Well I am still sitting here

so I have decided to go back to volunteering at the Blanton. I have been wanting to do it for ages but as I was job searching I thought I should be doing that. However, I thought to myself yesterday, I am going nutty here with no kids to talk to and Gordon sleeping a good part of the evening before he goes on the PC until about 9.30 when he wants to watch TV. So I contacted Martha yesterday and I should be back next week, doing my old shift of Friday 10-1pm, so I am looking forward to that.

Kid wise, Alan and Emily are both back to college but Alan has only managed to get 9 hrs despite needing to do 12 (the max he can do at the moment). This will put him even further behind but at least he can't say he is overworked! I just wish he would contact his counsellor more and maybe they could have pushed for him to get into something.

Elisabeth is believe it or not, working in a call centre for $8.00 an hour! We have spend $72,000 approx over the last 4 yrs for her to get a good degree in Biology and apparently that is not enough to get a level entrance job in that field. She had an interview with the fish hatcheries in San Marcos the other week which had been described to her as being something a high school student could do. That sounded good but no, apparently they were actually looking for someone more experienced than a graduate fresh out of college. She had done well in the interview apparently so they suggested she could get more experience by volunteering there! Just a quick point, she had been working all last summer with no pay for the same place but with smaller fish ,so basically they are just get cheap labour.

Anyway, she is plowing along, as she really want to work in the environmental field. If she is still in San Marco during the summer she will take a new class that is being offered in environmental law and maybe that will help. However, it really pisses me off that more and more places are insisting on kids getting masters/phd's before they are even considered for a job other than your run of the mill jobs, like call centers or pharmaceutical reps!

The weather here is cold but no colder than it was in London when I visited but somehow it seems colder, weird eh. Anyway, basically it is dark, dank and too cold to willingly go outside. That is another reason for taking up the volunteering again, that unwillingness to actually go anywhere is rearing its ugly head again. If I could get groceries delivered I would as I really hate going to the grocery store but its more than that, I get anxious about going anywhere, putting it off until I absolutely have to. The weather is not helping!

Anyway off to get dressed now and do some chores around the house before I start my crafting/art(?).

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day making a cardboard frame for my latest beaded figure . As it based on an icon from these parts, I decided to make a shrine but again one of my fears got in the way. We have plenty of scrap wood in the garage which I could use to make a frame, however, since my college days, its always sometime I avoided doing. I know how to do it, I made my own stretchers at college but it was with power tools, a big circular table saw and it scared the sh** out of me. All power tools scare me but saws in particular. So today I am going into the garage and sort out some wood.

Anyway back to the shoddy cardboard frame, I decided in my wisdom to cover it with tiny Mosaic glass tiles. I managed to do the top, one side and some of the raised front before deciding this wasn't going to work. Fortunately I had used a hot glue gun to attach them to the cardboard so they weren't too bad to prise off but its amazing how well they were stuck on with that stuff!