It's My Birthday! And On June 12...

...Joan of Arc leads the French army to victory in the Battle of Jargeau.  (1429)

...Death warrants are issued for Samuel Adams and John Hancock by British general Thomas Gage, who also declares martial law in Massachusetts. (1775)

...the United Irishmen fight the Battle of Ballynahinch. (1798) 

...Ulysses Grant pulls his troops out of their positions at Cold Harbor, giving the Confederacy a victory. (1864)

...The Phillipines declare their independence from Spain. (1898)

...One of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history kills 117 people in New Richmond, Michigan. (1899)

...The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, NY. (1939)

...German troops liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Brzezany, Poland, and kill 1,180 men, women and children at the city cemetery. (1943) 

...Medgar Evans is murdered in front of his house by a Ku Klux Klan member. (1963)

...The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. (1967)

...and then I come along.  Pretty cool, huh?  And since I've been around...

• I played in a bagpipe band for eleven years.  Well, okay, I was in one bagpipe band for six years and the other one for five years.  Booze, drugs, wild sex, constant travel, loud music--it all kind of runs together, ya know?
• I bought a condo in San Diego, California with Joan, and then sold it for twice what we paid for it, after I exasperatedly told our real estate agent that there was no way on earth anybody would shell out that much money for an 800-square-foot space with high ceilings. 
• And so I was rich for about five minutes.  After which student loans and cars and credit cards and moves to Texas got paid for, and I was no longer rich, but that was okay.  
• I went to England one summer and followed Big Country around.  And here it is, twenty-something years later, and I'm getting ready to follow Big Country around...three dates in Texas.  (Well, hey, I'm not a wide-eyed kid anymore.) 
• Despite several attempts, I never got arrested for civil disobedience.  For some reason, by the time the police showed up and said "You have five minutes to clear the area," I always figured the point had been well made.
• That, and there were maybe ten liberals on campus where I went to school.  And they weren't very good company.  If you're going to be locked up overnight, you need good company.
• I went to music school for two years.  It's John Lennon's fault I didn't graduate. 
• I've been through ten-plus cats.  There must always be cats.
• I worked in a public law library for seven or eight years, during which I contended with:
• A guy who was sure that the copy machine was reading his mind and transmitting his thoughts to the government.  He came in every Tuesday.
• A man who stated that the CIA had bombed his town with nerve gas that caused everyone in the town to forget that this had ever happened, and that he needed to file a Freedom of Information Act request but he couldn't remember the name of the town, and the CIA kept denying that this had ever happened.  
• A sweet little old lady that would come in, walk around the whole building and sprinkle holy water on everything while whispering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like "motherfucker."  
• A guy who'd been ticketed for having a dog at the beach, and was trying to prove that since he was actually in the water at the time, he was not "at the beach," and if that failed, that he was in "international waters," where the police had no authority.
• I was born in Texas.  I live in Texas.  I want to die in Texas, and have my ashes buried under a live oak someplace because I ought to provide some nourishment for something, after all those trees went through all that fruit growing to nourish me.
• Okay, I was born in Laredo and left almost immediately, but I still count as a native Texan.  That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
• Since we moved to Texas I was unemployed three times in five years, and never once did we fall behind on the mortgage payments.
• Why? Because we bought a house we could effing afford, that's why. Imagine.
• I wrote a trilogy of thriller novels that are called the Mindbender books while I was unemployed, and they're really good, so if you're a literary agent or a publisher or something, or if you know a literary agent or a publisher or something, drop me a line so we can both make a few bucks. Thanks.
• I was a little manic while I was unemployed. Just a little.
• I have a Garfield bowling ball that's bright orange and says, "Let the Fur Fly."
• I can't bowl. Well, I can throw the ball down the lane and occasionally hit something, but so can your average chimpanzee.  
• Bowling is a lot of fun, though.  I like it a lot.
• I play on the law firm softball team, the mighty Law Dogs.  We are the worst team in the league by a comfortable margin, but we have a good time. 
• I took a writing course once from the mighty F. Paul Wilson, which is kind of like taking a painting course from Vincent Van Gogh.  Totally awesome.
• I've been married to the lovely Joan for the last 18 years.  Yep, that's long enough we could've had a baby and raised it to adulthood.
• I have no interest whatever in having a baby and raising it to adulthood.  
• I sometimes have dreams I have a son, though.  And he's a teenager, and he's taller than me. I have to look up at him to shake my finger under his nose. 
• Joan and I actually got married three times.  I think the third one was "legal."  At least it was at the time.  What's the Supreme Court said lately?
• I was really kind of disappointed that we couldn't get married in the church, but the pastor didn't want to get into a fight with the bishop and Joan didn't want to get married in the church anyway. 
• The next same-sex couple that the pastor married, got married in the church.  About which I have no comment. 
• Since October 2007 I've been dragging myself awake at five a.m. to swim a mile in the morning before work.  
• If you added up all those miles I bet I could've swum to Hawaii by now.
• I enter a swim race every year, a 2k distance race, which I sometimes manage to finish in under an hour. Dead last, I might add. 
• Joan's ex-husband and his wife are friends of ours. It's very Noel Coward, no?
• Just this afternoon, Joan scored us tickets to The Book Of Mormon. Sweet!
• Joan got me a meditation cushion and mat for my birthday. Best. Gift. Ever.
• I paint a little.  My favorite painting is one of a school of fish, swimming through the air in a desert landscape.
• I used to have dreams that my fish could swim around in the air, that it did them no harm.
• I miss my fish, but I think aquarium fish are incompatible with one of my cats.
• Someday I wanna go tornado chasing.
• I have a bad feeling I might actually catch one, and then what would I do with it?
• I became an "official" Buddhist about two years ago.
• Who ever thought that Buddhists would dig tornadoes?
• Despite my occasional bitching, life is actually pretty good.

