Oh, for the balls of Fate in a nutcracker …

And so it is that I am once again unemployed … the rollercoaster of life has plummeted again, after leaving me on a seemingly endless perch of uncertainty.

The single hinging factor in the equation of whether or not I would be moving to Parksville to accept the position of 2nd-In-Command from CJ and RJ has been, since day one, whether or not I could find a place to live. To try and tackle this problem, I started with the continual hunting of the classifieds, to which those who had places were either a) hornball guys wanting an attractive girl to gawk at and not wanting a testosterone challenge, or b) women who wanted the perceived neatness and security of having another woman living in their home … in short, neither of these options suit a male renter, regardless of how un-stereotypical that male might be.

Follow that up with contact to Malaspina’s sattelite campus, hoping to obtain a list of people with places available for rent. One would expect that, like most educational facilities, they would be able to provide at least a short listing of options … and one would guess wrong. Because most of their students already live in the area, they don’t keep a list.

The Chamber of Commerce provided a small potion of assistance, offering up a listing of 5 apartment complexes. More phone calls … two of them didn’t even have the decency to return my calls following the messages I’d left, a third said not to waste my time, as they were full. The last two were able to book appointments … a glimmer of hope …

Booking a trip to spend a week visiting an old friend who lives in Richmond (whom I will dub "Special K", from a funny incident from Basic Musicanship), we planned a day trip to Parksville to meet my appointments, and for a couple errands she had to run … and the glimmer of hope died soon after. The first appointment presented an apartment which was far from suitable to live in–bitchy landlady, a potentially damaged wax seal on the toilet which could amount to a $500 repair and time without a bathroom, and a dead air smell that stunk like the smell of the floors in Enforcer’s recently repaired apartment: a smell stemming from unfinished floorboards, rotting beneath the carpet.

The second appointment seemed better on the surface, until she nicely sprung on me that there was an application to be filled out, complete with reference and credit check … I’d expected the reference check, but a check of my decimated credit file too? Would’ve been nice to have known about that in advance! Anyway, I took the application and got the fax number to fax it to her the next day … only to find that the attempt at the fax only resulted in a voicemail, which in similar fashion to the classified advertisers, warranted absolutely no effort to return my call. $6.95 and an expresspost later, the application was mailed … and even with that, email, phone, and address included, STILL no contact!

After a week of being back from Vancouver, my gut twisted in an emotional knot and my brain turned to mush from the stress, I had no choice but to call CJ and give him the disappointing news. This was probably the most difficult business-related phone call I have ever had to make, because despite my best efforts to keep personal and professional matters separate, CJ and RJ are my friends, and telling cJ that I had to decline the position left me feeling like I’d been kicked in the gut. I can only imagine now what the feeling will be like to package up my old uniform and send it to CJ.

*sigh*

At least, of all of it, the trip to see Special K was good. I’d forgotten somehow what it was like to have a musical colleague in my proximity to discuss the arts with, and the combination of musical mentality and seeing a friend I’d not seen since 2000 turned the week into a much-needed vacation (which I hadn’t had in over 3 years), even if it was a business-focus trip. Perhaps the best part came from a discussion with a gentleman from her old church (whom I will dub Kreed) … Kreed happens to be a member of the Faculty of Language Education at UBC, and feels that with the current shortage of teachers in the province, my certification in Basic Musicianship and partial bachelor degree, and the lack of a music teacher at my local High School, an argument might be made for me to be granted a Letter of Permission from the BC Ministry of Education in order to allow me to teach music locally … something I must research (and already have)

Guess all that’s left to do is take a deep breath, hold on tight, and see what Fate has in store … and, of course, find that nutcracker