Fun Jobs!

It's a hell of a long shot, but I'm trying to get a mental-health sabbatical to go work for the Mouse. I want to burn all my available vacation (55 days, I think?) to go be Cruise Staff on the Disney Magic. The Cruise Staff are the crazy, loud people who jump around and yell and lead the deck parties, run the game shows, lead on-ship activities, call bingo, and in general make sure that everyone on board is having fun and has plenty of cool stuff to do. This job would be sooo much fun and be such a great break from 15+ years of computing.

So many things have to happen just so for me to actually pull this off. I started with my dear darling Susie and Bonnie, who consented for me to go off and do this wild hare idea. Then I went to SixthStar entertainment, the folks who do hiring and staffing for DCL. A brief email exchange taught me that this *was* possible, but the position I wanted was only available as a 4-month contract. Duke has limits on how much vacation one can take off in a year, so I'd have to get the 4 months split across a new-year boundary, which means Thanksgiving, Christmas, Anniversary, New Years and my Birthday would all be spent on-ship, away from my family. I talked to my director about it (he's a Brit and exceptionally cool, and damn smart as well), and he didn't say no. His words were that there were a lot of details (ie. all the HR stuff) to work out with my direct manager to make it happen.

So, although it's not a done deal, it's made it much, much further than I ever thought it would. I'll keep pushing, and talking to people, and see if I can make this happen.

-B