Memorial Day

This has been a busy week with going to a job fare, trying to complete my classwork, and planning for a BBQ on Sunday for people that I used to work with. It hasn't been easy to get any of it done while still trying to potty train Alex, and having to facilitate Dante's self directed punishment for easing half of a bag of chocolate chips in the mornings (definitely without permission, and certainly while trying to be sneaky).

Aaron and I went to the Fox news job fare at the Crown Plaza in Warwick. There were about 3000 people who showed up for the job fare and only about 70 companies represented there. If you eliminate the military booths, colleges, and temp agencies there, it cuts the numbers down to about 40 actual companies. Then cut out Avon, Autocrat Coffee, Foxwoods, and Twin River Casino and I had even fewer decent looking companies to hand out a resume to. I turned in my resume to Bank Newport, Child & Family, and The Children's Workshop, took a card from Macy's and a "get started" pack from Avon. I'm hoping to get in with the Children's Workshop or Child & Family because these jobs are in my career field and (as my friend Sam told me) I can get my entry position work out of the way while I'm in school, allowing me to be positioned to slide right into a good job after graduation. However, I went into my branch yesterday and my old teller supervisor asked me if I'd consider coming back to work in the branch as they have a teller leaving and there will be an open rec. I told her I'd certainly be interested, and now I'm praying on it to see if it's the right thing to do. On paper it looks good because it's work, it's a job and a position that I already know with people who I've already worked with, and I know more now than I did before I left it. On the other side, it's bad because tellers start at a grade level 3, and I am a grade level 7...I don't know if I could come in as the head teller which would at least be a grade level 5. If they can't get that approved, I'll be taking a 6.00 per hour pay cut (which unemployment should make up the difference on for at least a year) but the job is less demanding and easier than the one I was offered in the call center and I can keep my seniority. Anyway, it's something to think about.

School work has been a bit tough this week. the reading was really dry and I'm not sure how many more 40 page chapters I can read this year. Chapter 2 was all about research but it was mostly about all the little definitions of parts of a study and the different types of research, issues researchers have to deal with, and so on. It didn't even get interesting until the last two pages and I just thought I was going to scream. But I took notes by hand, then typed them up, and highlighted parts as I read so that helped me to really understand some of the more confusing parts of the chapter. I really put my blessing to the test this week. I managed to finish the work for my writing class yesterday and I used what I learned to help write out my Sharing Time lesson for tomorrow (that was a bonus!). I only have my project to write and I'll be doing that later today and then taking tomorrow off to party with my friends at the BBQ and then I'll start reading Chapter 3 on Monday.

Sunday I'm having people come over after I get out of church to have a little party since our department was eliminated. We thought that we wouldn't be getting laid off until yesterday so we chose tomorrow for the party, but we got laid off last week instead. I have to go out to the Sam's Club in Warwick to get hot dogs because the one near me is under construction and decided that Memorial Day weekend would be a good time to close down for a while. We're doing this Pot Luck style so others are bringing chips, soda, cake and stuff. Hopefully everyone shows up who said they are coming or we'll be missing stuff. I tried to confirm with the people who no longer work for the bank, and my friend Eric is touching base with the ones who stayed. I have a few packages of hamburger meat and I just need to get the dogs, and the buns. Now I just have to check the weather to see if we can be outside...

Well, Alex is done with lunch, Kung-Fo Panda is done, and I need to get him down for a nap and work on my Psychology project.