Tuesday, January 24, 2006
She's Baaaaack!
Oh dear, I know I've been gone too long when Ashlee has time to ask in the midst of her fabulous smitten-ness (is that a word?), "where you at, lady?" I've also let the New Year's resolution I made to my website's boyfriend to post more often slide. I can only hope all of you subscribe to this by RSS, otherwise you've probably given up on me by now.
The short answer to the question is that I've been right here, but lazy about posting. The long answer is that I've been directing most of my energy to the job search, and had been kind of holding my breath until some of that worked itself out. Well, it has, but not in a good way. As you may or may not know, I was employed for the last year on a grant-funded project. While the project is still ongoing, the money that was budgeted for my participation in it was done at the end of 2005, so as of the first of the year I'm unemployed. I've been applying for various things, and in fact had one job offer which I, perhaps unwisely, turned down due to the fact that they didn't have any budget to fly me down for an interview and I was leery of taking a job based on a phone interview alone. (Plus there were some other things re: salary, and their schedule in hiring someone that made me question whether it would be a good fit.) I also had an on-campus interview for what would have been a wonderfully fabulous dream job at the University of Michigan, allowing me to use my mad project management skillz, get some experience in a library, and be associated with some super-cool things like the Google Library project. Unfortunately, I found out about a week ago that they selected someone else. I'm not too proud to tell y'all... I cried. Still, it's not really anything I can beat myself up about. I interviewed as well as I could (even the person doing the hiring said he couldn't think of anything I could have done better), and I felt like I really hit it off with the people I spoke with and vice versa. So, you know, I did my best, and you can't do better than that.
I was also waiting to hear back about a job at the University Press here, and found out yesterday that I didn't get that either. (Whch is really probably for the best. I wasn't 100% sure that I wanted it.) But where that leaves me is back to square one. Job searching. Sigh. So I'm applying for a couple of temp jobs to keep my rent paid while I look, and continuing the process.
But there has been good news as well! When Southside-Aussie Boy (previously referred to herein as "A") and I spent the weekend in Chicago at the beginning of the month we stayed at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, which I booked through Priceline. We had a wonderful time, but there were some things about the room that were decidedly sub-par. We could hear noise from both the elevator lobby and the room next door. There was some weird yellow goo on one of the supposedly clean glasses in the bathroom. And the otherwise lovely king size bed had some awfully sharp wooden corners, which I discovered late at night when I whacked my shin into one of them while coming back from the bathroom. Talk about things that made me cry! So I figured it couldn't hurt to email Hyatt and let them know... and soon I should be in posession of a certificate for one night's free stay at a Hyatt hotel!
Speaking of good things that come by mail, the other day I got a package with a necklace that I bought during the cruise my mom and I took this summer. I had lost it somewhere after purchasing it, and thought it was gone forever. But they must have found it when cleaning or something. (It must have been pretty well hidden if it took 5 months to find it.) They figured out who it belonged to by the receipt that was still in the bag and mailed it to me forthwith. So that was a nice surprise.
I've also used my newly abundant free time to thoroughly clean out my closets as well as design a few new t-shirts on my CafePress site. (By the way, the "Love Hurts" t-shirts don't mean anything's going badly with me and the Southside-Aussie. They're just designs for the CafePress anti-valentine's contest.)
All right, now that you know what I've been up to, I'm going to do my best to get back to posting on a regular basis. I had such great ideas during my hiatus too! Too bad I didn't write any of them down.
The short answer to the question is that I've been right here, but lazy about posting. The long answer is that I've been directing most of my energy to the job search, and had been kind of holding my breath until some of that worked itself out. Well, it has, but not in a good way. As you may or may not know, I was employed for the last year on a grant-funded project. While the project is still ongoing, the money that was budgeted for my participation in it was done at the end of 2005, so as of the first of the year I'm unemployed. I've been applying for various things, and in fact had one job offer which I, perhaps unwisely, turned down due to the fact that they didn't have any budget to fly me down for an interview and I was leery of taking a job based on a phone interview alone. (Plus there were some other things re: salary, and their schedule in hiring someone that made me question whether it would be a good fit.) I also had an on-campus interview for what would have been a wonderfully fabulous dream job at the University of Michigan, allowing me to use my mad project management skillz, get some experience in a library, and be associated with some super-cool things like the Google Library project. Unfortunately, I found out about a week ago that they selected someone else. I'm not too proud to tell y'all... I cried. Still, it's not really anything I can beat myself up about. I interviewed as well as I could (even the person doing the hiring said he couldn't think of anything I could have done better), and I felt like I really hit it off with the people I spoke with and vice versa. So, you know, I did my best, and you can't do better than that.
I was also waiting to hear back about a job at the University Press here, and found out yesterday that I didn't get that either. (Whch is really probably for the best. I wasn't 100% sure that I wanted it.) But where that leaves me is back to square one. Job searching. Sigh. So I'm applying for a couple of temp jobs to keep my rent paid while I look, and continuing the process.
But there has been good news as well! When Southside-Aussie Boy (previously referred to herein as "A") and I spent the weekend in Chicago at the beginning of the month we stayed at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, which I booked through Priceline. We had a wonderful time, but there were some things about the room that were decidedly sub-par. We could hear noise from both the elevator lobby and the room next door. There was some weird yellow goo on one of the supposedly clean glasses in the bathroom. And the otherwise lovely king size bed had some awfully sharp wooden corners, which I discovered late at night when I whacked my shin into one of them while coming back from the bathroom. Talk about things that made me cry! So I figured it couldn't hurt to email Hyatt and let them know... and soon I should be in posession of a certificate for one night's free stay at a Hyatt hotel!
Speaking of good things that come by mail, the other day I got a package with a necklace that I bought during the cruise my mom and I took this summer. I had lost it somewhere after purchasing it, and thought it was gone forever. But they must have found it when cleaning or something. (It must have been pretty well hidden if it took 5 months to find it.) They figured out who it belonged to by the receipt that was still in the bag and mailed it to me forthwith. So that was a nice surprise.
I've also used my newly abundant free time to thoroughly clean out my closets as well as design a few new t-shirts on my CafePress site. (By the way, the "Love Hurts" t-shirts don't mean anything's going badly with me and the Southside-Aussie. They're just designs for the CafePress anti-valentine's contest.)
All right, now that you know what I've been up to, I'm going to do my best to get back to posting on a regular basis. I had such great ideas during my hiatus too! Too bad I didn't write any of them down.
