I Saw It in Philadelphia: A Pig at the Pizza Parlor

Yes, it's a pig in a baby carriage. 

Dogs are not uncommon inside Philadelphia restaurants and coffee shops.  Many of the coffee shops actually keep dog biscuits at the counter for their canine visistors. There was a dog inside my hairstylist's studio one day, and we even saw a big dog inside Macy's once (he was on his way out as he and his owner had been asked to leave). 

This is the first pig I have seen inside a commercial establishment anywhere.

You can't see it, but it was a twin stroller and there was a (human) baby in the front seat, too. The nice woman who had the child and pig said she was pig-sitting for a friend and wasn't sure what kind of pig he actually was. 

This handsome little guy was named Scrappy, and we encountered him in a pizza parlor on South Street. He was adorable, if a bit shy.

Needless to say, we chose a veggie pizza for lunch after our encounter with Scrappy.  

Random Updates. Really Random.

The Stuff We Lost In the Move

One of our missing moving boxes from the move has been found, or some of it, anyway. It DOESN'T appear to be the box with the photos, but we're waiting for a little more info. If it's the clothes and shoes, we have already replaced 'em and don't have room to store much extra, so we probably won't worry about getting it back. From what we know so far, it's a partially-full box only, which means someone probably picked through it and took whatever they wanted already.

The Job Hunt

Still hunting for a job and trying not to panic. Still have a little time, too, before I have to panic, but not much. I didn't start job hunting until the end of October, due to the move trauma and needing some time to get settled, so I've only been at it four months, but still. Ugh. My daily routine nowadays consists of going through all the job boards and LinkedIn each day to see if anything good has been posted, then going through the career sites of my "target" companies and seeing if they have anything new, or if I can find any new target companies to add to the list. I usually find two or three worth bookmarking or applying for every day, but not always. I keep hearing about how you're supposed to network, all these ridiculous bullshit guerilla job search tactics you can try (sending a package with a coffee mug AND your resume to the recruiter, etc.) and I just cringe. That is so not me. I also think how annoyed I would be as a recruiter or HR professional if people did that. Granted, HR pro's usually have a different personality and goals than I do. Maybe they truly are not annoyed by those tactics somehow. Or maybe those tactics work if you're in some creative field like Advertising, or you're in an industry that thrives on entrepreneurs, like a tech start-up. The financial services and insurance industries are notoriously conservative in many regards and I suspect they are in this one, too. I'm adding Philly contacts to LinkedIn as I can find them, but without working, I honestly haven't met that many folks here yet. My handful of karaoke friends are it, pretty much, BUT ...

Friends

... Two friends I have known for awhile just moved to Philadelphia this week. Yes!  :-)  One is an old friend from Lincoln, and the other is this person's sweetheart, whom I met for the first time in 2011. And you know the old shampoo commercial from the 1970s:  "They told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on ...?"  Umm, no details I can share yet but something like that is possibly in the works.  If nothing else, it is nice to have a few more friends here.

Coding and Networking

And in other professional developments: I have thoroughly ramped up on my HTML skills and am taking a class this weekend to learn JavaScript. I hope to make some new contacts there and meet a few other cool folks here in Philly. The coding knowledge couldn't hurt, either. I'm sure I won't know enough after that to get hired as a website developer (though I already know enough to be able to maintain some corporation's blog or update their website), but what I'm hoping is I'll learn enough to decide if I am interested in a change in career direction, and have an aptitude for it, which could prompt future educational choices, too.  I live very close to an ITT tech school if I want to get a certificate in something technical, plus there are all the other great colleges here (Drexel, Temple, Penn, etc.) if I want to pursue a Master's in something.

Complacency and You

Which brings me to another important point for everyone, but especially my friends and readers who still work where I used to work: don't get complacent.

Part of why it's taking so long for me to find a job out here is due to the high unemployment rate.  Philly, at 10.1%, is higher than the national average of 7.8%, and much higher than Nebraska's 3.7%.

Part of it, too, I have to accept responsibility for because I let myself get comfy in a job that I thought I'd probably work at for the rest of my life, and that was the wrong thing to do. We've all seen the firings and layoffs as jobs move overseas and lines of business get dropped.  There is no guarantee you'll have a job there in the future, and you don't want to wait until you get laid off to start preparing for your next job.

