THIS IS ONE OF THOSE posts for which having a digital camera would be useful, but I'll do the best I can to describe the result of an accidental bean sprout toughing it out in the most unlikely place.
A few weeks ago, I brewed up a batch of chili. I use dry beans whenever possible instead of canned. Dry beans hold up better during the long simmer, ensuring that my frozen batches — stored in my fridge like so many cryonic heads — will not turn to mush when I microwave them back to molten, superspicy goodness. I pick through the beans before cooking to weed out any tiny stones or funky wrinkled beans (isn't that a comic strip?), then rinse the remaining ones in a colander.
While doing this and pouring them into my pot, a lone pinto bean got loose into the sink. I tried to pick the wet little bugger up, but couldn't get a grip on it. So I used the plunger end of my sink plug to push it down through the trap and out of mind.
Or so I thought. Somehow, this tenacious bean wedged itself into the sink plug. I found it weeks later, when I removed the trap to clean it out. There, snuggled between the metal bars that act to anchor the trap in the sink, rested the bean, its spotted shell pale and discarded and hanging on the edge of a whitish, inch-long sprout. From the other side of the bean emerged a root.
I had, in effect, created a bean sprout.
This isn't the first inadvertent germination that's occurred in my kitchen. Months ago I'd kept a rhizome of ginger past its stale date, which then put forth roots. Had I any spare soil in the joint, I'd have planted it just to see what might happen.
I still don't have any bags of topsoil, but I do have a number of existing plants, including one that's rather too small for its pot. I carefully extracted the sprout from its metal lodging, dug a hole in the huge pot just mentioned, and dropped the seed in. I then covered it up and watered the surrounding area.
For a few days, nothing happened. I figured, the worst thing to occur would be the main plant gets a small, rotting seed on which to feed, Nothing like a little spare nitrogen.
This is where the camera would come in handy. If you ever grew vegetables from seedlings, or experimented with seeds in grammar school, you know what a bean seed looks like when it finally pierces the earth and extends its head to the sun. (This picture will help fill in the blanks.) The sprout appeared quite suddenly over the course of yesterday, greeting me when I finally staggered home from work, and is now a good 3½" tall.
My next course of action will be to buy some soil, extract this bugger from its current bed before the roots get too complex, then plant it in a spare 2-lb. yogurt tub I've got lying around. In an ideal world, I'd then transplant it, along with scores of other seedlings, into a garden. Not an option as an apartment dweller, sadly. I'll let it grow as much as I can get it to inside; I believe beans are annuals, so this might have a built-in stale date. Still, as a surprise science experiment, it just shows how relentless life can be.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
2007 Goals: Unwrapped
FOR THE PAST 360 DAYS, I have had a plain #10 envelope staring at me from the ledge of the whiteboard that hangs on the inside of the front door to my apartment. The main and return addresses are identical: Both are mine. Last year, I was inspired by a Marketwatch.com columnist to write down a bunch of goals for 2007, but not to look at them . . . only to have a vague idea of what they were, and to strive toward fulfilling them.
Upon reading this list of 36 dashed-off ideas, I believe the Marketwatch guy must have a better memory than I do, because I clearly forgot a great number of these right out of hand. Although he counts a good year as one in which he hits half of his goals and comes close on the other half, I would've counted this as a good year had I simply been able to recall half.
I suspect I'd do better with the plan I considered adopting on the first day of 2006, on which I recounted the SMART system for setting goals: they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. Having a predictable plan of events, like my current exercise week, with recognizable goals and the steps to achieve them all drawn out, seems the best way to go for me.
Still, a look at a few choice items from the 2007 mystery list might be interesting:
Find a new job: This was the first item on the list. I didn't really begin looking in earnest until I started my career development training in April. Fortunately, this step only took about 3 months.
Lose 38 pounds by 12/31/07: The closest I came was about 14 pounds in June, when I was home most of the time and able to go to the gym whenever, as well as to adhere to a stricter feeding schedule than I had while I was in the city. At this point, I'm down about 8, owing to the cold blowing my exercise schedule late last week.
8 or more hours of sleep per night: Got a lot better at this after the end of the last job. By some miracle, my sleep schedule didn't creep forward as much as I thought it would during my layoff. During my last 3 months at the salt mine, I'd get maybe 6 tops, 3 on poker nights, because it didn't matter. Now, it tends to be around 7 to 8. I naturally arise at or around 5:00 now if I go to bed at 9:00, no small feat on either end.
Maintain a regular exercise regimen: 4 times weekly minimum: Became a solid feature of my time between jobs, slacked off a bit during the late summer, then I became disgusted with myself, wrote an angry rant and posted it for inspiration on my bathroom wall, and started daily visits in mid-November. Aside from the cold virus–related disruption, I've been a rock.
Keep a clean home; reduce or eliminate clutter, spare paper, old newspapers, and junk mail: Failed spectacularly after I brought home all my shit from the salt mine. I didn't dispose of or properly shelve any of those books or papers until late November. The newspapers waned as I stopped buying the Sunday Times and canceled my Wall Street Journal subscription (just stuck with reading it at work). I also bought a super-shredder to contend with the continued tide of junk mail. Still, there were times when I was greatly disgusted with the piles around the place, and I believe it inhibited my desire to entertain here, which is not fair to those friends who kindly host. I've succeeded in keeping the place major-event-level clean since the party on 12/8, and I intend to do so as long as I can.
Bring lunch and other work food from home as often as possible; no lunches in the city except for payday: I actually cut down to one lunch per week, and this didn't help with my habit of getting a bagel and Diet Coke for breakfast most days, but at least I saved $7–$12 per day, unlike my also soon-to-be-laid-off coworkers. I preserved the habit at the new place, even though I could drive home for lunch.
Eliminate caffeine: Now this was purely utopian. I had a whole little tapering-off regime along with this item, very industrious on paper no doubt, but it worked about as well as those that Burroughs instituted to get off heroin. The last time I am going to have the willpower to kick an addiction is during a work cutoff.
Write daily for 1 hour; post all relevant work to the blog: Though I did get more entries up this year, including my Lenten devotion, and I participated in a 100 Words month in October, I still could've done more. I take Dr. Pauly as my inspiration here; he puts in 2 or 3 hours of free writing per day, in addition to his column assignments, travel for work, poker coverage, and interviews, and if you compare the early days of his poker or personal sites to the rich and insightful posts he now produces, you can see every hour of work under the skin of his writing. It's not only the difference between Pauly's blog and a lot of other poker blogs; it's the difference between Pauly and a lot of other writers.
Spend at least 15 minutes per day outside, as weather allows: I like this one and I believe I did well with it, up until about the past month and a half. I found myself taking walks outside in Chelsea as the end of my work approached, both to get some sun on my face and lift the winter blues, to breathe unrecirculated air on my own time for a spell, and to remind myself that there was indeed a world outside that job. Once sprung, I tended to walk to the gym on many nice days, and to sit outside in the park or near my building. On fall weekends, when the weather was freakishly warm, you could find me with the newspaper and my radio, listening to football and breathing in springlike air without the allergens of May to plague me. At this job, I've tried to get outside and just stand there, away from the smokers, or to walk around the perimeter of our huge parking lot, and enjoy the free skies. All of this is an attempt to claim time as my own, outside, where our ancestors evolved, and place work in the comparatively narrow context where it belongs.
