The Job Search Continues

As of today I am up to 68 71 72 job applications submitted since I started looking for full-time work at the end of 2008. (I started looking for jobs in earnest after I finished my thesis in late December 2008.) So far this year I have submitted applications for 18 20 government jobs and 26 27 28 private sector jobs. The rest of my applications have been submitted to various unknown organizations listing jobs on Craigslist. I have applied for jobs in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New York City, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC.

My dream is to wind up with a federal IT job in Madison, WI. But at this point I would take just about anything. Towards that end I have done what I thought I would never do and applied for jobs in Washington, DC. I really, really, really don’t want to go back to DC but I am most likely to find a decent short-term or temp job whereby I can make some money and get out of my Mom’s house. Plus, I’ll be able to see more regularly some of my long-time friends. If I can get a job in DC for just a few months I will be happy. If worse comes to worse I’ll take a permanent job and make plans to leave for up north within a year.

I just gotta do something, even if it is in DC. Not working—and not having a life as a result of not working—is just killing me.

<Updated at 14:34 on 31 Aug 09 to reflect the fact I applied for three more jobs today.>

<Updated at 00:17 on 01 Sep 09 to reflect the fact I applied for another job this evening.>

Pennsylvania Highways SUCK!!!

So, I left DC on Friday afternoon to get back to Syracuse late Friday night so I could see my father when he stopped by my Mom’s house on Saturday afternoon. I left my buddy Stephen’s house at 5:03PM on Friday and arrived at my Mom’s house in Syracuse at 2:03AM early this morning. Getting out of DC was a bitch. Stephen lives right off of Rt. 1 in MD (just over the border from DC) and it took me an hour to drive the ~7 miles to the beltway (I-495) interchange for Rt. 1. But, once I was on the beltway I made decent time and got up to Baltimore, around the southwest corner of the Baltimore beltway (I-695), and onto I-83 northbound.

I stopped at the PA welcome center just outside of York, PA for a 30 minute power-nap and then got back on the road. As I approached York I realised I wanted something to eat. So, I get off on I-83 (Business) and headed into, and eventually through, the small city of York, Pennsylvania on the lookout for some tasty and mildly healthy fast food. Just as I was about to get back on the interstate (I-83) northbound I spied a Five Guys burger place. Prayers were made, exclamations occurred, and I pulled off the road hoping for some grilled beefy goodness. I was not to be disappointed. I got a standard hamburger with lettuce, tomato, green onions, and ketchup along with a small order of fries and a Coke.

With some food in my belly and caffeine in my bloodstream I was ready for the non-stop push back to Syracuse. Little did I know just how nerve-wracking the trip was going to be. (As an aside: I have always hated Pennsylvania’s roads. I have been driving to and through Pennsylvania since 1992 and I have never had a good experience driving in PA. Never.) Once you get past the interchange with I-78, I-81 makes a sharp turn to the north and heads up into the Appalachian mountains. Unlike a lot of mountainous highways, I-81 crosses the many ridges of the Appalachians in this part of the country. There is no easy drive following the ridge line; It is all about going up, over, and down the other side of the mountain ridge.

Once I was up in the mountains I encountered the worst Summer weather I have experienced. There was freezing rain with occasional small hail and straight-line visibility of less than one-quarter mile. (With the mile markers spaced apart by one-tenth of a mile, you could just make out through the cloud/fogs the marker two-tenths of a mile ahead of you.) My speed dropped to around 45mph and stayed in the 45-55mph range for close to two hours. And I wasn’t the only one. I tend to drive slower than normal in most highway traffic so as to be more fuel-efficient but in this weather all the other cars that would normally pass me were going slow as well. The trucks still sped along the highway but their “speeding” was in the 55-60mph range as opposed to the usual 75mph range you can expect on a late-night drive up I-81.

