Finally
2004-09-23,

So, uh, sorry for the absence. I've been a bit distracted this summer, what with getting fired and all.

Yep, that's right. I was let go on June 1st, the day I was supposed to go to the Indians game with tickets from the office. I didn�t go, strangely enough. It was also the first day of group rehearsal for The Music Man. To that I did go, and, much to my relief, it was a welcome distraction.

So why, do you ask, was I fired? The official reason was that I had, on the Friday previous to my termination, made some mistakes that were apparently unforgivable enough to kick me out. The reality was that my Supervisor had it in for me, loaded me with things I only half understood, took pains to make it completely uncomfortable to ask questions of her, then said I was unfit for the job after, surprise, getting a thing or two wrong.

Okay, I just realised that I'm done talking about that, forever. I found myself not wanting to write anymore and just getting frustrated all over again, so enough of that. Moving on.

So The Music Man went pretty well. My performance as Jacey Squires verged on legendary. The quartet as a whole did well, save maybe for the baritone, who was� well, he's the music director's husband let's just say that. Not that he can't sing, but he was just not cut out for barbershop. Then again, neither am I, but mainly because I have a hard time being that cheesy for that long without wanting to laugh or scream or both.

Heather and the kids did fantastically. Heather was commented a few times as being the most expressive person on stage. Hilary actually showed some coordination skills, not to mention being an excellent auxiliary teacher for Simon. And Simon himself? What can I say, he was the cutest thing on stage. At the end of the show when the boy's band walks out to perform, he got, every night, a noticeable wave of "oh, how cute he is" from the audience. I think he learned a good lesson from this experience about 'practise makes perfect', in that after getting frustrated with learning the dance moves, he stuck it out and (with Hil's help) managed to pull it off, even being just imperfect enough with it to be even more cute onstage. He and Hil both have the theatre bug now; I just wish there were more children-friendly shows to be done.

During tech week of The Music Man came tryouts for Man of La Mancha. Something that should have been an easy breeze-thru turned out to be a three-week extravaganza. I managed to have to try out not twice, but three times inside the span of two weeks. It was plain that there was some indecision involved between the director and music director. Although I was trying out for the part of Sancho, I ended up with the part of the Padre, and rightly so, in retrospect. The part suits me quite nicely, and if I'd known more about the show beforehand it most likely would have been the part I'd have gone for. However, I think I should have taken the indecisiveness at the beginning as a warning.

Don't worry; I'm still in the show. I have to say, though, that this has got to be the least organized production in which I've ever been. The schedule has been notoriously inconsistent. The director has been late at least once every week. I don't think there's been one day where we've had the entire cast present. It's just over one week before the show and there's still at least one scene that we have yet to block out. Ack.

But life goes on. My birthday happened on the 9th and I got a most excellent present - a job. The kids and I had gone up to the Heights with Heather to work and from there we minus H were going to head over to her sister's place to hang with H's mom who was in town for most of the summer (which will be addressed later). We were there for a few minutes because we were giving my mother-in-law some time to get morning motivated, when H and her boss get in a conversation about bringing their billing in-house (rather than outsourcing) to put the money spent on that to better use, and the fact that, if they did that, H would need some help around the office. A moment later, H's boss turns to me and says, "You want a job?" So the next week I started part time. That was almost two weeks ago. Then the inevitable happened.

Lesson About James

Things in his life oft come in pairs. Why, when he met his Heather, he had just begun courting another. Just last December, he had two job offers inside one week (sadly, choosing the wrong one). I'm sure there are other examples, but the author is coming up short. Suffice to say, things in his life oft come in pairs.

I got a call from a woman at Accountemps in Akron, saying that they had seen my resume online and wanted to know if I wanted to apply for a position they'd been having trouble filling. They actually came to me. Go figure-- two years of having my resume listed on the web finally paid off.

The position is at Unnamed Corp. (which is not it's real name, duh), which manufactures and wholesales compression therapy materials, and I would be testing the materials and recording statistics. Not exactly a glam job, but it was something vaguely up my alley and was offering decent pay. I went to Accountemps and signed up (during testing, I accidentally got certified as a Specialist with MS Excel 2000) and a day later went to an interview. It must've gone well, because I got offered the job today, and I'll start on Monday. It's an 8-5 job, so I'll have to say goodbye to sleeping in to the late, late time of 730am and hello to the early, early time of 615am. Not such a radical change in the grand scheme of things, but then, I'm going to be starting the new job at the same time as Tech Week for La Mancha. To me this spells 'weak immune system', a.k.a. a cold, especially since Fall is just starting to kick in. I just hope I can fend it off until after the show. Of course, by mentioning it, I've already sealed my fate, but so be it.

In other job news, it seems I'm going to be delving into entrepreneurship with my wife and mother-in-law. It seems that H's mom has for a while been trying to set up an exporting operation into the U.S. while she's been living in India. Apparently you can buy things for super cheap there, ship them here and sell them for 10 times what you bought them. Upon talking to H and I about the prospect, we agreed to give it a try. I'm going to end up being the operations man on this side of the planet, once we get an idea of the types and amount of things we're going to be selling, either wholesale to stores or at craft shows and whatnot. More to come on this subject as it develops, but it may end up being another source of income in about 6 months, right around the time this temp position that I'm getting is due to potentially expire. It's also going to be right around the time when we'll start worrying about finding out about travel arrangements, most likely. You know, cos of the baby.

Oh, did I neglect to mention that we finally got our authorization from the government (in the manifestation of Form I-171) to go ahead and adopt? Yay! We got it two days after we decided that we were more than likely never going to get it, because it was taking forever (it had been almost 12 weeks since we'd sent our request form in to the INS - or whatever it's called now) and since we went to the October 2002 protest march in D.C., we were probably on some blacklist somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon and doomed. But oh, it did arrive last week. We then scrambled to get all of our important documents notarized and then certified by two counties (one document was notarized in Cuyahoga Co. and the rest in Medina Co.) so that I could make a run on Monday to the Ohio Secretary of State's office to get yet another certification (and if I'd known beforehand I'd have left him a nasty note about how evil he is for trying to disrupt the system for processing of new voters in Ohio, which just happen to be heavily Democratic, not to mention trying to muck up provisional voting). Now the certified documents are in New York, awaiting yet another certification from the Chinese Consulate. Assuming all goes well there, the next step is to send that, along with the rest of our papers, documents and photos - which, altogether, we lovingly call 'the baby' - to our agency for a good combing-over before it ultimately gets sent off to China. There it will sit for 6 months or so in a filing cabinet (literally - we've seen pictures online of the cabinet) until they get to us (basically using FIFO) and use their mysterious, magical powers to match us with a child. But that's a long time from now, and there's much that should and will happen until then.

In the meantime, I'll be updating again, at least after the craziness of Tech Week and opening weekend. I've certainly missed doing so, and I'm sure I've missed some deep thoughts that should have made it up here. If I remember any, I'll be sure and share.

-- End Transmission --