Gentle Readers,

Life has been surprisingly busy the last little while given the lack of job. We've been running around like mad to all kinds of SCA events and trying to do things on the same visit like go to the Velvet May opening gala and visit my brother's family (including my beautiful new neice Scarlette) and this weekend my parents arrived for a long overdue visit with their granddaughter (and the rest of us, should we be around).

I'm so glad they were able to come up as I had no idea how I could get down there to visit.

This weekend I also got to go to fencing and I was Alex's date and sanity anchor for a wedding where I was again given opportunity to see what a tiny town Ottawa really is.

I've been in a bit of a holding pattern with regard to work. I'm one companies first choice for a potential contract and that's great, but the customer who would be paying for it are not moving with much alacrity so I feel a little like I'm going to get caught with timing when things do come through. I worry it's going to go like this: have great interview while waiting, contract comes through, agree to contract, get job offer. I suspect this fear is not helping me feel motivated about opportunities. I think it's also keeping me from feeling like I can get deeply into any personal projects as well. Still, regardless of how many birds are in that bush my hands are empty so I better start doing some grabbing as I've not got much to loose.

I applied for EI last week as well (another thing I was putting off) so I am a little bit more motivated.

I've applied for at least half a dozen jobs and while it's slightly better than the last time I was unemployeed, I'm still very saddened by the number of HR departments that don't even acknowledge that you sent them a resume. I understand that it's very time consuming to send a PFO to everyone who was not selected for an interview, but really, how hard is it to set up your outlook to automatically send a "Thanks for sending us your resume" letter.

Only slightly less annoying are the ones that ask you to re-enter your whole resume. At least those ones acknowledge that you applied.

Our renovations are on hold to a) let our basement get a little dryer (thanks to our landscaping and the new eaves) and b) to let our contractor finish off some of his other commitments. The basement looks so different with all of the demolition I did. I'm only partly surprised that we managed to pull a full large dumpster out of there.

The house feels a little bit lighter now.

Now I must apply for some jobs and then I'll reward myself with another post.