Some of the other goals are still relevant and perhaps worth pursuing this year. As I said, I'd do it visibly, in stages, not tucked away in an envelope. But if nothing else, seeing that envelope with my name on it each day did make me think that I should be doing "better," no matter what I was doing, and to find out what might comprise "better" in all my activities. So it was not entirely meritless.
Upon reading this list of 36 dashed-off ideas, I believe the Marketwatch guy must have a better memory than I do, because I clearly forgot a great number of these right out of hand. Although he counts a good year as one in which he hits half of his goals and comes close on the other half, I would've counted this as a good year had I simply been able to recall half.
I suspect I'd do better with the plan I considered adopting on the first day of 2006, on which I recounted the SMART system for setting goals: they should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. Having a predictable plan of events, like my current exercise week, with recognizable goals and the steps to achieve them all drawn out, seems the best way to go for me.
Still, a look at a few choice items from the 2007 mystery list might be interesting:
Find a new job: This was the first item on the list. I didn't really begin looking in earnest until I started my career development training in April. Fortunately, this step only took about 3 months.
Lose 38 pounds by 12/31/07: The closest I came was about 14 pounds in June, when I was home most of the time and able to go to the gym whenever, as well as to adhere to a stricter feeding schedule than I had while I was in the city. At this point, I'm down about 8, owing to the cold blowing my exercise schedule late last week.
8 or more hours of sleep per night: Got a lot better at this after the end of the last job. By some miracle, my sleep schedule didn't creep forward as much as I thought it would during my layoff. During my last 3 months at the salt mine, I'd get maybe 6 tops, 3 on poker nights, because it didn't matter. Now, it tends to be around 7 to 8. I naturally arise at or around 5:00 now if I go to bed at 9:00, no small feat on either end.
Maintain a regular exercise regimen: 4 times weekly minimum: Became a solid feature of my time between jobs, slacked off a bit during the late summer, then I became disgusted with myself, wrote an angry rant and posted it for inspiration on my bathroom wall, and started daily visits in mid-November. Aside from the cold virus–related disruption, I've been a rock.
Keep a clean home; reduce or eliminate clutter, spare paper, old newspapers, and junk mail: Failed spectacularly after I brought home all my shit from the salt mine. I didn't dispose of or properly shelve any of those books or papers until late November. The newspapers waned as I stopped buying the Sunday Times and canceled my Wall Street Journal subscription (just stuck with reading it at work). I also bought a super-shredder to contend with the continued tide of junk mail. Still, there were times when I was greatly disgusted with the piles around the place, and I believe it inhibited my desire to entertain here, which is not fair to those friends who kindly host. I've succeeded in keeping the place major-event-level clean since the party on 12/8, and I intend to do so as long as I can.
Bring lunch and other work food from home as often as possible; no lunches in the city except for payday: I actually cut down to one lunch per week, and this didn't help with my habit of getting a bagel and Diet Coke for breakfast most days, but at least I saved $7–$12 per day, unlike my also soon-to-be-laid-off coworkers. I preserved the habit at the new place, even though I could drive home for lunch.
Eliminate caffeine: Now this was purely utopian. I had a whole little tapering-off regime along with this item, very industrious on paper no doubt, but it worked about as well as those that Burroughs instituted to get off heroin. The last time I am going to have the willpower to kick an addiction is during a work cutoff.
Write daily for 1 hour; post all relevant work to the blog: Though I did get more entries up this year, including my Lenten devotion, and I participated in a 100 Words month in October, I still could've done more. I take Dr. Pauly as my inspiration here; he puts in 2 or 3 hours of free writing per day, in addition to his column assignments, travel for work, poker coverage, and interviews, and if you compare the early days of his poker or personal sites to the rich and insightful posts he now produces, you can see every hour of work under the skin of his writing. It's not only the difference between Pauly's blog and a lot of other poker blogs; it's the difference between Pauly and a lot of other writers.
Spend at least 15 minutes per day outside, as weather allows: I like this one and I believe I did well with it, up until about the past month and a half. I found myself taking walks outside in Chelsea as the end of my work approached, both to get some sun on my face and lift the winter blues, to breathe unrecirculated air on my own time for a spell, and to remind myself that there was indeed a world outside that job. Once sprung, I tended to walk to the gym on many nice days, and to sit outside in the park or near my building. On fall weekends, when the weather was freakishly warm, you could find me with the newspaper and my radio, listening to football and breathing in springlike air without the allergens of May to plague me. At this job, I've tried to get outside and just stand there, away from the smokers, or to walk around the perimeter of our huge parking lot, and enjoy the free skies. All of this is an attempt to claim time as my own, outside, where our ancestors evolved, and place work in the comparatively narrow context where it belongs.
Some of the other goals are still relevant and perhaps worth pursuing this year. As I said, I'd do it visibly, in stages, not tucked away in an envelope. But if nothing else, seeing that envelope with my name on it each day did make me think that I should be doing "better," no matter what I was doing, and to find out what might comprise "better" in all my activities. So it was not entirely meritless.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Siege Interrupted by Sick Days
SECOND OF TWO SICK DAYS today. I hate being home and doing nothing. My ordinarily inviting apartment becomes a tomb after two days of quarantine, and the Internet is a grim hallway of stale content not designed to be viewed 1,000 times per day by a shut-in.
Worst of all is not going to the gym. My last visit was Wednesday morning, when I woke up with a scratchy throat that surely foreshadowed a cold. My nutrition intake for the previous four or five days had been scattered, so my muscles were a bit weaker than I would have liked. Going to the gym Thursday morning — by which point the cold had hit full force — was out of the question. Though it's not the most serious cold I've ever had (no real fever at all, little nasal congestion), it was still enough to knock me out for 12 hours or so between Wednesday and Thursday (aside from waking up briefly to call in sick). Indeed, I'm contemplating a nap right now.
This is my first stretch of sick time at the current job, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for the magazine. But I can't help that. Sick days are there to be taken when you're sick. People who go in ill are crazy. All you're gonna do is make others sick catch something worse yourself, do crappy work with little attention on anything besides your own miserable physical shape, or all of the above. I've shaken off a couple of run-down stretches where I successfully repelled others' travel-induced illnesses, but this time, there was no sense in gritting my teeth, going in sick, and struggling to do even a mediocre job for what might end up being a half day anyway.
