so i have talked to the new owners of the company, shamrock. i will be paid with benefits thru the end of november no matter how long they need me. which is fine. i can live with that. i've been thinking about taking off the rest of december and starting fresh in january. so anyway,

it looks as though chatterfish are making steps to being a better band. they had a show last weekend and they were played on pittsburgh indie radio. manoni got into a snowbaord movie and used chatterfish as their soundtrack. they all went to the premier last nite in harrisburg. so things are looking up.

i actually can't wait til i'm done here...

so i finally got in touch with maureen shallcross at the strand after a few rounds of phone tag. she obviously was not impressed by my resume. she said she was looking for someone with more experience particularly in a cultural institution. but she liked my enthusiasm. yeah yeah. huge rejection number 1. that's okay though. i was devastated at first but i'm over it. i knew it would have been my experience in question and that's exactly what it was.

so katie emailed me another job op last thursday. i will pursue that as strongly as i did the strand. i feel more confident in my resume now so i feel a little better about send my resume.

joe's birthday was this week. josh for once was able to come out and help celebrate. we spent saturday on MD with jules who wanted to go to ikea and we stopped at sunny's surplus to find a military shirt to match john lennon's. we tried to stop at outback steakhouse but the wait was too long. so we headed back to the cove for oktoberfest food.

first of all, hello! what the heck is up with the platters at the cove? they are so huge i swear they are meant for sumo wrestlers. legend has it that you get free dessert if you are ever able to finish those things. i got 3 steaks of pork on my plate and a huge pile of veg and spazle. unbelievable!

josh comes by to go out to the bars. we hit tailgaters first but it's too crowded and then we decide to go to the quick 6. aaron and alisha join us for a while and then we're off to the tre-mar. and then we stop by aaron's house for a while. josh had never seen the house so we got our 3rd or 4th grand tour. soon it was about 2 in the morn and we head out. but we had to stop at the cove again for a quick drink. we made it in time for eric to let us in before close and had a shot and went home.

the next day, we slept in til noon and joe got to open his present. he was psyched he got a car stereo, he's wanted one for a while now. i can imagine not having any background music while driving and that's annoying. so he was happy about the stereo. only he had a little trouble hooking it up. i think he'll employ josh's trusty hand to help him get thing installed. so anyway, we head off the ginmiya to meet up with his family for a little dinner. mind you, the grandparents didn't come. grandpa won't eat anything but meat and potatoes and grandma will have a fit if she knew we ate raw fish.

so we finally got the boat!!! we employed the help of will to help us eat the sushi and sashimi for two that comes in a cool ass wooden boat. it was a highlight. and then we went over to the grandparents for dessert. pumpkin pie was scrumptious and it was actually one of the times it wasn't stressful to be around grandma.

it cheered joe up quite a bit everytime it's his birthday. he gets presents and he always gets told his own baby stories every year and they always proclaim how wonderful and perfect he is. who wouldn't love that?