The whole story

Got an e-mail from mom about the "restructuring" meeting they were called in to this morning:

This is one of the kinder restructuring meetings I've attended as these things go.

My severance package is 8 weeks - I can take the package and not come to work or I can come to work and be easily available for interviews and such. If a job is not found by April 3rd then I can use accrued vacation time to take personal leave. After that time I would be eligible for unemployment.

I will be given hiring priority for open positions for which I am qualified. There is one for which I am the obvious candidate but it is not a given.

Recruiting and career coaches were there to tell us what they can do for us and were encouraging about helping us find another place to be and that we would be receiving highest recommendations. There are six of us affected. Our building which is a rental will be vacated after April and other remaining staff will be shipped to other buildings.

I'm okay, I know the senior director of operations and that she will do everything she can to place those of us here who are being displaced. But of course, these things are not easy.

I am grateful for your love and support.

Martha

We're still trying to figure out how Emory's lost so much money, I think it's because they spend too much and have probably had students leave due to high tuition. Anyway, thanks to all of you for your prayers and happy thoughts and love-- the last day has been a nail-biter and while this obviously isn't the best thing, it's better than being immediately turned out in to the street.

Hitting Home... Again

My mom is going to be called in to a meeting tomorrow morning where she will be given her severance package. With five other people.

Yawn

I've been bad the past couple nights and stayed up late, which I really can't do tomorrow since I made enough money to head to Savannah and back! I'm really excited and though I wish I could trade cars with mom (my radio is busted and I have no CLUE which fuse it is that needs to be changed!) I know the panda can make it down there and back. She's good for the highway driving, didn't give me any trouble on the trip to Morrow, and I probably won't do too much driving when I get down there, so I'm not too worried. Next week is supposed to be warmer than our current subzero week, so maybe I'll get a chance to work on the exhaust and look at the MAF sensor, see what I can figure out-- for Jeremy, it's a $20 part. For me, of course, it's a $150 part... if it has to be replaced, it has to, but I'd rather not fork over another week and a half's worth of pay! Same deal with the exhaust-- David could probably help me replace it, but it would be SUCH an enormous project.

In other news, the Kellys invited me to go with them to the Charleston Food and Wine Festival and stay with them on the Barrier Islands. Bobby Flay will be there, so if I go, Em and I will have to go heckle him. It would be SO much fun, but it's the week I'm supposed to go see Jeremy. I guess we'll see if he has a job that he'll be working, and if so then I'll go another weekend. I mean, if spring comes and business picks up, I can drive down there Friday and leave on Monday which is the entire weekend, so I'm trying to talk him in to a job. He's not quite as bad as I am about getting fidgety and frustrated with nothing to do, but he's getting there!

I got my postcards for the save-the-dates today, which is super exciting! They're even prettier than they were online, so we just have to get the printer upstairs, get the template figured out, and print 'em out! There's a LOT of addressing to do, so that should keep me busy. I'll catch up on my tv shows and write addresses! Since it'll be a couple days, I'm going to go ahead and start addressing them on one side to be printed on the other side, that way I can just stamp and go! Yay!

As sad as some of the Cold Case episodes are, I absolutely adore the period music. It's pretty awesome. Especially the ones from the 80's and 90's.

Not much else going on, still trying to settle in to the new place, and still getting used to the fact that I actually have a place to put my stuff now! It's still mostly in boxes, it's kind of a strange feeling to have adequate space after living in compact, crowded space for five or six years... I miss my friends, even though Em's close, I just don't see her that often because of our schedules. I also don't really have the money to go to lunch with Laura every week like we'd like. As much as I loathe Memphis, I miss being so close to my friends. Oh, well, less than a year now and I'll have my own household.

Now-- more early 90's Law and Order. Oh yeah.

Get Smart

If I fill out 5 job applications (and I've already filled out one at Parker's), I can watch "Get Smart" which I borrowed from Emily. If I fill out two more, I can watch the little followup they did on Bruce and Lloyd (<3 Masi Oka), and speaking of Masi Oka, if I fill out two more I can watch Heroes on TV tonight instead of online tomorrow.

