Thrihyrne

So I'd reached out to a couple of recruiters I've worked with in the recent and not-so-recent past. One was literally just about to go on vacation, but we'll touch base next week. The other had a billing and customer support role that she thought I could be a good fit for, and it is literally three blocks down the street. I wouldn't even need to ride the bus! I could come home for lunch! They seem pretty hot to trot in regards to filling 2 roles, and I'm walking up there for an interview at 2:15 today. The pay is bottom of the barrel, but in many ways, that doesn't matter as long as my quality of life is positive. I do want to know more details about what the actual job entails as it's part of a larger collections agency, but if I can get more actual billing experience and potentially remove the "A" from my CPC-A by using my coding skills, then all the better.

Did I mention it's 3 blocks down the street? Just checking. :)

I'll post later after my interview, but I believe that with my EXTENSIVE customer support background and recent certifications and being a mature member of the workforce, this should be a no-brainer. I enjoy interviewing, and I'm mostly wanting to find out what kind of training they provide and what a 'typical' day looks like. I do want to be sure I won't be isolated like I was at ZoomCare, but hell, I'll give just about anything a try for 3-6 months that's that close. It's a 9 month contract to hire but they review contracts every couple of months and apparently the other 2 people that this particular recruiting company has placed are already getting pay raises. Sounds good to me!

I am in the midst of an interviewing frenzy. Beginning today, I have (had) three (and maybe four) confirmed interviews in four workdays. The maybe is for Monday. Today was a group and then one-on-one with Airbnb which could be really, really cool— especially looking longer-term in relation to things with evannichols, living together, and maybe even looking to spend some time working overseas. Tomorrow morning is an interview with a downtown church for a half-time development assistant position. Monday- still not sure; it's for a 3-month contract position up in Vancouver, WA, so not the best, but could be interesting. But of all of the leads, probably the least likely to pan out. And today I got a call from a local classical radio station about a membership assistant position I applied for. Interview with them Tuesday morning!! Good thing that I enjoy interviewing. Yes, you read that right. I've done so much of it in recent years that I'm no longer intimidated by it and actually really enjoy going and interviewing the potential company. Lots of amazing possibilities, and I couldn't be happier about feeling so desired by different facets of the working world.

For the holiday yesterday, Evan and I went to sanguinity and grrlpup's house for a scrumptious dinner and entertaining conversation. Prior to that, I had a marvelous, low-key day with evannichols and he assisted me in the initial mechanics of doing my own dyeing. Below the cut are pictures of the two two-color colorways I did. They are quite vivid and I'm going to wash them tomorrow to get any remaining dye out of them (they were steam-set and shouldn't bleed, but I just want to be sure) and air dry again before winding them into center-pull balls. I really will post pictures of the finished products once I have them. I got all kinds of affirmations and exclamations of how talented I am about the turquoise vest I'm knitting, so that also made me feel pretty frakking awesome. :)
( yarn pics here )

So, um, things continue to be really phenomenal. But it's been a really long day, and I'm going to chill out with some online Boggle and then a documentary and then I'm off to bed. :P

For whatever reason, after a particularly lovely weekend with evannichols (nothing unusual happened; I just felt even closer and more tender-hearted about him/us), yesterday morning I felt really out of sorts. I later decided that I should be a bit more careful about what I watch when feeling isolated. Watching stories about a Scandinavian cop investigating murders whose father is also beginning to suffer from dementia ("Wallander") is perhaps not the wisest choice. :P The day improved, however, and today I'll get to work earlier than usual and head up to Evan's work and then spend the evening together. I'll also be doing my first video preliminary interview with a company I'd applied to a week or so ago. I don't know that I'll ever be used to automated processes like that, aside from various online testing that I've done. When applying for the downtown company where I got through to the very end of their hiring process, early on I had to call and was asked a series of pre-recorded questions and had a three-minute per-question time limit to answer on the spot. That kind of freaked me out. This video part should be interesting (different company), but I'm having to do it at Evan's as my Mac mini does not have a webcam. These new requirements by companies, or assumptions, anyway, that applicants will have easy access to webcams and microphones is a bit misguided in my view. I suppose it's part of the current way to reduce time and in-house resources in order to winnow down the applicant field. I don't really approve.

