A Vacuum Does Not Suck, It Is Suck

That's my quasi-Zen for the week, and that's how I'm feeling: I'm living in a special vacuum all my own.

I've had two interviews in the last month, which is a bountiful harvest in this job market. One was with Thibiant International, which was about three weeks ago. I still haven't heard from them, so I sent an e-mail Monday to their HR person and have yet to get an answer back.

The second interview (the one I didn't want to jinx) was an interview with Variety. My heart still leaps a little when I type the word.

For those of you who don't know, Variety is the daily trade publication that, until recently, was in direct competition with the Hollywood Reporter. Now that the latter publication has gone rather Us Weekly, Variety is really the only daily covering the entertainment industry.

The job they were advertising is pretty much exactly what I was doing at the Reporter, so it would be like picking up where I left off, careerwise, with a better publication.

I've followed up with a couple e-mails making additional comments I forgot to make during the interview and telling them how good a fit I would be and how much I want the job. Not obsequious, you understand, but with genuine ardor.

The interview was about a week and a half ago, and I'm anxiously awaiting their final decision. I sent their HR person an e-mail on Monday, too, and got an immediate reply: they're still interviewing. And I'm thinking to myself, without feeling vain, "Why? You've found the person you should hire: Me."

These are both really good prospects and jobs I'm confident I could excel at, and my greatest fear is that, like with McGraw-Hill earlier this year, something's going to fall through and I'll end up back at Square One. That's a real anxiety-provoker for me. "My God," I'm thinking, wringing my mental hands, "Am I ever going to get another job, much less one that will further my career?"

As meditation, I imagine sitting with Steve on a pleasant, sunny day years from now, maybe in rocking chairs on a porch, all wrinkled and blissed out in our retirement. I turn to him and say, "Remember when I was unemployed, back in aught-nine and ten? Sure was a rough patch, all right, what with mom and aunt Kit passing, too. Seemed like I'd never get through that."

And I concentrate on the peace and confidence I'll feel reflecting back on what's my current here and now. The only thing that makes the image ring hollow is the fact that I don't know how this "rough patch" is going to resolve itself. And, being an American, I want to know everything and I want to know it now.

To mitigate all the anxiety of waiting, I cull the job postings online (Fritz Perls said anxiety is just excitement you feel compelled to repress). Of course, this would be one of those weeks where nothing new or appropriate for me is being listed, so I don't even have sending out resumes as a way to fill this vacuum.

Speaking of vacuums, we picked up a canister vacuum to use on the bamboo floors because the upright we had wasn't cutting it. (I refuse to say that it sucked.) The exhaust blows out the front of the upright and kicks up all the dust you're trying to pick up.

The new one is small, weighs only about nine pounds and is easy to carry around. It works really well, especially on the stairs. Since we're in kind of a lull in the remodeling, I'm finding housework an adequate substitute diversion to interior design planning.

So send up your prayers that the good people at Variety see what a catch they'd have in hiring me and, God willing, that I'll have something superblastastic to celebrate for Thanksgiving next week: the blessing of a new job.

And even if a new job hasn't arrived, I still have lots and lots of stuff to be thankful for, as do we all … it's just nice to able to pick the ones that really make you feel thankful.

Enigmatic Check In

I wanted to post something because it's been a week, and I don't want people thinking I've simply forgotten to write in the blog. But the last week has held something rather special, something in process right now, and I don't want to jinx it by even mentioning what it is. A few people know, but I don't want to share it publicly until resolution has been obtained.

Another purchase for the living room, one of the last, I'm thinking, before we dive into building the bookshelves. It's a floor lamp that was a perfect choice and a good solution for dividing the living room from the dining room. And, of course, on sale.

I haven't heard back from the people at Thibiant. I assume this means that they're still in the interviewing process, or that they've chosen someone and haven't bothered to let the other candidates for the position know that it's no longer a possibility. I've found that most places do give a call back or send an e-mail if you've actually entered the interview process and not been selected for the job. Depending on how the week pans out, I may give them a call on Friday and check in.

