Turns out it's open-house weekend here in NYC.

[link]

(I NEVER manage to notice this until the day of)

Call my answering service at 212 560-7306 if you want to meet me and go to some of these.

I am SO going to the little red lighthouse.

Remember this?

Asking for industrial strength jobma.

I'm in the middle of the interviewing/testing process to have a temp gig through April that will consist of me driving to a chain of auto parts store locations, installing new computers, and training the counter staff in their use. (A company vehicle, cell phone and credt card, even.)

I have passed a phone interview, faxed forms, FedExed personality test and background check so far. F2F or phone job interviews are next week, followed by [if hired] training that might take place in Raleigh, NC.

As many crossed fingers and toes as possible, thank you.

The F2F interview was put off, and I will be having it not in Raleigh but here in Minnesota, 20 miles away. training may or may not be in Raleigh.

Tomorrow, Wednesday morning, 9am CST.

Please direct any job and self-confidence ~ma you can spare towards me, if you can.

A big thank you for the stability ~ma directed at my friend around the bend. He's doing much better...daily group, apparent med compliance and a healthier/safer sense of self. Now it is just a life-time of management.

Again, thanks for the good thoughts.

Thanks for the Job~ma folks.

Interview went well, when I got home, they had a message waiting on my machine, and....

wait for it....

I have to be interviewed by someone else *next* Wednesday.

Frell.

Stay tuned to the next chapter.

This interviewing thing is all well and good, but it doesn't pay the mortgage.

I would appreciate any spare ~ma you guys have lying around today around 11 am. i'm going to the hospital to have another round of ultrasounds done to see if the cysts in my uterus have grown to determine which kind of surgery they will do on me.

I feel bad asking for ~ma for something comparatively minor, but I'm having an MRI today and can I ask for diagnosis-ma, so I can figure out what the frell is wrong with my right arm.

Popping in from the darkest depths of a slow dial up to ask for some non-specific non-family meltdown-ma.

Announcement: the dates for my return to Australia have been confirmed. I will leave Philadelphia on November 19. I will leave the US on December 3. I will be in San Francisco for Thanksgiving. I also intend to visit Seattle, L.A. and San Diego on my way out.

Further details will be hammered out in the F2F thread.

Hey there. Can someone who has Aurelia's phone number (or sees her online) let her know to check her email? We're supposed to get together today and my phone has gone kerplooey and I'm afraid she won't see my e on the subject in time.

Thanks!

Lest anyone wondered, I wasn't in the Hilton Hotel in Taba last weekend.

It's entirely possible you didn't realise it was in Egypt - the CNN coverage certainly made it sound like it happened in Israel. Despite Israel's attempt to annex Sinai some years ago, it's still part of Egypt, and a large percentage of the victims of the bomb were Arab Egyptians.

Since it was a holiday weekend, I was in a hotel at the beach myself - but happily I'd chosen a less swanky hotel up on the Mediterranean coast, rather than a posh hotel on the Red Sea coast. Two of my friends and co-workers, however, were in the hotel. Their room was destroyed in the blast, and they are only alive now by the slimmest of chances; they'd left their room a scant five minutes before the explosion. Their friends were not so lucky, and they have now been confirmed as among the dead. They leave behind two children, one nearly two years old, another nearly nine years old.