I'm all packed. Tomorrow I fly off on vacation to the northernmost county of California. The flight is scheduled to take 90 minutes. Driving would take at least 7 hours. California is big. Almost as big as Sweden. 

I'm sure the trip will be fun, but right now I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about it. It costs a lot of money and I could be spending time in my garden instead. There's a reason I live where I live. It's wonderful here. 

Oops, I guess I forgot to post this. I'm off in a couple of hours. Excited! 

The car didn't start on Monday morning, so I had to take Lyft. I was at the office before my boss any way. An admin let me inside.

The experience of being in the office was pretty chaotic. The part of the networking company I'm working for now has a slightly better reputation than the rest, but it's still sucky. I'm glad I'm not working in the office, so I'm not caught up in that. My manager keeps telling me how refreshing it is to talk to me. She's concerned about the release because the business keeps pushing for more changes. That is so familiar and not in a good way. I knew taking this job would be a thorough refresher in how to let things go and not let stuff get to me.  

In the evening I took Lyft to the meeting and then got a lift home with a friend. That meant that I didn't go grocery shopping. So I need to do that on Friday after the meeting. It was a good meeting with a lot of raw emotion. 

On Tuesday I called AAA first thing in the morning. They came out and jump started my car. The AAA guy didn't think it was the battery, because it still had about 14V potential and the lights all came on when he pushed the button. 14V should be fine for a 16V battery, he said.

I had called the mechanic while I was waiting for AAA, so I drove over there right away without allowing the engine to stop. They investigated and today the verdict was that it was the battery. It didn't deliver enough cranking amps. According to the mechanic, Hyundai engines require higher CA than other car engines. So they put in a new Hyundai battery. I have no idea if that's true or if he was selling me a bill of goods. If anybody does know, feel free to chime in. I do know that it was expensive! 

I took Lyft again to the therapist but then I walked home from there. Very convenient that it's so close by. Here are some jacaranda flowers I photographed on the way home. I really enjoyed my walk. These are just normal California suburbs and I love them. Not the least because I saw three cats. 

Today I worked in the morning. Then I walked over to the mechanic. Here are the flowers of a Persian silk tree that I took on the way there. I only met one cat on this walk. 

This afternoon I didn't really have anything to do for work. But it's supposed to be a full time contract, so I stayed online and made sure to keep an eye on IM, in case my manager wanted anything from me. If this is going to be a common occurrence, I'd like to figure out a way to make good use of my time. Today I spent some time learning more about Sketch and organizing the Sketch files a bit better. That's good for both me and the employer. I may spend some time on my visual design course tomorrow if my manager doesn't have enough work for me. 

On Friday I'm going into the office. My badge has arrived and there's a lot of set up to do. Conveniently I have a doctors appointment at 2, so I have a reason to leave before traffic gets bad. 

My plan for today was to go to my beloved Rancho and hike. That didn't work out. I'll spare you the TMI. Suffice it to say that I had to turn around after less than half a mile because my body was not cooperating. Such a bummer! I had really been looking forward to this hike. Judging from my Instagram feed, I haven't been there since March. No wonder I miss it. Hopefully I can go next weekend. Here's a photo of a mostly dry creek. 

On my way home I got a call from my next door neighbor. She said that there was an injured cat under her car and she wondered if I knew the cat and maybe his human. I asked on NextDoor and his human was found.

Apparently it wasn't really an injury, but a rash. It looked pretty bad but he didn't seem to be in any pain, even in the area near the rash. His nictitating membranes weren't up either. The poor kitty has a reaction to flea medication and to flea bites. Not sure if that's becoming increasingly common, or if I just hear about it more often. The bare patch was the size of a couple of quarters. That's pretty big on a cat. He was a TNR kitty with a missing eartip, but clearly well loved and fed. Very friendly too. When I started talking to him, he came right out from under the car for pets. No hesitation at all. 

I was hoping to figure out my benefits this weekend but key information is missing. Such as costs. That's kind of important, so I've requested it. 

Then I stamped page numbers in my bujo. That kind of thing always cheers me up. 

Tomorrow I'm going into the office. I have a meeting that starts at 10.30 and ideally I need to pick up my newly-issued badge on the way. I'm not sure if that will really happen. Today I tried starting my car around 9 am and it was a no go. :-( It's been hard to start when it's cold lately. Cold for California, that is. I've resorted to parking it in the courtyard in front of my garage because it's warmer outside than in the cavernous garage. 

