A lot has changed in the last year for me.

When I last posted, I was close to graduating college. I finally graduated last August, and now have my computer programming degree. I've spent the last year looking for a job, going on interviews, sending out dozens of resumes, to no avail. I did get a job last October, that lasted 6 weeks. I absolutely hated it. I was doing tech support for Iphones. I hate Iphones, and I hated the company. I quit after 6 weeks because I just didn't need the stress. I was sick most of the time I worked there. As soon as I quit, and went to the doctor, I got better, and have been healthy ever since. I decided then that I would never, ever work in a call center again. I did it for 15 years, and I just can't do it anymore.

So this winter I did a lot of babysitting for my sister and brother-in-law. I stayed with the 3 boys for 8 days while sis and BIL went to Mexico, back in Februrary. My nephews are now 10, 7, and 2 1/2.

I sort of gave up on trying to find a job this winter, and just concentrated on using my free time to get healthier. Back when I worked for the call center for 6 weeks, I joined a gym at a discounted rate because of where I worked, so I started going to the gym 3-4 times a week, using the weight machines. Then starting in March, I started walking at the high school track. I'm up to walking 4 miles a week now, as long as the weather is decent.

In April, I applied for a part-time librarian position in the town library. It was between me and one other woman. My sister and mom are on the library board, and they said that it was between me and this other woman, and that it would be perfect if they could combine both of us and our skill sets into one person, but they could only hire one, and I wasn't the one. But, in my interview, I presented ideas I had for the library as far as a website, new technology, and a new barcode scanning system for check-in and check-out. They were so impressed with that, they hired me to design their website, and help the library transition to the barcode system, and be the tech person they would call if they needed anything with the computers. So I started going in to the library to learn their systems, and gather info for the website, and help with the automation transition. The librarian kept saying she wished they would hire me also. This is a really small library, with an extremely small budget, and they kept saying they coudln't afford to hire me except for the website and per incident computer help. So I've been doing most of the work for free.

Then last night, they had a special meeting, and my sister (I was babysitting her kids) came home and said I had a permanent part time job with the library. Apparently the librarian really pushed to get me hired, and they magically found money to pay me with. So I am officially employed part-time with them.

After I started the website for the library, the librarian was in the town hall getting some things, and telling the town secretary that I was doing the lbrary website, and the city clerk said they wanted me to do a website for the town. So, I'm going to the next town council meeting to present my ideas and see what they want, and hopefully in the next month or so, I'll be doing their website as well. Between the two, I'm hoping that it will be basically a full time job.

So things are looking up. I'm going to try to get rid of my car this week and take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program--I have a '97 Jeep Grand Cherokee, so it qualifies--I desperately need a new car. The transmission is going out on the Jeep, so I need to get rid of it ASAP.

Other than that, there isn't much else going on. I still need a new furnace, which I'm on a waiting list for a free one through some program, and hopefully this job won't pay so much as to knock me out of the qualifications.

I'm really excited about this new job. It's really ironic to me how I applied for a city clerk job and librarian job a few months ago, and didn't get them, but now will be working for both anyway! I think once they saw what an asset I was going to be to the library, they realized they needed to hire me. I don't think they fully realized how much I was able to add to the library until the librarian actually started working with me, and saw what I could do.

I'll post when I have the website done so anyone interested can check it out!