Besides, I have an event for which I need to get better as soon as possible. Not just Christmas, which I shall spend with my parents. I got a call last night from Felix's best man, who said that the groom-to-be's bachelor party would be this coming Saturday. At this stage, it seems the monstrous neon chaos of Atlantic City will get the nod as venue. With any luck, all I'll be doing by that point is coughing out the last of the congestion and not picking up some grim virus from the casino chips. The next 12 hours will be critical in seeing how fit I am to indulge in stag duties this third time in 2007. Keep your fingers crossed — it's been a while since I placed any money at risk, and I've got the yen to joust with chance. Also like Moe Szyslak, to eat a steak the size of a toilet seat.
Worst of all is not going to the gym. My last visit was Wednesday morning, when I woke up with a scratchy throat that surely foreshadowed a cold. My nutrition intake for the previous four or five days had been scattered, so my muscles were a bit weaker than I would have liked. Going to the gym Thursday morning — by which point the cold had hit full force — was out of the question. Though it's not the most serious cold I've ever had (no real fever at all, little nasal congestion), it was still enough to knock me out for 12 hours or so between Wednesday and Thursday (aside from waking up briefly to call in sick). Indeed, I'm contemplating a nap right now.
This is my first stretch of sick time at the current job, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for the magazine. But I can't help that. Sick days are there to be taken when you're sick. People who go in ill are crazy. All you're gonna do is make others sick catch something worse yourself, do crappy work with little attention on anything besides your own miserable physical shape, or all of the above. I've shaken off a couple of run-down stretches where I successfully repelled others' travel-induced illnesses, but this time, there was no sense in gritting my teeth, going in sick, and struggling to do even a mediocre job for what might end up being a half day anyway.
Besides, I have an event for which I need to get better as soon as possible. Not just Christmas, which I shall spend with my parents. I got a call last night from Felix's best man, who said that the groom-to-be's bachelor party would be this coming Saturday. At this stage, it seems the monstrous neon chaos of Atlantic City will get the nod as venue. With any luck, all I'll be doing by that point is coughing out the last of the congestion and not picking up some grim virus from the casino chips. The next 12 hours will be critical in seeing how fit I am to indulge in stag duties this third time in 2007. Keep your fingers crossed — it's been a while since I placed any money at risk, and I've got the yen to joust with chance. Also like Moe Szyslak, to eat a steak the size of a toilet seat.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Five-Day Siege
HOME ON A MID-DECEMBER NIGHT, looking at my last full work week of the year, and it's gonna be a bear. And not one of those funny, tricycle-riding bears you wanna just take home and let live in your garage. No. Even if it looks like that type of bear, once you get this one home, it punches out your kid, rips the lock off your liquor cabinet, chugs your Johnnie Walker Blue, peels your car out of the driveway through the garage door, and eventually shows up on the 11:00 news being hosed off the side of a school bus after careening through a petting zoo.
Yeah, that type of week.
With one seat still open in our editorial staff, one of my stories a mere skeleton and in dire need of a rewrite, deferred days off being taken before they go stale but causing outages among the rest of the staff — including the art director (who, mercifully, survived last Monday's layoff) — and a looming, yet increasingly laughable deadline coming at the end of the week, which everyone knows will be bumped into the final week of the year, but which nobody wants to admit, this proves to be one of the squeakiest squeakers in the long history of squeakerdom. (Look it up. It's right next to w00t.)
At least I had a decent weekend to steel me for these rigors. I got some chores done and had a fine lunch at the northern Bergen haven for BBQ known as the Mason Jar, following this up with brewing a mighty mass of chili. Lunch and/or dinner for the next 2 weeks will be much simpler to assemble. Today, after the somewhat defanged nor'easter offered a modicum of hail-like snow and winds far less than expected, I availed myself of the weekend rail service recently instituted on the line through my town to attend my friend Bill's holiday party at his recently repainted condo in Hoboken.
For this, I actually left early, out of some masochistic urge to actually watch the Patriots manhandle the Jets up in Foxboro. I parked myself in front of a burger and, uncharacteristically, a beer, at a bar once reaching Hoboken. (I barely ever drink, especially when away from home, as I usually drive myself places.) This became two beers once the Jets began reverting to recent form. By the time I abandoned my stool, I — an infamous lightweight — was quite tipsy.
I threaded my way through the post-nor'easter Hoboken (barely any rain, and no ice, both far less than the weather genii foresaw) to Bill's place, where, as I said, I took in the paint job he'd delegated to his sister back in August. Very nice work, I have to say. He's been there for about 8 years, and I was stunned to see what a couple of careful color choices could do for a place. And he had more than one, too: a red entryway, light-blue kitchen, greens here and there, a touch of eggshell. It was like he moved and I didn't have to risk my bursae by lifting his couch. I can't paint this apartment with anything except water-based white pigment, so I have to live vicariously through others' design decisions. As for the party, it was a good time, featuring, as always from his place, a balcony view of Midtown Manhattan, which lit up enchantingly as night fell and the fog shrouding the taller buildings dispersed.
I scanned the glittering skyline for my old building, where I spent most of the last several years of my career. Decidedly nondescript, it was invisible amidst so many impressive edifices and shining Times Square attractions. I'd previously had a view, from a corner cube unaccountably given to my lowly self, spanning from the Statue of Liberty to Weehawken, with Hoboken and the great expanse of the Garden State as my horizon. From that cube, I could see Bill's condo building, and with the right optics, that very balcony on which I stood this early evening. I spent quite a number of moments — sometimes when coming in early or staying late to work on that beastly accounting title with the 48-hour turn — scanning the horizon or watching the Hudson roll unstoppably down to the harbor and wondering what I was going to do next, but not really having much of a push to try anything else. Not quite a designer, sort of an editor at one point at that firm, certainly not a writer, I was in a dangerous niche, where my expertise grew only slowly in any direction.
My company's move would take me from that vantage point, which I'm sure is now in the possession of one of the partners from the law firm that occupied the five floors below us and was creeping Borg-like through the remaining upper floors of the building. Does this person ever use the view for anything more than just putting the zap on easily impressed clients or colleagues? Does he or she ever just watch the river flow, the trees of Jersey stretch off into infinity, the way the land seems to roll back forever on a windy day when the smog is blown from the sky? Does this person reflect on how fortunate he or she is to have that position, and that it, like the view, is fleeting, and meaningless without realizing just what it took to get there . . . that it's better to walk away from a hateful job that offers you a breathtaking vista outside your window, but never permits you the time to look out at it?
Against this reality, having a rough schedule ahead, but one in which I get to write and see my work in print — even just as a few small items about pharmaceuticals, or buried in the context of making a rough narrative readable — where I can drive home in a quarter hour and have far more time to myself, or visit my parents and enjoy far more of their company in their later years — against this, having such a schedule doesn't seem so bad. One year, three years, five years from now, it's unlikely to make a difference, as long as I can return to what matters.
Yeah, that type of week.
With one seat still open in our editorial staff, one of my stories a mere skeleton and in dire need of a rewrite, deferred days off being taken before they go stale but causing outages among the rest of the staff — including the art director (who, mercifully, survived last Monday's layoff) — and a looming, yet increasingly laughable deadline coming at the end of the week, which everyone knows will be bumped into the final week of the year, but which nobody wants to admit, this proves to be one of the squeakiest squeakers in the long history of squeakerdom. (Look it up. It's right next to w00t.)
