21 September - 24 October 1999
Reno, NV
Fall has come to the Reno area almost on the date specified on the calendar. The one exception was the oaks here in the Truckee Meadows; they began dropping their acorns about two weeks before the official day. They have made up for it by tenaciously holding onto their green leaves until around the 18th when we had our first freezing night. I am of the opinion that fall is one of the nicest times of the year in Reno, the days are still not to cold and very clear. The sunrises and sunsets are like molten slag poured across the sky. The "wild" geese, that never migrate, retain a vestige of the migratory instincts by forming Vs of flight against that flaming sky as they seek feeding grounds or return to the river or lakes that they call home. The first folds in the earth that make up the Sierra Nevada are our visible mountains to the west and they have now become mottled with the yellows and rusts of changing leaves. The colors are softer and more blended than the stark, hard-edged, angular lines of the colors that covered my Rhodopes of Bulgaria. Perhaps it is the difference you would see in a painting by a Pointillist rather than a Cubist. However, neither appearing as brilliant as the colors offered by the maples of the Northeastern United States. The small patch of snow that continues to survive on Mt. Rose may be destined to last through the season. It made it through September, growing smaller each day it seemed, until it was gone on the morning of 6 October. But, it had disappeared under a light dusting of fresh snow and reappeared the following morning to continue its struggle. I am cheering for it everyday now, hoping that it can last into next year.
I also went back to work with the fall. I am now working at the Atlantis Resort Casino, another temporary assignment from Accountemps. The assignment was for an undetermined period but long enough for them to hire a new Accounts Receivable clerk to replace one that had quit. I did billings to wholesalers, travel agents that sell package trips to Reno and the Casino, for almost three weeks until that happened. The Finance Director, a new hire that preceded me by some two weeks, then decided to keep me on to help resolve an out-of-balance condition in the A/R supporting ledgers and the General Ledger. It seems that they changed systems in February and it was a mess that is only now starting to get straightened out. This will keep me busy for some time to come and when that is finished they have another mess in Fixed Assets. I also did a couple day projects involving the filing of Personal Property Tax forms that have not been submitted to the County since July 1995. So it seems that I have some steady work available to me. I like the job much more that I did at Intermountain Farm Credit. The management style is so much more relaxed even though they have a mess everything is not a crisis. At Farm Credit everything was always in an uproar plus I was doing telephone reception duties on top of the Accounts Payable and normal filing. At the Atlantis I have been told what they want done and left alone to do it. Farm Credit was also a micro-management shop; three people told me sometimes that something needed to be done (sometimes this was a "heads-up" about something that we needed to do that never did get done). Much better! However, I don't know if I could work full time or not. The owner is very hands on and has a reputation for being a hard guy to work for; I have seen only a little of that and heard some of the stories. The new Finance Director is the 5th in four years!
The other job possibility is still muddling along. I called the company in San Francisco again on 4 October and found that Dawn, the final decision-maker on hiring, had been out of town for almost two weeks and had not had a chance to get back to me with additional requests. It seems that the 3 Letters of Recommendation that I provided were all excellent but she needed to talk to a Supervisor that I had worked FOR. So I gave her the name of my Country Director in Bulgaria, who is now working in Washington and I did not really work FOR, plus two supervisors from Harrah's. I will wait her out but I am getting the feeling that the job is not there and she just doesn't want to answer yes or no at this time.