I've got a new job. I accepted a position as a sales assistant for the condo seller.

So I'm celebrating my freedom from uselessness.

It's a pay cut from what I was making at the insurance company, but I get 3 and a half hours a day of my life back. The new job is only 15, maybe 20 minutes from my house, making me much more "green". So there.

And, of course, it's much less responsibility....

which I hope will translate into much less stress. I'll be working by myself 2 days a week. No problem there. Co-workers may be over rated. On the 3 days I'll have "supervision" - including both weekend days - it'll be the sales woman to whom I'll be reporting directly.

She seems like a normal person, though, of course, it's hard to tell in a job interview. Everybody seems normal until you get to know them. Hell, look at me. But, what I mean is, that she seems like the kind of person who wouldn't go nuts, screaming, hollaring, throwing things, because I didn't refill the candy dish. Anything else, I can probably handle. Also, she seems to have good communication skills, so she can probably tell me what she wants me to do. It's the people that expect you to guess or to "know" that I sometimes get into trouble with.

One thing I know up front: it's one of those jobs where I'll do a lot of the work and she'll get the credit. That's what being an "assistant" is all about. But all my concerns about numbers, sales goals, figures and productivity will be tangential - it's her butt on the line. Moreover, this woman is old enough and has been in sales long enough to have had plenty of worse assistants than I'll be. She seems mature enough to know a good thing when she gets it.

The condos themselves ought to be a pretty easy sell, though I have to say they're just as ugly as sin on the outside. But I'm always saying that you don't live on the outside of your house, and inside they are beautiful, spacious, well laid out, and have fabulous views. They're also well built and quiet, and not over priced for the market. I wouldn't mind having one myself, really. Of course, we could hardly fit the 800 square feet of The Hub's workshop in a condo, even if the neighbors would, somehow, tolerate the airplane-taking-off sound of the planer. But that's another story.

I haven't settled on a start date yet, but it'll be within the next two weeks.

The fun part will be helping people pick out their tile, granite, cabinets, etc. And I think the sales woman will let me do a lot of that since I have experience and I get the impression that working on that stuff gets on her nerves. Besides, at that point the sale will more or less be made and she'll be on to the next one.

So I'm looking forward to it. I hope I did the right thing.