Category: Personal

Sorry I’ve been silent these past couple of days. No new photos for cat blogging, and I don’t have much to say on what’s going on in Washington.

I’m also realizing, now that Scott and I are, for the first time in several years, both on a weekday work schedule, how much that impacts your ability to get things done. Instead of my being able to run errands on weekday off hours, leaving the weekends for more enjoyable things, we have to cram the to-do list into those hours when everyone else is trying to get through their to-do list as well. It’s a bit of an adjustment.

Yesterday, for example, we went up to San Francisco for an event at the SPCA. After that, we decided to run a couple of errands. For example, I have a low-value Best Buy gift card I wanted to use, and there’s one a block away from the SPCA. So we go, and have some fun wandering around and looking at various stuff. We made fun of the insanely expensive TVs, looked at some speaker systems for the iPod, and checked out the software and DVDs. Eventually I made a selection and we headed for the cash register. At which point we discovered 15 to 20 people were on line ahead of us.

“Forget it,” I said. “I’m not waiting on that line just for this.” And we left.

This isn’t meant to be some sage observation about business, because I’m not sure what the point here is. Is is that Best Buy is not doing so well and thus is trying to skimp on cashiers or that Best Buy is doing really well even in the post-Xmas slow times? I don’t have the data to come to a conclusion either way.

At any rate, the computer game I’ve been thinking about buying remained unbought, and we moved on to Costco.

So today was Day #4 at the internship. I’ve spent most of my time so far working solo, putting together a strategy document for marketing one aspect of the newest version of the product. I submitted the completed memo to my supervisor, and had a few hours of down time while I waited for him to read & respond to it.

Since I’m still new at the job, I didn’t really know what the protocol was — should I ask for more work, start working on a project I’d mentioned in the first paper, or wait for feedback on my first work product? My supervisor was in and out of meetings and I didn’t want to bother him. Unsure, I fell back on self-reliance. I did some research, read over some internal documents, and started jotting notes and ideas for other possible projects.

This worked for a couple of hours. But after lunch, I started to feel worried. The other intern, who started the day after I did, was working busily away on two different projects, talking to people, asking questions. I was sitting there, working by myself, and feeling a bit isolated. Dark thoughts descended. I started wondering whether maybe, despite what I’d been told when I was hired, they didn’t really plan on keeping both of us? Perhaps this first week was some sort of weeding out process to see which of us was the better hire and the other one would be quietly let go? Was my lack of new tasks some sort of signal? Had I blown it already? For two more hours, I alternated between paranoia and telling myself I was being an idiot.

These last 4 years have been pretty rough in a lot of ways, but I didn’t realize how deep the scars had gone until today. Once upon a time, I trusted what managers told me and would have welcomed a few hours of slack time. Now, I’m both more cynical and more insecure.

Finally, just as I was starting to think that maybe I ought to wash out my coffee mug (the one personal item I’ve brought to the office) and make sure it was clean, dry, and ready to go in case today really was my last day, an email from my supervisor popped into my mailbox, telling me what a great job I had done and would I present my ideas to the rest of the marketing staff in 30 minutes.

I had to read the e-mail twice before the relief set in.

Hopefully I won’t let my insecurities get the better of me next time.

– My office is exactly 33.5 miles from my home.

– Twinning’s “Vanilla Chai” tea tastes totally, completely gross.

– Cactus, on the other hand, isn’t bad. It reminds me of a green bean, only a little chewier and a bit more flavorful.

Today was the first day at my new internship, which is why nothing’s been posted here. I’m home and fed, and Bloglines tells me I have 132 unread posts waiting for me in my RSS feeder. I wonder if I’ll get through them all before I get too sleepy to finish?

I won’t be talking about the internship here much, if at all, but I will say in passing that anyone who says that switching from Windows to Mac is easy is kidding themselves. I have been given a G3 as my workstation and the lack of either a right-click or a scroll wheel on that horribly non-ergonomic joke of a Mac mouse is no fun at all.

So Scott and I had a quiet New Year’s at home. We cooked up a yummy dinner (grilled wild salmon and pasta with asparagus and a lemon cream sauce), watched “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and various add-ons from the DVD, and then flipped the TV on at midnight to watch a rebroadcast of the ball dropping in NYC.

At which point I got incredibly homesick, and started crying when Sinatra’s “New York, New York” came on. This morning I’m still sad. There’s something in the air that makes me wish I were tramping the streets of the West Village, heading off for brunch in a noisy diner, and then just out for a walk, maybe clutching a carton of coffee to keep my hands warm.

We only got home to NY once in 2005, and I think that has something to do with why I’m feeling so homesick today. I need a city fix.

It comes down to reality
And it