Randomness is all I got

You'd think an RV filled with two cats, a large dog, and two adult humans would be horribly uncomfortable and crowded, but you'd be wrong.  Of course now the weather is starting to turn cold, so that might prove to be an issue...

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I have an interview next Monday down in Bend, and I'm excited and nervous and mostly excited but still pretty nervous.  It's with a solar panel company, and it's a sales support/marketing job, so it's totally up my alley.  Now I just have to convince them of that.  Eek!

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Satellite reception out here in the boonies is hit-or-miss, so I was heartbroken when it crapped out in the middle of 'Castle' last night.  But thank the digital gods, it was posted on Hulu already today.  I need my Nathan Fillion hit for the week.

So. Cute.

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Something somewhere linked to Tumblr, so I bounced over there to see what the deal was.  I think I like it better than blogging.  I place lower expectations on myself for content length and quality.  So you can find me over there now too.

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Yep.  The whole content length and quality thing is in evidence today.

Gimme a minute to catch my breath...

It's been a helluva time these past few days - we made it from Ohio to Washington unscathed, and have been spending the last three days down in Oregon.  B had a final interview in Coquille and we took some time to drive around the area - from Coos Bay to Coquille to Myrtle Point to Bandon - and, well... I don't want to offend anyone who lives down there, but there were times when I was saying to B, "Paddle faster, I hear banjos!"  I grew up in the country, don't get me wrong, but the vibe I got in SW Oregon was a bit... erm... uncomfortable.  It's hard to explain.  (Then we learned that Deliverance was actually filmed down there, and it made a lot of sense.)  The funny thing is, we struck up a conversation with some guys we met in Bend yesterday and mentioned we'd been down in Coos Bay, and they immediately were like, "Oooooh, yeah those coasties are CRAZY" so we felt a bit validated.  Anyway, we had a good long talk about it in the car on the way to Bend and decided that B is going to pass on this job.  Not just because of the area, but the job itself would only pay $14/hour and would be so fricking stressful for him, dealing with  close-minded, set-in-their-ways locals.  Plus, I wouldn't be able to find a job for myself either unless I want to work at the corner Gas & Go or something.  So, it's back to the drawing board... but at least we're out west now.

We did, however, absolutely fall in love with a couple of areas.  First, Missoula.  We stopped there to visit B's brother on our way to Spokane, and we both immediately felt at home there.  Young, hipsterish/hippieish, outdoorsy, comfortable, just a great town.  Unfortunately a great town with limited possibilities for jobs, but still might work out.  Then yesterday we drove to Bend via Eugene/Springfield along the McKenzie River, and Oh.My.Gawd. is that river valley AWESOME.  It's on our list now too, along with Bend.  B would probably be able to get a job up at Mt. Bachelor pretty easily too - or at any ski resort, really.

So, yeah.  We got all sorts of worked up about something that was so hugely disappointing.  But we've had some fun along the way!

My traveling companions - The cats were somewhat easy to deal with, except when they got tired of each other.  Of course it took me until the last day to figure out the best way for them to travel - Gyro drugged and in his small crate, Lily not drugged and in the big crate.  If they both were in the big crate, Gyro always drugged and Lily either drugged or not, it inevitably led to flying fur and yowling.  I had a nervous breakdown somewhere in South Dakota and nearly threw them both into oncoming traffic, but it all turned out okay in the end.

Wind farm in Minnesota

Sunrise in South Dakota

The storm we drove through in Montana (rainbow!)

The Rockies

The scenery - flat, then hilly, then flat, then MOUNTAINS.  Some ugly bits in South Dakota and some nasty rain in Montana, but otherwise pretty interesting.

Then. finally, my brother's place north of Spokane.  Which is EXACTLY what we needed after that crazy trip.  That's the Pend Oreille River.  Yeah.  My brother just built a new house on his property there, so my mom lives in the little mobile home they were in during the build, and we're in the RV right now.  It's surprisingly comfortable.

Oh, did I mention we stopped in Missoula on the way?

SHOT SKI!

It's starting! (eeeek!)

