t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


it'd been six weeks since my reemployment seminar and today was my follow up meeting at the career source office down in fresh pond. so you can well imagine that last night i was feverishly filling in my worksearch activity log, the detailed record documenting the day to day going ons of my job hunt. truth be told though, within the past six weeks i haven't really been looking. the few job leads i have i've kind of squandered and never really followed up on them. i don't feel the urgency just yet. my unemployment will last me until the end of january, and even then i can apply for a 2 month extension. anyway, there was a lot of embellishing last night. talked to a friend about work? oh yeah, that's networking. hung out with some people? networking. chatted with someone over aim? networking.

the follow up meeting went by pretty quickly, my case worker asked me about how the job market is going, i told him what he already knew, i told him what i can only imagine since i haven't jumped into the job search pool just yet, that there isn't a lot of permanent jobs but there are freelance work available. he gave me a few leads to try out, then make a copy of my doctored worksearch activity log. "so what do you do with those?" i asked, pointing to the log with my nose. "actually, nothing," he said. "on rare occasions the department of unemployment will do some random audits, but with the economy as it is right now, they're already more than swamped with work." i also asked if i have to come back in another 6 weeks and he said no. we shook hands, he wished me luck, and then i left.

i spent most of the day at the house tracing the edges of the floor with blue masking tape, in preparation for the big painting event that's going to happen god knows when. there wasn't enough to cover the whole house, i got as far as the kitchen before i ran out of tape. getting intimate with the floors allowed me to further realize just how bad those floor guys were. they didn't do a good job cleaning up the floors before they polyurethaned, and there are dents in the walls where they carelessly bumped their sanding machine into. maybe i'm too critical, because the average person who comes into the place won't notice a thing other than shiny wooden floors.

all day i was torn. i was working on the house but i felt guilty because i haven't been doing much work on my new director project. by 3pm the guilt was overwhelming and i couldn't do anymore renovation stuff. i also had terrible stomach pains, which could either be psychosomatic manifestations of project guilt or maybe just the fact that i didn't eat anything the whole day. i raced back to belmont and got all productive with my work, got enough done that i feel pretty good about the project, no more guilt. there doesn't seem to be enough time in a single day to do both things, to renovate and to work. i can't imagine how long the house would take to get down if i didn't get laid off, because i can't imagine coming back after work and strip paint and patch walls and tape floors.

and last night my sister got the nikon coolpix 2500. it's a sweet camera, essentially the guts of the nikon 950 but in a sleeker, more compact design. it shoots movies (without sounds) and has a very bright lcd (even though it's smaller). she's going to china next week, wanted to get a camera, decided to go digital, a little bit more expensive than a good regular camera but nothing to develop so it's more cost effective.