Maybe it will be significantly warmer tomorrow morning. I hope so. Otherwise I've got to take Lyft. I'm going to factor in time for that. Or maybe even hold my nose and Uber if there's no Lyft nearby. But I'm not going to factor in time for both getting the badge and taking Lyft. I'm wondering how long it would take to get the badge anyway. Might there be a line at security on Monday mornings? Wouldn't surprise me. Given that I don't work in the office normally, having a badge isn't all that important to me anyway. 

I'm thinking of calling a garage on Tuesday and turning in the car on Tuesday afternoon after therapy. I've got to get this fixed. Not having a reliable car sucks. Maybe they can fix the passenger side door as well. A bolt fell out of the hinge a couple of months ago. Since then it has stopped squeaking, something it had been doing ever since I had an accident back in 2016. At some point I'd also like to fix the chip in the middle of the passenger door and the scraping at the bottom of the driver side. But those things are cosmetic and in the California climate they don't pose a risk to the longterm health of the car. I'm so glad that I'm making money again so I'll be able to take care of these things. I should get my first pay check at the end of the coming week. Whee! 

My tattoo is in the irritating peeling stage of healing. I keep finding little green skin flakes around the house. That's not terribly attractive. I'll probably be wearing a jacket most of the day tomorrow, so it won't be a big deal. 

I thought I'd be feeling good today but I don't. My plan was to go to Half Moon Bay and then head back home via the meeting. 

The first problem is that the contracting agency was pressuring me to waive dental and health coverage. At best this is laziness -- they may want all paperwork signed before the contractor starts so that they don't have to chase them. But it clearly says on the form that I have 23 days after my start date to make up my mind and if I fail to sign up within 23 days, the default is that I don't get coverage. I ended up adding a third checkbox to the form with the text "I'm considering it and will give an answer within 23 days of my start date." That really shouldn't have been necessary. 

This makes me inclined to be suspicious of the agency. They also failed to go over time sheets with me. I'm going to need to go over the pay stubs with a fine tooth combed when I start getting them. I just realized that I don't know how often I get paid. I guess I'll add that to my questions. Another important question that I have for them is about overtime. There may be a lot of it to begin with on this project. 

I really dislike doing business with people who I have to check on every step of the way, or they may cheat me. 

Anyway, I sent off the amended and signed form. In my email I also said that I wouldn't have a lot of email coverage, so if need be we could talk on Monday. Then I set off for Half Moon Bay. 

The trip took quite a while. There'd been an accident between a subcompact and a garbage truck near Skyline. I didn't mind that much. Recently I bought Loreena McKennit's latest, Lost Souls. I like it just as much as her earlier records. Now that I'm familiar with it, I've put all her songs on shuffle. I love singing along with her in the car. 

Half Moon Bay was good, as usual. Here's some architecture in Half Moon Bay. I bought lunch in a deli on Main Street, then I ate it in the beach parking lot. It was sunny when I arrived but soon the fog came rolling in. I took photos of wildflowers after I'd eaten. If anybody knows how to embed Instagram photos on Dreamwidth, please let me know. I used to be a front end developer, so I don't mind writing a bit of HTML to make it work. 

Then I spent quite some time on the beach enjoying the feeling of being cleansed and rejuvenated by the nearness of the vast ocean. It was lovely. But before I knew it, it was time to head back over the hill. I stopped at a drugstore on the way to get first aid stuff for my tattoo. It's quite red now. 

On the bay side it was sunny and I made good time on the freeway. It was beautiful. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the meeting one bit. It was very chaotic the first 15-20 minutes. I'd made the mistake of sitting on the same side as the door, so I even had people carrying chairs above my head. That was scary and very triggering. Originally I had planned to share about my new job, but I was too triggered, so I didn't feel like sharing at all. All I did was ask for the business meeting book, because it had gotten stuck. It was soon found and a number of people wrote stuff on the agenda for the next business meeting. I would have liked to bite somebody's head off, but instead I just wrote a question about how we can prepare the room to avoid the chaos at the beginning when people go to other rooms to get chairs and distribute them throughout the room so people have somewhere to sit. I'm sure that's eminently solvable. What I'm not sure of is if other people care enough to solve it. 

