(sings) Oh the weather outside is frightful….

November 19, 2003

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing, and much to my dismay the caller (who was my sister, contrary to other people’s beliefs) informed me of the weather outside. I stood up, looked out the window, and saw that it was snowing. Hard. There’s an eye-opener, that’s for sure. It snowed a few weeks ago for a little while, but it certainly didn’t stick. Now all the roofs on the street (and throughout much of Portland, I’d wager) are covered with snow, though it’s rapidly melting. I went outside to get the mail and already things were in an advanced state of waterfalls off various objects that has caught the falling snow. It didn’t really stick to the pavement, though, and so all that’s left in the street now this afternoon is a bit of slush. Certainly not the winters I got used to for the last four years. In Beloit, it snows all day, sometimes for two, and the snow lasts for at least a week. Here, on the rare occasion that it DOES snow (which is about once every two years it seems), it typically lasts a day at the most, and the next morning when you wake up you’re lucky if you see any signs that it snowed the previous day, save for maybe a big pile somewhere that didn’t melt all the way through. Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with that slop anymore. At least, not until the next ice age hits.

I went out to lunch with my sister yesterday to McMenamin’s (the last time for awhile, I promised her) yesterday, and I tried their new seasonal ale. The Scarecrow ESB that I’ve been enjoying has been mostly retired from active circulation, and their new seasonal ale is called “Sleepy Hollow Nut Brown Ale.” Each table naturally has a placard advertising it with a quote from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving as a nice touch. My own experince with nut brown ales has been pretty slim in the past since I generally don’t care for an overwhealming taste of ANYTHING in my beer that’s not supposed to be there, not the least of which is a nutty flavor. Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale is good, but the new McMenamin’s seasonal puts it to shame. Must…have…more.

Still no word on the job hunt. I’m told by my Dad that the man I talked with a few weeks ago is having a strategy meeting this week with his partner to talk about things, because apparently they’re stretched on manpower as it is, so hiring new blood might be a dealbreaker. It’s not out of the picture yet, but I have a feeling that things won’t work out quite as I’d hoped they would. I also got a letter today from the last application I sent in a couple of weeks ago with the standard “thanks but no thanks and we’ll keep your resume on file” rejection letter. Next on my list is sending in an application to OMSI for a job I think I can do, and hopefully a friend of mine that works there can put in a good word for me with the HR department, if that’s kosher. I put her name down on the application as someone I know who works there, so they might actually go to her. She’s not that close of a friend, but I knew her in high school in Corvallis enough to be friends with her then, and she’s the sister of a friend of mine who was in my class at Beloit. Enough to say “He’s a good guy, you should give him a shot” at the very least. I had a feeling that the last application I turned in wasn’t going anywhere when I hadn’t heard anything back from them yet so I could have kept going, but as I said, I’ve been a little uncomfortable applying for new jobs when I’m waiting on another one.

And sadly, that’s about all I have to say at the moment. Yes, it’s that slow. I’m sure you couldn’t care less about the games I’ve been playing to pass the time, so I’ll leave you with a satire article I found at “The Onion” and found extremely poignant to my life. Enjoy

http://www.theonion.com/3944/news3.html

I’m out of ideas for end of post pictures at the moment. Wait. Nevermind.