Immeasurably More

A few weeks ago, I won a radio call in competition. "Congratulations! You're the 101st caller in the 101..." the voice on the telephone said. That's as far as the voice got. I was actually trying to call my doctor's office to schedule an appointment and I had fumble-fingered the number three or four times already.  So by the time my brain thought, "Wait.... What..?!"  I had already hung up and started dialing again. But my lucky streak did not run out!  The local library had a summer reading program; any adult who read four books received a Panera coupon (yea!  Panera!) and was entered in a drawing for miscellaneous stuff. Yours truly is now the proud possessor of this First Lines of Literature mug*. And tomorrow, I will buy a lottery ticket. *Jealous? Get yours at  www.philosophersguild.com

Last week, I submitted my first job application in more than seven years.  It took me almost two weeks to complete as I agonized over a customized resume and cover letter and an answer to the question "why would you be an asset to our company?"  I find my usual writing "voice" is self deprecating and mildly ironic, but neither of those tones are particularly useful when one goes begging for work. After a weekend off from my job search, I was back at the library this morning to pick up What Color Is Your Parachute? , a classic of the "How to find your perfect job" genre*. What Color Is Your Parachute? is updated each year in order to provide the latest advice to us the unemployed, and Mr. Bolles is pulling no punches in this edition.  In the very first chapter, he downplays the importance of the traditional resume I've just spent hours crafting.  He titles his second chapter is "Google is your new resume". "What we know for sure i...

An anonymous reader asks: "I have  DIVERGENT  on my Nook. Is it worth the read and should I spring for the other two books in the series?" Because I know this anonymous reader is actually my dad and because I know my dad's taste in books, I can unequivocally say: Read the book, Dad!  And you should have Insurgent downloaded before you finish Divergent , lest you get caught somewhere without internet access and a computer and you're forced to WAIT until you get home to be able to download it.   Now, maybe you have not heard of the Divergent trilogy.  It's ok - I hadn't either until I got back to the US this spring and some of my Facebook people-I-used-to-know-in-a-former-life started talking about the movie (still showing in some theaters here in Tulsa).  And then the library had a display of books that had inspired this summer's blockbuster movies and I decided to find out what it was all about. The setting: In the aftermath of devastating ...

July 4th seemed like an appropriate day to log onto USAJOBS.gov "the Federal Government’s official one-stop source for federal jobs and employment information*" in order to see whether I'm qualified for or interested in any available positions.  As the air rumbles with the sound of fireworks I can not see, I see that the USAJOBS.gov web masters wisely decided not to allow unfiltered searches, so I can't determine the total number of openings listed, but here are a few statistics that will have changed by next week. There are currently 13 openings with the Executive Office of the President - 10 of them unpaid internships. The other 3 require Top Secret security clearance.  All 13 are in Washington, D.C. As are the 15 positions open with the Library of Congress.  (Disappointing for me!)  In this context, the Library of Congress is considered part of the Legislative Branch. There are 927 jobs listed within a 20 mile radius of Washington, D.C., but job openings are...

I didn't intend to wait six weeks between blog posts; I achieved it only by carefully procrastinating one day at a time. You see, I made a deal with myself: I could take the month of June to stare at the clouds, doodle on notepads and watch hours of Booth and Brennan catching murderers, but when July came, I had to get serious about the rest of my life. So July happened yesterday.  And I'm feeling serious about this blog. Heretofore this blog has been primarily personal anecdotes and travel photos.  Fun, casual, easy reading (I hope).  Maybe it will go back to that eventually, but since I consider "the ability to string words together to form coherent sentences" to be one of my more transferable job skills, I'm going to try to mix in some more serious, opinionated, and/or informative posts.  Maybe even a little fiction.  Stuff that will legitimately count as "writing samples". Here's how you can help: Feeling curious?  Send me your ideas fo...

After my grandfather died in January, my aunts made sure that one of them or one of their friends was sleeping over at my grandmother's house all the time.  Grandma was pretty shaken by the loss of her husband of 66 1/2 years, and because of her chronic back problems, everyone agreed that it was better if she had some company during the day and definitely someone else sleeping in the house at night.  Then I showed up in March and Grandma's had three months of my being around.  And for three months she's been insisting - really, she could live alone if we'd all just give her the chance. Over the course of 86 years, my grandmother has gone from living with her parents, to a residential position at a children's home where she fell in love with my grandfather, to 66 years of married life.  And I, as a woman who's lived alone most of the last 8 years, I'm thinking... Grandma.  You have *no* idea what you're asking for. But the out-of-Tulsa-town family is...

When I was a teenager, my parents gave me a birthday card which had a drawing of a messy pink bedroom and the message "Living with you, we understand why hurricanes are named after girls."  I would like to claim that this was an unprovoked act of parental humor, but no one who has seen my bedroom then or since would believe it.  Tidiness is not among my natural gifts. When I packed to leave England, I have 49 parcels; 47 were shipped and 2 were taken on the plane with me to Tulsa.  Of those 47 shipped parcels, half a dozen found their way into my former bedroom, forcing me to negotiate a path to the closet so I could hang up my coat.  "Ah... the good old days." I thought as I was forced to find floor space for my duffle since my guitar case was already on the bed. I had arrived at my parents house with a list of things I wanted out of those 47 boxes and suitcases: kitchen scale, books, stationary, contact lenses, summer clothes and high heeled shoes, and, of co...