At least I had a decent weekend to steel me for these rigors. I got some chores done and had a fine lunch at the northern Bergen haven for BBQ known as the Mason Jar, following this up with brewing a mighty mass of chili. Lunch and/or dinner for the next 2 weeks will be much simpler to assemble. Today, after the somewhat defanged nor'easter offered a modicum of hail-like snow and winds far less than expected, I availed myself of the weekend rail service recently instituted on the line through my town to attend my friend Bill's holiday party at his recently repainted condo in Hoboken.
For this, I actually left early, out of some masochistic urge to actually watch the Patriots manhandle the Jets up in Foxboro. I parked myself in front of a burger and, uncharacteristically, a beer, at a bar once reaching Hoboken. (I barely ever drink, especially when away from home, as I usually drive myself places.) This became two beers once the Jets began reverting to recent form. By the time I abandoned my stool, I — an infamous lightweight — was quite tipsy.
I threaded my way through the post-nor'easter Hoboken (barely any rain, and no ice, both far less than the weather genii foresaw) to Bill's place, where, as I said, I took in the paint job he'd delegated to his sister back in August. Very nice work, I have to say. He's been there for about 8 years, and I was stunned to see what a couple of careful color choices could do for a place. And he had more than one, too: a red entryway, light-blue kitchen, greens here and there, a touch of eggshell. It was like he moved and I didn't have to risk my bursae by lifting his couch. I can't paint this apartment with anything except water-based white pigment, so I have to live vicariously through others' design decisions. As for the party, it was a good time, featuring, as always from his place, a balcony view of Midtown Manhattan, which lit up enchantingly as night fell and the fog shrouding the taller buildings dispersed.
I scanned the glittering skyline for my old building, where I spent most of the last several years of my career. Decidedly nondescript, it was invisible amidst so many impressive edifices and shining Times Square attractions. I'd previously had a view, from a corner cube unaccountably given to my lowly self, spanning from the Statue of Liberty to Weehawken, with Hoboken and the great expanse of the Garden State as my horizon. From that cube, I could see Bill's condo building, and with the right optics, that very balcony on which I stood this early evening. I spent quite a number of moments — sometimes when coming in early or staying late to work on that beastly accounting title with the 48-hour turn — scanning the horizon or watching the Hudson roll unstoppably down to the harbor and wondering what I was going to do next, but not really having much of a push to try anything else. Not quite a designer, sort of an editor at one point at that firm, certainly not a writer, I was in a dangerous niche, where my expertise grew only slowly in any direction.
My company's move would take me from that vantage point, which I'm sure is now in the possession of one of the partners from the law firm that occupied the five floors below us and was creeping Borg-like through the remaining upper floors of the building. Does this person ever use the view for anything more than just putting the zap on easily impressed clients or colleagues? Does he or she ever just watch the river flow, the trees of Jersey stretch off into infinity, the way the land seems to roll back forever on a windy day when the smog is blown from the sky? Does this person reflect on how fortunate he or she is to have that position, and that it, like the view, is fleeting, and meaningless without realizing just what it took to get there . . . that it's better to walk away from a hateful job that offers you a breathtaking vista outside your window, but never permits you the time to look out at it?
Against this reality, having a rough schedule ahead, but one in which I get to write and see my work in print — even just as a few small items about pharmaceuticals, or buried in the context of making a rough narrative readable — where I can drive home in a quarter hour and have far more time to myself, or visit my parents and enjoy far more of their company in their later years — against this, having such a schedule doesn't seem so bad. One year, three years, five years from now, it's unlikely to make a difference, as long as I can return to what matters.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Axe Swings at Work, But Misses Me This Time
HOO-BOY, I'M OUT FOR two days, and I miss a minor massacre at work. The payroll was 18 people smaller when I returned to the desk today. Fortunately, I was not among them. I believe I've already discussed my "Fuck this, I'm going to Vegas" plan were I to be laid off twice in one year. The powers-that-be have until the end of this month to evoke this response from me. As badly as I'd love to get back to the Neon Havens, I'd much prefer to do so in the context of current employment.
This layoff was quite different than the one I endured. Without divulging too much, four teams were combined into two, leaving people who were redundant. The people no longer needed were called to a mystery meeting and given the news. While this was transpiring, the rest of the company was gathered in another conference room and told what was happening. They were therefore closeted while the first group was given 20 minutes to clear their desks and leave. I was unable to find out if they got any severance. Even if they did, compared to this, I made out like a bandit.
The dismissed folks were primarily editors or managing editors, but also included were two longtime art directors, including the chief AD. It calls to mind the study from the Wall Street Journal, and the post I wrote as a result, about the potential for replacement among graphic designers. Now we only have two ADs left, plus some junior designers and support from satellite offices. Though the chief AD was to spearhead the switch from Quark to InDesign next year, this seems to have been no defense.
We did get a pep talk about our own bright prospects, but it only steels in me the need to acquire as much training as I can, in case this is the first spasm of contractions in the coming year. Many believe 2008 will host a recession (or continue the one that we'll eventually realize began this year). No time like the present to keep making myself as versatile as possible. The company does have a forward attitude toward such training, though when I asked the person tasked with the pep talk about a course we'd had earlier in the year, and whether there would be any follow-up, they didn't recall the course. I do, and I will see what I can do to get as much relevant, difficult-to-outsource training and experience — to say nothing of connections with others who can find me work should this not work out — as I can cram into my softening brain. As good as this job currently is, my experience at the salt mine has kept me from saying that this one — or any job — is forever.
This layoff was quite different than the one I endured. Without divulging too much, four teams were combined into two, leaving people who were redundant. The people no longer needed were called to a mystery meeting and given the news. While this was transpiring, the rest of the company was gathered in another conference room and told what was happening. They were therefore closeted while the first group was given 20 minutes to clear their desks and leave. I was unable to find out if they got any severance. Even if they did, compared to this, I made out like a bandit.
The dismissed folks were primarily editors or managing editors, but also included were two longtime art directors, including the chief AD. It calls to mind the study from the Wall Street Journal, and the post I wrote as a result, about the potential for replacement among graphic designers. Now we only have two ADs left, plus some junior designers and support from satellite offices. Though the chief AD was to spearhead the switch from Quark to InDesign next year, this seems to have been no defense.
We did get a pep talk about our own bright prospects, but it only steels in me the need to acquire as much training as I can, in case this is the first spasm of contractions in the coming year. Many believe 2008 will host a recession (or continue the one that we'll eventually realize began this year). No time like the present to keep making myself as versatile as possible. The company does have a forward attitude toward such training, though when I asked the person tasked with the pep talk about a course we'd had earlier in the year, and whether there would be any follow-up, they didn't recall the course. I do, and I will see what I can do to get as much relevant, difficult-to-outsource training and experience — to say nothing of connections with others who can find me work should this not work out — as I can cram into my softening brain. As good as this job currently is, my experience at the salt mine has kept me from saying that this one — or any job — is forever.