I sent out a mass-email to my fam & friends yesterday, outlining our plan (as much as we have one) & I've been talking about it in Facebook & Twitter, so I figured I'd make it all official and shit by writing about it here too.  (Since we all know I'm so good about writing...)

We're leaving Ohio on Friday!

The stuff that we had out here at the in-law's has been crammed into our now over-stuffed storage unit, awaiting further instruction.  We'll stuff our clothes into suitcases, fill up a cooler with caffeinated beverages and beef jerky, drug the bejeezus out of the pets, and down the road we'll go, across I-90 through such joyous places as Mitchell, South Dakota, until we land in Spokane.  We'll crash there for a couple of days, then dump the pets on my mom and drive down to the booming metropolis of Coquille, Oregon to meet with some folks that might actually want to hire B, and pay him to do watershed-type-stuff.  The job seems to be in the bag, so when we get a confirmed "welcome to the company" we'll drive around down there to find a place to rent.  Thankfully there are a couple of good-sized towns nearby where we should be able to find a place - otherwise we'd probably be shit out of luck in that tiny little town.

Now, obviously there are a plethora of ways this could all go south of cheese.  I started listing all the possible things that could go wrong, then I started getting the shakes.  Traveling across the country is one thing, but traveling with two cats and a dog is another.  Then there's the whole, what if B doesn't get this job bit, which... while the idea of living and trying to find a job myself in such a smalltown-rural-middle-of-nowhere area kind of makes me a bit OMG, I'd much rather face that challenge than face starting all over again on the job hunt for B.  Me, well, there are dream careers and then there are jobs, and I can find a job doing whatever.  B needs this job to kick-start his career, and I'm willing to wait a couple of years for him to catch up before taking the next step with mine.  Besides, I grew up in hickville, and the area down there looks awesome from what we've been able to see.  I think I can make it work.

I'm still left thinking about what I'm going to do though.  I'm getting the federal unemployment extension and have about 5 more months on it.  It's possible I might get a second extension too, since I last worked in Michigan.  So I could keep leeching off the government for a while.  Or I could find a retail job and have flashbacks to those despairing years right out of college, which wouldn't be too bad but might wind up paying less than I'm getting from UIA.  There are a couple other complete-leap-of-faith ideas, in other words absolutely insane and not entirely realistic, that are floating around in my head.  But both require either a good amount of capital or a good amount of experience, neither of which I have at the moment, so I think they will continue to sit on the back burner.

A couple of things I know I'm going to do though, are the farmer's markets and volunteering with the watershed association that B will (hopefully) be working for.  I don't want my marketing & PR skills to get rusty, so I figure I'll loan them to the CWA.  And I've always wanted to have a booth at a market to sell not only our garden veggies, but my crafty bits & bobs too.  Smalltown Oregon seems to be the perfect place to start, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Also, this:

"Neah da beech, boyeee!"

Simple, right?

Last night I read through my own archives.  I'm not sure why, but I'm glad I did.  For one thing, I noticed some things to edit.  But what stood out the most is how I've changed as a writer.  My Inner Critic tells me that I'll never be a real blogger, that I have no voice, that I'm an okay copy-writer but not a story-writer, that I'm not interesting whatsoever.  But reading my own words, comparing two years ago to last winter, I'm starting to see that, once again, my Inner Critic is full of shit.  I've gotten better, I'm learning to write as I think, as opposed to as I think others might want to read, I've got a bit more focus, and I'm starting to feel a bit more confident, if not prolific.  It's still hard to get motivated though.

I mentioned in a conversation on Twitter the other day that once I have something to write about, I really like the writing process.  But thinking of something worthwhile to write about is where I get stuck every damn time.  That notebook I was keeping beside the bed to write my blog ideas in has been packed (in the same box as my alarm clock, I think) and despite having plenty of time to sit down and type, I just tell myself that nothing is happening, therefore there's nothing to write about.  My blog has always been a simple journal - I share it with my family & friends through Facebook as a way to keep them in the loop on what's going on with me, so I've always had to have some sort of event to write about.  I'm trying to change that mindset, and just write for the sake of writing, to exercise my brain and exorcise some demons.

I think once life settles down and I have a routine again it'll be easier, but these past few months have been anything but settled.

