So ends my first week of not working. For being unemployed, I must say I've been just as busy if not busier with all the events of the past week. They are as follows:

1) Our move-in could not begin on August 1, 2006. The ditzy undergraduate girl who currently lives in the apartment thought her lease expired the end of this month. We called the landlord, who called her on her cell, where she found out she is in Jersey with her parents. She is booking it back to Boston to move out this weekend, no later than noon on Monday. We now have to arrange for a cleaning service at the landlord's costs now, and delayed our painting, which gives us one less week to move.

2) We have to find a new home for our dining room set, gifted to us last year from Keith's grandparents, as Keith's aunt and uncle plan to rent out their former home this upcoming academic year. As that is fastly approaching, we now have to give up on a weekend of painting and moving to run to Connecticut. I'd be fine going if we hadn't already lost a week to ditzy girl mentioned above.

3) Our engine light came on following a thorough car cleaning (engine and all) in many months. We had to arrange for a car appointment, the earliest available being Wednesday.

4) We went out on Wednesday night to go out with a friend visiting from Orlando. After being home all day, we had to finally leave to pick him up at 6 pm even though I was waiting on a package for the favors for my best friend's bridal shower this weekend (UPS has until 7 pm to deliver) but we made sure our neighbor was home to accept the package on our behalf. Phin and Corrie have accepted our packages for 2 years now, so no problems...or so we thought...

5) However, the driver refused to hand the package over even after Phin identified himself and pointed out the note I'd left, and showed the driver his driving license. Therefore, we called UPS immediately to have them pull the package from the truck and have it ready upon the Customer Service Center opening Thursday. Of course, they didn't pull the package Thursday morning and claimed there were no instructions in the computer to do so. So the Customer Service guy "Mike" got insulting and began acting like a major asshole with Keith by accusing him of not calling Customer Service to have them pull the package, which made me FURIOUS so that I shouted and yelled at him using some copious profanity at times. Once they finally decided to direct us to the warehouse to retrieve the package, we were now 3 hours off schedule instead of 2 (we originally wanted to leave at 6 am). A good bit of our commute was spent talking to UPS. I want this guy's head on a platter. NOW. He shouldn't be out front working with people with that disposition, they need to stick him in a back room somewhere.

6) Our commute then involved me having a medical issue (I'll spare you the details) but suffice it to say I was in a lot of pain. We got my doctor on the phone in Massachusetts to issue an Rx and call it in to Pennsylvania. While Keith was on the phone, we got pulled over by a New Jersey state cop who informed us with a warning that no cell phones (hands free or hand held) were permitted in the state. Of course, we didn't know, and were grateful he let us go considering we were trying to contact my doctor's office.

6) We finally arrived in Pennsylvania on Thursday, just in time for dinner. It was probably our longest run down to the Keystone State ever.

So now I'm in good ol' Bedford hanging out at the old homestead and getting ready for today's party and such. Tomorrow night we'll head back to Lancaster, and then back to Boston Monday.

I still have nothing definitive from Harvard--I followed up mid-morning Tuesday as requested, but, was told that there were some "complicated" issues they were dealing with due to switching around faculty assistants and giving senior faculty new assistants. They were making efforts to contact the one faculty member, who was unaware of the administration's plans to pull his assistant. My contact had a meeting with an Assistant Dean to discuss this issue in further detail. I got the impression that I may be wanted/needed for yet another interview (my fourth in person, my fifth overall counting my inital telephone interview). Yet, they asked me to call back Thursday late in the day. Well, I got preoccupied by the medical issue, so I didn't call them back until Friday morning and left a message. So I am still waiting and no better off than I was over a week ago. Sucks...

This means I'll be talking to Spherion very shortly about temping. With jury duty scheduled for me on August 29th, I'll probably start early September. I'm fine with this. This is only temporary.