Posts by Jonah

Well, yesterday I informed Michele and Duncan that they might not have me around much longer. “Duncan,” said Michele, “can we afford to hire Joanna full time?”

“That’s what you can spend the afternoon figuring out,” Duncan told me. So I filled out an application for a workers comp insurance quote and called a paycheck service to ask them to give us a total number for what it would cost to hire a full time employee at $25,000 a year. This includes FICA, FUTA, unemployment insurance, the paycheck service–including direct deposit, withholding, and tax deposits. What I discovered is that it’s darn expensive to hire someone! And I thought the respective government hand were taking enough out of my own wallet already. I didn’t realize they raided my boss’ even more.

Today one of my duties was to drive down to the Division of Wildlife and fill out a roadkill form. On Saturday someone out near Baptist Road hit a doe and her fawn. They called the game warden, who gave them the Michele and Duncan’s number and told them to call. So they went into action. The fawn was already dead, but the doe had to be put down. Then they skinned and dressed the carcasses, wrapping them in sheets and hanging them from the porch ceiling. I can now say that I’ve tasted fawn… something I will probably never taste again.

So I got the roadkill paperwork, allowing the holder to legally possess a carcass. Which was a good thing, since I had the doe in my trunk. Then I drove up to Black Forest to a house with a meat processing operation in the basement. “That’s really big for an antelope!” said one of the white-coat-wearing butchers with a sandy handlebar mustache, pulling the carcass out of the trunk and hanging it up on a hook.

“Probably because it’s a mule deer,” I said. “It was roadkill.” I don’t think deer are in season yet.

“Had to drive through some fences and fields to hit it, did ya?” the butcher teased me. He unwrapped the sheet from the carcass. “I don’t see a bruise on it!”

“Well, she had to be put down,” I suggested, “so maybe her leg was broken.”

“From steppin’ in a bear trap?” he laughed.

Michele had told me that this operation had really good summer sausage for sale, so I bought a huge one marked ANTELOPE and brought it home to Berck tonight. We haven’t tasted it yet, waiting for it to thaw. I hear their elk summer sausage is the best, so maybe I’ll get some of it if I get sent back out to pick up the venison.

In other news, I finished entering all of the information from nine years of deposit slips, check stubs, and bank statements today. Then I started matching up ins and outs. More of that tomorrow.

Unless I get to go running more errands.

Michele has pointed out that if I work anywhere else, I won’t get my daily smoothie. (Wild-cherry peach is the best I’ve had so far.)

Actual Fact: Gabriel Duvall, associate US Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1835, served his last ten years deaf, so oral arguments left little impression. He apparently refused to leave the bench until what he considered a suitable successor would replace him.

I applied for a cool looking job at Compassion International recently. Michele wrote me an awesome letter of recommendation (she knows the big kahuna there). And I wrote a kick-ass story for the part of the application called “Statement of Faith.”

But I haven’t heard back from them. Apparently, they got lots of applicants.

Back when my family lived in Colorado Springs, my Sunday school teacher at the church we attended was a guy named Al. He always had an interesting lesson and truly employed the Socratic method. I think it’s been the only time in my life when I couldn’t wait to get out of bed on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we alternatively hyperactive and sullen teenagers started to drive him nuts, and he quit being de facto youth group leader to protect his sanity. Anyway, Al worked at Compassion. So I looked him up, see if I could get an edge on the inside.

Al doesn’t work there anymore. He’s started up his own consulting firm, helping organizations gather and enable volunteers. So I wrote him an e-mail and sent him a copy of my resume (because that’s what I do these days, send out as many random resumes as I can). He was excited to hear from me and told me he was passing my credentials on to a client of his.

Well, today his client gave me a call…the head of the fairly new volunteer wing of a major organization, to be exact. He is looking for someone to mind the organizational aspects of the program, freeing him up to do the fancy talking. It’s doing stuff that I would enjoy and that I’ve got experience with. It sounds perfect. He asked me what my minimum salary requirements were, and I told him $25,000/yr., and he said this position would pay 24-30, depending on experience (more money than I’ve ever made, to be sure). He’s a USAFA grad and thought it was cool my husband teaches people how to fly. He’s also got nieces and nephews who attended Wings Like Eagles. He told me their names, and I recognized them. Then he said that he was going over HR’s head to contact me, and we were going to have to pretend like this phone call never happened. The position would have to be posted inhouse for a week or so, then I would have to apply through the human resources department. He would call me back in a week to let me know what to do next.

So I’m very excited. Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s still very encouraging to get a call like that, from someone who’s never met me but seems really willing to hire me. I just have to tell Michele and Duncan my days with them might be numbered.

Speaking of which, Duncan handed me a company checkbook and a huge file of bank statements and deposit slips today. The earliest date on them is 1996. I started entering them into an Excel spreadsheet… because I know how to use Excel now!

But I may have to hurry.

Actual Fact: In 1936, Adolf Hitler declared Mickey Mouse to be an enemy of the state in Nazi Germany.

My mom and dad are in Singapore for three months. Dad is heading up the Integrity Media regional branch while they find someone to take over there.

Some interesting facts about Singapore…well, I thought so anyway:

Oral sex, public spitting, and failing to flush public toilets are all illegal, although bar-top dancing and bungee jumping are no longer. Importation of chewing gum used to be against the law, but the US insisted that Singapore end its ban on selling the substance in order to join in a free trade agreement. (Apparently, Wriggly has some really powerful lobbyists.) Sugar-free gum is now available…but only sold by dentists or pharmacists, who also have to record the buyers’ names. In all this time, there has never developed a black market for gum.

Singapore gets about half the water it needs from rainwater. The rest it imports from Malaysia.

Singapore used to be part of Malaysia, which kicked the island out in 1965, forcing it to become a sovereign nation.

Singapore is the second highest most densely populated country in the world, right behind Monaco.

Singapore has one of the highest per capita gross domestic products in the world and unemployment is at only around 3%. Yet 84% of the population live in public housing.

Serious offenses like murder and drug trafficking are punishable by hanging. Amnesty International claims that Singapore has hanged 400 people since 1991, “possibly the highest execution rate in the world.” But the government claims this figure is exaggerated. Still, Singapore enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Singapore is also the world’s biggest bunkering hub with 23.6 million tonnes of bunkers sold in 2004.

Can anyone tell me what the heck a bunker is?

I awoke this morning to the doorbell. Then some knocking. I wasn’t dressed, so I didn’t answer, but then the phone rang. It was our landlord informing me that our downstairs neighbor was complaining about our water heater leaking. He was out of town, so I had to wait around for the plumber to call.

Indeed, the water heater was running (it’s a very loud monster), which it doesn’t do unless someone’s just taken a shower, and Berck had been gone for hours. I figured out how to turn the water to it off, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn the gas off, so it just kept heating what water was left in there, putting it under greater pressure and causing it to leak some more. I put a bunch of bowls underneath to try to catch the drips. Then every so often I opened the release valve at the bottom of the tank and emptied some of the contents into a pitcher. For a 40 gallon tank, I wasn’t about to make 40 trips to the toilet, but I kept it from leaking more until the plumber came.

The plumber turned off the gas, so the thing finally stopped leaking. But he had to go buy a hose to empty the old water heater and get a new one to replace it. He’s back now installing the new one.

In the meantime, I’ve been applying for some jobs. I’ll go to work as soon as the plumber is gone. He’s currently soldering some copper pipe with a blowtorch.