Putting out Fires

Today I headed over to a park in Tempe for a charity event.  I’d volunteered to work the photo both at this thing, and it was SO MUCH FUN.

Gabriel’s Angels is an organization that sends therapy dogs to spend time with abused children.  They spend a lot of time in battered women’s shelters and the like.  A lot of these kids, along with their moms, had to quickly leave behind clothes, toys, and sometimes four-legged friends to escape a bad situation.  It is such a wonderful cause, and a few hours of my time was hardly sufficient.  Anyway, the theme of the walk/festival was beach, as you’ll see… 

My friend Donna (from work) and I were given Polaroid cameras and we took pictures of people and their pups.  Here’s one fun family I took a picture of:

If you know me, you know how painful it was to spend a few hours with adorable puppies.  :-)  They had contests with the dogs for best bathing suit, best body, and best beachwear.  It was hilarious (but I should mention here that if any of you EVER catch me dressing my dogs like this, please have me committed).  OK, here’s a few, but click HERE to get to the other pics.

So there you go.  Doggies humiliated for human amusement.  But, the dogs seemed to be having a great time sniffing each other’s nether regions and the whatnot, so it was all good.

Tomorrow I’m going in to work for a few hours to make up for the fact that I have my INTERVIEW on Monday.  What to wear……

I hope you’re all having a great weekend!

Love! 

No seriously.  Guess!  OK, I’ll tell you…  I have a job interview on Monday!  Its at my same plant, but it is a big promotion and hopefully a less stressful job.  Plus, I’ve been in my job 2 years now and that’s about 2 years too long.  I’m ready. 

I have gotten a lot better lately about not watching too much TV.  I tend to like it on for company, but Ryan is very anti, so I’m trying to limit the amount of tube time.  But, I do have a slight obsession with three shows:  Project Runway, Grey’s Anatomy, and The Amazing Race.  I can’t really get Ryan to watch any of these with me, but last night he actually committed himself to 10 minutes of TAR.  I’ve always told him we should audition for that show.  We would totally kick ass.  We’re both pretty athletic, we’ve traveled quite a bit, we’re campers so we know how to rough it, and as sad as it is… he’s a firefighter and they haven’t had that angle yet.  That’s right, I’m willing to take advantage of that for a possible million dollars. 

But what would it say at the bottom of the screen when we were doing the obligatory trash-the-other-teams interviews?  “Ryan/Amanda…. Firefighter/???”.  I think I’ve probably said it before, but it really is hard to be the one with the uncool job.  Not that I talk about what my job is here, but you know I’m an engineer.  Engineer=nerd.  So what would I prefer? 

I graduated from college w/ a guy named Pete.  He just last year married a girl who was on Survivor, and when her season was on TV, he was sent to the island as a contest prize (which she didn’t win).  OK this guy is brilliant.  He got recruited to work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory straight out of college and he designed the Mars Rover.  Seriously.  So what do you think it said at the bottom of his screen when he was getting ready to walk the plank?  “Pete/Race Car Driver”.  Race car driver???  Because he’d told them that he’s gone to an non-pro course for fun sometimes.  Race car driver! 

So now I’ve got this interview on Monday and I can’t help but think…  is it worth pushing my way up this ladder?  A job I don’t like and a career I’m not passionate about?  Daily sexual and age discrimination?  Or do I want to find a different tag to go after my name?  Well, for the time being I’m gonna kick arss at the interview, but then its soul-searching time…