"For I Know the Plans I Have for You..."

(The picture above was taken by Nicole Rowell, and I think it's beautiful)

Favorite things of this very moment (10:34 pm CST):

• Knowing the outcome
• Crazy Love by Francis Chan
• Ice water
• Long, prompt emails from Jay
• Having breakfast with Kayla and T to look forward to

Today has been a little surreal. Actually, this week has been a little surreal. The whole of it. The week started out with me running through a list in my head of all the places I could still try and apply to find a job. Not my favorite task, but a necessary one. A new job must be found. This is one quest that can not be thrown aside.

Monday was a holiday, and that day was spent with my family, and then also in going to Augustana College in Rock Island, IL to see my youngest brother, Joel perform in a concert as part of the Gold Honor Ensemble. The concert was fantastic. The Augustana Ensemble played, the Gold Honor and the Blue Honor Ensembles also played. Everything was wonderful. Augustana is a beautiful college. If only they offered library science there...

Tuesday started off fairly quiet. I'd made my to-do list for the week, and was getting some of the chores out of the way like laundry and cleaning of catboxes (oh the joys of catboxes...gick), and then my father called. He told me that he had a job for me. I needed to come over to the bank, they'd had a problem with some calendars they ordered, and they needed someone to go through them. I ended up there by 1 that afternoon.

Wednesday, I spent all day working at the bank, but also set up an interview on Thursday at a home for the mentally disabled. Listened to a great deal of The Return of the King. Tolkien is brilliant.

Thursday...ah yes, today...

Today has been weird. I battled a great deal of ice and spent some time salting our driveway and walkways here at the house, and then I got ready and went off to my interview. The interview seemed to go pretty well. I had to take a 25 questioned, short standardized reading test while sitting in the dining room. One of the residence was in there eating lunch. Very sweet, but very loud. Imagine trying to write an important paper with the TV all the way up and your siblings talking to you. That was basically what the test was like. Aparently I did alright on it though. I then filled out the form giving my consent to having them run a background check on me (I have nothing to hide). Then I went and talked with the woman in charge of the home as well as the clerk for both the homes in Oregon. That seemed to go pretty well. They seemed to like me fairly well, and they answered all the questions I'd been saving.

They told me that they would contact me this evening if they needed me to come back in for a 2nd interview tomorrow. It's almost 11pm now, and I haven't received a phone call. They aparently don't need me. Hopefully though, Kayla will get a call. She also applied there and her interview was yesterday. Tomorrow I get to meet Kayla and Terrence for a breakfast-esque type coffee outting before Kayla and I head over to Stillman to work with the calendars (she started helping out there today), so I will hear whether or not she got a call at that point.

What this all comes down to though is that this week has been rather bizarre. I am exceedingly grateful that someone in China screwed up the printing of hundreds of calendars going to a small, locally owned set of banks in a rural IL area. Those mistakes have provided me with a short term job that will help me make yet another car payment without having to touch my savings account, and that is a truly blessed event. Beyond that, I've also realized how terrifying I find the concept of working with mentally disabled adults. I need to learn more about what working with them is really like. I'm sure the work is very rewarding, but I've never been around adults with mental disabilities, so I'm just not sure what it's like.

This also means that I am back to handing out more applications and collecting still more. There will continue to be odd jobs until I can find something permanent. Of this I am fairly certain. There's always someone needing something. See a need, fill a need, right? *smiles*

Besides, this is just one small part of my life, and an even smaller part in history. One never knows where it leads.

Have a wonderful night.