What next?

I found a couple interesting postings over the past week, though not as many as I would have liked. I’m hoping Rutgers or NYU show some interest. The Search will continue, of course. I’ll be hitting the one-year mark at my current job next weekend, and I’m hoping something changes for the better because it’s feeling rather dead-end-ish.

I finally started reading Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series this week, after years of hearing about it. I’m almost two-thirds of the way through The Eyre Affair, and I’ll admit that I’m highly intrigued by this alternate version of history. In Mr. Fforde’s (or should I say Thursday’s?) universe, the Crimean War was still going strong in 1985, bad literary adaptations and knockoffs were considered High Crimes, extinct beasties were cloned as housepets, and Uncle’s rather wacky garden-shed inventions were actually viable and very cool toys. That’s not even including the fact that The Man is represented by Jack Schitt. I have to say that my favorite bit so far is the long-running production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, done Rocky Horror style: the cast is pulled from the audience every week, and those not chosen cheerfully heckle, play with props, and join in for the final battle. Huzzah!

The search goes on … and on …

While I’ve been rather busy over the past week or two, I’m still on the hunt for additional and/or better work than what I have now. There are still lots of jobs being posted, but some of them are repeats (across different job boards and occasionally within the same), and oh so many of them are above my current skill and experience level. The job market is still horrendous from where I’m sitting, and it’s probably a bad thing that I’ve gotten used to rejection. I probably mentioned the office-minion job with a local publisher that I had been contacted about – things kept coming up, and I’m still waiting for a call or email that Madam Editor said she’d be dropping me. I may try sending her another email in the morning, and if she doesn’t respond I may have to give that up as a lost cause, much as it breaks my heart.

Lunacon was fun this past weekend. Attendance was down a bit from last year, probably due at least in part to the economy. This year’s Guests of Honor are great folks, and I look forward to reading more by Lawrence M. Schoen and possibly collecting more of Rachael Mayo’s art as the opportunities arise. I’m sad that I had to miss Eric “In the Elevator” Zuckerman’s interview session, but I’m sure I’ll find the video(s) on YouTube or his website later on. Also, next year’s Guests of Honor have been officially announced, and I’m proud to be able to post it here: Author John Ringo (insert my happy dance here), Artist Howard Tayler, and Young Adult Author Tamora Pierce!

Happy St. Patty’s Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate! I don’t have any plans other than wearing a green shirt to work – I didn’t get any soda bread, I don’t like beer enough to hunt down green draft, and the only place I know of that offers (or at least offered) green bagels is too far away for me to go a-raiding. On the upside, I did find a pin I got years ago that seems to have a real shamrock in it. I’ve got it pinned to my bag. Maybe it’ll bring me a little luck with the job hunt, who knows? I’m still waiting to figure out if and when I’ll get to interview with that local independent publisher – something came up for Madam Editor last week, and my availability this week didn’t match up with hers. Maybe next week if I get lucky …

Anyway, this coming weekend is Lunacon! It’s going to be a good time. I haven’t studied Klingon like I’d thought about doing, but I’m still taking my bilingual Klingon/English edition of Hamlet with me. Lawrence M. Schoen, this year’s Author Guest of Honor, is a member of the Klingon Language Institute. I’ve read on his blog and Facebook page that he enjoys spreading the love of Shakespeare in the “original” Klingon. My currently-poor German is still better than my Klingon, but I may end up inviting people to randomly declaim Klingon Shakespeare from the book. And who knows – maybe I’ll start trying to memorize Hamlet in German – “Sein, oder Nichtsein …” And who knows what’s going to happen on Saturday night. That’s the night of the “supermoon” where it’s going to be full and swinging the closest it’s been to Earth in almost twenty years. Natural disasters? Zombies raiding the Lunacon Masquerade? Me morphing into a were-orangutan? Who knows?

Finally, my thoughts go out to the people in Japan and the other areas of the Pacific affected by the quakes and tsunami last week.

Here we go again.

Another week without big news. I got an email today saying that the review process has started for the resumes submitted for that ship’s librarian job. I was going to have an interview yesterday to be an administrative assistant for a local independant publisher, but it’s been postponed indefinitely. I’ll be trying to contact Madam Editor again as soon as I know my schedule for next week.

The only thing I know for sure at this point is that I’ll be disappearing into Lunacon next Friday through Sunday unless some awesome circumstance (like a sweet job offer) or disaster (I get sick or catch something heavy with my head) prevents me from going. I’ll be running the Donald A. and Elsie B. Wollheim Scholarship Fund Book Exhibit and Raffle like I did last year. The books are donated mainly by publishers and fans, and the proceeds help send young writers to science fiction and fantasy workshops. We did get an extra-special donation this year: Del Rey sent us one of 500 hand-numbered special editions of their Legends II anthology. This is a slipcased cloth-bound hardcover with gold leafing, signed by all the contributors. It’s still in its shrinkwrap, and it’ll be an extremely nice win for whoever gets it in the raffle drawing. …preeeeciousssssss…

Exotic pets and toxic waste …

Did that get your attention? Good! I’m currently enjoying a little book called Buffalito Destiny by Lawrence M. Schoen. The basic concept is that after liberating a pregnant buffalito (think a lapdog-sized buffalo able to eat anything and through-process it into oxygen) from a non-human culture and using the pups to start a mega cleanup company back on Earth, Our Hero winds up trying to stop an ecoterrorist group from destroying the planet while continuing with a big toxic landfill cleanup plan that the group had been rabidly protesting. I sincerely recommend this book as a fun read.

Why bring this up? We’re a tad over 2 weeks out from Lunacon, where Mr. Schoen is the Author Guest of Honor. Aside from sitting on various panels and participating in other festivities, he will be using Lunacon as an opportunity to launch his new book, Buffalito Contingency, sequel to Buffalito Destiny. I’ll be attending the Convention, and if Mr. Schoen is willing, I may have a video of the book launch party to share afterwards.

In other news, the job hunt continues. One of my recent applications was to be the ship’s librarian for a local maritime academy’s upcoming training cruise. It would be a short-term position, but it’d be interesting and I’d get to travel a bit. If they take me, I could hope there’d be something waiting for me on shore when we got back, but in the meantime I wouldn’t have to worry about room and board. And I’d be in charge of movie nights …