Last Saturday evannichols, snottygrrl and I saw the new Pixar film 'Brave'. It was okay. Very pretty, and occasionally funny, but I didn't find it emotionally engaging at all. That said, it was full of redheads, which made me very happy. What made me even more pleased was yesterday I was talking with my supervisor and told her I saw the movie and she noted that someone in one of the other departments had referenced me as 'That new person who looks like the girl in Brave.' LOL!! Now granted, I do have red, wavy hair. But I don't have a head of hair like this, though it is exactly the head of hair I've wanted so desperately to have since I was a child. The comparison cheered me, nonetheless.

A total aside: I need more slats for my bed. I only have three, and the mattress sags not inconsequentially, and it's taking a toll on my neck. Something will need to be done about this.

I went jogging yesterday! Three and a half miles, even! Planning to do the same today and through the weekend— until it next rains, even. It felt so good to get some cardio and slow down when I needed to in order to keep it at a jog. Heh. Oh, and the plasma center yesterday was a bust. After three hours I'd still not seen anyone, so I gave up and decided my time could be much better spent than hanging out in their office. Seems ridiculous that the center in Harrisonburg was so much more sophisticated. Maybe another day.

This morning I've been super-productive for whatever reason; maybe a solid night's sleep, though I was deep in the midst of a dream when my alarm went off. I was so on top of things by 7:30 a.m. after doing my laundry and hanging it outside on our impromptu clothesline (ie: the chain link fence in the backyard) that I finally took a couple of pictures of Cooper, the boxer who is so adorable, all cozied up in his favorite chair. The first is with the flash, but the second captures the ambiance better as the curtains are drawn and the room is rather dark.

( Cooper, the sweet boxer, in his habitat )

This morning I'm determined to apply to 5-7 positions (four down thus far), do laundry (done), type in the last of the Gimlific I'd been writing on prior to the holidays last year, and some other things before going to catch the bus and meet evannichols for lunch. It will continue on to be a productive afternoon as well. I'll try and post my knitting WIP, item one from my Secret Endeavor that has had its starts and stops. I'm especially excited about more dyeing once I have my own mini-set and can do it here, or at Evan's.

Happy Friday!

For another good reason— I have a two day temp position downtown! I've registered with several placement companies during both periods of time here in PDX but hadn't had any actual placements until now. Since I'm in the final phase of communication before hopeful employment with this other company, working for two days in what should be a low stress environment is great by me. So, yay!

I don't really want to put in bullet points for this post (though I enjoyed putting in flowers earlier), so I'll just write a few things to do with the wonderfulness of recent days. On Friday I had a follow-up/second-and-final interview at the downtown company where I'd love to work. It went very well, and I was asked to stay (if I could) to shadow someone for about fifteen minutes. Good sign. I'll hear from them by the end of this coming week, so I'll have closure one way or another and I'm so glad of that. I may also have an interview at another company for a temp-to-hire position through a placement company; we'll see. When evannichols and I arrived at his house Friday afternoon, I spent some time speaking with his sister about all of this because she's recently been offered and accepted a position at this company. When I did finally head inside, I found Evan looking a bit expectantly at me, and then I saw them: a beautiful bouquet of peach/coral roses, and a card. Not to do with my job hunt, but just because he's as smitten with me as I am with him. There might have been a bit of subtle swooning.

This weekend was restful and restorative, and also included some social time meeting snottygrrl to see one of the films that was part of the Studio Ghibli Film Festival held at the Portland Art Museum NW Film Center. The one we saw (My Neighbors the Yamadas) has a director other than Hayao Miyazaki; we're all Miyazaki fans and have seen many of his films on both the big and small screen. Evan and I were particularly interested in seeing at least one of these films that aren't available in a format we can rent, so that was accomplished.

I'm back over at my place now, unpacking and also preparing to repack as I'll be spending a fair amount of time at evannichols' this coming week and weekend. He has a birthday coming up on Friday, and it's one of those memorable ones that ends in either '5' or '0'. Follow his blog to know which. ;) There will be a special-ordered (by me, even!) gluten- and dairy-free fabulous cake, and dinner, and lounging, and goodness only knows what else. Maybe online Boggle. It could happen. ;) But for this evening, I'll settle in with a small serving of Fritos and queso, some Being Human, dismantling another beautiful (and free!) sweater, and a few other things before heading to bed and hitting the ground running tomorrow morning. A quick thanks to emansil_12 for the wonderful phone call today, and to llembas for the letter I received when I came home.