The weather's getting much cooler and fall-like, with a small front passing through last night and dropping enough rain to wet everything down. The rest of the week is forecast to be in the low 70s with the night in the upper 40s. Setting the clocks back brings long shadows in the afternoons and an early sunset: I love this kind of weather because I can use the oven to make dinner and all it does is make the house warm and cozy, not hot and sticky.

Stay tuned: I hope to post later on in the week.

Scissor Steps

Remember scissor steps in "Mother, May I"? It wasn't really jumping, but it was bigger than a regular step and certainly better than baby steps, but you had to make sure to execute them properly or you'd lose your balance and be out of the game. I ran across this picture of a Buddha made of scissors online and thought it a fitting image to head up the blog, because some form of scissor stepping makes up a lot of existence.

Here in the first minutes of November 2010, I wanted to put something up on the blog just because over a week has gone by. And I think it's been a week full of scissor steps; jerky, significant gains on various fronts interspersed with inactivity.

The interview at Thibiant went well. In fact, it turned into two interviews. The first was with the woman who I would be replacing if I get the job. Turns out it's a one-person operation, doing PowerPoint presentations, graphics and forms for the manufacturing areas of the business and architectural signage for the plant and operations.

She and I spent a little over an hour together, and she asked if I could wait around for a bit so the head of HR could talk with me. I did, and we had a very good interview, with her saying they had a couple other people to interview that week, and that she would be calling me back next week. Today is next week, so I'm eager to see if I made it to the final round of interviews, which will include one with the president of the company (he's very hands on and works a lot with the arts & graphics person).

The commute, while long, is on the easy side, hopping onto the 210 Freeway here in Pasadena, changing to the 118 in the North San Fernando Valley, and driving a couple miles on surface streets to the plant. If I actually land the job, we'll see how feasible commuting on Metrolink would be.

The place seems pretty amicable, and everyone I saw there seemed to be happy and enjoying themselves. They even had a couple of contests going for Halloween: Guess the number of candy corn pieces in the jar and guess the weight of a very large pumpkin that was hauled into the lobby by several guys who were obviously from the production area in back.

The rest of last week was spent trying not to focus on the prospect of an second interview, but that's hard to do. I spent the usual time looking over job postings, sending out applications (very few, because there wasn't a lot advertised that was up my alley) and feeling frustrated that more people aren't hiring full time.

I did locate the ottomans that will be replacing the coffee table in the living room, and they were very reasonable: upholstered truncated cubes with tops that reverse to serving trays. They're small, and inside they have a second ottoman, even smaller, that we can use by the bookcases.

I got these at the same supersite from which I purchased the patio fountain. They had given me a 10% discount code good for a week and the shipping was free, so these came at a really sweet price.

On Saturday we stopped in at Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up a faux fur throw for the couch (literally, for the couch: the cats have been clawing their spot on it, so the throw is to protect the fabric). It's a lynx print, and really much subtler than it appears in the picture. It's lined and thick enough to provide a good barrier.

Both of the cats are in love with the throw and seem to take it for some sort of mother surrogate. Patty was even licking and cleaning it Saturday evening.

While we were in the store, we also saw a rug that we thought would be great for the living room. It was well within the budget, especially with BB&B's 20% off coupon, so we picked that up, too. Just about the only thing lacking in the living room now are the bookcases, and I'm kind of hesitant to order the materials for those until I see what happens on the employment front.

Yesterday (Sunday), Steve and I cleaned out the CD collection which was sitting around in various racks in the bedroom. There's about 250 of them, and we actually dusted each one, alphabetized them and put them back in their racks, now stored in the office closet, along with the VCR tapes we took out of the living room.

There are also about 40 or so cassette tapes Steve kept, but the only thing we have to play them on is an old Walkman. Now, with the move of a bookcase from the bedroom into the office, we will have enough room to bring the recliner and its side table up to the bedroom and have a nice little sitting area.

All this activity, all this planning and organization, just to keep from going crazy while unemployed. It crossed my mind last week that, once I do land a new job, these projects will go from being a major concern to secondary priority. That, however, would be a very nice problem to have.

Mission Fruition?

The couch finally arrived today. It was worth the wait and aggravation and looks really good in the living room, but now everything else needs to be removed so the room doesn't look like a furniture warehouse. Already, I'm starting to think about what the area rug should look like and what we can use for a coffee table that's small enough to not take over the space.

