master of femme-jitsu

I fed my snake her first rat today but not before the little fucker (the rat) tried to run away. It leapt out of her feeding tank as I was dumping it in then made a quick get away under my bed. I caught it thankfully when it darted into a corner. I didn't think I would ever be so excited for her to eat as I was to watch her gulp down the little basterd.

so i've been working at the pipe shop for a little bit now. i honestly love my job and feel a sense of responsibility for the store. today when i got in our usual wednesday stack of our local zine was waiting outside. after i got all of my opening duties finished i sat down and opened it up to see what was happening in the area. a couple pages in i saw a full page ad for another smoke shop. most of the local competition doesn't bother me but this particular shop is very close by and is partially owned by a guy who used to be our rep for some products we carried in the store. we had made numerous attempts to get in touch with him over the last couple months to reorder and settle our account. he avoided any calls and the one day i did actually catch him he gave me some line about being in the hospital. now i knew he and his business partner had opened a shop nearby but didn't worry too much because we have the best prices on glass i have ever seen. i did however start to worry when i saw there ad proclaiming the will beat any competitors prices by 10%. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!! their business slogan was so disgustingly similar to ours i nearly puked. while i think a little competition is great taking steps to put other small businesses out of business is another. since this shop has opened i've watched our sales start to decline. we still have our days but it's not enough and i'm actually concerned about the store. the owners want to advertise but want to keep cost minimal which doesn't help get much done. i've been racking my brain for days trying to come up with different things we could do and feel an even stronger sense of pressure now. i know sitting in the shop all day and only seeing 2 customers come in isn't helping. i need to find someone to go do a little spy work for me. i'd go myself but these guys know who i am and they aren't open when i'm away from the store. so for now i'm sending the other girl who works here 1 day a week. until then i'll be here biting my nails waiting to see what she has to say.

i went to my first florida gay bar last night. after 9 months of being here it seemed long over due and i really needed to do something that was work or being at my house. the bar itself (the pink panther) was very cute. apparently at one point the building housed a chinese restaraunt. regardless they had done a very nice job with the lay out. the place was owned or at least run by a guy who i thought might be persian. i was dying laughing on the inside thinking about south park. when we first walked in a saw this older dyke who looked oddly familiar but didn't think much of it because, well, i'm in florida and what lesbians do i know here. we made our way to the bar and i at that point ran into one of my regulars from the store. she was surprised to see me there and made some comment about me being busted. busted for being in a gay bar? didn't seem so far fetched but ok. ames and i sat at the end of the bar and started working on our ridiculously strong drinks. we started talking and the older dyke i had spotted walked passed us heading to the bathroom. again i thought it would be silly that i would actually know this person but i was determined to get a better look. apparently i wasn't the only one because when she came out of the bathroom she came and stood right next to me. i turned to her and realized i had been right. i asked her if she had once lived in albuquerque and when she said yes i immediately remembered her name. i re-introduced myself. she at one point had been a regular of mine at beeps,(the store i worked at in albuquerque for ages) and i used to lovingly refer to her as old chachie. I have an ex nicknamed chachie and this woman looks like I imagine she would if she had continued her partying ways for another 30 years or so. I couldn't believe it had actually been her. I had not seen her in many years, but used to see her at the bar on a regular basis. At least back in my boozebag days. I actually think at one point she was trying to sleep with me. Ok now I'm rambling and should stop.

but i still love this:

i decided a while back that after i finish school i'm bound for hawaii. since the weather in chicago the last few days has been all over the place i've been thinking about what it will be like to live somewhere that the weather stays about the same all year long. it's been a slow day at work which leaves a lot of time for daydreaming. i even peaked around craigslist a bit at what housing is like.
why wouldn't i want to live here:

I've been looking for a job since before I even got to Chicago and here I am 3 months after arriving and I'm still jobless. Never in my life have I been unemployed for more than a couple of weeks and those instances were always a couple weeks of planned unemployment.(meaning I had another job but wanted a break between)
My lack of job now is not for a lack of trying. Not for lack of experience either. For fuck's sake I've been a CNA since high school. You would think that hospitals would be chomping at the bit trying to get an employee like me. I love my work. I really love health care. I know I've taken a couple of breaks from the biz but it was necessary for me to figure out what I really wanted to be doing.
I've been hired for a couple of agency jobs that panned out to nothing. I've also had a couple of offers from each a hospital and a nursing home. I would have taken them too if it hadn't been for them offering to pay me barely above minimum wage. For the work I do I found it to be insulting.(you can't expect to maintain quality employees if you aren't willing to pay them a livable wage)
So today I'm attempting to submit my resume to one of the many hospitals in this city for what feels like the millionth time. Well lucky me that there website was having issues. I actually got to talk to someone in their HR. This is a miracle with in and of itself. Usually it's either something pre-recorded or some HR employee telling you like a broken record that they are "unable to discuss resume status due to the high volume of applicants."
The woman that I talked to was incredibly friendly and gave me her direct contact info to send my resume for her personal review. In addition her specific job within HR is to fill the positions for CNA's.
So I sent this woman the most heartfelt professional email I could muster. I was sure to include all the good stuff, "I'm going to school for nursing," "I'm uber passionate about quality patient care," "I'm the best candidate because..." Now it's in her hands. I'm not hold my breath but it sure would be nice to have someone take me seriously.

so i've had a snake for a little more than a year now and up until today she's been eating pinky mice or fuzzies (mice that have just started growing fur.) I went to the pet store to pick up a package of frozen fuzzies but the ones they had were relatively small. after talking it over with my roomie and the lady at the pet store, it was decided that we'd try a smaller but adult mouse. this is a huge step for my snake because in the grand scheme of things she's still a baby and this will probably be the catalyst to some substantial growth. so... we brought the mouse home, put her in her feeding terrarium, thawed the mouse, and threw it in. after a couple minutes of examining the mouse she went for it. i kept having doubts that she would be able to handle it, but she did. it took more than half an hour to get it all in but she did and managed to keep it down. now she's a happy fat little log of a snake and i don't know that we'll be able to turn back