I didn't put much emphasis on my own development the last few years there, and I know many of you also are not doing this. I am thankful I already have a college degree, and I can't emphasize this enough: if you didn't finish your degree yet, make plans to get back in school as soon as you can, especially since the company offers tuition reimbursement. If you find yourself without a job, you'll be competing against many other people who are also looking for a job but who also have at least a Bachelor's Degree, and guess who won't make the cut? These days, employers want a Bachelor's even for non-skilled positions like being a receptionist at a dentist's office, for pete's sake! Check out a few job postings if you don't believe me.

For those of you with a degree already: step it up in other ways. Get that resume dusted off and ready to go. Build your network on LinkedIn if you haven't already. Get trained as a Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt. Start sitting in on technical meetings and learning project management. Learn Access and Brio and SAP Business Objects and any other technology you can get your hands on. Learn another branch of the business (Life, Annuities, Variable, etc.). Take any opportunity  you can get to learn something new at the company's expense, or even your own if you can afford it. (Wanna learn some programming skills? I do recommend Code Academy to start and it's absolutely free. Learn some basic HTML and you can start adding web parts to that lovely SharePoint site we used!)

Cute Cat Photos

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. Umm ... how about some animal cuteness to lighten the mood here? Girlcat and Boycat say hello!

A List: Concerts and Shows

I've been to a lot of concerts and shows in my lifetime. At least I think it's a lot. More than some of you but probably not as many as others.

I used to make concert attendance a priority, especially in college and into my early 20s. Living in Nebraska meant we didn't necessarily have the best pick of concerts to attend (especially in the small town where I grew up), so if the difference between seeing a concert or not meant hours of driving to Omaha, Denver, Chicago or Kansas City, plus the associated expenses of gas, food, and lodging. . . well, so be it.  

Sometimes when I look at this list I am happy to have put in the time and effort to have attended, and cherish the memories of the event and the friends who enjoyed it with me. Other times, I wish I had saved my money and done some real traveling, but what's done is done. 

To me, there is a difference between a "concert" and a "show" (these are strictly my definitions, and there is definitely room for cross-over):  

• A "concert" takes place in a large venue designed primarily for events of this type and with a large seating or standing capacity: an arena, an events center, a theater, an amphitheater, a ballroom. 
• A "show" has a much smaller audience and takes place at a bar, restaurant, coffee house or other space whose main source of income is something other than events.
• Also, I haven't included shows from cover bands or bands with a local audience only. I do have a couple Omaha bands in the list, but those are bands that also have a national or international audience.  

The interesting thing about concerts and shows is that the same bands may play in both, possibly even on the same tour. Some may begin their career playing shows and end it playing concerts. If they're around long enough, they'll begin with shows, progress to concerts, and wrap things up playing shows again, mostly to loyal longtime fans. 

This list will probably grow over time as I know I'm not remembering every show and concert at this moment. Did we go to something together that I didn't include here? Drop me a comment and let me know. I seem to have a big gap in the late 1990s, although this was around the time we bought our house and maybe we were just too broke to go to any concerts or shows.

Concerts, in roughly chronological order (artists in red are artists I've seen multiple times):

