job!

as of monday, i'm the database manager for a non-profit in downtown norfolk called the planning council.

i have absolutely no clue how to manage a database. and i told them that. apparently they want me anyway. you can check out the database that will be mine here.

it's temp-to-hire via officeteam, and it pays a fair chunk less than i'm used to making. but the office atmosphere rocks; they seem super-nice. the right team means a lot more to me than the price. and it's an unambiguously save-the-world sort of place, which really appeals to my mostly-dormant-but-not-at-all-dead inner idealist. plus, i get to see how non-profits work and learn new stuff. yay!

there and back again

the last couple weeks -- connecticut, d.c., tennessee, and home again.

actually, california started the whole thing. see, the boyfriend went to california for a week and a half to visit family and friends and to go to camp hollywood. when the choices are between going someplace fun and staying home with cute and cuddly boyfriend, the comparison is "relatively expensive and yay" vs. "free and yay".... there's a certain amount of inertia to overcome. when the second option becomes stay home by myself, though, financial sense tends to get lost.

so, wanna go to connecticut this weekend for ctlx? absolutely!

getting there was a lot of the fun. one of our local dancers is also a pilot. i'd flown in small airplanes before, but had never been asked to help with the flying.

i got to steer the airplane!

i realize this was probably something akin to letting a four-year-old "steer" a car, but i got every bit as giddy as a four-year-old over it. unfortunately, we quickly discovered that i can either turn the plane or keep the pitch steady... both at once? forget about it!



somehow, in all the excitement about getting there, i never quite stopped to consider where we were going. so new haven -- and YALE! -- were an excellent surprise. the exchange itself was a bit to the blues/groovy swing/soul end of the spectrum for my taste, but the DJs were top-notch in that field, and thus it was an excellent opportunity to work on re-expanding my range. really, though, on this one, the conversations over meals and on the edges of the dancefloor and while just hanging out with our host, jason, were so much fun that they really outshone the dancing for me. conversations that veer all over the place, from mri machines to favorite new york times reporters to bach, make me really happy.

the tuesday night after we got back, jesse came back temporarily -- he had to check in at work on wednesday, so his time in california got a little segmented. somehow, he wound up flying into reagan but had left his car at dulles... excuse enough for me (and shauna!) to go dance at the jam cellar. amazingly, the plan worked -- jesse took the subway to the jam cellar, we all danced, then we took him to dulles before heading home. the dancing was awesome, but it was soooo hot. i'm learning - charming historic buildings go with charming historic air conditioners. i soaked through several shirts, sat out a bit, and was still too woozy at the end of the night to drive before i'd drunk quite a bit of water to rehydrate.

then came lake week. again with the impulsive travel plans. on tuesday, before heading to d.c., i'd realized that (a) several of my good friends who i don't get to see often enough were converging on tim's ford lake in tennessee, and (b) if i go to a temp agency and beg for work as planned, i may not get any vacation for a long, long time and will miss my parents in manchester, about an hour from the lake, i found a super-cheap ticket to nashville (yay priceline!) for thursday.

i didn't think this through before dropping jesse off at the airport on wednesday, but since he was gone (second round) wednesday-wednesday and i was gone thursday-thursday, it made the most sense for me to park my car and let him use it when he got back late wednesday night. this resulted in mailing my spare car key across the country... another plan that really shouldn't work, given my entropy field, but did.

my dad worked his schedule around so he could come to nashville to get me and drop me off at the airport, and they loaned me a car for getting across to winchester -- again with the being a lucky, spoiled brat. i had a really relaxing day at home hanging out with the parents, and then drove out to the lake thursday evening for four days of water skiing, over-indulging in really good food and wine and gabe's home-brewed beer, catching up, playing cards (i'm no card-shark and have to have the rules re-explained to me every time, but they even dragged me in for a couple games), dunking each other in the lake, getting the yoga fans to explain how to stretch the muscles i'd abused during inept attempts at skiing, and other such general merriment. very good times. then back to the parents' for a couple more days, then home.

this morning i've got an interview with OfficeTeam, my old favorite temp company (they got me the job at EODT!). with any luck, the days of impulsive adventuring all over the place will be shut down for a while... i'll miss it, but i need to get back to work.

upcoming dance weekends? the international lindy hop championships in d.c. are for sure. baljam in philly, maybe. dirt cheap blues is in virginia beach, so i can hardly avoid it.

