Short Term Contract

A couple weeks ago, on a Wednesday afternoon, my cell phone rang while I was helping Carrie move some stuff from point A to point B. It was a recruiter who wanted to see if I was available to take a short term, and by short term she meant two to three weeks, contract in Boston.

Two to three weeks? Sure. I can do that. I just wasn't about to give up my Fridays at the cooking school on such short notice for a short term contract. If it was a six month contract, I'd give up the Fridays and figure something out after the six months were up.

They wanted me to start the next day. I laughed as I sat there surrounded by boxes and mess and told the recruiter that I could start next week. There were still a lot of loose ends I needed to tie up. 

I learned a lot about contract work when I took the last "short term" contract in 2012. February 2012, I joined a team which had been put into place September 2011. They told me it would be a three-month contract.  That contract is still going.  In the back of my mind, I am prepared for this contract to be extended for weeks to come. And that would be good.

The first day i was there, the manager came over and asked me and the guy I'm sitting with if we were able to keep working past October  11, we both agreed and right now she got her way and we were extended to the 18th and may be extended longer.

Lesson learned about contracts, lesson applied.

The job is in the Seaport District. It's something of a challenge to get to at times. The train from where I live takes an hour, the subway nearest to the location takes another half hour, and then there is a half mile walk.

Right now, the weather being sterling and gorgeous and amazing, I can dig it.

Add some rain, wind, cold and snow and I'd be cursing the hell out of it.

Over the past two weeks I've walked from North Station to my desk, or my desk to North Station,  which is about 1.70 miles. Not a bad walk at all and in fact I can be at either destination in the same amount of time that it takes the subway to get me there. And with the weather being what it is... I'll take that.

I haven't worked in Boston since before Doug and I were married. I don't like a long commute. I don't like 2 hours of my there and 2 hours of my back being eaten up by travel and being surrounded by people coughing, sneezing, hacking, talking on their cell phones, picking their noses.

If I'm going to travel the 2 hours (and sometimes it takes me 2 hours to get home from the cooking school) I'd rather be in a car singing my brains out and looking at traffic, or bailing off the highway and taking backroads with my GPS leading me the way.

So far though, I've enjoyed this little excursion. I get to look at a lot of things, and lights and blue sky and colors and stuff are pretty. There are plenty of places for lunchtime walks, and I can pound out a mile and a half stroll in a half hour, grab a sammitch from an overpriced eatery, and be back at my desk in 45 minutes tops.

A girl can get used to that.

I'm exhausted most of the time when I get home. I am sleeping like I'm dead. This is a good thing, right?

Anyway... the company is a travel agency for people aged 55 and over. They have a very media-rich website and they upgraded from one version of the software to another, and things broke (just like the other contract). I'm wondering if things are going to be broken enough to keep us around longer than October 18th. God knows I need the money.

I really love the people I'm working for. E and A as supervisors are fantastic. And I think they love me. The guy I'm working with is maybe 25, and we have a lot in common from sports interests to music to art... and beer. So he's fun to talk to. And he's easily distracted, which is so much fun. I will say something and he won't know what it is, so he immediately goes to Google and checks it out.

"How do you know so much stuff?!" he asked me. I say "It comes from being 46! I've lived a long and interesting trivia fueled life!"

We decided that we could rule at Pub Trivia with him taking the sports questions and me taking just about everything else.

Working at a travel company is fun, because the content is interesting, but it's also painful because it reminds me of how little money I have and how many places I want to go visit. 

In other news, we replaced the dead red Volvo with a little brown 2 seater pickup truck. Doug went to the state auction in NH with 1200 bucks in his pocket and walked away with yet another thousand dollar car. I was really mad at him for doing it, I wanted him to wait a couple of weeks until we had about 3000 bucks so we could buy something a touch more decent. Plus, 2 seats? really?

It's cute though, and God knows I love me a little pick up truck.

It needs work, the muffler/exhaust needs help and it is leaking fluid from places. He's playing mechanic and doing a lot of work on it. I'm proud of him for the effort he's putting forth.

I had mentioned in a previous entry that my landlord had told us he would replace the deck and the garage doors. He came this week to measure for both and I'm hoping by the end of this month to have a nice new deck and garage doors that close. He also said he'll get a dumpster to pull out items the previous tenant left in the garage (the last dumpster was to clean up the items he left on the side of the road and in the driveway). We could have a place to store our stuff before it snows. Sing Hallelujah.

Not much else to report. I feel I've lost momentum with unpacking and organizing. I spent an hour this morning going through the laundry upstairs and getting things on hangers, and items folded and into bureaus. Quite a challenge for me. I need to get back to the back porch and getting that organized and cleared up.

So why am I here on my blog. See you later.