books!

The exclamation point is because I finally remember what I'd been meaning to write about last week: what I've been reading.

I'm not sure I believe in the idea of "guilty pleasure" books. Maybe that could be the enjoyment of a truly trashy book. But I gave up trashy books a long time ago - life and reading time are both too short. But I guess there's a certain divide between commercial books and literary books, or scholarly books and non-scholarly books, or even more challenging and less challenging books. But there's nothing I read that I'd be embarrassed to be seen reading (if indeed the Kindle had book covers).

So what I read were three Douglas Preston books (I think two were Preston and Lincoln Childs) in a row: Gideon's Corpse, Riptide, and The Codex. All really excellent, although I believe the Gideon book is part of a series and not the first one. I've probably mentioned how much I've enjoyed the (many) Preston/Childs Agent Pendergast books. Even if the characters are not tremendously novel (a lot of similar protagonists and love interests), the plots tend to be vastly interesting and always include a lot of science, archeology, art, and some pretty compelling descriptions of the trappings of wealth. This is all wrapped in mystery, suspense, adventure. Maybe not the most challenging reading, but very enjoyable.

Right now I'm reading The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld, recommended by Bob Steiner. It's a murder mystery set in 1909 New York City, imagining that during his NYC visit, Freud helped to solve a crime. So far, it's not quite The Alienist (a great work of historical fiction set in the same general era), but it's a very good imagining of the Freud/Jung/Ferenczi New York visit.

Still waiting to hear about the job for Barry - he was told about a week ago that they were going to send him for fingerprinting and do a background check, which is what happens right before hiring. But this place moves very slowly.

I called Wendy at the Village Scandal on Monday and she hasn't returned my call yet. I'll try again tomorrow.

Our home computer was on the fritz - seemed like it caught a virus so big and bad that my anti-virus and anti-malware products couldn't stop it. It seemed like a hard-drive hardware problem, so we took it into the shop, but all they had to do was wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows. We got it back yesterday, and I downloaded anti-V and anti-M again, plus Firefox and Adobe Flash, and was going to do the others tonight - except it died today and Barry had to take it back to the shop. Burns my butt. At least I have a computer here at work, cause I'd be losing my mind otherwise. I know I lived without the internet for some 30+ years, but I have no idea how I managed.

my head is spinning somewhat

Can't really say why, but it is.  Too much good mood.  Too much good mood + can't talk about it = what do you think it equals?

All else is what it is and what it's been: work is still good, I feel hopeful about the jewelry, I'm trying to arrange a dinner with Robin for the 16th or 17th.  Robin will understand the spinning-head stuff.  Her head has been known to spin over such things.

Money sucks, sucks, sucks.  Barry had a shot at a job at Ohel, working with developmentally disabled people, but it turned out he had to have a driver's license.  He's now applying for a slightly less good but similar job, also with Ohel.  Of course, I suggested that he look for similar jobs in other agencies, WHICH HADN'T OCCURRED TO HIM. 

As we say in Mangalore, oy vey.

hired!

And no, it wasn't the high-end jeweler.  I had a great interview with her, during which she said, "I will hire you" around four or five times.  Then I didn't hear from her for a week, and when I called, she wouldn't take or return my calls.  Go fig.  And I just wanted to let you all know that this stupid, unprofessional, lying bitch is named Gayle Grenadier, and if you ever have $40,000 to spend on a piece of jewelry, don't buy it from her.  And don't ever even consider working for her.

The people who did hire me are the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (which we'll call PPSC to make life easier).  I'm going to be the office manager, working below the director and executive director.  It's basically a post-graduate training institute (probably only open to M.S.W.s or Ph.D.s in psychology) who want to be analysts, practice analytic-style therapy, or incorporate some analytic theory/technique into their therapy practice.  So it's a school, and also a clinic where trainees can rent rooms to see their patients.  Believe it or not, I worked at one of these places in 1980-81 (the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training, which no longer exists).  So it's familiar ground for me.  I'll basically be running the office, along with registering students and maintaining student records.

They are paying the money I asked for, plus a bump in six months when my Medicaid runs out.  I'll be getting a letter today setting out the terms and conditions, to make things really official.  I liked both of the women who interviewed me -- unlike NYCPT, PPSC was created and run by a woman.  NYCPT was definitely a patriarchy, created and led by the late Dr. Reuben Fine.

I got the e-mail last night, and called in sick to BTW today -- tomorrow I'll being in my letter and start the disconnection process.  We keep Medicaid for around six months, which is when they review eligibility. We'll lose the cash and rent benefits, but I'm not sure when -- immediately, when I begin working, or when I first get paid.  We may be able to keep some part of the food stamps.  And I believe they pay carfare for the first 90 days.  I think Barry will continue to go to Back to Work, which I think will help him with career development.

And let's see what MST3K has to say:

fresh-cut grass!

It's about 61 degrees out now (1:44 PM), but it feels warmer in the sun.  I just took a nice stroll around the neighborhood, walked around for about an hour.  On Gravesend Neck Road, right around East 1st Street, there was a strong scent of fresh-cut grass, certainly the first time I've smelled that this season.  I've seen a crocus or two, but this really smelled like spring.

I'm home today on "Independent Job Search" -- which requires a midday walk in the spring sun.  I had an interview yesterday and I feel 98% sure I'll be hired -- possibly because she kept saying, "I am going to hire you."  She said it about three times.  I think what happened is that I asked for a little more money than she was planning to pay, and had to talk to her accountant about it.  But I think I did convince her that I was worth my $35K asking price:  even though I had limited experience in the jewelry field, I had a lot of administrative experience, and it was clear that I'd learn her business very quickly.  Stay tuned.

I have no idea exactly what happens on the public assistance front if and when I get a job.  Do I still have to go to the daily grind until I start work?  what happens to our benefits?  (I do know that Medicaid will be good for the next six months no matter what.)  I'm going to try to see my job counselor tomorrow morning, because I may well have an offer very soon.

I'm seeing Lily tomorrow, which is a big event because she is insanely busy with school and internships and work these days.  We're going to have lunch, since we get released from Back-to-Work around 12:30 on Fridays.

Also -- someone else who did me a good deed:  my former boss Ken (the good boss who hired me at Penguin, not the bad one who got rid of me).  He sent me a St. Patrick's Day card with a $25 Starbucks gift card in it.  I very, very rarely hear from him, although he's one of my job references.  He's a quiet person; I don't think he'd disagree if I said he's shy.  But he's tremendously goodhearted, and one of the very best bosses I've ever had.

Ken really believed in me and was always willing to give me a chance to tackle something.  I came to his department as a temp, and temped there for three or four months before I finally managed to get hired (there had been some terrible hires in that department over the past couple of years, and Ken and I had to really work at it).  One day when I was still a temp, Ken was overwhelmed by calls he had to make, or maybe there were a bunch he didn't want to do.  I think it was following up with some media that had received galleys (this was in book publicity, by the way).  I volunteered to do it, telling him, "I'm really good on the phone."  So he said, "Go ahead," and stood by to listen as I made the call.  A minute or so later, he gave me a thumbs up and walked away.

Once I was on permanently and had my own book assignments -- well, let me go back for a minute.  I actually had my own book right before my permanent hire.  There was a certain author that Ken couldn't stand dealing with, and I volunteered to make a call to this author.  I figured out how to deal with the guy pretty quickly, and told Ken that I would handle any contact with this author if he wanted.  So he was actually my author before I was hired.  I guess because it was my first assignment, and at first, my only one, and maybe also because I realized how different and interesting the book was, I worked my ass off on it.  In all fairness, the author did get a few major publicity hits set up before I got started (a piece in Rolling Stone, an appearance on The Colbert Report).  It was a big home run, both in hardcover and in paper, and it really made me at that job.

