even more fun with job apps part whatever b/c is anyone really counting at this point?

yesterday, i saw a craigslist ad for a job in my field that didn't sound completely horrible, so i applied for it. i received the following response this afternoon:

"hello!
thank you for applying for a position within (organization).
please add us on facebook! (fb link here)"

that's it. no "we'll be in touch if we decide we want to bring you in for an interview." no "omg we've been deluged with resumes so just give us a few weeks, mmkay?" nothing.

and since i'm not on facebook (i know, i know), i will just have to wait and see how things play out.

happy thursday!

more fun with job apps, part whatever the hell we're on now

one of the jobs i applied for last week (or maybe it was the week before?) was for a part-time position. the pay was on par with what i'm making at my current gig, but it was in my field and i figured i could make both jobs work out for me somehow, so why not go for it?

the 1st clue that things were going to be different was when the hiring manager sent an email essentially saying that i survived their initial review of resumes, but that they didn't have time to conduct pre-screen interviews and therefore i should complete a questionnaire and they'd take it from there. ok, sure, fine. i actually appreciated their candor, although i didn't appreciate the fact that they left another applicant's cover letter in the body of their email when they wrote to me.

last wednesday, i sat down to answer the questionnaire. most of the questions were easy/straightforward enough, but there were a couple that were begging for snarky responses and it took all i had not to let loose:

"Please provide an example that illustrates your organizational skills and attention to detail."

i really felt like that was a question best answered by a supervisor or colleague and/or one of my references, but i forced myself to type something about using multiple calendars and to-do lists to help me keep track of various projects and deadlines.

Do you enjoy writing and creating content?  Provide examples.

no, actually, i hate writing and being creative with every fiber of my being and i can't believe i applied for this copywriter position in the first damn place. no, i didn't actually say that, but i really wanted to. instead, i said that creating content is one of the primary passions of my career (true) and that i'd be happy to provide writing samples upon request. left unsaid was "dude, this is a word document and my samples are multi-page pdf files. exactly what kind of examples are you hoping i'll provide here?"

"Do you have any special skills, talents or interests not listed on your resume?"

omg. this one sent me over the edge, as some of you might have seen on twitter. did i mention that this was a pre-screen questionnaire, and that i haven't actually talked to or seen the hiring manager yet? why the hell are my extracurricular activities coming into play now? shouldn't that be part of your "hey, it's your first day, tell us what you like to do in your spare time so we have something to talk about when we run into each other at the elevator" orientation or something? here's what i actually said in response:

"Yes, but they are not on my resume because those interests/skills do not pertain to my professional life."

so none of us are surprised by the rejection email i received earlier this week, right? it's probably for the best that i talked (well, typed) myself out of the running on that one. that's what i'm telling myself, anyway. :P

high/low five

today, september 13, 2013, marks the 5th anniversary of being un(der)employed. i still don't regret leaving my last full-time position - i still talk to former colleagues and based on what they tell me, things have gotten beyond ridiculous to the point of "how is this place even still open?"

if i'd known that it would take me 5 years (and counting...sigh) to find another full-time gig, i might've tried to stay in that job a little longer. oh well.

in my father's house there are many questions

i've noticed that whenever my father's old house appears in my dreams, the layout and furniture are exactly the same as when we lived there, regardless of the time period being covered in a particular dream sequence. it's intriguing to me b/c i haven't lived in or set foot in that house since daddy died and the house was sold, but everything's the same. the blue couch formerly covered in plastic in the living room. the dining room table covered with papers b/c we almost never ate in the dining room. the kitchen with the double sinks and no dishwasher. the deep freezer on the enclosed back porch. my bedroom, which was directly across from the bathroom. the bathroom with a bathtub but no shower. daddy's bedroom, which was opposite the dining room. the basement where james & carol lived until they bought a place of their own, and where i joked about moving into after college graduation. the back yard that was primarily used by james & carol's dog. the garage where daddy or james would occasionally park their cars, but street parking wasn't really an issue except for when daddy's car got broken into. i think the thieves were more pissed than anything b/c there wasn't a fancy radio for them to steal, there weren't any valuables in the car, and daddy had put "the club" on the steering wheel, so they busted a window for nothing.

