Make it stop!

The job inquiries continue to pour in at such a rate that I can’t keep track of them. Most of them relate to jobs I already know about, but not all. On Tuesday the 8th, I was notified of another new IBM job, for Manager E. I also got a call about another job for Manager B; she’s apparently trying to fill at least two of them now. And another call about a technical writing contract for a completely different company.
On Wednesday the 9th, I went to IBM for my interview with Manager D. It went extremely well. He’s actually trying to fill several jobs — a contract position and at least two IBM employee positions — but the paperwork hasn’t been completed for all of them. I’m pretty sure he intends to offer me one of them. He promised to let me know by Friday.
In the course of the interview, Manager D told me about IBM Manager F, who will be trying to fill two positions for technical writers in the near future. At this rate, I’ll run out of letters of the alphabet by the end of May.
Wednesday was Marie’s day off, so she was actually at home for part of the day. When I got home from work, she handed me a stack of six telephone message slips, all of which were calls from recruiters for contract agencies. And there are still messages on the answering machine that are left over from Tuesday. Aargghh! Why couldn’t all this happen back when I was unemployed and could spend all day on the phone if I needed to? It’s bad enough that my cell phone keeps ringing while I’m at work. If I also try to return all these calls during the day, I won’t get anything done!
I had intended to spend Wednesday evening trying to deal with some of this backlog, and also bringing this blog up to date. Instead, I let Ruth talk me into going to see a play at Raleigh Little Theatre. I stopped volunteering at RLT when I began work at Perigee, because I was working on the night shift and theatre activities take place mostly in the evening. When Perigee switched me to the day shift, I could theoretically have jumped back into RLT activities, but I realized that evenings and weekends were now the only times I could concentrate on my job search. So I resolved not to get involved at RLT again until I found a job (or until my Perigee job ended on May 31). But Marie and Ruth are still active; both of them are working on the current show, a comedy called I Hate Hamlet. In fact, Marie is the dressing crew chief.
Wednesday night’s show was a preview performance: a dress rehearsal essentially identical to a real performance, but with a non-paying audience. (Tickets are given to the cast and crew, who hand them out to family and friends.) Marie was working backstage, but Ruth (who is on the props crew) wasn’t scheduled to work at this performance, so she was planning to watch. I decided to go with her. It was a fun show, and we had a great time. But it also felt odd to just sit in the house and watch. I kept thinking that I should be up in the sound or light booth, pushing buttons. Ruth had the same reaction; she felt like she ought to be backstage. I guess we’ve been doing tech theatre for long enough that we’ve forgotten how to be audience members.
Ruth drove us to the theatre. She’s had her Limited Learner Permit for some time (the picture is already out of date, showing her with much longer hair than she currently has), but this is the first time she’s ever driven me anywhere. We both did well; she drove better than I could have at her age, and I remained calm the entire trip. I may as well get used to this experience. Ruth will be seventeen next month, and a high school senior two months after that. And Ben will be a freshman. It doesn’t seem possible, but this is what happens while you’re preoccupied with things like theatre and job searches: your children just keep right on growing up.

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