Pacific Rim

 Yes, I am on Elance.  

And in LinkedIn, for what it’s worth.  Is LinkedIn pure magical-thinking nonsense? I am over half convinced that it is. Does anyone ever get a job via this "Facebook for resumes" – I mean, does anyone fill positions that way? It’s as if you would go about finding and hiring a plumber by reading all the tombstones adjacent to your own.  
 
I apply for jobs daily, or try to, if I can find ones that match. Yesterday I think my Internet wariness betrayed me. I have been spending all this time searching for copyeditor jobs, getting inundated with suggested job openings for copywriters instead – and then I get this message where someone with an acronym for a handle has requested that I put in a bid for a job transcribing a video interview! What was this? Why? Was this some kind of a random automated bot, intent on blurring my job search further?  Who would request that I put in a bid on a job outside of my area when they don’t know me? On the Internet, if something happens to you that is unexpected and unsolicited, it’s probably a trap. I clicked the button to decline the job, choosing the only reason that halfway fit, that the job did not fit my skill set.  … And on reflection I’m sure that was a mistake. The acronymic entity that made the request turned out to be a business that has hired on Elance for a lot of little jobs. I think they just wanted someone to do the transcription who could spell. I could have done that job. And been paid. And had one job on Elance to my credit, glowing on my profile for other employers to see, instead of still none. Do I not like money? Crap.
 
Spring is arriving here with full blessed force and it’s not a moment too soon. 
 
I’m glad I dream so much.  A pride of lions, who can apparently hold their breath very well, sitting peacefully around the floor of a swimming pool. (An image I was aware in the dream of having seen before, with a clarity that had me looking around in YouTube when I woke up before my head cleared.)  A rambling old house on a hill by the highway, that was a dusty bookstore the size of a city library and full of the most amazing finds, but that had apparently been taken over by an evil biker gang.
 
I have it in mind to re-watch through the whole series of Game of Thrones up to now before watching Season Three, which is just about to start. Gwen, of course, will be piggybacking along with me through my eyes, but I’d do this with my mom, who is more than likely to say "I don’t like this" after the first or second episode, so the whole project is under a curse from the start.  Well, the first two seasons of Game of Thrones are on "very long wait" in Netflix at the moment, and so they have gotten skipped over and movies lower down the list sent instead, so I gave up on that, and with our varied DVR schedule I just can’t schedule recording the old episodes for free as HBO plays through them en masse leading up to the season premiere, because we’d miss two weeks or more of other stuff – so I am spending money for the DVDs instead.  A high water mark for money profligacy, at least recently, but hey, I mean to do this, and my plasma donation will cover it.  The Complete First Season will arrive here today.  Finally.  I was on a website buying a secondhand copy of the First Season, and was almost finished laboriously filling in the shipping information when it occurred to me to try logging in, in case I had an account there. The login worked. … And several days later I found out that the reseller had express-mailed the DVDs out to the apartment where I lived ten years ago. Hell with it – I gritted my teeth and paid myself the idiot tax of just buying the same set a second time. That’s the set that gets here today. Counting those two purchases and the Second Season when I get it, when Mom says the series isn’t working for her it’s going to be very expensive.
 
More than spring returning – I am growing back. Like a shrub that has been burned flat putting out new green shoots. It’s like I am becoming alive to the air again. There is no getting over anything, but I am, for one thing, Gwen’s eyes and ears and skin now, or that’s part of the job… and those parts are becoming more awake.  The great illusions of full participation are returning.  It doesn’t all look like a sham.  
 
Reading recommendations:
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik
Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
the webcomic Dresden Codak (dresdencodak.com) – I was this close to getting a special print edition of the whole first part of the comic before the Kickstarter runs out, but no, I had to buy the Game Of Thrones first season again)
(maybe I should mention Dresden Codak again – it does make me smile)
 
Look, let me tell you what I will be doing when the day of Gwen’s death rolls around, July 12th.  I have a date. That is the release date of Pacific Rim, by Gwen’s favorite director Guillermo del Toro, with giant Jaeger waldo-robots fighting giant monsters.  I’ll be there, first row, center seat.
 
If you knew her, why don’t you do that too?  "Do this in remembrance of me."