Sigh.

I really need to find a job soon. For the income certainly but also because I'm about to drive myself (and Zack I'm sure) absolutely crazy being stuck in the house with nothing to do day after day. I'm not good at sitting still. I'm not good at enjoying time off and relaxing when I know that I could or should be working. And I'm really, really not good at just doing nothing. I've cleaned the cottage to within an inch of it's life (a necessity, given what I already told you about the floors and the moisture in the air). I've applied what for feels like every job in the city that I'm even remotely qualified for...and several that I'm not qualified for at all. I drew the line at "Bikini Housekeeper" and "Lingerie Model" per Zack's request, but otherwise, my resume has been sent to pretty much every business in the city. I've gotten a library card and already read several books. These things are all fun I suppose, but they're not exactly paying the bills. The good news is, I have a job prospect that is looking pretty promising. I had a second interview on Friday with the CFO and Assistant VP of Finance at the Tulane Medical Center and they seemed pretty interested. I know I am! Supposedly there were lots of qualified applicants and its very competitive but I'm hoping that my background in Accounting and the MBA will make me a front runner. We'll see. I'll keep you posted but in the meantime, anyone who wants to say a little prayer for me and keep their fingers crossed that this works out, well, I'd sure appreciate it.

This is the first time since we've been in New Orleans that I've been home alone all day. As part of his law school orientation activities Zack is participating in a week-long volunteer project which means he's gone all day and I have the house to myself. It's kinda fun to get to watch what I want to watch on TV but I had gotten pretty used to him being around all the time so now I miss him too. The whole point of this blog post is that I wanted to tell you a little about his volunteer project. I don't know many details yet, but he's working with an organization (no, I don't know the name, sorry) that is trying to figure out how to get information to the city's very poorest citizens. There's something like a 40% illiteracy rate here, which means that a large percentage of the population is not only not utilizing government aid and free assistance programs that are available, but they don't even realize such things exist. These people have no phone, no TV and certainly no computers or Internet. These limitations, along with being unable to read or write has really created a very despondent demographic in this city. He said he really learned a LOT about New Orleans yesterday just from being in meetings with this group, and he shared some of it with me. I won't go into too many details yet because I don't know much at this point, but I'm hoping that by the time he finishes up this project he will have learned and shared with me a whole lot about some of the inner workings of the local government, the demographics of the city, etc. From what he was told yesterday a lot of the allegations of corruption here are true and the amount of underhanded wheeling and dealing that goes on is just outrageous.

Like I said, I don't know enough yet to get too into it but I hope to share some of what he learns with you all at some point. Just wanted to give you a heads up to be on the lookout for the low-down on NOLA at some point!