Well, the weekend got off to a rather rocky start today, since Pook had gotten sick during the night. Of course, she hasn’t learned to sense these things yet and didn’t make it to the loo, so the first step this morning was to hit the carpet with cleaner. Then again after I got out of my shower, the poor dear.

So, I called in to class and took care of her here, since the EMC is currently sick and her husband can’t take care of the both of them on his own while working. Pook was feeling much better by lunchtime, but obviously tired – I’m betting she slept pretty lousily last night. She napped out at 3 or so on the way to the EMC’s to grab some more clothes for the weekend, and again once we got home. In fact, she’s still zonked on the couch as I type.

I didn’t manage to get much in the way of job hunting today – I napped out myself for an hour or so at 10am. I did manage to get an email off to one of the conselors at class who has an in with Clackamas county – that’s two so far, since BtFR knows the guys over at CC Sheriff’s Ofc. I have been directing just about every erg of energy I have into visualizing me getting this job – spent an hour or so today researching the laptops they use; I’ll be delving into the software over the weekend.

Now, I just have to find the homes of the hiring committee and plant subliminal messaging devices near their beds so I can whisper in their ears as they sleep. ;)

I’ll never understand why city, county and state job applications require such stupendous amounts of information. Today’s award for ridiculous requests goes to Clackamas County for saying “List ALL of your previous positions after the three most recent. Attach additional sheets if necessary.”

All? Excuse me? Do you really think that job I had mowing lawns when I was 10 really has any bearing on the position I’m applying for? Okay, maybe if I was going for Parks and Rec or something, but a computer tech? Cut me some slack here!

Personally, I can remember the names of the companies and what I did for them back to the beginning, but specifics like addresses and dates of employment are long gone from my memory. Frankly, some of them I would like to forget what I can remember of them.

Sorry for the lack of real content lately, folks, but I have been busy with some real-life concerns.

As I said, last week was spent in the job-search preparedness class out at PCC. this was an 8-hour-a-day thing that lasted all week. Not a complete waste of time, but I could have condensed the information I needed into a much smaller timeframe.

Now it’s back to the regular full-time job search, which I have been doing since way back in March. I’ve gone on a couple of interviews, but so have 3 million other IT guys, so it’s no real surprise that I haven’t been hired yet. It’s some tough competition out there right now, and employers are quite happy that right now they can get a guy with 4 times the qualifications they need for half the price.

When I’m not job-searching, I have been watching a lot of Stargate: SG-1 lately, since my girl works at the library and has been scoring us entire seasons on DVD. My regular watching habits were pretty hit-or-miss, so it’s nice to be able to see them all in order.

The only book I’ve had a cance to read lately was Marque and Reprisal by Elizabeth Moon. It’s the sequel to Trading in Danger, and both books are good quality space opera. The story follows Kylara Vatta, the daughter of a shipping conglomerate, through her life from being thrown out of the Space Force Academy and back into the corporate fold. Her first assignment goes haywire, and things pretty much get screwed from there. In the second book, things are getting more screwed, but she still manages to pull through – mostly by the skin of her teeth.

Unlike some other authors recently reviewed by Greyduck, Elizabeth Moon knows how to get her protagonists to do something stupid, and them beat them up for it.

Ok, back to the salt mines…

On the assurances that my older brother would spot me the gas money for the trip, I packed up the kids Wednesday afternoon and headed over the hills and through the woods to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Definitely a good decision. A better decision was equiping my rather hyper daughter with a portable DVD player and several movies for the trip. I would have killed for one of those when I was a kid.

My younger brother is currently home on leave while recovering from a wound received in Iraq – seems some fucktard got himself a rocket launcher and tossed an incredibly well-aimed shot into the compound the family Marine was stationed at, and he took some shrapnel in the ankle. This was just before the push into Faluja, so they shipped him home to heal, since he wasn’t able to fight at the time. He managed to make it back to Mom’s house the day I left, so things worked out rather nicely. It’s not often we can get all three of us boys in the same room nowadays.

While here, he decided to put some of his combat pay to use and grab some wheels to drive himself back to base with. If you see a mostly black 1979 Trans Am with blue stripes on the hood on the 5 in the next week or two, get out of his way. He’s got places to be and terrorists to obliterate. We talked about what he wants to do when he gets back over there, and he says he’s going to volunteer to be a Forward Observer – the guy with the radio and the laser designator, otherwise known as the most dangerous person you could ever face. That laser designator is guiding large pieces of ordinance into your front door. Smile for the camera.

Ma, of course, outdid herself once again with one of the tenderest, juciest turkeys to date. This huge bird (22#) came out of the oven so perfectly cooked that I almost pulled the carcass out of the meat while trying to get it out of the pan – I ended up having to drain all the goodies out and invert it onto a breadboard, then lift the pan off. At that point it was still too tender to flip over manually, so I had to repeat the procedure onto a second breadboard before I could carve it.

Hey Ma – that ziplock of leftovers you sent us home with didn’t make it back to the house – Ratty and I munched ’em the whole way home :)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.