If you were to look in my apartment, or my knitting bag, or my checking account, you wouldn’t thing I’d done anything at all this weekend, but you’d be far from the truth. It’s been a very busy two days.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a job interview. A two-hour job interview, with three different people. I wish I could say it went swimmingly, but I honestly can’t gauge how it went at all. I suppose we’ll find out in a few days.

Anyway, after the interview, I went over to some friends’ house to have dinner with them and their parents, who were in town visiting. It was a wonderful evening of story-telling and catching up, and it was definitely what I needed after a long day of battling anxiety and this cold I’ve got. After we parted company, I headed over to IHOP to meet some other friends who were had gathered for an evening of cards - I do so love card-playing. I probably shouldn’t have, because I was so tired, but I hadn’t seen some of these people in a few weeks due to conflicting schedules and traveling, so I went anyway. And I had yet another wonderful time.

Playing cards at IHOP with the gang

We played Manipulation, which is a take on rummy. It’s a great game, but it takes some amount of concentration. The basic gist of the game is that you’re dealt a certain number of cards (starting with 10 in the first hand and moving consecutively down to 1 card in the last hand), and you play cards on the table in typical rummy fashion (books or runs). On the first go-around of each hand, you have to draw until you can play a stand-alone 3+ card book or run, and on every other turn, you must play at least one card somewhere, and if you can’t, you must keep drawing until you can. The catch is that once cards are down on the table, they do not belong to any one person, and they can be re-arranged however you need them to be, so long as everything remains in books or runs of at least 3 cards. So, for example, if you had a Jack in your hand, there were two J-Q-K runs on the table in addition to a book of queens and a book of kings, you could move the two Qs and the two Ks from the runs into their respective books and take the two leftover Js and combine them with the J in your hand. First person to go out earns 0 points, and everyone else receives points for whatever is left in their hand (5 for number cards, 10 for face cards, 15 for aces). At the end of the last hand, the person with the lowest score wins. It’s fun, especially in large groups when you’re playing with several combined decks. But it can be difficult to spot combinations sometimes. :) And of course, if you start rearranging things only to find that you’re missing a card to make it work, (a) everyone then knows at least one of the cards you’re holding, and (b) it can be a real pain to remember how to put it all back to how it was originally. But it’s still a lot of fun, and one we play often.

Anyway, the AC was still not working last night (which is no big surprise, since I hadn’t yet called maintenance to come by and fix it), and it was hot as hell in the apartment. The high yesterday was in the upper 90s, and it was about 92° inside, even well after midnight. I did. not. sleep. at. all. So hot. I finally called today, and someone came by around 7:00pm to fix it. Turns out all he had to do was reset a breaker that had been tripped. Yay for easy fixes. And it’s now about 74° in the apartment, which I can handle far better than 92°.

Before the maintenance guy came, though, I had to get out of the apartment, because it was just so hot. So I went down to the mall and submitted applications at a few places for temporary work. It’s not really ideal, but work is work, and a paycheck is a paycheck. And working at Lane Bryant or Williams-Sonoma or Sharper Image or Starbucks or Barnes & Noble for a while wouldn’t be that bad. So… hopefully I’ll hear back something from one of them soon. The time is fast approaching where I have to decide whether or not to renew my lease or either (a) move back to Alabama, or (b) move into a cheaper apartment somewhere else here in town. Neither of the latter two are preferable, but hey - you gotta live within your means, right?

I hung out at my LYS for a bit this afternoon, too, and worked on my sock, and I’ve done some spinning tonight, but really, I haven’t had the time or energy to do much fiber-related stuff in the last few days. I’ve downloaded a few audio books from LibriVox, a site that offers free downloads for books that are in the public domain and are read and submitted by volunteers. I’m in the middle of Tristan and Iseult right now, and I’ve got The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Jane Eyre, and a number of other great classics lined up. Look at me! I’m finally jumping on the whole listen-to-audio-books-while-you-knit-or-spin bandwagon. Aren’t you so proud of me?

So, on that note, I’m going to go continue my book, work on some spinning, and enjoy my cold apartment.