reload... reload...

the first act of dr. horrible's sing-along blog, joss whedon's latest project, is supposedly up today... but fan enthusiasm has apparently crashed the website. meanwhile, this site has the teaser. doogie howser vs. captain mal... it's gotta be fun, right?

in other news, i'm awake in the middle of the day because i finally got a call from a company. going in for some talking and some skills testing tomorrow...

nocturnal

i wasn't exactly meaning to sync up to jesse's current night schedule (his shifts rotate from week to week), but i slept poorly last night and went back to bed for a "nap" this morning when he got home... and woke up around 6 p.m.

and here i am, 11 o'clock at night, not calming down for bed, but digesting "lunch" and trying to organize myself for the time until morning. it's a bit easier to focus with this schedule -- back in school, i often ducked out of the evening and early night for a nap so i could wake up and study from 4 a.m. on, when nobody was interested in socializing. hopefully that'll mean great things for el jobhunt this week.

but i think i miss the sunlight already.

update - the jobhunt

resume with cover letter #1 is turned in; the worst of the inertia's beaten, i hope! now i just need to repeat that feat once a day or so until somebody thinks i'm interesting.

(have to admit, though, that even though they're in williamsburg and i think i've decided i'd rather work between here and norfolk, i really hope this first company likes me. it's non-profit, interesting job functions, and generally looks like a super-neat place to work.)

step 1: resume

check.

well, a draft anyway.

i think i have it up here if you, dear readers, would like in on the polishing process.

i still hate trying to find that balance of telling people what i can do without sounding overly boastful, of trying to find the keywords employers are looking for without running too far into the b.s./buzzword territory.

and shhhhh, don't tell 'em that i don't use capital letters in my personal life!

long time no post

still jobless, and the idea that "i ought to be looking for a job as first priority" has led, more or less, to a sort of procrastinating paralysis across all areas of life. one day, maybe i'll learn to do something other than play solitaire and organize my music when i have too much to do that i don't want to deal with. i hate hate HATE the application and interview process, which is why i've typically just gone into temp agencies to deal with the problem of obtaining a job. i promised my mom, though, that i'd start getting in a bit more of a hurry about the jobhunt as soon as i get back from this trip (one of the last major ones that was planned before i moved); maybe it'll help to start unfreezing other domains first.

let's see, since i logged onto blogger last... it's been philadelphia for the workshop with kevin and sharon, then d.c. for big big event, then vblx last weekend, and now knoxville to go to alice and kris's wedding (HAPPY WEDDING DAY, yay!). shannon, who's kindly hosting me, is headed out to nashville for today, so i have a bit of time here by myself.

of the recent weekends, philly was probably the best in terms of adding new dimensions to how i think about dance; kevin st. laurent and sharon davis taught a one-track workshop that became, for me, basically a day to meditate on "how the heck this stuff works." by taking the simplest stuff out of pattern, and making us really lead and follow it, they produced pretty incredible results for a group class, and made it challenging for all levels (well, i was challenged, anyway). jesse and i also shared an opportunistic last-minute half-hour private lesson with kevin on sunday while david was taking one with sharon... the thing that struck me most was how kevin was able to correct some of my connection problems without actually saying anything -- he, through his connection, could make me aware of the tension i was carrying... very cool stuff.

big big event was a very, very sweaty weekend, but wins hands-down for best dancing. friday night, solomon douglas's band was in the best form i've ever heard them -- granted, i'd only heard them at lindy focus and on cd, but they were rocking out. the hot club du jam cellar's debut was also highly entertaining -- watch out for them! ninety-plus-degree heat and classes in non-air-conditioned venues don't mix all that well, but there was plenty of good material. peabody with chad and midori and "antiquated vernacular dances" with mike and casey were enough to get me even more excited about the sugarfoot stomp weekend (coming up 4th of july!). the boilermakers and russ wilson on saturday night were also delightful.

uh oh, i need to duck into the shower if i'm going to make it to the... um, scenic outdoor location?... on time! hopefully i'll get around to more rambling before another month's gone.

mturk

an afternoon piddling on amazon's mturk for a grand total of about $3.50 is enough to convince me that it's not -- at least not yet -- any way to earn a living. but there's something strangely addicting about taking assignments to rewrite sentences for about 4 cents each. not as much fun as project gutenberg's distributed proofreading, but a little more profitable.