Bright eyed and bushy tailed...

Well, it had to happen. I couldn’t stay unemployed forever. I’ve got bills to pay.

I’ve talked about the job market it in posts over the past couple of months and every week brings worse news. 533,000 jobs lost in the US in November. One week – one week – in December saw over 586,000 first-time unemployment insurance claims.

Ye gads. The unemployment rate in November was something like 6.7% and that number doesn’t include “forced” part-timers and other “edge dwellers.”

Make no mistake; there are jobs out there to be had. Not nearly as many as there usually are but companies are still hiring. But the number of applicants – seekers – is just insane. Competition is fierce and it's a buyer’s – that is, employer’s – market.

So I am grateful to have received an offer and happy to accept it. All in all, it appears that we’ll be able to weather this economic shit-storm without major damage. The house is safe and we've got health insurance so we can hold catastrophe at bay!

But I do feel like we were right by the edge there. I mean, disarray and chaos were right there with us for a little bit. The storm surge came right up to the back porch before it receded.

And tomorrow morning we unleash the new routine. Earlier wake-up for everyone. No more leisurely morning breakfasts with Littlefoil and the paper. Straight out the door to day care and then straight into the mine. Oh those home-office days are over!

So, things will change. And the most predictable change will be less time for blogging.

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OK. Flash forward about 20 I hours. I wrote that last night. And the funny thing is, Jillfoil read a draft and astutely noted how nice it would be if I were lamenting less family time just as much as less blogging time. A valid observation. I’ve got to work on that.

But the bottom line point of all this is that my ROP is probably going to go down. (What? “Rate of Post.” Duh.)
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I’ve had the goal of dropping a post about every other day. In other words, at least 15 posts over the course of a 30 day month. I was usually comfortably above that line but those days may be over.

But I’m going to do my best.

One last entirely un-related thought. ..If the people who say that the current economic crisis is the worst since The Depression are right, do you think that living through this will mark our generations in a kind of indelible kind of way?

Like when people tell stories about relatives who lived through The Depression and how it changed their character in fundamental ways.

I wonder if, 30 years from now our grandkids will be telling stories about us and joking about how our austerity and thrift came from being in the generation that survived the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008-09?

You know what the craziest part of that thought is? That our generation will become known as austere and thrifty. Not bloody likely!

Oh my god. Going back to work tomorrow. Just a little scattered...