The Unemployment Chronicles: Week 6

What a week.

In the career hunting world: I made an appointment with these people in Loveland about a heat treating job. I have an interview Tuesday. We'll see how it goes because it is a staffing agency and not the actual company but all of their hiring goes through this company. That was the high light of the job search. I also started mentoring at a high school robotics program. That is a lot of fun. I'll put a post up about working with high school kids soon. Also, one of the adult leaders works for a local (and global) aerospace company and that could possibly lead to a job. What exactly he does now or the fact that I would like to work at his company has not come up yet but in time hopefully it will.

I heard back from the Italian company I am trying to license my two pending patents. I sent them more information and now I wait to hear back. This company does not have a huge presence in the US so legally they only have to pay royalties on items sold in the US. That is to say I would get very little money from this company. Fortunately, money is not the point of this. It's the ride, the experience, the resume that would say something about successfully licensing my patents. It's about the free ice axes that I would get, and hopefully the trip to Italy. It's about when I have a third patent and I try to license that people are like "his first attempt went over well we should follow through with him".

I only applied for a few jobs this week, three I think. The problem now is that I have applied to most of the places I would traditionally think of working. So on the one hand I just keep checking their websites hoping they post new jobs. On the other hand I consider what other careers I am qualified for. I could work at a civil engineering firm because I know so much about steel and metal in general. I could work at a plastics company because I know more about plastic processing than 99% of people. So I did some brainstorming about other careers. I think I will start following up on those after my interview Tuesday.

It's just hard because I think of myself capable of working in the aerospace industry very well. So the fact that I have not gotten in quickly is confusing to me.

In the social and physical realm: I spent a day skiing at Copper Park. It was pretty awesome. The grooming was not 100% like in New England so we did some off-piste skiing in 12 inches of powder. My room-mate and I both wiped out because powder skiing is different than skiing on hard snow. Also, making turns at 12,000 feet is very tiring.

I ran 87 miles. I had one good tempo workout on a treadmill and one mediocre tempo workout on the roads. I was going to run 100 or a few more miles but I finally talked to a local 2:23 marathoner who is happy to find some person closer than Boulder to train with. He is also going to give some coaching advice, for free. One of the things that he reassured me about was how hard it is to transition to altitude. He said cut down the miles and stay away from the track for awhile. He said that he's seen lowlanders come up before and burn themselves out in the altitude, so he said take it easy. So for those of you wondering when my next race is, it might be more than a month. Anyway this is a very positive step in the right direction for my running. The opportunity to train with someone better. He is also a 1:06 half marathoner.

I tried to climb my first winter mountain in Colorado. First let me say I ran 17 miles Friday with 7.4 miles of that at six minutes per mile or faster pace. I drove to the Quandry Parking lot after supper and packing. I arrived at midnight. Usually I would go to sleep and wake up early and go. Well, there was a full moon. With all of the recent snow it was amazingly bright out. I could not resist the temptation to just go for it. So I dressed and headed out at 12:30. Anyway, I took the road less traveled and ended up post holing the better part of 3 hours getting to maybe 12,500 feet. At that point just before 4 AM I was tired and headed down. I got to my van at 5:44 AM and was asleep from 6-8:30.

Then I drove into Frisco and had a huge breakfast still wearing my Ragged Mountain bib and R1 Hoody. Then I drove to Aspen, I guess to scout out future climbs. But I was tired by that point and slept from 1-2:15 in the Forest Service parking lot just laying on my face in the back of my van. I never sleep on my face, I was that tired. Woke up, went for a six mile run up a canyon wall, had supper, watched a movie, went to bed at 10:30, woke up at 11:20 PM when my friends got back from the X-Games, hot tubbed for an hour and a half, then I went to bed again for the fourth time in 20 hours.

I also contacted a few of my friends in Colorado. I have maybe a dozen friends in Colorado and I have not spent any time with them, except my WPI friends, since moving out here. Based on the Facebook messages though I think in the near future I'll get to hang out with my friends. You see when I call someone my friend I mean it. I mean that in a whole bunch of years down the road we are still friends and I invite them to hang out with me.

That was my week. This is my life.