I'm very clear that I can't go on being cosecretary in the meeting if we don't solve the problem. The only reason I staid was because as one of the officers of the meeting, I'm supposed to be there. I would have left otherwise. Having people carry chairs above my head brought back some very scary memories of my step father's violent outbursts. Retraumatization is not desirable. 

Next week I'm secretary and I will sit in the farthest corner of the room, so I can avoid being triggered by all the activity behind my back and above my head. I'm really quite angry about this. Particularly at the guy who is doing all the scary stuff. It's one person in particular. The feeling of being a square peg in a round hole stems from this, I think. It's not that often that I feel like that here in the Bay Area. I need to take it seriously when I do, because it means something. 

I still don't have a job. 😢 Over a month ago I assembled an altar and the makings for a job finding mojo bag, but I never made the bag. I haven't really used the altar much either, even thought it's in my living room. I have some sort of blockage around using magick for my benefit. I need to talk about that and get to the bottom of it.

When I look at using magick for my benefit, I seem to be caught between two attitudes, neither of which is helpful.

One is exemplified through the headline of a blog post that stuck with me: "Why aren't you fighting dirty?" That sets up magick as cheating, kind of like doping in sports. Integrity and living my life in congruence with my values are very important to me. So seeing magick as cheating puts me off using it.

In occult circles there often seems to be a world view that assumes that power-over is the only power model. I'm not a fan of that world view. I much prefer a world view that acknowledges more power models than that. Then I can make a conscious choice to select the one that fits the circumstances. Apart from power-over, there's also power-with and power-from-within. For magick that's for my benefit, power-from-within is probably the best model.



The other unhelpful attitude probably comes from my super dysfunctional childhood -- I don't deserve to use magick for my own benefit. I've come across similar attitudes in some of the more fluffy-bunny parts of the Pagan community. These tend to circumscribe the use of magick with as many rules as Christians circumscribe sexuality. It's part of what puts me off some Pagan authors, particularly in te Llewellyn stable.

There's got to be a synthesis between "Why aren't you fighting dirty?" and "You don't deserve magick" that is less neurotic and more useful than either. But I haven't really found it so far. Pointers would be gratefully accepted.

I'm still looking for work. It's starting to get a bit old. I was expecting to have something before the end of March. Last week somebody asked if I was picky. First I got defensive, but then I realized, that it's true. And I like that I'm picky. So many times I've taken the first offer and ended up in situations that weren't a good fit. This time I'm saying no. 

I said no to another fintech startup, a unicorn in Palo Alto. During my in-person interview there it became clear that they didn't have access to their own users. That's a must-have. Can't do research without users and don't want to design without research. Apparently a previous designer had done research but she'd done it in a time-wasting way, so now the rest of the org are leery of research. 

Unfortunately others are saying no, as well. The healthcare startup, that I mentioned in my previous entry, said no. As did Google. :-( Apparently I was a top contender for the Google gig, so they may come back to me at some point. I would have taken that offer if it was given.

Right now I've got two possibilities going. One is for a textbook company and the other is for a graphics chipmaker. Both are in Santa Clara. I'm a bit skeptical of both.

Judging from my research, the textbook company laid off most of their design team and is now looking to replace them. That usually means that another part of the org has succeeded in a power grab. It could be Product, Development or the business itself. I can't tell which. But I definitely need to probe a bit there if they schedule an interview with me. It's a permanent position, so I don't want to walk into a minefield.

The hiring manager at the graphic chip company was supposed to call me last Friday. But he didn't, and he didn't contact me or the 3rd party recruiter to let us know. He just blew me off. After some back and forth, the phone interview was rescheduled for this Friday. This time he let the recruiter know that he needed to reschedule a couple of hours before. So that was an improvement. *snerk* Longtime readers of this journal may remember that I dated a pilot who worked for this chipmaker. I contacted him and he said that the design team were a bit chaotic. That seems to be a correct assessment. It's only a contract, so I'd be somewhat isolated from it. The way I feel now, I'll probably take it. It's an easy commute and if it's intolerable, I can ditch it. 

I usually go through the open positions on Mondays and apply. It's a numbers game, I have to keep reminding myself of that. What's good is that I'm not taking the rejections personally at all. It's disappointing that Google and the healthcare startup didn't want me, but it doesn't change who I am. 