But once I was hired, Ken would pretty much assign me to any book I got very excited about.  He figured out pretty quickly that I pushed really hard for a book I really believed in, even if it was a "big" book that wouldn't normally go to the most junior publicist.  (This was very untrue of his successor, who kept every single big book for herself.)  That's how I got to do the David Lynch book -- the second I heard about it, I ran into Ken's office and said Please Please Please.  (The new boss was there when the Lynch book came out in paperbook, and made a screwface about my being the publicist.  I was already in with the Lynch crew and she really couldn't do anything about it.  Very early on, she and I went to a Lynch event together, and when David came up and kissed me on the cheek, I think she knew she couldn't take the book from me.  As Emily Litella would say, "Bitch.")

One more story about Ken's generosity:  he represented an author I liked a lot, and loved the book, and I believe we had already arranged that I would do the paperback, or maybe it was that I took over a bunch of work on it a bit after publication.  Anyway, I was involved somehow, and Ken and I were both invited to a launch party that a friend of the author's threw (in an amazing little townhouse in Harlem).  Ken was both editor and publicist for the book, but when we were heading up to the party, he told me to tell people that I was the publicist.  It certainly made me feel more comfortable in a group of writers and book people who were strangers to me.  Ken actually looked fairly uncomfortable at the party, but as I said, he's shy.

I'm still on the mailing lists of both the difficult author and the author I liked, but not with the Lynch camp any more.  I had been closely in touch with his right-hand guy (I wasn't close enough to contact David directly), but he sent me a very snappish e-mail one time, and I never replied.  If it had just been a bad mood, he never made amends; I never heard from him again.

I've been thinking about setting up a little shop on Cafe Press to sell tee shirts and what-have-you with old advertising images on them, mostly, I think, beverage labels.  Like so:

Do we like these?  I also have some smashing foreign ones, and beer as well as soda.  I was playing around with some of the images this morning...they tend to get a little blurry when I enlarge them.  Maybe I need to scan some at a higher resolution -- these are actually images I downloaded, although I do own these labels and many others.

I would wear tee shirts with these images on them.  (Cafe Press, by the way, is set up so that you can sell with no set-up costs; last I checked, the seller uploads the images and chooses what kind of goods to use -- tee shirts, coffee mugs, etc.  There is a price for making each item, and the seller chooses how much over that to charge; the items are made to order.)

favorite new singer & new song

First, I want to apologize for the weird formatting on the poems in my last entry.  No idea how that happened, but I scanned and OCR'ed it and then polished it up in Open Office, but obviously there was something strange hanging out in the formatting.  I'm a little weak on formatting in Word (or clones thereof), but don't tell anyone.
OK, so I saw this singer and heard this song on SNL last night, and I was really blown away.  I've heard two songs and already I like her better than Lady Gaga and Katy Perry combined.  I went snooping around YouTube, and they don't yet have her SNL performance of this song, though they do have the other one she did last night.  But I found the regular video and a live acoustic performance which is just mindblowing.  Her name is Jessie J, and the song is called Price Tag.  She's British and I guess already pretty popular in the UK,
This is one of those songs I want to load onto my mp3 playing and listen to over and over until I know every word and then until I'm totally sick of it.

Also, I have a job interview on Wednesday.  It's with a high-end jeweler -- very high-end.  She does very beautiful designs which are very expensive, and her business is on a much smaller scale than Stephen's.  We actually had a long talk on the phone today and it might be a good match.  This is mostly for production work but my feeling is that she also needs someone who can work with computers and has some design sense...possibly also some bookkeeping and publicity.  I'll just have to see how it feels, what the workload would be like and, if it comes to it, what she wants to pay.

poems!

I was recently bemoaning my lost poetry, of which I remembered a few snatches here and there.  The electronic versions disappeared on big floppies many years back, and were probably in WordPerfect or MultiMate anyway.  The hard copies were lost in The Great Storage Tragedy.  But I remembered that my dad and stepmother, within the past year, had sent me some old photos and old documents, including several college literary magazines with a few of my short stories and poems.

The short stories were and are hideous; any snatches I ever remembered from them made me cringe.  But I did dig up three poems, and scanned and OCR'ed them so I'd have electronic copies.  (I never used OCR before, and so am proud of myself for managing to do it.)  None, alas, is the Coney Island poem.

I think two of the poems hold up pretty well, and one is not that good but captures a very important moment in my life.  I won a writing prize with one of my poems back then, but according to the magazines where these three were published, it wasn't any of these.  I have no idea or memory of which poem it was, but I do remember that I won that prize, because I'd been trying really hard to get it for several years.  I seem to recall that it was one I hadn't liked as well as certain others, but I was so glad to win the prize that I didn't much care.

All were published in The Gallatin Review,  a nice little literary magazine published by Gallatin Division of NYU, which was my school (it's now called The Gallatin School), in the late 80s and early 90s.

I do want to apologize for all of that pretentious lower-case shit.  I did remove the pretentious every-other-line indentations from one of them.  I don't suppose I have to explain how artsy the lower-case thing was.  I did often write poems with long shaped paragraphs, which I believe I copied from Marianne Moore and Muriel Rukeyser.  I don't and never did read much poetry, but I did like those two.

The first poem is the one I don't like as much...well, I'm a little nit-picky about it. It does have some turns of phrase I'm proud of.  But the title is one thing I don't like -- I called it "Chinatown would have benefited by the addition of Bob."  What I was trying to say was that my experience that day in Chinatown would have benefited, etc. 

This poem was published in 1988 but it was written, I believe, in the spring of 1986.  I wrote it the day after the Chinatown excursion, extremely hung over.  This was when I was bottoming out on alcohol, and is a very clear expression (at least to me), of how I thought "Bob" would fix what was wrong with me. 

There was an actual Bob I was chasing at the time (although once we were together, I found he preferred being called Robert), who ended up being one of the most difficult boyfriends ever.  The line in the poem where he says "I just can't stand that kind of thing" is genuine, one hundred percent Robert.  I got sober at the end of August 1986, and I think I broke up with him a couple of weeks later -- even that early in recovery, I knew he was way, way too much to handle.  I met him through the clerical union at NYU (he had been involved for a while, and I was a passionate newbie), which is why the word "union" is slipped in there.  I always used to put those little touches into poems as inside jokes that no one got but me.  (How sad is that?)

Chinatown would have benefited by the addition of Bob

I never before minded the mournfully bent heads

of the ducks who were nearer to food than to life;

today they troubled me, as I window-shopped for supper,

browsing garish dangles of dark-red barbecue,

the number of the shops, the clouds of rich odors,

the pale innocence of fowl yet to be cooked;

closer looks at trays of unrecognized food revealed horrors:

the feet of birds, the snouts of pigs, whole squid

coaxed somehow to science-fiction orange;

even the vegetable stalls gave me pause:

would unfamiliar produce poison if miscooked?

guiltily, I bought two small cantaloupe off a truck,

paying a grizzled Italian who asked his chum,

"Isn't she a beautiful girl?"; he took my dollar

and bagged my melons in flimsy plastic;

the fish markets beckoned, then overwhelmed:

shrimp had faces, whole fish were clearly priced but unnamed,

lobster and crab were cheap but alive,

a bargain on whole squid reminded me of when Charlie

worked downtown, and brought some home,

bravely following a cookbook to bone and behead the creatures,

working a delicate miracle over fresh pasta;

I couldn't, I knew, looking one in the eye,

and couldn't behead shrimp, couldn't execute lobster

or crab; in the past I have cleaned fish easily,

but I know I am now unequal to the task;

as I walked downtown from Washington Square,

the sun high and hot, walked through Soho,

through Little Italy, I put Bob in a number of scenes;

in my mind, he corrected situations

in which I felt too lonely and alone: too shy and

feeling too pathetic to enter a certain cafe,

I sat Bob at a table with me, the two of us sharing

fried calamari with hot sauce and drinking beer;

I placed him beside me in an antique jewelry shop,

surprising me when I admired a garnet ring,

saying, "It's perfect for you," and maybe buying it;

I saw him at my side in front of shop windows,

not caring if he shared my tastes in clothes,

happy just to have him there to say,

"I can't stand that sort of thing";

I really needed him in Chinatown; he would have

braved the tiny noodle shops where Chinese ate in crowds,

and enjoyed the wiseguy Chinese boy of twelve

who noticed my star and drawled, "Are you Jewish?"

and my reply, "Are you Chinese?"

without a doubt, Bob would have declared his ability

to clean fish; "You clean, I'll cook," I'd have offered,

wantonly bagging vegetables—asparagus or

broccoli rabe, a knob of ginger, a ripe mango to eat later;

at his apartment, I would create a meal

of memorable delicacy, the food of union, of sharing.

