It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon…
Oh wait. Wrong shtick.
So anyway, I’ve been puttering along on my job search since Midwest Furfest, tossing applications off from place like Monster and Flipdog with little expectations of replies. Certainly no phone calls from recruiters or anything like that. Well, on Tuesday that all changed. I got calls from three different recruiters, and one other one on Wednesday. It appears that the hoped-for break in the logjam in the first quarter of 2003 might actually be coming to pass.
The first recruiter had a possibility in Boston. I told him I would consider it, but I really was centering my search in the Chicago area. No problem – he can get more info to me and we’ll see what develops. I’d be stupid to flatly turn down anything. The second recruiter didn’t have much for me specifically, but we chatted about my resume for about a half and hour and she’s got a good picture of me and my credentials. The fourth recruiter had a project engineering position in Kalamazoo that requires seven year’s experience in managing capital projects. I only have two years under my belt, so I don’t really think it’ll go anywhere, but who knows? Can’t say I’m wild about Kalamazoo, but I could do worse.
The third recruiter I talked to, though – she had a job I’m really excited about. It’s in Belvidere, Illinois, just five miles east of Rockford. I thought it was pretty far out until I did some checks on Mapquest – Belvidere is about as far west of Chicago as Joliet is south of Chicago. That’s not so bad at all. The job is with Green Giant, which was owned by Pillsbury, which was purchased by General Mills a few years back. It’s a systems engineer position, and according to the general job description sounds like it would be something I would really enjoy. What really got me interested is when I looks at the job benefits – domestic partner benefits mentioned prominently, new employees get three weeks of vacation. Hell, at my last job I was still three years away from getting anything more than two weeks of vacation. Not that it would ever apply to us, but I also noticed that fathers of newborns (and those adopting!) get one week of paid leave – if nothing else, I really like the thinking behind policies like that. I should know in the next few days if they are interested in a phone interview, even though that wouldn’t take place until after the first of they year.
In other news…
Not too much going on. Got some Christmas shopping done. Got our tickets for the trip to Chicago in January as well. We’ll be at NoCoasterCon, then some meetings for Midwest Furfest. Got the budget for Registration for MFF 2003 put together as well. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, but right now I’m guessing we’ll see about 20% growth (down from last year’s 32.5% growth, but better than the prior year’s 8.1%). This would give us a total attendance of 820, with 128 sponsors. I’ll probably be modifying those estimates on the fly as registrations come in.
On the to-do list:
Make bread today.
Watch the finale of The Amazing Race tonight.
Watch the Survivor finale tomorrow night (not that we really care. This season has been a real dud).
Watch the super-duper edition of Fellowship of the Ring this weekend (we never got around to seeing it in theaters).
Go see The Two Towers this weekend.
Meet Thomas (and Sherry?) for darts and beer Monday afternoon (need to look up other game rules so we can play something besides Cricket and 301/501).
Prepare the menu for the Orphan’s Christmas Party we’re having on Christmas Eve (mmm, deep fried turkey…)
Think about the menu for our New Year’s Party. The only definites are artichoke dip and Thomas’ delectable tiramisu.
That’s great news about the recent activity on the job search front. I wish you the best of luck.
Oh, on the deep fried turkey…..please be an intelligent southerner and cook the bird outside the house! I just laughed when that became the new craze around here and houses started to go up left and right. Fried turkey is so absolutely moist and tender, but for gosh sake, take the fryer outside folks!
Please do not set fire to the dog
Actually, even though we have a turkey fryer, I’ve never used it to fry a turkey. The burner is fabulous for ultra-high heat applications – we had a do-it-yourself Mongolian stir-fry at our Memorial Day party, and it was perfect for tghat. There’s no way to get a wok hot enough indoors (please the cleanup was easy since we were doing it out on the patio).
The burner is also great for cooking stuff outdoors that gets rather smoky, like steak au poivre. For our NC Pride party, I set it up in the garage (it was raining) and cooked up a mess o’steaks in my trusty cast-iron skillet, then made up a yummy brandy-cream sauce in the pan when I was done. Fabulous!
(I really need to get one of these…)
Re: Please do not set fire to the dog
Ok….I bow now to the cooking guru *bows* You have my tummy just rumbling in the middle of my the Substation II lunch I am having at the office 😛 Bad dog…very bad dog!
And that apron….OMG that’s classic!
Oooh! Good luck in getting that job! Systems engineering is fun. Of course, I’ll have to get you a Starfleet Engineering badge to wear while you are on duty, you know 🙂
Uhhh…thanks?
(Sorry, I was reminded of The West Wing episode a few weeks back for a minute there 😉
It would be a bit of a different career path for me, but I like where it could lead. We’ll have to see…
I’m really glad to hear that things are looking up on the job front. Good luck with the one in Belvidere!
o/~ I’ve got a dog in Kalamazoo-zoo-zooooo… o/~
Actually, Kzoo may not be a totally bad place — about 2 hours from Chicago, a college town (Western Michigan), and it’s where my uncle lives, and he seems to be a fairly liberal minded kinda guy. 🙂
But I’m cheering for Belvidere!
Re: o/~ I’ve got a dog in Kalamazoo-zoo-zooooo… o/~
Kalamazoo’s a bit farther than that- closer to Grand Rapids, which is a good 4 hours from south Chitown.
And while I guess Michigan’s not that bad, I do vastly prefer Illinois. 🙂
And dammit, I forgot to turn in my registration for 2003 at the con… but I wasn’t sure where to take it. Guess I’ll just wait and hand it over at one of the meetings. 😉
-Kes
Re: o/~ I’ve got a dog in Kalamazoo-zoo-zooooo… o/~
You can turn it your registration at any meeting – that’d be fine. Heck, if it’s a rollover you just e-mail your info to me at duncan [at] wolfhusky.org and I can enter into the database from here.
As for Kalamazoo, well, I have some qualms about being on the receiving end of all those lake-effect snows coming in off Lake Michigan…
Re: o/~ I’ve got a dog in Kalamazoo-zoo-zooooo… o/~
You don’t get hit with the lake effect stuff much in Kalamazoo, unfortunately.
I *loved* the snowstorms when I lived in Traverse City. Of course I am a southerner, and that was my first northern winter, so I still had that ‘Holy shit! SNOW!’ thing going, but…. mmm. 🙂
And yep, I’m a rollover, but I’ll have to find my form to figure out exactly what I need to send you. =) Thanks!