What I am watching or have watched these days

Unfortunately, I have too much time on my hands these days.  That is not to say I don't do things to keep up the household and take care of the children.  To be sure, in the mornings I feed them breakfast, pick out their clothes and make sure they brush their teeth and comb their hair. 

And then I try to get some things done around the house.  It might just be laundry or sweeping up the floors or picking up the yard after my douche nuggets leave all their toys in it.  

I also do the majority of the cooking

When I catch a break, I watch or have watched the following shows listed here in no particular order.

• Emily in Paris: This is essentially Friends in France.  A group of well-to-do young adults whose luck only surpasses their good looks.  
  
  
• Fallout: Season two will air in December, and there will be a Season Three, so if I can just stay alive, I have a lot to look forward to.
  
  
• School Spirits: Waiting for Season 3.  The first two seasons are spread around a typical school year, but how long can they reasonably stretch this out?
  
  
• Interview with the Vampire: Season 3 will premiere in 2026, and I just cannot wait.
  
  
• Mayfair Witches: This show has had the unfortunate problem of dealing with the source material and making it work.
  
  
• Watson: getting better.  It was a bit clumsy at first but that was because they were busy setting the table.  Investing in everyone's backstory, fleshing out the characters and building chemistry.  The last few episodes really stuck the landing.  
  
  
• Ghosts (US): it's kinda mailing it in this season, but we watch it as a family.
  
  
• Strange New Worlds: The first two seasons were great with one or two WTF episodes.  The 3rd season seems to have a few more WTF episodes.
  
  
• Alien Earth:

ththt

Still you gotta try

In my industry, I have three paths, if you will, for employment.  I could work for a law firm that uses the No-Name Software I am a SME in.  Unfortunately, the law firms in Memphis do not use it, so I either have to relocate to a state where a law firm that does use it has an office, or find one of the few firms that are set up to use remote workers from anywhere.  Or I get a contract job and the 3rd party is set up to pay me from the fee they collect from the firm, while skimming a little off the top for "administrative costs".

The second option is to work for a consulting firm that specializes in No-Name Software.  The challenge here is that I'm a tad bit too seasoned in that I would not likely be pushed around as much today as I allowed when I consulted in the naughts.  It doesn't help that I haven't been working in over a year either.

The third option is a non-legal entity that also uses No-Name Software.  This is my preferred option because for all its ups and downs, Corporate America is better than Legal America.

As it so happens, this month I have been contacted by three recruiters for a role at each.  

First up is a recruiter who previously reached out to me last year for a law firm role.  Apparently, someone else had already submitted my resume there without my knowledge or permission.  This time, he reached out to me about two weeks ago, for another law firm role, an hour before he left the office to go on vacation.  I'm not confident about this one because even though it is remote, the JD specifically mentions specific states one has to work in.  Recruiters miss this all the time because they just hear remote or assume they will find someone in those places.

The second is a guy who called me about a consulting gig at a place I interviewed at about 3 years ago to the date.  He actually acknowledged this but says the company has had an overhaul.  And he demonstrated this by reaching out to me periodically over the last couple of weeks to try and set up an interview.  Calendar invite pending.

Finally, a recruiter reached out to me about a role at a Big Bank that I would love to work for.  He is not the first to reach out about this role nor is it the first time.  This started in May but apparently the job req got put on hold.  At first it was contract.  then it was FTE.  Now it is back to contract.  And it is hybrid.  They would want me in a office 3x a week.  Chicago is one of those places.

So let's look at this.  Big Bank couldn't figure out the job req.  This happens a lot because of budgets and end of fiscal year, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Big Bank hired a bunch of low rent call center recruiter to fill this position instead of using their in-house people.  And the team is spread across several offices which means Teams Meeting but yet they want you in the office in one of those cities.

This screams disfunction and yet I would take this chance at earning money again in a heartbeat.  I don't even bother telling Ng about these interviews since they often go nowhere.  We would like to move back north and this might be a way but it seems to be on the highest difficulty setting.

If they actually hire me, I would have to move back to Chicago immediately.  katness said I could use her guestroom, but that would only last so long.  And the thought of being away from my kids for an extended length of time freightens me, inspite of their douche nuggetness.  

When we moved down here, NG knew it would only be two months of being separated.  This could take longer.  much longer.  

Note:   I'm writing these entries as they happen and as I have time to jot things down but I may not publish until months from now (or ever). Note: This post was written when the events were still fresh.  I waited for a while to post this because I didn’t want to risk my job-hunting efforts.

Saving some Java

 We waste a lot of coffee in this household.  many a morning, I pour myself a cup of coffee that gets cold before I can drink it.

Nightingale has decided that we should save the coffee since the cost has gone up so much (thanks Trump).  This works for me because that means setting the pot every other day.

We have an Alexa-enabled coffeemaker because I didn't want to go through the trouble of setting a timer once for the weekdays and once for the weekend.

Eleven down, one to go

Today I went for my 11th visit for the Clinical Eye Study.  This means I only have one left, and we are scheduled for 42 days from today: September 16th.  

I had, unrealistically, hoped to encounter a particular kind of conflict since I began this study.  I hoped I would either have a job that made it difficult to keep the appointment or that I would be back in Chicago.  Alas, neither occurred.  

On the It's a Small World After All scale, it is kinda ironic interesting that the place we bought our Bathroom tile from is literally around the corner.

