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I HAVE A JOB!

The job I wanted, at the salary I wanted. (Not quite as much vacation as I hoped, but close.)

I just have to get the official offer, sign it and send it back. Then I start March 15. Which is awesome, since I was hoping to get a bit of time off before starting.

And I am now off to look at booking a flight to England for a quick visit.

Again, I say YAY!!!!!!!!

Yesterday was a bit crazy. Had a interview/negotiating seminar with the outplacement agency in the morning, and then the interview for the job I really kinda wanted in the afternoon.

( Cut because, wow, that was longer than I intended )

Yesterday I had an interview/test for an eLearning developer position. I was told the test was about general theory of eLearning development. In fact it was mostly questions about Flash and ActionScript programming.

I'm not a programmer.

I can tweak Flash code, but I'm not at a point where I can write it myself. (HTML and CSS, sure. Flash, not so much.)

Fortunately, there were a couple of questions on curriculum development, so I didn't turn in a completely blank test, but still, it wasn't totally fun.

At least the experience forced me to put together a very nice training portfolio. And now I know I need to swat up on Flash and ActionScript if I want to get into eLearning. Which looks an interesting route to take.

Anyway, to console myself after such a debacle, I hied myself hither to finally see Legion. Paul Bettany as the Archangel Michael was too delicious to contemplate. And while I wouldn't say it's a good movie, it was certainly entertaining.

( Cut in case anything is spoilery )

I just found out I've made it through to the first round of interviews for a learning developer position. And I've got till Tuesday to put together a portfolio that'll prove I can produce online learning.

I've spent all evening installing Windows and Office on my shiny new Mac laptop. Now I get to spend the weekend redoing one of my online tutorials without all that pesky branding from my previous employer. And this on top of ballet lessons, Mandarin lessons, the buying of a big girl bed (the Sweetie accidentally cracked the railing on the toddler bed Ros was rapidly outgrowing anyway), and play dates.

Crikey!

::deep breath::

So, it's been a crazy day.

Did one interview, for job requiring stupid amounts of travel. Am pretty much thinking it's a bad idea to proceed to the next round of interviews.

Did second face-to-face interview for a job writing technical papers on risk management for a bank. On the plus side, I'd be working very closely with a good friend from uni. On the minus side, the document they gave me to critique as part of the interview made me lose the will to live. I somehow don't think I'd be happy doing this one. (Went out for coffee with the friend who recommended me, and he says my writing samples are far and away the best they've seen, and he's convinced I can do the job, but still...)

Talked to mom this evening. All is not well. She woke up with her foot quite bruised, and it looks like she'll be going to see the surgeon tomorrow afternoon. (One of my oldest friends, who happens to be a nurse, talked to her today, and convinced her that yes, she should "bother" the surgeon and go see him.) At the Sweetie's urging, I think I'll be making a flying trip up north to make sure I get the full scoop on what's going on.

Agenda for the rest of the evening:

Create application packages for the four jobs I was going to work on tomorrow

Finally set up the shiny new laptop that is still sitting, neglected, in its box

Pack

I have returned from the north country, after a successful journey helping my mom deal with total knee replacement surgery.

The surgery went swimmingly. I did wonder, since they took her into the operating room at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, after assuring me they'd let me know when she was out, and I still hadn't heard anything after 1:00 p.m. So I finally left the family waiting room, trucked over to the surgical unit, and was told, "oh, she's been out for ages." They just forgot to tell me she was done, even after my mom reminded them. ::sigh::

They let me go into recovery for a few minutes since they were still waiting for a room, which is where I found Mom, sitting up, looking perky, except for the honking great bandage wrapped around her knee. She swore she was in no pain, and felt fine. And she kept swearing she felt no pain for most of her stay in hospital. (The surgical nurse told the ward nurse that Mom is, and I quote, "a tough cookie." They don't know the half of it.)

The Momster was up and walking the day after surgery, and surprised the physiotherapists at how well she was doing. (The PT said that Mom has inspired her to stop making snap judgments. She was dreading having to deal with an 80-year-old patient, my mom, but it turns out the woman in her fifties across the hall has been the problem child.) Mom still says she's not in much pain, except when doing her exercises.

I took her home on Thursday, and she's doing well getting around the house on her own. (She kept threatening to help with the dishes. I kept threatening to tell her surgeon if she tried.) She's got a freezer full of food, neighbours who are going to look in on her, and looks to be on her way to full recovery.

Alas, I couldn't post while I was up north. While I did manage to use the local library's computers most days, apparently the Parry Sound librarians consider Livejournal a bastion of "Adult Content" and have restricted access to it. If I still lived there--which let's just say is never, EVER going to happen--I'd be getting on the board of the library and fighting censorship. (Weirdly, their Net Nanny (TM) software did let me respond to comments. I just couldn't post a new entry.)

Next task: prepping for the two interviews I have on Monday. Added challenge: I'm not keen on either position. One is for a tech writing position in a financial institution that looks to be dead boring. (At least I'd be working with a very good friend from uni.) One is for an actual technical training position that looks to be interesting, except that it requires 75% to 100% travel. Even with the most understanding spouse in the world, which I pretty much have, that's gotta be grim. (I've set myself minimum conditions under which I'd take that one, and let's just say it involves lots of money, lots of vacation, and written guarantees of how much I'd be on the road.)

It's been clear for a couple of weeks that our company was probably going to lay some people off.

Today I found out that I was one of those people.

I pretty much had an inkling when my boss booked a last minute meeting with me right after lunch for little to no reason, so it wasn't a complete shock. But still...

On the positive side, this means I can take some time to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. Again.

On the negative side, there's never a good time to be without income.

Anyone need a good technical trainer/video production person?