my mother died when i was 7. at the time, we were living in a 2-flat building - our unit was downstairs and our neighbor, whose name escapes me right now, lived upstairs. my memories of that layout are fuzzy, but i remember at least 3 bedrooms - one for me, one for my parents, and one for james. a dining room that we definitely used b/c the kitchen could barely hold all of us (especially while my oldest brother was still living at home). a living room. a bathroom. a back yard with a garden, maybe? yeah, sure, let's go with that.

we moved maybe a year or two after my mother's death.

that unit in that 2-flat building was a rental. my mother's best friend lived down the block in a house with a layout that still weirds me out to this day, even though i haven't been back in at least 25 years if not longer. i lived there briefly after my mother died and my family tried to figure out how the hell they were going to take care of a 7 year old girl when daddy and james both had to be at work at holy fuck it's early o'clock.

but then we bought the house. i say we like i had a say-so in the matter, but i don't remember even seeing the house until the deal was done and daddy was like, ta-da, here's our new house and here's your new room and new bedroom set, etc. i'm sure his girlfriend/longtime companion helped pick it out in the hopes that maybe she'd get asked to move in, but that didn't happen. instead, daddy married one of his former high school girlfriends, who was living in indiana and commuted to chicago on weekends until she found a job here. things didn't work - i think i was the only one of my siblings who liked her, and i wasn't even living there full-time. james couldn't stand her, she hated chicago, and one day while daddy & james were at work, she packed up all her shit and moved back to indiana. she wasn't missed and now i can trip people out when i refer to my ex-stepmother.

anyway... this morning, during a 6am "oh you have got to be kidding me there's no way i'm getting up right now b/c it's saturday for fuck's sake" talk with myself, i started wondering about daddy's motivation for buying that house. i never got to ask him about it. hell, it never even occurred to me to ask him about it back then. i'm sure some of it was making sure i had a better neighborhood to grow up in - we moved from 66th & marquette to 73rd right off of king drive, and even my young self could tell the difference. maybe he needed a new start after my mother died? was he fulfilling a promise he made to himself or to my mother or to the family as a whole that we'd have a house? i don't know, and i'm more or less ok with not knowing, but i wish i'd been cognizant enough to ask while i had the chance.

misc.

--college football is back, you guys. i may or may not be excited about this...oh, who are we kidding? i'm totally excited about this! i'm wearing a northwestern t-shirt as i type, ffs. tonight's game isn't until 9:30 so i'm definitely planning a nap at some point. i still have a +1 for next week's home opener against syracuse, btw, so let me know if you're interested. eta: this ticket has been claimed.

--i'm also excited about pro football season starting. yes, i took off work so i can watch the bears season opener. yes, i switched days with a co-worker so i can watch northwestern/western michigan and bears/vikings. yes, i will have three consecutive sundays off (we're closed tomorrow for the holiday) for the first time in...hell, i think for the first time since i started this job a year and some change ago.

--i made some updates in the post i wrote about moms mabley the other night, so feel free to check that out again, or for the first time if you missed it previously.

--today is international bacon day, which would be a bigger deal for me if i wasn't already such a fan of bacon. mmm...bacon...

happy saturday! hope y'all have a good weekend. :-)

motivation

this is where i link to my other site, b/c anything i'd want to say here tonight has already been said there and there's no point in being redundant. :-)

ladies and gentlemen, it's moms mabley!

apparently my dedication to #31writenow is so real that even though i just got home and really should be getting ready for bed b/c omg exhaustion i haz it, i just had to get a blog entry in before midnight. i'm sure we'll all be glad come sunday when this challenge is over and i can go back to my sporadic posting ways. :P

i saw this documentary about moms mabley tonight and i highly recommend it to y'all when it airs on hbo in november. some of you might remember that i played moms mabley in a play i did for one of my classes senior year at northwestern, so yeah, there's a soft spot in my heart for her.

this movie made me laugh and cry - more laughing than crying, i promise - and i definitely learned a few things that i didn't know about moms. i will try to fill in those gaps later when i'm not desperately trying to hit "publish" on this post before midnight. (seriously, though - who have i become?)

eta: as promised, some things i would've written about on thursday if i hadn't been ready to pass all the way out.

