interviews, peaches, parades and Jesus

The job hunt is kind of like babysitting. You have to constantly check the kids and make sure they heard you over and over until eventually they are the ones calling YOU. Finally, I'm getting calls instead of emails. I had another interview last week that (I thought) went well. I'm supposed to hear back from them next week. I also got called for an interview with another position next week(!!!) Things are happening! Of course, just like the last time things got "rolling" with this process, I'm starting to FREAK OUT about how big this first job is/could be.

In other news: my mom decided this year we really had to go to the Lexington County Peach Festival in Gilbert, SC for the 4th of July. I'm always up for a parade (I am my mother's daughter, after all) so we trekked out to the 'pit' of South Carolina for this classy celebration. The parade piqued my "anthropology goggles" in that all parades, especially small town home grown county-sponsored ones, are representations of a culture as the "officials" would want the culture to be portrayed as. It's a socialization mechanism to reinforce certain cultural values- putting the values on display as "correct" and "celebrated." For the Peach Parade I saw today, I noticed a few things.

In addition to the overwhelming Christian / Baptist presence (a camel with a banner tied to it that read "Come see me at the Christmas Pageant at ___ Baptist Church!" While the girl leading it fed it Mountain Dew. She'd open a bottle, hold it up to the camel's mouth and the camel would take it and tilt it's head back and drink the whole thing. I think that camel probably drank 15 Mountain Dew's today. It's probably dead.) The main representation of women were as beauty pageant winners. All of these women were young, beautiful, many of them teenagers and children, adorned with crowns, gowns, and titles like "Little Miss Peach Queen," "Miss SC Poultry" and some kind of title about "Miss Tiny-Tot." Of course, there were girls in the marching band, some women in the senior center float, the red-had ladies, etc, but by far the most women were in the parade as beauty queens. The one young woman who was not the standard southern blonde skinny type was instantly ridiculed by the audience near where I was standing- they obviously already knew what an ideal young woman should look like- and she didn't cut it: (by rejecting what they saw in offhand comments, they affirm their cultural capital in the community).

The men in the parade, however, were present driving all the vehicles for the parade (all of them), all the tractors (at least 10), all of the politicians campaigning were men (with the exception of one), all of the veterans present were men, etc. Occasionally, a wife would stand behind her husband as he drove the tractor, and with the politicians the families of the politicians would be in the vehicle with them. There were some girls on the FFA float, which I was glad to see, but for the most part the parade had very clear gender boundaries- the most clear of which was that women do not drive tractors, they are queens! My mom grumbled that this was a "masculine parade!" and that she wanted to go to a gay parade next instead. I'll go with you, mom. Parades really are a cultural anthropology pool party. Seriously.

Getting up close and personal with deep southern culture makes me just laugh and laugh. If I don't laugh at it and label it I just get mad. I get mad anyway. One float for the Woodmen of the World had a large banner that proclaimed: "The Woodmen of the World support our Arm Forces." Sweet Jesus. But Jesus really was there with us today. As we were walking back to the car in the 95 degree heat we were becoming very thirsty. Right as one of us mentioned that we wanted something to drink this woman appeared and asked us, "would you like some ice cold bottled water? It's free" of course we accepted and thanked her a lot. We looked across the street and saw Jesus himself smiling at us from the Gilbert Baptist Church. What a day!

I need an evening activity.

I'm shedding small, pretend tears over the extermination of my college email address. Warren Wilson is so pathetic they don't give out alumni email- so bye bye .edu. Bye bye, .edu identity and cultural capital. I'm a little peeved about it even though I knew it was coming. I suppose that since almost everyone I know is on Facebook I shouldn't be too concerned.

Today I went on a long walk. I saw two cats. I walked 4.5 miles. I would think I would have seen more cats than that? I wore a pedometer to see how many steps that was... a little over 9000. I think I'll wear the pedometer more often to see how many steps I take a day. I've been acting entirely too lazy lately.

I made the Moosewood brownies again. They turned out like chocolate cake, again. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong? Maybe I shouldn't use the mixer next time. I know that the batter is too fluffy for it to be a brownie texture.

%&#^@(!

OK. Holy !*%&#

I got a call this morning from someone working for a company called The Resource Center. I thought it was the followup call from the interview I had on Friday from an organization called The Resource Center. So I returned the call just now only to find that this was A DIFFERENT COMPANY and I was on the phone with someone wanting to go through all the "preliminary phone interview" stuff for a job/company that I had NO IDEA WHAT WAS. Cool. So of course I sounded like an idiot because the jobs I've been applying to fall into two categories: recycling and not recycling- and I didn't know what on earth this thing was. One of my saving graces, I guess, was that their job posting didn't say much about them anyways.

UGH I JUST HATE SOUNDING LIKE AN IDIOT. For all you who think that naming your company "The Resource Center" would be great- get a little more creative, I beg you.

I just want a meaningful job.

