Job Update

OK, in case my job description seemed kind of fuzzy, I will actually be a technical service rep for automated HVAC/R systems!  Kind of crazy & random I know, but that's what the company has decided to do w/ me :)  So I will have 4-6 weeks of training (wiring diagrams, testing parts, learning about electronics, heating/cooling, etc.) and then I go live helping techs troubleshoot the system...as if I needed another career... :)  But it will certainly be interesting, should be job security, and the pay's pretty good.  Also, my hours will now be noon-9 p.m. after I finish training, so a little more manageable than I previously thought.

And, next metals class I learn how to rivet!, while creeping up on the end of archaic Greek art in H101...

AND...Glori & Aaron got engaged!!!! :)

AT LAST!!!... Full-Time Employment!!

Yay, I am once again gainfully employed!  I will be working 2nd shift at a call center for a company that runs automated building management systems...security, hvac, sprinklers, etc.  It pays well enough and they said they could be flexible w/ my schedule if I needed.  So I train from noon-8 for several weeks, and then will work 4:30-12:30 if I can't wangle a slightly earlier shift... :)  I will still try to work weekends at the bookstore for a while, to keep my discount (35% on textbooks!) and maybe see if I can't get a similarly paying full-time position in a month or two.  The call center thing is temp to perm through the employment agency, so I'm not married to it if the schedule is too much...

Anyway, thanks so much for your prayers & encouragement!

Fun Photos

I haven't updated my blog for a while, so here's what I've been up to socially:

Christmas @ Lori's with Grandma Eiswald - yummy food & precious company!

My friend Amanda came for the long weekend and we went shopping, to a movie, out for dinner, and explored the Indianapolis Museum of Art...

Then we went w/ Sarah and Bethany to the Children's Museum, which was free for MLKing Day...

1st Class Piece

Today I made this copper bracelet in metal-smithing - not too difficult, but I learned several new techniques, including annealing - heating the metal to make it softer for shaping.  I get to work with fire! :)  I've also learned how to sweat solder (using the blowtorch to attach one piece of metal on top of another) and make small balls at the end of metal wire for headpins & decoration...Tiffany, watch out :)

Haircut :)

Found the Aveda Training Institute in Castleton - students do it so it's much cheaper!  So now I'm blonde again too :)

1st Day of School

This is my school!

Today I had metalsmithing & jewelry design @ 9:00, then walked downtown to Borders (it was a balmy 60 degrees!) until I went to work @ B&N at 1:00.  A very busy day, found out that pre-dentistry majors take jewelry design to improve their dexterity (there are 3 in my class), and that there is one other nonstandard (old :) student in that class.  Tomorrow is History of Art 101 @ 9:00, then back to work at 1:00, rinse, repeat...

UNEMPLOYMENT ENDS!

I am officially not unemployed!  I stopped into the IU bookstore today, which is run by Barnes & Noble, and after getting my books for classes on Monday, asked the manager about a job - long story short, I am once again a B&N employee, albeit part-time.  Hopefully I will be able to get full-time hours once the cafe opens in a few weeks, if I don't have something else already.  The best part is that it's on campus, so a very short commute for me!  God is very, very good, and my landlord should be very, very happy.  AND the B&N discount stays in the family...

Interesting Week

Well, still no real job yet, but the folks here have been great!  This week the curator of the art center paid me to organize his (massive!) cd collection and attempt some organizing in his art studio.  What a blast! :)  Probably 5-600 cd's and maybe a 1/4 of them were out of their cases, some of which were in separate components...some really great titles too, all across the spectrum, every genre you can think of and some I'd never heard of.   He even let me take some of the duplicates, so I'm expanding my horizons as I type this.  Jennie & Amanda would have known more than I did and I expect will be jealous.  I feel I could make a very entertaining and comfortable living cleaning artist's studios...

Tonight I volunteered at First Friday, the monthly show at HCA, which was themed "Backyard", a fun and warm theme for a 20 degree January evening.  My 2nd favorite pieces were a series of really lovely b&w line drawings of individual squirrels, each performing different squirrel actions, each wearing a full-color painted WWF character mask closely fitted to their squirrel faces.  It sounds absurd, but you get the feeling looking at the drawings that this is exactly the mindset squirrels have, especially if you've ever seen one mount a full-scale assault on a bird feeder.

But my very favorites were a series of photographs entitled Escape Strategies.  3 were of a man in mid-air above a trampoline in cookie cutter upper middle class suburbia, poised to fly off the picture plane; my favorite was a bird's eye view of a ditto backyard with views over the numerous fences of several other identical backyards, with a turf "lid" set slightly askew off a black whole in the ground, which one could only assume was an escape hatch.  A fifth photo showed a folding lounge chair in flight dangling a rope ladder above same yard with same man running and reaching.  The irony of that series was that there was no where to escape to - middle class suburbia as far as the camera could reach.  One wonders if it was a commentary on American culture or a metaphor for apparently inescapable realities, or perhaps both.  Anyway, I love art.

Update:  Yesterday I received my financial aid distribution so tonight I write this on my new Macbook Pro!  Which it turns out I will need b/c my History of Art professor expects us to check the class website before & after each lecture for outlines, updates and messages.  At the risk of sounding like a parent, school has surely changed since I went last.