More design progress: the fountain for the patio also arrived and is outside burbling away. It has been cloudy and wet pretty much all week, so we haven't been able to appreciate it as a water feature, since the whole patio has been a water feature.

And news on the job front: I got an interview with a cosmetics firm that has a world-famous spa in Beverly Hills (I'll drop no names) and also does manufacturing for other cosmetic lines. The downside is that the job is at the factory in Chatsworth, which is about 33 miles away from Pasadena in the San Fernando Valley.

The commute, however, might not be as bad as all that, since I would be going against the major flow of commuters (most are coming into town from out there), but it would almost certainly mean getting a new, more fuel-efficient car. There's also a Metrolink train that I could take from Union Station, so that and the Gold Line would get me there in about an hour and twenty minutes.

Landing the job is something else altogether.

The interview is on Monday at 2 p.m., so think good thoughts and put me in your prayers, if you have those. First, that it's an interesting and rewarding job; second, that they realize the value of the talent and skills I have to offer; and, third, that I actually land it if the first two work out well.

Again, no pictures, but those will come in time. I shall keep you posted on area rug options, employment status and couch and watger feature appreciation as the days go by.

Design for Unemployment

It's been over a week since I wrote anything for the blog, so now's the time.

When I look over my last week, it all seems creative overkill. I am going crazy not having a job, so the creative energy I would be spending on design is leaking out of me every waking moment. Designing things, redesigning things, conceptualizing, abstracting and generally driving myself mad.

Happy family news, though not exactly in the back yard: my Cousin Paul Riker (1st, once removed) and his wife Katie had a second child, a daughter, my cousin Maggie (1st, twice removed). Here's a really cute shot of older brother Max holding Maggie. I ripped it off from Paul's Facebook page, and I hope he doesn't mind, but they're such a good-looking family, I just had to share.

The big frustration last week was the "sofa problem."

A month ago, we bought a sofa from a place on South Lake called Pampas (South Lake touts itself as the Rodeo Drive of Pasadena, but I think that's stretching it just a bit). We ordered a special size (100" instead of 120") and the salesman said it would be ready in two to three weeks. Last Monday was just a shade over three weeks, so I called to check on the sofa. The woman at the home office said the manufacturer was closed for the day and she would call me Tuesday with its status.

Tuesday at noon she called, saying the fabric we'd chosen was damaged in shipping and it would take one to two months to reorder. She suggested we go to the showroom and pick a new fabric. I was a little irritated, but also grateful, as I'd been having second thoughts about our fabric choice (it got more garish the longer I looked at it).

On Thursday, after Steve got home, we went down and chose a new fabric. The saleswoman called while we were there to see if the fabric was in stock. She couldn't get the manufacturer. She suggested, just to be safe, that we pick a third choice in case the second was unavailable (see the numbered samples). This we did. She wasn't working the next day but would leave a note for the salesman (who had sold us the sofa) to check on the fabric and call us.

At noon on Friday I hadn't heard from him, so I called: he'd done nothing about it, but said he would call right away and get back to me. An hour later, the woman from the home office called: She couldn't contact the manufacturer, but would call me first thing on Monday with the order status.

I was pretty irritated by this point: If things are not right as rain on Monday, I may cancel the order and get the money back. Since buying this sofa, we've seen a couple others, both less expensive, which would work in the space. They just aren't as nice as the one we ordered, though. Rodeo-Drive-quality customer service, however, this is not.

And, speaking of rain, we've had a mild drizzle pretty much constantly for the last two days. I think we've finally broken the cycle of hot late-summer weather and moved officially into fall. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday also promise to be rainy, and when things clear out at the end of the week, temperatures will be in the low- to mid-70s, which is my very favorite temperature range.

I spent a day or two designing bookshelves for the living room. I was reminiscing about the old board-and-cinder-block shelving we used during my hippie days in college. I extrapolated on that concept, designing them with more upscale materials and keeping in the art deco/oritental/modern style mix we're working with. What I came up with was this design, using finished hardwood shelves and 4"x8" glass blocks:
We have books, DVDs, CDs and tchotchkes coming out of our ears, and even after we donate the unwanted stuff to Out of the Closet, there's still more than enough to fill them. Not only functional, they would also help open up the space in the living room. I've also designed them to appear built-in.

