Catching Up

Laundry 101 is closed due to 'changes in the market'.

Cleveland's is once again open... but now is called Plaka and made me feel under-dressed in basketball shorts and a T. The food and pricing stayed the same, but I am still reeling from the shake-up in style.

Malaysia-plan has been canceled; Chicago-plan has been accepted. I will begin my employment in the Windy City eight days from now working for a construction consulting company doing PHP programming. The office is two blocks from Union Station. This week I will be picking out an apartment and subsequently moving into it. As I've been straightforward with the company, they already know about the Turkey plan and are willing to go along with it.
The Turkey plan: to be in Turkey working remotely and getting paid in USD by summer '09.

you win some, you lose some

Almost immediately after what I believe would be called nailing the interview, I had a run-in with either a sloppy painter or a really relaxed pigeon. The end result is a Monica Lewinsky sized blob on my suit coat and a smaller, Paris Hilton sized one on my pants. I tried washing them and nothing happens. At least I only have to wear the pair around for the rest of the day.

Getting some traction

Job
The summer is rapidly moving towards its conclusion and I am not that much closer to solving the age old question of 'so ... What are you doing?'

I've been posting resumes and cover letters for the last couple weeks fairly regularly. Thus far it's been recruiting agencies calling, asking if I am interested in positions I was either not even close to being qualified for or way over qualified for.

This weekend I decided to re-work both my resume and cover letters a bit, and I suddenly started receiving phone calls from the jobs I was actually applying to. My first interview out of the revamped paperwork is tomorrow in downtown Chicago for a PHP Developer position. I'm hoping there's a chance that if I got the position, I could work remotely. But getting the position is a little more important for the next 6 months.

Volleyball
My volleyball skills have improved significantly. The one area of my game that has not improved is still my serve. In fact, I'd say it's gotten progressively more sporadic and mind-bogglingly messed up. But at least I can hit with the big guys now.

Running
My oldest sister decided to sign-up for the Chicago Marathon a couple weeks ago. My brother-in-law to my second oldest sister then decided to sign-up as well. I did not sign-up and am slowly wishing I had. Although I'm significantly heavier now than I was then (20 lbs), I'm sure if I started training again a lot of it would come off fairly quickly.

But I decided to stick with the volleyball and basketball routine I have going now. I'm in two volleyball leagues (Mon & Tues) and have been playing basketball on Thursdays with some pretty good players. Michael Flowers has even shown up quite a bit to show everyone how we are just fooling ourselves into thinking we're good at basketball.