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Smoke From A Distant Fire

I was sitting around my house on Tuesday morning doing nothing in particular when the phone rings. “Hi”, said the friendly voice “we received your resume and would like to bring you in for an interview”. So we set up a time on Wednesday to meet. Awesome.

As is my custom, I like to ‘scope out’ the site beforehand so that I know where I’m going on the actual day of the meeting. So I do a Google Map of the location and head out on Tuesday afternoon.

One this to note is that we’ve had some fires around some local cities and the odor can be detected many miles away (I can smell them from my house even though they’re nowhere near me).

When I drive to this new town (which is 2 towns over from where I live) I can smell the burning like I’m standing in the middle of a campfire.

So I’m criss-crossing the whole city looking for one street and I have yet to come across it. I drive down a whole lot of other streets but not the one I’m looking for. Something must be wrong with my directions. I’m hungry and I have to use the bathroom so I decide to head back home and clarify my directions.

I use the bathroom, get something to eat and generally regroup. By the time I head back out the darkness has settled in making the journey to find this place a little more difficult.

I’m driving down some of the same streets and I see the smoke illuminated in the streetlights like there’s some kind of fog. The burning smell is even more intense now.

There’s a main street that basically cuts this town in half. I’m given to believe the street I need to turn down is right off this main street. My basic problem with not finding this turn-off road is that I wasn’t going down this main street far enough. Once I found it, it was kind of funny to see how close I was. Let that be a lesson to myself.

Wednesday comes and I have my interview. Everything goes as well as can be expected. I talk with one of the Vice Presidents of the company and they guy I’m going to be ‘helping out’. This other guy is 21 years old and some kind of programming whiz. He’s your typical nerdy teen, which is kind of funny.

They want me to come back the next day (Thursday) and meet with the other Vice President. They make it sound like they’re also going to ‘put me to the test’ but that never happens. I came back Thursday and talked to the other guy who was totally laid back and casual.

Friday morning I sent a thank you note to the guy that I talked to (on the first day). About an hour later I get another call for an interview from a different company. At this point, I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

The woman I talked to gave me the best directions I’ve ever gotten from anyone over the phone. I do my normal thing and drive out to the location to get comfortable with going out there and found the place easily (it’s in a new area of the city and Google Maps doesn’t have it yet).

I guess I’ll let you know what happens on that interview – it’s not until Monday.

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