FRIDAY FAST ONES

1. The job interview went very well.  It was pretty informal and was apparently the screening before the more formal interview with the higher up management person.  So I think I might be asked back for another interview.  I seemed to hit the right notes with the two women who interviewed me.  Thanks for the good wishes and I'll keep you posted...

2.  Since some have asked.  The business my sister and I are starting is a Home Staging business for people putting their houses on the real estate market.  My sister Polly is an interior designer and has been doing some staging and wants to expand that part of her business, but with 3 youngsters at home she is really busy - I am not so busy and have the marketing skills - so it is a good fit! 

I am building a website, a blog and writing marketing materials.  If I get a full time job, I will not be able to do what I would like to help the business, but I will do what I can evenings and weekends.  If I don't get a full time job, I will make the business my full time job and help with the staging and the face to face marketing to Realtors.  I will also market my organizing abilities on an hourly basis for people who don't have time to clean closets and cupboards before selling their homes.

3.  I went to the doctor about my knee pain and had x-rays.  As my sister predicted it is osteo-arthritis, which is the pre-cursor to the cartilage  breaking down which leads to the knee replacements which run in our family.  I spent time with the physical therapist working on exercises and talking about whether glucosamine really works, she takes it, so I guess I'll keep on taking it, too.

We talked about the new study using stem cells to grow cartilage which they are hoping will mean we can grow our own knee replacements!  Someday...

4.  Ally is done with summer school so I am going to see if I can haul her to off to the gym with me.  Then I need to fortify the fence around my tomato plants because the critters keep stealing my crop.  The dog needs a bath and I have a pile of ironing.  Oh the glamour! 

Have a great weekend!

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.) News from the job search - more and more employers are looking for bilingual employees, some days it seems like ALL the jobs are asking for it! Mostly for Spanish speakers (not surprising being in CA) but also Chinese. So get your kids serious about those language classes!

2.) Ally received her first paycheck. Tom helped her open a bank account with ATM card access and a savings account. We advised her to automatically deposit some of each paycheck into savings, and she did.

But she was just so excited to have that money! She went out to eat, she went to many movies, she shopped and shopped and finally bought the cowboy boots she has been dreaming of. She is now so broke that she is scrounging change and asking for paid chores (which she'll gladly do tomorrow for the money today.) So far she has left the money in the savings account alone, but it is another week until she gets paid...

3.) Update on my complaint to Ikea - I have had two responses. One from the corporate office and one from the store manager offering to send me a gift card. I was thinking about suggesting she could offer me a job, but I am not sure I want a 3 hour commute for a retail job...wonder if they offer benefits?

4.) We are having a BBQ at my sister's house on Sunday to celebrate Father's Day and my mom's birthday and my brother-in-law's birthday. So we have 3 dads and 2 birthdays all together - now that is efficient!

5.) Last but not at all least. A few years ago when I first started checking out the internet to see what the hell a blog was, I found Mrs. G at Derfwad Manor. I don't know why I was so lucky to have found this wonderful, funny woman out of all the zillions of blogs out there, but I was just that lucky. I immediately had a girl crush and checked frequently for new posts and was excited when the Women's Colony was started and aspired to someday be a good enough writer to be published there.

And now it is over. She has closed it down. I am crushed. I will miss the Colony and especially Mrs. G because most of the other contributors I can read on their own blogs - but Mrs. G ...well, she is one of a kind and I can only hope she will grace the internet again because I will miss her so much.

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.) I am thinking about sneaking out to see Sex and The City sometime this weekend. I haven't heard great things about it, but I have not been to a movie in a long time and for some reason, it appeals to me to go see the fashions and fantasy the movie is sure to have. Escapism to the ninth degree...without violence and special effects (unless you count botox).

2.) Hey, Blogger spellcheck doesn't recognise botox!

3.) Ally worked her first two events for the catering company last weekend both of them were weddings. She both enjoyed and was exhausted by it. She came home and said she now understood why we acted the way we did after working all day! It sounds like she did very well, the owner said she was a natural when it came to serving. She is very cute in her tux shirt and bow tie, and very proud of having her first job.

4.) The kids here have a 5 day weekend due to the school furlough days (because of school budget cuts.) It must be very difficult for working families of small kids to deal with all these added days off from school. The "trickle down effect" of economics always seems to be negative - not positive the way it was always presented by those who promoted it.

5.) Those weather prognosticators are wrong again about the forecast today, it is once again cool and cloudy. How much money do these people make for so rarely being right? Come to think of it, how many people do we see every day who are not very good at their jobs? Sullen, slow, sloppy, incompetent at their jobs? I run into a lot of them. Yet they get hired and I can't.

