The Job Search and a Mild Obsession

I am finally getting the wheels rolling on this whole teaching thing. I spent half of this afternoon calling local high schools to see if they have open positions and had a moment or two of grinning hope coupled with several moments of mild panic when I heard receptionist after receptionist say, "No, all of our teaching positions are filled." But there remain a select few high schools that still need teachers, so I am resting on those few.

On a pseudo-whim, I called Focus on the Family to see if they had internships available for Adventures in Odyssey. This, I have to say, has been a dream of mine since childhood (hence pseudo-whim). Well, not an internship specifically, more like a job, but I will start with small steps. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the kitchen on a Saturday morning listening to Odyssey and playing paper football with Paul. I remember also setting the alarm on my watch so that I would remember to come inside at 3:30 or 4:30 or 5:30 (I don't remember which) every weekday afternoon to listen to the reruns. I still listen to them online at work. I got Adventures in Odyssey CD or tape sets every Christmas until my second year of college. And I actually listened to them. A lot. (Oh, parents, by the way, they have the old classics out on CD now, it's called the Gold Audio Series, I think. I want them :-). And a MacBook.) Most of the tape sets are incomplete because we listened to them so many times that they wore out, or were eaten by the tape player. I learned half of my vocabulary from Eugene Meltsener, and I know Isaiah 41:10 in some random version because that's what was on Odyssey. I know who many of the actors are (at least the old ones), and in some cases I could tell you who else they've voiced. It's a little sad, actually.

Random anecdote, I was watching some old episodes of Quantum Leap or maybe 21 Jump Street with one of my roommates and I hear this voice, and I'm thinking, I've heard this voice. So I sit there for a minute and then I realize, this guy was on Odyssey! He played Horatio Spafford on the episode, "It Is Well" (and many others I'm sure).

Honestly, I think it was Adventures in Odyssey that started my love for the theatre and performing arts in general.

Anyway, that's what I did today, other than work. I really should have written a cover letter, but I fell asleep after I got home and then ended up watching The Office Marathon on NBC, because, well, who doesn't like The Office?

Oh, Dear...

...I am slowly becoming a prime candidate to be one of those sad, fashion challenged, rut-dwelling people on TLC's What Not To Wear. Stacy and Clinton are coming for me, I can feel it.

Random Thoughts

Here they are:

• Naps from 7:00PM-8:30PM are not conducive to a healthy sleep schedule.
• Resumes are a pain.
• I have too many books. Wait, no such thing...
• A person's nationality is fluid, especially when they become famous for something. Case in point: T.S. Eliot. This American ex-patriot is in both the Anthology of American Literature and The Norton Anthology of English (as in British) Literature.
  
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out in a month, I'm so stoked. Still have to read Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince again before then.
• I should read more.
• I should quit cheating on the crossword puzzles. But I won't.
• I never finished most of the books I read in high school. I should work on that. But I won't. At least not yet.
• Ben Folds rocks. Always.
• I saw on Facebook that an old roommate has friends getting married named Pam and Jim. I immediately thought of she was talking about The Office. I was mistaken.
• I enjoy 20th Century Lit much more than I enjoy 19th Century Lit.
• June 21st. Summertime, and the living is easy...
  
• My list of books to read will never dwindle. Never.

Bedtime!

A Salute to Sir Salman

I saw this news bit on the latest headlines feed on my Firefox browser and thought I'd share. Salman Rushdie was knighted. That's pretty cool. We talked about him periodically throughout my Modern British Literature class, as his work has relevance in the modern political world as well as British literature of the last two or three decades. In case you didn't know, Salman Rushdie is the author of Midnight's Children and perhaps more (in)famously, The Satanic Verses, the novel which garnered a fatwah from the Ayatollah Khomeini. So much for freedom of speech. My professor "didn't have the courage" to assign either of his well known works, so we instead read Hanif Kurieshi's The Black Album. Anyway, I have a lot of respect for Sir Salman. He probably knew that the publication of The Satanic Verses would likely sign his death warrant, yet he published anyway, and the next year went into hiding. So congrats to him, I say. Maybe ten years of hiding was worth it.

