I love a good snow day, even when there’s nothing to stay home from. What kid, or kid at heart, doesn’t? To this day, the news radio chimes make me hope for the words, “Montgomery County schools will be closed today,” no matter the time or season. A snow day is special, a surprise holiday, [...]
Category Archives: Queens
Hat, meet gift box… a holiday temp job to get me out of the apartment
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
After visiting the mall this weekend, I’m extra happy that temporary holiday season job at the big department store fell through. What a horrible nightmare of crowds and slush and noise. Holiday spending may be down, but holiday shopping is alive and well. As is the Queens Christmas spirit, which translates into lots of pushing [...]
The holiday season job I didn’t want and didn’t get, part 1
Saturday, November 28, 2009
What better time to find a job than the holidays? The whole retail industry staffs up to meet the demands of the year’s busiest shopping season. More eager shoppers require more overworked sales people to serve them while wishing they could just go home. It’s a holiday maxim, as accepted as Black Friday and mall [...]
Entering a contest for a job… sound familiar?
Friday, October 23, 2009
A couple weeks back I clicked over to The Washington Post to read about the Redskins. This is my daily torture. The thinking is that news about the team can’t always be bad; this season has taught me that it can. My mouse missed the “Sports” pull-down menu and landed on the link for “America’s [...]
Unemployed blogger called out for his sins
Friday, October 9, 2009
Some people like me, and some people don’t. And most couldn’t care less one way or the other about some unemployed blogger and his thoughts. That’s the way the world works. But once in a great while someone spits so much venom my way that I wonder if I wronged them in a previous life. [...]
“Coming to America” is alive and well in Queens
Thursday, September 17, 2009
After a long day of not finding a job, it’s relaxing to engage in an even more mindless activity. Channel surfing, second to sleeping, is the greatest time-waster ever created. My thumb and a few buttons on the remote control give me 200 stations of useless television programming, and occasionally something worth watching. I always [...]
Unemployed guy fits right in at the US Open
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tourists and Manhattanites don’t come to Queens. They’re still scared of Brooklyn’s tonier neighborhoods, where killer mothers, nanny henchmen and four-headed demon newborns of death rule the parks, boutiques and cafes. So this side of the East River, a little north of Brooklyn, where all the foreign people live, might as well be Sadr City [...]
The Queens unemployment workout
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Unemployment took away my last excuse not to go to the gym… work. And for that I will never forgive it. If you’re reading this, unemployment, consider yourself out of the will. The cats now get my ever-shrinking pile of assets. (Wifey will have to take it up with the furry ones.) My gym membership [...]
A place where the unemployed blogger people run free
Saturday, June 20, 2009
I need a new place to go blog and be unemployed during the day with my computer… ok, with wifey’s computer. My requirements are simple. It has to be reasonably close to home, or at least in NYC. It has to be cheap (by which I mean free) and near food and a bathroom. It [...]
What happens when I can’t afford a Mets ticket
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Attending a midweek afternoon baseball game is the height of unemployment decadence. I developed a taste for it after my 2008 layoff. Shea Stadium – the New York Mets‘ old home field – was only a few subway stops from my apartment. And an upper reserve seat behind home plate could be had for $5-$10 [...]