Yuku free message boards

*crickets*

Hello? Hu-hullo? Is anybody here? Somebody? Twig? floothe? ... *gulp* Bluejay?

Yeah, this place is a fucking graveyard. Que sera, sera. I wonder what it would take to get a hardcore group of, say, 10 people to return and post on a semi-frequent basis.

Whatever the case, yes, floothe, I did finally procure employment. And once again, my gamble of leaving one job without having another lined up already paid off. I work for ADP, the payroll company. My official title is Associate Implementation Specialist, which means I'll be helping new clients get set up with processing their payroll through us. They're a really terrific company, with benefits eligibility on day 1, and the salary is fantastic, a $3,000+/year increase over my previous job. The training is very comprehensive, 10 weeks, the last week of which is spent in one of our corporate training facilities in either New Jersey, Texas, or California. I found out on Friday that the out-of-state training is tentatively scheduled for December 14, which could suck if it takes me to New Jersey, as I'd imagine it's colder there than I've probably ever experienced. Another crappy thing about that date would be that it's the day after we're going to Vegas for Nine Inch Nails; I would essentially spend that entire Sunday in airports/planes. Ugh.
You wanna hear something ironic? And, like, really ironic, not Alanis Morissette ironic? Okay, I work for a payroll company, got my first check on Friday...and they screwed up my state taxes. My state withholdings should've been 25% of my federal. My federal withholdings were ~$55, so naturally the amount of state I had taken out was ~$175. (That's about $160 more than it should've been.) But to show how cool and nice everybody in this company is, my manager offered to lend me the amount erroneously deducted if I get in a tight spot before our next payday (which is when the correction will be applied).
The only other thing I could complain about is that the office is in Tempe, 30 miles from my house. That's a 60-mile round trip. That's 300 miles driven in one week. And with traffic, it's an hour drive each way. So I leave my house at 6:45 in the morning and get home around 6:00 in the evening. BUT it's not all bad. I take advantage of that hour on the road to catch up on music, revisiting CDs I haven't listened to in a while or unveiling recently acquired albums. And I get to think about Love Ridden, the feature-length script I'm working on. I've actually flourished in writing on it since I got the job since I have quite a bit of free time there. (2 15-minute breaks and an hour lunch.) And Jennifer's office is not very far from mine, and both our companies have ride share programs that pay us $25 if we carpool at least 11 times a month, so we're going to start doing that in November to save money on gas and complement our incomes. And not take so long to get to work and reduce the wear and tear on each of our cars and help the environment, blah blah blah.

Treasure Island was fun. Goldfrapp and CSS made it all worthwhile, and Hot Chip was cool, too. The crowd was very douchey, though, what with the influx of inconsiderate hipster brats. I also saw Sigur Ros at the end of September, who were phenomenal. Then Iron & Wine opened for the Swell Season in Tucson. Iron & Wine was fantastic and played "Flightless Bird, American Mouth," which is one of my favorite songs of the decade, no doubt. Swell Season were okay but Glen Hansard talks too much between songs and so they played fewer songs in an hour and 15 minutes than Iron & Wine did in 55 minutes. Which was crappy because I had my first interview with ADP the following morning and had a 2-hour drive staring me down, so I had to leave the show early. :-(
Last night I caught the Faint, who were FUCKING AWESOME! Had such a good time at that show, dancing the night away. One of their openers was this duo called The Show is the Rainbow, whose lead singer kinda reminded me of Jack Black with his manic energy and flabby physique.

floothe: glad to hear you had fun in Chicago and finally got to see My Bloody Valentine. (Oh, to answer your question, MGMT is an abbreviation of "Management." But "My God My Tom" was the original name for the band, so you may have a point.) I've never been to Chicago. Was it very cold or not just yet?
Sucky to hear that your car got impounded. You should protest to the city, arguing about the lack of the sign. And have you gone to the doctor about your eye? How many surgeries have you had? Have you got reasonable health insurance at least? (I spent a few hours in the hospital on September 29 after I passed out at Okkervil River, got some X-rays and a spinal tap and refused admission, and the bill came out to ~$4,000. After my insurance, the amount I'm due to pay is almost $1,000. Fucking ridiculous.)
You should invest in some recording equipment for the next time you hear your neighbors having sex. That is, if you're into that sort of thing, hehe. Are they just that loud or are your walls that thin?

And yes, everybody go out and vote this Tuesday. Preferably for Obama, but if your ideological leanings tip you towards McCain, well, you're an idiot but at least exercise your democratic right. I, unfortunately, won't be able to vote in this election. I had been registered as a Republican when I lived in Tucson but changed my party affiliation to Independent when I moved to Phoenix. I sent my paperwork in ahead of the deadline to be able to vote on November 4 but it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I got a letter saying that the driver's license number I provided did not match the number Pima County had on file, so I needed to reverify it. Doing that meant I wouldn't be a registered voter in Maricopa County in time for this election, but what really struck out to me was, wouldn't it follow that if I moved from one city to another, my driver's license number would change? Hmm, wonder if it had anything to do with me changing my party affiliation away from the Republicans? Especially since McCain is struggling to hang onto his home state.