Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007 - 10:51 p.m.

Happy Halloween, my peeps. :) I hope much candy and fun was had by all...or at least, those of you who have kids. :)

Speaking of kids and trick or treating, can I just say that it behooves those people with kids to use their brains when they take the wee ones out to extort sweets from the neighbors? Because those of us who don't have Halloween on the brain or childhood to contend with - on accounta we're not teenagers and don't have kids - may not think to slow down extra-slow when we drive through our narrow, bendy, twisty, sidewalk-less, unlit neighborhood streets in the dark. Seriously, there's no one in my house to get jazzed over dressing up and begging candy, and we live behind a locked gate and up a long drive, so we don't put the candy out, either. Hence, I headed down the street this evening at 6:30, in the dark, doing 15 mph as I always do, without realizing there were probably kids walking around, and bingo: there were freaking people in my street, around bends, wearing dark clothing that reflected not a single particle OR wave of light, and they were not carrying flashlights, either. So I had no idea they were there until my headlights hit them, and what with them being around the bend and all, that was a little late in the game for me to realize there were people there. After the first people, I slowed down to 5-10mph and tried to stay to the center, because obviously I realized there were probably more people in the street, but dude. Carry a frigging flashlight, for crying out loud. I passed at least half a dozen parent-child combos on my street alone, and not a single one of them was bearing a flashlight.

I wish I could hit all the places that sold Halloween costumes tomorrow to buy fun wigs and props for my photographs, but I have to work and then be somewhere at 6:30, so I don't see that happening. :( Props are fun, though. I took this image yesterday:

I slept until nearly 5:30pm today, which is going to make it hard to sleep tonight. I was just so exhausted by the time I got to bed at 3:30 in the morning that even though I got up at noon, when my alarm went off, I made the mistake of staying in bed to watch some CNN, and I just fell right back to sleep again and didn't wake up until TB started making noise in the kitchen. I hope I can get to sleep reasonably early tonight, or tomorrow will be a long day.

I fell on the steps the other day and whacked the crap out of my camera lens on the concrete. Now it jams and gives me the fatal E18 error all the time, and the lens fails to open or close all the way. :( I hope TB follows through on his promise of possibly getting me a new camera for Christmas, because I can't stand to be without one, and I lose all the creative urge I have, if I go too long without. When I had to go 2 months without one earlier this year, I really lost the drive to work on my 365 project, and I really want to see that through. If he does get me a new one, I want the Canon Rebel XTi. Badly. But it only comes with the body for like $800, and then you have to spend near that on a lens kit, so I kinda doubt I'll be getting one. That's just way too much money right now. :( I mean, when isn't it, but seriously, with me working for peanuts and having hospital bills, that's just too much.

Speaking of peanuts, the minimum wage here in California is supposed to go up another 50 cents on January 1, to $8/hour. Which means the Big Chain Bookstore will have to up its starting pay to that, as well*. Traditionally - according to people who have been with the company a long time - that means the rest of us will get a corresponding bump in our rates. Which means I *should* go from $8.25 to 8.75. But I'm not holding my breath. Something tells me it ain't gonna happen. I'm hurrying to get all my health issues taken care of, so that I can get a job that pays actual living wages after the holidays, though I might keep the BCB job for 2 days a week, just to keep my benefits. I do love not working a 50-hour week, but I definitely miss the pay of television, I have to say. :(

* All you BCB employees in other states owe us Cali Kids a debt of gratitude, btw. WE just make minimum; you people make above it in whatever state you work for solely because California has a higher minimum wage than you and the company pays a flat rate across the board. So you people enjoy that $2 above the federal rate, because we here in the expensive frigging state of California do not reap the same benefit.

I had something else to write about, but now I forget what it was. I have so much stuff to do, and I started thinking about it while I was writing the above paragraph, and now I'm all scattered and pre-occupied with all of the responsibilities I'm failing to meet, so I think I'll end this here.

Oh - I *am* testing out my cool new skin serum, so those of you who want to be guinea pigs, drop me a line. It's great (on me, at least) for repairing damaged skin (like on chapped lips) or around your eye area. It won't do a damned thing really for dead skin, but stuff that's just damaged or in pain, it does good stuff for. I use it on my lips every day now and around my eyes. It helped my chapped lips heal faster, and I haven't had them since. It also helped the split in the tip of my right index finger heal faster, too, though it didn't do anything for the skin that was already dead and peeling, on either my lips or my finger. If your lips are really chapped, it works much better if you apply it, let it soak in, and then apply chapstick. I think it's the glycerine pulls the moisture out of the chapstick and into your skin, but it really augments the action of the chapstick. If you want some, drop me a mail, and I'll tell you what's in it and get your snail mail 411. Send your requests/questions to askkatiedoyle at the dot com of the yahoo.

Peace out,
Katie

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