Mefi, Church and a Possible New Job

I feel like Sally Field: I did my first Metafilter FPP and it was kindly received. I was really worried. And then, immediately after I finished posting it - at work, of course, and it was about 5 - my friend D came in & hijacked me to the Flying Frog, since it is Wednesday, $2.50 draft and Disgruntled Museum Workers Local 420 meeting place of choice. When I should, of course, have been sitting there obsessing over Metafilter, waiting to be called to MeTa, freaking out in general. But I didn't do that - I sat at the Frog for hours, and J showed up, and the money from her grandfather who died last year just came through, and it's more than she thought it would be, enough for a down payment on a cheap house, and so we celebrated madly. I wanted to get her a flaming drink, but they don't do flaming (drinkwise, at least) at the Frog, and she had an Old Fashioned in honor of her grandfather. How lame is that? I wanted to get her something with fire, and whipped cream, and maybe glitter, and possibly choirs of angels - but no such damn luck, an old fashioned from the World's Worst Waiter. (tm - but he really is, I dread the Frog for this reason: I'm a great bar patron, I spent enough years in food & bev to be humble, and I tip at least 20%, and I'm patient and kind - and this guy plucks my last everloving nerve.)

So then it seemed like a good idea to go to the Basilica, and we did, although D bowed out at this point. J wanted to light a candle for her grandfather, and I lit a candle for my father, and my cousin Buzzy, and did the whole good Catholic girl thing with the genuflecting and the holy water & etc. There was a family in there doing the rosary, big time, so I sat in a pew for a while and then lit a candle for my father in the Mary chapel. There was a girl in the chapel, apparently having a major religious thing, or else just reading a racy novel, it was hard to tell, but the result was that there was nowhere to kneel, so I stood there, saying the rosary to myself and feeling awkward as all hell. Has to be maybe 15 years since I was in a Catholic church, if not longer. I imagined, as I often do in these circumstances, my father scoffing angrily at me, and in the car on the way home I yelled right back: "Okay! It was a hollow observance! Just like your little parenting moments!" and surprised myself by a depth of bitterness I thought was pretty much exorcised by now. Apparently not. But what the fuck, that doesn't really matter anymore, and if it makes me feel a little better to stand in a dimly lit highly domed place and light candles among murmuring, then why not? Maybe I should be Catholic again - doubt it, but you know, why not? I always saw Catholicism as being like the Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonalds vs. Burger King debate: if you're going to go with something horrible and bad for you, at least choose the original, undiluted version. Also, with Catholics, you get incense and guilt, so it can't be all bad. And anyway, in this odd world we now inhabit, I get the feelings that Catholics just aren't considered "Christian" anyway, so at least I could keep on being nonconformist, or something.

I might have a new job. In fact, I am about 85% sure that I do have a new job, but I'm afraid to talk about it in case I jinx it. It has been the strangest couple of days - I was sitting at the bar on Thursday after work having a drink and I threw out the comment that I was looking for a new job, and lo and behold, if I didn't get a call on Friday night from a guy I know a little, who owns several successful businesses in town, that he was looking for a PA who could run the businesses for him. We had lunch on Monday and talked, and talked on the phone a lot on Tuesday, and he is supposed to be getting me some paperwork information, and I think I have this job. I am completely excited but scared, too, I don't want to jinx anything, so I will not be more specific - but whoa, if it does indeed happen, it's considerably more money, and things will be good - crazy busy, no more surfing all day - but good. And fun, even, and a venture into the For Profit world, which looks like it might be Profitable for me. Cross your fingers or hold your thumbs or do whatever odd lucky thing you know of: I need a new job and I think, strangely enough and serendipitously, that this is just the one I need.