Job Craziness

I got offered a job, but I don't know how I feel about it. It's a job helping disabled adults find employment. It would involve a lot of driving around, working some weekends, and working random hours. I asked them if I could have a week or two to let them know if I'd take the job. They wouldn't let me have that much time. I have to let them know by tomorrow. They told me that I was their "top candidate", and that if I didn't get back to them soon, they'd offer the job to someone else. I'm nervous. Ugh.

I'm leaving home in a couple hours to do an observation at this year-round school for students with developmental disabilities. It sounds like I could probably get in there and get a job. Maybe... I might prefer working there because at least it would be regular hours, no weekends, and not too far of a drive. It'd still be stressful, but at least it would just be stressful during regular hours...

(Okay, I just missed a phone call while typing this about a job offer as a psychiatric technician. The woman that interviewed me for that position told me flat out that she didn't think that I would be "challenged" by the job with my education. Plus, I don't think that it pays very well. It would also involve working some weekends. I'll call them back tomorrow and get the details.)

I botched an interview yesterday for a job as a mental health clinician. Okay, so orginally the guy I was interviewing with forgot that he had an interview with me and he set up a doctor's appointment for himself...so the people in the office there called him on his cell and he was basically like, "Oh, I really screwed this up. Can you come back in another hour?" So, I agreed and came back later and started my interview with a woman there, because he hadn't shown yet. Then he came in and took me to his office to talk. The interview started going along (not so well, I might add...), and then he asked me something about my weaknesses. I said, "I get nervous sometimes...like in interviews and stuff." He said, basically, "No kidding...you're killing yourself here." His comment took me aback and I started to cry. The guy went on to say that I looked awesome on paper, but if I always acted this nervous he couldn't realistically send me into the schools and that I'd probably be fired in like a month. He then said that he and I could try to chalk the whole experience up to us both having bad days and I could call him back in a couple of days to reschedule with him and redo the interview. I don't know if that's what I want to do or not...the job seems cooler than any of the other ones I'm looking at, but now I'm so ashamed of myself and feel so horrible about the whole experience that I don't want to go back.

Okay, I'm going to grab lunch and get ready to go in for my "observation"...

The Couch

Well, we got a couch on Monday night. We bought a used couch that a girl had from homereserve.com. Customers to homereserve build their own couches out of plywood. The couch was able to be disassembled to fit in our car, and thus we had no problem getting it into the apartment. Here's Jake as we put it together on Monday night.
Here is Jake triumphantly throwing his arms in the air after we were able to finally get a couch.
Oh, and we finally got someone to take the (other) couch away off the curb today...after someone stole one of the cushions, after we had like a dozen different people call and email about it, after we lived in fear that it would get rained on...A guy with West Virginia license plates strapped it into the back of his truck and took off. Yay, we don't have to rent another truck or something to take it to the city recycling center!

New Apartment

Here are some pictures of our new apartment. See those red curtains? I sewed the bottoms of them myself! It took me like three hours! They came from Ikea and I was supposed to be able to iron the bottoms and glue them together using this material in the package, but that really didn't work. They started coming apart, so I decided that I would sew them.

Here's Jake in our kitchen. We got some metal shelving so that we could free up more counter space. We put the microwave on the second shelf, as you can see. Tonight I set off the smoke alarm again cooking dinner. Our smoke alarm is super sensitive. It goes off a lot in the morning when we come out of the bathroom. The steam from the shower makes it think the building's burning down...

Here is a coffee table that I assembled myself. Check out the folding chairs behind it. That's what we're sitting on. No couch yet. Boo.

Here's a peek into our bedroom. We have more room in there than I thought we would. When we looked at the apartment, I think the girl had a king sized bed and that took up almost the whole room. We have a queen sized bed, so it allows us a lot more space.

Grrr...

So, Jake and I thought we were going to have a couch this afternoon. We bought the couch from someone on Craigslist and used a van rented at Home Depot to pick it up (after having to deal with this incredibly bitchy woman at the Service desk there...but that's another story...). We recruited Brian to come help us carry it into our apartment. We tried everything to get the darn couch into our apartment...we tore the door off our neighbor's apartment, took off these wooden feet off the bottom, flipped to either side...everything. Now it's sitting as pictured on the curb. Crap. We spent all this money buying it and transporting it, and now we're screwed. We have nothing to sit on. Ugh! We posted it again on Craigslist, so hopefully someone will come by and buy it from us. I hope it doesn't rain on it or anything.

