I’m actually up early this morning for a change. The sleep schedule has been a mess as of late and Anne made a point of getting our butts into bed earlier than usual last night. I didn’t feel all that tired, but I must have been because it wasn’t too long before I was asleep. Melvin, the Official SEB Cat, then ensured that I got up around 7AM by crying outside the closed bedroom door and scratching at it because he wanted someone to get up and watch him eat breakfast after Courtney left for school at 6:30. I swear, for such a grumpy looking anti-social cat he can be as needy and clingy as some of my former girlfriends. He’s sitting here on the arm of the couch next to me as I type this trying to look as disinterested as he can.

I need to give a big thank you to IMPoe for the Eddie Izzard DVD off my wish list that showed up at my door the other day. She thought I could use a couple of laughs to help cope with all the stress I’ve been dealing with lately and she was right. It made for a nice surprise and it helped to take my mind off of things for a bit. My buddy Hairboy showed up last weekend with several of the other DVDs in tow for me as well so my Eddie collection is now complete unless there’s something out there I’m not aware of.

Speaking of Hairboy, he dropped in to order the parts to a new gaming/video editing PC he’s having me build him. It’s going to be a nice setup and I need to get a new job soon so I can make one for myself, minus the video editing part as I’m just a gamer.

Still waiting for the second interviews to come through. One of them is in limbo as the contract house I had been working for previously let me know that I’m out of the running for the position I had interviewed for, but they were considering bringing me in at a lower-level position and moving me up as I gained experience. Before that could happen, though, they needed to fill the position I had interviewed for and they were having trouble doing that as they’re hoping to find someone with previous grid-computing experience. So until they manage to fill that role any consideration for bringing me in is pretty much on hold. They told me not to pass up any other opportunities that come along because they’re not sure how long it’d be before they got back to me. So I’ve put any hopes of getting that one aside for the time being.

A couple of the contract houses contacted me about possibilities they were going to submit me for which I quickly approved, but no callbacks yet. Yesterday I got a call for a possible position at Pfizer, but it was in Kalamazoo and that’s a 2 1/2 hour commute one-way from Canton so that ruled that out. Wish their Ann Arbor location had a few positions open up.

Oh, and Happy Tax Day. I filed mine way back in February which is the only reason I’ve been able to survive as long as I have unemployed. Still haven’t seen an unemployment check and I’ll probably be spending this weekend eliminating some of bill generating things we’re using such as the storage unit and cable TV. I need to check and see how much it’s going to cost to rent a U-Haul so I can get all the crap out of the storage unit. My in-laws have offered part of their basement to store our stuff in until we get back on our feet. We’re probably going to cancel our cable service short of our broadband Internet connection seeing as we use that more than the TV anyway, but even that may go soon if things don’t change. We’re looking at whether it’d be cheaper to cancel our current land-line phone service and switch to cellular for awhile. Beyond that there’s not a whole lot more we can do I don’t think. Where are those long-lost rich relatives when I need them?

So that’s what’s news with me. What about you guys?