… plus c’est la même chose
Life continues to move, and some of the motions make familiar patterns. The arrangement may (usually does) come out in differences of infinite variations, but the overall themes continue to be familiar.
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Last time I had to hunt a new job, I sent out resumés (almost all online, it’s like printed resumés are only for the people giving you a second look) on a daily basis - seriously, it averaged out to at least one a day - went through maybe half a dozen different in-person interviews, and it still took me seven weeks to get a position.
Susan sent out … I think three, general inquiries, had an interview on Thursday, was hired by Saturday. And, oh, yes, her ‘half-time’ schedule will bring in 40% more than my current full-time job.
It’s usually a questionable choice for a man to marry a woman better than he is. This is because women, quite reasonably, tend to want a man they can look up to, rather than down on. (And why shouldn’t they?) The upside is that she seldom disappoints, and I gradually get better just by trying - endlessly - to live up to her example.
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I’ve lost 30 pounds since returning from China. I’m already at my Army weight. I might be able to get back to the weight I was after my first year of marriage.
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My son Kevin, along with his wife and daughter and in-laws, made a trip to Japan about a month ago. Leading up to it, they kept asking Amber (my granddaughter, still not four years old yet) how she would cope, since she didn’t speak any Japanese. She thought about it, came back to them, and said, “I have a plan. We’ll speak Chinese in the hotel, and when we go out we just won’t talk at all.”
(Kevin does, in fact, speak Japanese. Only a very little, enough to make stilted conversation and give directions to taxi drivers, but still. When he was a student, visiting Japan with his classmates - two Chinese and a Korean - he confounded the taxi drivers by being the only non-Asian in the entourage and yet the only one who could talk to them.)
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I came home from work this evening and told Susan, “They told me to pack up my stuff, and that they didn’t see any reason for me to come back.”
Absolutely true. BUT -
A new center is opening up. We were supposed to be there already, but there were delays. In the meantime, 200 new employees were brought on board to meet anticipated demand … but there isn’t room for them, so I was chosen (among many others) to work from home for the next three weeks, and possibly continuing after that. (It’s set so up to 25% of each section can work from home. Since it’s all telephone and computer, that’s feasible.) This will save me 2½ hours a day of driving time. Which will come in handy, because …
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As things turn out, the deadline for submission at
WIP Big Bang is July 27, and that for my entry at summer-of-giles is July 29. I wanted to be further along on both than I currently am, but now I have a bit more of my own time to devote to that.
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So many things are different. So much of what has changed, comes down to different projections of the same thing. Such is life, and I’m not tired of it yet.