The weather conditions did not improve until I was north of Hazleton and approaching Wilkes-Barre. And then the massive reconstruction projects taking place along I-81 come into consideration. There is a 27-mile-long construction zone where the road and bridges are being re-built. As such, lanes are closed for a stretch and then re-opened only to be closed again, lanes shift to one side of the road and then to another, and a temporary bridge was setup adjacent to an old bridge because the old bridge is/was unsafe(?) to use. Once you get north of Scranton you have another 10+ miles of road under construction. Although this stretch is mostly re-paving so there aren’t many diversions or lane closures.

Finally, as I get within 15 miles of the New York state border all the construction ends. It rains the rest of the way but with a diminished intensity. The rest of the trip was uneventful although I was able to pick up a pop music radio station from Windsor, ON for a good 45 minutes in northern PA/southern NY. I’ll be glad when my Mom moves and I don’t have to make the trip up to Syracuse any more. I-81 is a bitch to drive on. Bah!

Michaelangelo I Am Not

I had another painting gig this week. My friend Allison bought a condo in Columbia Heights and wanted help painting the living room and sun room. (The sun room is really just a small room off of the living room. But, as it has windows on three sides and gets both the morning and afternoon sun, calling it the sun room seemed most appropriate.) We did the cutting in and first coat together on the living room and I did the cutting in on the sun room. She put the first coat on the sun room and then I came back to do the second coat on both rooms. Although the sun room required a third coat to make it look good enough. (Bright, dark-colored paint over a light-colored wall requires at least two coats of paint to make the color stand out and be uniform in appearance.)

I was pretty pleased with my work—I would give myself a grade of 88 on this job–although I didn’t do quite a good job as I had hoped on painting the top of the wall near the ceiling. Even after taping off the edge of the ceiling I still had too many little spots where I “caught” the ceiling with my brush or roller cover. Next time I will use the two-inch wide blue painters tape as that is the diameter of a paint roller-cover. With two-inch edging I should be able to get up and touch the ceiling without leaving spots behind. Allison said she can get some ceiling white paint from the maintenance guys in her building. So, maybe the next time I am in town for a visit I can do a little touch-up work on her ceiling.

As for the walls, in the living room there were quite a few low spots where the walls had been touched-up or repaired but were not smoothed over properly to make the wall uniform. As a result I had to do quite a bit of angled rolling to try and get the paint onto the wall. Moving the roller at angles when applying paint is the recommended way to do it but you always want to have your finish stroke be vertical so as to have the paint look like it was applied in the direction of the longest axis of the wall (which is almost always the vertical axis). I succeeded in getting these low spots covered with minimal evidence of funky rolling technique but there is one spot to the left of her kitchen pass-through that really bothers me. I would need to get a much smaller roller cover to cover up that spot and hide the non-vertical roller marks. Maybe I’ll save that for my next visit as well.

Below are some pics Allison took while the cutting in and first coat were in progress. [The pics of the finished second coat will be coming shortly.]

Living Room Cut In

Living Room With First Coat

Sun Room Cut In

Sun Room With First Coat

Two Colors Together

FYI:  The colors she chose are Pale Avocado (Benjamin Moore 2146-40) for the living room and Harvest Moon (Benjamin Moore 2167-30) for the sun room in a Behr Premium mixture with a flat (matte) sheen.

Birthday Dinner at Georgia Brown’s

I took my friend Joanne out for her birthday. After much cajoling from me she chose Georgia Brown’s and we were going to try what was on their Restaurant Week menu. But once we got there and looked over the menu, their choices on the regular menu were much more interesting and appealing. (Although we both thought the Beef Pot Roast dish on the restaurant week menu looked delicious.)

