I'm so glad your faux-son is stepping up to do this. Best of all, this stuff will get a chance to get into the hands of people who will really appreciate it.

Kind of like how I felt about donating great piles and piles of Mom's clothes and shoes to the Good Will store in PA where I'd gotten so many great finds, it was a way of paying forward.

Faux son would have sent more to the trash, but he knows Hubby would have wanted stuff to have a use.

Somebody will be so happy to get that stuff.

Day off, yay! I got to sleep in a little bit, and now I'm going for a run in the woods.

Going through stuff like that is just so hard.

Doing it with someone(s) was so much easier, which made it rather a social/family occasion to remember the person, almost fun at times.

Definitely -- I made my mother go through a box with me recently, which was a great call. Partly because most things in it were basically trash, but sentimental trash! So hard to throw out.

I'm assuming you're keeping the weapons, Connie. They sounded...communal.

Bless him for being there for you.

So today is Friday which means it's mystery interview day. They sent an email with time and phone number they would call at and were off one digit. I literally have no idea what I might be getting into.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the interview test I blew. The test premise was that they gave me a summation of a project halfway through and told me to give a presentation and recommendations. Well, if you give me two pages of summation, how much summation can I do? And there's not really enough to be analysed.

it was kind of scary in that it was about a data interface, and one of the findings was that two of the fields "seemed" to have been swapped two years ago, one is missing and they don't know what's in the other field.

My primary "finding" was to include a stakeholder from the company providing the data and use what leverage you have to get the data explained--the data was being used to calculate pension payouts, after all. And then when you understand what's in the fields, change your system to put the right amount in the right boxes, as well as go back the two years and correct the payouts. And this was based on a real project.

They wanted an off the cuff decision about something I thought required analysis, so it's fair to say we wouldn't have worked well together

the second scenario required more insurance knowledge (this was Farmers) than I had (I had to know the implication of catmit, not just that it was catastrophe mitigation--not covering obvious high risks but passing that off to companies that do that sort of business) to be able to, again, summarise a summary.

It's stupidly hard to convince myself I couldn't have thrived there anyway (also there were no personal things in the VP office I tested in (ninety minutes!) or the cubes I walked past (which also had low walls).

I guess you just want to win every time, even if you don't like the game.

I liked working for UCLA last time round (can't beat the commute!), but I wish I knew the *job*. I thought I'd been careful about filing all the reply emails and screenshotting the final applications for Evernote, but I'm still lost.

At least it's a more active job market than last time.

So think good thoughts towards me at 11:30 Pacific today. And create a good job for me.

Yes, I hear you on the "want to win every time" thing. I once had a therapist ask me if I was trying to get an A in therapy.

I've decided I'm going to take August off from Facebook games on the unarguable basis that I'm spending too much time on them. See if I can't refocus more of my energy elsewhere.

(I'm actually finishing out a 'crystal chapter' on Gardens of Time, so I've got another 5 days to go on that one, but the rest of are going to be put aside starting this morning.)

I guess you just want to win every time, even if you don't like the game.

Yeah, and sometimes it's hard to remember that you should be evaluating them as well!