Good news....

...on the job front, where I got a second interview at the publishing company sometime next week.

....and on the dentist front; what I'd feared was a root canal was just a replacement filling, so although my jaw's a bit sore, it's not too bad.

On the other hand, I had to go back today for a cleaning (which was actually kind of nice and included a gum massage and stuff), and now my gums feel all inflamed - which makes me feel like this:

Interviewing...

I seem to spend half my time going to meet people at the moment - not people who can actually give me a job but recruitment agents who like to pretend they can - recruitment agents.

Things are pretty slow in the job market right now as everyone's on vacation, so it's a bit of a pain. I've had two proper interviews: - one for an audit/consulting firm which sounded okay - I was due to go for a second interview, then I remembered why I left audit and consulting in the first place - because I absolutely hated it and was deeply, deeply miserable doing it.

So I decided to pass on the second interview. I feel that recruitment agent may never speak to me again.

The other interview was for a publishing company downtown, and it went pretty well. I should hear today if I got through to the second stage - hope so, but we'll see.

Actually, today I'm more worried about the dentist.

Last Friday, part of one of my molar's broke off when I bit a nut; it was a piece around a filling and the way I see it there are two ways to fix this - root canal or yank the tooth entirely - neither of which exactly fills me with joy. Guess I'll find out which way that goes later this afternoon...


Novacaine - stat!

Celebrity spotting!

I forgot to mention that we went to see Mother Courage in Central Park last week, the second and last play for this year's Shakespeare in the Park. I queued for 6 hours, getting to the park at 7.15am - and I was still 150 people back - apparently the first 20 or so were there before 4am.

Why the popularity?

Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline were headlining!

It was a good play - very timely with the theme of war and with a number of not-so-subtle jabs at the current administration - but very long at 3 1/2 hours.

Still, it was Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline - and lets face it, you don't get much better than that...

EXCEPT...

We live opposite one of the cities' big ABC studios where they film The View (a daily chat show with a lot of opinionated women - sounds thrilling) and All My Children, one of the daily soaps here in the States.

I'd walked up to meet Gill at the subway tonight and we headed to the supermarket for some laundry products (its the little details like that that build up the tension, isn't it?) - and as we passed the studios, we passed a guy in his late 40s/early 50s coming the other way, wearing a polo shirt and slacks.

I thought he looked a little familar but couldn't place him and was more interested in seeing what kind of iPod he was listening to (I have to say the pink earbuds did nothing for his masculinity).

But he was barely past us when I heard a hyperventilating behind me.

It was Gill, sputtering with excitement - "Do you know who that was?"

I didn't.

"That was John James!"

I looked at her blankly.

"Jeff Colby! From Dynasty!"

And it was...I don't think I've ever seen her so excited.

Which is kind of worrying, when you think about it.

He used to look like this:

And now he looks like this:

But he's still enough to send Gill weak at the knees!

Fire Island!

Last weekend we took the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to meet Gill's boss Tom and his wife Irene - and they took us to Fire Island for the day.

Fire Island is a very thin island just south of Long Island that you reach by bridge or ferry. Most of the island, cars aren't allowed but at the end by the bridge you can drive and park up - which is what we did last Saturday.

After several hours of sunbathing we took a walk west towards the tip of the island - and this is where we found camper vans set up for fishing - Rob, eat your heart out! -with large vertical rods standing in the sand outside them with lines running over our heads into the water. It's a really beautiful beach; soft white sand; and it's a safe bet that we'll be visiting again at some point.

In the evening, Tom and Irene made dinner at their place where we generously helped them get rid of a few bottles of wine before heading back to the city on the 10.40ish train.

Yet another good weekend!

Late checking in

It strikes me that I haven't updated the blog in a while - I've been pretty busy looking for a job (moderate success so far, with a few interviews under my belt) and doing some writing, so I haven't got round to it.

I'll try and post a bit more about a couple of things we've done in the past few weeks.

In the meantime, go take a look at this. It's better than Superman Returns...