Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 120

Early Summer Haiku

Cottonwood fluff floats
shining in June sunlight;
carp thrash in shallows.

Job Interviews and Summer

I mentioned having a job interview about week ago. I asked the interviewer how many resumes they had gotten and how people they were interviewing. The answer was 60 resumes and 11 interviews. This means they were interviewing 18% of the people who sent resumes.

I had a phone interview for another job yesterday and asked the same question. This employer got 90 resumes and is interviewing 20 people or 22%. This suggests to me that the quality of the resumes is high, if they are interviewing one per

Another Picture

Our hoya is blooming for the first time in many years.

Unemployment Update

I interviewed for another job last Friday; and this week I went to a workshop on creative career exploration given by the unemployment service. This was the North St. Paul office, not as nice as the Bloomington office, though maybe a little nicer than the St. Paul office that's off University in the Midway.

The Bloomington office had free coffee. The St. Paul office has a convenience shop that sold coffee in the same building. The North St. Paul office has neither.

The people taking the workshop

My Writing Chair

Patrick has been trying his new camera. This is the chair I use for writing, though I remove the stuffed beings. Mr. Booby is on top. He is a gift from the World Wildlife Fund. Miss Barbel is on the left arm of the chair. She comes from the little gift shop run by the National Park Service in the Science Museum in downtown St. Paul. (It's for the national park along the Mississippi. Always nice to have national park in the middle of one's city.)

The chair itself is occupied by Che Guevara and W.

Say's Law

From Wikipedia:

Say's law, or the law of markets, is an economic proposition attributed to French businessman and economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), which states that in a free market economy goods and services are produced for exchange with other goods and services, and in the process a precisely sufficient level of real income is created in order to purchase the economy's entire output. That is to say, the total supply of goods and services in a purely free market economy will exactly equ

It's the Economy

I've been hearing cautious optimism about the economy -- "green shoots" -- which make no sense to me.

The housing market is still collapsing. The economy is shedding jobs -- a lovely term -- at the rate of 600,000 a month. GM is closing 3,000 dealerships. Think of what that means in a small town where the car dealer is the biggest business. If the GM bankruptcy does not go smoothly, it will take down a lot more dealers, and suppliers and much of the Midwest's economy. Even in decline, GM is huge.

Unemployment Again

I was in my favorite coffee shop on Sunday, ran into a guy I know and told him I'd been laid off.

He said, "I'm hearing that everywhere. Everyone is getting laid off."

Yesterday, Patrick and I went to the grocery store, the Byerly's closest to us. Byerly's is a full service grocery with people who bag and carry out the groceries for the customers; and -- like most local chains, though not the chains coming in from out of the state -- it is union, which means better pay and more benefits for the wo

More on Being Unemployed

I heard back about the job interview. I did not get the job.

That was one bit of bad news. In addition, I heard from my HMO. I am on COBRA now, but still carried on my old employer's plan, which renewed in June.

A year ago, my old job switched from an excellent plan to one that was cheaper and included very few hospitals, clinics and doctors. However, it was possible for individuals to buy up to the old plan, which I did. Now, I discover I am no longer on my old plan, but on the new cheap plan, w

Weather

The week in May when everything blooms is over, though the weather remains bright and clear. The Korean lilacs are flowering now. They follow the French lilacs by a week or two.

I spent last week recovering from Wiscon, sleeping more than usual and reading a lot.
I also did one job interview and sent out a couple of resumes. I'm finding one or two jobs a week that look interesting and seem to be a pretty good fit. This is encouraging.

Yesterday I went down to a local coffee shop and worked for an