I guess I didn't mean it!

I posted my wedding dress for sale on Craig's List about a week ago, fully expecting to never hear from anyone.

Now someone wants to come try it on.

What should I do?!

anywhere but here

Nothing's more depressing than driving home from a job interview that you bombed (one of 4 so far), while the SUN SETS AT 4:30, knowing you have a 10-inch stack of papers to grade and no plans yet for tomorrow's class, only to have Hawaiian music come on the radio, followed by a mariachi band from Albuquerque.

Well, to me anyway.

My sit-down

I'm taking a break from cramming for today's job interview, and again, I feel like Sarah Palin. Memorizin' catch phrases, stringin' words together into subject-free sentences, feelin' like a fraud and wonderin' what the heck to wear. Let's hope fifth time's the charm with this Interview Dress I bought in August and have been trying to keep seasonal by adding tights and a cardigan.

At my last interview, the woman ahead of me was wearing a nearly identical outfit. I wonder if she was hired instead.

This job is full-time, so I could actually accept it if offered. I was actually offered the last one (eventually, after probably being the third choice), but had to turn it down because they hours were way more than half-time, while being paid as such.

In other news, Goodwill and other thrift stores in Bellevue are awesome. Here's a sampling of what I've found in recent months:

* Laundry by Shelly Segal jacket
* Theory pants (though I couldn't buy them, because they were from back when a 0 was really a 0.)
* BCBG sweater
* Banana Republic shirt
* Ann Taylor pants

I'm not a slave to brands, but it's nice to know that my $7 blazer probably cost its original owner at least a hundred bucks. I'm all for labels when they're cheaper than new stuff at Old Navy!

Off to get costumed up and practice reading off the teleprompter!

Unlike my cynical husband, who came home on election day with a new button that says "If voting could change the system it would be against the law" over a picture of a fat ass sitting on what's either a ballot box or a toilet, I am among the breathless Americans who choked up when they saw Oprah and Jesse Jackson crying in the Grant Park crowd. In fact, I tear up a little when I think of it now, or of the way I felt when I was driving in my hand-me-down 1996 Corolla, battling a sinus infection and with a box full of papers to grade, and heard Neal Conan announce that NPR had called the race: absolutely amazed, exhilarated, and de-familiarized with my surroundings. It felt like an out-of-body experience, to think that more than enough of my countrymen had finally wised up. 

In that spirit of renewed idealism, tempered with caution for the backlash that the RNC is surely hatching, I'm sharing this essay by Pico Iyer. I doubt if Obama had an Obake-busters tshirt, the true badge of a Gen-Xer from Hawaii, but I still feel he embodies some of the Hawaii ethos.