I'm feeling really down today. I got two rejection emails today from really cool jobs. There have been no new jobs (I liked) to apply to in 5 days. These things are just an equation for self-doubt and frustration. The interview I had on Friday went well and they are going to call back sometime this week for another. I've got another interview for a different job on Wednesday of this week to look forward to, so at least the week isn't blank. ...But ugh, now is when I really wonder why I didn't forgo the fun in college and go to a free in-state school and major in computer science or programming or something. Man, feeling like crap really makes you loose faith.

On Saturday the boyfriend and I went to the flea market (didn't find anything) and to Pets Incorporated, a no-kill animal shelter in West Columbia. That is the shelter I used to volunteer with when I was in high school and it's the shelter where the boyfriend got his dogs. They re-did their whole setup and it's really nice now. When I use GoodSearch I always use Pets Inc as the organization to give to.

So Saturday night my friend WB had an Arrested Development themed birthday party. It's the first "real" party I've been to since I came home- maybe even the first "real" party I've ever been to in this city. I tried to dress up as Rita, Michael's girlfriend that has the brain of a 4 year old. I had a great time hanging out with old friends. They even had chocolate banana shots (which I didn't really like) but it was a great idea (if you've ever seen the show).

these hands used to pick tomatos and now these hands pick brain tumors

Has anyone seen Hopkins? This TV show is GREAT. I'm always a sucker for reality documentary kind of shows. This one follows doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The guy that was my favorite on this episode came to the US as an illegal immigrant from Mexico and worked himself up to be a neurosurgeon. It came on tonight (Wednesday) at 9.

coconutty

So I've been craving some serious coconut since the summer heat hit South Carolina. The coconut popsicles I've been eating just haven't been cutting it entirely (although they are REALLY good). So last night I cooked up some coconut pineapple curry. My mom used to make it a lot when I was in high school and it's really easy to do. It's not really for those who don't like tastebud parties (ie- hot, flavorful food).

Here's what you need:
1 medium-sized frying pan / low rimmed pot
1 can of coconut milk (regular or light, your preference)
1 fresh pineapple (a can of pineapple also works but make sure you drain the juice out! drink up!)
1 can of sliced water chestnuts (drain these too)
1 onion (I like Vidalias if they are in season)
1 fresh green pepper
curry
cayenne (or chili powder, or crushed red pepper)
salt
1 hot green pepper (optional)
chicken (optional)

So you cut the onion and the peppers up and saute them in a little olive oil until it's all a little softer but it's all still crunchy looking. I guess if you were cooking chicken with it you'd throw that in and cook that at this point too. Then you open up the water chestnuts and dump those in along with the pineapple. Stir that around for a short time and then pour the coconut milk in. Cut the heat to medium and add the curry to taste. I use a lot- my curry is yellow like the sun on the Teletubbies. Then I add the cayenne to taste (wait for it, it's a slow heat) and some salt to taste. Let that simmer for a little while. That's basically it- serve over rice and you've got some delicious yellow curry! Watch out for the hot green pepper, though. That will curl your hair.

Next up: Tahitian Coconut Bread. C gave me a recipe she got in Hawaii when she was on vacation with her family. Then maybe some Coconut Milk Sticky Rice with Mango? Homemade coconut popcicles? I better get off the computer- another one of those afternoon thunderstorms looks like it's going to rumble the city for a while.

Good news on the job front! An interview AND an email expressing interest! Things are looking up!

I've spent a lot of the past few days putting together a short essay, a critique of a website, and a marketing plan for a site as part of the application for a fellowship position with that site. It really makes me wonder exactly how many applicants for that position got the follow-up email asking for those materials. It sure would be an easy way to get a lot of really good feedback and ideas for your company, to put applicants through a process like that. Lots of companies pay a lot of money for detailed feedback. Clever! I hope that my efforts won't be for not. It sure is a lot easier to write essays and do tedious MS Word projects when you don't have to go to school everyday.

The last time I applied for a job and was asked to write an essay to be considered for the "next round" I submitted my essay (during the middle of exams while I was still in college) and never heard back from the company. Maybe one day when I am feeling especially heartless I'll publish the company who did that on this blog. For now, though, I'm sure there was some kind of "internet glitch" that prevented me from getting that "sorry, we're just not that into you" email. Yeah. Internet glitch. Jerks. It took them over 3 months just to review the resumes.

When hanging out with my friend C yesterday we talked about how we used to code our own websites and blogs and basically own the internet. We both knew enough about html and style sheets, etc that we could make pretty nice looking websites. Well, she was telling me that she was trying to edit the template of the code for a new blog and that she didn't understand what much of it meant. This is exactly what has happened to me, too! It's so insane that in the past 5-6 years all the coding for the internet has changed so much. I mean, I guess it's not insane, but there are so many new programming languages that we decided it really wasn't feasible to teach them to yourself, as we had done in high school. Kind of disappointing. I considered going to school for web programming- but always thought I could just teach myself anything I really wanted to know. Haha... WRONG. Here I am on blogger with a regular, standard template. Oh well. I guess I could use my old skillz to make a site if I really wanted to. Though they were very simple, they worked.

I just baked a batch of Brownies using the Moosewood Cookbook recipe. The Moosewood Cookbook is seriously my favorite cookbook ever. I could live fine forever with just that one cookbook.