Well, I now have 3 days off from job hunting and I plan to enjoy them. Hope you all do, too!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

This was my quote of the day when I opened my home page this morning:

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"/ Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
- Charles M. Schulz

So, yeah, the news that I did not get the job I interviewed for came as no surprise. Again, a good interview, actually, two interviews. They went with someone with "more closely related experience."

When I filled out the tax forms this week, I put homemaker as my occupation. I had the briefest of moments when I thought of putting loser in the space. But I recovered. It is tough out there for a lot of people, no point in taking it personally.

COLLEGE ROAD TRIP

Ally and I are off on a road trip to visit colleges. we will be travelling for 5 days with plans to visit 4 campuses in Northern California and Oregon.

The last college trip I did was flying to the East coast with Maggie and then taking the train and cabs. This will be much more labor and stress intensive.

Not to mention that the weather is not cooperating and we are packing for rain but hoping the forecasts are wrong. On the plus side, Ally can help with the driving.

And wouldn't you know - I got a hot lead on a job and they want me to delay our departure for an interview...Back on Sunday!

Wish me luck!!

DO I REALLY WANT A JOB NOW?

We are experiencing a string of glorious early spring days. Temperatures in the 70's, trees in bloom everyone walking around with grins on their faces. The kind of day that makes you happy to be unemployed.

Of course, this is when I get a call for a job interview! So I got dressed up and left the lovely day outside the door of the office building. And then was led into a windowless conference room where I spent the next hour and a half. It was a good interview. Not exactly the sort of work I want to do, but good pay and benefits, and it is in my town, so no commute. Big pluses.

So -now I wait to hear. He has to interview some internal candidates...in the meantime, I get to enjoy this great weather!

THE NEVER ENDING JOB SEARCH

This is how I felt after my interview on Monday.

This is how I feel today after I have not gotten the call about being the one they hired.

I am not sure what I could have done better, so this is what I am doing now.

Thanks for all the good wishes. I had really hoped this was it, but I sent out a couple more applications today...

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.) Okay world. I finally have an actual job interview on Monday. Please send out all the good Karma and whatever else you can send my way.

2.) Is it at all possible that the media will now leave the Tiger Woods thing alone?

3.) Loving the Olympics except for the fact that I keep missing the best stuff that NBC waits to show after 11 pm. Too late for me to do night after night when I have to get up at 6:30, so I tape to watch it in the morning - but I always end up hearing or seeing highlights before I can watch and be surprised. But loving it anyway.

4.) This week I have gotten to the point in my diet and exercise program (which I am also blogging about here) that I am down a size in my clothes and, even better, I am feeling much less pain and stiffness in my knees and hips. Just a month into my efforts.

5.) I really enjoyed this last week's weather. We had warm temperatures and the trees are starting to bloom and now I am even more looking forward to the real Spring in a couple of months! The rain is back, now. So it will be an indoor weekend. Have a good one.

REALITY BITES

I went to an employment agency in December to get a jump start on the job search in the new year. I was dreading what I knew was coming - the skills questions. I want to be honest. Honesty will not help my chances of getting a job.

I never learned to type. I managed to pass typing in high school with a C, but it didn't take. The Consultant at the agency sent me home with some tutorials and take home tests.

I practiced and warmed up and took the 3 minute typing test. I tested out at 27 words per minute. Ouch.

I can create a word document and even do some formatting. Excel I can fill in pretty well and create a simple form, but forget those formulas. I know Outlook can do more than send and receive e-mail, but the only kind of merge I do is in a car. Don't get me wrong. I have worked in 2 different jobs where I mastered proprietary software. I'm not stupid.

Well, unless you ask me to do anything more than simple math. I worked as a bookkeeper in a restaurant back in college. My boss loved me. He said he never worried I was stealing because he knew I would never be able to figure out how to do it. So when a job description lists budgeting duties, do I go for it with a clear conscience? I don't understand "accounting" but I can add and subtract, after all.

My skills are my intelligence, my ability to make people at ease, my desire to be helpful, to solve problems, answer questions. I am patient, I can handle multiple projects and interruptions well, work well on my own and with others. I have a very strong work ethic and commitment. I have a positive outlook and I like to laugh.

When I think about it, I have never done the same job before. I have always started on something new. I take the skills I have learned and the talents I have and I make a success or I don't. The trick right now is getting the opportunity. I hope the agency is up to the task.

OUT OF THE DAZE AND ON TO THE NEW YEAR

This may be a strange time of year to get serious about the job search, but that is the way these days are. The fact is that Tom is panicked about the drop in business and our large monthly requirements which come whether there are paying clients or not. The reality is that I cannot bring in or bill out money. I can help in other ways, but not the essential one.

And paltry as my pay was, I brought in our health care benefits. And now those are going to run out. And we could hire me as an employee and get benefits through his practice, but it isn't cheaper that way.

