The Weekend & More

Now that the weather's really starting to warm up a bit, I had a nice weekend. Friday night was spent being some of the first to see Will Ferrell's new movie "Blades of Glory." Very funny, and typical Will Ferrell. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and like the NY Times reviewer said, I'm also glad it didn't devolve into gay jokes. Instead, it just played on the awkward and uncomfortable really well and in a very funny way. So, props to Will Ferrell and the rest for making it willy without being insulting.

Saturday was spent being lazy at first, and then became more productive when Amy and I took a bike ride into the city to run some errands. I love being close enough to do that, and I love that despite Baltimore being a decent sized city - it's still like Small-timore because we ran into friends during the bike ride. Well, we didn't really run into them, we saw them and stopped and talked.

Anyway, Saturday night was a party with friends, and then Sunday was insanely lazy. I watched a UFC "The Ultimate Fighter" marathon and read two books. If you're in the mood to cry and feel depressed, then please read "For One More Day" by Mitch Albom. Albom specializes in books that make you cry and focus on death. Thanks, Mitch.

But really, it is a good book, and thanks Amber for sending it on to contribute to my "Get Off Your Lazy Ass and Read" campaign. I also read the book "Hope for the Flowers," which Amber also mailed to me. It's awesome and I loved it. I've now read nine books! Woo! Since my last book update, I've read "In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck and one called "Carrier Combat" by Frederick Mears.

The Steinbeck book was excellent, as usual. He's one of my favorite authors and this book did not disappoint. The story follows two guys who help organize a strike amongst migrant workers in California in the 50s.

The "Carrier Combat" book was written in the 50s by a Navy pilot who served in the Pacific Theater during WWII. I love books about WWII, but this one was a disappointment. Despite this guy having taken part in some of the major battles of WWII (Midway, Guadalcanal) - his narrative sucked all the interesting right out of it. I stuck it out hoping it would get better, but it just didn't. Too bad.

Not sure what's next on my book list, I'll have to dig through my pile to find something do-able during a week with such nice weather.

As an update on the job front, no word yet from NPR. I need to start looking around a little more, that was just my first step. I did get an email back from a guy who works in the NPR dept I applied to, which is informative but certainly doesn't promise me anything. I think just applying last week was a big first step is really trying to get out there and move on.

This whole process has been a big challenge for me and quite a wake-up call. When Amy and I moved back down here to Maryland for this job, I was thrilled. I'd attained my dream job and was excited to stay here for years. And I have, it's been three years at this job now. Only thing is, I figured I'd be happy here for more than three years. I wasn't ready yet to be shaken and prompted to move on to something else. I'm really not sure what else I want to do with myself. Every time I look through the various job postings, some positions will look interesting, but many of them I'm nowhere near qualified for and others are just not what I should be doing with myself.

I struggle quite a bit with a "call," you know - going somewhere that I'm supposed to be, working in a job that will make a difference and not just have me as a cog in a big bad profits machine. I'm not at all discounting that type of work or anyone who works in for-profit jobs. If you like it, do it. I'm not one to judge, work where you want. And that's what it is for me - I need to work where I want to work. Hope that makes sense.

So anyway, being pushed out of my happy job nest before I was ready has not been the easiest thing to deal with over these past four or five months.

I think I really just need to magically somehow become independently wealthy and spend my time volunteering at all the agencies I love, or I need to have a sponsor pay me a yearly salary to do that. Hell, I don't get paid much right now, so it's not like I'm asking for a truckload of money.

I'm rambling. Thanks for reading. I'm glad all 13 of you feel special to be included on the private blog of me. I suppose I should tell you a funny story from my life to make it worth it. You know, so you're not stuck reading my job ramblings every day.

When I was in Mississippi last spring for work, I stayed for one night in this volunteer housing facility run by Mennonite Disaster Service. They were nice enough to let me stay there, except that they had me in a former broom closet. That's another story for another time.

Anyway, the location was amazing, about 100 feet from the beach in Pass Christian, Miss. I woke up the next morning and got into my rental car to hit the road for the day. Then I saw that I had a message on my cell, so I sat in the driver's seat with the door open (it was beautiful weather) listening to my voicemails. While listening, I noticed that some little gnats kept flying into my face. I was trying to write down the message on my cell, which is hard to do when you're holding a phone with one hand and swatting your other hand around in the air, so I closed my car door.

About that time I realized that the gnats were indeed a biting sort of gnat, and that their bites hurt - and they hurt bad. So now I'm trying to write down a message, swat at gnats, and I'm yelling out in pain as they bite me. I didn't open the car door, because then more would have flown in. So instead I stayed in my car of gnat-biting death, sealed in with small insects of doom. There I was, swatting around me wildly, yelling "ouch" and other interspersed swear words. I knew I was going to have to drive away soon and I didn't want the car to remain full of the little biting bastards, so I was trying to kill them all before leaving. Plus, I had a call to make and I didn't want them biting me while I was trying to conduct a phone interview.

The swatting and jerking around got angrier and wilder. I would yell out in pain, then swear, then yell out in victory as I'd smash them on my steering wheel or dashboard.

Soon I remembered that my car was not a hidden room with me and my hijinks invisible to all around me. I was in a glass case of gnat-death, visible to everyone. I looked up and saw several volunteers and MDS people staring at me. From their viewpoint, I must have looked like an epilectic woman with tourette's, swinging around wildly in my car, laughing, occasionally swearing, yelling out in pain and slamming my hands around the interior of the car and on myself. Thankfully the windows were up and they couldn't hear the swearing, but I still looked like a crazy woman.

We met eyes. I smiled awkwardly and waved. They returned the favor.

Then I put the car in reverse and promptly left the parking lot. I drove with the windows down for a ways to rid myself of the gnats, which worked a little bit. I stayed elsewhere that next evening.

Happy Monday, folks.