quick story

em the hunter--update #1

I'm still pecking away trying to land a new job. It's been since Sept 25, and money is now a serious problem. I’ve still got a few good prospects, but each has each has pluses/minuses, and the process is soooooo slow. I'm progressing with some, and adding new prospects in the event that wave 1 does not yield a job. Here's my update:

• New! Editorial Director, medical education projects: This is my best opportunity. The current editorial director is a former colleague who contacted me to see whether I was interested in coming on board. Um, yes. And she is advocating on my behalf with the company president. It's a lateral move, so presumably the money will be commensurate with my experience, and it's not a 100-mile drive to the office. Hiring experts say the best way to get a job is via networking, so I'm very hopeful about this one.

• Editor, dental publications: Would be a reprise of working for Charismatic but Volatile Executive, but this time at the company that he started when he left my former employer at the first acquisition. Trying to navigate these complex financial times himself, he can only offer 60% of my last salary. Welcome to 1995. Ouch.

• Editor, retail publications: Step down both financially and professionally, just not sure to what degree.  Not a bad commute (25 miles of highway). Have met with them twice now, the first session consisting of a personality test and several aptitude tests.  Welcome to 1979. Guess I faked my way through, however, since they called me back in for more interviewing. According to HR director, it could be several more rounds--including a dinner out (?!)--before a decision is made. Note to self--elbows off the table.

• Editorial director, medical projects: Right in my wheelhouse--variety of media and topics, fast pace,  good company. But! A 90 mile commute.They've gone silent on me.

• Update! Community publisher, physician networking Web site: Electronic media is where I need to go, given the die-off among print publications. Interesting work too, involving courting of key opinion leaders, acquisitions, long-range strategizing, audience generation efforts, and writing and editing. But! Would entail moving from lovely Trenton NJ to a suburb of Boston.   Not impossible, just daunting. I had 3 long telephone interviews before they went silent for  2 weeks. Received an email Friday--they want me to come to  Boston to interview in person. Yes!

•  Update! Senior editor, medical publishing: A women-owned medical communications company, I’d be taking a step down, financially and professionally, but it seems like a great place to work. Another 90-mile drive to the office, but as a nonsupervisor,  I think I could finagle a work from home arrangement. Had a second round of interviews, this time with the 3 principal owners (tough talkers). They like my resume but do not immediately see a fit for me in their organization. They offered some freelance editing, which I took, as a means  of assessing my editing  chops (suffice it to say it has been a while since I had to get into the nitty gritty of a manuscript). In waiting mode.

• New! Another colleague received an offer from a headunter and referred it to me. I had a very nice talk with him Friday night, and he's very optimistic about my chances to find something good. He has put me in the running for a good job in Big Pharma. Not a bad place to be in uncertain times. 

• New! Had a nice long interview with the headhunter for a medical education project director opening. Job is right up my alley as far as skill-set and salary. Drive is in the vicinity of 1 hour 1 way--doable. Headhunter thinks I have a chance!

Lock and load.

Denny Crane.

Magical thinking

I can not stand being unemployed. Day after day of grinding anxiety over money, unpaid bills, the health of my children, the loss of my identity, the looming economic depression. Lately, I'm catching myself mentally making deals:

• Paying for parrot food: if I select the Donate $1.00 to Homeless Animals button at the PetSmart checkout then I will surely get a job tomorrow.

• Screeching to a halt on the Interstate, if I let that guy into traffic in front of me then the editor job is all mine.

• Accelerating into the final mile of a jog, if I maintain at least a 7 minute pace, then my phone will ring within the next 30 minutes with a job.

• Walking into the kitchen, if I tap the tip of  my nose 3 times and spin around twice, then an amazing employment opportunity will shortly follow.

WTF is going on inside my head?

Interview #10

Returned to Ramsey NJ for a second interview today at a medical education agency. Distance: 85 miles. Drive time: 1 hour 40 minutes.  Position: step down. Salary: dunno. 

Met with the owners of the company, 3 women.  Jane took the lead in drilling for information and  weaknesses.  She began the discussion by admitting that my background really didn’t seem to fit with their current needs and then invited me to change her mind, like Rachel Maddow, who asks her guests to “please talk me down.”  I wish I thought of that at the time, but perhaps it's best not to make reference to a far-left-leaning host of a political television show who also happens to be an out lesbian until you know your audience a little better.