• Kenny Rogers and Dottie West, Nebraska State Fair, 1981?
• Willie Nelson Beer and BBQ at Rosenblatt Stadium 1981?   (I can't remember which actually came first--Kenny or Willie.  They were within months of each other, to the extent that I can recall.)
• Head East, Red Willow County Fair, 1983
• Vixen, Red Willow County, 1984  (this was after their appearance in the film Hardbodies and before their popularity as a female metal band in the late 1980s) 
• Robert Plant with Joan Jett, Omaha Civic Center, 1988
• REM, Omaha Civic Center, 1989
• The Sugarcubes, Public Image Ltd, New Order, at Red Rocks, 1989
• Love and Rockets, The Pixies, The Cure, Fiddler's Green (Denver), 1989
• The Pixies, Nebraska State Fair Ag Complex, 1989
• Ministry with KMFDM, Peony Park Ballroom, 1990 
• Jane's Addiction, Aksarben, 1991
• Fugazi, UNL Student Union Ballroom, 1991
• Jello Biafra (spoken word tour), Student Union Ballroom, 1992?
• Two Nice Girls, Student Union Ballroom, 1992
• Lollapalooza #2, 1992:  Fiddler's Green, Denver.  Main stage:  Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ministry, Ice Cube, Soundgarden, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pearl Jam, Lush.  (Second stage acts, the only one of which I saw as the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, also included such soon-to-be-famous folks as Cypress Hill, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine, Luscious Jackson, L7 and others.)
•  Lollapalooza #3: 1993:  The World Amphitheater, Chicago.  Main Stage: Primus, Alice in Chains, Dinosaur Jr., Fishbone, Arrested Development, Front 242, Babes in Toyland, Rage Against the Machine (as above, there were some great second stage acts were there that I didn't see at all.  It was 105 degrees that day and we attended the show after a ten-hour drive, followed by just five hours of sleep.  It was one of the least happy concert experiences I've had.  Re: Alice in Chains, Layne Staley had just broken his leg a few days before the show and performed the entire set from his wheelchair.)  
• Concrete Blonde, Peony Park, November(?) 1993
• Nirvana with The Breeders and Shonen Knife, Aksarben, December 1993 (yes, just a few months before Kurt died.)  
• Lollapalooza #4:  1994: Sandstone Amphitheater, KC. Main Stage:  Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars, The Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, L7, Boredoms.  (As with the others, I saw none of the second stage acts at this show.) 
• Diamanda Galas and John Paul Jones, Lied Center, 1994
• Steely Dan, Sandstone Amphitheater, 1996
• Marilyn Manson, Omaha Civic Auditorium, 1997
• Tito Puente, Lied Center, 1998?
• KC and the Sunshine Band, Rococo Theater, 2001
• The Pixies, Pershing Auditorium, 2004
• Joan Jett, Nebraska State Fair, 2004
• Nine Inch Nails, Pershing Auditorium, 2006
• Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Stir Cove, 2006
• Neko Case, Sokol Hall, 2006
• Andrew Bird and My Morning Jacket, Sokol Hal,l 2006
• Bright Eyes, Omaha Memorial Park, 2006
• M. Ward, Scottish Rites Hall, 2006
• Placebo, Social Distortion, She Wants Revenge, some giant outdoor venue in KC, 2006
• Andrew Bird, Sokol Hall, 2007
• Feist, Omaha Memorial Park, 2007
• Morrissey, Orpheum Theater, 2007
• The Faint, Sokol Hall, 2007
• Nick Cave, Ogden Theater, Denver, 2008
• Ween, Stir Cove, 2008
• Gogol Bordello, Sokol Hall, 2008
• Chris Isaak, Stir Cove, 2008
• Bonerama, January 2010, Holland Performing Arts Center
• Heart, Stir Cove, 2010
• David Gray, Orpheum Theater, 2011
• Cage the Elephant, The Black Keys, Stir Cove, 2011
• Flaming Lips, Stir Cove, 2011
• Paul Simon, Century Link Center, 2011
• Jack White, Omaha Music Hall, 2012
• Bonnie Raitt, Orpheum Theater, 2012
• John Waters (spoken word), The Trocadero, Philadelphia, PA, 2012
• Peter Murphy, The Trocadero, 2013
• Rickie Lee Jones, The Prince Music Theater, Philadelphia, 2014
• Echo and the Bunnymen, Union Transfer, Philadelphia, 2016
• Depeche Mode, Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, 2018

Shows, in roughly chronological order:

• Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Ranch Bowl, September 1989
• Camper Van Beethoven, The Ranch Bowl, October 1989
• Matthew Sweet, The Ranch Bowl, February 1992
• Sister Machine Gun, The Royal Grove, Lincoln, 1997
• Candye Kane, Zoo Bar, 1998
• Fear, Knickerbocker's, 2000
• The Reverend Horton Heat, Zoo Bar, 2001
• Mark Hummel, Zoo Bar, 2001
• Concrete Blonde, Royal Grove, 2002
• Henry Rollins (spoken word), Royal Grove, 2002
• Jonathan Richman, Knickerbockers, 2005?
• Dead Science and Carla Bozulich, Duffy's, 2006
• David Vandervelde, The Slowdown, 2007
• Gravy Train!!! and Ssion, Waiting Room, 2007
• Dosh, The Slowdown, 2007
• M. Ward, The Slowdown, 2008
• Daniel Johnston, The Slowdown, 2008
• Wolf Parade, The Slowdown, 2008
• Vic Chesnutt and Jonathan Richman, Waiting Room, 2008?
• Ssion,The Slowdown, 2008
• Tokyo Police Club, The Slowdown, 2008
• She Wants Revenge and Psychedelic Furs, Waiting Room, 2009
• Calexico, The Slowdown, 2009
• The English Beat, The Slowdown, 2010
• Strand of Oaks, Boot and Saddle, 2017

The Potential of Paperforms

We bought a box of Paperforms at a cool design shop shortly after we moved here.  They've been sitting in the closet for a couple months, but I just saw a frozen yogurt shop that had used them to decorate an entire wall and it looked really cool.