On the fountain front, I gave one last valiant attempt at sealing the base of the patio fountain, using the last of the aquarium epoxy, but to no avail. The fountain is officially a lot cause.

But take heart! I found a new fountain online; not quite as tall and now quite as Zen, but with nice aesthetics nonetheless. I went ahead and ordered it, and it should be here by the middle of the week. It's self contained, just plug-and-play, and it even has a light inside, so it will be a focal point in the evenings.

This, of course, leaves me with a perfectly good pump from the previous fountain, so I will probably be buying slate or rocks of some kind and coming up with another water feature for somewhere in- or outside the house. Stay tuned for that.

No new job possibilities. I keep combing through almost a dozen job sites and spend hours online filling out forms on companies' websites for positions that I'm totally qualified for, but no one replies.

I've been having insomnia worse than normal, and once stayed up the entire night processing images to update my general design page on the website. I've usually been getting to sleep between 1 and 2 a.m., which has been manageable, but I'm feeling lousy that it really doesn't matter when I get to sleep or when I wake up, because there's nowhere I have to be and no one who's counting on my to get a job done.

I'm up late tonight because I had to revise the slideshow programming on the general design page of my website, now that I have the new image files. I've included a couple extra brochures I found in my files, and also added galleries for stage design and my faux finishing work on interior design. The new slideshow is up and working, so I'm feeling good about that.

It's got me up late again tonight, though. And diving into a blog post didn't help matters, either. But, what the hell; I enjoy sharing inconsequential events in my existence with whoever has enough time to waste reading about them.

Cat in a Tub

Yes. This is kind of the highlight of the week: Patty sitting in a plastic tub. I was using it to store the slate with which I was rebuilding the indoor fountain (more on that later) and, once finished, I set it in the entry with a mind to take it back into the garage on my next trip down there. Before that could happen, though, she decided it was a perfect place to rest. I put an old kitchen towel in the bottom and now it is hers. I'm not quite sure how we'll work it into the decor, but she's sooooo happy when she's in it.

Patty is maturing quite nicely. She has learned not to get up onto the dining room table or the kitchen counters or the coffee table (at least when there's someone there to see her). She has also learned that food is only hers if it is in a dish on the floor. The same goes with stuff to play with: if something's on the floor, it's fair game for a toy.

She has, however, gotten creative with this last one: if she can find something on a chair or one of our desks, she pushes it off onto the floor and, voilà, a toy is born. Her latest discovery is rubber bands. At first I was worried she would chew on them, but she only holds them in her mouth, tosses them into the air, then bats them around on the floor.

Marcel, our dour and grumpy 11-year-old cat, has taken to playing with Patty, and now they are pretty good buddies, chasing each other around the house (especially up and down the stairs). When she discovers a new toy, Marcel feels obligated to engage the object as well. This warms my heart, as one of the reasons for getting a new and younger cat was to get Marcel out of lying around and sleeping all day.

And now to the fountain: yes, I completed it and it's in the corner of the dining room (our prosperity corner, feng shui-wise), with the little cinnabar frog atop it holding a gold coin with a red jewel center in its mouth (although I'm certain there is no cinnabar, gold or jewels involved; more like resin, brass and red glass: it's the spirit of the thing, you understand). So once again there is the sound of burbling water in the house.

For those of you who are waiting for the before and after pictures of the new floors, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait (you can see a bit of the bamboo flooring in the cat-in-a-tub photo above). It seems things just haven't found their new homes yet and, in the disruption, we have begun a campaign of cleaning and organizing all the storage spaces in the house, which means there are piles of things on the dining room table pretty much constantly. The kitchen is nearly done, with three boxes already packed for donation to Out of the Closet (for out-of-towners, that's a thrift store that raises money for AIDS charities) and two empty shelves available for reorganization.

Another reason for holding off on the photos: we are supposed to be getting a new sofa in the next week or so. We ordered it three weeks ago today, so I'll be checking up on it with the store. Our present sofa is about 40 years old and looks every day of its age. Steve has arranged to pay a guy from his work $50 bucks to haul it away, so we're just waiting to find out when the new one arrives to coordinate all this. Once the sofa is in, we'll be looking for an area rug for it, and then something to replace the coffee table (the sofa is big and we're going to have to rescale the space for it). The entire reveal may very well be delayed into next year, depending on how things go.