Cheers, all!

LinkedIn, and In, and In

I've been perusing the Interweb looking for good web sites for us unemployed folk. Boy, have I ever found one. It's called LinkedIn, and it's like Facebook for grownups. By grownups I mean professional types of all stripes, from accountants to plumbers and yes, just incidentally, paralegals. If you haven't checked out this site and you're looking for work, or if you're already a business owner/venturer and you're looking for more work, you could do a lot worse. There's just so much in here I hardly know where to start. Networking, corporate events, workshops, recommendations, shout-outs, and that's just the beginning. I've been wandering around in here for days and I haven't gotten bored yet. Plus, it creates a mini-page for you with your work experience, picture, general credentials and a little statement about who you are. Here's an example. (My accountant, Scott.) Seriously, check it out. You will not be disappointed.

For that whole looking-for-work thing, we have two nifty Web sites that do in a flash what Monster.com can't do in an hour; search virtually the entire Internet for job ads and bring them to you in a neat, tidy prepackaged format. They're called simplyhired.com and indeed.com. I'm not sure how they work but work they do. If it's been advertised somewhere on the Net (including on Monster) it will show up on one of these sites and probably both. It doesn't hurt that Linkedin works with SimplyHired.com and tells you if one of your connections is already connected to the job you're looking at. I should probably also mention jobster.com but I don't use that one as much. All three of these work with Google Reader or whatever RSS feed you care to set up.

As for how not to get depressed while looking for work, I found a whole lot of really good real world advice from ordinary folks right here.

And how is the whole job search thing going, you ask. Well, firstly I have a job starting April 27 with the U.S. Census, so if I can survive until then, and I think I can, I don't have too much to worry about. But the Census gig is not full time, and I will still need the real gig with the bennies and all that stuff, so the search continues. I've had some good interviews and we'll see what happens, folks.

Breakfast in America

Playing in the background: The smoochie bird. I'm not sure what kind of bird it is - possibly a bluejay - but it has a call that sounds like "smoochie smoochie smoochie smoochie smoochie."

Saturday in Texas. The day dawns wet and cloudy. It's been raining off and on since the middle of the night, as those of us who are easily startled by thunder boomies can attest. I've crawled out of bed, into some clothes, put in the ear drops (I have an ear infection), meditated and fixed the all-American breakfast - bacon and flapjacks. (Eggs would be overkill.) I've had some coffee, Joan is still asleep, when she does get up there's plenty of food, and the house is nice and quiet. Perfect time to get some writing done.

Except.

