the daily snivel
I've been a blur of manic activity since my last update (around, oh, last summer). I will talk about my first year of law school in the weeks ahead. For the time being, however, I thought I would get a new version of the daily snivel set up that would facilitate more timely updates. To that end, I have actually resigned myself to setting up a "blogger" account that will manage my posts for me. That way, if I have the inkling to write, I won't have to also have the inkling to markup a new entry and archive past rants. We'll see how it goes, and I would appreciate any feedback on the new format.
For the past couple of weeks, I have been job-hunting, which is a maddening experience. After five years working for Agriculture Canada, the dreaded time has finally arisen: there wasn't the money to hire me back this summer. I've been dreading this inevitable day ever since I started working there, as my co-workers have always been wonderful, the work was challening, and the money (I must confess) was swell. Deep down, of course, I also knew what a miserable experience searching for work tends to be. Keeping an excellent job, aside from every other conceivable benefit, means being free from looking for a new job.
Alas, now I'm looking, and not getting very far. The most frustrating part must be the false starts and dashed hopes. This week, for example, I interviewed with a placement agency that had an incredible job well suited to someone with my computer and legal skills. They kept me at the company for four hours so that they could assess my linguistic skills (English: 94 percent proficiency; French: 16 percent. Rob will have to work on that), undergo testing of my familiarity with various computer applications, and get me on the application of a secret level security clearance. Yikes. I already had what is known as "enhanced reliability" clearance, but the job requires looking at privileged and confidential legal documents. I had to account for everything I've done and everywhere I've lived for the past ten years. Subsequently, I was called in this morning for another interview, this time at the house of the CEO of the company. It's a firm with a huge business in litigation support right now. All the big law firms are working to have their cases digitally scanned and archived for easy retrieval and dissemination, and this company specializes in going on-site and scanning boxes and boxes of documents. They make a buck a page and often have to scan thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of pages. Unlike my willy-nilly says of nursemaiding a scanner one page at a time, several minutes at a time, the scanners they use have automatic document feeders and can process a page a second. Zoom. Big business and big money.
The problem, however, is that I don't have my secret security clearance yet (it could take as much as a month for CSIS to turn my life upside down). So someone else got the big job starting Monday (tackily, he was there with me for a joint interview of three). I got a promise that there would be work if my security clearance comes through, or they have work that only requires enhanced clearance. Until then, my efforts to ward off starvation continue.
So boo.
I also have a wild, baby squirrel trapped in my bedroom right now. I have no idea where it came from, except that my cat woke me up yesterday morning as he was playing with the poor, terrified thing, and it was screaming like nothing on this world. It spends most of its time hiding behind my furniture. I spent an hour last night pulling my room apart trying to find the damn thing, and chasing it around the room when it jumped and ran about -- not to mention when I screamed like a little girl when I pulled my bed out from the wall and it ran across my foot. I set out a live-release trap today, and hope that this will catch it. Meanwhile, my roommate found a drowned squirrel in our toilet this afternoon, so I can only suppose that there's a nest somewhere under the house around the pipes and insulation, and they're coming up through a small hole in my cabinet and running into trouble. Lousy wildlife. Perhaps I could learn to eat them. That would solve two problems at once.
Comments:For the past couple of weeks, I have been job-hunting, which is a maddening experience. After five years working for Agriculture Canada, the dreaded time has finally arisen: there wasn't the money to hire me back this summer. I've been dreading this inevitable day ever since I started working there, as my co-workers have always been wonderful, the work was challening, and the money (I must confess) was swell. Deep down, of course, I also knew what a miserable experience searching for work tends to be. Keeping an excellent job, aside from every other conceivable benefit, means being free from looking for a new job.
Alas, now I'm looking, and not getting very far. The most frustrating part must be the false starts and dashed hopes. This week, for example, I interviewed with a placement agency that had an incredible job well suited to someone with my computer and legal skills. They kept me at the company for four hours so that they could assess my linguistic skills (English: 94 percent proficiency; French: 16 percent. Rob will have to work on that), undergo testing of my familiarity with various computer applications, and get me on the application of a secret level security clearance. Yikes. I already had what is known as "enhanced reliability" clearance, but the job requires looking at privileged and confidential legal documents. I had to account for everything I've done and everywhere I've lived for the past ten years. Subsequently, I was called in this morning for another interview, this time at the house of the CEO of the company. It's a firm with a huge business in litigation support right now. All the big law firms are working to have their cases digitally scanned and archived for easy retrieval and dissemination, and this company specializes in going on-site and scanning boxes and boxes of documents. They make a buck a page and often have to scan thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of pages. Unlike my willy-nilly says of nursemaiding a scanner one page at a time, several minutes at a time, the scanners they use have automatic document feeders and can process a page a second. Zoom. Big business and big money.
The problem, however, is that I don't have my secret security clearance yet (it could take as much as a month for CSIS to turn my life upside down). So someone else got the big job starting Monday (tackily, he was there with me for a joint interview of three). I got a promise that there would be work if my security clearance comes through, or they have work that only requires enhanced clearance. Until then, my efforts to ward off starvation continue.
So boo.
I also have a wild, baby squirrel trapped in my bedroom right now. I have no idea where it came from, except that my cat woke me up yesterday morning as he was playing with the poor, terrified thing, and it was screaming like nothing on this world. It spends most of its time hiding behind my furniture. I spent an hour last night pulling my room apart trying to find the damn thing, and chasing it around the room when it jumped and ran about -- not to mention when I screamed like a little girl when I pulled my bed out from the wall and it ran across my foot. I set out a live-release trap today, and hope that this will catch it. Meanwhile, my roommate found a drowned squirrel in our toilet this afternoon, so I can only suppose that there's a nest somewhere under the house around the pipes and insulation, and they're coming up through a small hole in my cabinet and running into trouble. Lousy wildlife. Perhaps I could learn to eat them. That would solve two problems at once.