Update: "Rushdie title 'may spark attacks'". Anyone surprised? Yeah, me neither.

Arduous Processes

For the last several months, my aging computer has been running slower and slower by the day. In order to rectify this situation, I have embarked on the long and arduous process of wiping my hard drive and starting over in an attempt to cleanse my digital self and be rid of the demons which inevitably plague Microsoft machines. So I spent part of Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon backing up the 25 Gigs of information stored on my trusty laptop. My documents and other non-music files fit easily onto two CDs. I abandoned the CD strategy on Backup Disc 5, somewhere in the B's in my music collection. So I put all the music on my iPod and plan to download a program which will let me rip music from iPod to .mp3. I'm sure one exists--I had to do the same thing when my hard drive melted a couple Christmases ago. Now to find one that I can easily download and use.

And while I'm on the subject of arduous processes, I've been cleaning my room. It sounds rather childish and perhaps a little trite, but it is really taking a long time. Not only is there the standard mess of living in it, but I also have ten years of garbage (not literally) crammed into every crevice of every drawer and more knickknacks than I know what to do with. Unfortunately I inherited the pack rat gene and am completely incapable of throwing something away if it has any semblance of sentimental value. For example, I found a ticket stub from when I went to see the national tour of "The Producers" at the Bob Carr. Who keeps that stuff? Oh, right, me. But on the other hand, I also found my Tartu, Estonia bus pass from summer project five years ago. Now that has some sentimental value. Perhaps my best strategy for combating my pack ratty nature is to learn to discern what really matters in life. And then I could write a book about it. Maybe start Pack Rats Anonymous. The possibilities are limitless.

Why, one might ask, am I doing all of this stuff which I clearly do not enjoy? Because it means putting off looking for a job. If anyone thought graduation meant an end to procrastination, then well, they clearly do not know me. So, I'm putting off finding a job. I've done some of the paperwork, but I need to revise my resume and write a cover letter or two for principles of local schools.

Anyway, Windows Service Pack 2 is calling my name. Talk about arduous.

P.S. I'm thinking the quota is going out the window this summer. It's just not practical.

Summer Project Time

Well, I'm not going to make my quota. I blame this on being gone for half of May. Oh well. Maybe I'll try to make up for it in subsequent months. Maybe. Anyway, now for what I really wanted to write about.

Every summer around the end of May students from all over the nation embark on Summer Projects to, well, everywhere. And every time I get a giant bag of checks from Such-and-Such Summer Project at work my mind flashes back to my own summer project and I grow simultaneously nostalgic and jealous. Perhaps this is enhanced realization that I, having gone and returned from my summer vacation, am not getting on a plane and going anywhere, and that I, being boring and unmotivated, am working all summer sorting checks for all the people going on summer project to exotic places. And then I'm reminded via internet and work that several of my friends are on summer project. Keith, Scott, Katie...the list continues. And while there is some consolation in the knowledge that they too have to get up in the early hours of the morning, I know that their days will be filled with something fun, exciting, and more importantly, varied, whereas mine will indubitably consist of typing, sorting, batching, more typing, breaks at 10 and 3, and lunch somewhere between 12 and 1.

Trying to Meet My Quota

I decided several weeks ago when I was making changes (I'll call them structural changes) to my blog that I would try to post at least six times a month. So I'm writing in an attempt to meet my quota. That sounds bad, but when I read about writers or hear interviews I'm struck by how many of them had to force themselves to write at the beginnings of their careers. They would set a word quota, or a page quota and just sit and write. No matter what. Whether they had something to write about or not, they would write. Even if they knew that the words they put down on the page would more than likely be cut in subsequent revision, they would write. I sometimes marvel at people who have that kind of willpower. I certainly don't. I would always set goals for myself in my homework when finals week rolled around and everything started getting crazy, but I seldom met those goals.

Now that I'm out of college, I might try setting a quota, perhaps daily or weekly. My playwriting professor said that if you never wrote anything, you were never going to become a good writer. Like anything else, writing takes practice. I should practice more.

And that reminds me, I have yet to post about graduation. I'll get around to it, maybe that will be May post #2.