Speeding Up

Holy macaroni, ask for a flood and you'll get it! Amherst and Michigan (I applied to both for fiction) notified today. Ahh well...

Iowa also notified at least one person (I didn't apply there).

The big excitement for me is that Minnesota notified more people today. I can't wait to bounce my brain off of other people's brains. Congratulations, MN folks!

Congrats to all acceptances, new and old---and hang in there, those of you who haven't heard yet. It's still crazy early in the game.

PS---Nothing in the mailbox today.

PPS---My cat threw up three times today, and not furballs. I'm kind of worried about him, and I have to admit that a part of me is also wondering if this is some kind of bad omen. Ridiculous.

No promising job leads posted on Craigslist today. Man, it's 5 pm and I haven't eaten yet. I'm going to go get in the shower, then I'm going to eat TWO packages of ramen, and some leftover chicken. And I'm going to watch The Office.

Update 11:30 pm: I think Boots is okay. (I didn't name him that, by the way. He's adopted, and I just couldn't bring myself to change his name. He's old.)

Gimme Information / Please Let Me Wait Your Tables, Please

Both UMass Amherst and U Florida notified poetry people today (well, at least one poet each). Cornell notified at least one fiction writer on Friday.

It's pretty exciting. Maybe this means the big rush is coming soon soon soon? Every morning (well, afternoon) I wake up thinking This is going to be the day. Everyone is going to notify everyone today. I'm always wrong. It's so disappointing to find my mailbox full of magazines and tax forms and my inbox full of junk. Maybe there is no big rush. Maybe it's just going to be this grating little trickle, forever and ever. I'm so impatient, ugh.

Meanwhile, I'm still anxiously waiting for my official letter from Minnesota. (Their website says their notification letters will go out in February. So I'm thinking we'll start hearing about more notifications any minute now.) They're having a prospectives weekend in late March, and I really want the info about that.

Meanwhile meanwhile, I'm sooooo BROKE. I'm running out of room on my credit cards---funny how it doesn't sound so bad when I put it that way. Like I'm just storing stuff on them, instead of burying myself in debt. Lucky for me, I really like ramen. Creamy chicken with a few dashes of a chili flavor packet thrown in. Yum.

I still can't find a job. I've actually thought about standing around downtown with a sandwich board announcing my resume, like that guy in New York did. Maybe I should just have a t-shirt made.

I've begun scouring the internet for telecommuting jobs. I always thought of those as kind of fake, but some of them have to be real (?) I found something called Amazon Mechanical Turk, "Artificial Artifical Intelligence." Apparently it's supposed to allow companies to pay people to do weird little online tasks that "people do better than computers." I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently some people have likened it to a "digital sweatshop" of sorts.

Kind of bizarre, kind of sad, kind of insulting? Yes. Will I try it? Yes!

*

Update: It's mostly a bunch of crap. Now I'm sorting through ratracerebellion.com, which a kind fellow applicant over at the MFA Blog pointed out.

I Need a JOB

Every time I check the boards, and there are no new posts to read, part of me feels like screaming. I'll lose all respect for myself if I don't find a job soon. This just isn't healthy! I'm trying to quit smoking again, too. (Umm, gradually, but I'm down to no more than 2 or 3 a day). I have a BA and Wendy's won't hire me. None of this is helping. Must...stop hitting...refresh.