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So, I feel like I need to apologize for the fact that my last post was not at all even remotely funny, but hey, I guess that’s just the part of my cool mysteriousness, no? I’m not sure that this will be any funnier, because I’ve been in this very strange dark mood for the past couple of days. I’m frustrated with the job search - or rather, the lack of results from it - and I’m tired of feeling useless because I’m home all day while Dave is at work and I don’t really seem to do anything.* Yesterday I made myself feel slightly better by cleaning, but the house is still a mess, and the cleaning lady is coming tomorrow, so there’s really no point in bothering, is there? Normally, when I feel like this, doing something fun like going shopping for a new outfit or a pair of shoes might make me feel better, but I have this little rule about not spending money on extraneous things when I have no income. Call me kooky.

* Disclaimer: Dave has nothing to do with this mood, and I know that he hates that I feel this way. If anything, the guy is just too damn supportive, because he’s constantly telling me to relax and try to enjoy my time at home and think of it as a “vacation,” and I can’t seem to do that. But really, how sweet is that? It makes me feel even more guilty for spending his paycheck on things we don’t really need. Such as, see below.

So! In an effort to feel less useless and more like I’m taking steps to do something positive for my career, I’ve decided to get yet another certification. I won’t bore everyone with the details because I seriously doubt that most of you care, but this one little thing alone should definitely fatten up my resume quite nicely. Which means, of course, that I now get to go to the bookstore and drop some crazy amount of money on a textbook so I can teach it to myself, because that’s a better option than spending even crazier amounts to take a class for it. (Example: There is a 3-day intensive workshop for this certification, which costs a mere $3000. Holy god. I think I’ll just go buy the $75 book and go at my own pace, thanks anyway.) So yeah, that’s what I’m doing. Wish me luck.

Oh, and about that job that I’m not sure about: I got an email from my recruiter (the guy who set up the interview) with the subject line that said, “good news!” Apparently he wanted to let me know that yes, they’re interested in me, and it’s basically a decision between me and one other person. Um, how is that good news? I mean, yay for me being in the final two, but seriously. That still means there’s a 50% chance that I won’t get it, and really, I think I would’ve been happier not knowing that I was that close and missed it.

In happier news: today is my mom’s birthday. I won’t write a big elaborate shout-out since she doesn’t read this site, but I will say that she’s one of my favorite people on this planet, and I feel sorry for anyone who wasn’t raised by her. (So, basically, the entire world minus me and my siblings.) Yay for mama!

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Ok, the interview today? I have absolutely no idea how that went. I went into it with no expectations - I knew the qualifications that they were looking for, and I knew that I fit the description pretty well. But I didn’t really understand what it is that this group actually does (and yes, this is yet another team at the Giant Software Company), and I’m still not sure that I completely get it, even after being interviewed by three different people. So that’s kind of strange. I honestly just don’t know how well I did in the interview process - that big one a couple of weeks ago really shook my confidence, and these people all had poker faces, so I couldn’t tell at all if they liked me or not.

Bottom line: if they offer the job to me? I’ll take it. It’s a 6-month contract, so even if I end up hating it, it’s only temporary. And we could use the extra income. (More importantly: my ego needs the income to feel like a useful & productive member of this household.) But based on what I know of it, I don’t think I’ll hate it. It sounds like something that I would enjoy, and that I could do well. And if they don’t offer it to me? Meh. I don’t really care. Just have to wait and see, I guess.

In other news, after all that panic and chaos, the hurricane didn’t even cause my brother in Houston to lose electricity. Absolutely nuts. And in other, other news: I did nothing all weekend except play video games (Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker! Aaaaah! I’m reliving my childhood!) and watch season 1 of “Lost” on DVD. We still have a few episodes left, so don’t give me any spoilers. But man, I am totally loving that show.

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The scene: our house, this morning. Dave left for work, and less than 5 minutes later, I went to take a shower. I took my clothes off, then I heard something strange. One of our cats, Beaumont (the big, brave boy hunter cat), was yowling a very distinct meow. It was sort of a muffled sound, and one that I have come to know well; it loosely translates to, “Quick! Come see this neat dead thing that I’m carrying in my mouth and want to give you as a gift!” Since I was alone in the house, I went to see what was up. This was very, very stupid of me. As I started to come down the stairs, Beaumont flew past me with - yep, I guessed it - some tiny thing with feet sticking out of his mouth. I screamed, because no matter how many times this happens, I am still not used to it; and even though Dave hates it when I scream, I cannot help it. (See, honey? I really don’t do it for attention, I even do it when I’m alone in the house!) Beaumont ran into my office and dropped off his “gift,” which turned out to be a teeny tiny bird, which was not so much dead as it was still frantically fluttering around and leaving feathers all over the damn place. Somehow, amid much flapping of tiny wings and me shouting obscenities, I managed to separate the cat from the bird. I grabbed the cat, ran down the stairs, threw him out the back door and slammed the door on him. (Just in case you were wondering: on nice weather days like today, we leave the back slider door open a few inches so the cats can come & go as they please. Probably a bad idea when I’m going to take a shower. Probably a worse idea to advertise that we do this on the Internet.) And let’s not forget that I was naked for all of this - so um, hi, neighbors! I really hope you were all at work, but please feel free to send me your opthamologist bill if I inadvertently caused you to bleed from the eyes.

