One of the main reasons Alex and I picked up and moved to Pittsburgh was to find jobs.  It wasn’t really working out in Memphis.  We’d both sent out a lot of resumes with no real possibilities.  Sure, I could have had several sales jobs involving cold calls, weekends, and commission based pay, but I’m just not up for that kind of life anymore.  Until recently, most of my jobs have involved commission.  At this point, I’d sooner have my gums scraped every day.  I can’t tell you how awful it is to work for months on something, only to have the funding fall through at the last minute on the house, or hear that the client found the same thing online for $5 cheaper and booked it themselves. In one fell swoop, you’ve got a fraction of the income you were expecting, or worse, no income at all. 

So this time around, I’m looking for a salaried job.  You’d think with two undergraduate degrees I’d be set.  But one’s in Political Science and the other in Drawing and Painting, so I might as well have degrees in pole sitting and gum chewing for all they’re worth.  I do have office experience, I’ve run a business, written advertising copy and I’m terribly well-rounded.  But it’s hard to depict “well-rounded jack-of-all-trades” on a resume. 

My focus of late has been on museum work.  I took some workshops in grant writing and fund development, and volunteered at the Memphis Brook’s Museum of Art to help with the preparation.  I honestly believe I can be good at the administrative side of the arts. The tough part is convincing someone who’s got a job open.

Somehow, I managed to get my resume in front of the right people at a Pittsburgh museum right before we moved.  I wasn’t counting on anything until I made some connections in town, but I must have sent the right version- I have 6- to their HR department.  One of the reasons we were pushing to leave on time was that I had an interview scheduled for the end of the week we arrived.  Let me tell you, the mere possibility of a job made that move soooo much easier than it would have been had I not had a little incentive to arrive on time.  If you read my earlier posts, you know why.

So as soon as the dust settled from the crazy move, I researched the museum and the people running it.  I picked out some nice clothes and then went a day in advance to spy on them.  Well, maybe spy is not the word.  It isn’t like I sneaked into their administration offices and found the files on all the candidates and compared my qualifications to the others.  I just timed how long it took to drive, looked at the exhibits and talked to a few people who worked there. 

Despite all this, I still showed up incredibly early for the interview and had to sit in the car for a while.  Then I went inside and walked around the museum some more.  45 minutes later, I was on time for my interview. 

It went fairly well.  We discussed my qualifications and they asked the normal questions; “What do you know about us? What do you like most about the job? What do you think will be difficult about the job?” I always try to ask more questions than they do.  It keeps them talking and me from saying something stupid.  I’m usually pretty good face-to-face, but I once had a phone interview where I blew it by saying, “Sounds like you’re pretty small.”  I meant the staff was small, the guy took it to mean the operation was small and began talking about how much money was brought in, how many programs they had, etc.  Not a good idea to make the interviewer defensive.  Needless to say, I didn’t get that one.

I found out this interview was just round 1, so we’ll see if anything comes of it. 

The job hunt continues, but it sure was nice to know the resume, at least, is not being filed in the garbage.

My nephew, E, had his 7th birthday within days of our move to Pittsburgh.  Since it fell on a weeknight, he was allowed to invite one friend and go to Chuck E Cheese’s, the big birthday party would be on Saturday at a kid’s bouncy jumpy place. As new residents of his home, Alex and I agreed to go.

I don’t have children out of choice, and I have never been to a Chuck E Cheese’s before.  It has always been described to me, even by the most tolerant parents, as the 6th Circle of Hell (everyone always has one Circle that’s worse.) So I pasted on a smile and got in the car.

Now, I happen to like E quite a bit.  He’s always been a good kid, even when he was toddling around with sticky hands.  His tastes run very close to my husband’s so they are always able to chat about something or play a game while I look on benevolently. But I have a low tolerance threshold for most children.  I last twenty minutes then I need to move on.  It’s not that I dislike them, per se.  I’m just not interested enough to keep the energy going. Get them into packs of three or more and I really get jumpy.  Put it this way; when I turned 5 I left my own birthday party and went to my room.  I thought it was too loud. So you can imagine how scared I was of the notorious rat I was about to face.

K picked up E and his friend (a nice, polite little girl- whew!) and Alex, R, and I met them there.  I am happy to report the place was nearly empty!  There were a couple of other families and a small group of teenage boys who, I suspect, were special needs kids. At least I kind of hope they were.  Otherwise, they were pretty socially awkward for their age and have a long road to travel.

Speaking of socially awkward, we beat K and the kids by about 15 minutes.  I don’t have to tell you how weird it looks for two men and one woman to go trotting into Chuck E Cheese’s carrying presents with no children in sight. We sat for a while and had some soda and made jokes about luring kids to a van with the gifts. I noticed that they actually sell beer and wine there.  Everything came out of taps; there was Bud, Miller, Rose, and White.  I thought about ordering a soda cup of Rose as a joke, but I couldn’t stomach it.  Just saying, “wine on tap” is funny enough.

The kids arrived and immediately sprinted for the games.  I watched, ate some salad and wings, played Ms. Pac Man and skeeball, and helped collect the endless stream of tickets.  K challenged me to the race car game, then Whack-a-Mole.  I have to say, it was really quite fun.  Except for a random kid who kept stealing tokens, there was no fighting or pushing, the kids had a blast and the adults kept all their hair.