It isn't as if I haven't been looking and applying for jobs. I have posted with some frequency about my frustrations. About 6 weeks ago I realized I was depressed. It was really obvious once I started examining my symptoms. It isn't like the wind-up doll that they use in one of the drug commercials, or he hollow eyed, sweat shirted people in other drug commercials. For the most part I was up and around and functioning and wearing lipstick appropriately.

I went through the hoops and various appointments and have been taking some medication and I feel much more like myself. I feel some enthusiasm where before I felt my efforts were pointless.

I was submitting applications online over the weekend and wound up on one of those employment agency sites. Usually when that happens, I just go back out. For some reason I stopped and thought about it and decided to see what would happen if I followed through with their application process. In my experience, the agencies don't necessarily have the job advertised. They are trying to get candidates for their temp jobs, which I am not interested in doing.

I filled out the long and involved forms and was eventually siphoned into an appointment. And this is where I realize I have been really dim. Being sent by an agency to a job is so much better than sending a resume in cold. Especially as an older candidate. Being screened and "recommended" to the employer is always going to be better - duh.

Then I get to the strip mall office and I am not so sure. They put me in front of a tacky video for 15 minutes then have me fill out MORE forms and sit in cramped, dirty chairs in a waiting area with outdated posters on the wall and I am thinking I am wasting my time....

But the consultant was quite charming and professional. She really got my story and understood what I was looking for and had some ideas right away. She recommended I also apply to a couple of other agencies and sent me some tutorials to use to improve my skills before testing in Excel and Outlook. So I am quite pleased with my experience and have great hopes for the new year.

7 QUICK TAKES FRIDAY

1. My latest job search complaint: Companies who post jobs they already plan to fill from "within." I must have spent an hour and a half on the application, they wanted all kinds of information and details for a credit check and 4 personal references with name, address, phone number and e-mail. Then I waited and checked in, and finally got the notification that the job was filled from within. Geez. They should let you know if this is the circumstance of the job posting before they collect all sorts of private information and waste my time.

The ongoing complaint: All the "part time" jobs that are 32-35 hours a week. That way they avoid offering benefits - but it is tantamont to a full time job schedule offering little "time" for anything else.

2. I needed wide egg noddles to go with the Goulash I was making for dinner. I usually buy Golden Grain brand, but Safeway was out and I didn't have time to run across town to another store. So I bought the Safeway brand. When will I learn? The noodles were gummy when cooked through so I mixed a little butter through to keep them from sticking together. It didn't work. They ended up blobbing together and didn't hold the sauce of the goulash at all. Yes, blobbing is the best description...

People who say the store brand is the same as the name brands do not have my standards, I guess!

3. I have determined that I am going to enjoy being unemployed. Actually, I am officially unemployed but I do work for Tom's law practice. It is not consistent, so I find myself sitting at the computer "just in case" something comes up that he wants me to do. I end up surfing the net, reading all day. Getting stiff and headachy. It is making me anxious and depressed.

So now I am "scheduling" other activities, like housework and going to the gym. When work comes up, I do it. Otherwise I have a list of things to accomplish. I feel much better about my days this week. Now I just need to get Tom to be less irritated that I am not always at his beck and call...

4. Got my hair cut today - back to a basic bob. I grow it long because Tom likes it, but then I keep it pulled up all the time to get it out of the way. More asserting of me going on! Plus I had so much length cut off that the hair will be donated to a Locks of Love type organization which makes wigs for women. Hope they like the silver hair!

5. We survived the high school drama program devoted to AIDS and other world issues all done with music, dance and media projections. Very full of high school drama student ANGST. Actually, many of the 20 scenes were quite well done. Of course, we had stopped in for a few glasses of wine with fellow drama parents before we went over...

6. Ally's current boyfriend is not one for dances, so I got out of the dreaded shopping excursion for a suitable Homecoming Dance dress. I really must slip that boy a few bucks in appreciation.

7. Reading a murder mystery for book club meeting coming up. It is called Dissolution. Set in Tudor England at the time the monasteries were being dissolved and the new Church of England was being formed. I don't usually enjoy murder mysteries, but the setting makes it intriguing. I am enjoying it.

7 QUICK TAKES FRIDAY

1. I have this fantasy that we human beings could be self-cleaning, just like the oven. Throw back the covers in the morning and we are showered, shaven and shampooed. Just style and go!

2. My job search has stalled out. Careerbuilders.com appears to think so, too. Instead of an e-mail with job postings, I had one inviting me to check out other job options based on my skills and resume. I have a law degree, a journalism degree. I have worked in marketing and customer service for the most part.

