Crack: it’s the only conceivable explanation

I don’t usually post about my crazy roommate, but she’s been acting stranger than usual lately, and I feel the need to address this publicly. Not with her, as that would take entirely too much effort and wouldn’t result in anything worth the effort I’d expend. And I’m moving out when the lease is up in August anyway (two months and two weeks, not that I’m counting or anything).

She’s engaged in lots of door slamming and really loud television watching lately. REALLY LOUD – like so loud that I can’t hear the TV in the living room while she’s watching the television in her bedroom with the door closed.

But this is just annoying and disrespectful. This weekend’s activities, however, crossed the line to the questionably unsafe.

On Saturday morning, roommate left the apartment carrying her purse and a paper grocery bag. She didn’t say goodbye or anything. I only knew she’d gone because I when I went to thank her for writing out her rent check, she was no longer home.

She still wasn’t home when I went to bed Saturday evening. Presuming that she’d gone to spend the day with family in San Jose, I locked the front door, kept the living room light on, and went to bed.

She still wasn’t home when I woke up to use the bathroom at 4:30, at which point I turned off the light that had now been on all night.

She still wasn’t home when I woke up at 9 am. Or after I came back from running some errands. Or after I got out of the shower and finished two loads of laundry.

At this point, I started investigating missing person’s reports. But having no contact information for her family (though I did eventually find her cell phone number) and knowing that I needed to wait 48 hours to file a report with the SFPD, there was little I could do.

She finally came home at 2 pm Sunday, walked in the door without even a hello, and slammed the door to her room. I didn’t see her again until late Sunday night.

She must be a crack whore. It’s the only conceivable explanation.

It's almost time to pop the champagne cork

So I was supposed to be official this morning; to get my start date and find out when new employee orientation starts. I made the call to get that information, only to talk to my soon-to-be boss, who said it was probably time to do the due dilligence of checking my references. Argh!!

I meant to email the contact info to him yesterday and ask if he wanted to do that, as references weren't a part of any of our previous conversations. But in the boredom here I forgot.

And now he's in a meeting all day and will call them all Thursday morning and then be in touch with me. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, but another day's delay is annoying. Then again, this search started 14 months ago, so I guess another day isn't too bad at all.

There's an offer on the table

And I'm so going to take it. I haven't said yes yet, because it seemed right to let the other place know that I'm removing myself from consideration there first, but I'm going to say yes tomorrow.

Not to worry, though. My crazy job adventures won't end here. The nation will be full of new job stories in a few weeks. Yay!!

Thank you for being a friend

The guy in the apartment below mine - late-30's, chainsmoker, and constant coffee drinker - is an interesting character. Friendly enough, but he really doesn't go out of his way to make friends with most of the neighbors. He often listens to the ABBA Gold CD, at top volume, in the middle of the day.

Now, a little ABBA can be great fun, but after I've heard Fernando one hundred times I'm ready to give it a rest. And that's somewhat muted, through the floor. Today, however, he was singing a different tune entirely. Well, his television was, anyway.

I was sitting in the living room flipping through the tv channels, and with nothing interesting to watch, turned off the tv and could hear the music coming from downstairs. Not ABBA, but the theme song to the Golden Girls. You know, the one with the line "And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say thank you for being a friend."

One of us needs to get out more.

The agony of success

I got home last night to a message from UCSF, offering me a job. Great, right?

Yes, except I've since interviewed for a position at Catholic Charities that I want way more than the UCSF job. But the department is going on vacation, and doesn't plan to make its decision for another week.

So I'm stalling on the UCSF guy while I wait for the CC woman to get back to me with more information on where I stand. That way, if I'm going to have a second interview at CC it's a totally legitimate reason to tell UCSF I need more time. But at the end of yesterday's interview she showed me around the office and introduced me to everyone, then invited me out for coffee. That's probably not the way she treated candidates she didn't want to hire.

I never thought I'd be in this situation. Stay tuned. I'm sure there's more to come.

OKLAHOMA!

I had the pleasure on Saturday night of attending the 8th grade production of Oklahoma! put on by the students at my former parish. I went because a friend had an extra ticket, and I figured it would be a riot.

I was totally right. The kids were awesome, and the girl cast as Ado Annie is actually the niece of a good friend, so I got to catch up with her family. And she completely stole the show.