Time to get moving with them.

The Paperforms are a creation of a local company called mio. You can read more about them and see the other designs here.  (This is one of several cool products they offer.)

(This is not a sponsored post, by the way.  I have no sponsored posts. Probably no one wants to sponsor a blog that only 8 or 10 of my friends and family read, ha ha!)

They're supposed to come 12 to a box, but somehow we got a baker's dozen plus a lagniappe in our box--14 tiles total.  I hope we have enough paint to cover them all.

Here's what they look like now. Will post another pic when we get them finished and installed.

Never Say Never: Observations from a Mid-Life Job Hunt

Hunting for jobs in my early 40s has not been a pleasant experience. When is job hunting ever a pleasant experience? Probably never. I recall it being pretty unpleasant when I was 22 years old and fresh out of college, too.

I'm starting to wonder if we shot ourselves in the foot not bringing a car to Philadelphia. The greater metro area isn't as well-served by public transportation as I expected. As I commented in an earlier entry, I've seen some great jobs for which I probably would have been a shoo-in (life insurance companies offering jobs almost exactly like what I did in my last two jobs at the insurance company), but they were out in suburbs that I can't access by public transportation. And even the suburbs that I can access, I kinda sorta don't want to. If I wanted to live downtown and have a lengthy commute to the suburbs for work every day, I would have stayed in Omaha. I'm not at the point yet where I'm so desperate for a job that I'll take something that involves a lengthy commute by train or bus, but if the time comes I certainly will do whatever is necessary. Never say never.

But ... here's to hoping that time doesn't come!

I feel a bit out of my element in today's job market. Friends who work where I used to work, take note: that place is not adequately training and preparing you for continued advancement in your career if you ever leave the company. Most of the places offering positions similar to what I did before also want someone who is a CPA, some even want a JD (yes! and they're not willing to pay any more than what I was paid!) or who is able to program and run their own reports in SQL or other database technologies. They'll want project-management experience in methodologies like Agile and Scrum, and maybe a PMP certification to boot. (Go look all that stuff up if you don't know what  it is. If you have a chance to get trained on any of it, DO IT!)

My four industry certifications and hard-won product and process experience are not as useful outside of the old workplace, and I find I'm having to market myself as a potential employee based on a lot of general skills that may have made up just a part of some of my previous jobs.

Something that has paid off in more ways that I can count: my job at the perfume website. First off, they just gave me a 25% raise.  :-)   Second, having visible proof that I am a published writer, that I have extensive editing experience, that I have basic HTML skills and CMS experience is proving more valuable than I would have guessed (for all kinds of occupations), and all I will say for now is that it is prompting some possible changes in career path for me that I wouldn't have been able to consider before. (Never say never!)

In an effort to increase my visibility as a job candidate, I've had to face the reality of today's tech-driven world. I'm networking on LinkedIn. (And you all should be doing this, too, if you're not already.)  I had previously thought Twitter was a waste of time, but now I have a Twitter account, which I'm not doing much with at the moment, but never say never! I tweet when I have a new story on the perfume site, when I come across something interesting to share or when I have good coupon codes for perfume shops. I troll Monster.com, Careerbuilder, Dice, MediaBistro, indeed.com, insurancejobs.com, Greatinsurancejobs.com and Craigslist every day for possible job leads. (Those merit their own entry one of these days, oy!)  I have specialized resumes prepared emphasizing my general business experience, my experience as a writer and in corporate communications and I can tweak either one to emphasize certain skills to better match a job posting. I have a series of cover letters that go with each one and are easily tweakable, too.

All of this was extremely difficult for me to do, being a humble Midwesterner and an Introvert--selling myself is not my strong point. But it's getting easier. Never say never!

My Favorite Things: "Phantom of the Paradise"

Welcome to another episode of My Favorite Things.

This week, I'll share a corny movie that many of you have probably not heard of and have never seen, even though it was written and directed by an esteemed and well-established Hollywood figure, Brian de Palma.

This film is "Phantom of the Paradise."  (It is available via Amazon Instant Video for those interested.)

I first caught this on cable sometime in the mid-1990s, when I was home from work with the flu. At the time, I thought I had vague memories of it from the 1970s--either on TV or from reading about it in a magazine, but I would have been young and certainly didn't recall most of it if I had in fact seen it.