-----------

The second one, which was written later and sober, was a little unusual for me.  I tended to write poems which were love letters of some sort, and this one wasn't.  It feels kind of mature to me, for that reason.  It's just straight-up about a photo of my great-grandmother I'd never seen before.  What struck everyone in the family (because it somehow had just then arrived on the east coast from some west coast relatives) was how much I resembled her; it was always said that I looked almost exactly like my mother (I couldn't see it myself), but this was my paternal great-grandmother, and when I saw the picture, I thought, "My God, it's me!"

Well, of course, some fucking "lover" shows up in the last paragraph.  I actually may not have been sober yet when I wrote this, because I'm kind of suspecting it was that Robert again.  "Golden" means he was blond, and I don't really remember any blonds in that era except Robert.  I didn't really see anyone for a while in early recovery, not anyone I would have described this way.

great-grandmother

I have never seen this picture before

and so I reverse the truth: she looks like me, this woman dead

long before my birth. My family laughs,

gives her to me in a silver frame.

There is nothing dry or stiff about

her sepia face and form; she must have

horrified the photographer, back in nineteen-ten.

A fisted hand rides her hip, the other draped

over her man's shoulder to own him. Her face

is nothing but assertive, proud, defiant.

My lover is as golden and as sad as autumn.

He believes in his own power; he forgets in daylight

how in the darkest hours of night, he curls to me

like kitten to cat. He will only see this when

the evidence is produced: a new photograph that

a man who belongs to a woman, my notes to the future.

--------------

Number three:  I like this poem a lot.  I wrote it about my favorite professor, although "favorite professor" doesn't begin to capture what he was to me and to others.  He was brilliant and warm and way, way spiritual; his students (including me) were more like followers.  He was pretty close to being a holy man to many of his students.  He taught religion, and I studied mythology under him.  He was a nice enough looking man, but everyone fell madly in love with him, or at least under his spell, because of who he was.  It felt like a next-level crush.  Even though the class was huge, I managed to get his attention with some of the assignments I wrote.  The title is another of my little inside jokes: "peregrination" means to move from one place to another, but it also refers to a wonderful story he told about finding a peregrine falcon in his apartment (it had flown in an open window).

The poem was my attempt to sort out and explain my crazy attachment to him -- which no less crazy in light of the fact that lots of people felt that way about him.  I actually took the class because I had a friend who would never shut up about him, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Peregrination

It is surely for a reason, and one perhaps

not obscure, that he greatly resembles

the man I almost wed; he has the same brow,

and eyes so similar that I often forget

to distinguish between the two men, one

long gone and one filling my recent days.

He is the safest and most dangerous of men.

I was warned. I was told, both subtly and

straight out, that I would love him beyond

all others and beyond reason and sense and

beyond his own presence and facts and form.

As I try to know him, I learn about myself.

I was warned. He is universally loved, and

I turn Plato inside out, joining a symposium

of love for this old boy. And true to form,

I find myself more clever, more learned, more

virtuous than ever I'd imagined. He brings out

what is finest in me: this is the quality of love.

It is surely for a reason, and one perhaps

not obscure, that he came to me when I was ready

to love knowledge and to love the love of learning.

I was warned. I cannot stay myself from the attempt

to merge with him, and in striving for sameness,

I discover what is different in me, and unique.

His beauty tempts me to many wicked thoughts.

He is the safest and the most dangerous of men.

He promises no occasion of sin, but is the

fixed star of virtue; by his light, I navigate

the darkness in my soul. He promises the love

of goodness; I cleanse myself quickly in order to accept.

-----------

Anyway, those are the three dug-up old poems.  I used to write too much poetry, and a lot of it was trite and gushy.  I wish I could find the Coney Island poem because it was really, really good.  Actually, I kind of like the rhythm of the Chinatown poems, and the first stanza is probably as good as anything I've ever written.  Don't know if there's really any more of my old writings to be dug up. I haven't written a poem in well over ten years, and I think the last couple were about that prick V.  One of them was actually good, as I recall.  But these three don't suck all that hard.

In other news, the first interview at Zabar's went well, I think.  It was with a consultant, and if I make the cut, I'll go back and meet with the controller.  The title of the job is "Inventory Analyst," which I like a lot.

Even with the many days I manage to get out of the Back to Work center, for one reason or another, it's both weird and dull going down there week after week.  It's like some bizarre planet.  I've recently figured out that the best use of my time there is to try to get a seat in the computer room, and just job-hunt online.  I put my resumes on what I called a "memory stick" (Rafael corrected me and I now know that it's a "flash drive"), which yielded a great half-day of online searching.  But you can't always get a seat there.  As much as the classroom was initially novel (and I still do adore the instructor), I'm tired of "learning" things I already know, and I'm tired of most of the lame and lowbrow (sometimes both) conversations that spring up there.  I've actually met a couple of very nice, bright people, but I can't imagine actually staying in touch with any of the post-BTW except Rafael.  He'll be a friend for a long time, I think.

Houston, we have benefits

After yet two more sojourns to the public assistance center at Coney Island, we have an EBT card with food stamp money on it, and we supposedly have Medicaid and rent assistance.  We will get a second card for Medicaid and the option to choose an HMO, which will come in the mail.  The rent assistance goes directly to the landlord and will we get a notice.

The good news is that it's all retroactive to the month we applied, so we have over $600 in food stamps and our first rent benefit will be around $500, which is about half our rent.  Couldn't have come at a better time.  I was hoping especially to get the food stamps soon so as to conserve our cash.  Actually, our wonderful sister-in-law treated us to a big load of groceries from a big supermarket this past week, so we're fairly well stocked on essentials, but we can use it for smaller things in the neighborhood, and then do a big shop at Shop Rite when we need to.  Barry's going to go down to a favorite Chinese market tomorrow to buy loads of fish (we have a kosher fish market right nearby, but the prices are about twice as high).

I even got my free cell phone, which is very cute.  I actually read all of the instructions so I know how to use pretty much all the features (we somehow never bothered to do that on the prepaid phone).  And I got my free glucose meter on Thursday, so when I run out of strips for the one I have, I can start using the ones Harriet sent.

Barry and I have been assigned to WEP, which is what they used to call "workfare."  You work three days a week and go to the job center two days -- like going to the job center, the WEP job entitles you to your benefits, but doesn't pay any kind of salary.  Luckily, we were able to be assigned to office work rather than janitorial; we both have to report to orientation at the city Office of Housing Preservation and Development (I think that's the name of the agency...I keep getting it confused with the Landmark Preservation one).  No telling yet if we'll be assigned to the same office or even what borough.  Doesn't start until the 21st.

I guess WEP is good in the sense that it gets us out of the job center for three days, which breaks things up a bit.  It's bad, though, because it's time away from real job-hunting -- you can get excused from WEP if you have an interview, but you can't actually spend the time looking for work.  At the job center, you can job-hunt in the computer room if there's a free station, or you can get excused for "independent job search" (this is supposed to be other than e-mail job searching -- you have to fill out a form saying where you went to drop off your resume or whatever).

