Calling, flying, hiring, movie, Duchess

[cjsmith]

Square dance calling in Los Angeles on Sunday. TOMMYBURGER! Plus, on the flight back we got to see the sunset multiple times. It set before takeoff, "rose" as we climbed out, and set again a couple times in the air as it kept sinking behind various ridge lines.

I took cell phone video of a large fire 7mi east of Gorman. (Hey, don't look at me like that. I had the "phone" part of the phone turned off. (GSM phones make annoying noises in our headsets. (So does radar.))) Smoke topped out around 10,000 feet. I'm glad we were flying upwind of it.

STILL screening people for an opening at my company. Man, this is dragging. I have new insight into how much "hiring manager" means "major time suck". I also now realize, I think, some of the ways I tend to do well in interviews.

Rob and I watched "Sordid Lives" last night. I liked it. The stereotypes (on both "sides") were all there, but not too cardboard; the twits became more human as the film went on; we could laugh with the knowledge that we were also laughing at parts of ourselves.

Duchess continues to do well. She's perky, she's maintaining her (new) weight, and boy does she know the routine: the opening of the fridge door means treats coming soon.

Comments

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Is "Tommyburger" a code word for "the calling went really well!" or maybe "Banzai!"

:-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha! Naw, it's an amazing burger. There's a Tommy's right by where Phantom Squares dances. It's a real treat for me.

Sordid Lives

[apparentparadox]

Don't you love "Doctor Eve"? She's such a great character.

Watch some of the "deleted scenes", especially the one where the corpse speaks.

Re: Sordid Lives

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Doctor Eve was a basket case! Doesn't help that she slightly physically resembles some therapists around here, too. ;-)

Ooo, we didn't watch the deleted scenes! Must go do that.

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

My immediate reaction is to ask "Far or Near Tommy's", but I suspect those qualifiers mean something different if you're not in Pasadena. I never did go on a Negative-Time Tommy's Run. Ah, well.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Foggiest what those mean. I'm pretty sure we went to the one in Canoga Park.

(I go to LA multiple times a year and I have NO IDEA where anything is. We fly in, we call, we fly out. Take me two blocks away from any calling location and I would have no idea even what city I was in.)

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

I figured I had bored you to death with this story at some point, so I gave you a chance to deflect it. Your call. :-)

We would go to Tommy's occasionally when I was at Caltech. Looking at the map, I think we went to the Eagle Rock location, because I don't remember one in Pasadena at that time. In any case, the closest location was "Near Tommy's" when you just wanted a quick fix. If you were serious about flicking (wasting some time, same or equivalent word for MIT?), then you went to Far Tommy's, the original LA location.

If you were unconcerned with the traffic laws on the LA freeways, a round trip to Far Tommy's with a bit of luck on service could be done in around an hour. And if you left the campus just at 2am on the Sunday that Daylight Savings Time ends, you might return around 1:55am that same morning. "Negative Time Tommy's Run". It had the same cachet as any other stupid college achievement. Not that you would know anything about that, I'm sure, since I'm confident that MIT is entirely populated by sober, serious individuals.

Bwahahahahaha!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ah, I figured the time change would be involved somehow! Sounds like you guys had a lot of fun. Cool.

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

Some GSM phones seem worse than others. My new Blackberry (8700g) is barely audible -- my Treo 650 was HORRIFIC.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Treos seem to be the worst. We can't even have them on the table at a square dance. The speaker cables can hear them.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Nothing taught me more about interviewing than moving to that side of the table. :-)

And why haven't you posted this cool fire/smoke video, hmmmm? ;-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Because a) it is of very poor quality, having been taken at dusk on a cell phone camera, and b) you can embed video in a LJ entry ONLY if the video is hosted on YouTube or Photobucket, and I don't like being told that some other site isn't good enough didn't obtain special treatment. :-) Seriously, bad quality. Impressive fire though.

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

The multiple sunset thing is COOOOOOOL!

Glad Duchess is doing better -- my sister & her husband had a diabetic dog and had to do multiple daily insulin injections. NOT fun.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The multiple sunset thing is one of the nifty things about flying! Doesn't happen often, but it's cool when it does.

Fortunately the multiple daily injections are getting to be a routine. The un-fun-est (?) thing about it is we have to be there or call someone to cover for us. (Note to self: must must must give house key to someone who can do that, as we'll be unavoidably not home soon.)

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

That is the hardest part. My sister used to have to make it home at lunchtime (not very easy in Atlanta) to give Max his injection...

The things we do for our animal companions! Oh well -- they are worth it!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yikes. I just get the 2x/day regimen, which means I can't go anywhere after work. (Like square dance calling. Poor Duchess gets her schedule bent when I go to call.)

They sure are worth it though. She's the sweetest cat in the universe, and I'm glad this is so treatable.