I don't know what's wrong with me these days. Well, actually I could give you a list, starting just incidentally with being unemployed, but as far as writing goes I don't know what's wrong with me. I haven't been able to string two sentences together in weeks. Which is a pity because if there's ever a perfect time to write, it's during a period of unemployment - long stretches of unstructured time, occasional annoying visits to Monster.com to make sure you haven't missed anything - but otherwise perfect. I'fact last time I was unemployed (and yes, I'm appalled there was even a last time) I wrapped up Book Two and started Book Three. I even remember one particularly nifty three day weekend where I knocked out eighty something pages, which is even better if I don't then delete three-quarters of them the following day, as I sometimes do.

(Course I was also manic as hell, and it finally got a chance to show up because a. I wasn't working ten hour days and then coming home to write, b. I wasn't drinking anymore, either and c. the binge eating was pretty much under control thanks to OA. I'fact if it hadn't been for that particular lapse in workingdom I might have gone on undiagnosed for months or years longer, saving myself thousands in therapy and prescriptions, while the disorder continued to wreak havoc on my life and damaged my brain even more than it probably already is. Oh well. You gots to take der good mit der evil, as Lars von Trier would say.)

But here I am. Sober, binge-free, medicated, ridiculously calm compared to the swooping ups and downs of anxiety I had when I was working, and all set to dive into something big and complex in between looking for work, which, if one is honest, does not really take eight hours a day in spite of what those nice "how to land a job" guides tell you. And I am churning out absolutely nothing. This, for the record, sucks.

I even have a couple of works in progress. There's Book the Third of Mindbender, Soulmender, which is basically done but there's some denouement to wrap up at the end and explain What Happens To All The Major Players (and perhaps more important, who killed the sinister detective, because frankly, I'd like an answer to that one). There's the whole getting Mindbender published thing, which doesn't take concentrated writing but (oddly like looking for a job) does take a willingness to hunt down agents, write letters, follow up and be a pest in a nice way. And finally there's No Accounting for Taste, the sequel to No Accounting For Reality. During the last NaNo-go-round I got about a third of the way into this one; go back to November and check out some of these NaNo posts by way of example. So there's stuff I could be doing. I'm just not doing it.

What happens is this: I sit down at my trusty laptop (I love my laptop, in case I have not said that lately - I don't know what I'd do without my laptop). I open a file. Pick a file, any file. I read through the last little bit of whatever I was working on. I add a sentence. Maybe two. And then I get distracted. The TV is too loud or there's some new game on Facebook I just have to try or maybe instead of doing this I should be knocking out more query letters or more recently, I need to check Monster or Craigslist or Simply Hired, name your favorite, or there's a recruiter to call, a chore to do, a floor to sweep, dusting to accomplish. I go back to the file. I glare at it. Then I get fed up, quit, close the file (sometimes without even saving it) and flop down on the couch, watching whatever happens to be on the Discovery Channel and cursing myself for being a lightweight. Obviously I can't do this. Obviously I was fooling myself all this time. Obviously I've let everyone down again (though, as Dashiell Hammett allegedly said, "It's not like they're gonna miss you, Lily.") I've done this pretty much every day for weeks.

So is this that thing they call writer's block? For years I've been convinced it doesn't exist but I'm starting to believe in it now. Anyway, it's very frustrating. But perhaps there is hope. I did, after all, manage to knock out this entire blog post - and Joan is still asleep.

Beware the Ides of March

Playing in the background: The occasional chirp of the cell phone, calling Danny Boy somewhere

If I were the superstitious type, I might just take the whole month of March and, I dunno, leave town or something. Maybe go logging in Canada or hop on a fishing boat off the west coast of Alaska. Luckily I'm not the superstitious type because if I were I'd say, what the hell is it with March and being unemployed?

Ah, tis to laugh, you may say. But consider:

• March 2007. Mass layoffs by the SBA, since of course, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath is all cleaned up and everything on the Gulf Coast is hunky dory. Jen's letter of layoff dated March 13, 2007.
  
• March 2008. Nothing happened to Jen job-wise, but her dad got into one heck of a skiing accident while hotrodding down a double diamond with his older brother. There's just never a dull moment around here.
  
