The falling snow on my blog has departed… hopefully that means it is drifting through cyber space to reappear in the real world, on a hill just north of Duvall. 🙂

So it’s official: Today was my second day of work! I have been hired, and the negative drain on my money supply has just switched to paychecks of positivity in every way. This Wednesday I finally moved the job search beyond filling out endless job applications and scouring Craigslist from the comfort of my own home… after visiting a couple businesses and shaking some hands, I began to feel the familiar, sour, depressing fog descending upon me that always comes when job searching and finding nothing but fake smiles and rejection. Then a couple neat things happened:

  • REI took back items that had been sold with no refund guaranteed. I slept in a car with several friends to wake early for their Scratch-and-Dent sale, wandered the madness as people made quick work of the piles of hiking boots, clothes, and gear, and ended up buying only one thing: a pair of fingerless gloves that could convert to mittens. When I got home, it turned out there were two LEFT-handed gloves!!! 😛 Hilarious, yes, but entirely un-useful! Fortunately REI refunded me. Great store, shop there!
  • Second thing: Used a free drink coupon at Starbucks only to find it was expired. They gave the drink to me anyway. Yah, Starbucks!
  • Third thing: Visited Quiznos (this is starting to sound like advertisements for businesses…) and the manager said, “oh yeah, I remember you!” and proceeded to say that he still had my resume, that it was on top of his list, that my experience was impressive, and he would hire me right then if he had a spot available. He jokingly mused, “maybe I could fire someone…” Very encouraging to me to see that my resumes weren’t immediately discarded and that my experience was enough to get noticed….
  • And lastly… did I mention I got hired?! Completely unexpected. I walked into The British Pantry for the first time to buy my mom some of her favorite brand of tea as she was almost out… while checking out happened to ask if they were hiring… five minutes later I was shaking hands with the manager, and five minutes after that I was to come in the next day for training, hired immediately. As it so happened, someone had just quit without giving notice, so there was an open spot.

Thursday was my first day of work, where I had everything crammed into my head at once… and today was much quieter and gave me a chance to learn more names and settle into this new, entirely unexpected opportunity to earn money and DO something. 🙂

‘Tis a blessing, indeed.