It's all a good safety net.  The system seems to work, no matter how bureaucratic it seems at times.  On Thursday, I had to go to Coney Island to give in some papers that Barry put in our caseworker's hands two weeks ago.  Luckily, I was already excused for independent job search, which was actually a Word class at Connect-to-Care Thursday afternoon, so I could bring the papers to Coney Island in the morning.  Otherwise, it's kind of dicey, since Back-to-Work wants a letter from the public assistance office (HRA) if you have to miss BTW to go there, and HRA insists you don't need it and won't give you one.  (So far, we've had appointment letters when we've had to go to HRA, have a home visit, or go to BEV to verify our identities.)  So it's a pile of hassles, but if you're very patient, it seems to work.

Better news:  I have an interview Monday.  I got a call from a guy who said he'd seen my resume (I'm not exactly sure where, probably one of the job sites where I had it posted), and wanted to see me about a job very similar to the one I had at Dweck...and it's at Zabar's!  Zabar's is one of the great great great New York gourmet stores, although it started as (and continues to be) an appetizing store.  (Another lesson in all things Jewish:  "appetizing" is basically all of the things Jews put on bagels, particularly the smoked fish like lox and whitefish, plus the various plain and flavored cream cheeses.  It is very desirable to find an appetizing store where they actually slice the lox to order, rather than sell it prepackaged.  I only know of three remaining in Manhattan, including Zabar's, though there may be a few still in Brooklyn.  There used to be a lot more, but now there are very few.)  Apart from appetizing, Zabar's has all kinds of wonderful baked goods and gourmet foods, plus they have an excellent selection of housewares.

The guy who called me from there was very nice, and I felt we had a good rapport.  I really like the idea of doing production at Zabar's...I could make sure the smoked sable gets in on time!  I could take my pay home in whitefish salad!  He asked what I had earned at Dweck, and didn't make uh-oh noises.  I'm really looking forward to the interview.  Sounds like it could be a mighty good job.

Luna Park didn't call -- they were supposed to decide by the end of the week -- and I admit I did relax myself a bit last night.  I do so enjoy that bit of relaxation.

OK -- I'm fascinated by all of this insane Charlie Sheen stuff.  Yeah, I do feel bad because he's a terrible addict and probably also mentally ill...but I can't help but be entertained by the trainwreck.  And the jokes are just too funny.  This one is one of my faves.

south of north of Coney

In other words, Coney Island.

One:  I had the interview at Luna Park the other day. I was interviewed for the less-qualified position, and there are actually two of them, exactly the same, except that one will start sooner than the other.  The woman who interviewed me was lovely, and I think I did well.  She didn't mention money, but the job developer said it was $12-14 per hour, which is really less than I would like, but I'll try to talk them up to 15 or 16 if I get an offer.  It's seasonal, and would end in October.  The office is right inside Luna, and the job would entail a certain amount of time outside the office in the park, distributing paychecks and schmoozing employees to try to avoid the 67% turnover they experienced last summer.  The temp aspect of it works for me -- hey, who wants to be in Coney during the winter?  Also, they would require a drug test.

Sidebar:  I do not approve of drug testing, though of course I said I would take one.  Here's the thing -- if the issue is illegality, a background check would clear that up.  If the issue is possible intoxication on the job, who don't they ban any use of alcohol?  What if someone comes in hung over?  Also, there are a lot of prescribed drugs that might show up in a test.  I believe that Adderall (prescribed for ADHD in adults as well as kids) contains some sort of amphetamine.  Some people still take old-school antidepressants which are barbiturates.  I myself have a prescription for lorazepam (generic Atavan), a low dosage for bouts of anxiety.  And how about the whole issue of violation of civil liberties?  It's one thing if someone shows up at work obviously intoxicated, but what someone does on their own time should be their own business.  I generally do not apply for jobs where it's indicated up front that they drug test.  I think it's very wrong.

That having been said, I have decided that it's a good idea to start taking a goldenseal supplement and drinking a lot of fresh-squeezed lemon juice.

Two:  I had to go to the Coney Island HRA center this morning (luckily, I was excused for "independent job search," which is actually a Connect-to-Care computer class this afternoon).  They needed to make copies of documents that Barry handed to our caseworker two weeks ago.  These people may be overworked, but that doesn't mean they aren't fucking morons.  The woman who called wasn't our caseworker, but we referred her to him several times.  We find it impossible to get him on the phone, but you'd think this woman could have gone from the second floor to the third, walked to his desk, and asked for out file.  You'd think.  But no, I had to bring the suckers again this morning.  And as I said, it was a good thing I was already excused from Back-to-Work, because they require a document from HRA if you have to be there during work hours, and HRA insists that you don't need a document and they won't give you one.  Which of course, can put you at risk of -- all together now -- being FTC'ed.  Apparently they are FTC'ing people like mad because BTW is so overcrowded.

So Mrs. Abramova at HRA said that I had to bring the documents this morning by noon, and that I should go to the second floor and call her extension.  I was there before 10, and called her extension several times, and it didn't answer.  The receptionist didn't know who she was.  The receptionist asked me for her extension, and then she dialed it and got no answer,  Gee, thanks.  Finally, on my tenth time calling her extension, another woman who happened to be walking past Mrs. A's cubicle picked up the phone, told me Mrs. A was in a training session, but that she, Mrs. G, could copy the documents and put them on Mrs. A's desk.  Since I was a little concerned that these might meet the same fate as the documents Barry handed to the caseworker (not left on his desk -- HANDED to him), I came home and left a voice mail for Mrs. A and said that Mrs. G had left the documents on her desk, and that she should please call if she still didn't have them.  (I left out the part about her asking me to see her by noon when she was going to be in a training session.)

I hadn't noticed before that the HRA office is right behind the old Child's on the Boardwalk, which I believe Lola Star has converted into a roller rink.  HRA is about eight blocks west of the amusement area, past the baseball stadium (which used to be Keyspan Park but I've forgotten the new name).  It's kind of creepy and deserted there this time of year.  I thought about walking back to the subway via the Boardwalk, but my feeling was that the Boardwalk would also be creepy and deserted.  Plus, it was extremely cold.  It figures that I was at Back-to-Work yesterday when it was 51 degrees out, but at Coney Island today when it was 28 (plus the wind off the water is mighty strong).

Whether I'm working there or not, I look forward to seeing Coney in the summer.  I look forward to having a hot dog at Nathan's, even if I can't eat the roll (and have to skip the fries).

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this, but I wrote a poem some years back called "palm sunday, coney island," which was actually published.  It was in a small literary magazine called "Exit 19" or Exit something, comprised of poetry and stories that all involved a place.  They never sent me my copy, and I no longer have a copy of the poem.  I do remember the phrase "the sturdy inaugural turn of the wonder wheel" (I wrote everything in lower case back then...maybe I thought I was e.e. cummings).  I know that I actually wrote it on the subway -- I had traveled backwards to Coney to pick up another train line (a number of lines terminate there).  And it was Palm Sunday, which is the first day every year that the rides begin to operate.  (They run on weekends only until Memorial Day.)  I looked out the subway window and felt very Coney, and scribbled down the poem then and there.  (I wrote poetry very quickly and usually at one sitting.)  Most of my poetry is lost now, but I do remember parts of a few good ones.

Mitzvahs (or is it "mitzvoth"?) of the week:  my sister-in-law Elise, who would be a saint if there were Jewish saints, went to a Jewish non-profit (she works for one and knows them all), and brought a pile of free dressier clothes for Barry.  Three suits, maybe a dozen button-down shirts, and as many ties.  (You can't wear jeans to Back-to-Work, so Barry's basically been doing it in one pair of black chinos.)

