Snapshot. I’m sitting on my bed in my pajamas, my laptop on my dask chair. The desk itself is covered with piles of paper and …things. Outside it’s warm and sunny, and the mid-afternoon heat is always a sleepy time, but I’m not letting myself sleep during business hours. I’m waiting for my dad to get off the phone line so I can call back that travel agent.

Explanation. Despite appearances, I’m only wearing pajamas because I put them back on. I got up at 7, and at 9 left to go to the gym, look for work and check the mail. The outfitting store said the guy in charge of hiring was gone for the week, and they were really looking for someone who could work year round, but, still, maybe… Yeah, I’ll kiss that one goodbye. I drove by the Klondike Bar & Restaraunt, which advertised in the paper “Bartender, Waitstaff, Starting at $10.75 and $9.50 + good tips. No exp. nec, will train. College students welcome to apply.” I drove right by the first time because the establishment, although downtown, was a long shack, painted pink, and looked like the sort of place which rents by the hour. Despite the lure of high wages, my initial reaction was, sketch! No way am I going there! So I kept going to a thrift store down the street and browsed there for a while, taking sidelong glances at the thrift employees, wondering if it would be worth working there, and thinking about sketchy pink Klondike Inn. Some of the people working at the thrift shop look like they got old and their relatives donated them. Last summer when I went in there, though, there were a couple of young punks working the registers, with bleached hair and a lot of piercings, and it looked fun. This time around I only saw one punk girl, and three or four used up looking older women. And there’s no ‘accepting applications’ sign in the window.

After a bit I convinced myself to go back to the Klondike Inn, because, after all, it couldn’t possible serve worse people than I worked with at the cannery. Actually, their office really resembled the cannery office. And the young woman behind the desk turned out to have come to the US 14 years ago, from the Ukraine. She was listening to suspisciously Russian music, which was my clue. She photocopied me an application and wished me luck.

My next stop was the hq of the company that owns the Ester Gold Camp, among other tourist traps. They told me they sent all applications to the management at the Gold Camp, and therefore knew nothing. So I drove out to Ester, where the manager was taking a day off, although she was there, and would not talk to me. But they told me to come back tomorrow.

After that, I even remembered to get the mail.