I have been told that my experience was near perfect, and to never go again for fear of ruining it.  I don’t mind telling you I skipped the Saturday party at the bouncy place; there were 20 kids expected.  Judging by the bedraggled appearance of my husband and subsequent Facebook posts on Circles of Hell, I made the right choice.

We finally made it to Pittsburgh on Monday afternoon.  My brother-in-law, R, his wife, K, and their son, E, have a beautiful Tudor-revival home, over 100 years old with gorgeous wood accents.  Alex and I have the third floor, consisting of two rooms and a bathroom. It’s comfortable and the dogs have enough space to not feel cramped.

Did I mention it’s the third floor?

We schlepped the stuff we brought up three flights, panting and sweating all the while.  The next day we were to get up bright and early to meet the movers at the storage unit to drop off most of our things.  They would then take the rest to our new home.

We arrived at the storage facility at 8am.  We waited.  Then we went for coffee down the street.  When 10 o’clock rolled around we called to see where the movers were this time.  The driver let us know they were running just a tad late and it would be 5pm before they arrived.  Of course, the facility closes at 6pm on Tuesdays.  Alex let them know they would just have to drop our stuff at the house and then stay overnight in Pittsburgh so they could finish at the storage unit. The driver said he would see what they could do and give us a call back.  See what they could do?  What, are you kidding me? If they had an ETA of 5pm at 10 that morning, how are they going to arrive earlier?  I could only assume they would take the giant semi that held our stuff to the nearest teleporter and show up within minutes.

At 3 the driver called to say they’d be at the storage facility at 4:30.  They arrived on schedule at 5.

After some furious, though futile, unpacking it was suggested we bribe the storage guy to stay late.  $50 later, we got permission to stay.  The guys finished up at 8 then cranked up the semi to go to R and K’s house.

The house is in a quaint part of Pittsburgh called Squirrel Hill.  It’s great; you can easily walk to shops, but parking is scarce and the street is narrow.  It is also one-way.  The good news was, there just happened to be enough room in front of the house to move the truck to one side and allow cars to pass by. The good news pretty much ended there.

Because it was so late, we had the movers take the really big stuff up to our rooms. (Third floor, remember? I’m no fool.) But they stacked a lot of our smaller boxes in the dining room to save time.  We made a change in our bed plans, since there was no way to fit our king mattress up the narrow stairway.  Unfortunately, the queen box springs from our former-bed-now-guest-bed didn’t fit either.  We’re sleeping on R and K’s guest bed with a split foundation until we can get our own.

When the guys finally left at 9:30, we all collapsed in the second floor TV room with adult beverages.  As we sighed with relief, Alex looked around and said, “Hey, Sherry, where’s your laptop?”  It had been sitting on the hassock, charging.  We all looked around.  Everyone asked each other several times if it had been moved by one of us.

Crap.

I’d just gotten it for Christmas!  I’d barely used the thing! I was going to be replacing my old, slow-as-molasses desktop with it.  I was going to look cool writing on it in groovy, local coffee shops, dammit!

We pretty much figured that one of the movers hid it in some packing blankets as they came down from the top floor.  I am now filing a claim and disputing the final moving charge on my credit card. As you might guess, I am less than pleased with my movers’ performance.

There is a slightly positive side; I had not gotten around to transferring my files to the laptop, nor had I ever paid a bill on it.  So, there is no lost information or possible identity theft.  Plus, nothing else was taken, and we did finally get everything else where it needed to be.

Two lessons this time. 1) No one can be trusted. Watch your movers like a hawk.  They might not steal the stuff they moved, but everything else is fair game.  2) Sometimes laziness and procrastination can pay off.  If I hadn’t goofed around, I’d have lost a lot of files and would have had to change all my credit information.

Though we were a little worried about Max’s condition for the drive- the vet recommended Immodium, but only because this was an unusual circumstance- we felt pretty good about it as we went to bed Saturday night.  Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, Alex was up half the night throwing up and with his own personal case of diahrrea.

We have two vehicles which meant that both of us had to drive.  So poor Alex spent the first day of the trip drinking sports drinks, feeling awful, and listening to the dogs pant in the back of his car.  By the time we hit Cincinnati, he was nearly passed out on the steering wheel.  I admit, I was worried when I had to honk my horn to get him to leave the last gas station.  When we got to the hotel, he flopped into bed and didn’t move until morning.  He didn’t even go with me to eat.

It had been raining and I didn’t want to disturb my ailing hubby, so I took Max and Oscar out by myself.  Several times. By the end of the evening, everyone was covered in mud, especially Max.  I’m sure the nice hotel maids were not happy with the formerly white, now brown towel and washcloth I left behind. I swear I used half the little bottle of shampoo trying to get the white back!

The second day went much smoother.  Alex felt better, the dogs were pretty good, and the weather was only dreary, not rainy.  I will say though, that Ohio has the worst highways I’ve ever driven on.  Don’t get me wrong, Pennsylvania came close, but for sheer breadth and depth of pothole, Ohio gets the prize.

Lesson learned: Always have Immodium on hand when you’re about to travel.  You never know who’s going to need it.