Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Why do I even try?

I've now been unemployed for a little over two months. Resumes and cover letters have been flowing out of my printer and sent off like little pigeons. Unfortunately they don't seem to be homing pigeons, because nothing has been coming back so far.

I had to attend a mandatory meeting about looking for work and the opportunities that are out there. It was pretty depressing to hear that, although the average unemployment rate in Ohio is 7%, for our county it's 11%.  Didn't sound very good to me. One of the presenters was from the local vocational school, talking about adult training classes that were available.  Coincidentally, I used to teach classes there myself.  Anyway, he passed out a brochure that listed the various things available. A major drawback to any of the classes is the school location...on the other side of the county. It would be a 70 mile drive to attend classes which means spending $70 to $100 a week in gas. Not very likely.

So, I noticed that one of their classes was offered online and it sounded like something I could handle. Hot dog! I asked the presenter about it, and he said "Yeah, the whole course is offered online," so I checked the box on the form we had to turn in at the end of the session that I was interested in training classes.

The following Monday I called the school to inquire about when classes would be offered.  Surprise #1, not until September. Five months from now. Bummer. Okay, how about the online component of the class? Surprise #2, we don't offer that anymore...the brochure is out of date.

Come on, people. If you're giving out information on what's available, at least you could make sure it's current!  I mean, the brochures were obviously printed with a color laser printer hooked to your computer...is it too much trouble to go in and edit your document?

In other news, my wife's cataract surgery has been put on hold due to an unexpected rupture of a blood vessel in the eye. A trip to her retina specialist was unproductive last week, too much blood occluding the retina. He couldn't see anything, much less do any laser work on it.  We're going back in a couple of weeks for him to take another look, hopefully the blood will have settled and he can work on the eye then. If not, she may be in for some more serious surgery to do the repair.

Her gastric bypass is still on track, no setbacks on that front. She's been very serious on her diet and has lost at least 7 pounds so far. I'm very proud of how well she's doing.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Tech Guru In Training

I've been helping my wife set up a new website she's wanting to run. If you know her, you know she's a somewhat technology impaired, but enthusiastic nonetheless. She wants to learn but gets frustrated very easily when things don't work the way she thinks they should. She also gets VERY impatient if I can't fix the problem like snapping my fingers. Hopefully I can get things up and running for her in a few weeks, we're shooting for May 1, 2012 to put it online.

No major changes for the two of us otherwise.  As for the family, my youngest son and his wife just moved from a medium sized house into a 2nd floor apartment for two reasons. First, it puts both of them several miles closer to work. Second, they are in the process of adopting a child and felt that the new apartment would help them in regards to some of the qualification requirements. The old house had some problems in the basement that would have been really expensive to get up to the standards of the adoption agency.  They've also started an adoption blog, so we can keep up to date on how things are progressing.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

I'm Still Here

No posts for a couple of weeks, been kind of busy. Unfortunately that doesn't mean I have a job yet.

I gave up waiting on the AARP insurance papers and called them on the phone and gave them my vitals...sorry Charlie, AARP only takes the healthiest people. After some more searching, I determined that nobody except my school retirement folks would even offer me health insurance.  So I had to go with the high-priced plan.  All of my retirement income plus somewhere around $600 of my wife's will be going to pay for it.  Still haven't gotten the first billing...sort of nervous about that.

My plan went into effect April 1st and I renewed all of my prescriptions for about $100 co-pay.  I sat down with the bills and added up the actual cost before the insurance and the price would have been about $150 less than what my premiums amount to...so I guess I'm sort of breaking even.  Why do I still feel it's WAY too much money?

I've started collecting my unemployment benefits from ODJFS, that's a little consolation also.  Just got notified yesterday that I have to attend a mandatory four hour meeting on job hunting next week. Oh joy.  I've also been sending out resumes to potential employers, no responses yet.

My wife is still pursuing the cataract surgery and surgical weight loss and has at least one doctor's appointment scheduled every week for the next month and a half, some weeks two or three appointments.  All of them involve a drive of between 50 and 200 miles, depending on the doctor.  At 14 mpg, my old truck is sucking up a good portion of our income also.

Ah, such is life. Sooner or later I'll get over it.