[updated with new job details]
typing fast because Advil PM says when it’s sleepytime around here

I hurt all over from being on the move 12 hours non-stop yesterday.

Even my hair hurts. I had to provide a urine and hair sample to the drug screening company. I really thought they were gonna pull out a single strand of hair (do they not watch Forensic Files?), but they cut an inch and a half from the top-back of my head! I was still in shock while returning my recruiter’s phone call about the details.

Then my recruiter told me I’d have to take the tests again because of a communication error—the lab is no longer under contract with the recruiting agency. I flat-out refused. Let a lab tech give another haircut? Not a chance. A few hours later, my recruiter told me they’d been working through this issue of my specimen sitting in a now-competitor to their new lab, but it looked like I won’t have to retest. Yay and pass the cocaine.

I’ll be one of three writers in the marketing communication department of an oil company. I’d told myself I was never going back to Big Oil after nearly 10 years of the world’s most boring writing projects and working with engineers, the world’s most boring people. Two things changed my mind: outliving my severance pay and the opportunity to work on the creative side of a company. I may never see another Excel spreadsheet again.

It’s a six months contract which I’m sure will be extended. The project the company is working on is a mammoth one. All I have to do now is prove my awesomeness.

My hours will be a perfectly reasonable 9am to 4pm, central standard time. This means I can get JA to the bus stop, drop off the baby at daycare, then get on the road for the 45-minute commute with no real complaint or worries. I start on next Tuesday.