Monday, December 10, 2007
"I Love It When a Plan Comes Together"
FANS OF THE A-TEAM recognize that quote. I had occasion to use it early Sunday morning, shortly after the end of possibly my most successful holiday party yet.
Friday's day off proved very helpful in closing most of the remaining loose ends on my to-do sheet. (Amusingly, I found 2006's to-do list near the end of my cleaning maneuvers.) By Saturday, I only had to pick up a few perishables, retrieve the food, get ice, and wait for the gang to show. (I decided against waxing the kitchen floor.) The cold or whatever that had lurked on Thursday was nowhere to be seen on Saturday morning, and I hit the gym for 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer to launch the day right.
I was unable to find a suitable crudité tray at three of the food stores where I looked. The closest candidate, at the local A&P, featured carrots with that white, dried-out look, which led me to believe the other veggies in the tray were also a touch dessicated. I figured, "Screw this, I'll make my own," and filled a basket with (literally) raw materials.
From there, I returned home and did my last major bits of cleaning: scouring the bathroom, and vacuuming. This is where I had encountered the only wrinkle in all the planning. With Laurel and Hardy timing, my toilet paper dispenser fell off the wall and broke last week, which had led me to Bed Bath & Beyond to secure a roll stand. I'd figured that even if the landlord cemented it to the wall, it wouldn't have a chance to set by go-time, and if it fell off while someone was actually using it, I'd never hear the end of it. Easier just to pick up a new one and have the building manager take care of it at greater leisure. Once I'd done with the john, I gave the whole place a pass with the Hoover.
With only the catering to worry about, I felt relaxed yet a-tingle with anticipation. I also felt strong. I'd been running around for a day and a half doing just about everything, and I still felt fairly spry. This time last year, in awful shape, I was slumped on the couch, with an aching lower back (very uncharacteristic) and feet that felt like I'd run a marathon. By the time folks arrived, I was ready to go to sleep. This year was quite different. I had written on the melamine white board I keep on the inside of my apartment door, "HOLIDAY PARTY 12/8," and then drawn an arrow from the command, "BE FIT FOR THIS!!!" I don't know if I'd qualify as "fit," but I am more toned up than I was last year, with enough left in the tank to pick up the food and spend several more hours actually enjoying the company of my guests. The daily workouts and greater attention to food choices both paid off.
In my food pickup, I had a timely assist from my father. He had volunteered his services for transport, as well as for free ice from the machine in the Elks lodge to which he belongs. I took him up on both offers. The catering was done at the local outlet of Bensí, a chain of Italian restaurants in northern and central New Jersey. I'd gone to them last year, and they came through big: After a pipe rupture in their kitchen forced them to close the location where I'd placed the order, they forwarded my order to the next most local restaurant, which prepped and delivered the food with little time lost. This time around, everything was ready on target, and I got the trays onto the warming racks with time enough before zero hour to let the water hear up and the fragrance of Italian food to waft enticingly through my apartment.
For some reason, the list of residents disappeared from my building's vestibule, and a large group of my friends gathered there, putting their minds together on how to contact me. Ordinarily, one enters a code next to the resident's name, then asks to be buzzed in. But this sheet was absent, and attempts to get my land line number through directory assistance were fruitless (it's unpublished). So finally someone called up to my cellphone, and I gave them the code, which was duly entered. A minute later, I had the pleasure of admitting at least eight adults and two children at once. For someone like me, who spends the first few minutes of live party time wondering if anyone will show up, such a flood of friends was like a host's holiday dream.
The party immediately ensued. Folks caught up, mingled, swapped gifts, and of course, ate and drank. Several kind folks brought desserts, which grew in a sweet mound on the computer desk I had temporarily cleared of this very laptop to make way. I did my usual grab bag frenzy, letting guests who didn't have an Amazon package or other requested gift pick a mystery gift card from one of the tackiest bags I've ever seen in a card store. I had originally chosen this weekend to allow for the most likely date on which I would take part in the mighty Felix's bachelor party (most likely next weekend), but I believe it was also a little less stressful for folks, not being on one of the crazier shopping weekends, as 12/15 and 12/22 will be. Even if they had to drive past some of our more insane commerce centers, there's a chance they might not have had to stop at any of them.
As midnight neared, folks began to head homeward, and I reluctantly let them motor off. Closing that door after the last group was the saddest part of the entire evening, as it marked the longest possible time between this party and the next one. I reflected on all the joy and laughter I'd just experienced while tidying up, a task that proved quite simple — again, I credit exercising more as the reason I still had gas in the ol' tank.
I rate the evening as an unmitigated success. I had a great and large crowd of friends, good weather for this time of year, no cancelations, two delightful children as part of the mix, a ton of great desserts owing to the generosity of my guests, and lots of tasty leftovers to see me into the week. As much as I do to get the bones of these parties set up, it's only the arrival of my friends that breathes any life into them. I credit these dear people with the success of this year's gathering far more than anything I could highlight on my to-do list. I provide the venue; they make it an event.
Friday's day off proved very helpful in closing most of the remaining loose ends on my to-do sheet. (Amusingly, I found 2006's to-do list near the end of my cleaning maneuvers.) By Saturday, I only had to pick up a few perishables, retrieve the food, get ice, and wait for the gang to show. (I decided against waxing the kitchen floor.) The cold or whatever that had lurked on Thursday was nowhere to be seen on Saturday morning, and I hit the gym for 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer to launch the day right.
I was unable to find a suitable crudité tray at three of the food stores where I looked. The closest candidate, at the local A&P, featured carrots with that white, dried-out look, which led me to believe the other veggies in the tray were also a touch dessicated. I figured, "Screw this, I'll make my own," and filled a basket with (literally) raw materials.
From there, I returned home and did my last major bits of cleaning: scouring the bathroom, and vacuuming. This is where I had encountered the only wrinkle in all the planning. With Laurel and Hardy timing, my toilet paper dispenser fell off the wall and broke last week, which had led me to Bed Bath & Beyond to secure a roll stand. I'd figured that even if the landlord cemented it to the wall, it wouldn't have a chance to set by go-time, and if it fell off while someone was actually using it, I'd never hear the end of it. Easier just to pick up a new one and have the building manager take care of it at greater leisure. Once I'd done with the john, I gave the whole place a pass with the Hoover.
With only the catering to worry about, I felt relaxed yet a-tingle with anticipation. I also felt strong. I'd been running around for a day and a half doing just about everything, and I still felt fairly spry. This time last year, in awful shape, I was slumped on the couch, with an aching lower back (very uncharacteristic) and feet that felt like I'd run a marathon. By the time folks arrived, I was ready to go to sleep. This year was quite different. I had written on the melamine white board I keep on the inside of my apartment door, "HOLIDAY PARTY 12/8," and then drawn an arrow from the command, "BE FIT FOR THIS!!!" I don't know if I'd qualify as "fit," but I am more toned up than I was last year, with enough left in the tank to pick up the food and spend several more hours actually enjoying the company of my guests. The daily workouts and greater attention to food choices both paid off.
