Friday the 13th

Two things:

1) I am so mad for Sharon and Jason! It turns out that Dan stood them up for their engagement pictures yesterday. He had mentioned the day before that maybe they should reschedule because the forecast called for rain but Sharon and Jason had rearranged their work so they could go and wanted to go ahead with it. He never called back and he never showed up! Somehow I feel partially responsible since Dan was our photographer too. I don't know how that places blame on me, but I do feel guilty. I had warned Sharon about Dan's weirdness in the beginning but perhaps I should have been much more explicit? We had to reschedule with him a few times before we actually got our engagement pictures done, but it was mostly due to the weather for us and I didn't think it was something he "pulled" with other couples. He came through for us and gave us gorgeous pictures in the end. He was also a superstar at our wedding, keeping out of the way, making our guests feel at ease, and again providing amazing, magical pictures of the day. Now he's standing up my friends and falling through with his promises to get us the rest of our proofs in a reasonable time. We should have had our all our pictures 2 weeks after the wedding according to his contract. I'm glad we are witholding the last payment until we get the pics. VERY UNPROFESSIONAL! It's a catch-22... his talent is unmistakable, his prices really really reasonable... but having to deal with him and his apparent flakiness is not cool.

2) My interview today was a bit surprising. First off they wanted to clarify something with me - they had not noticed that I am currently on contract and the position I applied for is for a 1 year contract. There exists this policy at my company that does not allow anyone to work on contract for more than 18 consecutive months. Uh oh... red flag. I had to explain to them that I was aware of that policy. When I was extended for the project I am currently working on, we ran into that problem, and our way around it was to hire me on as an independent contractor. They seemed pretty sure that it's not a matter of the type of contractor I am, but that it's "total time at *insert my company here*" that is the determining factor. We went on with the interview anyway with the caveat that we need to have discussions with HR about this policy and whether or not I am eligible for the position in the first place. I think I did a pretty good job of answering the questions, but it seemed rushed as if they weren't really trying to interview me anymore. I was scheduled for an hour and I was done half an hour later. They didn't even give me a chance to ask any questions before they ushered me out. Very disappointing. What this means is that I am fully qualified for all these jobs I've been applying to internally, but that HR has been screening me out because of the contract thing. This one time that my application slipped through (possibly by accident), they thought I was a good enough candidate to interview. Bleh. So unfair. Doesn't previous experience at *insert my company here* count for NOTHING?

Ok. I'm stepping off the soap-box for now. I'm not going to let all this get me down. There's been enough of that lately.