Countdown

With three days to go before I start my new job (or at least start the two weeks' worth of training for it), I've been trying to take care of what needs to be done around the house. This includes paying bills, keeping up with correspondences, printing/filling out paperwork for said job, etc. It feels like, no matter what I do, there's something I'm forgetting. This is nothing new, of course; I always feel like I'm forgetting something no matter when or how I take care of everything. I've made sure to pay the bills I have due; this is good, as I can forget those now that the vast majority of them are paid online with paperless statements. We only have two bills that I/we don't pay online -- one of them is my Citi card's bill, as their website won't let me in without some stupid pin number I set up for the account five years ago (which, of course, I cannot remember now) and the other is the water/trash bill. Everything else but the rent is paid through until well after I'll get my first paycheck, so we're good. Finally we'll be somewhat financially stable again. Daisy gets paid a week from today, and then two weeks after that we'll both be bringing in paychecks every two weeks, and our income will double from that point forward.

Both Daisy and I are paranoid about money; I think I tend to be much more paranoid about it than she does, as for many years I have lived a life of abject poverty. However, she is very smart with money, probably because she is very sensible about most things and, well, because she spent a few years working in a credit union. I have to be smart with money because I've spent many years of my life really poor and scraping by. Yeah, there's a reason why I drive an eighteen year old Monte Carlo with 233,000 miles on it, and only a small part of that reason is because it's fast. So, yeah, it's really nice that we'll be a dual-income household and really nice that said income will allow us some breathing space.

Aside from those chores and tasks, everything's been quiet all week. I'm getting used to the iPhone, I suppose, though I haven't really done much more on it than before. Apple did see fit to send me a really long email with this, though:

I mean, I like the phone, and it's really useful for some stuff already, but it's going to take a loooong time for me to actually use it like an Apple master or anything like that. I have a few apps, I have my numbers programmed into it that I need, and I tried out the GPS tonight by plotting in the address of the place I have to go on Monday morning for my processing/ID badge creation/etc. It's apparently three miles away, and will take me eight minutes to get there. That's useful info. But aside from run of the mill calling, texting, and reading the news? Yeah, so far I've not done much more than that with it and I don't know how much more I will do with it. I actually need to read the manual, which the phone doesn't come with -- it's all online, apparently. I don't even know how to turn the phone off and on, or how to turn the sounds off and on. Yeah. It's a complicated little device.

I did special order and put a rubber case on it, though, because I needed to do that. iPhones are really smooth and sleek, and I have the feeling that if I didn't put a case on it, eventually it would slip out of my hand and I'd drop/break it. I'd rather not do that, especially as the phone retails for more than I paid for my car.

Anyway.

I still follow the news for back in the Wichita/Newton area if only out of mild curiosity for the place in which I spent five years living. Apparently there was a shooting today in Newton, which is really rare for a town like that. The newspaper (which I worked for, as you may recall) was reporting on it like crazy, as was the Wichita news channels. Shootings in Omaha are nothing new -- several per week, gang violence in certain parts of the city, etc etc -- but down there it's a major event when something like that happens. I looked it up on the map and found that it was maybe a mile or so from my former house, out by the discount grocery store I went to often.

The university starts back up on Monday, same as WVU does back home. My mother informed me that today is "move in day" at WVU and she's glad she has the day off so that she doesn't have to navigate student traffic. My friends who remain in Wichita, the few who are still there finishing their degrees (read: less than ten grad students who I actually know and know well) aren't looking forward to the beginning of the semester. Well, Parker probably is, as I'm sure he's itching to get in front of a classroom full of students again. It will be the first fall semester in five years that I will not be teaching classes when Monday rolls around, but it is clear that the fates have a cruel sense of humor, as I will be reporting to work on Monday morning for the first time since the semester ended in May. That seems so long ago now; I wasn't even married yet when the semester ended. I was still living in Kansas when the semester ended. I had really long hair and a really full, thick beard when the semester ended. It's so weird to think of how much really can change in the span of a few short months.

"Are you nervous about starting your training?" Daisy asked me tonight over her lunch hour.

"No," I said. "Psh. I just don't want to do it."

That may be the most honest sentence I've uttered all summer. I don't want to do it. I've been enjoying sleeping on my schedule, eating on my schedule, being able to shower and shave and smoke and go to the bathroom when I've needed or wanted to instead of when I have time to. The concept of being trained to do a job where I will have to report to people above me and have little to no autonomy in said job whatsoever isn't so much nerve-wracking or dread-inducing as it is frustrating. For the past five years, I've been teaching -- and when you're a teacher, you are more or less in charge. When you lead a classroom and teach lessons, you tell students what to do and how to do it. Because I was damn good at what I did, I rarely had to report to anyone. Yes, there were superiors above me, and yes, I did consult them when necessary, but for the most part, I was in charge of what I did and how I did it. The same does not apply to this new job I'll have. I will have at least three direct supervisors to report to, and while Daisy isn't allowed to be in charge of me at this job (nepotism, etc etc), she is ranked above me...and everyone there I'll work with knows she's my wife. In fact, from what Daisy tells me, I am the most anticipated new employee joining the crew.

That's something that may be really hard to live up to, honestly. Truth be told, I've never done this sort of work before. I've never even done anything close to it. Now, you give me enough training and I can do damn near anything and do it well, but I'm also a fairly slow learner when it comes to stuff that I have absolutely no experience with.

"You're lucky," Daisy said. "Things are starting to slow down right now. This is the beginning of the slow part of the year."

Okay, well, yes. That's good. That will help.

There are many upsides to the job, of course; I'll get to work with my wife, I'll get to work (after the training period, anyway) a schedule that is, quite possibly, the best schedule I could've been assigned, and unlike being a professor my job will goddamned end when I clock out for the day. I can't tell you how freeing that will feel again. I haven't had a job that actually ended (aside from breaks between semesters) since 2009 -- as a professor, yes, you go home at the end of the day/night, but there's still always lesson planning that must be done, there's still stacks of papers that must be graded, grades that must be entered on Blackboard, quizzes and handouts to write and make, etc. It was a very rare occurrence that there was nothing I could be doing for my students in one capacity or another. The fact that I don't have to do that stuff anymore is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how one looks at it.

So, that's about all that's going on. I'm sure I'll update you again over the weekend, provided I have the time and energy to do so.

The iMan

So. I have an iPhone.

After doing lots of different research through different companies and different carriers/sites/et cetera, Daisy and I realized that none of the options were going to be any better than any other, and some of said options were incredibly expensive to even start out with a new contract. For example, one carrier I looked at charged $250 up front for the phone and the first month's service plan, and that was a plan with very limited data and talk/text limits as well.

"So what do you want to do?" Daisy asked.

"I suppose we just go to Sprint and see what they can do," I said. "Nothing else is remotely reasonable and/or won't require me to buy the phone off-the-shelf up front."

I don't know if any of you have ever purchased a cell phone off-the-shelf before, but let me tell you, it is not fucking cheap. Most current smartphones cost more than my desktop computer did. Some of them cost more than I paid for my car. If you buy a phone yourself outright before signing up for a plan, yes, you may save some money in the long run, but it's so little that it's negligible when spread out over the length of a cell phone contract.

And of course, there's the fact that we don't have $400-600 to just spend all at once on a phone before any sort of plan even comes into play.

My iPhone 5c (they were sold out of the 5s; apparently there's some sort of promotion going on right now where current customers can get a free upgrade) was, on paper, $549. That is more than I paid for my car. That is much more than I paid for this desktop computer. However, it's worked into my contract that I don't pay it all at once, but over the course of the two years I'm with Sprint.

When it was all settled and done, I had a white iPhone 5c 16GB running iOS 7.1-something, unlimited talk/text/data, and I'm paying somewhere around $80 a month. When it comes to cell phone carriers, the phone I have, and the plan I have, that's a really good deal, actually. We priced Verizon beforehand as well -- they charge over $200 a month for a very similar plan. We got the best deal we could for the money. The 5c was (obviously) cheaper than the 5s as well.

As for the phone itself? Eh, I'm happy with it. No, it's not the metal-and-glass 5s, but it's good. It's fine. I still don't really know how to use it that well yet. Mind you, I've never owned a smartphone, and the only experience I've had with one is the handful of times I've had to make a call on Daisy's phone, or when she handed me the phone while driving and told her to text Mama something. Beforehand, I consulted Parker, who is an Apple-phile and owns basically every new i-device, on the learning curve of an iPhone for someone who's not only never owned one before, but who has never used a smartphone before. He gave me some good tips on how to use it, what services to turn on/turn off, and then told me that it's going to take a week or so to get used to it. I can totally see and believe that.

I haven't done much with the phone yet; I installed the Facebook and Twitter apps, installed an app for one of my favorite podcasts, and put Instagram on the phone despite the fact that I do not yet have an Instagram account. I called my mother as well as my grandmother, since I can now actually talk to them without having to worry about dropping a call or running out of minutes, and gave them my new number. I migrated my number book from my old phone into the new one manually, one contact at a time, weeding out the numbers of people I've not called in years and/or no longer need. I texted a few close friends to let them know I have the new phone and a new number.

I also got my first wrong number phone call not half an hour after I got the phone. They were asking for someone named Charlene.

"That's a bad sign," Daisy said. Daisy herself has had the same number for years, and she still gets calls for some woman who apparently had her number before her and didn't bother to change it for certain things (like prescription refills and the like).

