Wow this weekend flew by. Friday night, we stayed in and watched movies with Amanda. Saturday, we went out to brunch with Chris. Sunday, we woke up early to go snowboarding. I am getting so much better! We went to Stevens Pass this weekend and I got to go up on a higher slope. At first it was daunting, but I'm really getting the hang of things. I did get hurt a couple of times getting off the lift, but just bruises. They will heal. It's all good. Getting off the lift is so hard! Tony says I am doing better than both he and Julie on their third day out. I don't fall that much, but I'm still pretty cautious. Strangely enough, my legs aren't sore like I expected. Granted, I am sore, but that's due to falling.

I lovelovelove snowboarding!

3 days until X-mas!

I had a phone interview this morning at 9:00am. It lasted 20 minutes. But it's OK! So yeah. This job is perfect for me. First immediate connection: it's for the Windows Media Player Digital Rights team. I worked intensively with WMP DRM during my time at Intertainer. The program manager knows my former bosses. He was one of our main contacts at Microsoft when we would find bugs in WMP with our product. So yeah. It helped lots. The interview was very easy. He mainly told me about what the team does and the role the coordinator plays in it all. Asked me only a few questions which is a-okay. I will have the rest of my interviews with other team members after the holidays.

Last night, I went over to Tony's and he was going to help me get ready for this interview. I was so not in the mood and couldn't get motivated. Now I don't feel so bad since I really didn't need to prepare that much for this phone interview. Now I have two weeks to prepare for my live interviews. I think I am going to be the master interviewee at the end of all of this.

.................................................................................................
Waiting for the phone to ring for my phone interview.
Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.Wait.

My apologies for the previous short post. I was headed to Tony's to catch the season finale of "King of the Jungle". Snowboarding on Sunday was funfun (of course) and I did much better this time. Granted, the bunny slope at Crystal is MUCH easier than the one at Steven's, but it allowed me to practice balancing, stopping, turning and stuff. I didn't fall down as hard this time and did not end the day with a sore butt/ankle/wrist. After getting back from the mountain, a few people came over and ate chili I made the night before. Mmmm...chili.

This week has been pretty uneventful so far. Watched Margaret Cho's movies "Notorious C.H.O." and "I'm the One I Want". She is very entertaining. Job postings have been minimal...I am hoping that will change with the new year. The phone interview I was meant to have tomorrow got pushed back to Friday. More time to prepare, I suppose.

I can't believe I am going to be in Florida next week. Crazy. I'm trying to put together a little gifty for everyone...we'll see if I can pull it together in a week or so.

OK...stuff to do before going over to Tony's tonight. Amanda wants to make us dinner :-)

Crystal Mountain 12/14/03

The thing with Parker went well, but they don't have any placements right now. Bah. Paula called me on Wednesday to set up another interview - this time it will be a phone interview first. It's next Thursday. I will prepare even more for this one.

Argh! All this stress has caused my shingles to reappear. Ow! Ow!

Tuesday night, I went to dinner with Teresa at Hattie's Hat. That place has some yummy food! Good talks all around.

Wednesday night, Amanda, Tony and I went to a musical put on by Seattle Central Community College. Amanda went to school there for a little bit and knew most of the people in the cast. It was so long and wasn't very good IMO. Reminded me of plays from high school. Runaways I think it was called. It was written in the 70's. After the play, we went to the club for a little bit.

Thursday, Tony & I went to Goodwill. He ended up getting several coffee mugs and some other kitchen stuff. Thrifting is fun!

Tonight is birthday party night. First, we'll be going to Teresa's celebrations early in the evening. She is doing a bar-hopping thing in Ballard with a bunch of her work friends. Since neither Tony nor I can afford that right now, we will only be able to make an appearance for a short period of time. Later tonight is Stine's b-day party down at Open Circle. It will be a bunch of theater people which always makes things interesting.

We are going snowboarding again this Sunday! Yay! I am so excited!

Saturday was a very lazy day and it was lovely. I finished a book I had been re-reading and that's about it. We went out to the club that night since I had a little extra money after getting the unemployment check. Did some socializing and stuff.

I made these yummy cheese stuffed mushrooms on Friday night from a cookbook Sandi gave me for taking care of her pets. There is also a recipe for Stilton & Celery soup that I will have to make for Teresa. She fell in love with it on the cruise; I hope this recipe is just as good.

I had brunch with Sandi & Christine on Sunday before going to this little festival thing where Sandi was performing in the choir that she is in. It was a little thing at the Phinney Ridge Community Center where they were selling overpriced arts & crafts stuff. Their performance was quite enjoyable and it made me think that it would be something both Mom & Dad would enjoy. Yes, I'm talking to you! You know you like to sing! Dad should wait until he's retired, though. You are too busy now to get involved in another activity. Mom, I think it would be a great activity for you and help you find the joy in singing that I know is inside of you. A community choir isn't a whole lot of pressure. Really!

