queenbookwench

I started avoiding LJ for awhile, because I get these weird moods when I find interacting with people online to be anxiety-producing and stressful. And I was having a fair amount of RL stress--I got turned down for the only job I've had a serious interview for, and it was a job that I really wanted, too. Combine that with increasing money worries, and you get avoidant!BookWench.

But things are much better now, or at least they could be a lot worse. I have basically rent-free housing (with a little room of my own) for the next few months, courtesy of my friend chrystalguy and I have lots of other friends who've been incredibly supportive as well and aren't sick of me yet :). My parents have been really encouraging too--and they haven't been pressuring me to move home like I was afraid they might. My unemployment compensation finally came through, so my money situation is much less dire. I'm kind of in a period of rethinking what my job-hunting approach should be, because focusing primarily on libraries hasn't worked out so well for me. I haven't entirely given up on that front though, because I still have several applications out, and the wheels of city/county government do turn slowly. And it looks like I might be able to use some of this open time productively to pursue another one of my interests--I'm in the process of trying to work something out with a local alternative school for me to come and volunteer. The contact person there is kind of hard to get ahold of, but I have faith that I will prevail. ;)

I'm trying not to spend too much time reading the news and wallowing in the badness of things.

I saw likeadeuce today--she's a special person to me, and I'm thankful that we've been able to maintain our friendship in spite of a certain amount of physical distance and also fandom/friendsgroup drift. Today we had fun talking about comics, especially Iron Fist. She lent me the recent graphic novel _The Last Iron Fist Story_ (which it isn't), and I just read it. It was immensely fun, and now I really want to find out if there are any good Heroes for Hire graphic novels (I'm not a single-issue girl for the most part). Maybe I should be posting this on a comics blog, but I never underestimate the potential knowledge of my flist. I'm sure there are some comics fans here (in addition to likeadeuce of course.

This weekend I went to the National Book Festival and, despite standing in line for over an hour, did not manage to get anything signed by Neil Gaiman. However, I did manage to pick up a copy of his new book _The Graveyard Book_ for my friends before they sold out of them, and I also got to see the Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian, which closes next week. It was exceedingly nifty--in addition to Mupppets, they had a lot of storyboards and video of his earlier projects--shows, commercials, and experimental films, which I'd never seen before. It was a real shame that he died so relatively young.