Wow.

So, in a whirlwind of activity that I probably shouldn't talk much about, I find myself being paid vast sums of money to job hunt. It was either that or let myself be retrained, and I didn't actually have to think much about it to determine that I would be miserable living in a microsoft-only world. Thus I find myself at home, with hot tea by my elbow and cats scampering near my feet, waiting for the phone to ring with an HR person from ExcitingJobOpportunity on the other end wanting to interview me. I then have a real interview with them Monday. Meanwhile, I posted my resume on dice.com, and am now being mobbed by recruiters. Perhaps this was a mistake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and as I told Norm in the fifteen minutes I saw him yesterday, being overwhelmed is better than being anxious about whether or not people will be interested in me.

I just got off the phone with the HR person from the EJO. She asked reasonable but strange behavioral questions which I found sort of embarassing to answer; you know, things like "Tell me about a time in which you went above and beyond the call of duty." Okay, sure, whatever. I was able to come up with answers to all of the questions, but it felt very awkward, almost like lying even though I wasn't. Part of that, I think, was the enormous amount of simplification required to relate even the most basic situation... I couldn't say "Omi went to Spain and I did foo.", because of course she doesn't know who Omi is or what foo involves. So I had to leave a lot of stuff out, and every time I left something out I felt weird; I knew I was editing things to make myself look as good as possible, and even if that's what one is supposed to do during an interview, it still felt very uncomfortable to me.

Someone online (Dave?) suggested it might have been easier in person than it was over the phone. I think so. If I could have seen her and noticed her body language I would have definitely felt less awkward while I was thinking about her questions, and probably would have gone at a slower pace. I'm not sure if it would have helped the lying thing, though; anyone who is going to ask very simple questions about one's past experiences is going to get simple answers, and any time one simplifies something things get left out. I might have felt better about the lying thing if she'd asked any negative questions, but of course she didn't -- it was always 'tell us how you handled situation X', and to me the very word 'handled' implies that I took care of the situation well. If someone asks me how I handled something I'm going to tell them the times when I did handle it, not the times when I failed to. Oh, this is all so complicated, and my over-emphasis on analysis just makes it more so. Despite being uncomfortable I think the interview went well, and I suppose that's what counts.

I'm finding it very weird to be sitting at home, listening to launchcast and petting ambient cats and trying to figure out how to handle all these recruiters. I keep feeling a bit guilty, like I ought to be at work. And how does one handle all the recruiters, anyway? It seems so random; people keep calling and leaving identically vague messages referring to exciting opportunities in my area. I've spoken to two women today, one of whom pointed me at something which might actually be interesting, the other of whom referred me to a company who needs someone who knows a lot of Perl to do release engineering... except I don't even have Perl on my resume, and I don't want a job doing release engineering. It's bizarre.

Launchcast finally played a song I'm crazy about. Woohoo!

I went and got office supplies, and virtuously spent only $27. I now have a set of primary colour file folders (24), black pens (2), pretty marbled pens in bright colours (6 -- purple, pink, green, blue, red, and black), file folder labels (white, 248), neon post-its (a 3-pack in yellow, pink, and green, for a total of 195 post-its), cheap bic mechanical pencils (5, all black, with turquoise, white, red, sea-green, and purple clips), and a set of Pentel Metallic Gel Roller pens (five, in red, blue, green, pink, and purple). This makes up for walking across the entire mall yesterday on my way to get my hair blonded and not stepping into even one store to buy a cute bright t-shirt.

Getting my hair blonded was pretty successful, although last night I didn't think so at all. Last night my scalp was sore and my hair felt crunchy and I was generally dismayed by the whole thing. Today, after a thorough conditioning, my hair is back to being soft and gentle, and I am enjoying the sight of all this champagne-blonde hair attached to my head. Most of it was already this colour, due to having been bleached and dyed and the dye washing out, but now it's all this colour, officially champagne but in my mind a sort of dark wheat-gold, and every time I see it gleaming under natural light I wonder if this is the colour Shan imagined for Irrylath. So yah, I guess I'm getting to like it a lot, instead of dismayed or even indifferent.

Oh, my, time to go to gaming.