"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance or gross incompetence."

This post really has nothing to do with malice and/or gross incompetence; I just LOVE that quote. I first read it a million years ago on a button someone was wearing (ah, the halcyon days of wearing your identity/thoughts/sexual desires literally on your sleeve) and just happened upon it again whilst attempting to find this Beatles song that i am now convinced MUST be played at our wedding...! eh hem. sorry. No more wedding digressions today. I'm trying to focus on other stuff.

So, that being said, let's see where we are shall we? Have not heard back from the "really stellar" interview I had last week. Possibly the buckets of blood freaked them out but more likely the HR lady is still on vacation. Have heard from the JCCSF (Jewish Community Center in San Francisco) via phone last night and will be checking in with them this afternoon so there is still a glimmer of hope in the land of the unemployed. And yes, I do realize i am not Jewish but some of my best friends are! I also spoke with the nice unemployment folks yesterday (get that? I SPOKE with an EDD person on the phone. I dunno how that happened either. Possibly through a miniscule tear in the space/time continuum.) who informed me that I did get approved for unemployment insurance payments (yay!) but since i had failed to file a claim by the cut-off date (2/27/2008) I was "dropped from the rolls." (boo!) Now, what exactly "rolls" means in this context notwithstanding, I never actually recall being told I'd been approved. I mentioned this to the nice person on the phone and was told "we only send you something if you're denied so you can appeal if you want." To which I replied, so, then how do i know i'm approved? to which he answered (again in a REALLY nice way) "if you don't get anything in the mail." Hm. Still a little confused by the whole thing i mentioned that the website said that there could be a waiting period of "up to 6 weeks" before you're claim went through so I'd assumed that i needed to wait "up to 6 weeks" to check with them. He chuckled (that's right ladies and gentlemen, the nice man chuckled and said "well yes, but all of our correspondence is time based so you generally don't want to wait more than two weeks before contacting us." At that point i pretty much gave up but the good news is that he ended up "making a note" on my record (prolly to the tune of "this idiot thought she was supposed to wait 6 weeks just because the website told her to!") and is re-scheduling my phone interview so i can theoretically get paid for the 6 weeks i've been out of work instead of starting right now. Maybe. If they don't deny the claim this time around. I was told there is a chance. {sigh}

Lastly, work on the dissertation goes slow. I'm continuing to type but I'm having trouble getting my committee chair to talk to me/to everyone else so I'm not sure if what I'm typing is any good. Luckily, I got to see my lovely Professor-God yesterday at a talk she gave on "Ficionalizing Narrative and its potential uses in Ethnographic Surveys" -- {sigh} does that kind of talk make anyone else hot??!(And by "hot" I, of course, mean intellectually -- Sweetie-Baby-QB, hon, if you're reading this... heh heh. eh hem. anyway...) so she got all mad about the situation and went Gallant Knight on me: "That's it! I am officially taking this over. You are graduating in May!" Harrumph! Yeah! So, that's cool. (Sort of makes up for the fact that I got all jealous because there were other students of hers at this little talk and when it came time for questions/comments they were all "Well, as a student of Diane's I found her approach to be not just novel but actually stimulating to my creativity as well as really helping me to define and clarify my work....!" Whatev.