Long-winded catching up
How can I have so little free time, be so busy and tired, yet have so little to point to as "Accomplished!" at the end of the day?
That's one of the hardest parts of this between-contracts gig as a housewife. Precious little of what I spent gobs of time on ends up still done hours or a day later. Mommies reading this can empathize in spades, I'm sure. Dishes and laundry and dusting and catbarf-cleanup become undone the minute my back is turned. Six hours of hands-and-knees work pulling up vegetation from the foundations of the house and outbuilding make the house look neat and nice to the non-existent visitors for about three days. The real reason of termite-risk-reduction lasts for a month or so, but it's largely *invisible* as far as accomplishments go.
Still trying to get house projects wrapped up. It's a huge uphill battle just getting contractors to call back, show up for appointments, and then followup with an estimate. Obviously despite the economy they have more work than they can handle in that industry. Perhaps I should look at changing careers.
Job-wise, last week I flew out of state to a professional convention. It was a rather rough shifting of gears that I'm going to have to get better at dealing with. One day I'm standing under an awning, scalding my fingers hand-plucking a batch of chickens; the next day I'm sitting in a mooshy leather seat in a hotel lobby, sipping complimentary beverages while discussing database tuning and lecturing on data visualization and segmentation.
Let's just say my mental clutch needs a bit more adjustment.
The conference days were packed with networking and sessions, while every other minute was spent frantically studying for a certification exam whose pretest I, well, flunked in grand style. This was hard to accept, and was the prime reason for staying up til 3-4am every night studying. It's been almost 30 years since I outright flunked an exam, even a free doesn't-count-at-all prep-assessment like this one. It was inconceivable that I'd spend close to $2k in airfare, hotel, registration fees, etc, and *not* get the alledgedly "intro" certification that would pad the resume. It was also inconceivable that I could have some 30 years in computers, almost half of that with this package, and not have touched the majority of the utilities and features the exam asked about. I was starting to seriously question whether my experience counted for anything outside of a couple of clients - clients who were obviously far, far disconnected from industry reality.
So after all of that work, of course I passed. I then found out that I'd screened, studied for, and then passed the wrong test. The exam that dovetails best with my work experience was a different test entirely, on a different certification that my mentor wasn't aware of.
It never hurts to have passed a certification in a subfield related to your current specialization, particularly when you claim to be well-rounded and have good knowledge of related areas. So it's not as if that cert was a complete waste of time. I found out afterwards that the first-time passing rate was only 25% for people with 2-or-more years of appropriate job experience, so I'm feeling pretty damned good about having passed it at all much less the first time. And it was interesting to discover how little the pretest matched the Real Thing.
Sometime very soon I'll be taking the correct exam. Then I'll have more certifications than my husband has obtained from that same vendor muahahaha. I've downloaded the study guide and objectives, and they were like walking into a favorite pub: familiar, comforting, and feet firmly planted in the turf I know best. If I don't nail this test I will be seriously pissed at myself. And out $250, but for once it's not the wasted money that will make me the maddest.
Other than that, not much of interest. Kitties are shedding like crazy. The merlin's been declared Non-Releaseable due to the pre-existing feather damage, and found a placement in an educational program.
I'm settling into volunteering for the CSA's box-packing days, and the task of planning a week's worth of meals from what's in the box + what's on sale is getting easier with experience. We're making a deliberate effort to try "something cool" with every new item and have discovered that some veggies we didn't like can be wonderful when fresh off the farm.
It's amusing to think that the real kicker when deciding to bypass a $100+ fancy dinner out was that $5 worth of lovely organic veggies and meat would become trash if not consumed that night. And since I'm paying for some of the groceries in volunteer work-credits, it's FREE food that we are worried about having spoil. My inner Living Green Child and my Frugal Child are, for once, seeing eye-to-eye.
But dang, I could go for a seriously trashy hotdog, followed by a gooey brownie, y'know?
That's one of the hardest parts of this between-contracts gig as a housewife. Precious little of what I spent gobs of time on ends up still done hours or a day later. Mommies reading this can empathize in spades, I'm sure. Dishes and laundry and dusting and catbarf-cleanup become undone the minute my back is turned. Six hours of hands-and-knees work pulling up vegetation from the foundations of the house and outbuilding make the house look neat and nice to the non-existent visitors for about three days. The real reason of termite-risk-reduction lasts for a month or so, but it's largely *invisible* as far as accomplishments go.
Still trying to get house projects wrapped up. It's a huge uphill battle just getting contractors to call back, show up for appointments, and then followup with an estimate. Obviously despite the economy they have more work than they can handle in that industry. Perhaps I should look at changing careers.
Job-wise, last week I flew out of state to a professional convention. It was a rather rough shifting of gears that I'm going to have to get better at dealing with. One day I'm standing under an awning, scalding my fingers hand-plucking a batch of chickens; the next day I'm sitting in a mooshy leather seat in a hotel lobby, sipping complimentary beverages while discussing database tuning and lecturing on data visualization and segmentation.
Let's just say my mental clutch needs a bit more adjustment.
The conference days were packed with networking and sessions, while every other minute was spent frantically studying for a certification exam whose pretest I, well, flunked in grand style. This was hard to accept, and was the prime reason for staying up til 3-4am every night studying. It's been almost 30 years since I outright flunked an exam, even a free doesn't-count-at-all prep-assessment like this one. It was inconceivable that I'd spend close to $2k in airfare, hotel, registration fees, etc, and *not* get the alledgedly "intro" certification that would pad the resume. It was also inconceivable that I could have some 30 years in computers, almost half of that with this package, and not have touched the majority of the utilities and features the exam asked about. I was starting to seriously question whether my experience counted for anything outside of a couple of clients - clients who were obviously far, far disconnected from industry reality.
So after all of that work, of course I passed. I then found out that I'd screened, studied for, and then passed the wrong test. The exam that dovetails best with my work experience was a different test entirely, on a different certification that my mentor wasn't aware of.
It never hurts to have passed a certification in a subfield related to your current specialization, particularly when you claim to be well-rounded and have good knowledge of related areas. So it's not as if that cert was a complete waste of time. I found out afterwards that the first-time passing rate was only 25% for people with 2-or-more years of appropriate job experience, so I'm feeling pretty damned good about having passed it at all much less the first time. And it was interesting to discover how little the pretest matched the Real Thing.
Sometime very soon I'll be taking the correct exam. Then I'll have more certifications than my husband has obtained from that same vendor muahahaha. I've downloaded the study guide and objectives, and they were like walking into a favorite pub: familiar, comforting, and feet firmly planted in the turf I know best. If I don't nail this test I will be seriously pissed at myself. And out $250, but for once it's not the wasted money that will make me the maddest.
Other than that, not much of interest. Kitties are shedding like crazy. The merlin's been declared Non-Releaseable due to the pre-existing feather damage, and found a placement in an educational program.
I'm settling into volunteering for the CSA's box-packing days, and the task of planning a week's worth of meals from what's in the box + what's on sale is getting easier with experience. We're making a deliberate effort to try "something cool" with every new item and have discovered that some veggies we didn't like can be wonderful when fresh off the farm.
It's amusing to think that the real kicker when deciding to bypass a $100+ fancy dinner out was that $5 worth of lovely organic veggies and meat would become trash if not consumed that night. And since I'm paying for some of the groceries in volunteer work-credits, it's FREE food that we are worried about having spoil. My inner Living Green Child and my Frugal Child are, for once, seeing eye-to-eye.
But dang, I could go for a seriously trashy hotdog, followed by a gooey brownie, y'know?