The job thing: I got a call from Paula this afternoon regarding a few more positions that she will be submitting my resume to. She heard back about the Recruiting Coordinator position and the same thing happened - they chose someone who had previous Microsoft experience. They also do not give her feedback on how I interviewed even though she asks. They say fine, but we decided to go with someone who has MS experience. These other positions that she told me today sound much more interesting, so more finger-crossing that they will want to interview with me.

I finally got a call from Parker Staffing (the agency I worked with when I lived here before) after sending them my resume weeks ago. I have an interview/testing scheduled with them on Wednesday. They will be the 4th staffing agency. Why do I get this feeling that I am going to end up signing up with all of them?

All I want for Christmas is a job.

I went over to Tony's last night so he could help me prepare for my interview better. He was such a big help in giving me feedback to the questions that Jenn gave me to prepare myself. He got a call this morning seeing if he was available for an interview at Microsoft at 1:00pm today. Uncanny, no? So off we went to our interviews.

Mine took about an hour and I interviewed with 2 different people. It was for a Recruiting Coordinator position. They asked me kooky questions like, "Describe how you would make your favorite sandwich" and crap like that. Both were really hard to read so I'm not sure how I did (if they liked my answers or not.) The job didn't sound too exciting to me.

Tony didn't do so well in his interview. He was told that it was just going to be an informational interview and not a technical interview, but it was totally a tech interview that he was not prepared for. My boy has a hard time with interviews and his brain freezes up because he is so nervous. If you have any suggestions on how to help someone gain confidence while interviewing and to not be so nervous, please let me know. I have no idea how to help him with this. Now he's being hard on himself because he failed the interview when he knew the answers to the questions but just couldn't make his brain work. He did find out that he wouldn't have really liked the job anyway, but still.

So that was our interviewing adventures for the day. Staying in tonight and watching the telly.

I waited until 3:30pm on Wednesday before calling Paula back - I got her voicemail. Left her a message but never heard back from her that day. I did, however, hear from her this morning. I have an interview scheduled for 1:00pm on Friday! She didn't have much of a job description, so I'm not sure what team it is for or anything. I suppose I'll find that out tomorrow.

A phone call got me out of bed this morning. It was from the person I was waiting to hear from (Paula at CoreStaff) but wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. She informed me that she heard from another manager that is interested in interviewing me for another coordinator position. I asked about the previous one - she said he found someone that had worked at Microsoft as a coordinator previously, so he went with that candidate. That's understandable. So now I wait for another call to see when my next interview will be. It sounded like this hiring manager needs someone asap, so hopefully the process shouldn't be long.

*shimmyshimmyshakeshakeshake*
I got an unemployment check in the mail today!

Had a busy 4-day weekend. On Wednesday night, we went to the club for a little while. Thursday, I was up early again to go take care of Sandi's animals. Went home, made purple mashed potatoes and went over to Tony's to pick him up to go to Ira's. We went to Ira's for a little bit before having to leave to go pick up Amanda and go feed Sandi's herd again. Got back to Ira's shortly before the feast. There were between 10 and 20 people there throughout the night. The marshmallows on the yams caught on fire when baking in the oven when no one was paying attention. Catastrophe was avoided and the yams were still edible. Lots of yummy vegetarian food. Unfortunately, I felt quite sick later that night.

On Friday, I was still feeling pretty ill so I didn't do much. Tony took care of me and I felt better by the night.

Saturday was an early morning. I had to get up at 6:30am so I could feed Sandi's herd before meeting everyone at 7:00am for breakfast before heading out at 7:30am. We went to Steven's Pass this weekend. Go check out the pictures here. We got to the mountain around 9:30am, so I missed the 10:00am class. Tony took me down the run once before lunch. I was even impressed with how much I improved from the top to the bottom. After lunch, I went to the 1:00pm class. I learned a lot about balance and how to go in the direction you want. It was tons of fun. My class ended at 3:00pm and I met up with Scott. We sat in the lounge for awhile before Julie met up with us. Around 4:00pm, Tony & Chris joined us and we headed out. I actually didn't experience too much muscle soreness but plenty of pain from falling down. My butt, right wrist and left ankle hated me. My butt is still a little bruised today, but my wrist and ankle feel all better. After getting back to Seattle, Tony & I went over to Chris' for soup, spiced wine and video games.

I woke up Sunday morning with a head cold. After taking care of Sandi's herd, I pretty much laid in bed until 1:30pm. Didn't do much yesterday or today due to being sick. After I finish eating dinner, I'm going to go take care of Sandi's herd before picking them up at the airport around 9:30 tonight.

I hope I hear about the Microsoft job tomorrow. If I'm feeling better tomorrow, I'm going to call around to the agencies I have signed up with and see if there is any temp work or something. If there isn't, then I'm going to send my resume off to a couple of other agencies. I just wasn't feeling well enough to do any of that today.