Worrkkk

So, what am I doing now? Don't you love when that question shows up in the your status line on Facebook? Uh--I'm reading "what are you doing right now?" on your website. That's what I'm doing. What about you?

Maybe you don't use Facebook--that might be a good thing.

But I have enjoyed it for getting back in touch with some old friends from my home town as well as keeping in touch even with people in the DC area that I never see any more or who have moved to other parts of the country. I think I love it best when they post pictures and share their life, as well as reading those statuses. It's a nice way to keep in touch, so I would recommend Facebook. Just avoid the games. Some terribly addictive.

But aside from that, I'm working. And two jobs! I'm not sure how long this can go on, but I started one job last week, by recommendation of my roommate--a data entry job, just in the evenings. It doesn't pay terrifly well (I'm editing now--that isn't so much of a typo as it looks--I was trying to decide between terrifically and terribly, hadn't realized though that I'd merged them), but not as bad as temp jobs outside of the DC area still. And since it's in the evening, I thought that would be something I might be able to stick with when I did get a day job to help pay off these debts I have.

And it so happened that the day after I started there, the temp company that I've worked for for the past 1 1/2 years called with a job in Alexandria, really close actually, a job I can drive to, so have my car with me, as well as having hours that would permit me to get to the evening job on time. And though it's rush hour, I'm driving against traffic. Nice.

And so as of yesterday, I've had two jobs. It's pretty rough, as two jobs tend to be, I guess. The temp day job is 8-5 and the evening from 5:30 to 10:30. So I leave at 7:30 and don't get home til 11:00. :(

The good thing about the day job, though, is that I have time to write, as I appreciate. And the evening job keeps me busy for the full five hours, so I'm not at home wasting time with stupid tv shows that I'm getting tired of and only watch because I'm too tired to think about doing something else or too tired of doing the same thing I've been doing all day--likely writing or playing stupid computer games that I need to stop doing anyway.

Anyway, the other interesting thing about the day job is that it's for the same company that wasn't happy about my not wearing a suit to the interview. It's a different location--their warehouse. I still have to dress nice, but not in a suit. Thank goodness!

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I'll thank my roommate for introducing me to bloglines.com because the concept of saving all of the blogs I wanted to track was a new one, and saved me a lot of time from opening lots of blogs from time to time having no idea when friends would write. But there was another benefit. Bloglines's recommendations introduced me to a few recommended sites and then, following links on some of these and on some of my writer friends from school, I've collected quite the list of blogs that help me keep up with the writing and reading world.

But there was one more benefit to bloglines. They had one of their own blogs, which they automatically subscribed me to, wherein they posted a self-congratulatory note about their success over Google Reader. Oh! Google does something like this too? Why yes, they do. So I held onto that for awhile, explored a little but didn't feel like transferring my long list over just to experiment. Finally, I decided to go ahead and try, so I transferred a few over, then messed around to see the features. Well, I have to say I like them better. Sorry bloglines. You were great for awhile. Thanks for the intro, but so long.

Fortunately, Google Reader has an import tool, and Bloglines has an export tool, so it wasn't such hard work as I'd thought to get them all transferred. And now I'm enjoying the good things about Google Reader with all the blogs I follow, and the more that I continue to add both from their recommendations and from those in emails and blogs I already get.

So, what are the differences? Bloglines allows you to save posts that you want for later. But, once you've clicked on the link and then leave, all of the posts in that blog are automatically marked as read. In Google Reader, you have to open each post to mark it as read, and you can also mark an opened one as unread. But also! You can star and share, email to others and tag. Also, you can scroll through the posts in a particular blog, and you can put certain blogs in folders. So I can group all the children's lit related blogs, for example, and then also group my friends--so I can keep things separate. It's pretty nice. I like that! You can also view in expanded view format, like Outlook, abbreviated or expanded email view. And you can even elect to view the past x number of posts whether you've marked them as read or not.

Bloglines might have these capabilities, but they were glaring out at me, and so Google Reader comes across to me as more user friendly. It's also handy since I have gmail, that I can click on the link at the top (where all the Google's other feature links are) to Reader, and go right there.

So, there you go. Have fun!