I haven't gotten any more wrong number calls yet, but it's not like anyone really ever calls me to talk to me, so it doesn't really matter. What's important is that I now have a reliable phone that actually gets signal around the city, and can finally let the other old one die -- not that it works here anyhow.

So that's done, at least. That was a major thing I needed to get taken care of since, well, basically since I moved up here. It's a new expense, yes, but it's one we just have to bite the bullet on and take -- it's not like I could go forever without having a phone, because that's just not feasible in today's world. I justify it to myself by saying that I've finally leapt into the 21st century by getting a GPS that updates itself, by getting a way of actually talking to people that I don't have to pay for per minute or per message, by having a device that fits in my pocket that lets me access the entirety of the internet anywhere, anytime.

It's not like I needed any of those things to survive, mind you, and I'm sure to many of you, this is nothing new -- many of my friends have had iPhones (or equivalent smartphones) since their inception almost ten years ago now. But to me, it's all new. I am so inexperienced with it that I have no clue where to start. I'm like a child given a new toy with all sorts of different ways to play with it. When I was a child, most of my toys were pretty basic. The newest game system was a NES. The most complicated toys were Transformers. Now, with children growing up in the world of fully electronic toys that I only wish I would've had as a kid, and playing Xboxes and Playstations that have games that look real, the iPhone is the last thing that I really have left in this world that I can actually marvel at as an adult -- as I've never experienced anything like that before. If I were to leap back in time to 20 years ago, 1994, and tell my younger self that in 2014 I would have a phone half the size of my hand that accessed the entirety of human knowledge and recreation and allowed me to take it anywhere and talk to anyone I wanted as long as I wanted in various ways? I'm not sure I would've believed my future self. So yeah, I'm stoked that I have a new piece of technology, and no, I wouldn't have changed waiting this long to get it for anything. Will I use it as much as the average smartphone users use their phones? Probably not, but the fact that I can is what's exciting about it.

El Bandito

I've been doing a lot of things, both mentally and physically, to prepare myself for my new job, which starts a week from tomorrow. Some of these things are small and needed to be done anyway (such as vacuuming the house), and others are larger and/or more far-reaching.

For example, tonight I shaved off my beard again. Well, most of it. I left my mustache and a rounded/flared-at-the-bottom strip on my chin. I think it makes me look either like a criminal from a spaghetti western, or Guy Fawkes. I'm not sure which. Daisy, who I was worried would hate it, actually loves it and says it makes me look sexy and/or sophisticated. I'll take that.

As you folks probably know, I shave off the beard several times per year -- usually about three or four times. Even when I do, it is very rare that I leave no facial hair whatsoever; the only time in the past, oh, two years or more that I've done that was after the wedding earlier this summer, and that was only because I wanted to be cooler over the summer months. I was surprised that the beard grew back much more quickly, and much more fully, than it normally does. Maybe, for some reason, getting married allowed me to grow a full, thick manly beard more quickly. Who knows, but it grew in fast.

Meanwhile, it's taking a lot longer than usual for my hair to get longer after I had it cut two months ago, so I suppose there's give and take.

Anyway, I shaved it because I want to look at least somewhat respectable (and not like a wild bushman) when I start my job next week. I get my ID photo taken on day one, almost immediately after arriving and going through processing. The ID is one of those magnetic strip cards that you need in order to get into the building and the like, so it's something you have to keep on your person at all times. Granted, I've not yet worked there, but I don't know if it has to be visible at all times for people or not; Daisy keeps hers in her cell phone case now (because she's now management, so it's not like she has to prove to people who she is and that she's in the right place anymore), but I remember her needing to wear her ID on a lanyard for a long time -- if only because she kept misplacing the lanyard. Oh, and I bought her the lanyard.

Eh. I don't know. My point is that I'd rather not look like a crazy bushman in my ID photo even though yes, I will be growing out the beard and my hair again as the fall and winter months arrive and I need to keep my head and face warm. My Nebraska driver's license photo doesn't look like me either; it was taken two days after my haircut and when I had a clean-shaven face. I look like a penis. Or, barring that, a mental patient. And one who is either drunk or stoned as well -- the DMV takes terribly unflattering pictures. I thought it was just me, but no, Daisy's new license picture (when she changed her name after the wedding) is just as bad as mine is.

As an aside, I've only had one ID picture taken of me that I actually liked, ever -- and it wasn't a license, but my Missouri non-driver ID before I got my license. It was a great picture of me. My Kansas license photo wasn't bad, but it also wasn't good -- it was taken in the middle of summer on a 100+ degree day after I'd spent almost an hour sweating in the DMV waiting room, which in the part of Kansas I lived in, was literally a trailer. Yes, a trailer.

Anyway, whatever works.

I mentioned before that I need to get a new phone. Daisy and I are having trouble with that. Daisy's phone is through Sprint, which basically runs Omaha when it comes to the cellphone business -- AT&T apparently doesn't have coverage here (Daisy looked it up), and Verizon is much more expensive. T-Mobile, as you know, is what my current phone is, and it only works in about 10% of the city even though they say Omaha is in its coverage area.

There are pages upon pages of complaints like that for T-Mobile in Omaha. I'm not kidding.

So, forced with little other choice that doesn't involve me/us spending four hundred fucking dollars on a phone that may or may not work and do what I need it to do when I need it to do it, Daisy and I basically have to stick to Sprint. Oh, we've looked at other options. None of them are any more affordable or easier to do. None of them are inexpensive. None of them are justifiably, in my eyes, worth their costs or hassles. And if they have the iPhone -- which is what I'm getting if I must have a smartphone -- it's neither cheap nor a usable model (read: more than 8GB).

To be fair here, Sprint has what I want: an iPhone 5s 16GB (I'd rather have the 32GB, but it's another $200) with unlimited talk/text/data. If I'm going to get a new phone with a plan, I'm not going to be unsatisfied with it, nor will I get a low-end phone that won't have enough space or will be outdated within a few months -- I'm going whole hog, so to speak, or I'm doing nothing. Nobody else here has that for a more reasonable price/plan than Sprint has. They just don't. It's what Daisy has and it's what she uses, though she has an Android phone, which I don't want -- for one, her phone is bigger than my hand, and it won't fit in the pocket of most of my pants or shirts, and for two, well, if I'm getting a smartphone I just want an iPhone.

We've looked at plans from all sorts of different places and avenues -- all of them may be cheaper per-month, but all of them also require you to shell out the $400 or more for the phone before you can use them. I'm not doing that. Frankly, I'm disgusted with how much cell service/phones cost, and can't fathom why or how people could or would pay that much per month for a phone. Mind you, I'm coming from a lifestyle of barely ever touching my phone, and my phone being a prepaid phone that, if I'm having a particularly talky year, I only spend $100 on total, for the entire year. And make no mistake, I love my prepaid flip phone and would be perfectly happy keeping/using it until the damned thing dies...if only it got any signal whatsoever. In 2014 it's simply appalling that I can't get signal in a major midwestern city on my cell phone, no matter the carrier. It's not like it's 1996, no, it's 2014. So, unless something else comes up, we're basically set on getting me on the same plan Daisy is on at Sprint, just with an iPhone 5s instead of some Android phone.

"I want what you want, babe," Daisy said.

Daisy and I are very different people when it comes to cell phones, which I'm sure by this point you have guessed. Despite our only six-year age difference, she and I are of almost completely different generations when it comes to technology in general, really. All of her formative years throughout high school and college she always had a cell phone. I did not; I didn't have a cell phone until 2006, after I moved out here to the midwest, and that was only because I desperately needed a phone of some sort if I wanted to be able to keep in contact with anyone (this was in my three or four month "transition period" when my computer was in storage and I had no internet). I didn't even have a laptop that actually did anything until 2010, the same year I bought this desktop computer. I had two different, very old-and-slow desktop computers until then. I was still using dial-up internet until mid-2007, and didn't get a Netflix account until three months ago. Suffice it to say that I don't keep up with technological trends and don't waste my money on anything I don't need. And until now, well, I've never needed a smartphone. At all. I barely use the phone anyhow -- nobody calls me (and I like it that way), and I haven't sent ten text messages total in the past year. When I need to call someone, I use Google Talk because it's free and integrated into my Gmail account. Either that or Skype, which I haven't used since upgrading this machine so I don't even know if it's still functional. The last person I Skype called was Rae...before the wedding. Yeah. It's been a while.

Anyway. We'll see what happens. I'd rather we not spend all of our money on getting me a new phone just because I don't have one and would use a few of the features on it (GPS, iMessage, etc) but the only other options are to continue to use/own a phone that I can only rarely get signal on, or to find a prepaid phone similar to my own but on a network where there's actual signal -- and choices for that sort of thing are pretty slim.

Getting Old

I haven't written here in over two weeks, and for that I apologize. There really hasn't been much going on, to be honest with you. When nothing happens in my life, I don't write anything. It's really as simple as that. I'd rather not become repetitive in writing about doing laundry again or cleaning the cat box again or anything else like that.

Daisy's headlights were fixed quickly; both bulbs had blown out at the same time, and she had a bad fuse somewhere that they replaced as well (free of charge, I might add). Both bulbs blowing out at once isn't unheard of, but it is uncommon. After a two-hour auto shop experience, we came home and everything's been running fine ever since. Daisy takes care of her car; the week before that she had an oil change and had all of her filters replaced at another shop here in town she likes to go to. I, however, am more of the "as long as the car's running and nothing's broken, fuck it" sort of person -- at least when it comes to the Monte Carlo, anyway. As long as the Monte Carlo starts up and gets me from point A to point B and back? Fuck it. It's too much money to get any of the comparably minor issues it has worked on or fixed.

