Yes, I'm a little Grumpy right now.

Remember how I interviewed with my dream company, and I lost the job to an internal candidate?

The small token of consolation was that maybe the new candidate was coming from the Seattle office and then that, in turn, would open up a job for me downtown. (If you’re going to dream, dream big and slightly convoluted.)

Well, guess what happened? The new candidate is from the Seattle office.

In fact, she’s from my husband’s office, to be precise! What a coincidence!

Except…that it isn’t a coincidence at all. Turns out when Chris forwarded the job description to her, innocently asking if she knew who this new VP needing an assistant might be because his wife was going to apply for the job, she decided to apply for it herself.

Yeah.

I don’t know why I’m still stunned when people do things like this. You’d think I’d be totally hip to it by now. I guess it’s good that Chris and I remain “too nice” (His boss’ words. The boss that I’m not going to apply to work for because that would just be weird), but it sure stinks when we get caught on the short end of stuff like this.

Fortunately, I have faith that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to, and I know a few things that can lessen the sting a bit.

Grrrrr.

I really had no idea how much I’d love my Ipad. Every morning, I sit in bed and quickly scan Facebook, Twitter, and my Google Reader while drinking my coffee. Email can wait. But even with those conveniences, I never thought I’d give up paper books. Never. A couple of years ago, I swore off buying books (except for extreme circumstances, of my own rationalization) and started to check out books from the library on a regular basis. That was great, and since I’m a fast reader I never had a problem getting them back in time.

I don’t even know how it happened…I guess I had an Amazon or ITunes credit and one thing lead to another. Suddenly I was hooked on reading on my IPad. So, without further ado, here’s the list of books I’ve read since Christmas:

The first book I downloaded to my computer with the Kindle for Mac app (before I got my Ipad) was The Female Body Breakthrough. I sorta skimmed it and will have to go back to remember its tenets. You can read a great synopsis of it on Charlotte’s blog here.

Once I got my Ipad for Christmas, the reading really kicked in, and I had both Kindle for IPad and iBooks fully loaded (which I realize counts again as buying books. Ergh):

Non-fiction:

Apparently my books have a color scheme! All great books, but the one that was most helpful was the middle one, Over 40 & You’re Hired. I saw the author doing a seminar on PBS, and she had some fantastic job search tips and tricks. Though I don’t have a new job yet, it’s totally improved both my resume and cover letters, without a doubt.

Silly Chick Lit:I guess I like to remind myself of the agony of being single and living in Los Angeles.

Weight Struggle/Body Image Lit:The literature of my people, what can I say?

Miscellaneous Semi-Women’s Lit:Loved this book, though the one I read had a different cover. This cover is just silly. I have no idea who made this decision, but it was a bad one. The other cover had a ring with “Committed” engraved on the inside. I’m pretty sure Ms. Gilbert wants to vomit when she sees this cover.Am I like the last person to read this book? I really liked it a lot, and sorta miss being in a book club.Fascinating and sad how women continue to prostitute themselves and justify it.

Random Reads:Creepy and heartbreaking, but ends weak. One of the better books I read. Intertwining stories, but when the narrative point-of-view keeps changing it makes it a little tough to discern whose story you’re in for a moment.

Murder Mysteries:Decent, not mind-blowing.

And, finally, the books I couldn’t put down, featuring a female serial killer set in Portland, OR. I had never heard of them until I read that January Jones had optioned them. These are not for the squeamish. (Don’t bother clicking to look inside. I just didn’t bother to crop that off of these)

Is it any wonder that my tush is mush? Hey, I could have been eating or sleeping through the doldrums so I actually look at this list as an accomplishment. Happy reading!

All images courtesy of Amazon.com

I seem to lead one of those lives where either nothing is happening or everything is happening at once. After my few weeks of dedicated couch worshiping and Lifetime Movie Network addiction, things kicked into high gear in the house of Carbzilla.

