An Update! And a happy one, at that!

So check it out, this is what I'm doing if I'm not sleeping or at work with crazy holiday tourists.






Jaradoa Theater's
Fundraising Campaign

Here is a sample of the Play On! program that we're raising money for. In collaboration with Arts for All, they took the playwriting and acting course to teens living in a Manhattan shelter.



Really, I can't begin to express how excited I am to be working with this young, energetic company. They're doing great work.

Highs and lows

Ok. Halfway point for the month. An interview I had scheduled for this morning was canceled earlier in the week because they decided to "move ahead" in the process. Ouch. It's like the "he's just not that into you" of job seeking, or something. Oh well.

Wednesday I spent some time at my new-ish internship with a small theater company. I've been working with them for a little over a month now, designing and implementing an online fundraising campaign. When we're ready to go live with that, expect a post from me. For now, I'll say that givezooks.com is a pretty great social fundraising platform with an awesome support team. Seriously. They're on Twitter and everything.

I've sent out a few more resumes this week, no response yet. I wonder if this climate will have a permanent impact on the way employers treat applicants even after things have gotten better (they will get better, right?). I get maybe a 10% response rate on the things I send out. I understand that currently in the arts, the more entry and intermediate-level positions are getting upwards of 300 applicants in as little as two weeks, so I tell myself it's not personal if I don't get an acknowledgment of my application. But it's still disconcerting, and I hope that what is currently common practice doesn't become the standard.

I was offered a promotion at the survival job, so that's cool. Hey, everyone! I'm good at what I do! No really. I'm organized, calm under pressure and good with the creative problem solving. So hire me.

Couch potato: It's a lifestyle choice

So as I type this post, Jared is watching "An Invisible Thread", the final episode of Heroes Season 3 (volume 4). He's all caught up and ready to watch the current season. Insert gratuitous ZQ picture here.
What, you thought I was kidding? If there's one thing this girl is serious about, it's the Sylar love.

Now that we have to rely solely on hulu.com for our Heroes fix, our Netflix queue is wide open. Thus far, the list contains quite a few tv shows, like Slings and Arrows and Freaks and Geeks, as well as a rather diverse collection of movies one or both of us have been meaning to see.

Have I talked about my bad movie obsession? Or Jared's love of all (most) things comic-related? With those disclaimers, this list makes a lot more sense:

Kung Fu Panda
Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Billy Elliot
Strictly Ballroom
Australia
X -Men Origins: Wolverine
Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter
The Spirit
Confessions of a Superhero
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Into the Wild
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains

etc., etc...


So folks, movie night at my place. Pretty much every night, starting the day after Netflix ships Kung Fu Panda.

The list

Things I Currently Hate:
My damn Muppet-blue stuccoed walls
Not having paint samples to effectively communicate my ideas for the living room wall paint
Time to trim my bangs again
Never being home to watch Glee on tv
My crappy stolen internet connection
How Hulu is acting up because of said crappy stolen internet
Not having the $ to pay for a real internet connection of my very own
Having to choose between How I Met Your Mother and Heroes every Monday night

Things I Currently Love:
The songs on Glee
Blue Bunny ice cream was buy-one get-one at Key Food
"Love Song" by Taylor Swift--can't help myself
Having an interview on my schedule
My new $25 Target interview dress
My long-distance boyfriend is back to being my live-in boyfriend
Busting out the arts admin skills-- doing a SWOT tomorrow for online fundraising methods
The thought of not working at Carmine's in a month
Crisp fall weather
Jackets
Scarves
Long phone conversations with a friend I'm going to see tomorrow anyways
"Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky
A paycheck waiting for me at work tomorrow
A new guilty-pleasure show. Hint: it's got vampires

One Month

So this blog took an unexpected hiatus when I got the job at Carmine's and began being able to pay my rent. This was, funnily enough, also when my job search sputtered and stalled out. As opposed to 15-20 resumes and cover letters a week, I sent out maybe 5-7.

This has got to change, folks. Carmine's may pay the rent, but just barely, and furthermore, it sucks. Also, I have student loans coming due in one short month.

Alright, about Carmine's: It does not suck. It is actually a rather pleasant place to work. My co-workers, all the other hosts and busboys and servers and managers and bartenders and security personnel, they're generally cool people and I have a good time working with them. Also, the food is excellent, and we get to eat a lot of it. And I certainly shouldn't ignore the fact that I have gained some excellent muscle tone in my calves and thighs from walking up and down those stairs for 8 hours a night.

HOWEVER. I am crazy in debt over a graduate degree in arts administration because it's something I'm passionate about (yeah. I said passionate.) and if I'm going to take some low-paying job and barely scrape by, it better be a low paying job in the industry I love. Ultimately, I want to work for a smaller theatre company like Jaradoa Theater, where I'm currently a part-time intern and where I would get to wear a variety of hats. But to this end, I need to round out my NY theatre admin experiences. My special events experience means I'm good with details, people and high-pressure situations. I've got an excellent education in theatre arts, fundraising and nonprofit administration. Right now, I'm looking for an assistant position in the general management field, where my skills will be valuable, but I can also grow as an administrator.

So, like my friend Michele before me, I've made a commitment to kick my own ass into high gear and get a job I like. I'll write what I can about this search and my successes here. In one month, I hope to no longer work at Carmine's because I've accepted a position at a company that has way more to do with theatre than accommodating the 5:30 dinner rush and the 10:30 post-theatre rush.

Ok. Here goes.

So usually I post on this blog when inspiration strikes, often sometime between the hours of 7pm and 3 am.

But I have a job now, and the problem is, I'm at work for most of those hours (4-12 dinner shift). So the only thing that's striking me recently is my need for sleep. Working on having something interesting to talk about on here. May take a while.

Had an interview today, and another one scheduled for next week, one with a nonprofit kids organization and the other with a theater company. Fingers crossed! The current restaurant job is not really yielding much material. Other than crazy tourists and extreme stupidity, but as this is NY, it's par for the course.

random moment

I am totally crushing on Keifer Sutherland circa Young Guns I and II right now:


Just look at that scruffy cuteness. (Arrow added just because I felt like playing around with Paint.)