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As for news, there's nothing to report really.  B is hoping for an interview in the next week or so with a watershed organization in southwest Oregon (around Coos Bay).  He's had some great communication with the Executive Director there, so we're taking it as a good sign considering he's had nothing but form emails ("Don't call us, we've had a bazillion applicants & really don't want to hear from them all" kind of thing) or no communication at all from anyone else that he's applied with.  The supposed "Veteran's Preference" with federal jobs is apparently a load of crap, as he's gotten nothing but rejection after rejection from every department he's applied with, including the Corps of Engineers.  It's disheartening.

Me, well, I was officially terminated at the end of July (which makes sense, considering it's been six months since I was laid off), and I will finally admit that I'm a little bitter about it.  I put two years of hard frickin' work into their green program, and now what?  They're just ignoring it, I think.  I can't even think of an adequate word to describe how I feel when I still see my name on their website, see that they haven't changed any of the information there to reflect that they're not doing the programs anymore.  It's a combination of pissed, yet slightly hopeful, like maybe they're not ready to drop the idea of picking me back up just yet.  Who fricking knows??  Regardless, I've still been applying to jobs out west, but have gotten squat for real leads.  Same shit, different day.  I'd still go back to my old job in a heartbeat, though.

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As for the move, well, if B gets called about the job in Oregon, then we'll coordinate it with that.  Otherwise, we're leaving Ohio sometime around the beginning of September, no later than the 4th.  B's mom is flying to Missoula to visit B's brother (Little B?  B-Dubz?  Shit, I hate trying to think of nicknames to ensure anonymity, especially when their initials are the same) and B's dad is driving with us, so we're going to time it so we get to Missoula on the same day.  B and I will continue on to my nephew's place outside Spokane and crash there, and our stuff will actually stay in storage here in Ohio until we know where we're going.  It keeps us from having to move our stuff more than once (or twice, really, counting the move from Toledo), and saves us a lot of effort.

So we have a couple of weeks yet for everything to change.  Since it's inevitable that something will come along to screw up our plans.

A Random Random Tuesday

I haven't been doing Random Tuesday Thoughts in a while, mainly because it wound up being the only thing I would post, and I thought that was pretty lame of me.  So instead, I just don't post.
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Last night I dreamt that I was in Target, trying to decide if I wanted to steal a Superman action figure for a craft project.  But none of the action figures were the original Superman in tights with a red cape - they were all "futuristic" with chrome jock straps and night vision goggles, so I decided not to swipe one after all.  As I was leaving the store a little cream toy poodle walked in the door by himself, so I cornered him and was trying to find a tag with his owner's info on it, except he had so many tags on his collar I couldn't figure out which one was current.  I somehow looked up his ID number online and got a list of even more owners, and it just made me sad to think that this poor dog (who I distinctly remember had cataracts and a gray muzzle, so obviously a senior dog) had been through over a dozen homes in his life, and had been named some really stupid names like Coors Light.  I mean, what kind of jackass names a poodle Coors Light?
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There's a 14-day backorder on our new iPhones from AT&T (yet apparently the Apple Store has them in stock - grrr) so I've been putting together my wish-list of apps in iTunes.  Seriously, Cowboys Vs Zombies?  I'm on that like white on rice, baby.  If anybody can recommend some good ones, I'd love to hear about them.  I have the basics - my bank, The Weather Channel, Mapquest, Movies, Tweetdeck - and I want a good grocery shopping app, one that scans barcodes and maintains lists.  I'm going to test Grocery Gadget Lite, and maybe Shopper too.
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(Just checked the status of our orders, SHIPPING TODAY!!  WHOOT!!)
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I've been loading up my Etsy shop with jewelry, some lovely things I might add.  I even had little business cards made with my shop logo (thank you Vistaprint for freebies!).  I'm going to have to slow down for a bit though, until we get settled into wherever we're going.
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Can anybody recommend a good moving company for a cross-country move?  I'm getting quotes from United Van Lines, Mayflower, and Budget Van Lines - and of course there's U-haul as a last resort.  Is there any place else I should be looking into?
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I can't get enough of this commercial:


Frickin' hamsters, ya'll.