I am doing work for checks about twenty-five hours a week now. I was working at two phone-research places but I quit the non-medical one last week. Last week and whenever I want to go back I can play-test video games at this place called Volt for just over minimum wage. The pay is lousy but I literally played Halo 3 and Guitar Hero all day last time I went. I went to interview for an HIV-vaccine-study recruiter position (at Cabrini Tower on Boren and Madison, suite 1320) last week. I like the idea and I would volunteer for those guys even if they do not hire me. Tonight I am going to a lecture on the advances in HIV treatment in the past few years. Also I have done lots of focus groups.
I have had trouble getting a job related to chemistry, partly because the jobs sound really boring and partly because of competition with people who like boring jobs. I do not have a lot of drive to compete for a job that I do not want. I do not expect to be at the phone center much longer, but I am happy to get the experience. As it turns out, I did not have the proper technique to make people stay on the phone with me when I first went there, and now I am getting a lot of randomly called people to stay on the phone with me a half hour to talk about public health issues.
I got four pairs of free theatre tickets in a promotion recently. There is a free theatre week in Seattle, and last Sunday (two days ago) there was a queue at the Seattle Center to get first pick of tickets. I brought Lee with me there so we could both get tickets, but the give-away was horribly organized. Lee and I were there a half hour early, but when they opened the door to the sign up table other people rushed ahead of us. Lee was in bad shape and quite sick and had a cane. We would have brought his wheelchair, but it was not charged, and he really wanted to go. I went to the front of the line after he told me he wanted to go and I asked that he be allowed to go next. These two girls, not together, aged about 21 and 28, both got angry and said that he should have to wait. They looked like mall crawlers. The lady at the counter still helped Lee and now he and I can go see Sweeney Todd in Olympia, but still, it must be rough to be handicapped. I see this all the time, where Lee needs to go sit down or cannot participate in an event unless someone moves him out of the line or helps him out of turn, and people get angry at him for cutting in place. I try to be polite but Lee is shy about asking for himself. I can imagine other sick people who do not have a healthy friend with them and they simply cannot go to social events because people will not make simple accommodations for them.