i haven't been writing this blog much in recent days, so I thought I would update those of you who do get the latest and greatest, 

My girlfriend and I are just friends.  Like the Sheldon character on Big Bang Theory, she is a girl who is just a friend.  Oh well. 

We had some boundary issues, which I am working on.  Nuff said. 

As a result, I have moved from her apartment to a new place off of Cornwall near Assumption Church.  It is really nice. Rent's about $625 a month for this one bedroom -- the neighborhood is quiet. 

I am now retired, for lack of a better word.  The failure of a job hunt to obtain employment and my own personal issues has resulted in my obtaininng Social Security Disability.  

You're up to date. 

An update:  I don't want to jinx myself, but made the finals for a part-time job over at the local four-year college. 

Interview is Tuesday.  Am one of four finalists.

Asking that question of myself right now.

It occurred to me that I do like to find deals and shop.  During my 18-year marriage, we'd go places just to see how cheap we could find things for.  

With the economy being what it is and my own personal inability in finding a permament form of employment, I am thinking i might want to offer the Bellingham area its own shopping service!  There's only one in the area, but not even she can cover the entire Whatcom County area.

Moving on to Week Two of the job -- this week is afternoons.

It is learning the ins and outs of procedures.  Not the simplest of jobs, but I think I am getting it down, including scheduling appointments.  Just a matter of looking on the schedule for the latest openings and learning how long each type of appointment is.  

Sorry I haven't been here much lately.  Been really emphasizing my job search and other things.

I found a temp job with the WTA -- I am counting riders for the next month or so.  

Ran into a couple of friends on the bus.  One such person came on with her service dog, ignored me.   I seem to have been  collateral damage due to my girlfriend's dropping her as a friend.

Go figure.

In related business, I am enjoying my trips elsewhere in Whatcom County.  I wll see places I have never been during this month.  So cool.  

Well, I got a letter from my sister the other day.  Still has the best penmanship in the family, even at age 66.

She let me know about her kids other than her youngest.  So I went Facebooking again, hoping to find her daughters on that program.  I found both Sis's oldest (through her husband) and the oldest's son.  One can only hope they will add me and start a conversation.  That's all I want, start to talk again to people I am related to.

The middle one is not so connected as the other two.  But we will see. 

It occurred to me yesterday that I happen to be a Facebook member, which is one of the largest websites in the world.  Also occurred to me that I might have some relatives on it, so I started to looking for my nieces and nephews -- and lo and behold, I found my sister's youngest.   So I sent him a friend request -- happily he remembered either his uncle or talked to his mother and she refreshed his memory.

So, hey, when I turned on the Ipod this morning and looked at email, there was a note indicating my nephew had approved my friend request.  Yay!

I have some other news that I told folks in other spaces, but I went out before Christmas and got myself a girlfriend.   It was like karma.  We'd tried to connect on a dating site a couple of years before -- arranging to meet at a restaurant downtown, but that meeting fell through for some reason.  Move forward to October 2010 to a dinner group I attend -- I was sitting at a table along with several friends and two ladies walked into the room -- one was my girlfriend to be.

We talked and I reminded her that I had tried to connect with her a couple of years ago.   She remembered my email and said she was mistaken.  Well, we continued to talk via internet messenger and email.  Eventually, she tells me that she and her fellow were having problems.  I enquired whether she might be interested in getting together with me and she said yes.

So now we're an item -- two months now.

okay, so it's 57 now.  Or as I was telling the general world yesterday, the 18th anniversary of my 39th birthday.

It was an interesting day -- I had dinner with my stepson at a restaurant which offers a free sandwich on birthdays.  Then I went to the Upfront with a friend to watch another friend perform.   She did well.   We even got to see Ryan Stiles (who has a place here in Bham) in a couple of performances.   He brought along some friends to perform -- twas fun.

 So I took the test for the job at BSD last night.  It was an interesting experience trying to find the room at Sehome.  
The school map, fyi, was little or no help.  And there was little direction on the buildings themselves. 

So after walking from one end of the buildings to the other, I finally found two buildings with the numbers I sought.  And having run into another Job Club member (!) who had also shown up for the test early (she knew as much as I did about where things were at Sehome).  I finally found the room -- it was very warm. 

And clearly if anyone needs to know where the IA buildings are, I can now tell you.

As I expected, I was the only male in the room.  There were eight ladies in the room, taking the test.   We warmed up for the typing test -- I was hitting my 60-65 words per minute with some regularity.  However, it seems the typing test program was being picky about doing one or two spaces after a sentence.  I personally like to do it like typesetting (one space) but I figured out it likes two.   So I wound up hitting 65 wpm with one error. 

We also had a spelling test and a proofreading test -- both I found very easy, I thought, and knocked them out in about five minutes.  We were also asked to do an Email using 2007 Outlook...I smiled and took about 30 seconds to create the email, attached the right document from a folder, and send it to the right person. 

We will see where I fall on the list.