Preliminary job interview today, with a law office in Cleveland. Specifically, the Warehouse district. My main concerns today will be taking a typing test and finding out whether they pay for their employees' parking. If they don't, I'm not interested. Not for what THAT job pays! It wouldn't be worth my gas/parking OR my gas/RTA fares. I suppose I won't know till I get there.

Anyway. BOOOOO to having to put on pantyhose in muggy 90 degree weather. And BOOOOO to putting on makeup in 90 degree weather. And BOOOOO to cat hairs sticking to my black skirt. Yay to maybe finding a job that won't make me feel like a prostitute. Well, except for the makeup thing.

I finally decided on a name for my 20 week old new kidney. Well...technically I suppose it's older than 20 weeks, but it's been inside of me for 20 weeks, so I still think of it as new.

Anyway, I'm naming it after my brother and donor Stephen Tyler, AKA Skipper, AKA Skippy, AKA Skip, AKA "whore." I'm calling it Skippy II. It has a fondness for orange soda and soy hotdogs ("smartdogs"), and I'm only hoping it doesn't grow to be 6'1 ish in an imitation of the original Skippy.

Congrats to cousin Jess and Justin L!!!
They just found out their baby is going to be a boy.

It's about damn time they had another son, too. Their other son is growing up with three girls, and we all know how girls are.

Good job on passing along that Y chromosome, Justin!

So it turns out the company I was working for was in fact evil and soul-sucking, only they waited until AFTER the paid training period to let you in on the 60ish hour work weeks and the several times daily travel between two very large counties with almost no gas reimbursement. I once asked someone if it was possible to be in sales without turning into a horrible, maniacle, baby eating bastard. Turns out the answer to that question is "no." Ah well.
So now I'm doing the interview thing again. It's interesting to me how many of these so-called highly paid sales type positions are always available and advertised, yet the good old mid salary ranged positions are hard to come by. Are people that willing to want to pay me MORE money for doing so little? Pish.
I mean, I'm 24 19 with a complicated medical background, the voice of a 13 year old, and a lot of endearing nervous habits. Who WOULDN'T want to hire me? They're passing up a goldmine here!

In other news, I just polished off a carton of ice cream. And I don't even LIKE ice cream. Also, I'm somewhat lactose intolerant. Let's see how well I handle this new turn of events.

Oh, the exciting life I lead.

Why are we hosting a family reunion at our house? There are a few reasons I can think of:
1. Perhaps mom was drinking when she came up with the idea
2. We're hoping someone will be rich and end up throwing money at us
3. You can't drink beer (openly) in the metroparks
4. It forced spring cleaning upon the house
5. There is no reason except that the crazy genes are finally starting to take hold

All of these seem perfectly valid to me. We're getting to meet some relatives from Canada (eh?) and some people from out of state. Other than about 4 people, I'm not really sure who's coming that I don't already see once a week. I'm kind of torn between being my tacky hobo-funk self and making an effort to look presentable. Last time I wore my hobo pants in front of my Grandma she was quite rude about them, really. I guess it's "tasteless" to wear pants with a big rip in the ass in front of a bunch of seventy year old women. Who knew?

Grawr.

This week we're doing "role-playing" which terrifies the hell out of me. It's kind of like being in a horrible high school production, half improv/half scripted, only I don't get the joy of singing off key combined with the extreme awesomeness of trying to learn the Charleston in front of a gym full of men of indeterminate sexual orientation, all of whom are in revealing colored tights.

I might actually enjoy this a lot better if the men in class had to wear revealing tights. Not because any of them are at all attractive to me, but just because I'd feel slightly less awkward and revolting with my horrible stuttering, lack of experience and childish voice, and I'd at least have an excuse when I got distracted and stumbled over my "lines."

In fact, maybe life should just be filled with men in skimpy spandex garments. Yeah. It seems like a good idea right now, but of course I've only had about four hours of sleep. Still, if any of you out there would like to send me pictures...well...it could be like your good deed of the day or something. Don't be shy!

I think the only thing stopping me from rocking out with my (extremely businessey) socks out is my own inability to do a book presentation, owing in part to the fact that we don't get that particular phone book in my area, and also in part because I forgot my book tonight and ended up doing a mock book presentation whilst in the bathtub, using a "Cathy 20th Anniversary Collection" in lieu of a 30 pound book of yellow pages.

