Getting in the Groove

I woke up at eight o'clock this morning without the alarm clock (which I have set for 9:40 a.m.). I took this as a good sign, since I went to bed at 2 a.m. Most mornings this last week I was getting up at 10:30 or 11. I'd wake up at nine or so, but the bed felt soooo comfortable and letting the brain just sleep or loll or wander felt so good that I'd slip back and waste all those potentially productive hours.

Last Sunday we went out and got peat moss and chicken wire (which I found out is correctly called "poultry netting") and we made us a peat stick for the orchid plant that Kittie and David gave us as a cutting a couple years back. It's been making efforts to flourish but has never quite made it. Back sometime last year, I got the idea of getting a peat stick for it so there was something it could climb on root in. We'd gotten a stick wrapped in coconut fiber at Whole Foods a while back, but it was too dense for the ropey roots to take hold.

So's with a peat stick, what it is is a stick with peat moss wrapped around it and chicken wire (excuse me: poultry netting) to hold the whole thing together. I've been looking for one for months and none of the nurseries around here has one. This is why we went out and got the materials ourselves. Took about 15 minutes to make it. Doesn't it look pretty?

More exciting news: On Wednesday I attended an orientation seminar at Lee Hecht Harrison, which is a company that helps corporate types develop an effective job search. As part of my severance package, the Nielsen Corporation has footed the bill for this service. LHH doesn't actually look for the jobs, but they do instruct you on how to put together the paperwork and information you need to make your next career move effectively, rather than going out and taking whatever happens to be out there. And they have coaches who help you out with whatever aspect of your job search you're having trouble with.

There's also a monster Web site with several proprietary sections that link you up with human resources resources (which is kind of like Hamburger Helper Helper for employment) and lots of samples of resumes and positioning statements, etc. In this tough job market, with publication houses folding like fresh laundry, these are good tools to have. But the biggest thing they do for you is push you to keep looking and structure the process.

And I couldn't close this entry without at least a passing comment about all these famous people dying this week. I think it's an absolute shame about Michael Jackson, especially since he was younger than I am, and it always disturbs me when I hear about someone younger dying, not because it's tragic, but because it's unsettling. I have to remind myself that I'm entering that phase of life when I could pop my clocks at any time.

But I can remember being young and seeing the Jackson Five on TV, envying young Michael his fame and wondering what it must be like to be so famous so soon. When he came out with "Ben," I knew he was going to be a star in his own right, but none of us had any idea of what he would sculpt himself into in the end. I cannot abide by the inexplicable hours of "breaking news" coverage that he got, though; even the BBC spent their entire American broadcast with non-news "maybes" and "he might be's." That's not news; that's pictures from helicopters and journalists just guessing.

But perhaps the most ironic aspect of the whole story is that when he died, his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame was covered up by the red carpet laid outside Grauman's Chinese Theater for the premier of "Bruno," Sacha Cohen's latest effort (he's the one who gave us "Borat"). Unscathed, the Michael Jackson fans came upon the star of same-name L.A. radio talk-show host, Michael Jackson, and they began putting the flowers and offerings around that star. It was a star. It had the right name on it. That's Hollywood.

Farrah Fawcett was not too much of a surprise, since we knew she was struggling with cancer for many years. And it's not like she was a massive talent or anything, but she was just so darned well liked by everyone, had a respectable body of work and, to paraphrase Steve Martin, many a young man in the 1970s spent a lot of time holding up her poster with one hand.

And Ed McMahon: Sure, he was involved in those sweepstakes scandals and he was reportedly a fuming reactionary Republican who couldn't manage his finances, but he was Johnny Carson's best friend on TV, and so he was ours, too. I always thought of him as a zany, alcoholic uncle, the one you could always insult and socially abuse without fear of reprisal. Here's another person who had no real talent of his own but fell smack dab in the sugar of celebrity and it stuck for years after his relevance as a second banana for Johnny Carson had passed.

Well, one of the things we learned at Lee Hecht Harrison was that you have to structure your time when job searching, just like you do with any other job (because looking for a job is your job now, you see?). So my free time this morning is coming to a close. From 10 a.m. to noon I work on the job search, which means following the 10 milestones to meaningful career change. Then from 1 until 3 p.m. I study online for Flash and Dreamweaver (also Actionscript and Javascript). Steve gets home around 3:45, so all must stop while I lavish him with attention.