Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Got a job Sha na na na, sha na na na na

Yes indeedy, sportsfans, full and regular employment awaits the lovely and multi-talented Sgt. Mom, as of Friday, 8:00AM…. after three months as a temp mostly at the Enormous Corporate Giant, and pretty well resigning myself to the fact that very few enterprises would be looking to hire new staff until after the holidays… which would mean another couple of weeks after Christmas laboring in the vinyards of the E-C-G.

This whole thing happened as fast as a drive-by shooting, a message from one of the temp services about a possible job on my home phone last night. I called them first thing this morning, from the E-C-G:
“Oh, we really want to put your resume in front of this client…is it still current?”
“Well, pretty much, just tell him I’ve been temping since August for “Insert Major Temp Service Here”.”
“When can you do an interview?”
“Well, I can work with the manager here, and be free on Friday, last thing.”
“Ummm… well, he really wants to have someone start first thing… he’s coming in this morning to interview a possible… could you be here at 11:15?”

This agency is about ten minutes drive away from the palatial premises of the E-C-G, I can kiss off a lunch hour, or a little more, in the service of my eventual economic salvation. The backlong of work I was assigned to expedite for the E-C-G has been accomplished since mid-morning on Monday, and the area manager (a darling and accomplished woman) is very pleased with this, and otherwise inclined to be sympathetic to my quest for gainful long-term employment that does not involve two hours of travel out of my day. (I have better things to be doing with those hours, life being too short to spend them trudging the endless corridors of the E-C-G, or coping with San Antonio’s interminable traffic lights and jammed expressways.)

So, clock out, with the area manager’s best wishes, and allowing ten minutes to get to the VEV and off the E-C-G’s single zip-code encompassing premises, and ten to get down to the agency….

Foiled. The traffic light at a fairly major intersection is not functioning, and I spend the whole twenty minutes I have allotted to travel sitting in gridlocked traffic and fuming. This is the classic nightmare, horribly and embarrassingly late for an important appointment, second only to running in, trailing a length of toilet paper from your foot. I rush into the agency at half past the hour, apologizing and saying to the interviewer,
“I am so sorry… can you please imagine me in a suit, and not panting for breath?”

Fortunately, everyone got caught in the same traffic… and the interview goes very well. Of course, just about every interview I have done over the last five months I think I have done very well… well, maybe not the one where I told the CEO (in answer to the question “What would you do for me?”) “Get you properly organized… and bring in a vacuum cleaner and vacuum this office”. The place was a grubby pit in a warehouse an impossible drive away, and I didn’t really want that job anyway— it would have killed my soul, walking into it every day, with fluff on the turd-colored carpet and waterstains on the suspended cieling tiles.

Well, the agency called this afternoon–I have got the job. Well, that was a welcome surprise…. I shall think of it as my very welcome and most unexpected Christmas Present.