I have taken my car out several times as of late, by the way, for short shopping trips -- at least twice down to the Walmart a few miles from the house, the other about five or six miles across town. Seems to be running as per the usual. Dad reminded me that it's good to do this so that the seals don't dry up and the like, which he's right about. I still haven't put gas in the car since the drive up here back in May because I don't use it enough to warrant letting a full tank of gas just sit there in it in the parking lot. I will have to fill it, however, sometime in the near future as I'll need gas to get to and from work once my job starts.

Speaking of that job, I have a little more than a week left of relative "vacation" before it starts. While that sounds like it's a long time, of course, it really isn't -- it will be gone very quickly. There are several things I'd like to do or get done before I have to start working five days a week, but I don't know if I'll be able to. For example, I'd like to watch as much of Mad Men as I can, because who knows when I'll have the chance to watch it once I start working, and I'm only at the beginning of the third season. There are about four movies either in theaters now or movies that will be in theaters between now and the day I start my job, and seeing as we haven't gone out to see a movie since before we were married (I believe the last one we saw was Mr. Peabody and Sherman), and they're movies I really want to see, I want to do that as well. I also have to figure out how to get to and from the main offices of said new job, as the training/orientation session I have to go to on the first day is in that place and not where I'll be working. According to Daisy, that's where they do all of the processing (it's where I went for my interview, but it's not like I can remember how to get there and back now), and the training itself will take place in the building I'll end up working in. This was confirmed to me a few days ago when I got an email containing my itinerary and schedule for that first day, as well as the employee rulebook, information on pay and the dress code, and forms I need to sign, print, and bring with me that morning.

There are other things, of course. We need to reorganize and clean the house, run our new steam cleaner over the spots that need to be cleaned, go through our clothing and other mixed belongings to sort out stuff to donate to charity, etc.

Mind you, I donated a ton of stuff to charity before I moved up here from Kansas, but upon moving in and unpacking things, I've found that there's simply not room for a whole lot of the stuff I did bring with me -- especially stuff I boxed up and packed well over a year before moving out. This is partially because there's not as much storage space here in our apartment, and partially because I'm living with another human again who has her own stuff as well (obviously). There's not even half the cupboard/pantry space here as there was in my house in Kansas, for example -- so a good chunk of my glassware and dishes, which we now have no room for, have to be donated. The same goes for a lot of the stuff Daisy brought over here from her old bedroom at the parents', and for a lot of our excess clothing that we now no longer have room for.

I did reorganize and clean the spare room (where this computer is) enough to allow the cats back into it without having to worry about them getting into anything, and in doing so was able to go through the rest of the wedding presents, make note of who got us what (if it wasn't written down before) and put said presents to use or put them away for Daisy to use later. The bridal shower gifts are (still) right where they've been for months in the dining room, and I (still) don't know what's in them.

As for the rest of things going on? There hasn't been much to report. For a few days last week, Daisy was sick; she's recovered now, but she doesn't know if it was the flu or otherwise. I've remained immune to whatever sickened her, so I'm not sure either. This tends to happen a lot, honestly -- no matter how sick Daisy has gotten (a handful of times since we've been together), even when I've been around her and in close quarters with her during visits and the like before the wedding, I've never gotten sick. Either I am immune to Daisy's illnesses or she isn't a "carrier," so to speak -- meaning she'll get sick herself, but won't transmit the illness to others. It's the first time she's been sick in a year or so. I had stomach issues a few days ago, but nothing else -- save for the low-grade off-and-on sinus infection that I'm sure has been caused by allergies this summer. Nebraska is a completely new environment for me and I'm sure it'll take me the better part of a year, maybe longer, before my allergies get used to it. In the meantime I've been taking decongestants and Zyrtec, and both seem to help.

One of the detriments of moving to Nebraska, however, is that I'm out of contact with a lot of people. More so than before, even. Now, mind you, even when I lived in Kansas I wasn't an especially social person -- during the summers (unless I was teaching) I became a super-hermit because I had no money, which meant I couldn't afford to go anywhere or do anything. During the semesters I was less of a hermit, yes, as I was teaching and/or taking classes, which required me to be on campus a lot and be social with a lot of friends and colleagues...but I've noticed that since I've gotten married it's almost like a switch has been flipped, and many close friends are no longer in contact with me at all. Part of that, I'm sure, can be chalked up to it being summer still and even more of it can be attributed to most of said friends graduating and going back to their homes to start their professional lives, but not all of it. I'd need both hands, or more, to count the number of friends I have who have almost (or completely) dropped off the radar since I got married and moved up here in May. I consider this unusual just because of the timing of it all -- some of them I was in contact with up to the wedding itself...and then they just disappeared. More disturbing is the fact that several of them RSVPed to the wedding and said they wouldn't miss it for the world, and then never showed up and never told me/us or talked to me/us at all afterwards. That is strange to me.

Look, I realize that people have their own lives and problems, of course, and sometimes people just go antisocial or under-the-radar for a long time. I do it myself on occasion, as you probably know. And, to their merit, I do have some friends who live far away now who made sure to send us a card or a gift for the wedding even though we're not in contact much anymore, and I appreciate them more than words can say. But this isn't about that, it's about my own isolation more than anything else.

As I've written here before, I am very isolated in Nebraska -- possibly more so than anywhere else I've lived. Yes, I have Daisy and her family, and a small handful of her friends who I've gotten to know over the course of the past two years or so, but the common running theme there is that they're her friends. Not mine. They know me through her, and many of them are very nice, but it's not like I could call any of them up and say "Hey, this is a cool city, let's go out and do something" one night while Daisy was at work without it being extremely awkward and/or a major social faux pas on my account. I don't have my own friends here. The closest thing I have to a friend of my own is Rae's boyfriend, who I've barely talked to and have only met twice. It would be extremely awkward for me to ask him to go do something. He'd probably wonder if I was hitting on him.

Truth be told, I know next to no one in this town. Obviously that will change eventually, but right now I feel more like a hermit than I have in years. Daisy goes out four days a week (because, ahem, she works) and I'm lucky if I leave the house once -- usually for a visit to the parents' and/or for shopping. I'd go out more if I knew my way around the town or had the motivation to do it solo, but I just don't. And what would I do anyway? I don't even like to go shopping without Daisy by my side unless I absolutely have to and it can't wait. I'm also a really boring, nerdy person -- going out to do something, especially alone, just seems like a colossal (and usually expensive) waste of time.

Daisy has told me that she wants us to go out and celebrate my getting the job before I start working, including a dinner at a place of my choice and a movie. The movie part we already covered -- we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy on Monday night. I'm not even sure I really want us to spend the money going out to dinner somewhere -- we have enough food in the house to eat, and she's continually exhausted now with her work schedule, which sometimes requires her to work several hours of overtime every morning, depending on how busy it is. She can do that, of course, and is basically required to do that when necessary, since she's now no longer an hourly employee after her official promotion. During my training, at least, I'll be working 8-5. My schedule changes after that. At least that's what I've been told, anyhow. Instead of going out I'd much rather just spend some quiet downtime with her here at home while we can still get it. Once I start my training, for those two weeks I will see her for approximately an hour per day and only one weekend day, Sunday.

In this next week, though, there are still errands that need to be run in the meantime; I have to get a new phone, for one, which is something I've been putting off ever since moving up here and finding that my T-Mobile phone has no service in 90% of the city. Not just "low bars," no. Zero service whatsoever. Like it's in a complete and total dead zone. She has Sprint, and I'll probably get a phone on her plan. I don't really even care what it is (though I'd like an iPhone), and I really don't care if I have to get a new number or not, because it's not like anyone calls me anyhow. I'd almost rather get a new number, actually.

I sprained or pulled my arm muscles somehow during the day today; how, of course, I have no idea. It feels similar to how I tore my muscle when I was moving a few months ago, but I haven't done anything particularly strenuous. It didn't really start bothering me until I vacuumed the house tonight -- back and forth motion pushing/pulling the vacuum doesn't really feel that great when you have, apparently, a pulled muscle. It's in the upper arm, front of the upper arm, and the front of my shoulder. So, basically, almost exactly the same as the other arm injury, just on the other arm.

I'm getting too old for normal movement, apparently. I've pulled muscles in my sleep before, as I'm sure many of you have, but I was fine when I got up this morning, so I have no clue why I suddenly have this muscle-pulled, aching arm. Daisy became worried about me when I told her about it, telling me "please don't die from a heart attack."

"Um...that would be pain in the left arm, neck, and jaw," I told her. "This is my right arm, and it's just a pulled muscle, babe."

Daisy is fiercely protective and always incredibly concerned for me when I mention that I don't feel well or that I'm in pain. While it is appreciated and very sweet of her, I mean, I have lived almost 32 years on this planet without dying yet from minor pains.

So...yeah. That's where things are right now. Life continues on as normal; I spend my days either sleeping or doing (quiet) household chores while Daisy sleeps, and spend my nights (when she's at work, at least) much the same way. I'm just trying to somewhat enjoy my last days of relative freedom before I am once more back to the grind of a daily job -- even if it's a daily job that's much different than anything I've done before. The fact that it's going to pay me a hell of a lot more than I've ever made before also helps lessen the dread of starting there -- or working again in general, really. You know me. I'm a lazy sloth of a person by nature, but when there's a job to do, I do it.

