Idealist Job Fair

I haven't been to a job fair in almost thirty years, since I was an undergrad at Northeastern. Not much has changed. Picture an empty hall packed with rows and rows of tables, each table staffed with one or two earnest looking people and in a few cases a flag, some take-aways and a standing display of some sort.

What really surprised me was the sheer amount of people. When the doors opened, we were backlogged for about ten minutes to even get in due to the number of people. This wasn't just kids, but I noticed a lot of grey-heads in suits with leather satchels in hand.

This was a career fair for jobs in the non-profit sector. But the only word that mattered to a lot of us was jobs.

Meg from Idealist.org gave a great presentation on looking for jobs in this sector for both new workers and mid-career sector switchers. She pointed out the percentage of growth for jobs in non-profit space and shared some strategies as well as outlining some of the realities. (She also recommended their downloadable career guides.)

I hadn't really been scared before. I guess I've been optimistically sure that something will work out. I've got my plan, the skills I need to acquire and the sector that I need to break into, so I haven't been really dealing with this at the ground level. There's a palpable whiff of desperation and it's hard not to be affected by that. Especially when you see job after job for entry- or mid-level positions only in my own search.



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A nonprofit job fair at BU

A sign of troubled times. It opened minutes ago. It's wall to wall people minutes after it opened.

I love this sticker.

I love this sticker. How can you not love hi-tech alien cows?

Dust Mites

We don't see them. We don't feel them. We do however share our beds with them.
For me - that's a problem. I'm allergic to the little bastards. Flannel sheets and my futon (neither are good for me, because they're both dust magnets) are warm but not helping me here.
Gotta find some good night time allergy meds, if I'm gonna sleep well.

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My niece drawing

My niece drawing

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My brother and nephew.

I Love This Bridge

I found this picture, while searching for Boston backgrounds on the iPhone. The Zakim bridge really is spectacular, especially at night.

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Distant Shore

Okay, this is my new favorite iPhone app. It's from The Blimp Pilots LLC,the creators of the wildly popular Koi Pond app.

On the face of it, this is brilliant in its simplicity. The user walks an endless beach, you hear the gulls, the pounding of the surf and the crunch of feet on the sand or in the water. The user can explore the beach or collect shells (five shells will generate a bottle that can be used to send messages) or bottles (which will allow you to respond to someone else's message).

The other users that you communicate with are anonymous. You don't know of any other way to communicate with them and they have no other way to communicate with them. There are no usernames or anything that would you give a clue about them -- it's no surprise that the most common question I've seen in the messages are requests for my age, gender and location.

Update: Just to be clear, you can still communicate with previous penpals, too.

Shouldn't they have flown somewhere?

Shouldn't they have flown somewhere?

Alas, Didn't Make the Cut...

Unfortunately, I was just short of the cut off for the medical study. In four weeks or so, I should be able to try again. I'm supposed to take multiple vitamins to try to get my vitamin and (hopefully) my enzyme levels up to what they should be. They'll test me again in another four weeks, if I still want to go forward with the trial.

*shrug* Don't see why not.

I can take a daily multi-vitamin that I probably should have been taking anyway.