Thursday, January 31, 2008

back to work

start the new job tomorrow. I'm not excited. I'm hoping for snow. Weatherman says I won't get it. Guess it'll be fine. I'll just keep thinking of the money in the bank for our trip next summer. I've not even started, and I'm already counting the days till vacation. How spoiled am I?

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Interview part 2

So the interview went well. Mostly it sounds like a decent job and a good place to work. The funeral home is corporately owned, so i'd get to participate in a 401k again. Who knew how good that could be. The money is livable, right where Steve told me to ask for (which I didn't ask, they just told me). The hours are fine. On-call every third weekend, which is also livable. Directors at my last job worked the weekends on a rotating schedule. I wouldn't have to work unless a service were planned or a death occurred and the family didn't want to wait till Monday to come in. I wouldn't have to do removals because they have two students who do them all. Removals are picking up dead folks from the place they died and since it seems that most people choose to die in the middle of the night, not doing removals is a very good thing. Two things could keep them from offering me the job. First is the other person they've been talking with about the position. He flies in from out of state next Monday for his interview. So, he may win. Second is that I don't have a college degree. Sad but true. Without a degree, I can't graduate from intern to funeral director. The state says I have five years to get the degree. Denny says he'll give me two. He also said if I did some online work he'd give me a designated hour each day to do it, so I'll have less homework during the evenings. He also said they'd reimburse my tuition. I had an appt this afternoon at the community college to see what they had to say about a timeline. I missed it but can go in a few minutes during their walk in time.

All this to say I wasn't even sure i wanted to work yet and now I might have a new job AND I'll be going back to school. Guess we'll see what happens.

Monday, January 14, 2008

interview

So, I've got an interview tomorrow and somehow I'm not all that sure how i feel about it. Friday I looked on the state funeral director's website to see what i need to do about my intern license. It expired on my bday in December, but since I'm not working I don't have a director to be signed up as my mentor. Well, I clicked the employment link and a funeral home right here in my city had an opening. I right away grabbed the phone and thought if Kiki answered I'd talk to her, anyone else and I'd just hang up and not worry about it. Well, Kiki answered. She used to have my last job before me and she's the reason I went into the industry, well she's not the reason, but she encouraged me. I've thought before when I've talked to her that she thought I should stay as an office manager and not be a director. So it was a little hard to blurt out, I saw you guys are hiring for a fd, but I did it. She was very excited to hear from me and she right away gave me the cell number for the manager who'd taken a day off. She said their home has switched to central prep, so I wouldn't have to worry about learning to embalm. whew! Central prep is the way a lot of corporate owned funeral homes work. Bodies are taken to a central location where embalming, dressing, and casketing are performed. Then they go back to their own funeral home for services. It was a concern for me, as I've realized I really have no interest in embalming, but then how can you really be a funeral director if you don't deal much with dead folk. Hmm. Anyway, the manager, I'll call him Denny, goes to my church. I've seen him there and also he's come to my old work a couple times before to chat. So I felt only a little uncomfortable to call him at home. I hurried and called before chickening out and he was also very glad to hear from me. He told me he'd have to rethink his whole strategy and would love to talk with me more on Monday when he's back in the office. We chatted a couple minutes and I hung up with my head swimming. When Steve got home from work, I no longer felt so guilty about sleeping till 10am, since I'd gotten such a positive vib from both Kiki and Denny. Crazily, I feel a little like I'm not quite ready to go back to work though. Steve has been amazing in the past couple years and I don't wanna push my luck, but I also kinda like being at home. Let's see, quit a well paying job with tons of benefits and stock options; stay at home and remodel for almost a year; take a low paying job with no benefits in a funeral home of all places; quit again so that I can travel around with him for a couple months; now when it looks like another job may come my way poor Steve has to listen to me whine about "maybe I'm not ready to work again". Yes, I DO know how good I've got it. I'm not saying I think I'm a shoe-in for this job, I wouldn't be that arrogant, but I wasn't prepared for how happy they both were to hear from me. Denny called me this morning and asked me to come in for an interview tomorrow. He said he's heard nothing but great things about my work and he'd love to talk with me more. I figured that Friday he'd be calling directors I worked with to see what they thought of me and it sounds like I was right. So, I guess it's a good thing I bought that new suit Saturday. Gray wool, lined of course. It looks pretty good on me, if I say so myself. I sure hope I can remember the dry clean only part though! Anyway. I'll go in tomorrow and see what they have to say. Wouldn't it be awesome if later in the week they were to offer me a position that's Tuesday thru Thursday? I'd take it for sure! :)

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Job Hunt

Today the official job hunt begins. Well, I updated my resume and that's about as far as I've gotten. Does that count? I know which funeral home I want to work in next, I just don't know if they want to hire me! Guess maybe next week I'll have to tell them they do, no huge hurry...

I feel as though I don't have much of a purpose lately except to be a "lady of leisure", whatever the heck that is. Two solid months of traveling with Steve have left me fat and happy, but now I need to do something about the fat part! Maybe it's the turning of the new year and maybe it's the beginning of letting go of Corey but today I am ready to start fresh. Well, again, not in a huge hurry...

This year I'd like to get a new job, begin to run again, learn Italian, well conversationally at least, and remodel my kitchen. The kitchen will probably not get done because of Italy in September and that will probably take the budget, well part of it, enough to slow it down. Right now I better finish with my resume. Well, right after i read some blogs...