Of Gimshee, Boise Work Situations (or Lack Thereof), and Novel Writing

What's up, my home-dawgs? This being the first ever post on the first ever GimsheeRama blog, I thought I'd start off by answering the question that's no doubt on everyone's mind right about now... what the heck is "gimshee"? Well, you may have heard the expression "deep gimshee," as in "You kids are gonna be in some deep gimshee if you throw rocks at my greenhouse!" So gimshee pretty much means "trouble," but around here it's...well...the kooky and fun kind of trouble, like putting Cheerios in somebody's sandwich when they're not looking (an Alyssa favorite!). In the Green household, it has also come to mean a mass of any substance either without a name or whose name can't be remembered, such as the stuff inside Sloppy Joes. Proper usage in this context would be "Oh great! I just got some of this green gimshee all over the floor!" There! Now you speak fluent Gimsheese! How about that?

Well, to explain pretty durn quicklike what's going on around here... Alyssa is working two jobs, one at HP cooking food and the other at Sam's Club... cooking food. She's a fine little chefstress, that one is. As for me, I'm an independent contractor for Eduwriters.com, meaning that roughly once a month some guy in Reno sends me a writing assignment and I usually end up turning it down because it's on a topic I know diddly squat about, like marketing. What am I supposed to do, go out and take an advanced marketing course so I can make $24? I thinkest not. So, unsurprisingly, I've only finished one assignment so far, and I've still never seen any money. Probably a scam.

In the meantime, I've been looking for something temporary for the rest of the summer, but it's kind of complicated because we only have one car and the bus system in Boise is a nightmare. I was actually offered a 6-month contract to work at HP but I turned it down. What? Turn down working in the same company as my wife? Well, yeah. To be completely honest, I have absolutely no desire to write software documentation. I know that's what about 90% of technical writers do, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing something I know I'll hate. In a few weeks I'm supposed to interview at Healthwise, a company here in Boise that writes consumer health information. Now that sounds like something that would be up my alley! English and biology. Perfect combination. Next week they're supposed to send me a writing exercise via email, so hopefully I'm ready.

So what am I doing in the meantime? Mostly working on my novel. It's about two cousins who wind up on a Philippine island populated with humans who are slowly degrading into animals. Right now I'm just writing out the outline, which is now up to 46 pages. And I'm not even halfway done! Earlier this year I made a goal to have draft 1 of the book done by the end of September. At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky just to have the outline done. Oh well, I suppose I'm making some progress, even if it is just the outline.

Well, the li'l wife and I are off to bed. Toodles!