Had a very productive morning post-phone call with evannichols, then an as-always delightful lunch with him at BHFT. On the way home, instead of coming straight home, I went to my massage therapist friend Joseph's house for some pre-arranged much-needed bodywork, and then… YARN DYEING!! I'd been telling him about my Somewhat Secret Endeavor a couple of weeks ago and he said, "Don't buy dye — I used to do all kinds of tie-dyeing. I have great dyes. Come over and we'll use them!" So I brought over a few short skeins of some neutral-colored yarn from a sweater I'd dismantled, and have now officially done my first yarn dyeing. I can tell I'm already hooked. Well, especially when in somebody else's company and without having to come up with the space and materials myself. But he's game for me to come over with way more yarn and do a bunch more; he's grateful because he's been meaning to get back into that part of his life and just hasn't. So I've been a positive impetus for someone else! And I think the yarns are going to be beautiful and things are really falling into place for this Grand Endeavor. FWIW, I also have yet another interview this coming Thursday, though it's an initial interview for a placement company, not the client company. I have yet to hear anything from the two places I interviewed last week and am trying to remain as upbeat as I can and thinking positive thoughts toward the universe about my future position. Which will happen. I am tenacious and pretty good at selling myself by now.

And in the meantime, there's the Grand Endeavor and lots of creativity and yarn dyeing! And evannichols! Having him on my team goes a long, long way. :)

It's been right at two weeks since I had a real turnaround about myself, my situation, and steps I began taking to make positive, quantifiable changes. One of those is to exercise regularly, and this morning I upped my distance to over two miles, a decently-lengthed 35-40 minutes of cardio. This pleases me greatly. I'll never become a distance runner or anything like that; this is conditioning and trying to establish revived, healthy habits. I've also been measuring my portions so that I have a much better sense of how much I'm eating, and what. I do eat quite healthfully, but I was a bit stunned at just how much peanut butter I'd been ingesting with my granny smiths, and huge bowls of yogurt with cereal, almonds and craisins. The fact finding has been most illuminating. There's also two consecutive weeks of staying in my right mind (yay!) and job interviews. Very important. I had a screening call about a position at Reed College yesterday that not only was 15 minutes late, but the questions she asked me were so dry, impersonal, and standard banal. I was really surprised, and frankly caught off guard by it. It's rare that I don't establish a rapport with someone almost immediately, but my conversation yesterday was pretty awkward. They're at the very beginning of their search and won't put someone in place until mid-July, and frankly I'd be quite surprised if I make it into a second round.

As part of continuing on, however, I have an in-person interview for a part-time administrative/desk position at a NE community center and I'm looking forward to that. I'll also head to a place called Scrap that snottygrrl told me about, which conveniently is only about three blocks from my interview site. That said, I really shouldn't buy anything as I went CRAZY at my favorite Goodwill yesterday, coming out about $65 poorer, but rich in spring clothes (suitable for the weather and climate here) and shoes in the anticipation of being back in the workforce in the reasonably near future. I didn't bring a whole lot of spring/summer clothes when I initially packed to relocate and it will be a while before I head back to Virginia for a final extraction of all of my belongings.

evannichols will be picking me up today after his workday at BHFT and I'll be with him through Monday. Not only is that fabulous, but we'll be spending about a day and a half at the coast at a beach house with friends of his sister's as part of her belated birthday celebrations. This is the Pacific beach, ruggedly beautiful with frigid water, not the Atlantic or Gulf. It's my kind of place. :)

Yes, I'm making up words. I'll warn again for excessive happiness, but hey: I think I've paid for this. ( the past few days )

I'm getting very close to finishing my vest! I'm only about a half inch from the specified length, then I'll do all of the bind-off and decorative edging and then all I'll need to do is block it and be done. I've decided to make an adorable baby owl cardigan for both of my stepsisters out of this yarn since I believe they're both pregnant with second children. I'll get more details and confirm that when I talk with my stepdad today, if I get him on the phone.

Also on the positive job front, I applied to a database contractor position and while I highly doubt I'll be brought in, it was great to hear from the recruiter and after we talked, she said she felt comfortable at least submitting my resume into the mix. Then I got a call from one of the Portland community centers where I'd submitted a resume and cover letter, and I have an interview with them next week! Things do seem to happen when I get really serious about looking for a job.

In essence: it's all splendiferous. :)

I don't need to file. I'm under the minimum income amount for the year. There is one slightly grey area to it that I'm not going to go into, but I'm just going to let it go and not file. I do wish I could get back the $81, but Oregon really would include my Virginia income, which is crazy, so I'm not even going to go there.

The end.

Adulthood really does have its moments of being not so fun.

Back to focusing my attentions on the job hunt.