Sometimes life is good, sometimes not so much

[gwyn]

One hour till Angel and I'm dying -- both because of anticipation and because every time we have a new ep we're that much closer to the end.

Last night I had a wonderful dinner with friends, because talking_sock has been so kind to me since I lost my job and taken me out to eat at some truly wonderful places. She's moving away to the Boston area this weekend, and wanted to go out to her favorite restaurant, a beautiful little place in the Pike Place Market. It was a divine four-course meal -- the main entree was duck confit with this wonderful carrot-rhubarb whip thingie on the side -- and conversation and wine, and just something I never have the chance to do anymore these days. I'm going to miss you, L, your companionship and fascinating travel stories and wonderful taste in places to go, and learning about photography and video, and hope you'll have a chance to visit us again soon.

Then today I got a surprise call that the person who gave me the test from hell actually wants to interview me on Friday. Now, seriously -- if the test is like that, what is the interview going to be like? I'm mildly terrified. I suppose on some ways it wouldn't be bad if they hated me -- freelance is truly a feast or famine thing, and after a lot of networking, I suddenly have three leads on small things that could or could not pan out. If any or all do, then I have to make up my mind what I want to do. But right now I just have to focus on getting through this interview.

feochadn and I made a lot of progress on our Robbery Homicide Division vid today, even after I terrified her with crawly creatures. She is wigged out by tent caterpillars, which are milder here than in her home state of Montana, but right now my trees are being consumed by the current Seattle-area plague of the damn things and she arrived just as I was heading out with my big giant tree lopper to cut off affected branches. They really are disgusting things -- I don't mind just a single one crawling by, but when they are forming those tents of black, swarming things and oozing crap and all that, it's just... bleh. They completely denude your lovely trees, too, and young trees have a lot of trouble recovering. They're so hard to get, even with my telescoping lopper (it's a truly fun toy in some ways, this big 20-foot pole with a sharp blade), and after hours spent with my neck craned up looking for them, into the blinding sun, then weilding the lopper, I'm a big fat ball of screaming shoulder and neck agony. If ever I needed a massage...

I have most of the rest of the (deadly dull) chapter of Measure of a Man in my head now, finally, but I can't type any more tonight, I think. Maybe tomorrow after I get a haircut it'll be better. My hair is horrid and there's no way I can go into an interview looking like this. There's living cheaply, and then there's living intolerably cheaply, and scraggly hair just will not do.

Comments

[ascian3.livejournal.com]

Some of the developers I've worked with in the past used to like to give tests to interview candidates that were impossibly (or at least unreasonably) difficult. Usually they were looking less for whether you could answer than how you reacted to the question - did you approach it logically? did you give up without trying? etc. That seems less likely in your case, just because they weren't there to watch you take it (or talk to you afterwards) but it might be a possibility.

It's still pretty cruel, either way. But good luck with the interview.