Two Scenarios

Here I will compare my walk down Santa Clara Street at dark to my walk back up from Santa Clara Street at dark.


First walk down: Walking by myself around 7:30 with just a jacket and backpack. Within 9 blocks I was the victim of 2 "hey mami"s, 1 "hey you need a ride?", 3 honks, and I'm pretty sure at least 1 "Hey excu' me!"


Second walk back up: I made it to the Happy Thrift Store half an hour before closing time to pick up a lamp. Naturally, I was 1 mile+ away from the house and had to find an inventive method of transporting an awkward and bulky object back. The Asian thrift store owner has become quite the acquaintance after these past couple days of thrift store hunting and gathering and so he let me borrow his dolly for the second time for the small deposit of $5.00. So, here I am. Dolly and lamp in hands, rolling down 9 blocks up and 5 blocks over, making the most noise in all the neighborhood, and not receiving a single whistle or perverted stare. (And yes, they all look exactly like that.) It's the most amazing thing, really. I'm starting to figure out how to survive in this big city, one step at a time. The key is to act like you're crazy from the start. What kind of crazy mother effer is going to mess with a girl pushing a 7 foot tall heavy lamp on a dolly through the streets of San Jose at night? No one, that's who. New goal: get crazy before the crazies get you.

Cars, Glamour, Fame, Money

Okay, so even though I undoubtedly meant to reference this song in the title of this post, it is utterly misleading. We were not able to attain any of the aforementioned grandiosities. We did, however, obtain a mansion. In the loosest interpretation of the word "obtain", of course. We are now the proud renters of one room and one bathroom (with kitchen, porch, and living room privileges) of a millionaire's (possibly billionaire's?) mansion. Our roommate is a middle-aged Asian doctor named Jimmy. You can't make this stuff up.

Hotels, Motels, and Holiday Inns

By the end of week four, we realized we may have reached the end of our welcome at our gracious hosts' home. We had succeeded in job acquiring and now faced the - what would prove to be equally, if not more, difficult - task of obtaining a place to reside. While Val and Josh were very reassuring that we could stay as long as we needed, we were all longing for some change of scenery. So we decided the big move to San Jose was imminent.

While we never quite made it to Holiday Inn Status, we did at least upgrade to the Motel 6 from the Caravelle Inn. From here we enjoyed a weekly rate, a 3 mile commute on foot back and forth to Panera daily, as well as the luxury of a Chipotle just minutes down the road. Life is good. 

On drug testing...

After a few days at Panera, I received a call from Target asking me to come in for an interview. I thought, what the hell, an extra job couldn't hurt. Might as well give it a shot. Surprisingly, Target had THE most intensive interviewing process I had endured thus far. For the seemingly manageable job of "Cart Attendant", I faced four rounds of interviews. The first being a personality test that I'm fairly sure was promptly put in the trash can, the second being a series of oddly specific interrogations of times I had demonstrated leadership in my life, and the third mostly concentrating on whether or not I had any felonies on my record. You'd think the order would be slightly different, but hey. Somehow I was able to pass whatever method of scoring they used for these interviews and was given a conditional offer of employment. The condition being of course that I pass the fourth and final test, a drug test. I'm assuming this is where they weed out the majority of candidates. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for denying employment to drug addicts. The thing that gets me is the drugs which are considered the most harmful (cocaine, heroin, meth, PCP) are not detectable by a urine test after a maximum of seven days (and usually more in the 2-3 day region). Whereas the drug in question, the most popular, believed to be least harmful, drug with the shortest lasting effects takes a minimum of 15 days and a maximum of 30 days to disappear from one's urine.


Not that any of this is pertinent to my situation. I already had a full time, better paying job across the street and I probably wouldn't have ever worked for you, Target, even if you hadn't required a drug test. But, I'm just sayin'.

JORBS!!!

So, considering how weeks three and four were dishearteningly similar to week two, we will just go ahead and move right along. Hopefully this will also save the reader and the writer from unnecessary heartache-filled reminiscing.


But, alas...


We finally did it! Can you believe it? We went and got ourselves jaerbs! It only took a month or so. Well, technically, Jesse did most of the hard work by sacrificing four years of his life in the good ole' FLA to Panera. Turns out they can't really say no to experience like that. And when you have great looking friends like us, they can't say no to that either. So there you go, we are officially Panerists.