I got an e-mail from my brother yesterday. He's been too near to death lately - his fiancee's brother-in-law committed suicide - and it turned him introspective and gave him cause to remind the people in his life that he cares for them.
It's astonishing sometimes how little you can know about a person you thought you knew quite well. His letter revealed depths of feeling, thought, spirituality, and self-analysis that I wouldn't have thought my brother contained. Or at least, that I didn't think he'd be able to express.
Now I'm looking forward even more to seeing him at Thanksgiving.
All right. I've had four interviews - three in person, and one series of phone interviews - and of the four companies, I'm positive that two of them will make offers, and one more is fairly likely. In fact, after my fifth or sixth phone discussion with various people at Metro yesterday, the person I was talking to asked me to make sure to contact them if I thought I was going to take someone else's offer, so they'd know to hurry up and put out a bid.
It's too bad that the company that seems most eager to hire me is the one I least want to work for. (They're a consulting company, which means I'd spend weeks or months at one site, and then be re-assigned to a different site, and so on. That sort of rotation actually appeals to me in a way, but they're based about an hour from me, so the places I'd be sent to work are correspondingly far away. It's been confessed several times that they just don't have many contracts in the Williamsburg area. And the very first place they're proposing sending me is a place that I've heard has a lousy work environment for programmers, actually - and it's a long-term contract.) Still, I suppose it's possible that they could offer me enough money to make me consider it seriously. They have a fairly attractive benefits package, including a series of vacation condominiums for staff use.
The other two possibilities are Syscon and a contractor at NASA. If they both offered me the same money, I think I'd be sortof torn between them. Syscon has the advantage of being a much shorter commute, but the NASA contractor has slightly better benefits (I think - Syscon's are being re-arranged in January) and I wouldn't be starting out on the wrong side of the office politics.
But right now, I just want them all to get off their duffs, do their paperwork, and actually offer me something!
I'm going to go shopping today. The maid service should be here sometime this afternoon, and it will get me out of the house to go run some errands. (No, I haven't cancelled the maid service. They only come every two weeks, and I think I'm close enough to a new job not to sweat the cost.) Anyway, I need to buy a Christmas ornament for an ornament exchange party next week, (invitations were issued to all the 3GI ladies. I was touched to be included.) some accessories for my gold dress if I'm going to wear it to the 3GI Christmas party (yeah, I think I'm going to the party - too many of my friends will be there for me to stay home and sulk, and I love Christmas anyway) and a few other things.
I'm looking forward to it, for some weird reason.
I'm trying to decide if I want to buy a very small turkey and roast it. I'm fairly sure that Dad's campfire-roasted turkey is going to be a terrible disaster. (I've been surprised before, but he's not planning on catching any of the drippings, and aside from not being able to make gravy, I have no idea how he's going to baste it without drippings, and unbasted turkey is nasty and dry.) It certainly isn't going to have the skin that I love to salt and broil, and Mom was whining about not being able to make gravy. So I'm tempted to buy a small turkey and roast it, eat the skin, package the meat for Matt and I to eat later (only this time, I'd make smaller packets - don't ask) and make gravy from the drippings for Mom.
But then I wonder if I'm just fooling myself. I'm already committed to making pies. If I make a turkey, too, then I might as well just add some vegetables and rolls and have Thanksgiving over at our house! On the other hand, I like turkey. Matt likes turkey.
What do you think?
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