My interview for corporate communications specialist position at nearby (25 minutes) hospital is today. It's a contract job. I need to find out how long it will last. The agency behind this job only offers health insurance after you've worked 3 months. I may not work there long enough to qualify, and then x number of months would have passed and I'd have little time left to find a job that offered health insurance before the COBRA ends. This could possibly force me to buy from ACA at higher monthly premiums.

The 2nd interview is set for this Tuesday. Also a contract job of unknown duration. It pays a little better but the commute would be about 45 minutes, and if you know anything about me, you know that PatientSaver hates long commutes.

The big advantage here, though, is that I can get on the agency's health insurance plan immediately. I don't have to wait. So I'd work for as long as the contract lasted and when and if the job ended, I could keep the health insurance. It would "reset the clock" on the 18 months of COBRA health insurance you normally get. Right now, my COBRA runs out in January. I'm betting that even paying the higher COBRA rate for premiums would be cheaper than the ACA.

I plan to call both agencies to get more details about costs of their health plans to see if that is indeed the case. I would just rather steer clear of ACA if at all possible as Trump/Republicans could still mess with it, if not dismantle it.

So, right now, knowing next to nothing about either job, my preference is the hospital job because I find healthcare interesting and it's a much shorter drive. But, for reasons stated above, I may have to take the other job. Plus, I'm not sure I'm crazy about working for an agency. My experience: they tend to flog their employees...more late nights...the client is king. Multiple versions of everything you write. Maybe they'd permit some work at home though.

The drive to hospital would be easier, all highway. The drive to the other job would be partly back roads (dicey in winter), partly on a very congested 2 lane highway.

UPDATE: Interview was very easy with a very nice man but he seemed very uncertain about how the job would be structured or whether it would be contract or perm. I came away from it still knowing very little about what exactly I'd be doing, but right now i know they have a staff of 20 spread among 3 different area hospitals and together they handle media relations and marketing work. He let me do most of the talking and I tried to hit all the highlights and walked him thru my hefty portfolio.

The drive there was easy enough but the whole area where the hospital is, on the edge of downtown, is very congested and parking is tight. I had to park in visitors garage. On the way home, unfortunately, with no signage for the interstate, I set off in the wrong direction, directly into downtown, had to circle the block again and go in the direction I came, still didn't see signage and there was massive roadwork going on to boot so in desperation, I decided to take 84-East even though I wanted to go west. I planned to turn around at the next exit but that exit too was all messed up. Finally, about 40 minutes later, I managed to turn around and get back on 84 west.

There were just as many labyrinthine detours INSIDE the hospital as there were outside. I parked on the 3rd level, walked across a "bridge," took an elevator down to the lobby, then took another elevator up to the 2nd floor.

I sent off my thank you note and had a conversation with the other recruiter about the next interview on Tuesday. This next job is with a small agency specializing in creating instructional materials for the bio-pharmaceutical field. They need an editor. I'm amazed I'm even getting in there for an interview as i don't have a life sciences background, but the recruiter/my friend really sold me and my ability to research and learn things quickly and become an SME quickly.

Yesterday I managed to dig up the last of my remaining sedges. They look very attractive, very much like a clumping form of spider plant (without the babies), but they spread and spread and take over and then don't look as tidy, and they are a real pain to dig out.