I suppose I'm beating myself up more than I should...at least what I'm doing is ethical and helpful to small businesses and the Ohio economy. It's not like I'm selling Ye Olde DIY Asbestos Tiling Kit or something equally horrific. I may have found the one sales job that's not about screwing people (honestly!) and I'm sure my fear of not being able to improve myself is more of a reflection on never really having to work hard at much of anything in my life than it is a reflection on doing something abyssmal. And for the record, I never had to work too hard at anything not because I'm super talented at anything (which is NOT the case) but because I'm really lazy and like all lazy Americans, I want to make the most amount of money possible for being as motionless as possible. I figure if I practice this and work on it REEEAAALLLYYYY hard for the first few months, it'll come naturally and I'll assume it's "easy" and then I can go back to being "lazy" and everyone will be a lot happier, as I tend to be a high stress person.

I'm going to bed.

Adios.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICOLE!

I'm not telling her age, because she's a lady. And also she'd beat me. I hope she has a wonderful birthday filled with Rangers and Morellis.

These next two weeks I'm being assimilate into the Borg that is Corporate America.

I really like this company. Not only are they overpaying me to sit in a classroom and sing "Garfield 1, 2-3, 2-3" as an example of advertising, or why I can't sing, or whatever, they're also really working with us to pound some of this stuff into our heads BEFORE we go and make fools of ourselves in front of customers. Normally I hate group work, but this has turned out to be both interesting and fun. And whereas most companies are soul sucking profit stealing destroyers of well-being, this one seems pretty ethical, especially considering it's sales. I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Here are some of the odd characters I'm training with:

1. If you've ever seen the British version of "The Office," then you'll never forget the character David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais. He loved to talk about himself and make mysoginistic/racist comments right in the middle of trying to show off just how colorblind/eunich-like his thinking actually was. Well-----I sit next to a man who would come across as a perfectly nice gentlemen if only he'd shut his mouth three sentences into his speeches. He's JUST like David Brent. At one point we had to interview each other and he decided he didn't like the interviewer's questions, so he asked HIMSELF questions (out loud) and then answered them in a long and rambling way, being sure to list as many of his acomplishments as possible. He was the one to interview me, and he made it a point to mention SEVERAL times that I'm the youngest person by far in the training session, going out of his way a few times to do so. That was shortly before I proceeded to kick his ass in every single exercise we've done so far. He left looking kind of humble today.
2. I sit next to this man who's been in the industry forever. I've been making him my partner for every group exercise and appealing to his ego to make him go first and repeat himself a lot, thereby giving me extra valuable training. At first he irritated me with his constant butting in and overriding of ideas, but I figure if he wants to give out his knowledge for free, hell, who am I to turn that down? People pay good money for sales training and advice, and here all I have to do is ask.
3. Just when I start to feel like the most unprofessional, young, giggling person in the whole wide world, there's the lady who sits across from me. This lady is awesome. Her uber professional veneer has been sliding away during this training and she actually called something "ghetto" today. I love her. She and I have had the least professional sales experience, so we can bond in our need to ask lots of questions.
4. The woman training us is about 5'2", has a Louisiana accent, and calls ME "little darlin." I feel like a linebacker next to this woman. I just think that's funny. It's like me calling my dog Ben (a 15 year old dane/shephard mix) my "little puppy."

The main bad thing about this job so far is the office. Once I start working I won't be there every day but for now I'm stuck there and I don't know if it's the temperature changes or what, but I have to visit the ladies' room once every ten minutes while there. And it's not just me...the lady in training does it to. Also, the stop and go traffic is killer on my gas mileage. On the plus side, people in that part of the city are pretty patient and considerate. We all know we're going to wait no matter what, so there's a lot of yielding and a nice lack of horn honking. It's the heaviest trafficked commute I've ever had, but also the least stressful.

So that's what's going on for the next few weeks. I work all day, rush home or to one of my after-work things, and then I study and do my "homework." In two weeks I'll be allowed to go on calls and start field learning, and then I shall fully be Corporate Borg.

Tomorrow I start my work for The Man.
Too bad "The Man" isn't Patrick Stewart. And too bad "work" doesn't mean "illicit affair."

.........siiiiiiiighhhh........