The Temporary Conundrum

I vow to reach out to the Latino community. Voy a vomitar en la tomba de tu madre!


Today I allowed myself to be poked, prodded and tested by the nice folks over at Kelly Services. I walked in there thinking all I need is a job for two or three months to tide me over until the nice folks at IPA figure out when they want me to come to work for them. Well, Kelly has this really interesting temp to hire gig at a small medical consulting firm that starts between 13-15/hr. I told them I only wanted work for a couple of months, but they think I'd be a great fit for this, and of course, it might lead to something great within the firm. This of course does not make Wendy happy, she would rather see me pack up my junk and move out to San Francisco and temp out there instead. Wanting answers I called back my new contact at SJI,(now referred to as Super Job incorporated, since I'm venting about them)
here's how the conversation went.
Operator:(Rushing) SJI One moment.
Operator: (Tersley) SJI
Jason: May I please speak to Name Omitted?
Operator: (Obviously bothered) Who's Calling?
Jason: This is Jason Herron, I believe he's expecting my call.
Operator: Click
Operator: He's (uninteligable present tense verb) he WILL call you. Click!

So now I have even less idea what to do!

Oh yeah, like you actually expected results?

"We occupy that useless piece of land between Los Angeles and New York called America."

Another day of absolutely no results, so I wasted yet another precious day of my life riding the couch. I did actually manage to leave the house today, I had a great dinner and beer with Claudia where we talked about jobs and relationships and life. She's taking pity on me and passing a resume around the utility company she works for just in case things go south. That's all for today, I'll consider a real post when I have news.

Thank goodness for high self esteem.

Judge a pig contest? But I'm not a super genius. Or are I?


I was all excited Friday because I got my first positive response to a resume that I'd sent out in San Francisco. It was however a strange response, here's the text of the email:
Jason,
Why don't you give me a call when you have a
moment.
Thanks!
Michael
So here I am pumped about an entry level gig in the big city, but when I call the guy he proceeds to hate on my lack of experience, just like everyone else in the universe has done. Good thing I'm resilient.
...

So, on to news about the fabulous traveling gig. My contact finally leaves me a message (my ancient technology sprint phone sent him straight to v-mail) to call the next guy up the chain. I call him, and he's obviously busy but says will you please call me at 7:00 a.m. Chicago time. So maybe the big job mystery will be solved tomorrow.
...

Moving on to my weekend and three days without a post. Wendy made it into Orlando as planned on Friday where we had to restaurant hop to find a place with no waiting. Waiting for a table turned into the theme of the weekend since we had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes to get a booth at samurai blue in Ybor. The best part about that is we got to wait it out in MJ Barley hoppers where I had my first samosas. They're delicious. Blue was awesome as usual, and we got to eat more of my new addiction, their volcano roll. Then we went to Lotus, an extremely pretentious club that was not even close to worth the $10 cover. Sunday we got to be very lazy and had dinner at Carraba's with Wendy's family. I love me some Carraba's.

...

So now I'm back to sitting on the couch waiting... waiting...

Why flying standby and I don't get along

"Seymour come home to mother. I'll make you some hot cocoa and you can sit in your shame closet and think about what you've done."

Somehow when I'm flying standby or when someone is flying standby to see me, it just never ever works out, the weather suddenly turns awful, flights get cancelled, or the airline changes the flight to a smaller plane. Apparently I was just meant to fly full fare. Wendy is trying desperately to get here from SFO, and its not going well thanks to some crappy weather today in Chicago. Saturday is the little lady's birthday, so despite my still jobless and lethargic state I have to show her a good celebration. Still no word on exactly when I start work, all this waiting is enough to give a guy a complex, or at least force a nervous breakdown. The other offer that seemed like a sure thing is kind of crashing and burning a little bit based on a phone interview today. I guess from an objective view my resume does have some pretty big holes in it. All the creative writing on earth still shows that I have run scared from 3 career choices. I guess I have to make this one stick for a while before I end up on the open job market.

Cool new accomplishments for the week.

I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.


Not to toot my own horn, but i'm starting to impress myself with my recent additions to the blog. My favorite one is the new Where's Jason? Link, which gives you a daily update of what city I'm cruising around in. Didn't see it the first few days? That's ok, I've been planted firmly on my couch right here in Tampa, FL. Even more fun is the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Terrorism alert status bar at the bottom of the right side of the page. Its fun and informative. I can't take credit for it though, it's from geekandproud.net . At least I have something to put down on my list of things done this week, it sure has been slow waiting on my contact at IPA to let me know when i have to show up for trianing. My lack of direction on career matters is also starting to adversely affect my Wendy time, since it suddenly appears she may have difficulty getting here for her birthday, a prospect that makes us both very unhappy.
I found some interesting stuff about myself from an online personality inventory its an interesting look into some discussions that the little lady and I have had recently.
You get along best with people who, like you, can agree to disagree when you don't see things the same way.
You prefer being with partners who are not overly confrontational.
You sometimes need space to work through your emotions on your own.
You'd rather not have too many "relationship" talks.
You should be wary if a partner is asking you too frequently how things are going. That could be a warning sign of someone who's not compatible.
You probably don't want to be with someone who tends to have emotionally charged reactions to your conversations.