• March 2009. Not content to merely be laid off once, Jen gets laid off a second time, on or about March 10, from the firm she went to after being laid off by the SBA. Luckily for her, she didn't go work for Countrywide like a lot of her ex-cow orkers at the SBA, since six months after the big layoffs, Countrywide promptly began laying everyone off and it would have happened a lot sooner (though, she admits, not in the month of March.)
• March 2010. Jen gets fired in a classic case of "kill the messenger syndrome" that she doesn't really want to go into. But seriously, it happened on March 8. Couldn't one start to get extremely superstitious just about now? Like maybe March is a dangerous month to be around? Look what happened to Caesar. And I'm not even talking about Julius, I'm talking about my cat. Well, okay, no, I'm talking about Julius. But Caesar was named after him.

I am once again looking for work. And once again we have proof that everything changes and nothing stays the same and that getting attached to something is the surest way to unhappiness and angst generally. That doesn't stop me from doing it, though. I can't imagine it stops most of us. Joan and I, for example, are both rather attached to having enough money. Not a lot of money. Just enough so that we don't have to worry about paying the mortgage and catching fish from the Trinity River for our evening meal. (Fish from Trinity = grossbuckets.)

So okay, if anybody needs a commercial litigation paralegal who's serene in the face of the usual pretrial nightmares and can juggle depositions, mediations, trial prep and research on the finer points of the rule against perpetuities while ordering out Chinese food and billing 140 plus hours a month, drop me a comment or a direct message, @jenstrikesagain on Twitter. It would help if you're somewhere in the vicinity of downtown Dallas but that's not an absolute requirement. Many Trinity River fish will thank you. Heck, I'll thank you, too.

Hey!! I Got A Job!!

This just in, I've been hired. Small law firm, wrongful death and PI mostly, decent salary and health insurance. I start Monday. Yay!!

July Microfundraiser and Swim for Distance Wrap-Up!

Km swum in July, Swim for Distance Month: 41.1

Playing in the back of my head: "Keep On Rocking In the Free World" by Neil Young

Well, folks, July is (almost) over, and it's my best Swim for Distance Month ever! I logged 41.1 km, which is about 25 1/2 miles. I was only aiming for 40, so those of you who pledged some money by the km for the Childrens Medical Center microfundraiser, relax. I'm not gonna ding ya for the extra k. We'll just call it 40 and you can make your contribution here. If you haven't donated or pledged and you still wish to do so, you can to go to my fundraising page and toss some nominal amount into the basket. So far we have $78 and I know some of the pledges aren't in yet so it's looking pretty good! I'm pleased, anyway, and I'm sure the hospital will be, too. It is not easy to raise money in this economy. It'd be easier if I had a job with a nice law firm that wants to look good by contributing to local charities, but, you know, one thing at a time and all that.

Speaking of which, I have a second interview today and two possible document review projects about to start. So no matter what happens, it looks like I'll be working. We like working. Working is good. I'll keep you posted.

Next up in the great Swim-A-Thon, the Lake Travis Relays. It's in Austin in early October. I really wanted to do the Maui Channel Swim this year, but Maui being in, uh, Hawaii and me being unemployed, that's kind of not going to happen. Austin, though, is doable. Plus, I can take Joan, and she can hang around in Weirdsville while I'm getting wet with the gang.

Now, considering I can get sunburned walking to my car, I'm thinking three or four hours on a Texas lake might be beyond the capacity of even most sunscreens. (I've also gotten sunburned on all of my open water swims to date, though I just got a little pink at the Texas Tough race. And all of those were with heavy sunscreen.) So here's what I want: A burqini.

Is this not the coolest thing ever? It's a swimsuit designed by a Muslim woman to provide modest coverage during competitive or recreational swimming. And, okay, I'm not a Muslim but an outfit like this makes a LOT of sense for us pale folk. It's light, won't drag, and really is meant to be a competitive swimsuit. It comes in colors other than black, too, which is good because it's HOT in Texas in October. I'm not sure where I'm gonna get $200 Australian ($165 US) but the Lord will provide, I guess (says the Buddhist who wants the Muslim swimwear.)

Hey, I got a fan letter from a reader of No Accounting For Reality!! Thanks, Sharon of Frankfort, Kentucky! The paperback will be out shortly here and I'll be able to send you a copy in a few weeks. Still haggling with Lulu trying to get the price down to about $10. I may have to crack and make it $11.

So How's The Job Search Going, You Ask. Part III.