Then Elise offered to take me to the supermarket and she would pay.  (This is a double mitzvah since we don't have a good supermarket close by and she drives.)  So I did a pretty serious shop, and got us stocked up on things I can eat and things Barry can eat (which are almost total opposites at this point).  It was a good shop, and except for the fruits and vegetables, should last us for a good bit.  I'm hoping we'll get food stamps within a couple of weeks.

I'm concentrating my job hunt on creative companies and universities.  I need work soon, but I'd prefer somewhere that I can be happy, and hopefully make a decent wage.  After these CTC classes, my Word and Excel will be sharp, and I'll have Powerpoint and Quickbooks.

publicly assisted

I haven't written much because I'm still getting used to the public assistance thing and there was a period of jumping through a lot of hoops.  Going to the Coney Island HRA (Human Rights Administrator) and waiting hours to see our caseworker.  (I've never had a "caseworker" before.)  (And the upside of the wait is that I read a big chunk of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," which I can't recommend highly enough.)  Presenting many documents.  Getting more documents.  Getting a letter from our landlord.  Going to the job center in downtown Brooklyn to get excused from orientation to keep an appointment with an HRA office downtown to prove who we are (showing yet more documents).  Then we had to go back to Coney Island, I can't remember why.  (Believe me, this is not the fun part of Coney Island.)  This brings us up to yesterday (the rest was maybe the preceding five business days).  I went to my first-day orientation at the job center, but Barry had a bad stomach and stayed home.  I had to call him at home and tell him that he had to bring -- guess what? -- documentation today.  He needed a doctor's note even though he hadn't seen a doctor -- or he'd be "FTC'ed."  This is about the worst thing that can happen at the job center, and we are often told that certain things -- like not presenting the right documents at the right time -- will get us FTC'ed.  FTC is Failure to Comply, and if you get it twice, you get kicked out of the job center program, which means no cash benefits.

If you want to get cash benefits (rent and/or cash assistance), you have to do the job center, which is five days a week, 9-4.  If you don't, you can apply separately for food stamps and for Medicaid, but you can't get money.  (They don't call any of this "welfare" any more, but that's what they used to call the rent and cash benefits.)  Our caseworker suggested that the job center "might not be for you," but that we should at least try it for a few days.  I guess he was implying that we had enough skills and experience to job hunt alone.  My thinking was that if we hated it, we could quit and just get Medicaid and food stamps, and if neither of us had a job a month from now, we could go back into it.  Unfortunately, it takes 45 days from the time your case opens until you see a dime, and if we don't have at least one job in a month, we will not last 45 more days.

So Barry brought in his doctor's note today, and he had his orientation while I had my first day in a classroom.  And by the way, they give you plenty of papers in orientation and in class.  The papers and documents get a little dizzying.  I am constantly walking around with a purse full of paper, and every night I check very carefully to see what I need and do not need the next day.  Tomorrow I need to bring proof of a job interview on Tuesday, and of a home visit on next Friday.

"Home visit" kind of freaks me out the way "caseworker" does.  If they were still saying "welfare," I would be crying my eyes out.  Mostly I manage to see the whole thing as something that will help us out until we have a decent income again, but I have those moments of "I can't believe we're going on welfare."  I was brought up to think that was only for poor people...and then I remember that now I'm poor, too.  I was never rich, but I was also never poor before.

I was glad to see that the classroom is by in large a relaxed atmosphere and not very strict (except about arrival time and documentation for absences, duh).  Oh, they're also pretty serious about dress code.  No jeans, no sneakers, no hats.  In warm weather, no sleeveless shirts, no flip-flops, no shorts.  (Basically, you have to be dressed as if for an interview, though not necessarily a formal one. Lots of guys in chinos and a button-down shirt, no tie.  People chat and leave the room to see a "job developer" or work in the computer room, or just to stretch their legs.

You get assigned to one of four or five classrooms, and each one has an instructor.  Mine is pretty amazing.  Very smart, very funny, and very perceptive about the people in the room.  She picks up on someone's attitudes and characteristics very fast.  I think she knows quite a bit about me already.

The other folks -- there are about 30 in our classroom -- are more varied than I'd expected, quite a few well-educated and talented people and people who have held pretty serious jobs.  Most of them are very friendly and I met and had nice talks with quite a few. The instructor noticed the publishing experience on my resume and asked if should could introduce me to a guy in the class who had written a novel and was trying to get it published -- maybe I could tell him something about the process.  I said sure, and the guy was really nice, took me to lunch and we talked for a couple hours, mostly about publishing, writing, and his book.  I haven't really talked about that stuff with anyone for a while, and it was great fun.  I offered to help with his query letter and I asked to read the ms.  (He e-mailed it to me, and I realized that I could use this to convert it from .doc format to .mobi, and put it on my Kindle.  Have I mentioned that I love my Kindle?)

I'm going to Jannah's on Friday evening, and staying over through Monday (the center is closed for President's day).  Unfortunately, because of the holiday weekend, she and Linda couldn't gather "the girls" for a jewelry party, which is a bit of a bummer, since I was hoping to come home with a few hundred dollars.  But I'll get to hang out with her, take a break from everything going on here, let Barry have a little time to himself.  (Luckily, we are not assigned to the same classroom at the job center.)  Jannah even bought me a ticket to see David Johansen in Bordentown, and we're going with John and Linda, which will be a blast.  We're going to try again soon to either do another jewelry party or for me to do a Sunday sale at her shul.  I love Jannah's shul.  ("Shul," I think, is Hebrew rather than Yiddish, and I'm not sure how it differs from the English "temple."  I think that "temple" refers to the building itself, and "shul" means the building and the congregation, the synagogue (same as temple) and its community, but I might be dead wrong.  Jannah's shul is reconstructionist, which I'm not explaining now, but I'll say it's a branch of Judaism like reform, conservative, and orthodox.  I describe it as "reform reform."  As someone once said (I'm tired and forgetting names), You could look it up!

stupid newbie

I joined "LinkedIn" because everyone says you have to, when you're looking for work.  I guess I did the sign-in OK, but I have absolutely no idea what to do now or how it works. I am hoping that jobs fall from the trees.

Otherwise, it's just the usual morass of stress.  I saw a couple of employment agencies last week, temp and perm, and they all basically said, "Sign up with as many agencies as you can."  The market is kind of bleak.

Speaking of bleak, Barry and I have to do paperwork today for medicaid, food stamps, and cash assistance (or whatever they're calling welfare these days).  We had already completed the food stamps application, but apparently we have to do it all over again as part of applying for all three types of benefit.

Bleak is bleak, just plain bleak.  One break in the bleak is that I'm going out to Jannah's on the 18th, partly to visit but partly to see if I can sell some jewelry.  I'm making some very inexpensive memory wire bracelets for the occasion.

things are crazy

This job hunt feels like a death march.  It's hard to keep the anxiety and panic at bay.  I went to an orientation yesterday at a non-profit agency that Barry's been using.  I had a different orientation leader than he did, and she was awful.  She was doing a lot of "career counseling."  I don't have a career, never did, never will -- I want a job.  There's something of a difference.  The other four people there had real skills:  a CPA, someone with deep computer knowledge (I wouldn't know what to call it), someone with many years in finance.  Then there was a guy who had skills in about three different areas:  photography, marketing, and one or two other that I can't remember.  He also mentioned being four months behind on his rent.  (He seemed to be the only other person who needed to work fairly immediately.)  The leader actually said to him, "Pick one!", meaning to look for a job in only one of his skills areas.  Really?  I'd say make up three different resumes, and send them out for all three kinds of work. 

The leader was also talking about a lot about networking, but in a very different way than I can use.  She actually said she used to walk around Manhattan in a business suit, in case she ran into someone, blah blah blah.  She was also talking about going to seminars and professional meeting, and giving out your business card.  I asked if there was something I could use, since they don't have seminars and professional meetings for administrative assistants. She said, "Yes, they do!"  I'm wondering how I never heard of such a thing in 30 years, but never mind.  Business cards?  Talking to your doctor or manicurist or hairdresser?  I guess it's nice if you can afford any of these things.