--while watching the documentary, i learned that moms enjoyed the company of women. apparently during her tenure at the apollo, she would be "moms" on stage and then when the show was over, she'd don men's apparel and everyone would refer to her as "mr. moms." this was during the late 1920s/early 1930s. i think i need to re-read this book to see if there's any mention of moms' sexual identity. in the movie, whoopi goldberg interviewed a dancer that performed at the apollo during the same time period, who verified the "mr. moms" story and also pointed out that during that time, the labels of "homosexual" or "gay" weren't really used. people were (relatively speaking, obviously) free to define themselves as they chose.

--eddie murphy revealed that the grandma klump character from "the nutty professor" was inspired by moms mabley. i hadn't even thought about it until then, but it makes total sense if you've seen the movie and have seen/heard any of moms' routines.

--this exchange at the grammys with moms and kris kristofferson almost made me fall out of my chair laughing, particularly around the 2:10 or so mark.
moms: "i never could work with my teeth." (removes dentures)
kris: "you're a woman after my own heart."

faith in times of crisis

this is another one of those topics that i've been meaning to write about for what feels like forever, but i hadn't gotten around to it yet. then i read this nyt article (which may or may not be behind a paywall, depending on your nyt access) and realized that it kinds fits in with what i've been meaning to talk about.

how do people of faith reconcile their beliefs when faced with a crisis? this is something i struggle with on a regular basis. i've written previously about a concept i like to call "crazy faith and angry prayers," which pretty much involves me swearing at god even while i'm attempting to believe that things will work out as they should. i gotta admit, though, that sometimes i feel like my faith isn't enough. like the conversations i have with god aren't being heard. like i could really pull a godzilla and just be like "fuck all of the things" for all the difference my faith seems to make.

shit's hard, yo. i genuinely wonder how other folks who believe in some sort of higher power or spiritual being manage when things go fubar. how do y'all make it work? have you ever been faced with something that redefines the meaning of a clusterfuck and just decided to give up on faith altogether? or were you able to strengthen your faith in the midst of a challenge or challenges?

feel free to talk about it in the comments, or drop me an email if it's too personal to discuss in public on the internets.

nope!

someone sent me this article and asked "who is this woman?" after reading the article, i wrote back and said "i don't know, and i can't bring myself to care."

before i left for work this morning, i tweeted this as my feelings about the weather and the day in general, and it still holds true. it was fuck this shit o'clock as soon as i walked into work, it's hot as balls outside, and catching up on the day's news and headlines just reinforces my original opinion of today.

in other news, i really wish dairy queen delivered b/c i would nom the hell out of a massive hot fudge sundae right now. 

health care for some and tiny american flags for all!

so i was talking to fbc former boss today (hereafter in this post known as fbcfb, b/c y'all know i love me some acronyms), who currently is freaking out about health insurance. fbcfb is self-employed and was paying out of pocket for insurance through a program offered by the state of illinois, but recently found out that said program is going by the wayside. the rationale is that once the affordable care act goes into effect in october, fbcfb and others will be able to buy insurance on the open market. fbcfb's concern both is political and personal: "what if (the democrats) lose the senate in 2014? what if this program goes away? you know the illinois legislature isn't going to vote to restore funding for this statewide program..." at that point, i had to make a joke about the illinois legislature not doing much of anything these days, which is hilarisad b/c it's kinda true.

while i was having dinner tonight, my thoughts went back to this conversation and also to this piece about the affordable care act and how it's unnecessary b/c, duh, everyone in america has health care.

hi. my name is eulalia and i don't have health insurance. i have doctors who understand my current fiscal challenges and therefore don't give me grief about coming in for checkups and tests as often as they'd like me to. they give me samples and, when they're able, discounts on my bills b/c i'm paying out of pocket. i also have a dentist who understands some of my current fiscal challenges and who gave me a discount on my last visit.

but, hey, everyone in america can just walk into an emergency room and get the care they need, right? isn't that what the governor of mississippi is saying in that article? that all of us can go to the er and, ta-da, health care!