In addition to having a very good time (and singing along to most of the songs), my outing spurred an epiphany: I'd been thinking a lot lately about leaving the Sunset when my lease is up, and while I definitely need to be someplace with better transportation, I really belong in the Sunset, and have decided to try to stay.

What brought this on, you may ask? Well, I entered the school gym and was immediately confronted with several friends and the parents of friends. I've accumulated an odd assortment of acquaintances in my time here, and many of them live in this neighborhood. And I felt a very strong sense of belonging on Saturday night, which is something that doesn't come very easily to me.

In the midst of all this, while greeting old friends and former choir-mates, a lightbulb went off. In all the moving around I've done and all the places I've lived, that little slice of San Francisco is home, and I want to stay in it. I'd just like to find someplace a little closer to San Francisco proper, and further away from Hawaii.

Happy birthday Lucinda!!

Because this is much better than getting all the wait staff at Chili's to sing to you off-key while wearing silly hats.

Good omens

I left the building at 2:15 to travel the mile or so to my interview. I got on MUNI, so as not to be windblown and sweating when I got to my destination. A train came almost right away, and I got on. I was a little nervous, but feeling much better than I had this morning.

I sat down in the available, forward-facing seat and turned on my music. It was then that I noticed the woman sitting next to me. She was probably in her eighties, with short, brown hair and sitting with her bag in her lap. In her hands were some beads, and I quickly realized that she was praying the rosary as we traveled.

I took this as a good sign, and said a little prayer myself as I got off the train and walked into the building.

I think the interview went well. I felt like I did a good job of presenting myself really well, and I sounded both intelligent and (apparently) amusing, as I made them laugh a few times.

And the guy who runs the department has a PhD in history.

I left the building feeling pretty good, and went back underground to go home. A two-car L train was approaching the station as I arrived. Everything today worked out well.

Dear Miss Manners

What is the appropriate etiquette when, in a public restroom (in this case in an office building) the stranger in an adjoining stall is very obviously quite ill? This happened to me recently, and I was uncertain what to do, and thought you’d be the best person to ask for advice.

I figured I had a few options:
1. Ignore her all together – which was both uncomfortable and under the circumstances impossible.
2. Ask if she needed any help and hope she said no.
3. Tell somebody else she was ill and hope that person would deal with it.

I chose option two, and asked if she was ok or needed anything. She didn’t respond. This restroom is used by several offices on the floor, so I didn’t even know where to go to find her co-workers.

What are your thoughts?

Nerves

I've always had a healthy dose of butterflies in my stomach before a performance or any time I had to speak publicly, but they had begun to diminish by the time I finished high school - probably because I spent lots of time performing and speaking in front of large groups. Often in Spanish, even, and there's nothing more scary than speaking before a class in a foreign language, so somewhere along the line I should thank Senora Brechtl and my AP Spanish class for that experience. But I digress.

The only times I ever really panicked were before the juried performances I had to do to keep my scholarship for violin lessons. Those were pretty brutal, and on two occasions actually caused tears. Lots of them. In retrospect, I understand that the nasty judges were actually out to get my violin teacher through his students, and their mean comments and lack of appreciation for Vivaldi had nothing to do with me, but those two juries have been hard to forget.

I spent my four years of college taking public speaking classes and lectoring at Mass at least once a month. And some other activities had me speaking in front of classes pretty regularly. Grad school was similar. I was always prepared and always a little tense for the first few minutes, but the nerves faded as my presentation or whatever got underway.

Fast forward to the last nine months. I have become nervous to the point of shaking when I have to sing, publicly, on my own. I already have butterflies in my stomach over an impending interview - in five hours, and I'm pretty sure I had a bad dream last night about the Coffeehouse performance I'm doing in a few weeks.

So the question becomes: what happened? Is this all just a really, really delayed reaction to the bad juries? Am I not remembering a particularly bad speech or presentation I gave. Was I heckled?

A few nerves before anything important is not only expected, but really helps me rise to the occasion. This however, is getting ridiculous!

What else is an in-box for???

My current employer provides standardized inbox trays for all their employees. They're kind of nice, actually. They're the black wire and mesh ones that are stackable. My inbox is actually a stack of two, with a blue post-it note above it that says "In," with an arrow pointing to the top box.

Yet everytime one of the people I work with wants to leave me something, he asks "Is this where things for you go?" or "Is this where things to file go?"

Um, what part of "In" is so confusing? Can I make the sign any more simple?

