What Can I Tell You?

I have no idea how my new boss would feel about my naming names in this blog, so let's just call the company Anonymous Regional Retailer (ARR!) and stick with, as Paul said, the basics:

1. This is the company I interviewed with yesterday. The one today was a fine organization and all that, but they weren't ready to make an offer.

2. Assuming I get through my temp assignment period okay (which should not be a problem), the job will be paying more than the one I interviewed for today. Not $10K more, but that's fine. The really high-paying one was in Marana, 31 miles away, and I never even interviewed for that one. This one is less than 10 miles away.

3. Aside from the money, and the fact that one organization was ready to make an offer and the other was going to interview several more people and decide a week from now, I based my decision on the fact that C. was friendly and personable and we really got along well in the interview. The other interview was a nervous doubles act, with the boss and her assistant all-too-obviously reading their questions off a list they didn't write. I liked them fine, and I can't blame the young assistant for being nervous. Still, I didn't feel much of a personal connection, not much of a welcoming attitude. C. was relaxed and enthusiastic, and it was a real conversation rather than a wooden Q&A, even though he referred to a list of questions and also gave me a personality profile thingy to fill out. He listened to me and followed up, as if he was really interested rather than just checking things off. In this morning's interview, I had to explain my departure from Worldwide Travel twice before they understood it, and even then they seemed to miss the nuances.

4. ARR! is a medium-sized chain based in the west, expanding east but not explosively or heedlessly. It's been around for decades, and it's still family owned.

5. The work itself sounds fairly similar to what I'm used to, except I'll be a little more supervisory once I'm on staff. It's roughly the same size accounting department as FMFC. If I'm remembering correctly, ARR! even uses the same software for fixed assets as the one I used before.

6. I start work on Monday at 9 AM.


There were thunderstorms here this afternoon and again tonight, and Tuffy was all nervous again, trying to climb in my lap and even onto my desk. I had considered going down Madera Canyon with my last (really only) free weekday afternoon before the new job, but was just as happy, it turned out, to hang around the house reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman. The movie's okay, but the book is very very good indeed, full of wonderful prose and likable characters, gentle whimsy and a little discreet sex, and a plot that bears only a passing resemblance to that of the film. I highly recommend it, and will be reading Gaiman's other novels now.

Anyway, I don't think I took a single photo today, what with the discretion and the driving, the storms and the reading. The one above is from late yesterday afternoon, when a wall of cloud pushed in, and defined a line of brightness in the sky where the wall ended. It reminded me of a rift in time and space, as seen on Doctor Who and probably lots of other sf. Nothing interesting came through it, though. It didn't even rain.

But it's raining now, and Tuffy is standing beside me, seeking reassurance or protection or whatever it is. Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing I can do to overcome her fear of storms, or to help her get through one, safe inside with me.

Karen