that would resemble something that could be construed as accurate if, y'know, people didn't have to worry about how they were going to pay for those emergency room visits. i know quite a few people who have put off going to an urgent care clinic, let alone an emergency room, b/c they don't have insurance and the out-of-pocket costs are more than their wallets could handle. hell, i'm procrastinating on going back to the dentist b/c i'm pretty sure at least one of my teeth will need to be extracted, and that's an expense i just can't handle right now. my primary care doctor (and yes, i recognize that despite my current uninsured state, i am writing from a place of privilege just by having a primary care doctor) has a list of tests and blood work that i need to have done. my ob/gyn is just waiting for me to call and say that i have insurance again so she can schedule some long-overdue scans and so we can have a conversation about permanent reproductive decisions that is based in reality and not just "well, when you have insurance or when you're able to pay for this, you can do xyz."

i think that's what initially pissed me off the most about that think progress article -  the assumption that receiving health care, let alone quality and affordable health care, is as easy as going to the emergency room. and yes, i know i am harping on an article that was posted months ago, but i saved it as a pdf with the express purpose of writing about it, and tonight seemed as good a time as any since i am still trying to complete this #31writenow challenge.

sharknado cupcakes

nothing i come up with for today is going to be as great as this recipe/video for sharknado cupcakes, so i'm just gonna leave it here. (thanks kim!)

marching without walking

a lot of online chatter today about the 50th anniversary of the march on washington, and rightfully so. more than a few folks have made the well-intentioned suggestion of asking one's elders to tell them about august 1963 - where they were, what they were thinking, etc. well, i can't do that, b/c technology hasn't really perfected that whole "communicate with the dead" thing. skype can only go so far.

what i can do, though, is think about where my parents were in august 1963. i'm pretty sure they were in chicago and not in washington d.c. james would've just turned a year old a couple of weeks prior to the march, and greg and sylvester would've been gearing up for another year of high school, assuming that my math is correct. [one of the vagaries of having siblings who are way older than you are - after a while, you give up on trying to keep track of the age differences.]

i like to think that my parents would've supported the march and its aims, even if they weren't physically present. i like to think that they were trying to lead by example, by making sure their family was provided for and taken care of.

of course my thoughts go to daddy b/c he was the parent i was able to have more years with. assuming that i'm correct in thinking that he wasn't in d.c., i wonder if he felt any guilt about not being there. i wonder if he thought he was already living the dream, so to speak, by successfully moving from mississippi to chicago and raising a family. [technically 2 families, since my mother was his second wife, but my "sisters" are persona non grata to me so let's not go there, ok?] maybe he thought he was already a step ahead of other folks who were still in the south with no viable way to get out. i don't know.

i do know that daddy raised us all to be responsible, to do our best, and to never give up on learning. i remember at some point during his long career with the cta, daddy was chosen to go through some sort of management training. some folks thought he wouldn't be able to cut it b/c of his age. some others thought it was ridiculous that a black man be given the option to receive this training (and this had to be in the late '80s/early 90s, so what does that say?). but he did it. complaining about my homework was impossible b/c daddy would be cracking the books too.

daddy also raised us to dream and aim big. from about 4th grade until about midway through my freshman year at northwestern, i was convinced that i was going to be a lawyer. daddy not only wanted me to be a lawyer, but he wanted me to be the first black female mayor of chicago. maybe even president. i think it broke his heart when i was in high school and told him i had no intention of entering politics.

and let's not forget daddy's dream of me going to alcorn state on full scholarship and him tagging along so he could play football. i broke his heart again when i said i wasn't going to college anywhere south of the mason-dixon. james and i would joke that the only position daddy would be able to play at his age would be the waterboy, and this was years before the adam sandler movie.

but i digress.

my father likely wasn't in d.c. 50 years ago b/c his circumstances likely wouldn't have allowed it. i'm not in d.c. today b/c my current circumstances would fall out laughing if i even attempted a trip of such magnitude.

daddy did what he could, where he could. i'm trying to live up to that legacy. i think that's going to be my takeaway from this morning's discussion about the march - that we should all try to do what we can, where we can. amen.

my friends, they are awesome

i have to say that my days off this week were pretty fantastic, and tomorrow will (hopefully) contain more fantabulousness. although i wasn't able to connect with bff this week, i was able to hang with a few folks that i hadn't spent any quality time with recently, and that was cool.

