179: Cruelty, thy name is unemployment

This was my facial expression at lunchtime today.

Rather unexpectedly, the higher-ups decided the project I was working on at my temp job (which was going along in fits and starts from the get-go) was over, and most of us who had been working on it were thanked for our time and sent home at lunchtime with a full day's pay as severance.  So...I guess I've got a lot more free time now.  On the bright side, I'm reasonably certain that if I still don't have a full-time job or am not in some kind of academic program, I'll be invited back next spring.  Until then, it's time to get my ass in gear and update my Etsy shop.

Temping, she is a fickle bitch.

165: Elfin

Lake Harriet, Minneapolis, 2006.

It's summer, so the Lake Harriet elf ought to be in residence.  I haven't made it to the lakes yet this year, but I hope to have enough time some weekend to bike around the Chain of Lakes.

In unrelated griping, how can sitting at a computer for 8 hours be so exhausting?  It's only Tuesday and I'm about ready to sleep for a week, and I just signed up for the reader pool for more test scoring in July.

117: Kool-Aid

A brief missive from the land of No Child Left Behind:

There's an occupational hazard when you're scoring standardized tests for a living: sometimes, students produce the same wrong answer so frequently that you start to think it might actually, secretly, be right.  In other words, you start drinking the Kool-Aid.  I started out reading essays, and after a few days, a number of my coworkers were grumbling that, faced with the same misspelling for hours on end, they were forgetting how words were actually spelled.  Then I scored short-answer questions assessing punctuation usage.  After three days, I wasn't sure I had ever known how to properly use a comma.  Does, it, go after; or. before? this! word?

Oy.

Here's the moral of the story, kids: study hard, learn to write and express yourself properly, and read up on commas and semicolons.  It will serve you well.  Or, at the very least, it will keep the people that score your tests from going mad.

097: Thursday Thursday

I've been so wrapped up in how nutty today is that I nearly forgot to do even a drive-by blog.  Bullet points:

• Woke up to news of an early-morning carjacking (!), or rather cabjacking, and some sort of huge tanker spill, both on different stretches of the same highway.
• After making a couple of long phone calls and some appointment shuffling yesterday afternoon, I got word that I did, indeed, get a job scoring standardized tests.  Income!  Huzzah!
• I diligently saved up a percentage of my paychecks for the last couple months and bought myself an iPod touch, which arrived in the mail today.  I've been mesmerized, watching it sync my entire iTunes library.  My iPod mini from 2005 has a 4-gigabyte capacity.  The new one has 64GB.  (I think that's more than my netbook...)
• The temperature got up into the mid-60s today...but there's still some snow on the ground almost everywhere.  I don't hope to see more record-setting winters.  Just one was fine, thanks.

And now I'm off to stare at my shiny new gadget some more.

096: Perfect storm

Earlier, I said on Twitter that (for me) job interviews are the perfect storm of anxiety.  I don't like driving to unfamiliar places, talking to strangers, or talking about myself, all of which are required elements of the ordeal.  Today, I also had to write an essay and take a math test.  You don't realize just how much math you've forgotten until someone asks you to solve a word problem.

via We Heart It

If this pans out, it would be my first all-day-every-day job (even if it's only for a month or so), and we'll find out if I'm cut out for cubicle work.  This should be interesting...

082: Unemployed Again (Naturally)

Today was the last day of my temp appointment, so I'm once again on the hunt for a way to make ends meet.  It was an odd last day, altogether.  There was (yet another) snowstorm overnight, which meant that my express bus hadn't shown up after about half an hour, so I accepted a ride from one of the other commuters, a lovely woman named Phyllis, who braved heavy traffic and terrible road conditions to drive four of us to campus.  I later heard from a coworker that buses were running up to an hour late...yikes.

(I only slightly regret missing the opportunity to exchange pleasantries one last time with the friendly and handsome morning bus driver.)

I don't think the fact that I no longer have a job -- even if it was part-time -- has sunk in yet.  At the moment, I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning, and that's about it.  For the time being, there's still the massive purging of the hoarded crap in the spare bedroom to finish, and I haven't even started my taxes yet.  Then I have to photograph and list all the stock for eBay and Etsy that I've been putting off.  There's fellowship writing to be done and applications to be investigated and submitted.  I feel obligated to try to help with the care of my elderly grandparents (happy 87th, Grandpa!) so my mother can, on occasion, get some work done.  So there's plenty of work to be done, even if most of it doesn't pay particularly well.

It's Weird Wednesday!  Let's all do some introspection.

Pleasant surprises

Got an email from a potential employer today, asking me to confirm that I'm still interested in being considered for the job. The job and its government benefits.

Why on earth would I say no?

Still, though, I'm waiting until I've calmed down a little to respond, and I have until noon on Monday to do so. Getting this far in a hiring process is weird. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know I have to keep going.

And here I was, all ready to just keep plugging away at a couple spec scripts I've been working on in hopes of getting one of the screenwriting fellowships in L.A. The question now is this: do I want to keep working in libraries and archives, using skills I've developed over three years of archives work, or do I want to pursue something in which I have an actual interest and ambitions, but very little experience and nothing to recommend me?

Aie. The real world is a scary place.

The state of things

1) Waiting to hear from the U.S. Navy about an archives job. I was rated "Qualified" (as opposed to, I believe, "Best Qualified" or "Well Qualified") for the position, so not holding out much hope.

2) Woken up two hours early this morning by not one, but two absurdly loud jackhammers in the parking ramp across the street from my apartment. My roommate slept straight through them. She was woken up instead by the sound of my typing. (?!)

3) It's officially patio season in the Twin Cities. One of the best things about summer is enjoying your food outside on not-so-windy days with a pint and piped-in contemporary pop music. Oh, yes. Summer is good. I'm looking forward to Brit's Pub's Bastille Day celebration and some cider (what? I don't particularly like the way beer tastes) on the rooftop lawn. Even the restaurants along Washington Avenue in Stadium Village (just off the U of M campus) have squeezed a few tables out onto the sidewalk for those who enjoy bus exhaust with their meals (it's really not that bad, particularly at Sally's, where the patio is set back from the sidewalk). Goal for the summer: eat + get vitamin D at the same time.


Until next time...