In my food pickup, I had a timely assist from my father. He had volunteered his services for transport, as well as for free ice from the machine in the Elks lodge to which he belongs. I took him up on both offers. The catering was done at the local outlet of Bensí, a chain of Italian restaurants in northern and central New Jersey. I'd gone to them last year, and they came through big: After a pipe rupture in their kitchen forced them to close the location where I'd placed the order, they forwarded my order to the next most local restaurant, which prepped and delivered the food with little time lost. This time around, everything was ready on target, and I got the trays onto the warming racks with time enough before zero hour to let the water hear up and the fragrance of Italian food to waft enticingly through my apartment.
For some reason, the list of residents disappeared from my building's vestibule, and a large group of my friends gathered there, putting their minds together on how to contact me. Ordinarily, one enters a code next to the resident's name, then asks to be buzzed in. But this sheet was absent, and attempts to get my land line number through directory assistance were fruitless (it's unpublished). So finally someone called up to my cellphone, and I gave them the code, which was duly entered. A minute later, I had the pleasure of admitting at least eight adults and two children at once. For someone like me, who spends the first few minutes of live party time wondering if anyone will show up, such a flood of friends was like a host's holiday dream.
The party immediately ensued. Folks caught up, mingled, swapped gifts, and of course, ate and drank. Several kind folks brought desserts, which grew in a sweet mound on the computer desk I had temporarily cleared of this very laptop to make way. I did my usual grab bag frenzy, letting guests who didn't have an Amazon package or other requested gift pick a mystery gift card from one of the tackiest bags I've ever seen in a card store. I had originally chosen this weekend to allow for the most likely date on which I would take part in the mighty Felix's bachelor party (most likely next weekend), but I believe it was also a little less stressful for folks, not being on one of the crazier shopping weekends, as 12/15 and 12/22 will be. Even if they had to drive past some of our more insane commerce centers, there's a chance they might not have had to stop at any of them.
As midnight neared, folks began to head homeward, and I reluctantly let them motor off. Closing that door after the last group was the saddest part of the entire evening, as it marked the longest possible time between this party and the next one. I reflected on all the joy and laughter I'd just experienced while tidying up, a task that proved quite simple — again, I credit exercising more as the reason I still had gas in the ol' tank.
I rate the evening as an unmitigated success. I had a great and large crowd of friends, good weather for this time of year, no cancelations, two delightful children as part of the mix, a ton of great desserts owing to the generosity of my guests, and lots of tasty leftovers to see me into the week. As much as I do to get the bones of these parties set up, it's only the arrival of my friends that breathes any life into them. I credit these dear people with the success of this year's gathering far more than anything I could highlight on my to-do list. I provide the venue; they make it an event.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Running Free of the Chicken Coop
I TOOK TODAY AND MONDAY off. I only got 5 days due to my signing on in the latter half of the year, and it took me a few months before I used the first one, partly because I was busy, but also because I didn't particularly notice being busy. Not a bad way to be. Not like the last days of the salt mine, where the only reason I didn't take my vacation days was to get cashola for them. Otherwise I would have saved them all up until mid-March and then taken them all, and the severance, with a hearty, Doppler-shifted "Fuck yoooooooooouuuu!"
At the current place, however, I've enjoyed being there. So I've been a comparative laggard in taking my time off. Now, of course, there's a mad sprint to expend it all on the part of the staff. Especially for my immediate boss and the art director; the former couldn't take any of her many days during the 4 months when they were down a person (the very gap I filled), and the latter spent the summer embroiled in the redesign of the magazine. He in particular will have worked only about a month by the time November and December both flutter into the cosmic recycle bin, due to his playing catch-up.
I have taken my Friday and Monday off with purpose. Please raise your hand if you've seen Goodfellas. Recall the music that began the "Sunday, May 11th, 1980" section? Yes, "Jump Into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson. "I was gonna be busy all day," as Henry Hill said. I had a legal pad full of tasks to accomplish for my holiday party tomorrow. No taping bags of dope to a drug mule's leg or selling guns to Robert De Niro or (sadly) making a shitload of Italian food. Though the Italian food will arrive tomorrow, courtesy of the catering crew of a local restaurant. No, in this case I had a number of places to hit across Bergen County, and the best way to accomplish this was to have the entire day to myself.
I had a sinking feeling, on Thursday, that I might lose the chance. I felt a bit run down over the course of the day, which was made worse by the long day I put in (I had to update the magazine's website before departing, which took until 7:00). Worse, one of my eyes seemed very red. I wondered if I was going to be the victim of a one-two punch of a cold and pinkeye. I beat a hasty retreat to bed once I finally got home.
My eye looked better the next day, and I went with glasses rather than contacts to give it a rest. I felt less fatigued, but on the off chance it was due to overtraining and getting a little less sleep than is optimal Wednesday night, I deferred the first-thing-in-the-morning exercise for the afternoon, my favored workout time back during my layoff. I would either do my Saturday 30-minute elliptical workout or go ahead and perform the leg and shoulder muscle exercises ordinarily slated for Friday.
Fortunately, once I got oatmeal and tea into my system, I felt much more chipper. I moved all loose paper and other junk to my bed. This cleaned up all surfaces in the rest of the apartment so I could get a rag or duster onto them. It would also force me to address all of this shit — bag it, file it, or shred it — before sleeping tonight. Nothing like an ultimatum.
Next, I composed a list of destinations, mostly in Paramus, to snag gift cards for my grab bag. I have a tradition, for those guests who want to exchange gifts but who neither have expressed a preference nor have an Amazon wish list, of putting together a clutch of gift certificates/cards and letting folks pick'em blind. Everyone loves a clean gamble.
Snow began falling as I traversed the area. I grabbed Chik-Fil-A at Paramus Park a few stops along the way. I didn't see any of the dozen or so police cars and the helicopter the radio had warned would be present at either Paramus Park or the Garden State Plaza, in a supposedly longstanding security plan that had nothing to do at all with the recent shootings at that Omaha, NE mall. So at least I was spared some tooth enamel at gritting my choppers at such an example of money-burning security theater.
I got home around 3:30 feeling well. My eye was still clearing up, and the worn-out feeling had long subsided, so I donned gym clothes and hit the club. The weight area was nearly dead, so I grabbed the opportunity of a well-paced workout and did my usual Friday work. This completed four weeks of the new program, with progressively (read as: slowly) better eating habits to go along with it, and this morning the payoff was a weight of 225. That's 15 pounds lighter than the beginning of the year. If I improve my diet further and stick to the gym plan, I might lose two or three more before New Year's. Of course, this is not something I can afford to stop: It's a lifelong need.
After finishing a strong workout (moved up my reps in all areas by a little), I returned to my lair and continued to clean. Also snagged a few decorations for the place as well. All that remains is vacuuming, waxing the kitchen floor, picking up the hot food, and waiting for this little place to fill up with friends.