The only thing she mentioned that could possibly be useful to me is LinkedIn.  Honestly, the whole thing made me miserable.  Made me feel fairly useless and left-behind.  I'm not sure why I never did have a career.  I guess the few areas where I worked and could have built a career didn't work out in some way (in recent years, that would have been both Penguin and Dweck).

I've actually had a couple of interviews and seen one agency; I'm seeing another agency tomorrow and I have another interview on Friday.  At this point, I will basically take anything where I can earn money.  I haven't applied to any corporate/conservative places because I'm not a good fit and would never be hired.  I'm also looking for temp positions -- if I can earn about $2000 between now and the end of March, I'll be eligible for unemployment, which would be a nice safety net.

I guess I'm feeling a little sad about who and where I am.  I often feel like a failure, but now I pretty much feel like an absolute zero, like I'm very close to evaporating and no longer existing.  Maybe it's partly because of that orientation yesterday.  I'm out of people to network with.  I have only a handful of friends, and as much as I appreciate them, none of them can help me as far as work.  Facebook yielded one friend whose aunt's friend makes beaded jewelry in New York and sometimes hires someone to help her assemble.  We were introduced by e-mail but nothing has come of it.  (Assembling jewelry is kind of scut work anyway.)

On top of it all, Barry is feeling terrible because I'm getting some nibbles and interviews and he hasn't.  Then again, I don't think he's filing a tenth as many resumes as I am.  He seems to kind of wait around for these seminars and workshops.  I don't think he knows how to respond to this situation, although he's been pretty good about staying within rigid budgeting.  This week is his last unemployment check, and I withdrew the first chunk from my 401(k).  That has to last all this month, and then there's one more equal chunk for March, and after I pay April's rent, we have no more money.  Barry's working on medicaid and public assistance and we're waiting to hear about food stamps, but I just can't count on any of these until we have them in hand.

I'm going to Jannah's the weekend of the 18-20th, partly to visit but also so I can try to sell some jewelry to her posse.  I'll sell it cheap -- I just want to turn it into cash.  I've started making some things with silver-plate and even base metal, because silver is insanely expensive of late and I can't really afford to buy anything.  I did blow $4.50 on an ounce of bracelet-sized memory wire the other day, which will make over 25 one-wrap bracelets.  I can sell those for $5 each, assuming someone wants to buy them.

 I signed up for something called Resume Rabbit, which for $29, sends your resume to 87 job search sites.  The orientation lady said it was a bad idea, "because who knows who's seeing your resume," but I've already gotten 5 or 6 e-mails with job postings.  The orientation lady can go fuck herself.

interviews and Williamsburg

I actually had two job interviews today, which is not too shabby for my second week working.


The first one was in Sunset Park, an iffy Brooklyn neighborhood (albeit loaded with great Mexican luncheonettes) with a fair amount of industry. The main drag is 4th Avenue, but this business was between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, right past the BQE (= Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a big elevated roadway).  It's a wholesaler of souvenir items, and the job is administrative assistant.  The interview took about three minutes.  I was asked if I was working, what I did at my last job, and when I mentioned that I entered information into a proprietary computer system, she said, "We have that here, too."  She said it was general AA work, that the hours were 9-5:30 Monday through Thursday, and 9-5:00 on Friday.  She said that health insurance was offered after three months, and the medical was "OK," but the dental and vision are very good. She asked when I could start.  She asked if I had any questions.  She said that she'd call later this week and the idea was to have someone starting on Monday.


I figure they either decided from my resume that they absolutely wanted me, and this was just a formality -- or that they had already chosen someone and were just keeping this appointment to be polite.  Since I was actually interviewed by the assistant of the person I was supposed to see, I have to figure that they already had their candidate.  Also, there was no discussion about salary, though I filled out an application that asked for "salary desired," and I wrote "$32-35,000."  Then again, she did talk about benefits.  So this was all kind of weird and confusing.  


I feel like I've been out of the loop for a long time as concerns office work.  I have no idea what anyone wears to work any more.  I was super-overdressed for both my interview and my first day of work at Dweck.  Everyone wears jeans.  The woman at the souvenir company said that it's casual, and jeans on Friday.  I apologized for having dressed a little casually, but it was fine with her.  It was 25 degrees out, so I wore burgundy cords and a burgundy-on-beige blouse.  I don't think I have any pants that aren't jeans or cords except for a fairly busted pair of black chinos (pants with even a little stretch tend to get hopelessly busted and droopy).  I think I also have beige capri chinos, and some black-and-red pull-on Tienda Ho pants which are fairly not-plain (NG for an interview) and also way too lightweight for this weather.  (If you think about it, I started buying my new wardrobe in the warm weather, figuring I would add cold-weather pieces once I started working.)


If I get a job that's "casual" but not "jeans," I'll probably just have to get some decent pull-on pants (I have a brown pair that needs hemming) and wear tunics with that.  I mostly wore tunic-y shirts and jeans at Dweck, except there was a temperature problem.  The room I worked in was like a sauna.  It was something about the steam pipes traveling overhead, because no other part of the offices or factory was so hot.  In fact, the other end of the complex was often cold.  Basically, I wore short sleeves every day.  Every day.  I don't think I have as many nice long-sleeved shirts.


Second interview:  this was for a four-day job to work for a jeweler as a sales rep at a trade show.  Possibly a potential to stay on in sales.  The designer/jeweler is someone craftsy and already fairly professional (has a very beautiful website and has done trunk shows).  I met her and her husband at a cafe in Williamsburg.  Her jewelry is very nice and I could certainly talk about it with authority.  My sense is that they haven't talked to anyone yet who knew what vermeil was or what wire-wrap was or could name every stone in every piece.  I think the Dweck thing also impressed them.  They're paying a reasonably good hourly rate plus commission for the Javits thing, and are thinking about putting together a showroom and are looking for someone to staff it, which I said would certainly interest me.  They're going to have two people at Javits besides the designer, and I'm fairly sure they'll offer me one of the spots, though it's hard to say.  They might hire someone younger and cuter and teach her about the jewelry.  They had assumed that whoever they hired would need to be brought up to date on the particulars of the jewelry, which is why their ad mentioned a paid orientation session.  When I asked about the orientation, they told me what it was and pretty much indicated that it wouldn't be necessary for me.  But maybe they'll hire young cute people and orient them.  It would not be a smart way to go, but I'd understand it.  


I think it would be a lot of fun.  I also think it would be fun to run a showroom, but it's hard to imagine they would be able to make that a full-time job at first.


I actually do like her jewelry, although it's mostly very different from what I do.  It's probably the only way I could ever work for another jewelry designer:  that I admire his/her work, but it's very different from mine.  (Just like with Stephen.)


More than ever, I now know that there are no certainties in job-hunting.  Answering an ad for a job which seems like a perfect match is no guarantee of an interview.  A good interview -- or even three good interviews -- does not in any way mean there'll be an offer. An offer and acceptance doesn't mean that the job won't vanish.  And having a job doesn't mean you'll still have a job in three months.  (It wasn't recent, but I did have the experience of having accepted an offer, salary and start date fixed, and then someone else was hired instead.)  And getting two interviews out of ads answered in the first week of answering ads does not in any way indicate that I will get a lot of interviews.


I'm going to push fairly hard to temp, since if I temp around four weeks before the end of March, I'll be eligible for unemployment.  This will make hunting for something permanent a little less stressful.  End of March is pretty much when we'll be totally out of money.  Barry has three more weeks of unemployment benefits, I have about $5,000 in my 401(k), and that's it.  I get fairly panicky looking at that head-on, but that's pretty much it.  We are looking into pretty much any kind of public benefit we can qualify for, and I just don't want to list those right now.  It's fairly depressing.  Also kind of shocking, since I never in my life imagined even considering any kind of public assistance.