New Horizons, Part II

I found it sort of poetic that, now that I have a job, I got up this morning and found an email waiting for me from the university -- rejecting me for the position I'd interviewed and had done the presentation for.

"It was meant to be," Daisy said.

It's fine, really. As good of an interview/presentation as I gave, it's not like I expected to be offered the university position. I'm sure, eventually, that if I want to get back into academia, I'll have the chance. For now, however? I have to focus on the hand I've been dealt, and that means accepting and working the job that I was offered, and for the moment I am perfectly happy with doing that.

I also think it's somewhat amusing that I expected this, and bought those new shoes for said job a few days before I actually got it.

"When it comes to the training," I asked Daisy tonight on her lunch hour, "am I allowed to wear what I want, or is it all the same sort of 'business casual' that I'd have to wear every day when I'm there normally?"

"It's the business casual," she said, looking at me as if I was nuts. "They'll send you home from training if you walk in there wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And if you get sent home during training, you generally get fired."

I looked down at myself. I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Looks like I'm going to have to put away a lot of that stuff soon.

"Well, I'm glad I took out all of my collared shirts and polos now," I said. "I figured I'd wear the same sorts of stuff I wore to my interviews, like the purple shirt I wore last week and all of the nice pants Dad gave me -- stuff like that."

"Yeah," she said. "That's fine. Shirts with collars, slacks, dressier shoes. No ties necessary; nobody there wears ties."

So, basically the same outfits I wore when I was on the main campus as a professor and wanted to look somewhat impressive. Okay.

This is good, as I don't know where any of my ties are. They're boxed away with the rest of my clothing that I won't need until winter; I only unpacked the stuff that I knew I'd wear over the summer...which was basically my t-shirts and button-up shirts, shorts, and my sandals. Oh, and underwear, of course.

I know roughly what my work schedule will be once I start the job, barring any unforeseen changes, and it seems reasonable and decent enough. It's actually (honestly) the best schedule I could ask for, and I hope it remains that once I actually start. I'm not going to mention it here for fear that I may jinx things. Because yeah, even though I am an educated man in his thirties, I still get somewhat superstitious about things like that.

Daisy and I long ago had a long discussion about what would happen once I got a job, especially a job that was stable and full-time work, and it boiled down to what we could and would do with our finances. I told her that first and foremost, our priority was paying the monthly household bills (obviously) which will be made much, much easier with two incomes. The second priority was to pay down our credit cards -- all of them -- as much as we could. We've been doing this now, yes, but we're still using said cards more than we're paying them off, and once I start bringing in another paycheck every payday, we won't have to worry about that as much.

The third priority we discussed was to finally get the table and chairs we need (as we will now be able to afford them) and get a larger television for the living room. My TV was fine for the small living room I had in Newton; 22 inches was perfectly fine for that place. Here? With a living room probably three times the size of that one? Yeeeeeah, not so much. We need something bigger and easier to see/hear from across the room.

The last priority is to get me a newer car. That's a big priority, yes, and it's the most expensive of all (obviously). We've discussed it, and I've even had discussions with Dad about vehicles, as Daisy's parents recently got a new, really nice SUV. However, the car has to be the last priority as it's currently infinitely more important that we pay down our credit cards first and can sock away money into our savings account once or twice a month. Well, unless the Monte Carlo dies sometime soon, anyway.

However, a lot of this has to be done, well, rather quickly. Why? Because once November rolls around, my year of student loan forbearance will be up. And with this job, I'm pretty sure I'll make more than it takes to qualify for it again. That means said forbearance will end, and I'll immediately have to start paying off monthly student loan bills. Which, obviously, I don't want to have to do right after I've started a job, but it's relatively unavoidable. So we have to do a lot of this stuff within the next few months while we can still afford to do it. We'll be a two-income household, yes, but paying student loans will take more than 1/3 of my monthly pay, I'm guessing. And if I recall correctly, forbearance goes by the yearly salary, not monthly. I cannot remember for certain, though. I'm sure I'll find out in November when it comes looming again. Daisy isn't immune to this either; while she has less to pay back in loans than I do, she's also on forbearance right now, as she applied for it a month or two after I did so that we could save money for the wedding and the move. Hers will have to be re-upped or ended eventually as well.

On the plus side? For the moment, for a while, we'll be one of those DINK families. You know, dual income, no kids. And that's exciting.

I'll find out more about the job and the schedule stuff in the next few days/weeks, I would imagine. I'm guessing they'll send out an itinerary for their new hires that will detail where they're supposed to be and when. Then again, they may just do that when one arrives for training, so who knows.

In other news, I did get to take out the Monte Carlo last night and drive it around as I'd needed to do, but the reason I did/had to wasn't a good one.

Daisy's car headlights no longer work.

No, we don't know why.

I will say this: one of them works -- the passenger side lower parking light. None of the other lights come on at all. To drive at night, she has to drive around with her high beams on (which do work) if she wants to see at all, and apparently the switch for that isn't working correctly either, as she has to hold it to keep them on instead of just hitting the switch and having them stay on. We found this out last night when she was off work and wanted to go out to pick up a few things from Walmart. We got halfway down the street before I asked, "Hon, are your lights on?"

Well, they were turned on, but they weren't working. Turn signals and hazard lights work fine, but the actual normal headlights don't. So we turned around and came home, and we took my car out. The Monte Carlo has a lot of problems and it's old, yes, but at least its damned headlights work. All of them.

When we got home she researched the problem and found out that it's fairly common, apparently -- and it could be a fuse (or several fuses) or a larger problem, such as the lights' control board (or something like that). She set up an appointment for in the morning with an auto shop that her parents and sister have used before, and we're taking it in. They also honor her extended warranty as well, which is one of the reasons she chose that place.

We don't know how much it will be to fix it. It could be a cheap fix or it could be hundreds of dollars...dollars that we don't exactly have right now. Well, we do, but we can't afford to blow all of them on the car's headlights, of all things. This is a new problem, as well; the lights were fine two or three nights ago. It's only now that they're not working correctly. Here's hoping it's something simple and cheap like fuses. Seriously.

"Well, they'll be able to tell you what it is within five seconds once they plug the computer into it," I said. "Then we'll know."

I'm going with her to the auto shop this morning to take it in; the techs there told her they'd try to fix it while we were there, but it's possible that they may need to keep it for the day. If that's the case they'll give us a ride home and I'll take her back there later to pick it up (or, conversely, take her to work tonight and pick her up in the morning if it's not done by the time her shift starts this evening). Obviously this isn't ideal for anyone involved, so we're hoping it's something simple they can fix while we're there this morning. Going by my own gut, if even one of the lights is on normally (and yes, one is), my instincts tell me it's a fuse issue. But that's just me; I could be wrong. Daisy's car is a lot newer than mine is, which is why having any problems with it whatsoever is somewhat disconcerting. It's not like either of us abuse her car -- we don't even speed in it, and she gets the oil and filters changed regularly. Hell, we just did that last week. But sometimes these things happen, I suppose, and they have to be dealt with.

"I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things," I told her last night, "but I know that it sucks and I know I'd be stressed out if it happened to my car. I just want you to know I understand that frustration, love."

Daisy isn't the kind of person to get stressed out about many things, let alone something so small and otherwise insignificant. She and I are very different people in that regard, as even the small things stress me out and make me twitch -- especially things that involve money and/or vehicles.

So, I suppose, we'll see what happens this morning. She also accidentally left her purse here over her lunch hour -- which has her license, wallet, and everything else in it -- so here's hoping she doesn't get pulled over on her way home this morning from work...

New Horizons, Part I

Warning: nerdspeak ahead for most of this post, but the subject does change and I give out important news further down, so stick with me.

Last night, after at least two years of not doing it, I finally upgraded my computer from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS. In doing so, the goddamned thing crashed and the upgrade failed.

Look, I have a good computer, and I do love my Linux, but there's a lot of shit Ubuntu has done over the last several years that I really don't like, and every time I update/upgrade my OS I have to dick around with it for a good two or three hours afterwards to get all of my settings back to where they were. If I can, anyway. An upgrade from an old OS to a newer version generally disables about half of the customizations I've made over the years, as well as a good chunk of the special programs I've installed and modified (such as for gaming and for storage). This also includes the user interface, which I have to change/disable every single time I do anything. Ubuntu's default GUI is a terrible, tablet-like interface called Unity, which is difficult to navigate through, doesn't have a taskbar, and everything is done in panels. Ugh. I much prefer the GNOME 2 interface, which is the classic Linux desktop experience and the GUI that I used on every version of Linux I've ever had on my machines:

To use that classic desktop, you have to go in and specially/manually add it after every system upgrade (if it's available for your specific system, of course, which it usually is). Otherwise you're stuck using Unity. The screenshot above is a good representation of what it looks like, though that photo is a much older version of what I'm currently running.

Anyway.

I was able to download and initialize the upgrade fine, and it installed correctly, but then at the end it told me "the upgrade has been performed successfully, but there were errors." Okay, what the fuck does that mean?

At the end of any system upgrade, of course, you're prompted to restart to finish the upgrade. At least on Linux, anyhow; I don't know how it works on Mac or Windows machines, since I haven't used either one in almost ten years now. So I restarted. It brought me, as always, to the login screen. I typed in my password as always, and hit enter. Nothing happened.

Well, something happened, and that something was that the screen would go to the blank 12.04 splash screen (remember, I had just upgraded to 14.04, so that 12.04 splash screen should've been gone) ...and then it would just sit there. I could move the mouse around, but there was nothing to click on. It just sat there. I restarted several times, tried to login as a guest, tried to login under a different GUI, and nothing. Sometimes when I changed things, it would just lock up and freeze, others it would basically reset and take me back to the login screen, as if it didn't want me to do anything at all.

