Not to say that the last couple of weeks of job searching have been fun, but I haven’t had to style my hair, wear make-up and I’ve been avoiding my previous dress-code black like it’s been dipped in swine flu. I’ve spent my days: job searching, cleaning house, doing laundry and a couple of home improvement projects here and there. That all changed on Friday when I had my first job interview after applying for about 20 jobs in the last month.
Last Thursday I applied for the Assistant Director position at a local cosmetology school knowing that I had the skills and experience to fit the job as advertised. I was confident as I hit “send” and my cover letter, resume and letter of recommendation entered into cyberspace. I emailed the job advertisement to my sister, John and my mom to show them the great opportunity that was sitting in front of me.
On Friday morning around 10:00 am I got a call from the Director asking if I could come in that day for an interview. My day just happened to be free (of course) so I agreed to meet him at 3:30. I left early since I had to run an errand downtown and wanted to arrive in plenty of time. It seems I left a little too early since I arrived at the school a entire hour before my interview. I decided to run to the bank and drive around the neighborhood a little since I wasn’t that familiar with SE Portland. I spied a Thai restaurant called Pok Pok (2007 Restaurant of the Year) that John and I have been meaning to try among the other neighborhood landmarks. After my bit of exploring I headed back to the school to arrive 15 minutes early for my interview.
I met the Director, Darin, and he started off the interview with a tour of the facility. It is a locally owned, small school, but very nice, clean and organized. It was empty as most students had already left for the day. After my tour we headed up to the office and the interview began. He was a very nice man and I was confident in my skills so I was very relaxed during the interview. We talked a lot about my experience in the salon industry and why I wanted to break into the education side of cosmetology. I explained that I’ve always had a passion for education and especially loved training and working with new staff in my previous management jobs. Things seemed to be going well and he told me he would be making a decision by the middle of this week.
We kept talking and I felt like he started picking my brain about how to manage women, specifically young women in such a creative industry. I told him my methods and how I gauge my staff each and every work day. Itold him that I also manage everyone differently. Direct talk may work for one person but someone else may need a softer approach. We kept chatting and the interview started winding down. He ended by telling me that he’s had a couple of good interviews already and had some resumes set for interviews next week but he really liked what I had to say and felt that it was a fit and offered me the job on the spot! I did tell him that I wanted to take the weekend to think about it and discuss it with John as it would involve working Saturdays and so I felt it was a family decision.
After talking about it over the weekend, I have decided to take the job (naturally). I am still working on figuring out Hadley’s daycare situation before I know my official start date, but I will be starting no later than August 1st. I’m having a bit of a hard time accepting the fact that I will be working on Saturdays and missing that family time, but I’ve compiled a list of reasons why working on Saturdays won’t be so bad.
- I won’t ever have a case of the “Mondays”
- We will only have to pay for Hadley in daycare 4 days a week
- Hadley will have a day to bond with each parent separately, and one day together as a family each week
- I never have to work evenings
- There will be no rush hour to contend with on Saturdays
- Errands are easier to run on Mondays
- I can drink a case of Schlitz while watching Bret Favre and the Vikings on Sunday and sleep it off on Monday
There you have it. Once I put it that way, it sounds pretty darned exciting doesn’t it? Thanks for your suggestions as to why “working on Saturdays rules” to Mary, my Mom, Jay, Scott and Shanna—can you guess which suggestion was Shanna’s? If you have any more reasons, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Yeah, you read that right, XTREME! I updated about this on Facebook a while ago but since I email everyone that reads this blog, I think you all need a longer explanation.
Our Fourth of July holiday started off with a bang, that’s for sure. We spent some time at the dogpark on Friday morning and got some chores done around the house. We spent the bulk of the afternoon in the backyard playing with sidewalk chalk and cooling off in Hadley’s baby pool, because it was a hot day indeed. For dinner we decided to grill some chicken quarters that we had in the freezer. I submerged them in their ziplock bag in some warm water while we ran to the grocery store. When we got back they were perfectly thawed so we dried them off and seasoned them up with some home made spice rub from our Weber grilling cookbook. We were excited to eat them along with the pasta and steamed broccoli we had prepared. They were gorgeous and perfectly done after an hour on the grill. John pulled them off and we sat down to dinner. John and I ate a good portion of chicken, but little Hadley decided the pasta and broccoli were much more appetizing, let me tell you, I wish I would have followed her lead.










Speaking of talking, Hadley has had a little growth spurt in her speech lately as well. Her words may not be clear to everyone, but John and I are understanding more and more words, signs and sounds from her. She knows about 15 animal sounds (”Hadley, what does a cow say?” “MOOOOOOOO!”–cuteness!!) and has about 20 words. It’s amazing to me how much she can understand as well. It’s been a really fun couple of months watching her take everything in and learn on a daily, almost hourly basis. I’m really convinced that the excellent care she receives at
Scott and Jenn live down in Eugene (about 1.5 hours south of Portland) and invited us to join them on the Annual Wine Tour that they attend. We bought advance tickets a month or two ago for $50. That included the charter bus to 6 different wineries, and 3 wines at each vinyard paired with food for each one. The food was amazing, the wine even more so. What did we do with miss Hadley? Our friends Brian and Kara were also going and their nanny was available to take care of both babies (Sam is just 2 weeks younger than Hadley). From what I hear, that babies had a great time, but I can assure you, we had it even better!
a lake where apparently the owner of the vinyard is said to waterski naked. It was a littly chilly up there, so we didn’t get to see the water show.
Sweet Cheeks Winery
We had a beautiful weekend forecast for the Portland area with temps in the mid-80’s. On Thursday night I went to a grand opening of one of John’s clients in town that sells beautiful leather handbags. Check out
Memorial Day, out-of-town guests, garage sale, cheap beer, pool time, BBQ’s and a crispy sunburn. We spent the weekend busy, busy, busy. We had been planning on having a garage sale with some friends for quite some time. We decided to have it on Saturday only in a blitz to get rid of all our junk, I mean really awesome stuff. It was a blast, we had 3 other people participating and we hosted it at our house.