Instead, I rolled with my newly perfected Barack Obama hand gestures.  I deployed 3:

• The loose fist with pads of pointer finger and  thumb clasped together; it works best as a quiet emphasis-adder and much better than an arrogant finger jab, a la Bill Clinton as he denied having “sexual relations with that woman.”;

•  The fingers together and slightly closed, like you’re gently holding a glass; this is another subdued emphasis-adder;

• The open palm with pushing movement; this is to emphasize extra-important points.

The upshot is they will toss me some freelance work on a big insomnia project to see how well I do. They hope to get more funding to continue the project into ‘09, and if that happens, I think I’m golden. But how to pay the bills until then?

Maggots, spider legs, grubs and beetle backs

i was *starving* half to death. i got up at 6:30 a.m. but still managed to miss the fancy breakfast spread that preceded my second full day of lecture after lecture of impenetrable insider speculation on the future of radio-frequency identification tagging of pharmaceutical products--ie, wireless bugs placed somewhere in the packaging of your physician-prescribed medication, eg, your hypertension medicine, your HiV cocktail, your mood stabilizer, or your erectile dysfunction drug. According to industry, the bugs allow the medication to be tracked from manufacturer through wholesaler to distribution centers and from there to hospital or retail pharmacies. And then on to me and you. As they tell it, electronically tracking drugs through the supply chain will lead to substantial cost economies, labor efficiencies, and the big buzz--say it together now--improved medication safety. Nicely done.

it made my hair hurt.  So i left early, before lunch. My return ticket had me on the Amtrak 2:05 out of union Station, Wash DC, but i scatted out of the conference at 11:00, cabbed hard across town, and shucked and jived up to the ticket-exchange counter with one 40-lb suitcase, one 20-lb laptop computer bag, two briefcases filled with 5-lb each of vendor literature, and one 75-lb purse.  i caught the 12:05 baby! :-) but didn't have time to catch that bite to eat. :-(   

so now i'm hungry and faced with a 3-hour train ride where the only food is Amtrak food. What to do, what to do... yup, i toddled 5 cars up to the cafe car, and--i have *no* idea what overtook me--i ordered a tuna sandwich.

it came encased in a robotically-sealed 50-gauge plastic wrapper. the main ingredient--the tuna--was brown, and there were multicolored hunks of whathaveyou throughout. i plowed ahead and chose not to examine the wrapper for an expiration date or for an ingredient list. instead, i bit right in.

my mind involuntarily flashed to the TV show "Fear Factor" with its bugs and vomitus and excrement that the producers force complete morons to eat, and i put the sandwich down. But i was soooo hungry, so i picked it up again. but it was soooo bad, so i put it down again.

i'm still struggling with the upset digestive system.  if i have to, i'll go to the doctor for something. At this point, i don't care who knows.

Missed diagnosis

There's a reason I’m the medical editor and not the practitioner. I witnessed a medical emergency the other day while I was in Boston. It was at the 8 am opening session. I got there a few minutes late, and it was a full house, but I found a singleton seat about 5 rows from the back of the grand ballroom.

I was paying attention, kind of, and then the noise started up. I scanned the back of the room, and I could only see him over the heads of the audience seated around me--a sea of maybe 1000 health care clinicians.  An old guy, sorta overweight, grey suit and hair, was lurching/hopping/shuffling across the back row in the room while making a sound that I had previously not heard from a human being—a sort of high-pitched barking and wheezing that you might expect from a seal with croup. So, not being interested in the opening didactic, my attention stayed on the back of the room. The guy hopped and honked and HEEEZED! his way along the back row while those around me politely focused on the speaker.

Well-considered medical editor em diagnosis? epileptic fit.  Any minute I expected someone from this overflowing sea of clinicians to step up and give the man a fat shot of Depakote or something. It's my professional opinion that a fat shot of something good can be a big help in most any unpleasant situation.

He humpty-danced himself my way and then pulled upright not far from me, and there I saw a woman clutched below him, and he seemed to be riding her like a cowboy.

How odd. But odder still, no one appeared to be paying any attention to this strange tableau, except me of course, bored em.

Heimlich maneuver successfully accomplished, the patient smiled and hugged the man.

These people are way too calm. Wonder if they're on anything.

Soggy blogging

How the heck can a New Jerseyan complain about being in sunny Orlando, Floridia, in early Spring? By the way, hi Diann! *waves madly* Well leave it to me to complain about just about anything, but I really truly didn't want to leave today.