As I was saying in a comment to an LJ friend, my job search is going slowly. I'm not in any financial trouble and won't be for quite a number of months yet but I'm starting to worry a bit about how long my unemployment will drag on. I think I need to step up my efforts, particularly with the portfolio site. I'm already spending one full day per week on it. Two-three days/week would be better.

Earlier this week, I was contacted by an in-house recruiter in response to my application. The position seemed like a great fit for me and it's only a 15-minute commute. On Thursday I had a phone screen with the in-house recruiter. He said that he'd already shown my resume to the hiring manager and the hiring manager wanted to have a phone interview with me. All the things he told me about the position seemed positive.

Then we talked about my previous employer, and he told me that they'd just hired somebody who also used to work there. It was the person who almost got me to quit that job. I knew intellectually as soon as he said her name that I can't work with her and that I would have to let this job go. But there was a bit of a struggle before I was able to do that. The old tapes with my mother's gaslighting resurfaced. "But what if she's changed?" they said.

It doesn't matter. If I love myself, I'm not going to put myself in harm's way. And this person is definitely harmful to me. It sucks, but it was incredibly lucky that I found this out so early in the process.

I need to vent a bit. So there's this guy I've known for about 3 years through a 12-step fellowship. I like him and he seems to like me. He is divorced from a woman who is an LDS church member. They have three kids together, and they're LDS too.

Given that we know each other through a 12-step program, spirituality and related topics come up all the time. He's from a country, where most people are secularized Catholics. During the three years we've known each other, he's never said anything to make me think that he's anything else than a typical person from that country. For example, he keeps saying "My ex-wife is Mormon, so..." and he always talks about LDS as "they."

Today a group of us were out hiking together and the topic of Mormonism came up. I was going to say something about my experience with LDS but suddenly it struck me that maybe he is Mormon too. Rather than risk offending him, I asked point blank if he was Mormon. And lo and behold, he is. I'm sure I looked as shocked as I felt. 

Religious affiliations and leanings come up all the time in conversations with 12-step people. They're practically woven into the fabric of the program. I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm Pagan. Others are Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish or various Christian denominations. It's treated like a complete non-issue in the meetings I attend. People talk about it like they talk about if somebody prefers Mexican cuisine or Chinese. 

A romantic relationship with a confessing LDS could prove difficult. But what makes me angry is that he's kept his religion a secret from me and the others in the group for all the time we've known each other. That's crazy! I'm sure that if I hadn't asked point blank, he still wouldn't have told us. As the saying goes, "You're only as sick as your secrets." 

This is actually a great example of how you can control a situation by lying through omission. If we had moved in the direction of dating, at what point would he have told me? It would have become more and more difficult, the longer he waited. It would have been so much easier if he'd just been up front about it. I really don't like it when people keep secrets from me. It reminds me of when my ex failed to mention that he'd just broken up with his girlfriend when I drove down to visit him for a week in Southern California. The next day they were a couple again! Fortunately she was back in France, so I didn't have to deal with her. Still, that is definitely something he should have mentioned before I made that long drive. 

And I've got to wonder: Why the secrecy? And are there other important facts about himself that he's not telling us? I'm suddenly a whole lot less interested in him. 

@Desk
Check Chase payment
Check unemployment
Fill up new portfolio site

@DIY
Entry carpet
Mount cabinet front in yellow bathroom

@Garden
Fill hummingbird feeder
Move foxgloves to under arches
Prune and weed

@Downstairs
Run dishwasher
Tidy kitchen and living room

Monday
7.30 pm ACA
Get gas

Tuesday
Internationalization
Text T about hair appointment

Wednesday
11.45 CoDA

Thursday
My creative process

Friday
7.15 CoDA
Get trekking pole back from A

On tap for today is to tidy up the house as much as possible. There are lots of small messy areas that I want to deal with. Clearing them out is going to improve the vibe of the place, as well as allowing the cleaning lady to clean more surfaces.

Upstairs
Glue together goldfish frame
Put away laundry
Use new copper tray on nightstand
Remount bathroom cabinet doors and put stuff back in the cabinets
Put up curtain finials
Put up vent cover (need ladder)
Put up living room light shade (need ladder)
Put up vent deflector (need ladder)
Put away unironed scarves
Rehang goldfish frame
Take a pick-up pass around living room
Put all tools in the garage


Downstairs
Put back mirror mounts
Put away milk
Clear out dishwasher
Remove craft stuff from cabinet top
Put couch fabric in garage
Take a pick-up pass around living room and kitchen