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ritalin the rain
Monday, August 13 2018
location: Dug Hill Road, rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
According to our house sitter, it had rained in Hurley for much of the time we were in the Adirondacks, and those rains continued today. The moist conditions had brought about a massive mosquito outbreak, making the outdoors a decidedly unpleasant place. Normally Gretchen and I keep the front door open in the daytime during the summer, but today we found ourselves closing it occasionally to keep the mosquitoes out (oddly though, not all that many come in even when there are lots of them outside and the door is wide open).
I had a couple of job interviews today. I'd initially assumed that one at 11:30am would be somewhat technical, and that was why I'd been teaching myself React in the Adirondacks. But then I looked more closely at who would be interviewing me and saw that her position was not overly technical. So I relaxed, going into the interview with some food and my tummy and a few cups of Irish Breakfast tea. The interview went fairly well, although it was not perfect. I certainly did not feel a human connection with my interviewer like I've had in the past, and there were audio issues causing me to ask her to repeat herself.
[REDACTED]
So I was a little surprised when, later in the day, I was advanced to the next stage of the interview process. I was given a code challenge to complete without anyone hovering over me. That was a good sign; not being put on the spot with technical questions is always a good thing.
At 4:00pm there was an interview scheduled with a developer at that major pharmaceutical company (I can just say now that it was Johnson & Johnson). None of my former colleagues nor Gretchen wanted me to get that job given Johnson & Johnson's terrible record regarding experimenting on animals, but going through the process as far as I could had felt like a good exercise. I'd even been serious about it enough to bone up on my Lua knowlege in the Adirondacks (my knowing Lua had been the only reason my resume had come up). But at 4:00pm the interviewer Aaron Coleman stood me up, and so I contacted the recruiter (an Indian in India) who had connected me with this possible position. He said that at the last minute Johnson & Johnson had imposed a requirement that any potential developer have a college degree. As you know, I am a college dropout, so there was no fixing that problem.
I'd taking a Mexican ritalin pill in anticipation of that interview, but without the interview, it became an entirely recreational experience. I had some errands to run, so I loaded up Neville in the Prius (I couldn't find Ramona) and drove out to 9W. At the Autozone, I bought a complete set of brake pads for the Subaru (whose brakes had become increasingly marginal). And at Home Depot, I offloaded all the CF bulbs Gretchen and I had tried to take to the Hurley transfer station. Home Depot accepts them for free, so this was a huge cost savings. But they did not have in stock some porcelain repair filler I wanted, so I drove over to Lowes to see if they had any. I took Neville into the Lowes on a leash, and the ritalin had me in full "I am a human-shaped space probe sent from an alien planet" mode. At one point in the store Neville tried to piss on something and I had to stop him. Unfortunately, Lowes didn't carry any porcelain repair filler at all.
On the drive back home, I sipped a Sierra Nevada Torpedo and went out of my way to visit the Tibetan Center thrift store. There I bought two five volt switching wall warts (with cables) for a $1. (In the Adirondacks, I'd come to realize that most of my micro USB cables are problematic in various ways.)
Rain continued for much of the day, and Gretchen spent much of her time down in her new screened-in porch, which was apparently a very comfortable and non-distracting place to continue work she'd begun in the Adirondacks. She was even able to make progress on a poem, something she normally has trouble doing at home.
This evening I drank a bit too much as I rehashed with Allison our firing from The Organization over the diaspora Slack. When I got up to go to bed, I was so drunk I actually lost my balance and fell down with a loud thump, causing Gretchen to check in on me. Being that she was already concerned about my drinking, this did not look good.
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