Another Day 38: Life Goes On

 

Holidays and weekends don't count, so today marks 25 days unemployed. Considering I'm getting paid, am I really unemployed ? I guess so. It's going to continue to be a scary place until I have a job and unless the Accenture job comes through, I don't know when that's going to happen. For now, I consider this time off to be an extended vacation. This past Friday marked 5 weeks without a job. I haven't been unemployed since 1985, so this is a hard adjustment.

I got an email from Kurt this morning as he wanted to have a call to "get to know me better" before pursuing the exception to the proximity requirement ! The call was scheduled for 12 pm and I got on a few minutes before. It only lasted until 12:10 pm but I can tell he REALLY wants to hire me ! He said they just received a massive 5 year contract and the pressure is on to have enough team members in place to do the work. It sounds like he needs more than the 3 people he first mentioned and so far he hasn't found anyone with anything near the experience I have. He told me he dismissed one applicant because they were very arrogant. He also said he went to the former CEO of his company (they were acquired by Accenture) for help getting around the requirement, so I know he's committed to getting me hired. We'll see where it goes ! I just hope they don't try to low ball me on the salary. I don't need $110k but I'd accept $90k or better. That was my base salary at AT&T without OT, bonus or awards. I feel like the call with Kurt went really well and I feel like I will have the job if the proximity exception is granted. This is so exciting ! I've never wanted anything more in my life ! 

For the moment, I'm going to hold off on applying for any other jobs. I do have an application out there to Infosys for a couple of similar roles, but so far every job I've applied to has either ignored me or said they weren't considering me. Oh well, that's their loss.

To celebrate this great feeling, I decided to go to the casino today. After all, I had showered and done my hair and makeup. Why waste it sitting at home alone ?!?!?! I left about 1 pm but I was home by 5. I played my $100 free play and had some General Tso's chicken with veggie lo mein. In the space of 2 hours I lost $200 twice but managed to win it back both times ! When I got it back the second time I decided to come home. So all I spent was the thruway tolls. Did I want to play more ?Absolutely ! I could have stayed for hours with the $200 plus the $500 I took out of the bank ! I'm glad I didn't do that as I need to be careful with my money until I am secure in a new job. Traffic was pretty heavy on the thruway and 81, probably because this is a big vacation week. Tomorrow I'm going to take my computers to the UPS store so I can close the books on AT&T. I meant to do that today but forgot to put them in the car when I went out. I need a couple things at Walmart and the car will need gas soon too, so I may run those errands tomorrow.

I sent a thank you email to Kurt and he advised he's escalated the proximity issue 3 levels and is waiting to hear back. I really, really hope he can get that waiver ! If he does I could be starting a new job a lot sooner than I expected ! I really need to get some things done around the house while I still have all this free time !