Thanksgiving Wrap Up Rant

It seems like Thanksgiving has been going on for ten days. Will it never end? At least I begged off spending the day with relatives. But it kind of backfired because I was too depressed to do anything I had planned. I just stayed home, felt disgusted at the news reporting that even Black Friday wasn't soon enough, and that stores were staying open on Thanksgiving too. Now I've worked retail, and those poor drones need a holiday just like the rest of you, but now they are stuck in the stores Thursday too. Is no one else disgusted by this? Like they can't drain our wallets of money fast enough.

I'm protesting Black Friday. Instead I'm going to sponsor a woman in Africa through the Women For Women organization. They teach job skills to women in war torn areas so they can better support their families.  I used to sponser someone but then the economy took a dump and I had to back off.  But now I want to get back to contributing to the welfare of others, even if it's a personal sacrifice to do so. There's more to life than buying a new sofa.

Why I Am Up at 3 AM

As you might expect, I was sound asleep at 3 AM. I was having some sort of a dream that I don't remember now when something woke me up. It sounded for all the world like the people in the apartment I share a wall with were hanging photos. The pounding seemed like it went on for half an hour. At least 3 times a week they wake us up with banging noises or loud talking or music playing. This time I had had enough so once I was lucid I wrote a letter, got dressed, and walked around to their front door. Just as I was turning the corner a man came out of that apartment I think and crossed the street. He didn't see me. And I wasn't entirely sure he came out of the apartment or was just on the sidewalk stepping out into the street. At any rate I shoved the letter through their mail slot and if anyone in there was awake they would have heard the metal slat bang shut.

I have no way to know if they read the letter. But now about fifteen minutes later I can hear them talking again loudly on their patio and they cranked up some kind of music. So either they haven't read the letter and it's just business as usual, or they have read it and are just being belligerent. They are from India so I don't even know if they read English.

I do know my boyfriend has an 8:30 AM dental appointment and I'm guessing the pounding woke him up too. But unlike me, he's pretty good at rolling over and going back to sleep. My problem is I can't sleep because I expect them to begin pounding again at any moment (and sometimes they do usually just when I've nodded off again). I'm beginning to think it would be better to live in a tepee on five acres than to put up with this anymore. Oh how I miss having my own house where none of my walls touched anyone elses.

Some moods are hard to shake

I've been in a strange funk. Sometimes I just need to get away from the Internet for a while. It's hard when I have daily blogs and I'm in no mood to write. I don't think anyone really notices when I don't post daily but I know. I often wonder if the cost of being an artist is worth it. I can't even afford to drive to craft fairs anymore and I'm tired of paying for a business license each year when I don't even sell anything in Anaheim. Like most artists I hate marketing, taxes, rules & regulations and all the malarkey that goes with running a business. But the thought of punching a time clock isn't going to make me happy either. I feel like I'm in a no win situation.
I was hoping to make a decent broadcast on ustream.tv, but I just don't have enough geek in me to get all the bells and whistles that go into making a cam stream that people will actually show up for on a daily basis. And when I do finally get a few visitors to my chatroom, that is just about the time the system freezes up (not that it freezes up on any other ustream users that I met). For some reason I can't figure out, it freezes about every 20 minutes, just when I get the room off the ground. Of course when I reboot and come back everyone is gone. So I wrote to tech support after Walt Ribeiro assured us that the ustream staff was excellent at working out bugs for their members. Well, maybe he had great experience with them but I emailed asking for help days ago and haven't heard a word from them. So I started my cam today, got frustrated with the poor quality, and when someone did come it, the whole thing crashed.
Right now I'm suppose to relax and go to bed for the night and I'm all frustrated again. Also, I need to lose weight so I've given up my nightly dessert. So here's a virtual dessert. It's all I'm getting tonight.