Week 2 - The Rest

Wednesday
Like most Cat folks, my buddy Ron decided to take some vacation to finish out the year with a long break. His Wife, Roxanne, stays at home and has found alot of joy and rewards speaking at the South Side Mission Benevolence center during their morning and mid-day services on frequent occasion. Ron is comfortable speaking in front of these crowds in the evening, and somehow Roxanne duped him into taking some of her spots during the daytime opportunities.
They brought their daughter, Amber, along for the ride. Her sister, Jasmine, was on my team for EE this semester and kept me on my toes during training. I say "duped" lovingly because then I was duped into taking Roxanne's speaking slot for this afternoon, which was very interesting. I went into it without any prep because I only intended to give a brief devotional, and then a short Gospel presentation to the few people who would should up. Well the place was packed with more people than I had ever talked to at the mission. It was great though. By presenting to the folks at the missions a little bit about my own struggles, I feel better connected and received by them. The guy sitting right in front of me talked to me for a while about getting laid off as well. He was one of the Track Type guys who got laid off three weeks ago. I had already heard about them being the first, most surprised and least notified to go.

Roxanne ran some errands with the kid and let Ron and I play in the snow for a while. I was assigned to shovel an elderly woman's driveway after every snow through our church's "snowman" ministry. It's been a joy to get to know this lady. She can talk as long as you can listen, and breathes between words faster than....someone else I know. Virginia's grandson came out to help us, and the job went faster than ever before. This kid has been living with her for about six months, and has proven to be a handfull. Being verbally abusive, deceptive and spending the night in jail occasionally are just a few examples of his attitude. It's clear in many cases that he wants attention. Virginia has more stamina and endurance for his attitude than some guys my age. Our youth pastor, Joey, has tried to spend alot of time personally devoted to him, but it hasn't helped alot, by the kid's own addition. I promised to call him before he finally leaves for Texas next month. Ron then helped with my driveway. When Roxy returned to pick up her hubby, they demanded a tour of the house. Ron and I talked about some practical aspects but Roxanne's ideas blew me away. I'm trying my best to consider one of them seriously. Meet my new designer!

After the third shoveling session (because after two it gets addicting), the rest of the day was slacking and going to church for dinner and AWANA.

At some point this week, I discovered a away to stay warmed up between weight lifting sets at home - climbing the equivalent of this inside my house.


Thursday
JonnyB beckoned from down the street to have me over for brunch and some computer support. It's a wonder I offer to fix people's network related problems when I have such a hard time with it myself. This was the third time I worked on his wireless print server. It was the furthest we've gotten so far in getting it to work, but only to find out that it's intended purpose might not be what WE wanted it for. Honestly, who makes a wireless print server that requires the printer to be hardwired to the router? Who? When Jon wasn't looking, I quit working and played with the animals.

Later, I got a call from one of the employers to whom I had applied for a job. He told me that I was sent a short online quiz. It was a 75 minute, 45 question test. Pretty fun, but if I see one more word logic problem, "these five words have something in common, what word comes next?", I will scream. Actually, I did scream, but no one heard me. My results were impressive (according to this guy) but I have doubts about that. He claimed I was in the 96th percentile. First of all, I never figured out what the five words had in common, and they asked five times with different sets of words! Also, they asked those math story questions like "two trains leave the station at..." which would normally stump me and alot of other people. But when it's multiple choice, you just plug in each value until it works.

Thursday was also an opportunity to invite an unemployed buddy over to catch up and see where he's been and how he's doing.

Friday

Josh and I received rude awakenings in the morning. Ex-roomie Jed barged in to inform us that you can hear a tree (or large branch) falling in our hood every 10 minutes, and (rightly so) he thinks we should de-ice and move our cars immediately. One of the biggest trees I have ever seen hovers over my house and driveway. It drops large dead branches in every heavy rain storm, so it's a no brainier
that a serious ice storm is dangerous. A branch (pictured) which is normally far above anyone's head was almost touching the sidewalk. Josh got kicked to the curb while I took the remaining garage space. :-)

The benefit of this was that Jed fixed me breakfast. Thanks Jed. Ironically (do I use that word alot?), I have seen fewer branches (tiny ones too) fall off of this tree over the last week than in any heavy wind rain we've gotten. We've been blessed. Ya, I realize the ice isn't gone yet.

This test guy got back to me to inform me of another programming test I will take (should be a little challenging) and explained more about their program. I won't bore you with the details, but it is a big decision if they offer. It involves getting traind for 13 weeks (I've seen the syllabus and it's good) and either spending money at the end of six months on the training and having faith that they will find a job nearby, or just moving to the east coast to work for them for a year at reduced pay to pay for the training.

Earlier I got a MUCH more exciting potential job update. I'm trying to forget about it because the position doesn't even exist yet, and it's only talk. I will be having lunch with the IT guy I would work under later this week or next week. Coincidentally (ha!), I went to high school with him.

The rest of the day was pretty frantic preparations for the Bible study Christmas party at John and Sarah's. Josh helped me out alot on his snow day. The family tradition of Meringue cookies didn't go so well, so I went with mint meltaway chocolates instead.

Friday night, Saturday, Sunday and today had their own excitement, so they'll get their own posts.