I'm in Bloomington, Baby

Bloomington, Minnesota? No. Bloomington, Illinois? Close. I drove through there, but a little further east. Bloomington, Indiana? That'd be the one.

I arrived last night after a 7.5 hour journey in the car. Instead of following Google maps to the letter, I detoured so I didn't have to drive all the way to Indianapolis, and I went through some little towns that ordinarily would've been nice stopping points, but I just wanted to unpack and get a little settled, so having Ma & Pa Slowmyazzdownonthetwolaneroad was a slight annoyance. The night before I left, anxiety struck big-time. Here I was, loading up my car for the third time, to go to another city another 7.5 hours away, with not much of a plan for what I do after the interiews. This is where I'm hopefully going to land permanently, but until that time comes, I'm just another nomad in another city. This time, I am staying in a beautiful apartment while the owner is on vacation. The apartment is nice, but the door to the outside world is a bit on the thin side. You can hear everything in the hallway. And last night, as I tried to sleep, I kept hearing someone's car alarm, and I'd wake up and wonder if it was my car being broken into (nevermind that I don't have an alarm that sounds like the one I heard). I tried to find an iron so I could pertty-up my suit, but all I found was wrinkle-releaser, and these creases were too big for that. I figured I needed a new iron anyway, so I ran to Target to get one, and picked up milk as well.

I got to my first interview today about five minutes early, and it is in a prime location - downtown a block or so off the square. If you have a thriving downtown, then you know how fun it can be to actually be downtown (KC's getting there, slowly). And I left my nerves at the door, answered all the questions truthfully, talked about this and that - it felt like the administrator and I were old friends. But I'm overqualified for the position, so there's a greater than likely chance that I won't get it. I'm the first one interviewed, and Administrator isn't sure what the next step is in the hiring process. This is what I'd really have fun doing: being the one-woman HR. It really is perfect. Other than being overqualified, the company looks really good to me - it's a small place with less than 30 employees. Coming from a job where there were over 2000 of us, I kinda like the idea of smaller. But with smaller companies comes smaller benefits, or at least that's true in this case. Employee-sponsored health plan. 401k after 6 months, and it takes 5 years to be 100% vested that the company puts in your plan. 1 week of sick time, 1 week of vacation, and 1 day of personal time, which is pretty good to me. I don't need a lot. Salary is much less than in KC, but again, I expected this, so it was not a shock. But when Administrator looked at me and said, "This may not be as challenging for you as your last position, so I'm not sure if this would be a good fit for you," I pretty much figured game over, back to square one.

And now I'm preparing for interview number two. This one I am completely unqualified for. Isn't that nice, to have two opposite ends of the spectrum in the same day? When I say completely unqualified, I mean unpaid experience. The goal is to sell them on my unpaid experience so they pay me to get the experience. I'm up to the challenge, just as soon as I finish my soybeans.