Or perhaps I'm missing something. Like the fact that this individual has so much crap in his inbox that you can't locate it under the mounds, so he leaves things in piles sprawled across the desk, and, yes, even the floor. Maybe he just doesn't recognize an inbox for what it is. Or recognize it at all.

Ode to the digitial age

I love the 21st century - digital music files, digital television, and now, digital music score downloads.

Brian and I needed the music for the piece we're performing at the Coffeehouse next month, and we've been kind of dragging our feet about getting our act together - though we will, but that's really beside the point.

While we were both considering learning it from the CD, our as-yet-unknown accompanist will definitely need the music, and it's available online, but we'd have to wait for it to be delivered. But wait, the octavo is also available as a digital download in PDF form. So, it was purchased, downloaded, and in my email inbox this morning, for me to print out really nicely on the color printer in my office.

Now we just have to learn it, and soon. Coffeehouse is in three weeks.

You have one new message

This is seriously the best phrase I’ve ever heard over the phone. I called my home number this morning to check my messages – as I do at about 11 am every day, just in case there’s a job prospect lingering on my answering machine.

This morning, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AGES, there was a message from somebody who wants to interview me.

I am so excited.

I called the guy back, and the position is an interesting one. It’s with UCSF, in the corporate and foundation relations office, doing some administrative stuff and a lot of writing. Now, we all know how I hate administrative duties, but there’s a great possibility inherent in this job, at least according to the boss. They’ve approved a few researcher/writer positions to start at the beginning of the 2007 fiscal year, and they want to hire somebody to transition into this position.

How cool is that?

Stay tuned, there’ll be more next week, after the interview.

Bored? Apparently I’m not the only one

The second annual office cookbook was distributed today, with much fanfare, knockoffs of movie posters touting its arrival, and the requisite batch of emails sent to all staff complementing the designer.

It’s truly an amazing piece of work. Each book - assembled in a small, white, three-ring binder, has a customized cover, and the art is awesome. It’s done on regular-sized paper, and is over 100 pages.

Most staff members submitted at least one recipe, and they’re all really well presented, and the accompanying text is witty and well thought out.

But the creator just told us he spent about four hours a day over the past three months working on it, and at least some of that time was while he was at work!

Apparently I’m not the only one with some time on my hands. At least I don’t run through the color cartridges in the printer. No wonder the toner was always low.

Slow brain demise, one cell at a time

I am getting seriously concerned about my lack of brain function in my current temporary job. I do very little all day, and spend most of my actually productive time - between one and three hours a day - completing the very hard tasks of copying and distributing mail. Except for the days I have to struggle to determine the most esthetically pleasing set up for the sandwiches served at lunch meetings, I have very little to do that takes any effort.

And I'm getting scared. At least at Wartnick I could talk to some pretty sharp people, which lessened the brain cell death. Here, nobody's very smart and the cubicles prevent consistent conversation. What if I wake up one morning and there are no brain cells left? What if I'm unable to make conversation, or understand even simple directions?

This concern makes me want to run quickly to the library, but I'm in a reading rut. Nothing on my three-page long book list interests me right now. Anybody out there have a good book recommendation? Or even a bad book recommendation. I'm getting desperate!

No room in the fridge

One of the perils of hosting a party is never being quite sure if you'll have enough food. Or if you're buying so much you'll have to have a second party to use everything. Our food on Saturday was yummy, but there's lots left. Seriously, so much that it doesn't all fit in the fridge, and there's sandwich baggies full of chips and crackers sitting on the kitchen counter.

Anyone want to come over for some snacks? There's lots of soda too, some cake, and enough alcohol to pickle several livers.

Happy birthday to me!

This was by far one of the best birthdays ever - thanks to everyone who shared it with me.

Injured in the line

In what might go down as the top most ridiculous kitchen injudy ever, I seriously hurt my right pinky finger while opening bottles of wine to make my award-winning sangria last night.

I pinched the skin at the base of my finger with the corkscrew, and it really hurt. I didn't draw blood, or even pierce the skin. I just pinched it, really, really hard, in the spot between the bottom knuckle and the base of my finger. And now there's a half-inch long mark on my finger and it still kind of hurts - but only when I mess with it.

I'm seriously considering using it as the excuse for leaving early today.

Not to worry, though, I perservered through the pain, and the sangria - did I mention it won an award once? - will be fantastic. I haven't made it in over a year. If I keep practicing, I'm probably far less likely to injure myself again in the future.

