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In The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Sinbad says at some point, “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel!” I’ve always liked that quote. It’s kind of a snarky way to say, “God helps those who help themselves.”

I bring this up because I’m going to have to trust in God again, while I frantically try to tie up my camel. I lost my job Monday in a layoff and I only have about two months worth of funds to float us by.

I’m both calm and anxious.

I’m calm because I know I have a strong skill set and that I am in an area that has a great need for my services. (So if you know anyone in the greater Los Angeles/Orange County area who needs an award-winning editor with more than 15 years experience in marketing communications, publications management, public relations writing and web content development, send them my way!)

On the outside, I’m my typical chipper self, although maybe a little bit more so than usual.

On the inside is another story.

I knew this was coming in advance. The night I found out, I dreamt that I was outside of my body watching someone perform surgery on me. He had this huge, oversized, plastic wrench that he was using to move around my large intestine. At some point in the dream, he invited me over to feel my intestines. It was really weird. I could feel the muscles moving the stuff inside along. I woke up with a horrible pain in my side.

I’d say the stress is getting to me. But there is a bright side.

For the past four weeks I’ve been coming into work and it has been torture. There hasn’t been much to do because I was in employee communications and we weren’t communicating more than once a week. The little work I did was to organize the employee questions coming in to the CEO via a Web form (90% we love you and we’re in this with you and 10% explicatives and vitriol) and to gather the news clips (the company is going down the tubes, etc.). Gee, that was fun.

So, as I said, I’m trusting in Allah/God/The Great Spirit/The All There Is/the Universe that something will come my way swiftly and we’ll be O.K.

But, on the other hand, I’m tying up my camel and setting up interviews with potential freelance work to help us get by while I play the job search game. Would you believe that within a hour of posting my resume on Craig’s List I received a call for a freelance job? Gotta love Craig’s List.

Anyway, I guess I just felt I had to get all this yuck off my chest without depressing my husband. Thanks for being there, oh anonymous blog reader.

What a funny adjective to use to describe me. I don’t really think I “rock.” I’m much too ordinary for that. I’m a geek, a dork and sometimes even a fuddy duddy. So it always amuses me when someone tells me that I “rock.” I know its just a compliment, but it seems so out of place.

Now, don’t get me wrong, and go around thinking I don’t like myself or anything. I embrace my inner dorkiness, heck I almost rejoice in it. I have my talents and I’m really good at what I’m really good at. I’m just saying I think that as far as adjectives go, “rock” just does’t suite me.

I think “nice” suites me very well. So well, it makes me want to barf. I just can’t help myself. I’m a nice person, I’m polite almost to a fault, and I often don’t ask for what I want because I don’t want to bother the other person.

Whatcha gonna do?

So, if you had to pick one adjective that really described you, what would it be and why?

For a while now, I’ve thought that the Honda Element was the world’s ugliest car. But I was wrong.

Recently, I saw the Toyota Scion XB and it makes the Element look so much better.

So here’s my Random Thought: Why did someone think that designing a car to look like a shoebox on wheels was a good idea?

Ugly	Uglier

This morning I was writing a review of “The Offspring,” an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, for SyFyPortal.com, which I regularly contribute to. In this episode Data creates a “child” who surpasses him in the ability to experience emotions and dies as a result. I cried when I first saw that episode, and I must admit that I got a lump in my throat writing about it, as well.

For some reason, this reminded me of something that happened shortly after I moved to Tampa, Fla., in 1999. The apartment complex we lived in had a small “lake” (more like a pond, if you ask me), which attracted quite a few ducks.

One weekend, as my husband and I left for ride to the beach, I saw a mated pair of mallards under a bush. The female was dead and the male kept trying to “wake her up” by lifting her neck with his beak.

It was the most poignant thing I had ever seen. That simple action conveyed such a strong emotion to me. I couldn’t stop crying for hours. Which, of course, pissed off my husband.

“It’s just a duck,” he’d say.

I tried to communicate that it wasn’t he death of a duck that moved me so. It was the grief and sorrow of its mate. Thinking about it now brings that all-familiar lump to my throat.

For days, I re-lived that moment. It broke my heart to think that this mallard would be alone for the rest of its life, for I was under the impression that ducks mate for life. Upon further research, however, I discovered that although that is pretty much the case, if a duck looses its mate, it can seek out a new one. That made me feel a little better.

My Diet Progress

I’ve been cheating big time — I just can’t seem to resist chocolate these days — but I’ve still been loosing, although very slowly.

NOTE: OK, I know I promised the next post would be about Estepona, but this random thought got in the way.

I’m a big Monkees fan. I own most of their albums on CD and long to own the DVD collection of their TV show. My favorite episode is the one where Peter sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for the ability to play the harp. Mickey, Mike and Davy save his soul by proving that Peter had the ability to play the harp all along and that the transaction was void.

I bring this up because yesterday I read a story where a man in Jiaxing, near Shanghai, tried to auction his soul on Taobao, China’s equivalent to eBay. 58 people bid on his soul before the auction was pulled by Taobao.

“We reviewed Taobao’s policies and realized we had no specific policy on the selling of souls,” said Porter Erisman, a spokesman for Taobao’s parent, Yahoo-backed Alibaba.com. “After some discussion, we decided that we will allow the member to sell his soul on Taobao, but only if he can provide written permission from a ‘higher authority’.”

This story intrigued me, so I did some research. Turns out he’s not the first. At least three other people have tried to sell their soul on eBay!

In February of 2000, a Canadian man put his soul on the auction block and got a highest bit of $20.50. eBay objected to the auction, and sent him a list of reasons why: “If the soul does not exist, eBay could not allow the auctioning of the soul because there would be nothing to sell. However, if the soul does exist then, in accordance with eBay’s policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the auctioning of human souls.”

In January of 2005, a Hamilton County, Indiana, man tried to recoup money he lost in a car-sale scam by auctioning his soul on eBay. The auction site balked, again, so he updated the listing to selling his “autograph,” which just happened to be on a bill of sale for his soul.

In January of 2006, a British man auctioned his soul on eBay, along with a signed certificate and license of authenticity. But this sale came with restrictions and rules:

• The owner would have permission to contact the seller in the afterlife for benign or malign purpose.
• Ownership would expire 1000 years after date of purchase, and could be sold or passed on from person to person until the duration of this period was up.
• The buyer could “be human, extra terrestrial, a celestial being or even Satan himself.”
• If the seller should cease to exist in anything other than natural circumstances then this would void purchase and ownership, and “would most certainly cause wrath to be inflicted upon said purchaser, using methods such as haunting and poltergeist activities.”
• The buyer has the right to try to contact “said soul whilst still bound to human host. This however is only permissible whilst host is sleeping, as per license agreement.”

After five days, this soul had just one bid for £10.99.

All this made me wonder, “Why?”

First, it is my personal belief that one’s soul is priceless and that no human being could ever come up with a sum of money equal to its worth. Second, it gives me the willies just thinking about selling your soul to anyone. Then again, I’m rather territorial and wouldn’t dream of giving up something so valuable.

But then again, maybe there are people who don’t believe in the value of the human soul, or possibly even its existence. Again, this just gives me the willies. What do you think?