Ok, population of the house is now me (still naked! hello!), the bird, and Teenie - who has never hunted a damned thing in her life and I don’t think she would honestly know what to do with a bird if it flew up and pecked her on the nose. So I wasn’t worried about her, but little Miss Birdie (I don’t know that it was a female, but that what I called her) was definitely injured, and I didn’t know how badly, but she was hiding under the trunk in our living room. I called my vet, who referred me to a different vet - a mere 15 miles away (gee, is that all?) - where they would take in injured wildlife. Fantastic! But I’m still naked, and oh yeah, sort of greasy! I called my mom, who reassured me that I would not be a horrible person if I took 20 minutes to shower and slap on some make-up before I took the bird to the emergency clinic, so that’s what I did. I put on my gardening gloves, caught the bird in my living room windowsill, put her in an Amazon.com box, draped a towel over the top of it (thinking it would calm her if it was dark - I have no idea if it helped or not), and drove off to the vet’s. They took her and said they were pretty sure she’d be ok, so I left a generous check for their donations-only wildlife center, and that was that. On the way home, I stopped at the pet store and bought collars with bells to put on all of the cats, because I’m fine with them killing mice (lesser of two evils - I don’t want mice in my house, soooo….), but the bird thing? Not cool.

End of scene.

Moving on: The phone interview today has turned into an in-person interview on Monday. This could be good, but I’m not letting myself get *too* excited about it, since that didn’t work out well for me in the past, and besides, I’m still not sure that I understand exactly what this job entails. But apparently I impressed someone, since they still want to talk to me after the phone interview. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, scary stuff over in Houston with this hurricane. My brother lives there, but he’s evacuating tonight, and going to stay with our cousin (Cat’s brother) in Austin. Apparently he’s mostly just packing up his clothes and his guitars - I’m not sure he cares about much else.

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I didn’t get the job. I don’t have a real reason why, since they don’t disclose that information, just “the hiring manager has decided not to proceed at this time”. Surprisingly, I’m sort of ok. I’m not nearly as devastated as I thought I would be. I was making jokes with Dave last night that maybe this is a sign that the universe wants me to just stay home and have babies. I think I could handle a barefoot-and-pregnant lifestyle. Well, maybe not barefoot, as I do love me some shoes.

But honestly, somewhere during the interview process I realized that while this is a company that ideally I would love to work for, it’s not necessarily the job that I want. It involved a lot of gray areas that seemed sort of nebulous, and I do much better in a more structured environment (i.e., if you don’t give me a deadline for something, there’s a slim chance that it might get done somewhere between now and the end of time). Also, it would have put me in the very awkward situation of having to occasionally sit in on meetings with Dave’s ex-wife. Not that I really have a problem with that - I’ve never met the woman, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m the winner in the situation because she left, and now I get to keep him. So on some level, I’m sort of grateful to her, but there’s still an underlying “you hurt someone I love, therefore I must rip your spine out via your eye sockets” kind of thing there. So it’s probably for the best that I won’t be working with her.

Anyway, now it’s back to the drawing board. Also known as Monster.

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No news yet on the job situation, except that my nails are a mess from biting them due to worrying. So instead of listening to me whine, here’s the recap of Dave’s birthday weekend. First, on Friday night, I managed to throw together a semi-surprise party. Nothing huge, just a few friends over at our house for dinner and cake. Hoo lordy, the cake. Back when we did the cake-tasting for our wedding, there was this one cake that Dave absolutely loved. It was a chocolate cake with Bailey’s Irish cream filling. And it was awesome, but I didn’t want a chocolate wedding cake because I had this weird fear that people (meaning: me) would get it stuck in their teeth and then be smiling for photos, and that would be bad. So I told Dave at the time that I would get him one for his birthday. I know he forgot about it, but I didn’t, so I ordered the Bailey’s cake from our wedding cake lady, and I picked it up on Friday afternoon. Here’s the thing: this is the biggest cake I have ever seen in my life. I ordered the one that said it was about 20 servings - thinking, ok, party guests can each have 2 slices, then we’ll have a couple left over for the weekend. Y’all? There is over half a cake still in my fridge - that’s after I hacked off a huge chunk for Dave to take to work with him this morning to distribute among his co-workers - and just the half takes up almost an entire shelf in the fridge. I’m not kidding. I also attempted to make a trifle, which is a dessert that Dave’s mum makes that he loves - I had emailed her to get the recipe so I could make it exactly right. That turned out semi-successful. I should’ve used pound cake as the base instead of angel food cake, because the latter turns into a cakey liquid goo substance when soaked with sherry. As for the sherry, I think I used way too much. Seriously, you can get a really nice buzz from one serving of the stuff. But the rest of the trifle (since the sherry-soaked cake is only the bottom layer of about 5 or 6 layers), it’s pretty good. Oh well, lesson learned for next time - I’ll get it right for Christmas.