That beautiful yet deeply consternating (is that a word?) river that I live on is acting out again, and if I may remind you, WE HAD OUR 100-YEAR FLOOD IN SEPTEMBER! It's up to its tricks again, however. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) predicts that come Sunday at about 3 am it will crest at the same level as it did in September, which put it inside everyone's home. Yes, I tried to slide out of going, but I was met with a complete lack of understanding.

me, Friday: "Boss, I'm seeing a problem develop..." *presents NOAA graph showing trajectory of river rise*

Boss: "OK em, no problem, just leave today and get there early."

me: "But it's going to storm like hell and flood again."

Boss: "What's the problem? You'll be in Orlando!"

me: "Well, it's a problem only in as much as it's going to wash away my children and my elderly mother who watches them while I'm away and my home."

Boss: "Ha ha! You can pick them up on the Florida beach!" *shrugs* "What do you want, em, I should cancel the meetings?"

me: "No... I guess I'll take a wait and see approach..."      

And now, I can not STAND it that I am unable to check the river level every 10-15 minutes, consult with my neighbors who are doing same, and in general keep a very close eye on things. Kids and elderly mother are stowed safely, but I still just need to be there, to stand guard or something.   

2 things (Big stupid feet)

Why is it that when there’s one particular move that can be classified as wrong!, I will make it?

1. While showering yesterday, I managed to knock the razor off the ledge as I shampooed my hair. The tub was full of swirling suds but I could see that the little click-on razor blade had been knocked off the razor when it hit the tub. “Don’t let the razor go down the drain!” I told myself but just as the thought formed in my head, I made a wrong move--I felt the crunch of something underfoot and then the circle of the drain enveloped my heel. I dropped down to my knees in the tub just in time to see the razor blade disappear around the crook of the drain. CRrrAP!

2. While lunching with co-workers on Friday, we were gassing about the changes afoot in our company since we were acquired 5 weeks ago—who’s gone and what they’re doing now, and who might be next. So I chimed in with “It looks like they had the decency to tell Editor Buddy Boy off-site, because he’s not been back since Monday.” The suddenly ashen appearance of Associate Editor Buddy Boy on my right clued me in to my misstep. Dammit, I thought it was common knowledge.

Sometimes it’s the little things

/rant

It bothers me when someone says, “send me an email so I can send you the email” and then they rattle off an email address at 80 mph. Yup, you are the Alpha dog, but God forbid you should do the heavy lifting and write down my email address so you can SEND ME THE DAMN EMAIL. Similarly, I am bugged by the passive-aggressive schmucks who rattle off a phone number, also at 80 mph, plus it’s all in one clump. I hear phone numbers in groups, people: 3-3-4. Would it kill you to slow down! And use pauses—that’s what the damn dashes are for.

/rant

Gag

It's easy to make me laugh. Take the lowly whoopie cushion, for example. I've had at least 8 whoopie cushions in my life, and to this day, they never fail to get me laughing like a fool. I ordered my first off the back of a comic book when I was 8, along with some other superior items of comic ingenuity such as garlic-flavored gum and the old fly-in-the-ice-cube gag. I believe my mother ultimately retired that whoopie cushion with her sewing scissors after a few short hours of blappy torment.

And so the level of my humor was pegged at an impressive height early on.

I bought another whoopie cushion only a week or so ago. Did you know that advances in engineering have resulted in an improved whoopie cushion? It's true. It is now *self-inflating.* No more peeling those wet, spitty flaps apart with your fingers to blow the thing up. Nope, it automatically re-inflates. Genius. Now who (besides my tormented Mother) doesn't laugh when hearing the prolonged, trembling rip of a whoopie cushion?

No one. But let me tell you what's *not* funny. To be trapped in Evil Creep Skeevy One's car on the way to our meeting today when he talked over the high-pitched/low rumbling frrRRAP! that escaped his skinny shovel-assed buttocks, like "she won't notice if I keep talking." It was at that point in our trip today that I stopped breathing.

Gag.

Stupid tricky job

There have been a few editorial misfires on em's watch over here at Big Med Pub Co. The short list:

1. Ran a Table of Contents in the April issue that in no way reflected the actual content of the magazine.

2. Ran an article in Aug on osteoporosis. Then ran it again in Dec.

3. Kindly printed the answers to the continuing medical education test at the end of the article.

4. Deleted a 25-page paper.

Missing some pronouns? Hmm, wonder how that happened.... Okay, okay, I! I! I! I! Phew, I feel better now.