At the current place, however, I've enjoyed being there. So I've been a comparative laggard in taking my time off. Now, of course, there's a mad sprint to expend it all on the part of the staff. Especially for my immediate boss and the art director; the former couldn't take any of her many days during the 4 months when they were down a person (the very gap I filled), and the latter spent the summer embroiled in the redesign of the magazine. He in particular will have worked only about a month by the time November and December both flutter into the cosmic recycle bin, due to his playing catch-up.
I have taken my Friday and Monday off with purpose. Please raise your hand if you've seen Goodfellas. Recall the music that began the "Sunday, May 11th, 1980" section? Yes, "Jump Into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson. "I was gonna be busy all day," as Henry Hill said. I had a legal pad full of tasks to accomplish for my holiday party tomorrow. No taping bags of dope to a drug mule's leg or selling guns to Robert De Niro or (sadly) making a shitload of Italian food. Though the Italian food will arrive tomorrow, courtesy of the catering crew of a local restaurant. No, in this case I had a number of places to hit across Bergen County, and the best way to accomplish this was to have the entire day to myself.
I had a sinking feeling, on Thursday, that I might lose the chance. I felt a bit run down over the course of the day, which was made worse by the long day I put in (I had to update the magazine's website before departing, which took until 7:00). Worse, one of my eyes seemed very red. I wondered if I was going to be the victim of a one-two punch of a cold and pinkeye. I beat a hasty retreat to bed once I finally got home.
My eye looked better the next day, and I went with glasses rather than contacts to give it a rest. I felt less fatigued, but on the off chance it was due to overtraining and getting a little less sleep than is optimal Wednesday night, I deferred the first-thing-in-the-morning exercise for the afternoon, my favored workout time back during my layoff. I would either do my Saturday 30-minute elliptical workout or go ahead and perform the leg and shoulder muscle exercises ordinarily slated for Friday.
Fortunately, once I got oatmeal and tea into my system, I felt much more chipper. I moved all loose paper and other junk to my bed. This cleaned up all surfaces in the rest of the apartment so I could get a rag or duster onto them. It would also force me to address all of this shit — bag it, file it, or shred it — before sleeping tonight. Nothing like an ultimatum.
Next, I composed a list of destinations, mostly in Paramus, to snag gift cards for my grab bag. I have a tradition, for those guests who want to exchange gifts but who neither have expressed a preference nor have an Amazon wish list, of putting together a clutch of gift certificates/cards and letting folks pick'em blind. Everyone loves a clean gamble.
Snow began falling as I traversed the area. I grabbed Chik-Fil-A at Paramus Park a few stops along the way. I didn't see any of the dozen or so police cars and the helicopter the radio had warned would be present at either Paramus Park or the Garden State Plaza, in a supposedly longstanding security plan that had nothing to do at all with the recent shootings at that Omaha, NE mall. So at least I was spared some tooth enamel at gritting my choppers at such an example of money-burning security theater.
I got home around 3:30 feeling well. My eye was still clearing up, and the worn-out feeling had long subsided, so I donned gym clothes and hit the club. The weight area was nearly dead, so I grabbed the opportunity of a well-paced workout and did my usual Friday work. This completed four weeks of the new program, with progressively (read as: slowly) better eating habits to go along with it, and this morning the payoff was a weight of 225. That's 15 pounds lighter than the beginning of the year. If I improve my diet further and stick to the gym plan, I might lose two or three more before New Year's. Of course, this is not something I can afford to stop: It's a lifelong need.
After finishing a strong workout (moved up my reps in all areas by a little), I returned to my lair and continued to clean. Also snagged a few decorations for the place as well. All that remains is vacuuming, waxing the kitchen floor, picking up the hot food, and waiting for this little place to fill up with friends.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Plowing Through the Snow
AS PREDICTED, WINTER ONCE again offered the NYC area a foretaste of its talents with a blanketing of snow this morning. Even with the dawn still some time off and my glasses on the nightstand, I could see the glow of new-fallen flakes on the lawn and tracks next to my building. With blades of grass still poking through the white, I knew it wasn't too deep, and wouldn't be too difficult to clean off my car. Certainly easier than the freezing rain and sleet predicted for later this evening. With the arrival time of this blight a big white question mark hanging over the land, I kept with the original plan and got out to the gym shortly after the open.
Another recitation of this gym routine will sicken all five or six of my regular readers, I'm sure, but it's important to me that I document my efforts here. I know that when summer returns, or even sooner, when snow far deeper than what we got today entombs New Jersey, it will be more difficult to sustain this rate of attendance. (Summer is tough because it takes me a long time to fall asleep in hot weather, and I won't be able to wake up as early.)
It amuses me how easily people at this gym get upset when pushed out of their own routines. When the spin class instructor is late, they mill about anxiously . . . instead of taking advantage of one of the many exercise options also available to them. Believe me, this is a well-stocked fitness outfit. I try to use a variety of cardiovascular machines, so if some are full up or out of order, I've at least got some experience with another device. I have to fight against the tendency to settle into ruts myself, and changing things up can keep your muscles and nerves guessing and ready for anything.
I'm usually very quiet at the gym. I see it as a workplace. I don't get caught up in conversations, drama, or any of that. I used to be a real sucker for that at previous workplaces, but I try to limit it now. The watercooler is for water. Likewise, I don't pay the club each month to go there and do anything but whip my doughy ass into shape. There were times during the last job when the morning gym visit was the high point of the day. I could control nearly everything that happened during that hour, whereas the rest of the day could go off the rails at any time. Now, things are much sweeter at job, but I still need the mini-vacation from everyone and everything that the gym represents. So: No cellphone, no chitchat about last night's dance-based reality show, no sympathy for whiners who don't want to wring every penny of value out of their membership dollars.
Sometimes I wonder, when a cluster of these types assembles around the spin area or the free weights (where I can't avoid them), if the club would take an extra $10 per month to give me a key and the alarm code so I could come in at 4:00 . . . and lock the door behind me.
Another recitation of this gym routine will sicken all five or six of my regular readers, I'm sure, but it's important to me that I document my efforts here. I know that when summer returns, or even sooner, when snow far deeper than what we got today entombs New Jersey, it will be more difficult to sustain this rate of attendance. (Summer is tough because it takes me a long time to fall asleep in hot weather, and I won't be able to wake up as early.)
It amuses me how easily people at this gym get upset when pushed out of their own routines. When the spin class instructor is late, they mill about anxiously . . . instead of taking advantage of one of the many exercise options also available to them. Believe me, this is a well-stocked fitness outfit. I try to use a variety of cardiovascular machines, so if some are full up or out of order, I've at least got some experience with another device. I have to fight against the tendency to settle into ruts myself, and changing things up can keep your muscles and nerves guessing and ready for anything.