Okay, so whatever those errors were, they'd locked me out of my own computer.

I got out my laptop and booted it up, convinced that I'd have to download and burn a fresh image of the OS itself to install it manually, which would wipe my desktop's entire HD. This I did not want to do, obviously, as even though I'd backed up all of my data, all of my custom settings would be wiped and I'd have to go back out and get every program all over again, set them up, and reconfigure them. This was not something I wanted to do, as that takes hours and hours of tedious work.

At about this time, Daisy came home from a night out with her best friend, right at the time where I was at my most stressed and frazzled about the damn computer not wanting to just work. I very calmly and lovingly told her that I'd be out in a while, and that I needed some time/concentration to fix the damned thing, and she understood, gave me a kiss, and let me work in the dark of our computer room like some sort of mad scientist.

I downloaded the installation image and made a bootable flash drive with it, and burned an extra copy onto a blank DVD as backup -- which was a task in itself because it took me nearly an hour to find my spindle of blank DVDs after the move.

When I booted it (with the flash drive first), it gave me the option to reinstall my installation, which basically translates to repairing all of the broken bits and letting it completely redo itself. Which is what I did. An hour later I had a perfectly functioning desktop computer again, with the upgrade leaving most of my configurations and the like alone. This is a very good thing. I installed the GNOME 2 interface again, and my computer is back to normal -- faster, prettier, and completely up-to-date. There were, of course, some programs I had to re-add or re-install (Skype, Google Chrome, Dropbox, etc), but eh, it wasn't bad.

So, that's done. That was part one of my plans for "stuff I need to do around the house but haven't gotten to yet." And then Daisy and I went to bed.

Daisy, as an aside, is on a strange schedule right now. Yesterday morning, really early, she went to help Mama renew her visa. As I mentioned here in the past, Daisy's mother is a Canadian citizen, but a permanent resident here in the states (as she's been living here for longer than I've been alive, and is married to an American). Because of that, Daisy and both of her sisters have full dual citizenship in both countries (and two of their combined six children do as well). However, since Mama isn't an American citizen, she periodically has to go to immigration and renew everything...despite the fact that yes, she has been living here forever and she is married to an American. It's a very stressful -- and according to Mama, somewhat degrading/dehumanizing -- experience, so Daisy accompanied her. It went well, apparently.

However, and here's the part I alluded to at the beginning of the post, when I got up this afternoon I had a message waiting for me from Daisy that said I had missed a call on my cell phone. This in itself is slightly amusing, because most of the time at our place, the phone gets zero reception whatsoever. It'll show me the little receiver symbol with a line through it, will say "searching" because it can't find a network that's even somewhat compatible with my phone, and it'll search and search until it drains the battery and it dies. So really, I was surprised it received a call at all.

I looked at the number and it was a local number, and I knew from the prefix that it was from Daisy's company. Aha. Finally.

I checked my email and found that one of the HR people had sent me a message asking if I was still interested in the position I'd applied/interviewed for, and if so to give her a call. Note that this was a completely different HR person than the one I'd been calling/emailing (I later found out that this one was an intern), so I logged into Google Talk and called back -- which led to me being officially offered the position and given a start date for training: August 18.

I have a job. Well, technically, anyway.

The training period lasts two weeks, Monday through Friday each week, usually from 8AM-5PM. It'll start on the 18th and then my real start date, provided I start the full position immediately after the training ends, will be on Tuesday, September 2. The position pays quite well -- it's the same job Daisy had before she formally got her promotion (so I know the salary) and it's full time.

I gave the lady on the phone my birthdate and SSN for background check info (which, of course, will turn up completely clean) and she gave me the location I need to be at on the morning of the 18th -- it's the building in which I originally interviewed. Daisy later told me that's where they do all the processing of forms (like payroll and tax forms) and then they give you another address to go to for the actual training most of the time. I would imagine that I'll more than likely train in Daisy's building, as that's where I'll be working, but I'm not sure -- so don't hold me to that. The company has numerous locations all around the city, and at least six or seven different buildings at those locations. I'm fine either way, obviously; you give me a job and I'll go do what you tell me to do wherever you tell me to do it.

Now, some of you may be thinking something along the lines of why did you accept it immediately instead of waiting to hear about the university position? Well, my answer to that is fairly simple: I knew I had a much better shot at this than at the university gig, this is full-time and stable with a yearly salary that I already know, and aside from knowing several of the people I'll eventually work with, I also know that it's very close to my home and that it's a job that I'll be able to do within an office and with no travel involved. Why wait for a job like the one at the university that may be fun, but isn't stable and involves a lot of things that I'm not necessarily the right person for?

I hung up the phone and breathed a big sigh of relief. The long, desperate hunt for a job was finally over, and not only was it over, but I still had almost a month of vacation-like time where I could decompress, relax, and finally enjoy my downtime without being constantly stressed about money and survival issues. A little less than a month before I start is fine; we'll survive and pay all of the bills and rent with what we have now with no issue.

More details will become available as I get them, of course; I got another email a while later from the HR lady asking one last quick question of who'd referred me -- I told her, of course, that was my wife. When an employee referral comes into question, the employee who did the referring gets a bonus for the reference.

"Yeah," Daisy said, "...after you have worked there for six months."

"I have to work there for six months before you get your bonus?"

"Yep."

"Well, shit."

I don't think that will be a problem, however. We'll need the money. It's also not until after that six-month point before I'll be able to become eligible for a promotion or position change within the company, so even if I don't like the job I'm doing, I'm still locked into it for at least that long.

Replies and Expectations, Part IV

After a dinner of sandwiches with the parents, Daisy and I went to one of the large Walmarts here in town to get necessities for the next week or two (read: things we can't go without for more than a week or two, max), and I found and purchased a new pair of dress shoes on clearance for $25.

Why did I purchase a new pair of dress shoes on clearance for $25? Well, the conversation went something like this:

Me: [producing two pairs of shoes, one laced and one slip-on] Which one of these would work for [company job]?

Her: Either one, really.

Me: Okay, well, which one do you like more? They're both the same size and same price.

Her: Well, one's brown and one's black. The black is more versatile, but it doesn't have laces.

Me: I don't necessarily care about versatility as I never match my clothing anyway. Which one?

Her: I don't know, babe, pick one.

Me: ...

Her: Would you like shoes without laces? Have you tried them on?

Me: I'm wearing flip-flops. I'm not sticking my bare feet into shoes to try them on.

Her: They have those hose sock things, don't they?

Me: ...eww.

As an aside, the sock things wouldn't matter, since I only wear thick boot socks with any actual shoes I wear. I still wouldn't get an accurate fit.

Me: I'm not trying them on, love; I know my shoe size.

Her: [getting frustrated] Then just get whichever ones you want, but the laced ones look better. What about these ones? [picks up shoes that aren't leather, look more cheaply made, and cost over $10 more] These ones look like a sneaker and a dress shoe combined, and they're Dr. Scholls.

Me: [more frustrated than she is] I don't get it. 95% of the job is all done on the phone and the computer. Why the fuck would [company] care about what is on my feet?

As a second aside, Daisy's company is rather strict about the dress code, which is basically business casual. That includes policies like no jeans, no shorts, no shirts without collars, and semi-formal footwear -- no sneakers or sandals, not even dress sandals for the ladies. The only dress shoes I have are the ones I was married in, which are incredibly uncomfortable to wear for more than a few hours at a time, and a pair of brown dress shoes Daisy's father gave me -- which have the same problem. If I eventually end up working for said company, I need a pair of shoes which won't destroy my feet if I have to wear them forty hours per week. 

Me: [continued frustration] I really, really just wish I could wear my sneakers, which are infinitely more comfortable than any of these damned things.

Her: Again, honey, if you're going to get some, pick whichever shoes you want. But if you get them without trying them on and hate them, that's on you. Just tell me you'll return them if that happens.

Me: Of course. [looks at shoes in box] I'm going to go see if I can find the laced ones in my size [13; I have big feet] in black.

And I did search, and I did find them. And those are the ones I purchased. And they fit (and feel) really good on my feet. But this is an example of most conversations we have while shopping -- a small window into married life and shopping with one's spouse, so to speak.

Daisy has stated on numerous occasions that she hates shopping with me. In contrast, as I don't get out much, it's one of my favorite things to do with her.

It is also very rare that I purchase any sort of clothing or shoes for myself; I haven't bought a new pair of shoes, aside from a new pair of sandals here and there to replace ones which have worn out and/or broken, in several years. I have at least two or three pairs of sneakers that I bought on clearance (including a pair of Chuck Taylors) that have sat in bags/boxes packed away in closets, never worn. I can't wear sneakers at Daisy's company, however, and I more than likely won't be able to wear them if I end up working at the university. In the summer, and really anytime past high temperatures above 60 degrees, I will wear nothing but sandals or flip-flops no matter where I go or what I do until it is too cold to wear them anymore. The only exception to that thus far has been the wedding and both interviews I've gone to this summer. I buy clothing even more rarely, as I donated a ton of it to charity upon my move up here, will be donating even more soon as the summer becomes fall and I take that opportunity to lighten my wardrobe as much as possible, and received probably thirty pairs of pants and shorts from Daisy's father when he lost weight and his former ones were too large for him. Suffice it to say that it will be several years before I have to buy pants again. Any pants. So, ahem, buying a new pair of shoes, especially dressy shoes, is an indulgence as well as a treat.