I was struck immediately by the sets, costumes, music and gore, all of which are ridiculously over-the-top and were presumably meant to be that way.  (Or not? It was early in de Palma's film career.) It was all very 1970s tacky and was hopelessly out-of-date at the time I was watching it, even thought he 1970s were very much cycling back around in the 1990s, in terms of fashion and music influence.

The sets were decorated by a then-unknown Sissy Spacek, and the music--all written and mostly sung by Paul Williams, who also stars as the film's sex symbol [yes!] and bad guy--was nominated for an Oscar.  My favorite performance was Gerrit Graham as Beef, in a deliciously campy send-up of 1970s glam rockers.

I watched the movie repeatedly during the two months it ran on cable.  Then I forgot about it.

Then it made the rounds on cable again in the late 1990s, and my obsession was born. This time I shared it with a few others, some of whom agreed with me that it was a masterpiece of kitsch.  (Some found it boring and ridiculous, of course.)

A friend bought me my first VHS cassette of it in the early 2000s. It was one of the first DVD's I bought when we upgraded to the new technology. Another friend made me a copy of the soundtrack from Napster (the soundtrack was not available in the US at that time and was obtainable only as a very expensive Japanese import).

And upon surfing the web, I was delighted to discover I am not the only person who thinks this movie is fantastic. It is a "midnight movie" that plays in a lot of places (kind of like Rocky Horror Picture Show) and there are websites devoted to it, annual fan conventions, highly-detailed reconstructions of the Phantom costume for sale, etc.

I actually got a chance to see it in a theater at the Dundee when we lived in Omaha, where it played as a midnight movie in October 2007. To my surprise, Mr. 42 and I were NOT the only people in the theater. There was a reasonably-sized crowd in attendance, possibly because the movie stars and contains the music of Paul Williams, who was born and raised in a suburb of Omaha.

I will admit it looked a lot cheaper and cheesier on the big screen than on my TV, and the film reel they had was in pretty bad shape, but it was still fun to see it in its original format, with popcorn.

The pièce de resistance in my Phantom collection is the original movie poster from the 1970s release, which Mr. 42 found for me at an antique store that was going out of business. It was professionally framed and marked down from $179 to $139 in the close-out sale. That's probably more than I would have paid, but it was wonderful to receive such a thoughtfully-chosen gift, and its bright colors and cheesy graphics have graced the living rooms of four different apartments now.  

67 Days

It has been 67 days since Mr. 42 and I last drove a car, which was the date we arrived in Philly and returned the very expensive one-way rental Mitsubishi Gallant we drove here.

That is without a doubt the longest I have ever gone without driving a car since I got my learner's permit at age 15. (Technically speaking, I started driving at age 14--not uncommon for rural Nebraska, where many kids learned to drive at even younger ages if they grew up on farms, which I didn't.)

During these 67 days, we have used the "leather express" (aka our feet) to get almost everywhere. We rode in a taxi to and from the art museum, and that was the only time we've been inside a car since our move. We have only used the subway three times. We rode a bus to and from Ikea.

An ATC I made in 2010. Watercolor and ink on Yupo.

We thought we would be making more use of public transportation here (and we might, someday) but we've also been pleasantly surprised at how many of the things we need to go/do/see/buy are within walking distance. My definition of "walking distance" has expanded a bit, too. If it's within a 30 minute walk and it's not raining/snowing, it's worth the walk.  It is possibly worth the walk up to 45 minutes. If we're talking an hour or more away, we look for some other way to get there or we just don't go (King of Prussia Mall, I'm talking about you)!

The day we gave our car to my niece and her husband--just a couple days before we moved--was one of the happiest days of my life. I've never been one of those folks who regard cars as a status symbol (though I'm not judging those of you who are this way, and I acknowledge that having had constant access to a car or even multiple cars since age 15 puts me in a relatively privileged position to begin with). Once I began my lengthy commutes between Omaha and Lincoln, I came to view cars and driving not as a privilege, but instead as a necessary evil and a pain in the butt. I am so excited to finally be living somewhere that doesn't require you to have a car in order to complete the most basic tasks of life. (Omaha had a bus system, sure, but let's be honest--it sucked.)

Life without a car here has proven challenging in some regards, especially for buying groceries and job hunting. I've had to let several good opportunities slide because they're in a suburb of Philly that is not accessible by public transportation. Plus, I did the lengthy-commute-between-cities thing for five years and I'm not eager to repeat the experience anytime soon.

I am firmly convinced, though, that all this walking is improving my mental and physical health and will trim some pounds off me. Eventually. As soon as I learn to resist the Spanish fries with Whiz...