Day 115
Jobless Day 14: Two week anniversary. Still no job leads or interviews. Still no unemployment. Good thing mom’s in town. I am still eating increasingly stale pastries
stolen from the Marriott’s breakfast buffet, the goal being to stretch out my
food reserves a few more days before having to break down and buy
groceries. I am being embarrassingly
cheap with good reason… I am trying to stretch money past where it shouldn’t be
stretched. Like stretching a piece of
paraffin… sooner or later… it’s gonna snap.
Day 117
To escape the turmoil of the house, I have
redoubled my training for the Chicago Marathon. It gets me out of the house for
up to two hours a day, and leads to my first income since being fired: I find a dollar whilst on a
run. I have managed to cut back, at
least as far as food is concerned, mainly by mooching off Jan and Rose, who
have both been great in looking the other way.
In the good news department, I had a phone
interview with a smallish, 30-person startup in South San Fran. I also get my second phone interview with
another small biotech company, which reminds me of McCompnay. I’m starting to notice that all of these
start-ups have these bland corporate names that combine science and bland
corporate culture. Everything is Sequencode or Reversacyte or Cerebrolomics or Rejuvalex.
Apologies if the biotech company names I just
made up actually exist. Bigger apologies if they exist and I wind up working
there.
Day 119
After nearly three weeks of running to avoid
overdosing on Rose and Jan, I am now able to complete a run of 20 miles. This,
combined with a particularly frugal trip to the grocery store (total outlay
$20.17 for an impressive array of stuff) and the fact that Jan left some extra
French fries out, makes this day a pretty good one.
It’s funny how your priorities and worries
change when you no longer have a job.
Obviously, I’m no longer worried about dragging myself out of bed to
impress my boss, or the fallout from a failed experiment. On the other hand, when I go to the grocery
store, I am now spending far more time dithering over which deal is slightly
better, the generic diet soda at regular price or the brand name on deep
discount. Oddly, I am stressed a lot
less with the soda.
The observation does support one theory I have
held for a long time: no matter how important or lowly one’s stature, your
problems at the moment enlarge themselves to become quite pressing, even when
they’re not. As an example, a drowning
man’s sole worry is treading water, but I contest that a man on dry land will
allow his own difficulties to engulf him, even if they’re stupid, like his wife
buying the wrong shade of BMW.
Still no word from my first
interview. Interview 2 is next week with a small
biotech. I find the idea of working for
another one man show distasteful after dealing with McBoss. While I was looking for a new gig, my mother
had Googled him (a bit more thoroughly than I did initially, it would seem),
and found out he has strong roots to Arab groups alleging inappropriate acts
against the Israeli government. He also
claims he was not allowed to speak at his high school graduation, even though
he was supposedly the valedictorian. Finally,
just for WTF factor, he also claimed to be an award-winning poet*. In short, I
was working for a psycho. The fact that
I didn’t last long is almost a point of pride at this point. I do feel kind of bad, legitimately bad, for
the people working for him. Labor Day is
tomorrow, and they do not get it off. I
started on July 1st, and we didn’t get the fourth off. Seriously.
I may be tough or stupid for working there in the first place – another
reason to never mention this on my resume.
As Bill O’Reilly said after being sued for sexual harassment: “We will
never speak of this… again.” First time
I’ve ever compared myself to O’Reilly.
Perhaps unemployment IS changing me…
* I followed that last one
up. Apparently, during an online interview, McBoss was asked to submit one
of his poems about stem cells. He did
and, although it is not clear, the thing was so relentlessly mocked that McBoss
asked the website administrators to take it down. If you have ever written a
poem about stem cells, you are officially the punch line in a “Know how I know
you suck at poetry?” joke.
Day 120
Rose is picking up her
workout regimen again. Having once been
tremendously obese myself, I believe myself to be sensitive to the plight of
the overweight, and I. That said, I feel
I can also address the topic frankly, much the same way that a Polish citizen
can make Pollack jokes.
Today Rose was too busy to
get to the pool. Her “workout” consisted
of “swimming” in the family’s hot tub. Yes, the bubbles were on. Yes, I saw Rose in a one-piece. I would not mention this Rose hadn't brought
it up at dinner, lording it over Jan. I
had run 18 miles that afternoon, and did not feel it was necessary to bring up
at dinner.
A few days later, Rose
announces she’s going to ride the bike.
The family has an entire fleet of bicycles, all safely unridden in the
far recesses of the family’s overflowing garage. When I enquired, I discovered Rose owned an
antique exercise bike. Later that
afternoon, I asked her how the rise had gone.
“Great,” she said, “I did 50.”
“Fifty minutes?” I asked,
impressed.
“No, fifty pedals,” she
answered.
Later, I calculated that,
for a good cyclist, 50 pedal revolutions took slightly longer than 30 seconds
and burned just under eight calories.
Next Time: Jan and Rose
interactions. Lots of them.
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