First the good news: I interviewed for a job yesterday!

Mind you, I’m not counting on getting the job, mainly because the company is looking for an extra skillset that wasn’t mentioned in the job posting. They seem like nice folks, though, and I certainly wouldn’t mind taking a stab at doing the gig. The money wouldn’t be nearly as much as I was bringing in before, but I could make do. Ah well.

Now for the bad news: I seem to have come down with a cold!

I felt a bit achey and worn out yesterday afternoon and evening, and in fact went to bed a bit earlier than usual. I woke up during the night feeling altogether too much like I was going to be “physically ill,” if you know what I mean. (Luckily I managed to defeat that impulse. Whew.) Now I’m sitting here with a runny nose, fever, swollen glands and a scratchy throat, periodically sneezing.

Oh, joy.

I still have to head out of the house at some point, if only to deposit my “benefits” check and hit the store for cold meds and foodstuffs. While everyone else is enjoying their holiday weekend (with the exception of Mari, who’s working all weekend), I’ll be hunkered down and miserable.

Oh well.

How fed up am I with the entire job-hunting process? Very. I’m tired of spending hours a day poring over job postings, preparing cover letters, emailing said letters and resumes, sending follow-up emails, making phone calls, and generally getting jack squat in the way of responses. (So far: Two phone interviews, and those were in the first two weeks.)

Then there’s Monster Dot Com. Oh, yes, what a fine resource that’s turned out to be. Granted, I like the “one-click-apply” feature, but it’s done me very little good so far. What’s worse, apparently certain parties think that trolling Monster for email addresses is a grand idea, as I’ve received two unsolicited and highly annoying missives on account of being listed there. Just because I’m in a foul and snarky mood, I’m going to eviscerate today’s message in full public view.
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Today wasn’t really a busy or complex day. I got up early, after another in a week-long string of lousy nights’ sleep, and trundled off to my local branch of Oregon’s Employment Department. You see, I was selected for some kind of “career orientation” based on some funky mathematics they do to determine one’s likelihood of becoming employed before one’s 26 weeks of benefits run out.

If only that was my biggest financial worry, eh? But they don’t need to know how bad I have it, do they?

The gist of the orientation is that they wanted to provide a group of us with information and motivation. That’s fine, they’re doing their jobs, and in fact I did come out of the experience with a couple of useful website addresses. Neato. One guy, however, and there’s one in every group… he first had to complain about the fact that he was present in the first place. “How do they determine this score? What can I do to lower it?” (My thought: Well, getting a job would be a good start.) He then went on about how he was newly out of work after holding a job for nine years (my voiced response: You too, eh?), and that he’d just spent $500 on a resumé, and…

Wait, what? Five hundred dollars? Wow. So, that brings me to the first “don’t” for today:

Don’t… assume that dropping half a grand for a resumé is going to guarantee you employment.

After fleeing the E.D. offices, I decided to scavenge for foodstuffs, as I’d left the house long before my normal breakfast time. I had a hankerin’ for a Chipotle burrito, but they weren’t open yet. So, I wandered a bit, and ended up at the mall. (Nevermind what I did there. It’s not important, not yet anyway.) While there, my phone rang.

To the best of my knowledge, it was someone offering me a contract job in the Portland Metro area. I can’t be certain of this, however, as the person on the other end refused to do two important things: Speak clear and unaccented English, and speak at reasonable volume. I made out “contract” and “Portland Oregon” but damned little else, and that’s after several attempts to get the woman to repeat herself clearly. So, it’s time for another “don’t”:

Don’t… outsource your job recruitment calls to an outfit based in a country for which English is not the native tongue.

Arriving home as the weather became just a bit too warm to be strolling around in long sleeves, I ate and eventually dozed. A little while ago, after battling with ATI’s stupid multimedia software (“I don’t want the timeshifting ‘feature.’ What do you mean, I can’t turn it off? To hell with this!”), I decided to check what the weather forecasts looked like online. I saw a forecast high of 78 degrees, which is all very nice except that the current temperature read 81 degrees. You can probably guess where this is going:

Don’t… neglect to update the posted information when the facts outrun the projected numbers.

Mind you, maybe I’m the only one who finds stuff like this annoying. Then again, maybe not. At the very least, I was able to derive some amusement, and that’s what matters. Right?

I watched a talented cook do it, so tonight I figured I could do it too.

That certainly reads like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? And yet, somehow I managed to produce a decent meal for myself. I made a couple cups’ worth of rice in the spiffy rice cooker we picked up a few weeks ago, and I heated up some meatballs (previously frozen, to be sure… my talents only go so far, after all) in BBQ sauce on the stove. Not only did I do these two things, but I did them correctly, and the results were edible rather tasty.

Sure, it’s not normally something to write home an entry about, but you must keep in mind that I’m not normally found doing food-preparation activity of any kind other than punching buttons on the microwave.

By the way: Two cups of rice, uncooked, makes a whole steaming lot (pun very much intended) of cooked rice…

It’s time for another round of “Yay! And Boo!,” courtesy of the insanity that makes up my existence…

Yay! Not only did I enjoy a truly splendid weekend with my secondary girlfriend, but my primary girlfriend is in town again for a few days (to engage in further jobhunting activity, of course).
Boo! The webserver crashed again, and again, and again. I have no idea anymore what’s causing this. Argh. I need to see if Infinity Internet can put more RAM in the godsforsaken machine…
Yay! I called the “Unenjoyment” folks this morning and learned that my benefits will (finally!) start coming through, probably this week.
Boo! My bank double-dinged me for the rent check I wrote last week.
Yay! I learned this while within a few blocks of the downtown branch, so I was able to quickly start the process of getting that second charge reversed. (I am so very glad that I had the presence of mind to investigate the odd tally on my ATM receipt then and there, instead of adopting a “wait and see” approach.)
Boo! It may be 72 hours before I get my money back.

Of course, there’s also the overarching Boo! Hiss! of failing (despite daily efforts) to become employed (or even to land an interview, dammit), but I try not to stress about that more than, oh, six or seven waking hours out of any given day…

Today I sent out another batch of resumes, cover letters and email missives. I also posted my resume to Craigslist, something that I should’ve thought of myself but instead needed Mari to remind me about. Ah well.

Contrast Friday’s phone-call-o-rama (seriously, I’ve never taken so many calls in a single day) to today’s… utter silence. Nothing from the gal who called as we were heading into the coast range foothills (at 4pm on a Friday, no less… “Can you call me back on Monday, please?”), nor from the outfit I’ve been in regular contact with for the last few working days, nor from any of the other people I’ve tried to get attention from in the last two weeks.

It’s enough to make a guy lose sleep. I don’t have time for this, dammit.

On a side note, pictures from the coast trip are online. I suspect I’ll be cranking out an entry or two, in the days (or weeks) to come, providing amusing anecdotal detail to Lil’s excellent (and quite comprehensive) write-up of the weekend.

Happy Monday to you. I hope yours was more productive and rewarding than mine…