Devil and the Crossroads

It's been an odd week, full of odd people. I started a swing-shift job with that bastion of McJobs, Kinko's. This after two solid months of pounding the wet, cold pavement of Seattle. The pay is tit, the work is brutal -- runny-nosed crazies at 10 p.m., enraged CEOs trying to use the self-serve computers and counting down my register with more security redundancies than the Pentagon -- and my co-workers are nice but restless and disgruntled. Apparently, there's a bit of a turn over in staff ...

On top of this, I appear to have scored a major find in the form of a rent-controlled/H.U.D. apartment in downtown Seattle, so close to the Space Needle I can see it from the front door of the old brownstone. The housing coordinator people are giving me a couple of weeks to land a paycheck and move in. The only glaring drawback to this rental: there's nooo parking. None. Nada. So I'll be parking my Toy way down near Safeco Field/Seahawk Stadium and visiting it once a week. However, it'll be only a 20 minute bus ride to work and just about everywhere else.

Then, today, I got two notices in the mail. One was yet another "sorry, but the position's been filled" letter from the U of W. It was for a "publications designer" with their medical school. Total cake, pays something like $30k + there's a union + bennies up the wazoo.

Also in the mail was a notice from the California Division of Forestry. They're starting interviews for their summer firefighter crews. This engine station is in the extreme top of the Golden State, shouting distance from the Oregon stateline.

For those readers not familiar with it, California is a state with epic natural disasters, usually of the brushfire kind and is in a perpetual state of putting them out ... or mopping up floods ... or re-erecting concrete things after they fall over in earthquakes. Shake-n-Bake, they say.

The CDF firefighting job would pay between $22 and $25 an hour ... to start ... and that's just straight time while yer waxing the engine, cleaning yer boots or sweeping the barracks. They also provide a whole lot of emergency training in the form of free EMT/paramedic classes because they are required to respond to car accidents, earthquakes, cats in trees, etc. unlike the U.S. Forest Service which only starts moving when piss firs flame.

So, once again, I'm at the crossroads. Just me and the devil.

-- Mz M.

And, just like the actor, Carrie Fisher, all I really wanna do is write ... it's just that "clean, well-lighted place" dilemma Hemmingway long lamented.