Phone Frustrations

I applied to a job as a mental health clinician through email yesterday with a center that works with some of the DC charter schools. To my surprise, I got a call back yesterday afternoon from them. My voicemail picked it up. However, when I tried to return the call using the number they left on the message, my cell phone immediately ended the call. There wasn't a single ring or anything..."Call Ended" would just come up on my phone every time I'd dial the number and hit send. I don't know why that would happen... anyway, I sent the guy from there another email to let him know that I've been trying to contact him. We'll see if he gets back to me.

Mail

So, I haven't been able to get to my mail since I've moved because the girl that lived in our apartment before us took the key with her. I'm freaking out that job stuff is getting sent to me. I have substitute teaching applications out to Fairfax County and Alexandria, and I imagine they are going to send me stuff about orientations in the mail. I'm wondering what I should do if I don't get a mailkey soon...should I just have my mail held at the post office and go pick it up?

RSS

I learned recently about RSS. I'm using it now to keep track of when friends' blogs are updated so that I don't have to type in their URLs to check. Most people probably use it to stay updated on news and stuff. Maybe I'll do that too, but for now I'm fascinated that I can just use it for the blog thing.

Blogathon

I read something once about people doing blogathons, which involved blogging about something every half an hour for 24 hours. I'm tempted to try something like that, but I don't want to stay up for 24 hours straight. I could stand doing that instead of job hunting today though.

Caffeine

I think I've grown more addicted to caffeine. Today was the third day in a row that I went out and bought myself a cup of coffee in the morning. At our old apartment, I could get free coffee every morning in the lobby. It wasn't very good coffee, but I'd still go down and get a cup to wake up in the morning. Now I've gotten myself hooked. Crap.

Disparities

This morning, I saw a report on the news about life expectancies. In Mongomery County, Maryland, average life expectancy is around 81...as it is in Fairfax County, Virginia. However, in the District of Columbia, life expectancy is only 72! WTF! People living about 10 miles apart have life expectancies almost 10 years different. That is insane. There was no explanation as to why the life expectancies vary so much either. Are people in DC just generally poorer and less able to afford health care? Are they drinking radioactive sludge or something?

Getting My Hopes Up

I got a phone call early this week that went something like this:

Me: Hello?
Guy: Hello, may I speak to Candace?
Me: This is Candace.
Guy: Hi, this is *Joe* from Arlington Public Schools. So, how's it going?
Me: Pretty good.
Guy: Great, so, umm...has anyone from here talked to you about your internship?
Me: What? No...internship?
Guy: Oh, so you haven't heard from anyone yet?
Me: Umm, no...
Guy: Oh, okay...well, it looks like we have you placed in an elementary school...I think Tuckahoe Elementary. Okay, well, we've been really swamped in placing people because we had a lot more interest this year than previously. Let me see here...I'm not sure who we have you placed with. Okay, well...I need to get more details on this. Is it okay if I call you back?
Me: Umm...sure?
Guy: Okay, well, I'll call you back when I work out the details.
Me: Okay.
Guy: Yup, bye.
Me: Bye.

So, I hung up completely weirded out. I sent Arlington my application materials way back in February or March. I didn't hear a word from them since then, so I naturally assumed that I did not have an internship with them. Why would they call me the week before school starts to let me know about an internship? Something was fishy.

The guy called me back yesterday and I asked a bunch more questions and made it clear that I thought I was applying for a paid, school psychology internship (he kept calling the internship a "counseling" internship, which also was fishy). He said, "Yes, yes...it's a counseling, or school psychology internship or whatever..." He told me that it was unpaid, however. I said that if it was unpaid, I'd have to think about whether or not I'd accept the position. He said, "Okay, why don't you call me back on Tuesday and let me know what you decide?" I told him sure, and then a little while later he called me back and told me that he had set me up with a counseling internship, not a school psych internship, "although it is clear on your application materials that school psych was what you were looking for." He said that the two school psych internships offered by Arlington had been spoken for since spring sometime. Yup...so basically some HR guy was confused and didn't know the difference between a school psychologist and a counselor. Eh, whatever...