Since being fired, I've been able to get some much appreciated moral support from you, my online friends, as well as a few friends closer to home. I was advised by two people to drink heavily. Not really my style, but I did enjoy a bottle of Beck's.

After the heat of the day was over yesterday evening, I did get out to clean up the garage some, as well as the basement, two cool places to be.

Next step? I will wait and watch to see when the $6,000 of my International Equity Fund which I sold yesterday is deposited into my checking account. When it is, I'll call the bank to get the exact amount it will take to pay off the mortgage. I may even take a ride down there and do it in person, alert the media and make a public announcement.

At the least, as a feel good measure, I will get from the bank the total amount of mortgage interest I actually paid these last 17 years and how much I WOULD have paid if I had just made normal payments over 30 years. Then I may frame it. My big milestone achievement.

I applied for a few Craig's List jobs this morning. Nothing too exciting but money is money.

During the past week, I've been reading a lot about hypertufa and educating myself on technique. While my first batch was a waste because i used the wrong kind of cement, the 2nd batch was much improved. My 3rd batch was just 2 pots: I broke an experimental one poured into a basekt when i sset about removing the mold/basket, but the other one is the best one yet; it has some very nice vertical lines on it because that's what the plastic pot had that I poured it in.

I'm thinking that if I could sell perennials this spring, I could probably sell some hypertufa pots too, both with and without succulents in them. I found a nursery, also on Craig's List, not too nearby but worth the trip, that has a sale on perennials now for $1 each. For prospective buyers without much imagination, sticking a $1 succulent in the pot would really enhance the pot's beauty, and I could mark up the price a little bit.

I don't think the peak of summer is a good time to sell any more perennials, but I'd like to post them for sale again in late August, with the hypertufa pots. By that time I should have a nice little collection of various shapes and sizes.

So the garage will become Hypertufa Central. Curing takes a good 3 weeks, with another week needed for de-liming the pots. So it's a process.

Today i bought a $1 children's ball, the plastic kind about the size of a bowling ball, which I intend to use as a mold for a cement garden sphere, the kind you might see scattered aboutg an old English garden. I saw a write-up about making these online. You cut a roughly 2-inch diameter hole in the ball at the spot where the inflatable opening is. You then pour in the concrete mix, let it dry, and then peel away the plastic ball when ready to de-mold.

the only thing I'm wondering is how hard it will be to fill the ball with cement once you cut itm open and deflate itm.

After all that happened, I needed to take a break from my thoughts and get out of the house today. I've had all the windows and doors closed tight and shades drawn for a week now, due to the awful heat. I come and go through the basement/garage now, so as not to let in all that hot air through the front door.

I left around mid-day to see if Great Clips was still having a $6.99 haircut special. it would be a nice treat and pick-me-up. They weren't. I left.

I filled up the gas tank at $3.61 a gallon, pretty much the lowest price you'll find around here, then I headed for Lowe's where I picked up more peat moss and perlite, spending $0 cus i had a gift card. These are needed supplies for the hypertufa.

Then on impulse I hit Good Will, remembering I had to throw away an old pair of jeans a few weeks ago after they developed holes in the crotch. I didn't absolutely have to buy these, but I did spend $6 on a replacement pair that was pretty comfortable.

I also browsed Xpect Discounts to see if they had any other interesting cheap plastic things I could use as molds. I saw one or two bowls that would work well, but didn't want to spend $2.99! How cheap am i?. I think I have enough to play with at home.

Oh...one more development on the job situation. I got another email from the owner of the company. He said we're giving you 2 weeks of severance pay. Wow. I hadn't expected anything from a p/t job I'd only had for 6 months. I thought that was pretty generous, but i know that the main reason they are offering that is becus they are also sending me paperwork they want me to sign, not to reveal trade secrets, etc.

However, what bothered me is that he said, while your offer to "go home now" could be construed as a resignation, we are often generous in situations like this and are giving you the severance, etc.

So the editor in chief told him that I offered to leave. I wrote back and told him I would never leave voluntarily becus i need the job too much, that my only other source of income is my freelance writing. (I didn't mention my unemployment benefits; that's private and nothing he needs to know.)

However, when he said my remark could be taken as a resignation, that alarmed me becus Dept of Labor would nix my remaining benefits if they thought i had quit. I never offered to "go home now" as the editor in chief apparently told him, but in the context of her continuing to attack my character and performance, it was like, what else can i do, what do you want from me? And so what I said was, do you want me to leave?

She said no, but then 5 minutes later, she said "You can leave...now."

I had a brief conversation with a DOL rep today who informed me that I have to have a hearing with them which won't take place til July 24, and until that hearing my current benefits will be suspended, pending resolution. I think that's really unfair since my current benefits are related to work I did prior to this job and has nothing to do with it. However, they don't see it that way and she said that yes, depending on the outcome, it could jeopardize my remaining benefits.

So, worst case scenario could be even worse than I thought. I could possibly lose not only the p/t job, but my remaining unemployment benefits, which, while reduced a while back quite a bit, would still last me a good while.

I think I have a pretty strong case now with several mitigating factors to cite, including 1) the fact that i don't think employers usually give severance to anyone they fire; it's usually something given when you're laid off. 2) Employers also don't usually offer to give a positive reference for someone their subordinates fire. 3) I told the editor in chief before I was hired that I didn't know quark or filemaker, the 2 software programs we used daily in this job. I even asked if there was a user manual or guide i could take home and study up on prior to starting the job so i could be better prepared, but she said no. 4) I can also cite the high turnover for this position, and I have no doubt it's due to the EIC's difficult personality. 5) Finally, we've been working all along with obsolete software and hardware, and even with a recent computer upgrade (they bought secondhand computers), they are still several generations behind the current versions of everything. So I really feel the equipment handicapped our ability to do the job. They were constantly gerry-rigging things to try to get it to do what they wanted it to do.