Been remiss in updating here, mainly because I’ve been feeling pretty down. Things are on the upturn, so its time to bring things up to date…

We saw The Matrix Reloaded last week – OK movie, a bit mired in psychobabble, but it’s the middle edition of a trilogy – I’ll give it a passing grade because of that.

Over the weekend we went to Artsplosure (a local street/art/music festival). It wasn’t too bad, but I guess I’ve gotten jaded about these things. All the craft booths looked the same, and not having any money to spend didn’t make things much better. The company was good, though, so at least there was that. On Sunday we had a nice quiet day, running a few errands up to Southpoint Mall then having a nice night at home.

On Monday I got quite an unpleasant bit of news: my unemployment benefits, which I thought ran until September, end the first week of June. Apparently, the information the NC Employment Security Commission had on their website when I first looked was out of date. That put me in a mild state of panic and I sent out a good dozen resumes that day. Now, this isn’t quite the end of the world. We have a good nit of money socked away in savings and we can hold out for another few months between that and Dan’s salary, but it’s rapidly coming down to the wire. As a result, my list of possible locations, the biggest limiting factor in my job search so far, has suddenly expanded. What started as just Chicago, then Chicago/Milwaukee/Northern Indiana, then the Great Lakes Region, has now become “anywhere but Texas, New Jersey, the Deep South, or the Plains”.

On the bright side, I’ve already seen fruits from my expanded search. I got a call yesterday about one of the positions I’d applied for on Monday. This led to a phone interview this morning. After a surprisingly brief conversation, I now seem to have a face-to-face interview next Thursday. Now the downside: it’s in Richmond, Missouri, a small rural town about 40 miles east of Kansas City. I’m of mixed feelings about this – it’s marginally closer to Chicago (8 hour drive by way of Des Moines). It’s quite a small company; I’m not sure how many employees but I’m certain it’s fewer than fifty. Domestic partner benefits are pretty unlikely, but I don’t really have much information at all about the company. The town itself is a tiny farming town, not even on an interstate. I have a lot of misgivings about where Takaza might be able to find work there (unless his employer has a branch nearby, but they tend to have offices near airports and it’s nearly 50 miles to KC International). In short, a lot of unanswered questions, but I’ll go for the interview and see what happens.

Hey, it’s a nibble, and the first face-to-face interview I’ve had since November. That alone makes me pretty darned happy.

So I’m being all productive today, now that I’m feeling somewhat better. Did laundry earlier and I’m making up a nice batch of chicken stock. I’m also trying to make my own dulce de leche, since I was disgusted at how much they wanted to charge at Williams-Sonoma. So, for tonight we have country-fried steaks and mashed potatoes with cream gravy for dinner. Yum.