In tribute to the Pig

One of my favorite blogs, Angel the Pig, is no longer. Angel, the writer, will be removing it this weekend. Please check it out one last time before it disappears forever, leaving me with the question: where do blogs go to die?

Nap time

By far the best perk of this job is the wellness room; a small, dimly lit room near the bathroom with a very comfy 6-foot-long couch and a do-not-disturb sign for the door. Employees are encouraged to use it, and many do.

Today I went in hoping to rest for half an hour, to make up for my rather late night. Sigh. Just typing that makes me feel really, really old.

In any event, the wellness room's location next to the bathrooms makes it not too conducive to sleep, because the bathroom doors slam loudly anytime someone enters or exits. But I set the alarm on my cell phone and hoped to rest my eyes.

I'm pretty sure I actually fell asleep for about 10 minutes. I awoke to the odd chiming of the alarm on my new cell phone, slightly disoriented and a little groggy.

I'm still tired, but boy do I feel better. Long live the power nap!

Gone drinking

I was really just going to go for the lecture. Honest. I have a lot to do this week and I intended to get a good night’s sleep so that I’d be alert and awake today.

But then I got to chatting with some people, and the word circulated that we could continue the conversation over a beer up the street. And I was having such a good time. So all of a sudden there I was, talking liturgical music and immigration policy while sipping a Guinness from the window booth at the bar.

And then it was 10:30, and we were talking about having to get up for work tomorrow, and the fact that it takes me 45 minutes to get home. And then came the offer of a ride (from somebody who drank only Coke) and then it was 11:30 when I opened the door to my apartment.

But I had a blast. And made some new friends. And woke up quite cheerfully at 6:20 this morning, well before my alarm and with enough time to enjoy a quiet breakfast and iron the clothes that didn’t get ironed last night.

Double teamed

“Hey Clair,” somebody calls from over the wall of my cubicle. Just as I’m responding, two of the girls I work with approach me, one on either side of my desk.

“Do you know about the R Drive?” they ask.

Now, this seems like a simple question. Why does it take two girls to ask it?

“Yes,” I reply. “Where all the final grants go.”

“Ok. Good,” they respond, almost in unison. “We just weren’t sure if anybody told you about that.

Um, that was actually a big part of my training. Now, why didn’t the girl who was training me tell her co-workers what she was doing? Why didn’t she let them know that she was training me on all facets of her job – aside from special projects and stuff we assume I won’t be here long enough to do.

But the bigger issue is that they seem to think that I, like them, aren’t really very smart. And that’s really quite frustrating. I can handle managing the grants database, and catering meetings, and writing letters. This job is really way too easy. So much so that I’ve applied to two jobs and worked on the birthday party game today and still had plenty of time to do all my work. The whole hour of it. Wahoo.

Crash Carts

A large part of my pointless and brain-numbingly boring job is to schedule and set up for meetings. Many of the meetings are slightly overblown catered affairs, where lots of people who are ridiculously serious about eating healthy consume way less food than normal people would, leaving us with lots of leftovers.

I hate doing food setup. I hated waiting tables. I hate cleaning up after people. And I hate that the people here are slobs.

However, I've discovered that I really love the catering carts. They're three-level rolling carts that we use to move things (usually beverages and glasses) from the kitchen to the meeting rooms. While proper office decorum dictates rolling the carts slowly through the hallway, I like to pretend I'm taking curves at high speeds, that the wheels screech as I round corners, and that I parallel park while taking out the other kitchen carts.

Sadly, the office it too crowded for me to make the accompanying screeching and crashing noises. But I can dream about crashing into people. And leaving them covered in tuna fish sandwiches.

It's time to pull out the noisemakers and silly party hats

Stephanie (not my sister, obviously, since her birthday isn't until July) and I are having a birthday party. We'll have hats and cake and maybe even silly party games - we're taking suggestions on those. Anybody? We were thinking something with a year theme - like name the top song or biggest news story of the years we were born. Your thoughts, please. Especially those of you party planners who can't (big sigh) travel west for this shindig.

Confidential to Shoeless Lu

My birthday party is shoes optional. That's way better than shoeless pentameter. Or even shoeless in the office.

A little poem I wrote

Four spaces after sincerely, not three
Coffee and tea
Don’t forget the decaf
And fill the ice bucket beyond half
But don't spill on the granite
A sin worse than blowing up the planet

Just a few reasons
In verse
Why this job makes me scream
And curse

Now if only I could find something
To rhyme with alcoholic
‘cause that’s a fine alternative
To work

Highs and Lows

The past 24 hours have been full of strange highs and lows - reality checks amid immersion in the non-reality that is my job.