Anyway. 

I still haven't heard anything from either place, of course, in regards to employment. I have been emailed several times, however, to be rejected for other positions I've applied for at other places, which does nothing more than fuel my general misanthropy in life. In fact, I'm pretty sure "general misanthropy" is my true calling in life. But I can't get paid for that.

We don't really have any plans for the remainder of Daisy's days off this week; there are family issues and events to attend to, and I'm still waiting on calls or emails from potential employers. In the meantime, I plan to (finally) upgrade my computer to the newest version of Ubuntu, as I now have a workaround fix for the desktop/interface issues that kept me from upgrading before, and before that (obviously) I'm going to hook up my portable hard drive and back up all of my files in case the damn thing crashes while it's upgrading. It'll take a while, so in the meantime I will have other stuff to do in and around the house that doesn't involve the computer -- such as cleaning and cooking and taking care of the finances and bills which come in. I've been doing well with that thus far, keeping track of all of our money and paying bills as they come in either electronically or with checks from both our joint account as well as my own. Yet again, however, for the fifth or sixth time in a row I have forgotten to purchase stamps while I've been out, which frustrates me to no end -- especially since I do need them so badly. 95% of our bills are indeed now paid online anyway, however, and the ones that aren't have already been paid for the month, so we've got a while before we have to deal with those again.

As for the Thank-You notes, by the middle of last week I had sent out all of the ones I have to all of the recipients I had on my list who I did not otherwise thank personally. The rest of them are on Daisy to sort out, write out, and mail whenever she gets the chance to do so, as they're all people she knows or to her relatives.

There are other tasks to be done, of course; I need to get my car out and drive it around some at some point, as it's been sitting in the parking lot here for well over a month and I haven't touched it. However, it's going to be really hot this week (projected highs are near 100 today, with an expected heat index of around 110-115, and the forecast for the rest of the week isn't much better), and as my car is black with black leather interior, driving it during the daytime if I can possibly avoid it is completely out of the question if I don't want to burn alive. I'm sure I'll have some reason to take it out/down the street to Walmart or someplace within the next few days, given I can do it at night and have the energy to do it.

And also so I don't lose my parking spot, which would drive me nuts.

As you know, I'm a very particular person. I park in a particular spot so that I can always see my car.

Ahem. Anyway.

I've been up all night. I am not tired in the least. While Daisy sleeps so that she can do the aforementioned family stuff later today, I cannot. That's not to say that I haven't been sleeping well -- honestly, I have slept fine the past few nights once I have been able to go to sleep...it's just been weird hours. I do generally get a good eight or so hours of sleep, however. So I have that going for me, at least.

Replies and Expectations, Part III

continued from the last post...

All I wanted to do on Thursday morning, well after I'd gotten dressed and had prepped myself for the interview, was sleep. Maybe you folks know this and have dealt with it before, but when you can't sleep for hours on end, and then finally fall asleep only to be jolted out of it an hour or two later, you can't function. All you want to do is go back to sleep. If you can't or are otherwise not allowed to go back to sleep? Well, tough shit, you have to face the day feeling like death for the first hour or three that you're once more awake, until (if you're me, anyway) you can get enough caffeine and nicotine into your bloodstream to be mobile and a semi-productive member of society.

Daisy, the sweetheart of a wife that she is, offered to drive me to the interview (as she went to the university and therefore knew where it was and where the buildings were that I needed to be in), even after working a full overnight shift. She did this knowing full well that the interview would take two hours -- I was told it would -- and that for those two hours she'd be left to her own devices to sleep in the car, wander the campus, etc. She did this without question or complaint, and when I offered to go by myself she waved me off, as she said she knew that driving in rush hour traffic and trying to find the place to go, on a campus on which I'd never before set foot, would stress the hell out of me.

She's right, of course, but I could've managed.

Anyway.

The interview was fine. Overall, I mean.

It did indeed last two hours (a little over two hours, actually), and the ladies who interviewed me were really nice, open and easy to talk to, and very understanding about my need to reschedule (I did not, of course, tell them the real reason why I rescheduled). The meat-and-potatoes of it is that the position is full-time while it lasts, and its duration is six months from the day it starts, whenever that may be. I'd be replacing two women who are going on maternity leave at the same time -- but they're only hiring one person. Those two women's duties would be split half-and-half between me and the rest of the office staff, and time/work would be balanced out. The position also entails a lot of erratic hours and locales, including such things as going to career day festivals on Saturdays and Sundays, some of which could be up to sixty miles away or more.

This, of course, didn't fill me with a lot of want for the position. I mean, driving to a high school or community college here in town and running a booth for a few hours on a weekday is one thing. Driving sixty or more miles away to do the same thing on a Saturday or Sunday is quite another...especially in the winter.

But, a 50/50 shot at those sorts of things? Eh, those aren't bad odds. I also made sure to play up the fact that my car is falling apart and has 233,000 miles on it, because that may have helped in any other situation...until I was told that they also use rental cars for the longer trips. Shit.

Okay, well, that's not too bad. Still.

The interview consisted of three parts -- the first was a sit-down conference room session with the ladies who'd interviewed me on the phone. They asked several questions which were similar to the ones I'd been asked on the phone, and then several new ones. Again, I could tell they were impressed by my answers, and the answers to some of those questions seemed to mildly shock them by how on-the-ball and, ahem, intelligent I was in casual conversation. At least that's the impression I got, anyhow.

From that point I was very quickly ushered into a larger conference room with what had to be an eighty-inch television screen hooked up to a computer. It was on this screen that I would be giving my presentation. I'd told them before that all I needed was a computer with which to login to my email, as I'd emailed it to myself. Well, yes, this room did have that...hooked up to the massive screen, which in turn was displayed to a room full of probably twenty-ish people, none of which had interviewed me before (aside from the aforementioned three ladies, I mean).

What. The shit.

I was told I was going to give the presentation to the interviewers and a chancellor, not an audience -- and definitely not an audience of which I had no clue who they were -- actual college students, vice-presidents, chancellors, other staff? Who knows. I wasn't told. I do know that the children of at least two of the admissions staff members were there...children who were college-aged, of course. But I wasn't expecting a full room of people. At all. Hoo boy.

I put on my game face, brought up the presentation, and went through it. I did the best I could, of course, and I could tell that it was impressing most of them -- which sort of surprised me, after all, since I knew little about the university, its programs, or really anything else, and had made it pretty vague in several places because of that.

When it was over, there was the ten-minute question-and-answer session...during which I answered what questions I could under what was, I'm certain now, extreme duress (but didn't appear that way on the surface), everyone seemed satisfied, and we dismissed.

Again, people seemed impressed -- I want to stress that. I wasn't getting weird looks or confused stares or anything of that sort, but nods of understanding and smiles, and when I asked the interviewing ladies afterwards if that was the sort of presentation they were looking for, they told me that it was and that I hit all the bases they were looking for. So that's good, at least.

The final part of the interview was afterwards -- a walk across campus to have a one-on-one interview with the university's vice chancellor. During the walk, which was led by the lady clearly in charge of the entire interview process and not the one who I'd been emailing/talking to on the phone prior, we had a rather loose, interesting conversation about the job itself and about the prospects of it.

"We can't really get people to interview for these temp positions," she said, "because people find out it's a temp position and they're no longer interested. I mean, it's a good job, but most people want something permanent, you know?"

"Oh, I understand that," I said. "But, does being hired even in a temp position like this make them eligible for internal-only university job postings?"

"Absolutely," she said.

"So how many of the folks you've hired on as temps -- playing the odds here, of course -- have turned their position into a full hire after the temp time period ends? Or, barring that, how many have been 'installed' into other open positions upon the end of their temp services?"

"Quite a few of them," she replied. "That's not necessarily the case with the position you're interviewing for, since it's the maternity leave thing, but we've had temps who in the past have gone on to work in numerous departments around the university as soon as they've finished. One of them works in academic advising now, another went somewhere else..." she trailed off.

"So, basically, it's a 'once you're in, you're in' scenario?"

"A lot of the time, yes," she said.

This was a big question I'd had since the beginning, as you know -- since it seemed like an awful lot of work, time spent, and calories burnt to have what amounted to three or four different, separate interviews for a temporary job. I understand that part of the job is being the "face of the university" at events and the like, but come on, it's not that complicated. The job at its core is little more than a traveling salesman. Go places, sell the university, leave.

After the walk across campus, I was interviewed for about half an hour by the vice chancellor -- who was very nice and kind, of course, but the kind of woman you could tell was deathly serious and all-business about her job and about the people she was interviewing. And, of course, I got the always-asked so why aren't you still teaching somewhere? question that everybody in every interview asks me.

I had to give my standard response of there's no teaching jobs available, and if there are, they don't hire anyone without four degrees and ten publications, and if they do, they won't pay a living wage, and as a married man I can't live on or support the wife on $12,000 a year anymore, etc etc.

She gave me a novel idea, though, and that was sending an email to the Department of English chairpersons at the universities and small colleges around the area (including this one) and making a direct inquiry on whether there were teaching positions available, adjunct or otherwise. I've done that with my former university, obviously, and one of the smaller schools up here, but I figured that all of the larger schools would have some sort of employment portal and/or online system I'd have to go through, as I tended to see adjunct instructor positions posted all the time on job boards from many different schools.

