Dave’s Good Stuff

It’s Friday, my last unemployed business day for (knock on wood) the rest of my life until retirement. I’m going to the regular Friday lunch at the Fox and the Hound at 11:30. After that, I’m going to take a friend’s bike to the bike store to have it worked on. Then I’ll be taking the dogs out to Lawrence so a friend can care for them while I’m out of town this weekend. Then it’s Bed Bath & Beyond for some random stuff. Finally, it’s three hours to Hermann, MO for a weekend of wine tasting and debauchery! THAT’s how I want to end my unemployment. :)

My bike is also in need of work. I gave it to a friend… an acquaintance actually who is extremely generous and nice. He wouldn’t accept any sort of compensation, he just loves working on bikes. He’s going to try to find out what’s wrong with it that it keeps creaking and popping with every pedal stroke. An absolutely fantastic fellow, he is.

The flaying my finger suffered on Monday when I started working on the bike is healing nicely. My hair dresser gave me a really cool band aid that’s heat sensitive somehow. It seals, even around knuckles, extremely nicely. I looked for them, but couldn’t find any.

All in all, this has been a really good week. Omar was in town, there’s been lots of good food, good drink, hanging with various friends and generally enjoying myself. Then it’ll be capped off with a weekend trip to Hermann, MO for a weekend of tasting wine!

Omar, a friend of mine from my college days, left this morning after a week long visit. I caught up with him briefly on Monday, and then again on Tuesday, and spent most of the day with him yesterday. He is one of those once-in-a-lifetime friends that it’s always an absolute joy to get together with. Just brimming with talent and ability, he’s still struggling to find his place and find what he wants to do. Given our conversation that went until 3:30am this morning, I’m thinking his idea of getting somehow into psychology is a fine idea. Life this year has been nothing if not bumpy, and he offered plenty of insight and ideas into what might be going on in this confused mind of mine. He always was very good at that. Aside from that, there were lots of stories about days gone by, lots of pictures taken while others were pulled from their dark hiding places to see the light of day for the first time in years. A completely successful and enjoyable visit, in short.

In addition, I reconnected (a theme for the last couple of years, actually) with another friend I’ve not seen in years. Sean Mac and I used to live together in an extremely interesting house in Lawrence. It was built by a French cabinet maker, and was more designed than built… a little in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright, if perhaps not quite to that level of artistry. We went our separate ways and met again through Omar this past week. I’m quite pleased with it, actually.

After lots and lots of liquor and wine and food (most of it meat, and much of it grilled) Omar left this morning for his 9 hour trek back to Colorado. I’ll see him again in September when I head out there for a wedding I’m attending. I’m going to try to get him to crash the reception… though he’s not much into the party scene any more, especially when it involves people he largely doesn’t know. Maybe I’ll skip out and hang with him at a local watering hole…

A month or so back, my bike’s bottom bracket (BB) started creaking. With every pedal stroke, there’d be clicking, creaking and every now and again, I’d feel something a little bit rough. Off the bike, I could feel play in the cranks, but without a job, I was hesitant to do anything about it. So I stopped riding as much - which really really sucked. Now that I have a job, I thought I’d finally dig in and figure out what was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got a call from the Human Resources Department at one of the places I interviewed. It was a local area code, so the local HR department, rather than the parent company’s department called.

I got the job.

I got.

The job.

My first day will be the 30th. That gives me a full week off to actually *enjoy* unemployment!

When I was laid off from eScout back when the dot com bubble burst, I was out of work for 69 weeks and 6 days, for a total of 489 days. 12 Weeks, 5 Days for a total of 89 days is much better.

I’ve added a comment subscription plug in, just in case you want to be e’mailed when a new comment is added to a post you’ve commented on. Right now, comments subscription is on by default. When you comment on a post, there’s a little checkbox you can de-check if you don’t care what other people have to say, but that wouldn’t be very nice.

I just got word that one of the jobs I was vying for has slipped through my fingers. They are looking for someone with more experience in areas I was simply never exposed to, more formal training and perhaps older and larger of stature. Who knows… it’s probably for the best, as I was on the fence with that company as well. I’m sure they sensed that and didn’t want to risk me coming on board, only to be dissatisfied. Still waiting on word from the other… you’ll know almost as soon as I do.

I came up with this a few months ago… at least I think I did. I’m *sure* it’s been done before, and it’s possible that I have seen it or read about it, but I don’t recall either. It’s a variation on standard pocket billiards (8-ball, 9-ball, whatever really) that helps develop carom skills and a better sense of what happens after the cue ball and object balls make contact. In short, the cue ball receives the object ball, rather than being sent into the object ball. Read the rest of this entry »

My second interview with the second company went well. I’m still waiting on word regarding the interviews with the first company. I’m waiting now to see what happens… either offers will be made, or not. *fingers crossed*

Still no word on how the interview went last week. I did have another this afternoon at another company, but it’s been rescheduled for tomorrow morning. That’s fine by me, b/c it gives me a little more time to find out what’s going on with last week’s interview… I really don’t have a good feeling though. I did. But now I don’t. Funny though, as the first appears to slip through my fingers, the appeal of the second increases. That’s the way life goes sometimes. Just have to keep breathing. Keep those fingers crossed. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sick. It hit Thursday night, and really kicked into gear Friday. Now it’s Sunday and there’s been no improvement whatsoever. I’ve not looked down the gullet, but I suspect I’ll see the same thing I saw the last time I had strep. It feels the same, with the only strange thing being I don’t think I’ve run a fever. The throat hurts, the ears feel full and dim, and the energy level is low.

That pretty much means that the lake is out this weekend. Blah.

I never did hear back about the job on Friday. I’m going to call on Monday, but I don’t have a great feeling about it.