Meters swum in July, Swim for Distance Month: 37.5 (with two days to go)

Playing in the Background: Rain, apparently. Unless the squirrels are throwing acorns at the chimney again.

In case you're keeping track, August will be Month Five of the grand unemployment adventure. As far as the TDI is concerned, though, it's only Week Thirteen. This means I still have thirteen weeks of unemployment payments to go, which, if I use all of them without any breaks, will take me right through late November and into the Christmas seasonal employment rush. So doing okay there. Course I'd prefer to go back to work way before then. Joan would probably also prefer that. I think unemployment is harder on the spouse of the unemployed person than it is on the unemployed person. Sure, you gotta deal with that "what was wrong with me in the first place" thing and the "why doesn't anybody want me" thing, but the spouse, God help her, is placed smack into the middle of a situation that is A. unstable and B. she has no control over. Course none of us have any control over anything, but at least we get to feel like we do once in a while.

This is probably the longest I've been out of work since college, when I distinctly recall spending most of one Christmas break at home watching the "screaming dog of the day" $1 rentals from the local video store (most of them scummy horror films with the occasional blowing-things-up-for-no-reason actionfests) because I was the only one who didn't have a job. And yes, this does suck, but the suckage is only in moderation. Plenty of things suck worse. If you wanna know how worse, pick up the book Columbine by David Cullen. I'm reading it now and, yeah. That sucks worse. Hard enough to go through high school at all but imagine being the survivor of a school shooting and having the media follow you everywhere you go for the next two or three years until you either graduate ("an astonishing success after such tragedy") or fail to ("another victim of the inexplicable violence"). Eesh. It's my new Book o'the Decade, so check it out. Of your local library. Or wherever.

I had an interview today with a recruiter (yes, another one; I think there's like 50 in town all trying to fill the same 3 jobs) and left very reassured. She told me she had a woman last week with identical credentials to mine plus an M frickin' BA, and said woman hadn't had an interview since April. I've had scads of interviews; therefore, I am doing something right. The competition is just really frickin' fierce right now. Firms are interviewing nine and ten people just because they can. In making the decisions, it sometimes comes down to irrational things like looks and handwriting. (I'm not kidding. Someone Who Would Know told me this.) Since I don't look like Marilyn Monroe and my handwriting is, uh, interesting, I'm out of luck if they're going by that. But who knows if they are? Ya just don't. It's a jungle out there.

That aside, though, I've come upon some truisms about the whole looking-for-work thing. Item One, it does not benefit you whatsoever to take a full-time job you don't want unless it has health benefits. If it does, taking it for that reason is probably okay, because health benefits are expensive. Otherwise, though, you're just making it difficult to keep looking (which you're going to do because you don't want the job.) Unless paying the mortgage is becoming impossible (which it isn't, in my case), it's better to find a part-time job or a temp gig so you have time for interviews.

Item Two, if you can, take a part-time job or a temp gig so you have time for interviews. (Nice segue, huh?) In Texas, at least, having a part-time job does not disqualify you for unemployment benefits. There's some formula by which they continue to pay you a lesser amount, and don't ask me what it is but it's on the TDI web page someplace. If you make too much money in a given week to qualify for an unemployment payment, they'll just postpone your unemployment benefits for that week. Which is how I got to 13 weeks when I've really been out of work for 18.

Item Three, I can't afford to think about any of this stuff. Not how long I've been out of work, not how much longer it's gonna take me to find a job, not how I'm going to pay the bills next month. If I do I will make myself crazy and there are plenty of things out there to make me crazy without my help. I gotta concentrate my mental energy on What I'm Doing Today. (And "How am I going to pay This Particular Bill?", which, remarkably, hasn't been a problem yet. And shouldn't be as long as I continue to take em one at a time.)

When you think about it, none of us should be wasting mental energy on the future anyway. As Mariko put it in Shogun (another Book O'the Decade if there ever was one, but I read it years ago), "There are twenty tomorrows between that day and this one. Anything can happen on any of those days." That philosophy is both shockingly Buddhist and would fit in well with the whole Twelve Step thing. One day at a time and all that. And the most important thing to do at any given time is what you're doing at that moment.

But I will still make this prediction: I predict that in the immediate future, I will get up and make myself a quesadilla. Oo, I'm right. That's a hit!