Anyway. I think it went well with the vice chancellor. She explained to me some of the deeper details of the position and informed me that there were four people interviewing for the position -- all of them were interviewing this week, and by the end of next week they'd be contacting the candidates to let them know yes or no. As I was one of four, that's a 25% chance I'll be asked to be hired. I also confirmed that a large number of temporary employees do indeed continue within the university somewhere almost immediately when their temporary contract expires.

That 25% figure, however, brought me back to a conversation I'd had with Daisy earlier that morning:

"If they offer you the job on the spot, are you going to take it?" she asked.

"No," I replied flatly. "It's not my ideal position, which you know, and it's temporary. I'm still waiting on [company] to get back to me, since that's apparently in the works as well. And that job is a full-time desk job that wouldn't require me to drive all around the tri-state area and is quite literally three minutes from home."

By the time the interview was over, I probably would have taken the job if they'd offered it to me on the spot. And therein lies the conundrum.

Look, it's not a bad job. At least not from what I learned about it during the interview process. Is it travel? Yes. Is it at times going to be inconvenient and/or difficult? Also yes. Will I have to make myself look ultra-presentable almost every day, including (probably) wearing a tie and button-down shirts? More than likely. But the pay is good while it lasts, the people I'd be working with seem extremely nice (as well as extremely competent) and I'd be in academia again. Not teaching, no, but in academia.

Driving back home, I told Daisy the entire story of the interview (or, well, the Reader's Digest version, anyway). It's a lucrative opportunity; I won't lie. But it's not a forever thing, it will end in six months, and there is the rather large possibility that when it does end, I'll be stuck right back where I was before -- where I am now, jobless and searching. I can take risks, yes, and were I still single and living on my own I would absolutely jump at the chance to work a job like this even for six months. But I'm not anymore. I have a responsibility now not only to myself, but to my wife and to our bills and other monthly expenses. I've been a damn good employee at every job I've worked, but even with that I'm not sure it justifies the risk of once more being unemployed in six months, because it's not like they can guarantee I'll get some other position within the university after that point.

On the other hand, there's the job with Daisy's company, with the wheels still in motion for it, and me waiting to hear if they're actually going to hire me and when. When I got home from the interview I called the HR guy and left a message on his machine in the office, basically repeating everything I'd said in my email to him several days prior. That's all I can do, really; if they want to hire me, they'll offer me a job there. If they don't, then they won't.

"I'm open to advice here on what to do," I told Daisy, "if both places offer me positions."

She suggested I take whichever one offers me the job first, and if I don't like it, to quit and take the other one -- a heavy implication being that she doesn't think I'd like working for her company at all. And I probably wouldn't. But it would be stable and more convenient.

I did the math; working the university position for six months would pay me more, even after taxes, than I made all of last year. Doing the math for the job with Daisy's company for a full year pays a little more, but it's a negligible amount.

I don't know, folks. I really don't know. Neither job is my ideal career, obviously, but it will provide us with money, money with which we could do the stuff we need to do around the house -- such as pay off our credit cards more easily and eventually get a table and chairs, a larger TV, and a newer car for me. I long ago resigned myself to the fact that whatever job I get now will not be an ideal one, but something I have to do in order to continue paying bills and supporting the household. So, to a large extent, any job I choose to take (if anyone offers me one anyhow) is the lesser of two evils, with the greater evil being that we can't support ourselves.

Replies and Expectations, Part II

continued from the last post...

Upon getting up on Tuesday, I knew that there was no way -- no way whatsoever -- that I would ever be ready for the presentation on Wednesday morning. Daisy and I barely get any time to ourselves anyway, even on her days off, because there's always something else to be done. On Sunday morning, she had to work really late and then we went over to the parents'. On Monday, we went to her sister's place for fourteen hours. Tuesday was her last day off for the week, and silly me, I actually wanted to spend some downtime with my wife. And, y'know, actually get some downtime.

Some of you may be saying "Brandon, you don't have a job, so all of your life right now is downtime." That's not the case at all. There's a lot of stuff I do in and around the house, and I keep near-constantly busy with it. I don't like being bored, so I always find something to do. And, of course, there's applying for new jobs for hours on end every several days as well. I do work. It's just not the type of work that involves sitting in an office or standing in front of a classroom anymore.

Anyway.

The interview/presentation at the university, as you probably know, was scheduled for Wednesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon I knew that there was no way, realistically, that was going to happen and still give me a decent shot at getting the job. As I am honorable to my last breath (see my previous post), I emailed the lady in charge of the interviews to tell her that I would be unable to make it in on Wednesday morning, and asked if I could reschedule. I knew that if I didn't reschedule, there's no way I would be able to give any sort of presentation unless said presentation was me saying "hey, I don't have any slides or charts for you, but I can stand up here and talk to you about shit."

The other reason I requested a reschedule was because I hadn't heard anything from Daisy's company on Monday, so I was doubly expecting something on Tuesday. Daisy and I had other errands to run on Tuesday (including another short trip over to her parents' to pick up some herbs from the garden) and actually wanted to spend some time together, so my plan was to buy a little time for all of that stuff and to take care of everything I could within that timeframe.

My request for a rescheduled interview was granted -- for Thursday (read: yesterday) morning instead of Wednesday. That meant I'd have to put together the presentation from scratch in the span of what at the time was about 36 hours, including normal sleeping/eating/Daisy time as well. So I began my work.

I want to step back from the situation here once more and mention that I wasn't exactly enthused with the details of the university job; as I told you before, it entails a lot of travel and basically being the face of the university to prospective incoming students. While I can do that, and more than likely do that easily, that's a job more suited to Daisy (who told me that this position is basically her dream job). As you folks know, I'm not exactly a social person, and that goes double for when I am forced to drive around to lots of places and slap that fake smile on my face. But...there's a lot I will do and a lot I will put up with for a steady, incredibly-well-paying (for the duration of the position, anyway) paycheck that will help us pay the bills and get us out of credit card debt.

The problem with putting together the presentation wasn't making the presentation itself -- that I can do easily with LibreOffice (the standard Linux office suite) -- but in knowing what the presentation needed to cover. My directions on creating the presentation had been incredibly vague; they were, in fact, one word: admissions. The word admissions could mean a lot of different things, and I wasn't sure in what capacity they wanted me to focus on the most, especially with the rather vague literature I'd been sent -- a few brochures, a campus map, and a directory of programs the university had to offer. However, the position was in the office of, and working for, undergraduate admissions -- new students choosing the university as their education destination. With that in mind, I decided to focus my presentation on playing up the highlights of the university with the intended audience being those new prospective students. If I were a freshman, what would I like to know about the school? Its programs? The city of Omaha? What about its extracurricular activities, tuition, sports, Greek life, etc? So that was what I focused on.

Mind you, I know next to fucking nothing about this university.

Yes, my wife went there and got her Bachelor's degree there. Yes, it's the university here in town, and it's the "smaller version" of the big, important university in Lincoln. Yes, I know the sports they offer and what their mascot is...but aside from that? I don't know anything about it. I've only lived in the city of Omaha for two months. I don't even know my way around the city on my own. Sure, I can tell you where three different Walmarts are, and I could tell you where to get the best pizza in town (it's still Night Flight, duh), but other than that? I know nothing about the city aside from statistics. Daisy has been living here for over ten years and still needs her GPS to get from point A to point B most of the time, especially if point B is in a neighborhood or section of town that she/we never go to often or at all.

So in making the presentation it wasn't so much that I couldn't do it quickly, but that I needed to focus on what to cover, in what order, and how I could get the information for that stuff from the brochures/booklets they gave me as well as the university's website -- which I was encouraged to use liberally. I've made many presentations before; I had to do them not only in undergrad, but I had to make complex, lengthy (hour-long, 40-slides-ish) presentations for my high-level lit classes in graduate school. This was a presentation that would last fifteen minutes, so my guess was that it would be...oh, ten slides or so. With a beginning and end slide, so really, eight slides worth of material to cover in fifteen minutes. That's not bad, right?

It took me three hours to make the first four slides. I was shot. And remember, the first slide is a "cover slide." Groan. My brain was fried by the time I went to bed on Tuesday night, with the understanding that I would come back to it once I was awake on Wednesday and finish the rest of it.

In the midst of this, I'd still not received a call from Daisy's company or the HR guy who was supposed to get back to me, and I sent him an email detailing not only the job posting number, but requesting any information he had on it and hoping he'd give me an update -- as I knew I'd been recommended for hire by several people at that point. It went unanswered and again, ignored. Upon going back to work on Wednesday night, Daisy brought up the frustrations about this in her weekly meeting with her coworkers, and I was given directions to call the HR guy on Thursday -- if I didn't get him, leave a message and the supervisors/managers who worked with Daisy would get on him about it. Okay, I thought, that's fine.

Wednesday was slow and tiresome.


I haven't been sleeping well; I've been sleeping, when I do sleep, very erratic hours that don't lend themselves much to productivity during daylight. If I want to spend time with Daisy during the week at all, I almost have to (roughly) be on her same sleeping schedule and pattern. That's been very difficult as of late, and I've found myself sleeping for short stretches before I'm awakened by the cats, the need to pee, the need to eat something, daylight, kids screaming outside, people slamming doors or stomping upstairs/downstairs, etc. So, I'll sleep for a few hours at most before something like that happens, get up and deal with it, and then go to sleep (usually somewhere else, like on one of the couches) for a few hours more. Repeat until I can't sleep anymore or my back hurts.

