I'm pissed off about my "job" that I was *supposed* to have, that I was *supposed* to have started several weeks ago now from HES. Things apparently haven't been flowing into them as fast, or as much, as they thought, or at least told me. I feel like I'm being given the runaround. I'll be given a call one day and told something like "work's about to come in, we'll call you back soon and let you know", only to not hear from them for days. When I then call and follow up I'm told something like "well, we're still working on it, it's not coming in quite as fast as we wanted, we'll keep you posted if we need you or not". WTF!?!?!? That's just bad business relations in my opinion. To tell someone they're about to be employed and then take it back? Granted, no contracts between them and I have been signed yet, but still...doesn't make anyone want to work for your company if you always did that...

Second, I'm pissed off at the election and voting. This time, one is no longer able to write in a candidate for any office as one has always been able to do. You have to bubble in one or the other or basically not vote by not chosing either. WTF!? Is this a fascist country now where you don't have the freedom to vote for anyone except who's on the ballot?! I didn't want to do that. I think the candidates running for every major political office in the country and my state are a bunch of complete douchebags. While the people I wanted to write in, obviously wouldn't win, I believe voting is a matter of principle and one shouldn't vote for a lesser of two evils. Settling for that instead of voting for someone you truly believe in is, in my opinion, a truly wasted vote. Nevertheless, short of voting against all the tax hikes my state wants to do, there were a lot of unfilled bubbles on the ballot for people running. I think I would have had a more fulfilling experience taking my ballot out to the shooting range to see if I could put a round through the center of each bubble instead.

With the prospect of HES looking bleak, I now continue my ever-so frustrating search for more potential jobs. Add to that, I am now filling out grad school applications for next fall. I am looking at applying to Mech/Aero engineering programs at at least a dozen colleges around the country. Anyone out there who has applied to grad schools at some of the more prestegious schools knows what I am talking about when I say it's a total bitch of a process! There are just pages and pages and pages of info to be filled out. To add to that it's been a pain trying to get recommendations, transcripts and the such. On top of that, because of the deadlines for applications and the time it takes for testing scores to be reported, I am going to be doing a crash course for the GRE that I just scheduled to take in a couple of weeks from now. So pretty much my entire waking life for the last week has been spent looking for jobs or filling out grad school apps. It really really sucks...

I said "for now" earlier because the contract work coming in for these particular projects will probably last into the middle of next year. However the manager of HES used to work for my former contract agency at Sandia Labs (L&M; Technologies) and has contacts in several departments out there and said that he could recommend me to them whenever they received funding (probably around the start of the new year) as a permanent position. I found this odd but at the same time cool that he would say something like that cause I mean what company out there would really encourage you to find a better job if you could?

So this will be good money for me coming in at a time when I need it most (I'm broke and in a lot of debt right now). So three cheers for that!

I've been pursuing a job now for the past year as well. As of yet, nothing solid has come through and I remain unemployed. I have counted now that I have interviewed with over 40 corporations in the last year and sent my resume to countless others. I've had companies interested in me and been flown over the country several times, but ultimately only had two actual offers. Those two came from NASA Marshall Center in Alabama and Celtech in Carlsbad, NM. Those were mediocre at best and I declined them because they really weren't what I wanted to be doing. I've come to realize that this is just not a good time to be looking for a job because of the economy and so many other people I know are in the same boat. Unfortunately I spent all my energy applying for jobs over the past year thinking that I wouldn't have a problem once I got out and didn't want to apply for grad school right away. My mistake I guess. Nothing I can do about that except to keep looking and begin applying for grad schools for next fall in case I do not find anything.

My job at Sandia Labs also ended this spring after working there for 7 years. My dept. went through a number of project cuts (thanks to our economy) and I was let go as a result. It sucks because it was a good paying thing that would have kept some cash coming into my pocket while I continued to look for a better one, however the work I had been doing there for a long while wasn't anything I really enjoyed and I believe that remaining there for so long doing something so unrelated to my major probably hurt me in the long run. So perhaps it's better that I am no longer there. ? Fortunately I had a lot of money saved up and have been able to live cheaply back at my family's house in Albuquerque in the mean time.

I no longer ended up getting married this summer as was previously the plan. My relationship with my fiance went through some incredibly hard times this spring and we decided that it was not in our best interests to get married in June. We're still together, but no plans to get married any time soon. It's better that way I think. There are too many pressures on us at this time in our lives yet and jumping into things blindly or unprepared just isn't something I want to do. One day perhaps.

These are only a few of the things that have gone on in the last 1/2+ year. Like I mentioned before there would be too much to ever try and write a complete update. I really intend to keep myself to writing at least a couple times each week so hopefully it will not be 9 months until the next one. LOL

My pursuit of a job for after graduation has yielded a few promising things. I was offered a job at NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, AL a couple weeks ago. It's a federal intern program for a 2 year contract working on the propulsion and space environmental testing for the ARES rocket, which will take our astronauts back to the moon in the next decade. It sounds like an interesting job, but I have yet to make a decision given that I'd like to actually see where I'd be working, meet some of the people, and get a taste for what the job is like first. I guess NASA is going to fly me out there at some point next semester so we'll see then. Northop-Grumman also informed me they'd like to fly me out to their California facility in January for a 2nd interview and a company tour. So far things are looking promising and I'm sure I'll know more very soon.

I leave to go visit the family in MN next Friday. Lindsay is coming along as well. We're renting a car and driving there since it is cheaper to rent a car for a week and a half these days than get a single airline ticket. LMAO! Before that, we're going to spend a day at her parents house here to do the christmas thing with her family. It'll be interesting having 2 christmas's now, but I'm sure it'll be a good time

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Thank you all and I hope you tune in!!!