Nothing Much

It was actually warm enough for me to wear a skirt today. This was quite a momentous ocassion and it is supposed to be even warmer tomorrow. I didn't think Chicago weather would bother me much since I was used to cold, Missouri weather. What I didn't take into consideration is that while there are some bitterly cold Missouri days they don't last the whole season like it seems Chicago's bitterly cold days do. It's just one snow fall after another...

I sign up for almost every news alert under the sun at work because I put together a weekly e-newsletter and am always on the lookout for relevent news headlines. So today I received this headline in my inbox, "Jobs Report: It's Worse Than It Looks." The article goes on to say that the economy almost certainly lost more jobs in January than the 597,000 reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics due to the way they imput their data. Anyway, I find this mind-boggling and stressful. My church just started a Career Networking Group open to the public led by professional career counselors and human resources folks in an attempt to help with resumes, networking, etc. I love this idea. It's one example of a way that a church can be relevant and do something to serve the needs of the community. And in church yesterday we were asked, by show of hands, how many people have either recently lost their jobs or knew someone that had lost their jobs. The show of hands was truly frightening. (Side note: one hospital here is laying off several hundred and another hospital here is laying off at least 450 and eliminating several hundred more jobs through attrition.)

On my way to church yesterday my car died at every stoplight. And there are a LOT of stoplights between my house and church. Finally, I figured out that if I put my car in neutral I could prevent it from dying. On the way home, without using neutral, my car didn't die one single time. Now, I'm not a mechanic but I don't think this is normal. So my husband will be taking me to the train and picking me up each day until we get this fixed. I don't have the energy to think about it right now...in a few days - maybe.