Woohoo!

The Sox win the Series! That's enough happy to make me okay with the fact that I'll be staying up half the night to catch up on work!

Halloween

Eeeee!!! I love Halloween. The first time I encountered it I was 6 and had just found a whole new reason (besides sledding) to love America. Free candy! Dressing up! Knocking on strangers' doors and demanding the aforementioned candy. Growing up on Route 9 in Worcester we always had to go somewhere else to do my trick or treating. I certainly wasn't going to let the fact that I lived on a highway get me down. Not while there was free candy to be had.
Homemade costumes was the way to go for me. So I would dress up in my black jeans, white turtleneck, black bowtie, cat ears on a head band and a tail pinned to the back of my jeans. My mom would draw whiskers with her eyeliner and I was rearing to go with plastic pumpkin bucket in hand. The costume would change year to year but kitty cat was a faithful standby. My dad would drive my sister and me to a nicer neighborhood and he would tail us in the car as we went knocking door to door. Thank God that by the time of my first Halloween I had grasped English well enough that I could shout "Trick or Treat" in delight over and over that one night. The best part was getting home, pouring the candy out of my bucket and making the appropriate trades with my sister. 1 snickers bar = 2 almond joys or 4 red licorice sticks. Black licorice was tossed aside and the full sized bars wouldn't be traded for all the fake gold coins in the other's pile.

As the years went by my trick or treating partners changed from my older sister, who was now too cool to dress up, to Michael, Jason and Edwin (the kids of my parents' friends and my adopted cousins). We figured out that the nicer the neighborhood was the better the treats were. So, as we would have to go to another neighborhood anyway one year we went to a upper middle class neighborhood with nice lawns and shiny cars parked in the driveways. The better part of the night went great. But the last house we went to was a cold bucket of water to dampen the night's fun. We walked up to a white house with black shutters, a seasonal wreath hung on the door. We rang the doorbell and waited. An old lady opened the door bowl of candy in her hand. We shouted the ritual chant "trick or treat!" and she looked at us for a moment, not opening the screen door. "You're not from this neighborhood" she said, and closed the door. I was probably 11 at this point and my sense of right and wrong, justice and acceptance was overdeveloped and mostly derived from a certain captain of a certain starship named Enterprise NCC 1701-D. I knew people weren't always good and kind but geez to a bunch of kids on Halloween? But just as suddenly as it happened we brushed it aside. My dad was waiting patiently in the car and soon we would be home counting, trading and feasting.

The last time I ever went trick or treating was with Matt and his little sister Monica. I dressed up as a devil, a la Lola from Damn Yankees, Matt dressed as an angel though I don't recall what Monica dressed up as. I want to say kitty cat but I may be superimposing my standby costume on her. It was short and fun. Mostly I was just enjoying being dressed up and being with them.

Halloween was a great part of childhood and I wish that it was still socially acceptable to go out and demand candy from strangers. New plan as soon as I pop out a kid I'm dragging it door to door umbilical cord possibly still attached if necessary. It's not for me it's for the kid. I swear.

For those of you who missed the news at the end of the last post

Click on play!

Now imagine me dancing around the room, while braying:
"GABY HAS A JOB! NOW WE CAN AFFORD FOOD!"
"GABY HAS A JOB! THERE WILL BE NO MORE PLAINTIVE DEMANDS FOR PRESENTS!"
"GABY CAN BUY ME SUSHI!"

Cue the parade of acrobats and elephants through the living room.

"GABY CAN SPEND TIME DOING STUFF OTHER THAN WATCHING STAR TREK RERUNS!"

Now I get out my big medieval hunting horn and blow an ear-splitting blast. I carry Gaby around on a chair in triumph. Elephants are breaking all of our furniture and pooing on the carpet. It's a good thing Gaby has a job to pay for the repairs.

"GABY CAN BUY NEW FURNITURE AND CARPETS!"

Interview Questions

It's never a good sign on a prospective job when you feel during the interview that the employer has no regard for it's employees. Generally people trying to hire you at least pretend to have social skills. They spend some time telling you how great their company is and why you should work there. During initial interviews they go over the standard questions of "What are your strengths? What is you biggest weakness? Do you prefer working in a team environment or by yourself?" But it's the questions that they come up with after the standardized ones that have more to say about them then you.

Questions like:

-"Why did you leave your last job? And the job before? And the one before that?"

Indicate that they have a high turnover and instead of taking responsibility for the work environment they have created they have chosen to blame the countless employees who keep quiting. This only applies though if your resume doesn't reflect "job skipping" i.e. six months here six months there.

-"How do you handle difficult coworkers?"

I haven't even started here and someone already doesn't like me? Generally this means you'll be working with people who may have not been informed of social norms and boundaries. Think sales people who will step all over you to get to that quota at the end of the month.