So, I'm just answering ads, putting my best foot forward, and hoping.


I did want to say something about Williamsburgh, the neighborhood where I met the jewelry people today.  WB is kind of like what Soho or the East Village was thirty years ago, but it's the first neighborhood of this type in Brooklyn.  That is, a neighborhood that was fairly poor and run-down but was colonized by young and artsy people because space was cheap.  This worked in Williamsburg even though it's in Brooklyn, because there's very quick and easy subway access to Manhattan.  So now it's all full of trendy restaurants and cafes and art galleries and lots of music clubs.  Some Manhattan clubs have even moved there.  There are some artists you just plain can't see without going to Williamsburg.  The problem is that it's kind of a pain to get there from anywhere else in Brooklyn.  I actually had to go from Brooklyn to Manhattan to get a train back to Brooklyn that goes to Williamsburg.  I think the "cool" section of WB is quite a distance form the subway, since I had to hike quite a bit from the train to the cafe, which only seemed to be at the outer border of the artsy area.  (Part of the overall neighborhood is also Hassidic, which has been the case for many years.)  Williamsburg doesn't seem to be all that gentrified, though it's now unaffordable.  The younger folks and students are now gravitating to Greenpoint and even Bushwick, which are adjacent to WB.  (Greenpoint is an old-school, middle-class Polish enclave, and I hate to admit that I know pretty much nothing about Bushwick.  I believe that Bushwick is/was referred to as "dangerous," which I think is Polite Code for "poor" and/or "minority."


In the early and middle 90s, before WB got cool, I used to go there once in a while to shop at the late lamented Domsey.  Domsey was an enormous bargain store but mostly known for the gigantic used clothing section.  The prices were quite gentle, and you could go with $30 and come home with three enormous shopping bags.  Williamsburg was terrible then, partly Hassidic, partly bombed-out/ghetto-looking.  But Domsey was awesome.  Also, the very famous steakhouse, Peter Luger, has been there for many years.  I believe I was taken there once as a teenager; apart from the location, it's way expensive, and still considered one of the very best in NYC.  From before Williamsburg was cool.

day one

Ironically, my right wrist is killing me from carrying maybe 30 pounds of beads back from Manhattan yesterday.

A couple of friends have offered advice or said they would keep an eye out.  I talked to the NYS tax people (they levied my account about a week ago, and then released part, and I was to make payments of 10% of my gross).  I told the man that I had lost my job and offered to pay the percentage from my last two paychecks.  He was very nice and said, "Well, you might need that money."  I said I was worried about my account being levied again.  He said if I do not make the voluntary payments (that 10%), they would contact my employer. He said I should call back in a month to make sure there was no action against my account.

I'm also going to file for unemployment -- I don't think I'm eligible, but all they can say is no.  Can't file right now because I worked four days this week.  I can do it on Monday.

I finished a beautiful bracelet last night, and really enjoyed myself making it.  I haven't made as much jewelry in the past couple of years, but I find when I do it now, I'm slower and more meticulous and take more pleasure in the process.  For instance, when I was working on the bracelet, I decided that I didn't really like a three-pearl element I had used.  I used to let that kind of thing go.  But this time I removed it, and removed anything that I tried and didn't really love, so when it was done, it was exactly the way I wanted it.  Well, almost.  The clasp I had wanted to use turned out to be a bum one, wouldn't stay closed.  It was a drag, because it was a box clasp with a beautiful faceted peridot that mirrored a small portion of peridot in the bracelet.  But I ended up with a silver box clasp, which looked just fine.

I am planning a lazy day today, although I did check into the state tax situation and unemployment.  But I'm definitely going to kick back a bit, and then start the job-hunting grind tomorrow.

maybe a dream job?

OK, I answered a Craigslist ad yesterday for a purchaser for stones and beads for a high-end jewelry designer in Brooklyn.  I said in the ad that in addition to the administrative requirements, which I met, I have bought stones and beads for eight years as a jewelry hobbyist.  The guy replied almost immediately and asked about my salary requirements.  I told him, and noticing that his last name was the same as one of my favorite contemporary jewelry designers, I asked if they were connected, and they are.  He told me about the salary arrangement:  it's a good number based on a five-day work week, but the work week is only four days just now, probably going to five days early next year.  The four-day salary is a mite light, but I said it would be fine.  What he actually said was, "If we offer you the position pending a positive interview, would this be acceptable for your salary needs?"  That sounds to me like he's fairly sold on me already.  So I have an interview on Friday, and get this -- the studio is about six blocks from where I live!  how amazing is that?  Just the idea of working six blocks from home, buying stones and beads for one of my favorite contemporary jewelry designers...how cool is that?  (In addition, because I'm familiar with the designer's work, I already know what kinds of stones and beads he works with.)  I'm supposed to meet with the contact and one of his "associates" -- I'm wondering is it's going to be the designer.

When I lived in Manhattan, in the east 50s (I lived there for eight years before I met Barry and moved back to Brooklyn -- my Manhattan apartment was way too small for two), I loved walking around the city.  Almost every Saturday, I would walk across to the west side, go to the Donnell Library (a much better branch than my local one was), and do some strolling and window-shopping.  Since I was already insane about jewelry (though not yet making my own), I would usually look in Tiffany.  In the days when my credit was better, I got a Bergdorf's credit card, though I rarely used it for anything more than cologne and cosmetics (with the exception of one occasion when I splurged on a $700 coat, marked down from $1,200, which was huge money in 1988 -- and I still wear the coat!).  But I would often go into Bergdorf's on those strolling Saturdays, mostly looking at the first-floor cosmetics and accessories.  That's where I spotted this guy's jewelry, which was too expensive for me at the time, but I fell in love with his work. 

I have five contemporary jewelry designers I love, and actually own work by two of them (sterling Elsa Peretti earrings, and a Chan Luu necklace, five strands of coral beads, that I won in a drawing from Fragments).  (The stuff Chan Luu is showing now on Fragments is not nearly as nice as some of her older stuff.)  I got the Elsa Perettis by being a bit of a pig -- a fairly distant relative sent Barry and me a cake stand from Tiffany as a wedding gift, something we wouldn't use in a dozen lifetimes.  I cashed it in, and instead of getting something for us, I got the Elsa Peretti earrings to wear at my wedding.  Actually, Barry had gotten me a pair of Elsa Peretti sterling heart stud earrings for the first birthday I had after we met (I got him a pricey Native American sterling bracelet), but I lost one.  I also have a sterling heart-link bracelet from Tiffany that my folks gave me when I graduated college in '93.  I'm not that label-crazy, but then again, maybe I am when it comes to jewelry.  And Tiffany, let's face it, is Tiffany.

I gave that collectibles gallery one last shot -- e-mailed them and said, in a polite way, hey, weren't you going to get back to me for a second interview? I did hear back, and of course the response was very different than what I'd originally been told, but it was worth a shot.

Barry is still deep in whatever's going on with him.  He's having a foot problem on top of everything else, so I'm going with him to the podiatrist today.

Maybe I'm more attracted to the herbal guy (I suppose I can call him Herb) more than I thought, because I've recently found myself somewhat drawn to a couple of tall, thin Asian dudes on TV.  Go fig. 

jobs and disappearing debt

I did interview for the uptown university job on Tuesday.  The department chair and four faculty members interviewed me.  They all seemed quite nice.  The only possible hiccup is that I didn't have some of the computer skills they asked about, though I imagine they were "preferred" rather than mandatory since I wouldn't have responded to the ad if they were required.  I of course said that I could pick up any of them easily.  I've used a personal computer on the job since 1984; in fact, the first one I used didn't even run on MS-DOS (it was CP/M, which I guess fell by the wayside a long time back).  I've probably learned about two dozen programs/software in those years, not counting newer versions of old products.  Anyway, I thought the interview went fairly well and I'm pretty sure I'd like the job.  I poked around online for the union contract that would cover this job, and even though I couldn't find a code for the title, I checked a couple of grades of administrative jobs and I figure this job should pay around $42K to start.  Plus it seems to be a very good union.

