Recession Liveblog!

Actual lunchtime conversation with a gray-haired co-worker whose name I still don't know:

Him: Good afternoon. Will this explode if I microwave it?
Me: No idea.
Him: It's made of metal.
Me: In that case, maybe you shouldn't microwave it.
[pause]
Him: Did you know that if you microwave pantyh0se, it catches fire? I read that somewhere.
Me: No, I didn't know that.
Him: So if your pantyh0se are wet for some reason, you shouldn't dry them off in the microwave.
Me: Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.


Wine country biking trip I didn't pay for


The afternoon after the final party


The first cold day of the season

I haven't been blogging much--I see I skipped the entire month of February--but oh, how busy I've been! The tragedy (yes, tragedy) of it is that I've been occupied with such truly bloggable material at work. But I've been too busy working, and I can't blog about work as long as I'm still here, anyway. And given the situation (Stable job + nasty recession + 3-strikes-I'm-out on the masters application process), I expect to remain here for a good long while.


Yes, I did fail for the third consecutive year to get into a grad program. Every year that goes by is another mark in favor of selling out. The older I get, the more I would be willing to trade for the ability to afford a certain standard of living. The less I want to be sharing my living space with people I met on Craigslist, perfectly lovely people they may be. The more I long for middle-class comforts like the ability to go on vacation, maybe once a year, on my own dime without bankrupting myself.

But how to sell out? Is anyone even buying these days? This schmancy degree has got to be worth something, hasn't it?

...
...

Or not. Well, I'm employed!


Christmas in Midwest (didn't pay for this either)

Meeting Notes

I suppose I am lucky that I have to attend only one meeting a week. As you can imagine though, I take each meeting very seriously. I always make sure to take detailed notes.







On the topic of work, it was evidently not enough that my boyfriend and I shared an apartment, a daily commute, a checking account, and a boss. So now, M. is moving into an office directly across the hall from me! It is a coincidence, but one that fits nicely with the general process of nauseating attached-at-the-hip-dom. Tune in for next episode, in which M. and I buy a tandem bike and matching outfits. Jeezy.

Food

Ramen. Ramen ramen ramen. RA.MEN. Ramen ramen ramen ramen ramen, ramen ramen ramen ramen.

I've been sitting in my office since 10am (late, yes) and I could eat the universe. But especially ramen.

P.S. My parents' house did not burn down. Maybe next time.

Sober Month Is Dead; Long Live Sober Month

My married flatmates are breaking the lease and moving away soon; apparently our after-midnight carryings-on are too crazy for them. I rather enjoy their company (childish tantrum aside), but so it goes. When we do find another flatmate, he or she will be my tenth in less than two years. I wonder, is this normal for city folk?

---

Sober Month died on May Day. I celebrated, appropriately enough, by drinking vodka.

On Tuesday, M. and I got home at 11pm. Fifteen minutes later, we flagged a cab to a DJ set/dance party in the rather creepy warehouse district where these things usually take place. Our cabbie complained about boorish, fratty baseball fans, and then, without any transition at all, regaled us with a story about being threatened at gunpoint by a couple of thugs downtown. Note to self: even if desperate, never work as a cab driver.

I have never been to a show at this particular venue without M. drinking too much whiskey and doing something completely ridiculous.

First, there was the time that he took off his shoe and handed it to the DJ, over the DJ table, for an autograph. After the show, he wrote his email address on a ten-dollar bill and gave it to the DJ, asking him to spin a party at our apartment. (By the way, the DJ in question is widely recognized as a joke.)

Then, there was the time that the stage was roped off but M. decided to dance on it anyway. When the DJ flipped out and an army of security guards swooped down on us, M. was so infuriated that he quit the dance floor and stood outside, chain-smoking and talking shit about the DJ. Later, M. spotted the DJ fleeing the venue and promptly rushed over to block his path. My first thought was: my God, a fist fight? I watched as the DJ--a small, effete man whom M. positively dwarfed--cringed with fright and summoned security. As it turned out, M. merely griped over the roped-off stage, but his body language looked mighty aggressive at the time.

This time, M. decided it was a good idea to lean into the ticket booth and swipe the venue's stamp pad on our way out the door. Apparently the whiskey told him to do it. We were in bed by 3am. Waking up was brutal.