First off, my unemployment buddy, Kristin, gave me a heads up on a job description that sounded truly perfect for me. Not only was I totally qualified for the job, but the employer, whom I greatly admire, also happens to employ my husband. I’ll give you a tiny hint:Yeah, in case you don’t know, not only did we honeymoon at DisneyWorld, but we also own a timeshare there. We’ve visited 7 times in the last 7 years, and, by total random fluke, my husband works for one of their subsidiaries. Not to mention that fact that I watched The Mickey Mouse Club faithfully as a little girl and can remember my first trip to Disneyland when I was seven years old like it was yesterday. To say I was a little excited to have the chance to interview with them is the understatement of the new millennium. (When we moved here, I didn’t even know that they had offices in Seattle. I swear.)

Now, the bad news, the job was not in my husband’s building downtown which is what we were hoping for. Call us nerdy but we really miss commuting together. Worse yet, this new office is way out by Microsoft which is about an hour and ten minute commute each way. With a $7/day toll. Ugh.

Anyway, I had a great interview, and it turns out I was their 3rd choice. They actually went with an internal candidate which I absolutely think was the right choice to get a brand new office up and running (literally, they had one phone in the whole building that was working). That said, they left the door open for me to come back and interview for a Director’s assistant position in the next few months.

An hour later on the very same day that I got that news, we found out that our offer was accepted on a small, foreclosure condo in Portland! We had been expecting to hear by March 9th or 10th, and our real estate agent had just called to say “Eesh, still no word,” when she immediately called me back with the great news! Seriously, she called me back so quickly I thought she had butt-dialed me.

So what’s going on with that, you ask. Well, we’re easily influenced and got really caught up in Portlandia. What can I say? No, I’m kidding. We’ve been thinking for a while that we might eventually move down to Portland, and then thought, in the meantime, that we would find a super small studio that we could go to on the weekends.

Instead, it looks like we are going to end up with this:It’s a one-bedroom in the Hawthorne neighborhood. We really fell totally in love with the neighborhood when we went to go look at it. We can walk to EVERYTHING! There is great vintage shopping, food carts, restaurants, pubs, movie theaters, etc. The neighborhood totally feels like us, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Plus, we get to be closer to such fabulous bloggers as Lisa., Mama Pea, Kalin, and Spabettie!

So pardon me if I’m not posting food as much. I’m a little obsessed with creating the perfect weekend getaway on a budget (blog spin-off maybe?).

By the way, whoever said “No news is good news” didn’t have to deal with me freaking out every time my cell phone rang for the last two weeks. Just sayin’.

Hooray! We made it through Winter! Barely…I’ve lost 9 pounds in 13 weeks on the new WeightWatchers PointsPlus program. I’m very pleased with that since there was a time when losing weight again seemed impossible. One more pound to go, and I will have lost 20 since January ’09. And that’s pretty much with minimal exercise. What I will say about that is that I’m 100% certain my body would be smaller right now if I had put more effort into exercise over the last two years, but I’m content right now with my progress, my size, and my body. (A lot of that comes with age, believe me.)

We’ve been having some good eats around here:

Mama Pea's Oatmeal Cookie Cupcakes

Recipe

I made a batch in my new silicone baking cups from World Market (love everything about that sentence), froze them in 3′s and 4′s, and then pull them out when I want one. I top them with a small dollop of almond butter for a PointsPlus total of 8. I added raisins to one batch, and butterscotch chips to another. Whatever you do, don’t you dare call them muffins!

Not as popular were the Chocolate MiniCakes with a secret surprise ingredient:

I mentioned them on my Facebook page and this is the conversation that ensued:I thought I was going to pee my pj’s. My friends were pretty creative for an early Saturday morning! It was almost anti-climactic to reveal that the mystery ingredient was just sauerkraut. Certainly nothing to plink your glockenspiel over.

You can Google Chocolate Sauerkraut cake for variations. I already had the sauerkraut so I was looking for a way to use it up. The cake turned out a little dry, and didn’t exactly send me running to try the Black Bean Brownie recipe. Although I understand others have had great success.

That’s the Reader’s Digest version of the month. In other news, we’re waiting on two important decisions which are totally out of our control, which is NOT a place I’m comfortable being. I’ve finally learned the fine art of distraction and the ability to only control that which I have control over.

For example, I finally broke down and bought the small version of this lamp at IKEA even though everyone and their Dwell-reading grandmother already have one:Sometimes it’s the little things that bring us joy when everything else is out of our hands. It’s been an adrenaline ride this month, for sure. Hopefully I will be announcing happy, fun news soon!