Besides those tell tale questions there is the whole tone of the interviewer. Do their voices sound kind and inviting, demanding and questioning? Are they trying to be evasive when you ask about holidays and benefits? Or are they honest and upfront?

While on this job hunt I have interviewed with several people here in Portland. Early on I went to a job fair and met a representative from a health care company who runs several assisted living facilities in the area. And right off the bat I got a bad feeling for the company. The man who was there grabbed my resume from my hand. He liked my experience and proceed to ask the why did you leave your last job question. Then he pointed his finger at my face and told me to complete the application online and call him the next week. He wasn't rude really but I just didn't get good vibes from that man. Just the same though I went ahead and applied and they called me a few days later to schedule and interview. When I got there they had me wait half and hour in the lobby. When I finally got to see the interviewer the full time billing position that I applied for turned into a part time night shift front desk position. I was told that wasn't the kind of position that I wanted and ushered out. I don't know what to make of that. In kindness I decided that someone had made a mistake in posting the position. Though they still have it posted.

Netflix was an interesting experience. They just moved their call center to the Portland area and I was very excited about this company. Netflix is known as a generous flexible company who values new ideas. Apparently this only applies to their head quarters. They for some reason have a call center that is open 24-7 (meaning holidays and weekends too). What was the most displeasing as a perspective employee is the desk situation. They have a farm of open cubicals dispersed within it are areas with couches and laptop stations. You don't get your own desk. Each time you come in for work you sit wherever and work. No pictures from home, no silly personal touches that make the call center experience survivable. You'll never know if the person who was using the headset you know have on is currently in the hospital consumptive and dying. The couches and laptop areas are for your scheduled breaks. They sat unused. The interview itself was pretty standard again mostly with the undercurrent of trying to figure out how long I would work for them before quiting. And oddly a video that was mostly about Blockbuster.

The interview with PML Microbiologicals was ideal. The woman who called me initially was upbeat and excited. She was honest and upfront with the terms of the position and her questions were centered around getting to know me and my experience. The physical interview was standard and only committed the difficult coworker faux pas. But they took me answer of demanding professionalism with approval. It took a little bit Red Sox detour when I mention Boston. All in all I think that it's a fit. Which is good because as of Monday I'll be working there.

Not dead yet

In case you were wondering why I haven't written it's not because Matt has grown sick of me and summarily locked me in a closet. It's more that I've been procrastinating at the one thing that I can procrastinate at while not employed. Even though it means that I'm not doing something I enjoy doing. My urge to procrastinate is boundless and when faced with not having something substantive to direct itself to it has instead chosen to attack my blogging. So my apologies and to make it up to you we went for a walk in our neighborhood and took some pictures we hope you'll enjoy.

Meanwhile on the job front I've landed phone interviews with Alphacard, Netflix, and PML Microbiologicals. I'll reserve my impressions of these companies until a job is secured and I know whose back I can talk behind. I would hate to be the inventor of the term pre-dooced : to not be hired in the first place because of one's website.

Portland: The Land Of Beef and Beer

#1 reason to move to Portland if you're not the crunchy granola "I love the environment and my idea of a good time is surviving bear attacks while hiking up Mt. Hood" type: good cheap beer and beef. ( wine as well for the snooty crowd) Oregon is blessed with fertile soil and incessant rain which apparently are essential ingredients to growing grapes, hops and cows. As such the many microbreweries flooding the market bring down the prices of local beer. And hell you can't drive two blocks without hitting a cow. I may be exaggerating about the cows but we have many ranches at the eastern end of the state (staffed by actual cowboys with boots and ten-gallon hats), which equals cheap beef. YUM!

(Pic is of tonight's dinner. The steaks came in a pack of four for $20.)

HUGE-SHI

Matt and I are notoriously bad at the whole cooking at home thing. So much so that instead of making a lunch to take to school Matt will just not eat until dinner. I, on the other hand, have been known to eat out twelve times a week. In our present condition of me being a penniless leech we have been trying to limit the number of times we eat out each week to just once. I know I just heard all the full-fledged card-carrying grownups guffaw at our carefully thought out money saving plan of just eating out ONCE a week but we choose to see it as personal growth.

Yesterday for our weekly feast we went for sushi. We chose Saburo conveniently located within walking distance of our house (a fact that did not escape us when looking for a place to live). Saburo is notoriously popular and everybody (all four people we've been brave enough to talk to) has recommended it. The place has got that hole in the wall feeling and yet there is always a long line outside rain or shine rain. As per usual Matt and I ordered three maki rolls and a handful of different nigiri sushi, some miso soup and gyoza. In our experience this is enough sushi fill our bellies but not to the point of inducing a food coma. Our waitress came by took our order and made a face as if to say "are you sure you want that much?" or perhaps it was more of a "woohoo good tip today!" kind of face. It's hard to decipher between the two. When our food arrived a short while later we understood the waitress's reaction. The sushi were ginormous! The nigiri were like an entire fish was fileted for each piece and the rolls, normally consumed in one dainty bite, took two or three bites to finish each piece off. We had indeed over ordered. And for the first time ever we took sushi home in a doggie bag.