---

I finished the project, but the project finished off my brain. Writing, even in a blog post, suddenly seems close to impossible.

Screw transitions. Here are some pictures of an America-themed barbecue that my soon-to-be-ex-flatmates arranged for the benefit of their French visitors.

A giant platter of freedom fries:


Burgers and beer-cooked sausages:


A very special hat:


Bad beer and good beer, none of which I touched as it was still Sober Month at the time:


This is not from the barbecue; it is a gratuitous picture of cats:

Birth/School/Work/Death

I have been on the "home stretch" of this cursed project for about a week now. When I'm truly done with it, I will print out every one of its cutesy, punny pages, light them on fire, and then dance upon their ashes.

It is therapeutic to express anger toward inanimate objects.

There's yet another show tonight, set to last far into the AM. Sober Month is over; God help me.

These Kids Will Need Prozac

They have me writing kids' stuff at work these days, and I'm just plain deplorable at it. I mean really, really bad. When left alone I tend toward long, complex sentences with too many clauses; I have to force myself in order to write otherwise. Having to write in a cutesy, punny manner does not come naturally to me at all, so everything I type comes out sounding stilted and utterly insincere.


And my mood's been dark, so most of the topics I can come up with are frightfully dreary. For instance--AIDS in Africa, mercury poisoning, the disappearance of girls in China, pollution in Mexico City, genocide, droughts, skin cancer, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, polio, Huntington's disease, the Great Depression. Some rather heavy stuff. The few topics that aren't dreary are probably just plain boring for any half-normal kid. What ten year old is interested in William Wilberforce or erosion mechanisms? Certainly no ten year old I would have wanted to be seen with at that age, and I was a total dork.

Since I'm slow at kid-writing I've had to work on it at home, too. Doubleplusuncool.


I promise to blog about work every day so that within a month no one reads this at all.

Epiphany of the Week

Evidently, I am being paid to work, not to screw around on the Internet.

I Live in Venezuela?

Photo 1, through a shop window in my neighborhood:


Photo two, from a BBC report on "Venezuela's informal economy," which I stumbled upon by chance the following day:


The last few days at work have been a banal hell of endless typing, staring at Excel documents until the contact lenses fuse to the eyeballs, shivering in an inexplicably air-conditioned room when the ambient air is damn well cold enough, explaining simple processes step-by-step to well-meaning but cripplingly unimaginitive middle management, slouching in a hard seat hour upon hour until the back aches, and a few of the other things that make office work so rapturously sweet that I wish I could keep doing it for ever and ever. I'm off to a good start---

Lawsuits and Good Luck

What a wonderful morning. After a late wedding-party night, I woke up unusually early to take the train for an 8:15 doctor's appointment. I waited for the train in record-low temperatures. I missed the appointment anyway. Then, I staggered to work dead-tired and spent the morning researching libel law.

Yes, libel law! That's how swimmingly the wedding party went last night. I sat across from a particularly awkward co-worker, and by the end of the night I was actually afraid of being sued (by somebody else--not the co-worker). I won't give any more details, lest they amount to libel--what doesn't?--but suffice to say, I am extraordinarily grateful for this state's 1-year statute of limitations.

Nonetheless, the idea that there are people out there who truly hate me and appear to desire my ruin is rather distressing.

Such things would drive me mad with anxiety if not for how lucky I have been otherwise. My job may not be terribly exciting, but it is stable, and although I once despised my lazy unwillingness to find another job, I now realize that staying here was probably the right choice. For if I get into graduate school, my boss has offered to take care of my tuition if I keep working part-time. I say: and spare myself a hundred thousand dollars in student loans? Hell, yes! It is an offer I can't refuse.

And our boss is paying for M. and I to go to Hawaii soon on a work-related retreat having to do with M.'s work, not mine. My work, it seems, will involve eating lunch and exploring the island.

My flatmates are perfect; my apartment is perfect.

M. and I get along better by the week, and meanwhile he is poised for spectacular academic success.

I am now taking bets over what species of killjoy will next spoil my good fortune. An unforeseen lawsuit? E-coli? A dreadful bicycle accident? An affair? A rare tumor? Or an "unknown unknown," as Mr. Rumsfeld would say?