giving in

Kirsten and I arrived in Wellington with the intent of getting short-term jobs (for a few months) and then moving on, traveling around the country.
Now, granted, I perhaps haven't been looking for a job with the fervent dedication some would say I should. But I've been looking.
(One of my favorite moments in Wellington came when I went in to put my name on the lease for our apartment. I told the rental agent I had no job, and she asked what I was qualified in. I told her I was a journalist. She talked out loud to herself as she wrote down, "Not qualified in anything."
The plan is to do some free-lance writing while I'm here. Hopefully eventually even make some money at it. But for now, I'm going to have to get some sort of nothing job for a little money while I try to set up a few stories.
I finally broke down yesterday and signed up with a temp agency. One of the few things working at a newspaper for four years does qualify you for, other than writing, is typing fast. The lady lit up after giving me a typing test and seeing my speed.
It also gives me more motivation to find something else - waiting tables, anything. Anything where I don't have to dress up and sit in a cubicle. Technically, the last four years at the paper I was working in a windowless office at a cubicle, but there were key differences. For one, I almost never had to wake up before 10 a.m., and often didn't have to wake up until much later. I also wore jeans into the office 90 percent of the time. Most of my days were broken up by going out to a college campus to talk with athletes or coaches, although there were the bad days when I was sitting around waiting for someone to call me back who was out of town.
And then every now and again I got paid to go to sporting events and eat food someone else was paying for.
Come to think of it, that's the kind of job I need to find.

something's wrong here

Running blogger's built-in spell check function on my last post, I discovered something.
The largest free blog site on the web doesn't have the word "blog" in its spell-check dictionary.

for a writer, I don't do much of it

I spend a lot of time online everyday, especially right now when I don't have a job or anything else to fill the time during the daylight hours (sure, sure, I could venture outside, but who wants that?)
I realize, however, I don't do much of what I intend to do. Often, I mean to post an update to this or my other blog. Instead, I am drawn into a whirlpool of information, much of it meaningless. I find myself more interested in reading others' writings than putting some of my own up.
In a way, this isn't really a bad thing. Blogs, especially this one, are the virtual equivalent of talking to yourself, or maybe ego masturbation. At any rate, it's mostly a personal exercise.
But I'd still like to exercise it a little more. Where's that self-control I keep thinking about?

i think this is good news

I can't imagine how hard it was for the reporters to sift through all the sketchy information they were getting after Katrina hit, but it looks like the worst of the news might not have actually happened. One thing I worry might get lost in this article are the accounts of officials who say even though the murders, rapes, etc., may not have occured, or not with any frequency, it doesn't change the fact conditions were horrible.

as a long-time Netflix user, something I have to say...

DVD Unlimited is crap.

movies

I'm trying out the New Zealand version of Netflix.

Anyone got any movie recommendations?

something done right

So it only took a trip around the world for me to see Batman Begins - it's still playing here in New Zealand, and we watched it in Auckland.
Awesome. It's too bad more of the other comic-based movies haven't done it as well.