Hoover...Hoover...where the @#%#@ is Hoover

22nd Street runs right up to I-4. Right past my cigar factory, as a matter of fact. So if you don't mind, could someone tell that to google maps??

Google had me get on 22nd, then off and on to a toll road for 3.3 miles, which was just long enough to pay $1.25 to the nice lady in the hideous hawaiian/uniform shirt. Then onto another and another road before jumping on I-4 a couple of blocks from where I would have if I had just gone straight on 22nd like I will today. Dumb. I-4 to I-275. Get off, a couple of quick turns, hey I'm an hour and a half early so I'm coming back to this here Waffle house, and I should be there any second now.

Any second now. I say any sec....hey, I'm headed out to Clearwater on a six lane road? What happened?

Turn around, back to the area where Hoover is, poke around, poke around, poke ar....hey, that sign says LONG BRIDGE. CHECK GAS. What th...I'm headed to Clearwater again! Emergency turnaround. ABORT! ABORT!

Long, embarrassing story short, I left at 0745 for a 1000 interview. It was about a 40 minute drive and I arrived only 30 minutes early. Some was traffic , but most was me circling a 6 block square area like some deranged, I don't know...a deranged something that shouldn't be deranged but would circle it's prey. A tiger maybe. Or one of them Jack Dempsey fish.

I finally figured out what happened. And I was none to quick about it, either. Hoover was the last road before the CHECK GAS bridge into Clearwater. I'd be so intent on turning around and not making that unecessary side trip, that I wasn't seeing the street sign. Obviously, eventually I did. But by then it was too late for the Waffle House, which is just a darn shame. That's some good eatin'.

Turned out that it was a sales job. But I listened politely and the more we talked, the more I liked it. No cold calling, just responses to people who contact us for the information. I would be handed a list of names every Wednesday to call and set up appointments with. I'd get help getting licensed. Intensive training. Mentoring. Medical, dental, full pension paid by the company. And the part that hooked me, "We want real people with real integrity. If the people decide it's not for them, we want you to thank them for their time, shake their hand (and mean it) and tell them to give you a call if they change their mind. This company DOES NOT do high pressure sales."

I did not send this company my resume. I suspect that they got it off of Monster or HotJobs. The personnel director contacted me, we exchanged a few e-mails and the patience and integrity she spoke of yesterday was evident back then in her response to me telling her I couldn't make a Thursday interview because I was still overseas. "It's OK, we'll wait. Just call me when you get back and we'll talk."

Anyway, I've decided to give it a shot. If it is indeed true that honesty and patience, and the ability to make people feel comfortable talking to you, are the key ingredients to success here, then I think I would be very, very happy. If it's not, and I'll know soon enough, I gots feet.

I know it was boring, but some people apparently wanted to know. You'll know things aren't going well when I use this blog here to hit y'all up to "borrow" some money.

My Uncle and Aunt drove down from NC yesterday. And boy are their arms tired. Wait, that makes no sense. Anyway, Uncle Fred, who I'll call UnkelF, 'cause I don't use real names here, brought me ten 2 liter bottles of Cheerwine, though I lost two of them in a trade for a pound of Neese's Liver pudding, also a delicacy from NC and also ferried down from NC on that East Coast smuggler's trail known to all as I-95. He didn't stop to see Pedro, either. I seem to only know heathens. Pedro weeps.

I was asked if I can multi-task. Shoot!, I used to multi-task and do something else at the same time.

Tomorrows post will be of little interest to all but a few. I intend to pull out some of my old stuff and post what I think are some great lines and/or couplets from the stuff I was writing as a teenager. My imagination was a lot more mature than my brain, and I don't even know how that happens. Maybe I was one of them child properties or something.

People that don't drive the speed limit seem to hold it against me that I do. I was going to send a card, but the finger was quicker.

Honestly....today I got nothin'. And bunches of it. So I'm fixin' to leave here and go check YOUR blog. It's what I do, because like my tag line says, Ramblin' Ed cares about YOU.

My peeps, Out
Ramblin' Ed

Ramblin' Ed