I picked up a TON of apps yesterday at the Forum, and only a couple here in town today, but it was a nice walk around so there ya go. The Forum is promising, Williams Sonoma and Banana Republic were hiring late because of the economy (one of the managers said she was waiting until a week after the election to start handing out applications-- she wanted to see what the stock market did) and a couple other seemed to be as well. It'd be a pain in the butt to drive all the way out there, but the scheduling sounds pretty decent, so it would be worth my while and I could get a few days off now and again to go down to see Jeremy. It would be better if I got a job in Decatur, then we wouldn't have to front the money to get new tires on the car and get it registered (not as big of a deal since I'm not driving it and, thanks to the tires, it's in obvious disrepair) because I could just walk to work. I applied at Parker's, which is where the old Mick's used to be (for the like zero people from Decatur who read this blog) and looks really super nice on the inside. I talked to the head chef who thought she recognized me from Birdi's, so hopefully she'll tell the hiring manager that I'm cute and nice and experienced and he should hire me first.

Brickstore is a possibility because of the Brickstore Biergarten (opening January at the latest, btw) and there's a new pizza place opening, Zucco, but the owner wasn't there when I stopped by and I don't think the painters spoke English so I'll probably just drop a letter of interest and a resume in the mail.

Though, let's be honest, I would die of happiness to work at WS or BR! I would spend too much money at WS, but that's ok. I'd have really nice kitchen stuff, and maybe even get some presents for people!

Anyway, I'm sure you're all thrilled with my job search updates, since that's what this has turned in to, but since there's not much else going on, I'll just bug out and start working on those apps and chopping up the butternut squash and the potatoes for the shepherd's pie (just the potatoes for the pie, not the squash).

Workin' my way back to you, babe

I play 50's music in my head. No, really, on my way back from Memphis the radio didn't work, so I ended up singing "Don't Stop Believin", "Jesse's Girl", and various oldies including "Fill Me Up (Buttercup)" and "Stop (In The Name of Love)". It would appear that the oldies have a corner on the parenthetical song titles.

Today was low-key enough. Accidentally overslept; I'm still not used to having to wake up without light queues, so Jeremy's going to give me a wakeup call tomorrow since he gets up at 8a which is 9a my time. I got some stuff over to the storage unit today, but not nearly enough, and it's almost all the way full so we're gonna go over tomorrow and re-organize some things, and I'm going to ask her if she wants me to maybe get things set up for a yard sale this weekend and put up an ad on Craigslist to try and kick out as much crap as possible. She says she can donate it, but it'd be really nice if we could make a few dollars, especially since I can't find a job to save my life and we're trying to find a new place to live. I'm putting in more applications tomorrow, some for seasonal work, some for temp work, some for part time work. I really hope I get something. At this point, even $50 a week would at least help me pay down my phone bill and send a few bucks to the GI and Rhodes.

As for the future, Jeremy said that WyoTech indicated they would start trying to place them about three months prior to graduation, which means I'll have more than a few days of scrambling to find a job and find us a place to live. I'm really glad he's doing this, he sounds excited, and his roommate found them a 2 BR apartment close to campus that is totally reasonable, so maybe he'll be able to sleep at night now. If you have any suggestions on fairly temperate climates where people might be inclined to ride bikes year round, let me know-- we're starting our list of possible places so that both of us have a better chance of getting a job. I think we're aiming towards Austin or Atlanta areas, still, but you gotta go where the jobs are, right?

Keep your fingers crossed for me over the next few days-- I'm putting in at PierOne, Starbucks, Best Buy, several restaurants, Grassroots Campaigns (I applied for a job with them in Austin, but couldn't accept for financial reasons), and a couple of box office positions with theatres in Atlanta. I guess I should also get mom to print off a bagful of my resume; could get pricey since I'm so desperate I'm handing out the whole CV!

For now, though, I'll be thankful to be back in the real South. Inside the Perimeter, the real Atlanta, life is calm and happy. People might be in a bit of a hurry, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying a beautiful day, walking to work, or honking and waving to someone you know on the street. The weather is beautiful, and the people are nice-- if I get too bored, right up the street is the square with trees, picnic tables, and people I know. I know I sound a little bit like the Cheers theme song, but it's true. Big city feel, small town heart. It would be really nice if Jeremy could find a job around here-- I think he likes Decatur a lot, and since everything's pretty accessible through MARTA, he wouldn't have to deal with the traffic.

Here's to home, the place where you feel comfortable enough to take your shoes off and stay a while.