Day 50 Cedar Rapids Iowa song: Tuesdays Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd

This morning I accidently let it slip that it was my birthday the night before. Loretta (my host) made me a huge breakfast and asked me what kind of cake I like.

I found that I ran out of my massive stack of resumes. I don't know how to look at that. I gave out all those resume's and I got no jobs, or I have been hard at work. I guess for sanities sake, I will take the optimistic route. But I had to spend a good portion of the day making more resumes and more air-checks. When I got done, I still had plenty of time to get to all of the stations in town. The news station had me sit in the lobby for an hour as I waited for the news director. She came out and said, "Wow, you are really a brave man. I hope your documenting this. I'll tell ya, its the economy is why we can't hire right now. But I promise to take a look at your resume and tell you what I think if I'm interested. But I'll tell you, I have a stack of 300 of these. Good luck, and don't give up, you'll find something."

I have heard those words lots scattered throughout this journey. But thats ok, I don't let it get me down. Now I know for sure that at least she will take a look at my stuff and turn me down because I suck and not because I fell in line with all of the others.

I went to many of the radio stations in town. The biggest one in town had only two Program Directors with about five stations. And both of them were busy being on air when I arrived. That is not a good sign for this town, these were the biggest stations. I decided thats ok, I will leave my stuff anyway. Won't give up, won't give up, won't give up.

When I got back to Loretta and Garth's home, there was a cake baked for me and a present. They left me with a card with 40 dollars in it. I was speechless. I really don't know how to say thankyou to such generocity. I know I need it though. I can't survive without it. They also gave me an Iowa University shirt. Its pretty cool. Now I have a shirt from the Iowa area.

Later on I was set up on a blind date. Luckily for me, she was beautiful. Her name is Mellissa and she works in healthcare for people in Africa. She does a lot of traveling. She is older than me, and she spent a great deal of her life serving others, this is how she found her chi. She is perhaps the most spirtually grounded person I had ever met. We had some pie and spoke of how one can know where you are supposed to be. She had no problem completely opening up and sharing her perspective on the Gospel and telling me all that she feels. She seemed like she has been around forever with how much she knew about life. I envied her perspective and connection to the higher sphere. We spoke on what it is that makes people know where home is. Of course, I couldn't have the answer in one night. But hearing it from someone as intelligent as her, definately helps put things in perspective and gets me to closer to my goal.

scripture: 2nd Nephi 31:20