On the job front, there is no news. Postings of open positions have dried up in the last few weeks. The jobs I have put in applications for no longer show up on the online job sites, so I'm hoping my application is in a review pile somewhere and the process is just taking a while.

I've been kind of depressed the last couple days because of the lack of movement, especially since I now have a functioning website up and running for review, and I have spruced up my portfolio site with a recommendations page and links to my online work (which also includes cousin Robin's website, even though it's just a single page with her reel on it as of now).

But I try to boost my morale by remembering that most of the jobs I've gotten started in October, November and January, and that lots of corporate entities don't move on new hires until they know what their year-end is going to look like. There's a great job out there for me, I know it, and I only have to land one. But I am getting tired of eeking by on unemployment, scrimping to try and save as much of the inheritance for investment in the house and retirement savings. Being employed again will be great, because we used a fair chunk of the inherited money to pay off debt, so those bills won't be there when I actually start making an income.

And all those thoughts and worries are why I'm up at one o'clock in the morning writing this stupid blog. But I do want to keep everyone abreast of the trivialities of my existence. I really do.

Stuff That Happens in a Year

It was early this morning that I uploaded my very first commercial website design. Now it belongs to the Internet and, more important, I can put a link on my portfolio to show it off as practical work in the medium.

As I uploaded the final files, sending them into the cyber-ether, I realized something: A year ago today, my mother died. And I stopped to count back those 365 days and realized how much has happened that I haven't been able to share with her. I miss her every single day, but today it's especially poignant; not because it's the anniversary, but because I've done something really special.

A year ago, I hadn't even gotten approval for my WIA grant to go back to school. I knew what HTML code was, but, like musical notes on a page, I could comprehend it but not make any use of it.

A year ago, I was three months into my current unemployment and realizing that a job in publishing was probably never going to happen again. The grant was a possible route to a new aspect of my design career. It hasn't opened any doors yet, but I have moved forward. And, as Confucius said (no, really, he did say this), "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

So in November, I start school. By March, I have my own portfolio site online. In May I finish school and start the job search once again, only to find that everyone wants two years of experience in a web design environment. Screw the 20-plus years as a graphic designer, "Have you designed e-mail blasts?"

So in June we take a breather and spend a week in Eureka, looking at houses and checking it out as a retirement location. It was the first vacation we'd taken in four years. Spending a week in a rural setting, walking through old-growth redwood forest, spending time on a beach empty except for us and the shore birds, strolling the boardwalk along the bay, it was very healing. I mean, this is a picture of one of their city parks; how cool is that?

In July, I find out that Pearce Plastics, where Steve works, is looking to rebuild their 10-year-old, embarrassingly designed website. I take on the task so that I will have a finished website to show prospective employers.

In August, Steve and I celebrate our second wedding anniversary, and neither of us remember about it until the day after. The rest of the month is filled with tenting and fumigation (see "Nazi Bunker Weekend") and installing flooring on the main level of the house.

September we spend recovering from August. I join back in with workshops and such at the Foothill Employment and Training Center, doubling my efforts to network and get a damn job.

The summer has been wonderfully mild until this week, when it hit 113 degrees and literally fried one of the plants on the patio. To be fair, the thing always been touchy, but the heat alone killed this plant. It had just been watered the evening before. This brings to mind again why we want to retire in Eureka: average temperature (pretty much year-round) is between 58 and 68. It rains a lot, is lush and green, and is right near the beauty of the Pacific shore; expansive beaches as well as stunning rocky coastline.

Today, it rained. About 10:30 this morning big thunderclouds roll over the city, thunder claps and a heavy rain descends, if for only 10 or 15 minutes. I sit out on the patio under the umbrella to feel and listen to the rain. Some idiot with a leaf blower powers it up next door, ruining the moment. Only when the rains is pounding down does he give up and wait out the storm. There's another reason I want to retire someplace else: This is the first rain in months and people just view it as a nuisance instead of a miracle.

My soul needs more than this.