I’ve been keeping busy! Sort of. Too busy to write blog posts, apparently, or not busy enough to have anything in particular to write about? Maybe both. Anyway I have been doing lots of novel writing, and also some working and some day drinking with friends, and lots of going to the gym and yoga, so all in all a pretty good arrangement of things. Also, I started a wheel ceramics class a couple of weeks ago and last week for the first time began to feel like I was getting the hang of it–so I’m pretty excited about that! Playing with clay is extremely satisfying and now that I’m not feeling frustrated by the difficulty it’s starting to be really fun. I even got to keep two pieces to fire last time.
The day drinking with friends, always fun on lazy Florida summer beach days, also revolved around spending some time helping a friend with a house she was remodeling. That’s mostly over now, but I really enjoyed learning about painting walls and tile grout and molding. Especially accompanied by mango White Claw and rap… Yesterday I helped her repaint the racing stripe on her boat, followed by a sunny afternoon of cocktails and beaches.
Work has mostly involved an on-again/off-again call center transcription project, which, apart from being sometimes mind-numbingly boring, was actually great. I’m happy to be a bit bored if I’m being paid $25/hour to work lying on the couch in my pajamas eating grapes. Plus it was kind of interesting eavesdropping on people’s phone calls to Google Express to complain, a random A/C repair shop for services, and (bizarrely) Roto-Rooter to describe some in-depth and gnarly plumbing problems. All in all some boring choices, but I don’t think I’m going to be making calls like that again without thinking of the random girl who may, some months later, be lounging around in her underwear meticulously transcribing every “um” and “uh” and repeated word I say as I describe my problems and give my address. I’m sorry this project has ended now.
The highlight of the transcriptions was the autofill which had been used in some of them, and which, frequently, needed some serious correcting. My all-time favorite was probably when the speaker said “there’s a button” and the autofill had very cheekily written “I like your butt.” Another winner: the speaker said “Tell me how how how how you you you work” (people repeat words A LOT more than we realize), and the autofill had written (I am not making this up): “so tell me a little bit about how you were a ho ho ho.” Another gem: “And uh when can I expect to see, you know, can men lactate today?” And the brilliant: “Tori, hi, my name’s The Nest.”
More ceramics tomorrow–can’t wait!
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