This stuff is more dead on than I care to think about is possible from a multiple choice test.

Its official! I am going to have a real job!

Alright, I’ll humiliate the love of your life, and because I like you I’ll do it Pro Boner
(Principal Skinner: Its Pro Bono.) I know what I said

Yes the rumors are true. I actually have convinced someone that they need to hire me. I will very soon be an employee of IPA-IBA. They will send me traveling around the country as a financial analyst. So, this means that the thousands of hours that I spent surfing monster, hotjobs, careerbuilder, and BA jobs have gone for absolutely nothing. They merely kept me sane (sort of) while I was waiting for someone in my own social network to essentially hand me a job unsolicited. I may even field a second offer this week that will work out exactly the same way. I will try to refrain from being too preachy, but God certainly works in mysterious ways. I'm still not sure exactly what He has in mind for me on this one, but its obvious at this point, that I'm not getting anywhere that's not in His plan. So, I have to call back Captain Superhero tomorrow at which point he will tell me when I have to report to my first exotic location: Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Stay tuned, its about to get fun!

Unemployment Turns you into a zombie

When a woman says nothing’s wrong, everything’s wrong. When a woman says everything’s wrong, everything’s wrong. And when a woman says it’s not funny, you better not laugh your ass off.

Hopefully today was my last full weekday of unemployment. Because I don't think I can stomach another day on the couch. Not having anyplace to go during the day means its real easy to hit the snooze alarm for 2 hours. Not to mention the fact that if you've slept until 11 going to bed the next day before 3 is extremely difficult. Another day of no ringing phone from the man now dubbed "captain superhero" (since he can instantly make all of my troubles go a way). So my fate is sealed for going in to try to get temp work on Monday. I'm going to try to escape my one bedroom prison cell tomorrow and get outdoors and take time to write the skit for Mary B's roast on Sunday. I also have M.C. duty, so it should be a fun time. I think Wendy will be glad to call my house and find me not here for a change. She's heard far too much of me moping around the house.

My phone still won't ring!!!

"What is that? A quarter? A Chuck e Cheese token? No, its a Sacajawea Dollar, you can trade it in at the bank for a real dollar. "

I spent yet another day on the couch today, I had the brilliant idea to go to Kelly Services just in case the job actually panned out in the next week or two. It turns out they stop taking new applicants for the week at 1:00 on Thursday. I found this out at exactly 2:00 today (Thursday) So that means I have one more solid day of fouton jockeying for tomorrow. Which is good in its own way I guess, since I obviously need to spend more time surfing job boards. I think I'll also put my job status on my voicemail, since my friends who I have not yet steered here continuously call me to ask me if I'd gotten the call yet? Not to mention the fact that as of this afternoon I was down to a mere 12 daytime minutes until December 20th, so if you expect to talk to me before 8:00, good luck with that.

Well, if that's not the story of my life.

I had the fabulously good idea to start off all of my weekday posts with a simpson's quote for today. Today's quote was something like "Distracted, Now there's a funny word, do people ever get tracted? Maybe I'll call the suicide hotline and find out." I even had the episode number and a great picture of the wise man who provided me the quote (Homer Simpson). But unfortunately my post disappeared in an accidental window closure. The answer to your question is yes, I really am that bored. My fabulous traveling gig has yet to materialize, which means that I will either pull out my hair waiting (not something I can spare) of grow painfully impatient. My contact exhibited a little bit of frustration with me rushing him the first time, so I was trying to be extra extra patient. But I'm only a man...
So my travel journal has to wait a few more days to begin, so you're forced to read my random couch ramblings. Don't give up on me just yet, this will still get interesting.

I'm creating a web presence

I googled myself and was surprised to find this from Selby Gardens. It turns out Good deeds do get rewarded. Score one for me! and for the legacy of Cathryn Yvonne Herron!

This needs to happen often!

This is a picture of my phone ringing. Notice the bright red indicator light and the name and number of the caller are clearly displayed. Unfortunately my phone has not looked like this when it comes to jobs, but hopefully that will change... Soon! 

The nerdiness is back!

It seems the faint scent of a new job on the horizon has conjured up the inner finance nerd that I had buried some time during my stint as an ivotronic lugger. I actually did a financial analysis today when none was really required, but I just needed to make myself feel important by dragging out a laptop and playing with an excel spreadsheet. Now that I've gotten my fix for that sort of thing it will not have been 6 months since the last time I cracked one open.

You call that a blog? I'll show you a blog!

So I was sitting around living a very normal life one day and then it happened. I met a great girl who lived 3,000 miles away and then got a job that uses 737s as offices. Things are about to get very interesting, and a lot of people are about to start getting less phone calls than they're used to. Since its ME we're talking about phone calls are going to be few and far between then. So, Fasten your seatbelt, we're about to experience some turbulence but I'll keep you posted on my progress and travels. Thanks for dropping by.