I had a busy day yesterday.

My interview at CBA seemed to go really well. They actually went ahead with the second phase of the interview process, which involved some testing, both a SAT-like written test and a computer aptitude test. For the computer test, I had to answer five questions by finding the answers in the CBA website (most of them I already knew the answers to because I know CBA). The second part of the test was fiddling with an Excel spreadsheet and then extrapolating the data into a PowerPoint slide presentation with graphs and such. Fortunately, I had given myself a crash course in Excel the day before, because I’ve never really used the program before (at least as it is intended). But I REALLY haven’t used PowerPoint before. So I spent most of the 45 allotted minutes figuring out how to make slides and import my shiny pretty Excel graphs. I managed to finish the assigned task in time, but the result wasn’t very glamorous. I felt extremely proud of myself for making two programs I have no experience with do what I wanted. But my slide show wasn’t at all creative, and the position is for the Communications and Marketing Department. I thought about telling the HR people about my triumph over ignorance, but since I’m supposed to have Microsoft Office down pat for the position, I decided against it.

From there I went to Monument’, where Michele and Duncan hired me to do busy work for them so they can focus on actually making money. “What is the going wage for this kind of work?” Michele asked.

“For new-hire administrative stuff, 8 to 9 dollars an hour.”

“Let’s make it 10.”

Duncan said, “That’s a steal!”

I solved several problems for Michele in the first hour or so, and then went about gleaning certain contact information from the notes she had taken and saved each day. I’ll probably continue that today… after I figure out how to make the laptop talk to the desktop through the wireless network.

Berck came over after he finished working, and he and Michele and I loaded up a wagon with buckets and raided the apple tree on Brown’s Place. I climbed the tree and shook branches, while the apples fell on Berck and Michele as they picked them up.

But now I must go back to work.

Work! I have some work!