Part of this is due to my allergies, which have gone insane over the course of the past two weeks or so -- enough to give me a low-level sinus infection at almost all times. My allergies will be fine for two or three days and not bother me at all, and then wham, I am smacked down by them big time for another two or three days. Again, repeat this cycle over and over and you have my life. Nebraska is a much different allergy environment than Kansas was, even though geographically it's only about 200 miles away from where I lived before. Its weather patterns are different, its temperatures/wind directions/barometric pressures are all different, and it's wreaking havoc on my body and its tolerances for these things -- which also isn't helped when I spend a few hours every day outside on the porch, as I don't smoke in the house.

Anyway.

As Daisy went back to work on Wednesday night and the interview/presentation was on Thursday morning, I dove into finishing it almost as soon as she left for work. When I started it, I had five slides complete, including the cover slide. When I finished enough to call it "done" or "done enough," it was eight hours later and I had twelve slides total. It was 3AM. I had my alarm set for 5 not only because I needed to be able to be awake enough to go to the interview, but because Daisy would be getting home shortly thereafter.

Sleep did not come. I made food and tried to tire myself out with a full stomach -- didn't work. I tried to watch Netflix until my eyes were heavy. This worked marginally until I was able to turn it off and actually rest a little. The rest was broken at 5, obviously, when my alarm went off. I hit snooze, and then a few minutes later was reawakened by Daisy's key in the door.

Replies and Expectations, Part I

I consider myself a pretty patient man on most fronts, though it is well-known to most of you at this point that I don't like (or want) to be. I don't like waiting on things (or for) people that I shouldn't have to wait on. I have, apparently, an unrealistic expectation that if someone has a job to do, that person should do their job to the best of their ability at all times. This is the philosophy I've always had in everything I've done. When I was a college student, I was the best college student I could be. When I was a cashier and stocker at four different grocery store chains, I was the best cashier or stocker I could be -- no, the pay wasn't the best, but I still had a job to do, and I did it. When I was a college professor, I was the best professor I could be, even if it meant going above and beyond the call of duty and sacrificing social time or sleep. As a husband, I try to be the best husband I can be to Daisy -- and that includes doing everything I can around the house to balance the workload and contribute as much as I can to our marriage and living space, as well as continue to foster a positive environment of open communication in our relationship.

It's about being honorable.

Everything I have done is not because it's been expected of me or because I'll be punished if I don't do it (translation: I won't), but because it was the right thing to do in those given situations. Yeah, I could've flunked out of college if I'd not cared about it. No, I didn't have to go to graduate school. Yeah, I could've gotten away with doing less than half of the work I actually did for my students when I was a GTA as well as when I was a professor, and if I really didn't want to, I wouldn't do anything around the house now and let Daisy take care of it all. But that's not who I am. I have a very strong sense of honor, responsibility, and accountability for my actions or inactions. It's not like lives are in the balance, or anything like that, but that drive is at the core of my being as a human.

So, when I observe people who have certain important responsibilities not by choice, but because it's part of what they do for a living, and to a large portion of the people who they deal with, that is who they are -- yes, I get angry and irritated when they don't do their jobs. Especially when, in not doing their jobs, they inconvenience or otherwise discount/ignore me. I am not a fan of incompetence, and I am not a fan of people who don't follow orders and/or don't respond to questions that need to have answers. It gives off the sense that I are beneath them and not worth their time -- and believe me, as I have told Daisy in the past, nobody is allowed to make me feel inferior, or treat me as such, when I know in many ways I am indeed a better and more intelligent person than they are. I have always been a leader, not a follower -- while I can be a follower in certain situations where there is a true leader present, one who I can respect and admire, that shit changes really fast when said leader reveals him/herself to be a fucking idiot. Any of you who were around for the first incarnation of this blog 5-7 years ago remember that, as I wrote about my experiences working in the grocery store in Missouri.

Daisy has told me at times that I have a sense of entitlement about some things, and that is very true to an extent -- yes, I do have a sense of entitlement in some cases, but it's not the false, "give it to me because I deserve it because I said so" entitlement. No, any entitlement I feel about anything is completely justified. For example, if I apply for a teaching position at a university, and I meet the minimum qualifications plus have another degree and years of experience above what's even asked for in the "preferred" section of the job description, yes, I feel entitled to an interview. I see no difference in this compared to as if I'd bought an expensive electronic device that broke under warranty and I requested a replacement or a refund. I want to take what's rightfully mine, what I qualify for, and what I should have. That's not false entitlement, that's a reasonable expectation for a reasonable outcome. No, I may not get the job, but I do feel entitled to a shot at it if I've applied and my qualifications reach/surpass what they're looking for. Unreasonable expectations would be if, say, I applied for a teaching position that required a PHD as well as at least ten publications and ten years of teaching experience (none of which I have), and demanded an interview anyway.

Anyhow, I'm being long-winded and am belaboring the point.

I was told last week that I had been recommended for hire at Daisy's company by at least three managers/supervisors (Daisy herself, one of her fellow supervisors, and the guy who interviewed me) and could have received up to two more glowing recommendations from others within the company who have met and/or otherwise know me as a candidate for the position there. I was also told that my application was being "pulled" in order for them to file the paperwork to get me hired, and I should hear back from the HR people sometime quite soon. I covered most of this in my last post.

Whether that actually happened is beyond me, honestly, as it's now Wednesday and I have heard nothing from anyone at the company, when I was expecting something by Monday or at least by yesterday. Still nothing. Daisy's fellow manager who recommended me has done all he can do, though he has been monitoring the situation (he hasn't heard anything yet, as she checked with him last night). It's all in the hands of HR now, and the HR person who originally recruited me and vetted me for interview waaaaaay back in April (or even late March, I can't remember) has now mysteriously become unreachable, when previously he would reply to every email I sent within five minutes of sending it.

Daisy has also told me there were many people who called multiple times, over and over, before they were eventually hired. I interviewed for the position there five weeks ago now, and have requested updates on my application status at least three times -- requests which have apparently fallen on proverbial deaf ears. My application status on their website simply says "applied," but doesn't give me any updates past that (as many other employment portals do). So, truly, I'm in the dark about this.

Here's the problem. As mentioned before, I knew I had some decisions to make here -- my interview/presentation with the university was scheduled for today, and part of the weekend was to be spent putting together that presentation, as you know. However, I didn't want to plot out a ton of time and put a ton of work into that presentation for an interview on Wednesday if I got a call on Monday from Daisy's company offering me a job -- it would've been wasted effort, calories burned for no reason, as I would've immediately taken the job at Daisy's company and canceled the interview at the university.

Before you say anything, yes, I would love to work in academia again -- but the university job is a temporary position that ends in a few months, and requires much more work, effort, travel, and fake smiles compared to a full-time, non-temp job of sitting at a desk in a climate-controlled, comfortable office at a computer...which is basically what I do here at home. And the pay is pretty much the same.

As an aside, Daisy told me that she thought her job may be too stressful for me. I told her there's a lot of stress and bullshit I can overlook when a sizable paycheck every two weeks is involved, and this is completely true. If I do get the job at her company I will start at over $10k a year more than I've ever made at any job. To put that into perspective, I made $12,000 last year as a professor. Before taxes.

Anyway, I'd planned to use Saturday night to make the presentation, but I was really fatigued and was feeling sick and lethargic all evening, so I went to bed early. Daisy had to work overtime that night and didn't get home until really late in the morning, not getting to bed until 11AM -- which was when I got up.

Okay, I thought, so we'll go have dinner with the parents on Sunday night as per the usual, and then I'll come home and work on it then. The presentation only has to be fifteen minutes in length, roughly, and there's time at the end for a Q&A session. I find the whole "Q&A session" a fairly laughable concept, as the only stuff I know about the university here is from what little Daisy has told me about her college years and the sparse information in the packet they sent me.

When we went to dinner at the parents', it was brought up that the parents were going to visit Daisy's sister the next day (a road trip about two hours north of Omaha, close to the South Dakota border), as it was the fourth birthday of Daisy's sister's oldest boy. We were asked if we wanted to come with them -- a day trip consisting of leaving fairly early in the morning, driving up there, spending the day with Daisy's sister and the kids until our brother-in-law came home from work, eating dinner and doing the birthday stuff, and then coming back.

"You can go," I told Daisy, "but I don't want to."

This led to Daisy getting upset with me -- despite the many reasons I gave for not wanting to spend all day traveling and around children, the least of which being that I had a presentation to research and create -- I recanted and told her that if it was that important to her, I'd go.

Let's step back here for a moment and fully admit something -- yes, I could've made the presentation at any point over the course of the week prior after I'd received the information from the university.  This is true. So, yes, it's totally my fault that I'd put it off for as long as I had. However, one of the reasons I had done so, as mentioned before, was because I was waiting on Daisy's company to contact me with a job offer, since those wheels were already turning. That call, at the earliest, was expected to be on Monday -- when we'd be gone at Daisy's sister's place, a place where I wasn't sure I'd have any cell phone signal whatsoever to receive said call.

As an aside, I did have cell phone signal up there, but it wasn't T-Mobile service and it didn't matter, because I received no calls anyway.

So, since everything was agreed upon and we were going, we left the parents' place, went immediately to get a birthday present for the kid, and then came home and went to bed. The parents wanted to leave at 10AM or before, which meant that if I wanted to be functional throughout the day at all, I had to get up around 7 or so. Which I did, and we went, and it was fun -- but it was also tiring. We were gone for fourteen hours, the entirety of Monday from morning until close to midnight, and I was completely exhausted by the time we got home. There would be no presentation-making that night -- I had to sleep. I had to sleep a lot.