Psst. Hey buddy. Wanna buy a dog?

This weekend I went to a picnic. It was with some of the people that I played Frisbee with over the summer. (Frisbee-Amy wasn’t there.) There was a couple there that had just bought a dog. OUT OF THE BACK OF A VAN! They said it was an animal rescue type organization. In Tennessee there aren’t laws about having to get your dog fixed. So the shelters euthanize the dogs pretty quickly after they are brought in. So there’s this “underground railroad” for dogs. They (I don’t know who they is) go and get the dogs and bring them up to West Virginia. Then they sell the dogs out of the back of a van in a parking lot. Is that what Chris Farley was talking about? LIVING IN A VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER!!

GOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!!!!!!!!

Now that I’m unemployed I’ve been languishing in self-pity. I’ve been sitting around in my underwear watching Gilmore Girls repeats and eating ice cream. And that’s on the good days… Actually I’ve been applying to all kinds of jobs and complaining because I don’t hear back from them that day. Seems to me that if I can e-mail them my resume they should be able to read and reject it in the same day. Anyway I applied at a jewelry store. The manager asked me why I wanted to work there. The only good reason that I could think of was that I would probably meet a rich (possibly Indian) princess and then I could get married and quit. Or at least flirt with the cute girls that came in. I didn’t say that though. I made something up about how I like to meet people and help them with stuff. I called her a few days later to see what she thought and she said I didn’t have enough experience. I don’t think that you can say that for any job that you fill out an application that they just tore off of a pad of applications. I should have told her that I just wanted to flirt with the hot girls that came in. I’ve also applied to some restaurants in the area. I got an offer from one. I’m pretty sure that the only reason is that I have a friend that worked there and he called and told them that I’m cool. Seems to me that if I worked on an ambulance and managed 7 foreign post docs in a lab I can handle 3 tables in a restaurant. So I’m supposed to start the restaurant job on Monday. Then last night I got a call from the area manager at a snooty furniture store near me. I applied there and didn’t expect to get an interview because I don’t have experience in their field. But I have an interview on Friday. Like I said, it’s a snooty store so there’s a good chance that the pay would be good. I would rather work there since the restaurant isn’t that close. Plus as long as I’m not the furniture mover it will probably be less work. I know that there isn’t a store manager. I’m not getting my hopes up for that though, I’m sure that being a building manager and managing 7 foreign post docs, doesn’t count as experience. I think that the furniture store has the lowest princess quotient of them all though. I have applied to lab jobs, where my experience is obviously applicable. But I haven’t heard from any of those.
Worrying that I would take a temp job and have it not be so temporary; I asked my roommate to help me and kick my butt a little to make sure that I’m working on getting on with my life. So we went out yesterday for coffee and talked about setting goals. He told me about his mid-career crisis and how he set goals and got some role models and got things together. (So I have some open positions for role models if anybody wants to apply. Make sure you have some good experience in those areas. I’ll send you and application if you’re interested.) It was a good conversation. We set some goals for me to take the GREs in the next few months. We talked about how I want to change professions to International Development and Aid Delivery. He suggested that I read some books about it so I can be sure to talk intelligently about the subject. He said I should go to conferences and talk to everybody that I can about it. I need to network. I don’t really know how to network. It was good for us to sit and talk about it. I’ve been saying for some time all these things that I want to do. It feels good to have goals to work with. Well, time to work on some of those goals. Maybe I’ll put some pants on first.