It took a while for us to make up our minds which was OK as it took them a while to find the bottle of wine I ordered (a dry, smooth German Riesling with a bit of zest to it). Eventually we settled on Black Eyed Pea Cakes as an appetizer and Joanne ordered the Pan Roasted Grouper while I ordered the Virginia Peanut Chicken. The Black Eyed Pea cakes were amazing, a little cylinder of peas ground up with spices and quickly fried. They were crispy on the outside and moist on the inside. The dish was served over red rice and accompanied by stalks of flavorful but generic asparagus. The entrees were surprisingly large considering the “fine dining” reputation of the restaurant. I had never been there before but knew of it and expected it to be like many other upscale restaurants I have patronised where the nicer and more creative the dish the smaller the portions.

Her grouper was fairly mild, flaky, not too moist and was accompanied by a few kernels of popped corn among a medley of corn-based accompaniments. Definitely a surprising addition. My chicken was a quarter bird that was cooked thoroughly but tender enough to pull off the bone without a knife. I had a variety of corn as an accompaniment and a delicious side of redskin mashed potatoes. I could probably make a meal out of their mashed potatoes alone; They were yummy. There was no room for dessert after the meal but we were never hurried to leave by our waiter.

I would go back there again. We had no complaints about the service—although it was a bit noisy at times for a normal conversation voice. The only down note is the fact that the Pot Roast dish featured on their restaurant week menu is not a regular item on their main menu. Maybe it will appear in another season when a hearty meal like Pot Roast is more appropriate. Happy birthday Joanne. Thanks for the excellent choice.

Sailing on the Chesapeake

I finally got to go sailing this Summer. I spent almost three weeks in DC visiting friends and doing some short-term jobs for a couple friends. Most of the time I stayed with my buddy Stephen and on two consecutive weekends we took out his boat—a 26′ Ranger in decent condition—for some fun times on the water.

The first trip was Stephen and I clearing out some of the cobwebs from his boat as it hadn’t been used since the previous Summer. There was a nice steady wind and we tacked all of four times in a five-hour trip. We went up the bay towards the Bay Bridge, across to the far side, back down the Bay, and one final tack back towards his marina. It was an all-around good time.

The second trip I brought along a friend-of-a-friend. So, it was Stephen, Debbie, and myself. I thought Debbie was into sailing but it turns out she is not, she likes canoeing better. So I wanted to make the most of the trip for her and show her some of the typical sites in this part of the Chesapeake. We almost didn’t make it as we got stuck in the channel leaving the marina—It was slack tide and we were a little too close to the outside edge of the narrow channel that leads from his marina into the Bay. With me in the water pulling on a bow line and Stephen working the tiller and outboard we were able to get the boat moving. A passing catamaran threw us a line and pulled us free but in the process got themselves stuck in the mud. So, I stayed in the water and pulled on a line attached amidships while Stephen gunned the motor to break them free. (At 36′ in length, it took every ounce of power in Stephen’s outboard to get the catamaran out of the mud.) Once the cat broke free I was hanging on for dear life to my line but I succeeded to pull myself aboard their boat, bundle up their line, and dive back into the water to get back to the sailboat.

I think Debbie was equal parts amused and bemused at our difficult start but she enjoyed herself once we got into open water and raised the sails. The wind was more erratic than the previous week so we spent more time tacking but got into a settled tack and headed up the Bay. We checked out the Thomas Point lighthouse up close and from afar a few cargo ships anchored in the shipping channel. After four or five hours we started to head back when my buddy Eric—My regular sailing partner—called on the phone and suggested a meet-up near Thomas Point. We got there way before them and got tired of waiting so we started heading back to the marina. Eric fired up his motor and caught up to us so we tied off to one another briefly for a visit. Introductions were made all around—Eric’s girlfriend Monica was out with him—and then seas got a little choppy and we headed back after an extra couple of (un-planned) hours on the water.

There were no problems heading back as we were on a rising tide and Debbie didn’t seem too perturbed by the lateness of our return. And she must have enjoyed herself a bit as she had found time to take a nap down below during the day. : -) Debbie wanted to get some pics of the setting sun and her pics, plus her movie of the sunset, are below.

It was another good day spent on the water and a good time was had by all.

done