there were a few times during the course of my day today that i was reminded of just how great my friends are, for various reasons. i am trying to be better about telling people how great they are on a regular basis, b/c i feel like we all need to be reminded of the shit in our lives that doesn't suck, and therefore i am once again publicly issuing my thanks for my friends. i love you guys like i love a good book and chocolate, which, as y'all know, is saying a lot b/c nobody hates the chocolate. :-)

have a great weekend!

another day, another placeholder type of post

i think maybe at one point last night or this morning, i had the idea to write about my day of win yesterday, but upon further reflection, it'd read more like a list of "hey look at all the shit i did yesterday" and that just doesn't sound appealing to me right now.

i'm becoming convinced that my mental fog today is due to the fact that i had such a kick-ass day yesterday and my brain didn't know how to fully process it. that, and the rain/clouds today just make me want to have all of the sleep. i'm surprised i managed to pull myself off the couch to come out to the bar, where i've just finished up working on job apps and am pondering my next move before i head out to the chicago dancing festival tonight. maybe i'll go home and drop off my laptop and take a quick nap?

so, yeah. sorry for the more unexciting than usual content today, folks. let's hope i'm back on my only moderately unexciting game next time. :-)

dreamgirls in the summertime

so last night keidra and i had plans to hang out in millennium park to watch "dreamgirls" for the 20th time. that might be a conservative estimate, b/c i'm pretty sure we've each seen it 15 times if we've seen it once.

due to technical difficulties, though, the movie couldn't be screened. we were sad for about 20 seconds, until the announcement came that we could stay in the park and listen to the soundtrack. since we know the movie well enough to sing/speak a good chunk of the dialogue, we decided to stick around. you can check my twitter timeline from last night for highlights if you're into that kind of thing.

at one point, keidra & i looked around and realized that at least half of the people who were in the park before the movie cancellation announcement was made were still hanging out. i might've yelled out something like "omg chicago i love you so much" once or twice. there really is nothing like #summertimechi, folks.

there's also nothing like belting out all the parts to "it's all over" and "and i am telling you" and making instant connections with every other black woman you make eye contact with who's also singing along. you couldn't tell us that we didn't sound fantastic.

and then i remembered something i wrote last year about "dreamgirls," and keidra & i laughed b/c we both knew we'd be on youtube at some point looking at clips from the original broadway production, which, of course, leads us to this clip which still wins all of the things.

what does "home" mean to you?

home for me has almost always meant chicago. it's no secret that i have lived and loved my hometown for as long as i can remember.

when i moved out to the south suburbs back in the day, "home" was always my father's house back in the city. i'd go "home" for weekends and holidays and breaks from school and other special occasions, and that's how it was until i graduated from high school and started living full-time with my father for the first time in 10 years.

at northwestern, "home" was still my father's house. i'd still go home for weekends and holidays and breaks and sometimes just b/c i could, or just b/c daddy wanted me to.

after daddy died my junior year, my sense of home shifted a bit. james & carol's place was my permanent address, but i didn't really live there. it was around that time that i started finding housesitting/petsitting gigs so i'd have somewhere to stay during breaks when nu's campus was closed.

post-graduation, home was, appropriately enough, my apartment. easy enough.

when i had to give up casa de eulalia and embarked on my current journey of housesitting and couch-crashing and guest room usage, home was still chicago. during most of 2012 when i was in the north 'burbs, any extended trip to chicago was a trip home. if you were reading this blog last year, then you probably remember some of my ramblings about my love of this city. if you've been reading my other blog, then you're also acquainted with my unabashed affection for chicago, flaws and all.

and now that i'm in chicago and on the verge of moving again, my sense of home continues to shift. it's logical to me b/c as the years have passed, i have grown to consider the circle of friends i've developed more like my family than some folks who are actually related to me.

home is still chicago, and, if i'm honest with myself, will likely always be chicago. i can't imagine myself anywhere else, which probably speaks to a limited imagination on my part and i'm willing to accept that criticism. a lot of it is due to the fact that i spent a good chunk of the past year or so working to get back to the city that i love. i can't see myself giving up on chicago, despite mounting evidence that it's trying its damnedest to give up on me and its other fine citizens.