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The Claw

In Chicago, if you needed to get rid of a mattress or sofa, or other such items, you put it on the alley and it would disappear within the week.  The garbage trucks would take it even though sometimes the item wasn't on the approved list.  As a good citizen, you would leave a case of beer out around the holidays.

Down here they have a vehicle called the Claw that comes around and picks up things that cannot go into ordinary trash bins.  The thing is, no one knows when it will come.  
It might come Monday afternoon, or Wednesday Morning or alternating Thursdays.  

Nightingale really wanted me to trim the tree branches that were practically touching the ground so they wouldn't slap our lawn crew in the face when they ride their lawn mowers.  That she wanted it done during the hottest part of the summer (yet) annoyed me, but to be fair I could have done it earlier in the year.   

So I did a little bit each day and Natasha helped me trim them into smaller manageable pieces to put out for The Claw, which didn't show up for a week.

Somebody that I use to know

 It was brought to my attention the other day that a friend from college died of cancer earlier this month.  Obviously, this sucks.  But what I'm finding strange is how I'm feeling about it.  Lily Hung and I were good friends in the early 90s.  We were at UIC together and our group would meet in the cafeteria before class and grab coffee or breakfast.  We would often have lunch together too.  I had my first Guinness with her at Hawkeye's.

Lilly also introduced me to volleyball and the Lincoln Park Volleyball club.  She was a far better player than I and she often played in tournaments, which is where she met her husband, Andres.  And that is when we started spending less time together.  A few times over the years, she'd make a half-hearted attempt to get together but our schedules never jived and it fell flat.

Again, I'm not sure why this is causing me so much confusion.  We had our Season in the Sun but then grew apart.  No big deal, really.  But perhaps my neurodivergent mind is telling me, while looking through the Lens of Time, that we could have had a different type of relationship.  

Could we have had a romantic relationship?  She often pointed out that I was good looking, but I guess I never made a move.  Could she have helped me navigate the Mysteries of Life better?  What would be her motivation to do so?

My short answer is that I guess I missed the lunches and dinners and good conversations we use to have and that they went away only because the dynamic changed.  She needed something more and I couldn't provide it.  

Bathroom Renovation Project to begin shortly

Update from the future:  This post sat in my drafts folder while I worked on other things, namely finding and ordering tile.  Our contractor completed demo and has done everything he can do until the tile arrives, hopefully soon. 

We are about to embark on a project we do not want to do but desperately need to do: renovate our master bathroom.  It has gotten to a point where it's only gonna get worse if we don't fix the issues now, and we want to enjoy it for a bit before we sell this place.  There is an assumption that we will sell this place, and it is one thing that keeps my will to live going.

To be sure, this should be an exciting, fun thing that we should want to do.  However, it isn't because this family only has one income, and it is stretched thin.

We could just replace the shower, but that still leaves the Jacuzzi bathtub unusable.  And our vanity is very outdated and looks just terrible.  Basically, it's almost a full gut rehab with the exception of the His/her Walk-in Closets.  Have I mentioned that this is the best bedroom-bathroom combo I've ever lived in?

 

FYI my contractor is rather annoyed that we don't have our tile yet.  I'm not too upset about it because when we first approached him, he did that thing people do to get customers to light a fire under their butt and commit.  He said he had a project in early August and would like to get us in before then. 

I knew he was blowing smoke up our butts but Nightingale kinda bought it and also wanted to get everything purchased before the next round of Tariffs increased prices.  However, we just didn't have the bandwidth to check out tile until the weekends and there is a learning curve. 

Two more to go

Yesterday I went for my 10th visit for the Clinical Eye Study.  This means I only have two left: one the first week of August and the last one will be mid-September.

That's still a lot of time that needs to pass before i get the check that will go directly to Home Depot to pay off the appliances we had to buy last November.  The kids will be back in class for their last year of Elementary School.  

The funny thing about participating in this is that it was almost doomed from the start.  At the beginning, almost every visit conflicted with something else.  The last few have been relatively drama free, however.

But...two weeks ago we went to Michigan for a graduation party.  I forgot my eye drops!  Luckily, Sister-In-Law wasn't leaving until the next day, and she phoned us to ask if we had forgotten anything.  So I only missed a couple of nights, but didn't record it as such on the log.  

My SIL, however, had some mega drama on the drive down.  They rented a minivan and were going to do the entire drive in one day.  But when they were around Nashville, the check engine light came on.  Turns out, the car hadn't had its oil changed in a long, long time.  They were going to try and swap out rentals, but instead had to just get an oil change and get reimbursed.  This delayed their arrival but many hours.

I'm torn because, as much as I dislike my BIL, it isn't fair that his wife and two young children had to endure that.  Speaking of Confederate Jethro, we got into it on Saturday of that trip when we were having lunch at Rainfall Cafe.  He just cannot got more than 5 minutes without saying something that would get you in front of HR in Corporate America.   His latest issue is men using the women's bathroom probably because Fox News told him this is happening.   

I told him to STFU at lunch but he refused.  When we got to SIL Adama's home, I told Nightingale's parents how pissed I am and that if they don't want me to go nuclear, it might be a good idea to back me up.  I had meant only after confederate Jethro said anything stupid but MIL preemptively got on his case when they arrived, so of course he was pissy the rest of the trip.  

It's officially summer and the entire United States is experiencing a heat wave.  It's actually hotter in Chicago than it is down here, by a few degrees.  This is the time of year I cannot really stand to be outside too long.  The kids are bored out of their minds.  

I have a few appointments to keep but once those are over, I hope to be able to get them out of the house more.