I have debt, some of it very old, mostly hangovers from various periods where good income suddenly dropped off, and never again became good enough to pay off much debt in addition to current needs.  They mostly involved various small lines of credit -- 300 here, 400 there, store cards and small-limit credit cards.  About six months ago, I paid off a couple when I got those notices offering a settlement for a one-time payment of a much lesser amount.

But one of these collection agencies has been bugging me a lot over the past year.  It was from a small-limit credit card from maybe three or four years ago.  But as best I can remember, the card had a $350 limit, and these people were trying to get me to pay over $700.  They've been phoning a lot over the past eight months or so. When it occurred to me that they were trying to collect a whole lot more than I thought I should owe, I started asking the callers to send me an itemized bill, since I thought the charge was incorrect.  A couple of them said they couldn't provide it.  I got to the point that when they called, I just said, "I'm not paying anything because I think the amount is incorrect.  If you send me an itemized bill, then I'll talk to you about it.  I'm not paying anything until I see an itemized bill," and then hung up the phone.  This happened about ten times.  Finally, someone called and said, "I understand you want to see an itemized bill, since you think the billing amount is wrong."  I said yes, and she said, "OK, we can do that."  This was about two months ago, and I never received the bill, though they did stop calling me.  Today, I got a letter from them saying that my balance owed is zero and they're going to remove it from all three credit reports!  I don't think this was one of the bills I paid off six months ago (OK, my record-keeping leaves something to be desired), but if someone tells me I don't owe them money, that's just fine with me.

I got a call about a week ago from another collection agency, saying that I owed something, maybe a few hundred dollars, to T-Mobile.  About 4 or 5 years ago, we went into a T-Mobile store to get phones and a plan, and they did an instant credit check and said that my credit was not good enough.  Period.  I told this to the guy who called, and I could tell he didn't believe me, and I repeated it several times, and threw in something about identity theft, and he finally said, "We'll investigate it and inform you of our findings within thirty days." Yikes!  But yesterday, I got a letter saying that we don't owe T-Mobile squat.  Again, I love a debt that vanishes.  I think I've actually cleared up everything except a student loan and taxes.  But I can't do anything more until I'm working.

Went to meet my herbal pal today.  He's a little shy and awkward, but he's a really nice guy.  I told Barry that I like the guy because he doesn't treat me like I'm twice his age, or act like it's weird that someone my age should be doing business with him, and so on.  Barry asked, "Is this guy coming on to you?"  Maybe I sounded like I liked him too much."  I said no, and later thanked him for thinking that someone would come on to me.  I told him that no one had come on to me for nearly thirteen years; this is nearly true.  That was the last *new* person who came on to me.  Someone I'd known for a long time had an eye on me in the interim.  But the truth is that maybe I enjoy the herbal guy a little too much, just a little.  For the most part, men overlook me, except old hippies from outside New York City.  (The thirteen-years-ago guy was one of those.)  That's been true for years.  Apart from being overweight, I'm short and flat-chested.  (Lucky me, overweight *and* flat-chested!)  Herbal Guy is not a flirt and has not been forward in any way, but he really seems interested in me and in getting to know me.  Maybe he just likes to be friendly with his customers, but it's nice anyway.  Hey, he said he liked my earrings (unsolicited), which will get pretty much anyone in my good graces, big-time.  It's not just admiring my work -- I like someone who notices details and is any sort of aesthete. 

Current earworms...I'm not sure if I explained the other thing, or what I called it, the sort of self-earworm thing when I repeat and repeat a song on my mp3 player or computer because I'm really enjoying it and can't stop listening to it.  It's like an input-worm.  Sometimes an input-worm turns into an earworm, or vice-versa.  But here are the current leaders:  Boogaloo Down Broadway by Fantastic Johnny C.  (I could swear I posted a video for this recently, but now I can't find it.  So go to YouTube and look around.)  Wild Young Hearts by the Noisettes.  I don't seem to be getting tired of that one.  There's one I heard today that may be a future one:  Bedroom Boogie by the Red Elvises.  A friend told me about the Red Elvises, and what I've heard so far is pretty cool.  And while we're on music, I wanted to mention Los Straitjackets, who are obscure but very cool.  They play surf instrumentals; rumor has it that they're a bunch of top-notch Nashville studio guys.  But no one knows, because they wear lucha libre masks.  They've been doing it for around fifteen years, way before lucha libre was on anyone's map in the US. I saw them once at the old Tramps.

On Sunday, I went to the Atlantic Antic, a huge annual street fair on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.  Unlike a lot of the usual street fairs in New York, which tend to have the same vendors and food stands, the AA had a lot of interesting foods from local restaurants, and wonderful jewelry and clothing and such from local artisans and craftspeople.  I swear that every third table was jewelry.  It's the first time I can remember that I started walking past jewelry tables because I was so overloaded.  (Lucky for Barry he wasn't with me, because I stopped and stopped and stopped.)  I ended up buying some little silver stud earrings, a tee-shirt for Barry, and some tights, leggings and a purse from Brooklyn Industries (they had a whole table of stuff for $5 apiece -- that bag was easily a $50-60 item originally).  The Transit Museum had an exhibit of old busses on two blocks -- you could get on them, and they had old ads.  A couple of people I knew were playing music, but I only caught one.  I hadn't been to the AA for a few years, and I really enjoyed myself.

jobs and so on

I never did hear from the collectibles place.  I'm guessing it had to do with the hourly rate I wanted, even though I said I could be flexible.  I can't imagine what else it could have been.  But I'm still determined to work in the collectibles field.  I've started educating myself online about different types of collectibles.  I started with vintage watches and am wishing I knew how to repair them, since eBay has a lot of decent watches going for very low prices because they need cleaning and/or repair.  That would be an awesome business: repairing and selling vintage watches.  I'll have to research how to learn watch repair.

I took a beading class on Saturday.  I get daily e-mail coupons from Groupon and Living Social, which provide discounts for local stores and services.  Living Social had one last week for classes at a small bead store in Brooklyn -- $15 for a coupon good for $45 worth of classes. I'd been to the store and hadn't been impressed (very small and high prices), but a couple of the classes looked interesting, so I bought the coupon and registered for a class on making wire-wrapped rings.  It turned out that I was the only person registered for the class, so I got a private lesson, and made two rings there, and three more at home.  Good skill, and I liked the lesson.  Since I learned almost all of my jewelry skills from magazines and books, I often turn up my nose at classes (the only one I took before this was on knotting, which I just couldn't figure out from diagrams), but this one was really useful.

I'm bailing on an interview today with a temp agency, with a long-term position that, now that I look at it, is most likely highly corporate.  Plus I'm getting enough nibbles on my applications that I'd like to stay available for interviews.  I have one on Friday, for a university job.  I have mixed feelings about it: the pay and bennies are probably quite good.  On the downside, the potential boss seems extremely formal; also, I screwed up and applied to a university where the commute would be appallingly long, maybe two hours each way.  When I applied, I confused it with another school whose campus is on 42nd Street.  There are a couple of universities I haven't bothered with because of a similarly long commute, and this should have been one of them.  Well, we'll see about it *if* I am offered the job and *if* the money is right.  (My idea of "right" for this job is anything over 40K with benefits and without frequent overtime.  I would consider another job "right" for a lot less pay if the commute were shorter.)

In the meantime, I'll continue to file applications and hold out a dim hope that the collectibles gallery has just been too busy to call and that I'll eventually hear from them.