One morning two weeks ago, I was walking the dog past the home that’s under construction in my neighborhood. As we approached, I watched a city inspector hop out of his truck, sign the inspection report in the front yard, and promptly hop back into his truck. He was gone before I reached the end of the yard.

Maybe the guy just has really keen vision. He may be the kind of guy who can spot construction problems from across the street in the predawn light. It sure seemed to me, though, that he had signed for something he hadn’t inspected.

Back in my Navy days we had a word (as the Navy often does) for that kind of behavior: gundecking. Part of my maintenance chores as a petty officer included inspecting the “fire bottles” (extinguishers). While it was tempting at times to just assume the damn thing would work when needed, I took the maintenance very seriously, knowing that the life it might save might one day have been my own.

As there’s nothing resembling a housing boom at the moment, I am left to wonder why this guy was in such a hurry to do his job. Or not do it, as the case may be.

Yesterday marked two months since I lost my job. How has it been? Basically, it’s sucked. I’m itching to work again and while I’ve gone on a few interviews I haven’t gotten any offers yet.

There are two more interviews set up for this week. If those don’t pan out, I think I will set up shop again for myself and hunt down some consulting work. If nothing else, this time will force me to become a better salesman.

I had a chat with my friend Kevin Sonney today, who blogged earlier this summer about the need to establish a routine when one loses a job:

One of the things that really messes with unemployed people is the lack of a routine. Take a standard office worker – they get up, get ready, go to work, go home, have dinner, do their own thing, sleep, later rinse, repeat.

And then we’re cut adrift, our patterns are broken, and it’s easy to unhinge or lose productivity. The advice given to freelancers – and this applies to the unemployed as well – is to establish a new routine, and stick to it, until it becomes a habit. And to make it productive, before we end up spending every day playing XBox in our underwear and never leaving the house.

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It was a day not filled with good news. It wasn’t a bad day, necessarily. Just not one that contained a job offer.

It’s funny. I’ve been working from home for a few years now and never really felt cabin fever until I was not working from home. I wanted desperately to have some assignment to be done today.

With no job to do, I dusted off a project I’ve been meaning to complete for some time now. It’s a Raleigh-themed web forum I’m hoping fills a gap I see in the online discussions around here. I’m still hammering out details so it’s no where near ready for public unveiling. Still, I’m enjoying working on it and it’s teaching me a lot.

I’m just ready to be out of this in-between state I’m in. Kelly’s working now and I’m not: it’s a total change in responsibilities. I have to play a bigger role around the house than I have before and still find time to job hunt. Then when I do get a job, the kids will be in an after-school program for the first time ever, which means less family time for all of us. At least at that point, though, we’ll be in a routine that will hopefully last us a while.

Maybe some luck will come my way. I feel I could use some right now.

I was in the Costco checkout line today when the older woman in front of me casually looks over my purchases.

“Is that Ménage à Trois?” she asks.

I gulped. What did she just ask me?

“The wine,” she said. “Is that Ménage à Trois?”

Ah, the wine! I turned the bottle around to show her the Chilean label.

For an instant there I thought she was hitting on me!

While the cool downtown Raleigh business chose another person for their IT opportunity things are going very well for me. I’ve got three pending phone/in-person interviews over the next few days and will probably add another one soon, too.

One thing I was told from one of the companies I’ve already spoken with is that there doesn’t seem to be many sales engineers in the Raleigh area. Maybe that accounts for the attention I’ve been getting.