Lessons Learned in the Past 24 Hours

1. If/when you get laid off, resist the urge to drown your sorrows for at least a few hours. Get to a computer, dust off your CV, and start sending emails.
2. When you do go to drown your sorrows, get other people to pay. Note: Everybody is really, really nice to you when you’ve just been laid off.
3. Always wait til the last minute to buy expensive hats and wigs for your company Christmas party, because if you buy them and get retrenched the very next day, inevitably the stupid shop will refuse to give you a refund. (Bastards.)
4. Don’t underestimate the power of spite. Get angry at the idiots who let you go. (Don’t they know how awesome you are?!) Use that as motivation to get cracking right away.
5. Don’t be proud. Tell everyone you know that you’re looking for work. You never know where a lead is going to come from.
6. People are amazing. I had no idea how many folks would be willing to help me out, even “Internet-friends” that I’ve never met. (Sample email I received today: “You don’t know me, but my wife knows you from some knitting site and said I should email you my company’s open positions…”) Maybe there’s something to karma after all.
7. I am so incredibly lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful friends. When I moved here seven years ago, I didn’t know anybody other than the Snook, his family, and a couple of his college buddies. The outpouring of support I’ve had in the past 24 hours has been really gratifying and humbling. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you to those of you that poured sangria down my throat; thank you to those who sobered me up; thank you to those who sent job leads and tips; thank you to those who offered kind words and encouragement.

It’ll be good. I actually had an interview today, about 25 hours after I got the axe (which must be some kind of record, right?). Regardless of whether it works out or not – pleasepleasepleaseplease – it was good to have some immediate positive reinforcement. Things aren’t dire yet. The sun is still shining, and I’ve got a path ahead of me. It’ll be good.

Laid off
Well, at least you can all officially say that you now know someone who was a victim of the economic down-turn. Anybody have any good job leads?

The Barefoot Contessa’s Ultimate Ginger Cookies

I was flicking through my news feeds yesterday when this recipe started shouting at me. (No, really.) I’ve had some crystallized ginger in the pantry for ages, so I thought it might be a good way to use it up. Plus Rodd likes ginger a lot. I’m categorize myself as ginger-ambivalent, in that I like it as long as it’s not too strong (when I tend to find it sort of medicinal). So I wasn’t expecting to like these cookies. I WAS TOTALLY WRONG. I could tell as soon as I pulled them out of the oven that these were made of WIN. I handed one, still warm, over to the Snook. “These taste like Christmas!” he said. They sure do. Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, with all the spiciness and aroma of the best gingerbread you’ve ever had. Highly, highly recommended. (Recipe here. I substituted treacle for the molasses since I already had some in the cupboard.)

Why the heck am I getting a Depo-Provera shot every three months when I could just play the didgeridoo? (Look, I’m all for respecting traditional culture. But I walked through Circular Quay Sunday morning and a crowd of tourists was gathered around a 12-year-old white girl playing a didge, and I didn’t see any tribal leaders standing there cursing her to a life of barrenness. Leave Nicole alone.)

Best. Movie Tie-in. Ever. Now I just have to trick the Snook into wearing it! (Link courtesy of Jenny, who is a crazy Twi-hard no matter how much she tries to deny it.)

If Twilight was 10 times shorter and 100 times more honest. Ha! I had some fun at the knitting event yesterday playing Horrify the Twilight Noob with Reecie. I think it was my explanation of the terrifically impenetrable amniotic sac surrounding vampire-human hybrid fetuses that nearly made her head explode.

Jim’s Best Pranks from The Office. I friggin’ LOVE that show.

Tough Bloke Challenge 2008
We picked up Clare and Emily this morning and headed to Cataract Scout Park near Campbelltown. The drive took about an hour, so we got there in plenty of time for the 10am start to the inaugural Tough Bloke Challenge. Six hundred athletes lined up to run 8km through the woods and thrash their way through a dozen or so obstacles. They sent us off in waves every minute for about two hours. I intended to try to carry my camera with me to record the fun, but about ten minutes before our start time I realized it was a bad idea. Why? Because the first finishers were coming through and I could see that they were COVERED IN MUD. Yikes. So the camera stayed behind while we headed out onto the course. Here are the all-important “before” and “after” shots. (Note the colour change of Clare’s shirt!)

It was CRAZY. First of all, it was 33°C today! (That’s about 90°F.) So stinkin’ hot and windy. Snookums was nursing a slight hangover from his work Christmas party, and I was recovering from a week of stress and sleep deprivation. Needless to say, we weren’t in top form. We took off at about 11:30am and started the 3km (about two miles) jog into the woods. Snookums and I dropped back early as Emily and Clare powered on ahead. Then we came to the obstacles. The first ones were easy, just climbing over and under stuff. Then came the dreaded monkey bars. Clare and Snookums made it across while Emily and I suffered ignominious drops into the muddy water. (We expected that.) We continued on over walls, hurdles, and bridges. Then we came to the first of the “surprise” obstacles: a 6-meter-long pit filled with mud with barbed wire strung above it. Folks, we had to crawl on our chests through that stuff. It was thick and cold and gloppy, and at one point my knees lost contact with the ground completely and all I could do was flail. For me, this was the hardest obstacle on the course. By the time Snookums finally hauled me out, we were both covered from head-to-toe with what felt like wet cement. And we were only halfway done! We shuffled onwards, squelching in our nasty shoes and trying to shake it off as best we could. We climbed more walls. We scrambled over piles of tires and walked across balance beams. We crawled through dank wet pipes and then army-crawled through a water pit. (That helped clean the mud off a little.) We swung on ropes off a platform and landed in the water. Eventually we came the final obstacle, a chain suspended between two platforms. The goal was to get across it by hanging upside-down with your hands and feet. (A Race Marshal told us that the First Aid people had been on permanent standby there all day.) I took one look and went, “Nuh-uh.” So I left Snookums in the queue and headed to the finish line. Emily and Clare had beat us there and managed to get a photo of me coming up the home stretch. Then we went back to cheer on Snookums to the end. We all claimed our beers and burgers and sat down to share stories and nurse our wounds. (My injury tally: massive bruise on my left shoulder, bruise on my right tricep, scrapes on my forearms and knees, and a slight sunburn on the back of my legs.) It was a GREAT day! I’d really like to do it again next year with the goal of completing the obstacles I wasn’t able to do. Any takers?

(Apologies for the weird green line on the right. That wasn’t on the version I made, but YouTube somehow added it when I uploaded.)

Dead Air.
So… not a lot of posting around here this week, huh? Sorry about that. It just turned into this Perfect Storm of non-posting conditions. Work was busy, life was busy, and there’s the added pressure of trying to finish everything off before the holidays. I also spent a couple nights helping the Morris and Sons crowd set up for their Christmas Sale (which starts today!). And on top of it all, I really just couldn’t find anything worth posting. Eh, that’s the way it goes.

But not today! In an hour we’re heading out for the Tough Bloke Challenge, an event which promises a big, long, hilarious, MUDDY post later this evening. (That’s assuming that I’m not still hanging on the monkey bars like George Michael eight hours from now.) Wish us luck!

This is the way the poo ice cream saga ends… not with a bang but a whimper. (With apologies to TS Eliot.)