Job Hunt Begins

For the obvious affordability of being able to go out and still get drunk, on Wednesday nights such as these, at least when having some money to spend, I usually go down to Chippewa St. to La Luna for their $5 cover charge to drink at their open bar from 11-1am. Since the bartenders are amongst the best I’ve encountered, and on this night swamped with work, I usually walk out having spent around $10 total after tips. Win, win? As far as I can see it (which isn’t always so far by 1:00).

However, I’ve come to the point now, financially, that I pretty much cannot afford to go out, even for practically free booze, and find myself home instead tonight. When faced with the predicament of not working but not being able to go out, or working but being able to go out, I’m sure a man testing a theory of not working would stand by his guns and be resigned to not go out.

But let the record show—and I can’t stress this enough—I am no man. (And if all goes accordingly to plan I never will be.) Obviously I would prefer to be able to drink and not work but sometime ago, not knowing precisely how long, it was decided—collectively?—that we should not enjoy ourselves all that much and should instead spend our precious time working. For what I don’t know, but it is inarguable. So instead, I’m now left living with the compromise that I would rather work and drink than not drink at all.

(I could still be drinking but it is my desire for both beer and home that separates me from being a bum—and that may be all, which I am fine with.)

And so, foreseeing this forthcoming event, I began the all too depressing idea of searching for a job today. I did it quickly on my first day, like ripping off a band-aid, and hope something will come of it soon and simply end the search as quickly as possible. At this point, I see no difference between one job or the other no matter what the pay or what the job—they are all simply jobs. I will almost guarantee that I will take the first possible job that comes my way (though, it will be interesting to see just how much stubborn pride I harbor that might effect just how much I truly believe that).

To forget that I was even out looking for a job today though, I immediately took up my housemate Daren’s offer to go on a bike ride right after I got home. He too just moved back to Buffalo after a three year hiatus under the same circumstances as me: he just wanted to come back because he missed the feeling of it, saved some money to do so, and will also possibly be looking for a job soon enough (though another friend, Todd, might have lined him up for one already—one I was more than willing to concede to Daren for the simple reason that it was full-time).

Armed with similar enthusiasm to see the city again anew, we road down to the water with no particular end in mind and cameras in hand. For a city that rightfully dreams constantly of a more developed waterfront, I have been surprised to find just what there already is in the way of access to the Niagara River and Lake Erie. In the last two weeks alone I’ve found bike paths going onto Squaw Island at two different locations, and the bike path that goes under the Peace Bridge, down along the lakefront through LaSalle Park, all the way to HSBC Arena.

There are always things to do and places to do them. It’s only a mindset. Just as much as people are willing to believe that the only way to move back to Buffalo is by having a good job lined up, if people are willing to believe that there is nothing to entertain them at all on the waterfront, they will not even bother to test otherwise and accept this as a truth. But it doesn’t always take a proverbial Columbus to prove the world isn’t flat. For the exceptions who have personally gone down to the Squaw Island and LaSalle Park bike paths they have found one of the many pointlessly unknown reserves of the city that I can now proudly say I know of too.

Along these paths we stopped several times to take pictures. Both Seinfeld fans, Daren and I, we also realized that we now have an area where we can go down and contemplate a possible engagement and even began thinking of how we could recreate those moments from the show, even using the seagulls down by the water.

From the viewpoint in LaSalle Park we got a good look at the new windmills—how dare they build those on land that has historically been vacant and useless: it’s historical land!—that were recently put up and decided to try to bike our way down there. But, not knowing that the Sky Way—we can’t knock that down, it’s a historical eyesore; a part of our history!—is the only way over both the Buffalo River and the City Ship Canal, thus cutting us off from the shoreline temporarily, we rode around a little, got to take in the work along the excavated parts of the Erie Canal—how dare they excavate historically unexcavated lands!—and then decided upon just riding back up through downtown.

We probably spent another half an hour riding around downtown taking a few more pictures including a really cool alley view of the back of a building and its old fire escapes near Washington and Lafayette Square that Daren found while [ticketable action deleted] at Thursday in the Square last week.

All told we road around about two hours. We were able to take in and appreciate a number of places and views that we hadn’t bothered to find before and swore we would upon our return. And, perhaps more importantly, I realized that, as we sat on our front porch to cool off on a much more endurable summer evening, I even forgot about the impending doom of the job hunt.

The medicinal powers of a body in motion.

As for next time, we plan on riding all the way out to see the new windmills up close.