Hooray for wasting time!

At the recommendation of a friend, when Gaby and I got the hankering to procrastinate today, we tried out the following website:
www.freerice.com
This simple but solid little URL provides what few time-wasting Internet destinations can: a sense of satisfaction for the conscience. The site is basically an endless vocabulary test, but as you answer questions correctly, you win grains of rice that are paid for by the site's corporate sponsors and donated to hungry people. Now, procrastination doesn't even have to make you feel guilty!

Furthermore, it's super entertaining to play. Like, a barrel full of monkeys entertaining. The program is written so that it delivers questions at your vocabulary skill level, and you can advance by correctly answering multiple questions at your level, but you can also fall back to a lower level if you answer any question incorrectly. I seriously just spent the last 90 minutes trying to advance past level 50, which seemed like a nearly impossible task, until Gaby walked in and pointed out that there are only 50 levels, so it actually is an impossible task. Sure, I felt momentarily foolish at the loss of the hours I would never get back, but on the flip side my stubbornness is probably feeding an entire village right now. Plus, if you live with word nerds, you can compete with them by incessantly calling out across the apartment the number of the level you've reached. (Or so I've heard.) Oh, who am I kidding? Our apartment sounded like a cattle auction this evening, only with more trash-talking.

By far my best pull of the night: being able to pull the definition of "autochthonous" out of my kiester.

Haute cuisine chez nous

Wrapping up our week of French-themed meals last night, Gaby and I decided to make a gigantic pot of Soupe a l'Oignon Gratinee (better known at every Applebee's in the land as French onion soup). This was risky: Gaby does not usually like soup, and the consumption of vast quantities of onion does not usually agree with either of us. Still, we took the plunge, mostly because onions were pretty much the only food we had left at the end of the week.

It was not a disaster, but due to some questionable substitutions, we had, after about an hour and a half, gallons of a liquid that was not quite like any French onion soup we had ever seen. Looking back, it is plain to me that we should not try any more creative variations on recipes until we've actually made them as suggested first.

Where we went wrong:
"No beef boullion? Any chicken? No? Okay, well I guess vegetable broth will be okay . . ."
"White wine, huh? Let's use this sherry instead. It's almost white."
"We don't have any French bread or Swiss cheese. Oh what the hell, it's not like we've been that punctilious about this so far. Cut up some Italian bread and throw some grated Parmesan and Asiago on it."*

*Actually, this was delicious. And the bread was home-baked by Gaby!


So in the end, we ate a very strange-flavored broth indeed. It is small comfort that one aspect of the soup came out correctly: properly harnessed, the roiling energies of our digestive tracts could power our apartment building for a week.

Google-stalking taken to the next level

For all of you out there who are interested, Portland has been added to Google Maps Street View. You may now get a street-level photographic look at my apartment building (taken after I arrived this summer) and neighborhood. Be on the lookout for me! I don't know exactly when the Google vans came through, so there may even be a picture of me walking down the street or waiting for a bus or something. I hope I'm not doing anything embarrassing. But if I am, then I guess there is the comforting thought that I may become internet-famous because of it.

Where does the time go?

It's the end of another school week, and I am at home enjoying a few moments' respite before plunging into next week's homework. (Respite = drinking a beer and eating leftover chicken.) Notably, I received two practice midterms in class today, both of which are due next week. This is one of the only opportunities I will have to submit written work for feedback from the professors all semester. The next time I get a test in any of my classes will be in December, when the final exams are given. For better or worse, my performance on those exams will almost exclusively determine the grade I receive in the classes, so I'm at least thankful that these practice midterms will give me a trial run.

Unfortunately, the availability of the practice midterms did not lessen the amount of regular homework assigned for this upcoming week. So I will be particularly busy for the next few days.

On the other hand, the practice midterms do include time limits of about an hour apiece (of course, there is no way to enforce these since the tests are to be completed at home, but I will limit myself to the suggested limit anyway). So at least the additional work will not require too much of my very limited free time.

In other exciting news, Gaby and I drove up to Seattle last weekend. We were there to visit with Leslie, my good friend from college (you may remember her as the girl who got married in Chicago last summer). It was good to see someone that we know again, and made us realize how much we miss being amid the familiar surroundings of Boston and Worcester and friends and family. We also spent entirely too much money on dinner and wine at a fancy French restaurant, but that's another story. Gaby came to the realization that however much she disdains the French language, she loves French food, and so our dinners this past week have had a very real Continental influence (my leftover chicken this evening, for example, is in a thick sauce containing an obscene amount of butter). Mm mm good. Tomorrow night's planned menu will include a salad with curly endive and thick-cut bacon. If we continue down this road, I may be asking for a prescription for Plavix as a Christmas gift.