Yes please, I'd love to buy some overpriced wrapping paper

Gah, the fundraising merry-go-round has already started. The kid's daycare sent me home with a giant book full of candy, coffee mugs and magazines subscriptions for my schilling pleasure. And when I signed Nathan up for skating lessons I was given another booklet, out of which I must sell $50 worth of useless crap, or be assessed a $25 dollar fundraising fee. The daycare is going another route, awarding the highest seller with $120.00 off their bill. I won't be the least bit surprised if I get something from the Elementary school in the next few days too.

Banker's hours

This is going to take some getting used to. Working 40 hrs again, and trying to sort out the kids, the dog and dinner in a short period of time when I get home. At least I don't have the insane commute anymore. Although I now have an insane amount of paperwork to look through from Pre-K, Nathan's daycare and Claire's daycare. I'll have you know that most of the artwork goes straight into the garbage. Although I am keeping some of Nathan's best attempts at writing his name.

The job is pretty cool. Not at all what I was expecting. The office is termed "Deposit Operations" and there are four departments with 8-10 people each. I'm in Reconciliation, and the people I work with review IRA accounts, ATM transactions, Debit card disputes and more that I haven't seen yet. The woman I'm replacing is on maternity leave, so I'm expecting to be there 3 months. They're not teaching me the complicated stuff, but the "grunt work", which is fine. My immediate boss has made a good impression on me so far, although it's pretty hard to fall lower than my last boss. Hopefully she'll be like my first controller at Hyatt, who was a hard worker, but took time each day to check in on us and joke around a bit.

Whether it will turn into a permanent job is a big question. Another woman in the data entry dept said that she'd been there as a temp for none months and no permanent jobs had opened. But I don't think she had any prior job experience, or much interest in the job, since she's now leaving for her completely different dream job. So things could be different for me. At the least, I'll make the best impression I can in case there are openings that the boss can recommend me for in the other local offices. I'm afraid that they do a lot of their hiring by promoting tellers.

In other news, the pig farm is now a cow farm, and they're being quite noisy on their first day home. Claire is thrilled, and wanted to go out and wave to them for a bit.

Kelly Girl

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the lost job last week. I obsessively checked websites for job leads, and even began to wonder if I could make a living off mturk at .10 a job. All that's behind me now, at least for the next two months.

I'm not sure why I wasn't registered with Kelly Services earlier. Maybe it was bad memories of a summer spent opening mail for Publisher's Clearing House when I was a Kelly Girl in 1991. But I sent them a resume Friday, took the skills assessment tests yesterday, and on Monday I start a new job. I'll be working for a bank, but not in a branch. Instead I'll be working for "Deposit Services", which I guess means handling the paperwork that flows from the other 130 branches in the area.

Technically, it is only for two months. But the recruiter said that they have kept a lot of people on permanently. I was amazed that I could set daycare up this fast, it will be annoying if I have to pull them out again.

And because I'm a history buff, here's a 1910 postcard of where I'll be working. Somehow, I don't think it still looks like this.

I do it!!!!!!!!

Claire is in her "independent" phase these days. "I do it" is her favorite phrase, whether it be fastening her seatbelt, putting the top on her cups, putting socks on. She has to do it. Unless it's doing her hair, then she runs away screaming.



When we take Zeppo for his walk, I always start her in her stroller, but many times she has to walk back. First, she'll re-fasten the seat belt even though she's not in it. Then she'll insist on pushing the stroller, even though she can only go about two feet before she runs aground. And if she hears a car, she'll sing out "Car Coming" and then abandon the stroller in the middle of the road. If I try to help, she whips out her second favorite phrase "Go Away".




And a shot of Zeppo, who is getting gigantic. I was trying to line up a shot that would give you a good view of the field we pass every day on our walk, but Zeppo's ability to sit still and pose is very limited.

A near miss

Given how much time and effort we put into our restaurant plan, it's not surprising that we continue to keep up with news and rumors surrounding the building. This week Dan heard something that makes us happy that we didn't continue our plans.

It seems that there may be an illegal/dangerous oil tank on the property. Which will be costing the college $100,000-200,000 to remove. Yikes. Can you imagine if we'd been up and running for a year and then found out about this while trying to buy the building? It certainly would have kept us from buying, and probably would have led to the restaurant having to be shut-down for clean-up. Luckily, it's not our problem.

I think this might mean that they had a buyer lined up, but then found out about the hazard while doing disclosures. They may also be doing some more renovations before trying to sell again. We'll keep an eye on it, and hope that it takes so long that we'll be able to try our concept again.

And on.

And the job search goes on. And on. And on.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Things you should not say at a job interview.

"I'd like a job with less stress."

God, why? Why did I say that? aaarrrgh.

In context, it makes sense. She saw all the experience I had on my resume and wanted to know why I was looking at this job, especially since she'd just told me the sadly low pay rate. She was just trying to make sure that I wouldn't take the job and then leave in a few months if something better came along. So I was trying to be reassuring that this is a job I want, and instead I said something stupid that makes me sound lazy.

I'm hoping that I recovered. I tried to make it seem that it was stressful because of the 50 hour week (which Hyatt expects of management) and horrible commute. But I should have also stressed that since my degree and experience don't match, I was only expecting semi-entry level job offers when I moved back.

I do want this job. Even though the pay was lower than what I thought was the lowest I would take, it comes with so many benefits that it will work out in the long run. Free tuition for the kids at any of the four local colleges is a pretty nice perk too. Even if they only went for a year or two before transferring, it would be so worth the low pay now.

Let me be a wage slave again, please

Are you all getting as tired of me posting about jobs as I am in looking for jobs? If so, cross your fingers for an interview that I have on Monday. Should be an interesting job, with great benefits and hopefully decent pay at one of the colleges.

However, I'm wondering about one little issue. The department posts pictures of all the employees on the website, so I was glancing through to see if I recognized anyone, and saw that one of the employees is one of our near neighbors. She's not someone I've met in person, but there's no doubt that I should recognize the name if we're introduced. And there's a chance that she would recognize me because I always walk Zeppo as far as her mailbox before turning around. I'm wondering if I should practice some complimentary phrases about her lawn in preparation for meeting her. And hope that she doesn't hold the fact that we're a bit messy against me. Maybe I should take a moment today to move the garbage can away from the street and put the hose away just in case.

P.S. I really want to complain about the heat, but I know that Joy has it much, much worse, so I won't. (but seriously, 92 degrees, in Sept, this far north, WTF??)

First Day of School!

Sniff-sniff. Boo-hoo. He's all grown-up.



Dan laughed at the parents who were taking pictures of their kids waiting for the bus, so I didn't do quite as much photojournalism of Nathan's first day as I may have wanted to. Plenty of time to correct that when I go to pick him up.

The class is only from 8:30-11:10, and a fair amount of that time will be spent having a snack. Two boys who he met last year at swim lessons will be in his class, so hopefully that will ease his shyness. Meanwhile, it's just us girls here at home.