I answered 6 questions. In dictating my interest in law, politics, writing, problem solving, interpersonal skills and the like. The list of careers that I should pursue included: Anesthesiologist, Electrical Equipment Assembler, Fish and Game Warden, Cashier and Geographer. Even Netflix does a better job of matching my interests!

3. I didn't realize that the Bible was up for revision. Just think of the possibilities. It could be revised women to remove the bias toward men. By perverts to make their kinks the norm. By PETA to ban the eating and wearing of animals. The mind boggles

4. My son called to say he had come up with the answer to a proof presented by one of his math professors which no previous student had ever been able to answer. GO MATH.

5. Shoes I chose with my Piperlime gift card from the Women's Colony gift card are on the way, will post early next week when I have tried them on!

6. This morning on The Today show they were talking about NASA's project to blast free some of the surface of the moon to gather more information on it's make-up. The "news team" cracked jokes and showed cartoons and said something along the lines of "hope they find out what they are looking for." I grew up in the 60's when we all took great pride in what NASA was doing and saw them as us. The can do spirit of this country. Too bad the cynics are taking over everything.

7. We are expecting rain on Monday. I plan to get the garden ready for it and start closing up my outdoor mosaic studio. Have a great weekend.

JOB SEARCH - WEEK 2

I have now been looking for a job for over a week. I am not sure if I can even count myself as one of the nearly 12% unemployed in California since I left my job more somewhat voluntarily and do not qualify for Unemployment Insurance. I am kind of like all those people who have used up their UI and are not really counted anymore.

This morning there were a couple of reports on the news about job hunting and the economy. One was about making your resume stand out by listing specific accomplishments, following up after sending resumes and making job hunting a full-time endeavor. The usual, generic tips which aren't even always relevant.

What was interesting was a spokesman from Yahoo saying there are jobs mostly in health care, engineering ad high tech - which we have all heard. Then he goes on to say that the positions offered are not all "professional." They need receptionists and janitors and warehouse workers. Which is true, too. But mostly, from what I have seen in a exhausting week spent looking at everything out there, there are very, very few positions for anyone but experienced engineers, technology professionals and nurses.

While I am not one to shy away from applying when I don't have absolutely all the experience listed - it is daunting that a "receptionist" is supposed to have experience with autoCAD and Dreamweaver in addition to writing sales orders and proposals, staff scheduling and conduction facility tours.

Most companies want you to have worked in their specific field and know their specific software, etc., and I suspect they will get that. And cheaper than the last person who had the job. I see lots of very long job descriptions with 35 hour weeks, no benefits. I applied today for one that is a 1099 position - what they like to call an independent contractor - so they don't have to pay payroll taxes.

Something new to me is the online tests some employers have you take. Timed tests for math, grammar, vocabulary and reasoning. Like a mini-SAT! As part of the initial application process. I have also had to agree to credit and background checks.

I will say that I have been approached by numerous companies interested in meeting me! They are all sales positions. Some telemarketing, a couple of insurance companies, a real estate investment company and something to do with identity theft. All promise great incomes! Make $2000.00 per week! The catch? Commission only.

GOIN' ON A JOB HUNT

I am on the hunt. The job hunt. Great timing, huh? Is it ever good timing when you really don't know what you want to do and you are already really, quite grown-up?

I peaked out, job wise, in my early thirties. I had just graduated from law school and got a job in the marketing department of a nutritional supplements company. I liked the work which was a mix of product marketing and FDA /FTC compliance (the law part - which made me feel better about paying off my student loans.) I liked the small size of the company. I believed in the product. I even got to go to Europe twice on business!

The company was sold the month after I had my twins. I didn't work again for 16 years.

Then I had to get a job because our family was falling apart financially. I had a resume full of experience, but the last job I had came with a secretary and the only thing I had ever done on a computer was shop, help with homework and bank.

I couldn't even get an interview for a management level job. When I set my sights lower, I was questioned about my over-qualifications. I finally came up with a toned down resume and the explanation that after 16 years, I felt like I was pretty much back to entry level.

It wasn't easy. I was lucky to get the job I did, making a less than I had 16 years before. I worked very hard and enjoyed my job for 5 years and probably should not have left it. My husband never liked that I was working in what he considered a "menial job for low pay". He said I could leave it and when I was in a bad patch, I did.

Now his practice is slow and he is freaked out about our finances and telling me I have to go to work again.

This is not exactly how I pictured my fifties. I am just old enough to have grown up with the knowledge that I would have a college education, but without whatever it is that tells you to make a career choice. When I had my children, it was natural to me to be at home. I never missed working, I never really thought I would go back to working.

I have searched my heart and mind for a "passion." I have undergone career testing. I have read books. I envy those who have one. Who know what they want to do.

What I am going to do is get my resume updated and go hunting.