bleah.

still dizzy and head-swimmy, but not as bad as previous days. yesterday was productive; i did six loads of laundry and cleaned the kitchen up and did dishes and changed cat litter and made soup for naomi_traveller. potato-leek, with dill. v. yummy. i also applied for a couple of tech writer jobs. i did not call temp agencies because by afternoon i felt like i had done enough dammit.

but today, i must.

the egregious files

who the hell robs and stabs a 76-year-old buddhist monk?

bah.

with email down, i can't send out resumes. email will be back up whenever power comes back on in seattle.

i suppose it's time for a long lunch.

if you really want to know how bad the economy is

since i started my tech writing career, i've kept a cardfile of all the recruiters and headhunters i speak to. i keep notes of when i've heard from them, who i spoke to, what positions they've mentioned to me, etc. -- useful info to have around.

usually i go through every couple of months and email everybody a fresh resume. last march, i went through and called all the numbers, and half of the companies were out of business. wow, i thought. that's really bad.

today, i went through and called all the numbers i'd kept after last march. 56 were disconnected. 9 were live. i'm sending fresh resumes to the 9 still standing, but there's not much hope. none of them said they had any live tech writer positions, and one said he hadn't seen one in two years.

holy crap. that's all i can say. holy fucking crap.

anyway, i've got an appointment tomorrow with someone at the agency from which i got several low-level tech writing gigs in my early career. i spoke to her on the phone and explained that i'm willing to consider clerical temp work as well. she said to come in and bring a resume and we'll talk over my options.

god damn, this is depressing.