Anyway, the party was only a semi-surprise because Dave knew that there was a birthday-related activity going on, but he didn’t know exactly what it was. I made him stay in our bedroom for something like 4 hours while I set everything up downstairs. (I brought him tea and he had DVD’s to watch up there, so it’s not like he suffered.) I just couldn’t figure out any other way to pull it off - if I made him stay away from the house for hours, he would’ve seen people’s cars in the driveway when he got home. But I found out afterward that he sort of knew what was up, because apparently our housekeeper (who speaks poor English) didn’t understand when I asked her to please come early in the day on Friday because I was throwing a surprise party for Dave’s birthday that night. So she got there on Friday morning and said to Dave, “Your wife said I should come early because you’re having a party here tonight.” Goddammit. Oh well, I tried.

Other than that, the weekend was pretty nice and laid-back. I can’t think of anything notable, except that I never got out of my pajamas all day on Saturday. Seriously, I took a shower and put them back on. I think that might be a sign of pending insanity. And now, it’s back to my regularly scheduled nail-biting and waiting for the phone to ring. And compulsively checking my email every 10 to 15 minutes. Fun!

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I survived, although it was a bit of a soul-destroying day (to use Dave’s words). Originally I was supposed to interview with four different people. That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Yeah, well, I actually interviewed with seven people. That’s right, seven. I was there from 10:00 this morning until 6:30 this evening, and I swear to Jesus Christ Almighty that by the time I left, if one more person had asked me to talk about my background and work experience and why I want to work at [insert company name] one more time, I was going to find the nearest tall building and throw my dry-mouthed, exhausted ass off of it. And the thing is, it sort of felt ok while I was doing it, but then afterward I started thinking of all the things I wished I had said differently, and the answers I gave that might’ve been wrong, and the fact that maybe I’m not qualified for this job (or any job, for that matter - maybe I should just give up and go back to being a receptionist like I did right after college), and yadda yadda, the whole cycle of self-doubt and all that jazz. See “soul-destroying” reference above. Hence my current splitting headache.

So ok, as for the reason why my original 4-person interview turned into a 7-person interview, I figure it means one of two things: either they really liked me and they wanted me to meet as many people on the team as possible. Or, they weren’t sure about me and they wanted more people’s opinions. I sincerely hope it was the former, but I honestly don’t know. In any case, I should know something one way or the other soon. I’m hoping to hear back tomorrow so I don’t have to wait out the weekend, but I think that’s probably overly optimistic. And regardless, this weekend should be preoccupied with birthday-related activities for Dave (which we shall not discuss here, because he reads this, and dammit, he is going to be at least partially surprised), so that should help the time pass a bit faster.

And a special shout-out to Lauren and Angie, because I totally used your questions. I used Angie’s question about “what do you love about your job?” when I was being interviewed by two people on the team who would be peers with me. And I used Lauren’s question about “how would you define success in this role?” with the woman who would be my boss (if I get the job). And Lauren, your track record remains unbroken, because she did indeed say, “Wow, that’s a great question.” I almost laughed out loud.

P.S. About that prior post - I’m not mocking Wiccans by any stretch of the imagination. I have a very dear girlfriend who I absolutely adore who is a Wiccan. She has baby-sat my drunk ass on more than one occasion, and she gave me really great trashy underwear at my bridal shower. So yeah, it’s beyond my own little basic Judeo-Christian grasp, but hey, if it works for some people, that’s cool too.

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The in-person interview for the job that’s perfect for me? It’s tomorrow. I am sick with anxiety. I want it so badly, and I’m going to be absolutely broken-hearted if I don’t get it. So please-please-please send prayers, positive thoughts, voodoo chants, wiccan… um (what do wiccans do? Sprinkle fairy dust while dancing naked by moonlight? I don’t care, just bring it on!), and whatever else you got for me, because I’m going to need it tomorrow.

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