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livingdebNeighborhood Association Member
Today I became a paying member of my neighborhood association for the first time. I have mixed feelings about this, but now I am supporting the newsletter, which I love.
I also found out that some of the association's money is going to neighborhood charities. Extrapolating from the Treasurer's report for the last two months (probably unsafe), about half the funds were spent on the newsletter and the other half were spent on donations. I looked up what those were:
* NE Caregivers - "a coalition of congregations and community groups whose mission is to help seniors to live independently" - it's oxymoronic and religious, but sounds basically helpful.
* Care Communities - provides "practical and compassionate support to those living with AIDS" - also religious, but hey, religious people who don't think people with AIDS are going to hell sound good to me.
* Memorial United Methodist Church - the church where the meetings are held
* Messiah Food Pantry - this one's Lutheran and serves 20-30 families each week. I learned from researching this that they purchase food from the Capitol Area Food Bank. Weird, I would have thought it would be free. I suppose it's at least cheap?
* the neighborhood community garden (with apparently no religious affiliations!)
Now that we are members, in six months, we will be qualified to vote on any city initiatives which are passed separately for each neighborhood.
Jury Duty
Today I got my third summons for jury duty, but this is the first time that we have been able to answer the summons online rather than in person. And this may be the first time I actually serve. (The first time I was an alternate, and they never needed to call any alternates. The second time, the issue was settled out of court before it was time to select jurors.)
Interviewing
Yesterday I did my first (and second) job interview as an interviewer. A co-worker and I did the interviews together. I was worried that we hadn't had enough time to prepare, but I think the interviews went well.
We each thought up questions and improved each other's questions. Then we broke them into three sections: introductory questions, questions on things were looking for, and conclusion questions. We picked a time limit for each section so we wouldn't leave too little time for the later section(s). Within each section we ordered the questions by priority so that we could list all our questions, but if we ran out of time we would not have missed asking the most important questions. For some questions where it was hard to get at what we were trying to figure out, we wrote back-up questions in case the answer wasn't useful enough. We tagged each question with who was to ask it.
We also sat right next to each other on one side of the table with the candidate on the other side so the candidate would not have to turn his/her head from side to side like at a tennis match. And we faced ourselves toward the clock so we could keep track of the time more discretely than by looking at our watches.
My co-worker would add follow-up information based on the candidate's answers, and I started doing that too. This was especially the case when an answer showed that the candidate thought the job was something other than what it really was. Instead of sitting there thinking that obviously this candidate doesn't want our job, we would clear them up and ask what they thought about that.
As it turned out, we had plenty of time for all the questions. Things went very smoothly with all three of us interacting smoothly. I feel like I did get some idea of what the person might be like (though I have no hint on whether they are lying or deluded about their abilities).
Actually, I might have some clue. For both candidates I was able to notice something they weren't comfortable with by the way they suddenly got a little more tongue-tied. For example one person clearly would have had trouble with traveling when she thought it might be required every month. But once she got us to clarify that it was once a year, that was obviously no problem. So that made me feel a little less like I might be completely, utterly gullible.
Today I became a paying member of my neighborhood association for the first time. I have mixed feelings about this, but now I am supporting the newsletter, which I love.
I also found out that some of the association's money is going to neighborhood charities. Extrapolating from the Treasurer's report for the last two months (probably unsafe), about half the funds were spent on the newsletter and the other half were spent on donations. I looked up what those were:
* NE Caregivers - "a coalition of congregations and community groups whose mission is to help seniors to live independently" - it's oxymoronic and religious, but sounds basically helpful.
* Care Communities - provides "practical and compassionate support to those living with AIDS" - also religious, but hey, religious people who don't think people with AIDS are going to hell sound good to me.
* Memorial United Methodist Church - the church where the meetings are held
* Messiah Food Pantry - this one's Lutheran and serves 20-30 families each week. I learned from researching this that they purchase food from the Capitol Area Food Bank. Weird, I would have thought it would be free. I suppose it's at least cheap?
* the neighborhood community garden (with apparently no religious affiliations!)
Now that we are members, in six months, we will be qualified to vote on any city initiatives which are passed separately for each neighborhood.
Jury Duty
Today I got my third summons for jury duty, but this is the first time that we have been able to answer the summons online rather than in person. And this may be the first time I actually serve. (The first time I was an alternate, and they never needed to call any alternates. The second time, the issue was settled out of court before it was time to select jurors.)
Interviewing
Yesterday I did my first (and second) job interview as an interviewer. A co-worker and I did the interviews together. I was worried that we hadn't had enough time to prepare, but I think the interviews went well.
We each thought up questions and improved each other's questions. Then we broke them into three sections: introductory questions, questions on things were looking for, and conclusion questions. We picked a time limit for each section so we wouldn't leave too little time for the later section(s). Within each section we ordered the questions by priority so that we could list all our questions, but if we ran out of time we would not have missed asking the most important questions. For some questions where it was hard to get at what we were trying to figure out, we wrote back-up questions in case the answer wasn't useful enough. We tagged each question with who was to ask it.
We also sat right next to each other on one side of the table with the candidate on the other side so the candidate would not have to turn his/her head from side to side like at a tennis match. And we faced ourselves toward the clock so we could keep track of the time more discretely than by looking at our watches.
My co-worker would add follow-up information based on the candidate's answers, and I started doing that too. This was especially the case when an answer showed that the candidate thought the job was something other than what it really was. Instead of sitting there thinking that obviously this candidate doesn't want our job, we would clear them up and ask what they thought about that.
As it turned out, we had plenty of time for all the questions. Things went very smoothly with all three of us interacting smoothly. I feel like I did get some idea of what the person might be like (though I have no hint on whether they are lying or deluded about their abilities).
Actually, I might have some clue. For both candidates I was able to notice something they weren't comfortable with by the way they suddenly got a little more tongue-tied. For example one person clearly would have had trouble with traveling when she thought it might be required every month. But once she got us to clarify that it was once a year, that was obviously no problem. So that made me feel a little less like I might be completely, utterly gullible.