I spent yesterday afternoon writing about the invented sense of urgency that permeates this office, and how what they're doing really isn't that important. The reality check came with a phone call from my sister and the news that her friend Christine's dad died on Tuesday. I'm not sure who in the nation might know Christine (I'm never sure who's reading), but we spent many fun hours hanging out in the Illinois Ave. house and 7th Street apartment. Please send some thoughts or prayers her way this week.

Fast forward to last night and the emotional lift that came from a really good YAG lecture on faith and anxiety, and how to combat the anxieties that we face at work and in life. Not only was the lecture good, but experiencing it with a group of about 40 people who also needed some guidance to combat their life anxieties was really powerful. And to be able to talk about it with a bunch of people afterward was awesome.

I got home feeling pretty good, and had a message to call a guy about a job I applied for. He said I could call until 10 pm, and since it was 9:45 I dialed the phone, and we talked for about 20 minutes. The opportunity intrigued me because it would have been as the customer service manager for a music school. I would have been working with the students and teachers, and I could have taken free music lessons. But the hours were from 1:30 - 8:30 pm daily, with some time on Saturdays.

I refuse to give up the rest of my life for a job, especially one that would probably have only paid enough for me to continue struggling in San Francisco, so I told the guy I couldn't commit.

Sigh. It would have been a cool job, but I guess it just wasn't the right one for me. I was encouraged, though, by the fact that one of the four places I applied to last week got back to me. Hopefully, the tide has started to turn.

No sense of urgency

I don’t share the sense of urgency that propels people to race through the hallways of this office as though their pants are on fire.

Everything they do, say, or think is urgent. They walk fast, give orders in rapid-fire speech, and hunt one another down when they step out for lunch.

I can’t count the number of times somebody has come to me in the past three weeks shouting “Where’s Brad? Does he know about our meeting? Where is he? When will he be back?”

Once, he’d gone to get a sandwich. A couple of times, he was in transit. I’m pretty sure another time he was on the toilet.

Today, the popular question is “where’s Sylvia?’ Twice in the course of a minute, two guys exited their offices and gasped in alarm when she wasn’t sitting in hers.

“Where’s Sylvia, have you seen her?” one asked. I’d no sooner pointed him up the hallway to another office when the second guy came rushing out of his office.

“Did Sylvia walk this way,” he asked three people. “Have you seen her?”

Really, is anything that important? This is a small family foundation. Nobody’s acting on any life or death matters. Nobody’s performing surgery or curing cancer. What’s the rush? Let people go to the bathroom, or the kitchen, or out for some air, in peace. It’ll all get done eventually.

I'm waiting for boredom to kill me today

What if I die of boredom? Really. I could just slump over in my chair and whack my head on the keyboard. That would give the guys at the funeral home a big bruise to deal with. Somebody please make sure they match the makeup to my skin color. I'd hate people's last impression of me to be of a mottled forehead.

I am so bored today I could cry. I spent the morning making copies and formatting a list and printing documents because my boss didn’t know how to make the printer print on legal-size paper.

Then I read my daily dose of blogs, which has shrunk considerably since San Francisco Steph is still in Mexico, D.C. Steph has been busy moving in, and Angel is studying. Though Angel did provide me with great Catholic spam (see yesterday’s post for a full explanation) for which I’m very grateful.

Then I went to lunch and spent 15 minutes wandering around the financial district trying to find a place to buy a bus pass. There weren’t any.

Then I ate my sandwich. It was yummy, but a little messy – I think they put too much pesto on it today, which made the bread a little soggy.

After some really painful lunch-time conversation with two not too bright co-workers, it was back to my cubicle, where I still sit. I’ve finished my afternoon’s copying, and now I have nothing to do. And it’s only 3:30.

I’ve checked my email and read two newspapers and perused my favorite advice column and studied my horoscope. What to do next?

Carrots, continued....

In talking with my sister about this weekend's carrot encounter, Steph made a good point: what if the carrot and the banana were the same guy? What if he has a full-time fruit and vegetable gig?

Just important things to ponder on this Monday morning.

While you're at it, think about this. Today is May Day, and international day of the worker - which gained notariety in this country during the growth of communist worker movements at the turn of the century. Today is also the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker.

Who had this day first, the Catholics or the communists?