Hmmm, I really have been increasingly lax about posting regular updates lately. Well, anyway, here's the latest.

Wednesday.

While volunteering at Open Harvest, I asked one of the employees whose acquaintance I made recently (we'll call her "T") how she liked working there. She said that overall, it was really a good job, but her least favorite part was cashiering.

I told her I had been thinking about applying for the position advertised at the front of the store. She asked where I was currently working, and I told her about my gas station job that's less than a block away from where I'm currently living.

T suggested that maybe if I got a job at Open Harvest, I could find other roommates that live closer.

Hmmm... I guess I'm somewhat picky in that I don't want to move in with just any random people without knowing them fairly well first. (Unless, of course, they're crazy anarchist activists, hahaha.) But it was a thought. Entertain all possibilities, I say.

At the end of my shift, out of curiosity, I went up and asked L what the hours were for the advertised position. She said it was 16 hours a week, Monday and Thursday nights. Too few hours to replace my current job, and the schedule wouldn't work in conjunction with it either. She asked about my current situation, and I told her about it.

She said they were "thinking about" creating another cashier/stocker position which might be closer to full time. I guess this might have been a hint that if I really, really wanted a job at Open Harvest, it might have been possible to convince her to hire me for this soon-to-be-created, as of yet unadvertised position. But as I wrote previously, the truth is I'm on the fence about it anyway, so I decided to just leave it alone for a while, and continue with the way things are -- working at the gas station for money, and volunteering at Open Harvest one day a week.

L commented that it's really hard to find good employees. (This seems to be a common refrain among employers; I find this funny, because as an occassional job hunter, I've often found the converse to be true: It's really hard to find good jobs.) I wished her luck in finding somebody for the stocker position, and went on my way to buy groceries.

In the evening, I experimented with cooking lentils and rice. It turned out well. Yanthor bid me to write down the recipe, but since I hadn't made the slightest attempt to measure anything that I dumped into kettle, any recipe would be doomed to vagueness, much to Yanthor's chagrin. But here's an attempt:

Kettle 1: Organic Rice (I think it was jasmine, but not positive), water, Earth Balance buttery stick, salt. Heat the water, add salt and butter, dump the rice in, let it cook on low with the lid on for like 45 minutes or so.

Kettle 2: Organic Green Lentils. Water. (The water should be around double or triple the volume of the lentils.) Cook them up good for a while. Dump in some salt. Put in some chunks of garlic (maybe cut each clove into 2 or 3 pieces), a tiny handful of minced onion (from the bulk seasoning aisle), and a few parsely flakes. Stir it all around and keep cooking for maybe another hour. See what happens.

Simple stuff. Too simple, maybe? Organic ingredients. Yeah, that's the secret. Hah.

Thursday.

Did a lot of nothing. Seriously.

Well, I did finally summon up the courage to take a stab at repairing Serenity's rear gear shift. (I had obtained the parts the previous Monday.) After messing around with it a bit, I figured out the basic idea of what needed to be done. But as I tinkered around, and made multiple attempts to thread the cable through, the strands of metal began to fray apart. Attempts to wrap them back in place proved futile. Cutting them made them stick out. The more I messed with it, the worse it got. Eventually, it became impossible to thread anything at all.

At this point, I gave up for the day, and decided to address it later.

Friday.

Worked on a slightly altered schedule, which allowed me to sleep in for the morning. Nothing further.

Saturday.

Saturday morning, I was ready to get back to Serenity. It began with a trip to the bike shop to obtain a new cable.

When I got back to the Mideast Base and attempted to thread it through, everything seemed to be going smoothly until I discovered to my dismay that the new cable was just a few inches too short. (I had already shortened the housing quite a bunch during my first attempt, and was reluctant to shorten it further for fear of impeding necessary handlebar movement.)

I decided the best course of action would be to immediately return to the bike store, and see if I could exchange it for a longer cable. So, back to the store I rode. (Yes, I rode the same bike I was fixing. I couldn't shift the rear gear at all, but everything else was working fine.)

When I told the shopkeeper that the cable was too short for my bike, he was very surprised. Having the bike right outside, I offered to show him, to which he quickly agreed.

We brought the bike in, he mounted it up on his rack, and threaded the new cable through. He suggested that the rear piece of housing (still from the original manufacturer) could have been a bit shorter, but I said since it came with the bike and was still in good shape, I didn't really want to shorten it; even if a couple extra inches would allow the cable to reach the rear gear, it should still have a little excess to allow for adjustment.

He had longer cables, but they were designed for tandem bikes -- much longer. He took one of them, and cut it to something shorter than its default length, but plenty long for my use. Had it not been for the fact that I had left a small part at home (the rubber piece that seals the opening in the frame where the cable goes through), he would have just finished it right there, and I probably could have left with a 100% working bike.

But since I had made that silly little omission, it would need redoing anyway in order to put the piece back in. He warned me to be careful when threading it -- since he had cut the cable, it would be prone to fraying too.

I asked if there was any difference in price between the types of cables, he said, "No." Then smiled, and added, "Not for you."

In the words of Eric Cartman, "Sweet." If I was a loyal customer before, I am even moreso now. As long as I'm in Lincoln, I know where I'll go whenever I need bike stuff: Holdredge and N. Cotner. The Used Bike Shop. Check it out, Lincolnites.

Back at the Base, I threaded the new cable through without incident -- until I reached the last piece of housing at the back. One tiny little thread split off from the cable. Doh! I couldn't thread it through without causing it to split further, and I knew from experience not to try that again.

Part of my problem is that I'm not working with anything that even resembles a proper tool set. A pair of plyers, a pocket knife, and some old scissors. Not exactly the stuff of professionals.

I queried Yanthor -- who had earlier offered to lend me any tools from his admittedly limited collection -- about whether he had a wire cutter or something of the sort. He showed me his toolbox, and said I was welcome to dig through it. I looked around, and did find one cutter-type that almost looked promising, but it wasn't sharp enough to do the job.

If I could just make a good clean cut, I would still have plenty of cable to work with, so I left it in a partially threaded condition, and determined to get my hands on a proper cutting implement at a later date. Monday, perhaps.

I showered, and ate a (very) brief lunch with Yanthor, Anya, Yalena, and her new boyfriend before heading off to work.

Sunday.

Woke up in a leisurely manner in the late morning, and went to work. In a not-quite-typical version of the boring Sunday routine, I worked by myself for most of the afternoon.

When I arrived back, Yanthor suggested we order DaVinci's, to which I agreed. (Under the terms of our relatively informal rental agreement, a share of the household food supply is included, including an unspecified number of meals "dining out" or "ordering in".)

Cheesesteak with hot peppers. Most delicious.

I watched an episode of Millennium. And here we are now.

I've been thinking about writing my aspirations for life, and other such stuff, but I think I'll put that off a little more, since it feels like I've written enough for tonight.