Happy Halloween and suchlike, for those of you who celebrate pagan holidays. Happy "massive amounts of candy" day to those of you who indulge in that tradition. Happy Wednesday to the rest of you.

Today dawned gray and rainy in Denver, Colorado. This is a situation with its upside--if it's raining outside, the ubiquitous worker bees who have been crawling all over the building for the past month won't be able to come and do the threatened paintnig today. The idea of a day of peace and quiet, without the boom of power-washers or the whine of electric drills, is very attractive.

First up, on the job front, it's sad to say that the R.C.'s job interview yesterday didn't go as well as she'd hoped. Personalities can be tricky and you never know what you're going to get until you get there. Also, it seems to me that the job was actually advertised wrong. If what they wanted was a SQL programmer who knew Crystal Reports, they should have advertised for that.

Still. Interviews are all experience, right? Each one teaches you something.

That's what I try to tell myself, anyhow. I haven't really said that to the R.C. whose intensive prep for this interview will, I am very sure, come in useful in subsequent interviews.

My own next interview is next Tuesday. (So far. I sent out a handful of resumes yesterday and will no doubt send more today.)

In the meantime--I have dreams.

Last night, for instance, I dreamed about buying books. Must. Remain. Strong. I just bought three new books, of which I have 2-3/4 left to read. Many of the volumes I dreamed of pouncing on with glee aren't due to be released until next week, or even early next year.

Self-restraint really isn't one of my virtues.

I have tidiness.

I carried out 80% of the trash I mentioned yesterday, holding onto only three empty boxes with a vague sense that I might need them in the near future. It's amazingly nice to be able to walk through that room again, without picking my way through a minefield of stacked bags and boxes. I boxed up the "to be donated" stuff, so it's all ready to go.

I finished storage. Sort of. I did go through the seven boxes of books and reduce them to six. What's left, stays. At some point I need to go over there and catalogue the books that are there, but not today.

The only decision left to make is around the Doctor Who and Elvis stuff. I'm working myself up to the task--I'll have to donate the books and trash the rest of it.

Okay, and there's one more box of papers to deal with. All of my "retirement plan" stuff. I need to consolidate all of those bits and pieces of money into one account somewhere.

I have my responsible citizen badge for the month.

I read through the ballot initiatives and completed my mail-in ballot. Later today I'll take it to the post office and send it. (Minor nit: I don't see why they can't put the amount of postage you need somewhere on or in the envelope. It's annoying to have to go stand in line at the post office and find out.) (I have a vague and unsubstantiated belief that it's 85 cents. Maybe I'll just drop three or four of those 37-cent stamps I have laying around on the envelope and drop it in the mailbox?)

I have to clean house.

One drawback of cleaning out storage is that I seem to have transferred a lot of dust from the storage unit to the apartment. This place badly needs dusted and vacuumed.

Brooding....

This whole "housework" scam is really a pain. It never ends. I did five loads of laundry at the end of last week and now, yes, there is more laundry to be done. I scrubbed the kitchen a few days ago but it probably needs done again, in spite of the fact that 90% of our "cooking" is done in the microwave.

There's a Clean House marathon on today. Maybe I'll turn it on and see if I get inspired.

What's really turned out to be fun are the "behind the scenes" shows that Clean House has produced a few times. They tell you more about their struggles with various homeowners than they had time to do on the original episodes, including talking a lot more about how dirty the houses are. In one place, there were actually rats eating their way through the accumulated mountains of untouched-for-years but nevertheless too-precious-to-be-thrown-out crap in one family's basement. (That was the family that needed 8 industrial-sized dumpsters for all of the actual trash they and the crew threw out--the family that wound up with 250 bins full of things that, even after the garage sale and a week of intense work by the crew, they just couldn't bear to part with.)

Now I'm just talking to be talking, aren't I? Just avoiding the day's chores--the job hunt and housecleaning.

Have a great day!

(And, Jonathan? I haven't forgotten you're in the middle of your own job hunt. I'm sending the good vibes.)