I'm usually very quiet at the gym. I see it as a workplace. I don't get caught up in conversations, drama, or any of that. I used to be a real sucker for that at previous workplaces, but I try to limit it now. The watercooler is for water. Likewise, I don't pay the club each month to go there and do anything but whip my doughy ass into shape. There were times during the last job when the morning gym visit was the high point of the day. I could control nearly everything that happened during that hour, whereas the rest of the day could go off the rails at any time. Now, things are much sweeter at job, but I still need the mini-vacation from everyone and everything that the gym represents. So: No cellphone, no chitchat about last night's dance-based reality show, no sympathy for whiners who don't want to wring every penny of value out of their membership dollars.
Sometimes I wonder, when a cluster of these types assembles around the spin area or the free weights (where I can't avoid them), if the club would take an extra $10 per month to give me a key and the alarm code so I could come in at 4:00 . . . and lock the door behind me.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Sprinting Toward Deadlines
I HATE TO DISGORGE week-in-review posts rather than sharing smaller items of interest during the week, but the job has been keeping me later due to the rush to press of the current issue. Also, I have been getting up at 5:00 to 5:30 a.m. successfully for the entire week to get to the gym before the rush, which causes my string to run out by about nine at night. I didn't even do too much to plan for the party, which will make this weekend a goatdance.
Let's start with Monday. As I described here, one of the team members on my magazine left that day. For breakfast, many of us brought in food. I snagged a cheese danish ring from the local bakery (which, by the way, I escaped without buying anything for myself). The managing editor was in the office that day, and took us all out for a goodbye lunch. This after we had been told the week before that we couldn't go out because the issue is late and we need to concentrate on it. The ME had said she would bring in sandwiches from the local joint, but when the day arrived, she seemed to remember this as a nebulous request that we arrange this. You might have picked up that we occasionally have to work around this person. Still beats the other job by a parsec, but a bit maddening when you need to expend the effort to out-think and anticipate. So we ended up burning extra time out eating lunches that put us to sleep in the afternoon, just when we needed to push hard on the issue and send it out the door.
I ended up staying about an extra hour four days of the five to get this done. Not worthy of a medal in the grand cosmic scheme of things. However, I did note the amount of extra time so I could take it back at a future time. Give nothing to an employer without receiving something tangible. Keep in mind that we are now down one person. My services are now even more in demand. It gives me leverage, at least until we fill that spot and the new person gets up to speed. You never like to look at things in this sort of a mercenary way, but fundamentally, unless you're self-employed, you're just an SSN in an Excel spreadsheet. The moment your financial liability (pay, benefits, training, equipment, etc.) no longer brings a company profit, you're expendable. That I have my fingers in a few crucial pies right now is comforting, but what I really need to do is develop skills that can't be outsourced.
One of these is writing. Foreign companies can compose Web pages, lay out text, even edit in a rudimentary fashion. They will never be as skilled a writer as a native with an ear for the subtleties of the language and an eye on the marketplace. When I started at the new place, I was given a writing assignment within days. I had to interview a source, flesh out her proposal into an actual article, and write it in the magazine's idiom and with the available column inches in mind. I succeeded in all three areas. But it's just a start.
With the departure of my coworker, comes the chance to do more writing of this kind. I've been composing short report-type items for columns that contain industry updates for our specialist readership. It keeps my hand moving. I've also had the privilege of heavily editing or rewriting some of our more personal columns, reminiscences from people about their profession: moments that defined their careers, inspirations that might resonate for others, success stories, and the like. These folks tend not to be writers, and the pieces need a good edit at minimum. I've been careful to be sensitive with them, though, because you don't want to bruise someone's treasured memories in the process of crafting them structurally into a more potent piece of writing. I believe I'm succeeding at that; the contributors have been strongly positive over how I've polished their work. I've done the same for a new fitness columnist whose work we've been running. Though there is less potential emotion wrapped up in each piece, and she's more practiced as a writer than the folks I just mentioned, it's still someone else's work, and I've endeavored to let her passion shine through any stylistic or grammatical revisions I've had to make.
None of these pieces carry my byline, however. I want to produce another piece like my first one, or more if possible, so I can show future employers or possible providers of freelance-work my clips. I recall that in my career exercise, I envisioned being a bylined writer. Perhaps it's not as farfetched as I thought it was, upon writing it, back in April. It's still an impressive list of goals.
Now that I think of it, perhaps this exposure to amateur writing, and the work needed to improve it, is an education in how to produce copy that editors will seek out because it spares them the effort of polishing it. Line up three equally qualified freelance creatives before a deadline-haunted editor. Two produce work that needs tweaking or refinement. One hits the marks nearly every time. Who has the edge for future business from this stressed editor? I recall the very first meeting I had with the career counselor, my first workday of joblessness, in which he said our job was to find ways to convince rich people that giving us money makes their lives easier. The statement as phrased struck me then as a touch "classist," but I understood him to intend rich as "able to purchase your goods, services, or expertise." Then as now, it also strikes me as true.
Back to last week. We all said a regretful "see you later" to our departing coworker. Her office is close by, and two former employees of my company are there and still in close contact with folks at their former workplace, so future group lunches are in the offing. Plus we exchanged email addresses, so I can continue to call upon her experience and good spirits as the months at my current place, I hope, become at least a year or two.
Tuesday through Thursday were blurs of fitting copy, writing last-minute pieces, and getting them down to the artist before having them go through the approval process. Copy was still being approved on Wednesday, and even on Thursday, I had to compose and stick in one more small (100-word) item because the ME thought we needed more in one column. I also secretly wrote a second short piece in case this one didn't work out. (I can use it next issue, though.) This was the craziest schedule since we redesigned the magazine in September. I am told we used to have considerably more time to assemble issues, and I'm not sure how we might reverse the current just-in-time trend, what with one seat unfilled now. I barely have time to plot out items for future issues while racing through the copy for the current ones. I'm sure there's some way to render that state of affairs into a positive resume entry. I did manage to make up a couple of schedules for myself, so pieces get produced and sent around for approval at regular intervals. Such a schedule has been used some months before my arrival, but when they were down one person (sound familiar?) it went off course. I hope to avoid that fate by structuring the production of copy very rigidly, so I don't have to hustle as much and potentially trip while sprinting toward the finish and wreck a deadline. Further.
The ME was in the office through Wednesday before returning to Maryland. We spent Thursday sending PDFs to prepress and approving them via an online proofing system. My immediate supervisor was out taking a much-needed day off, and our other editor was working from home to push a late piece out, so in contrast to the rest of the week, Friday was far more relaxed. My task that day was to compose a spreadsheet of all the articles for the outsourcing folks to make our Quark docs into Internet files. Next week, I will spend two days working on the Website reviewing this work and approving or tinkering with it, then make the site live. My first couple of trips through this process reminded of the last bit of Star Trek II, when Spock has uncorked the Enterprise's reactor and is diddling with its innards while getting a gamma-ray facial. I had instructions for what to, and they seemed to make sense, but Jeebus, do they really want me noodling around the front page only 2 months into my stay? Don't they know I know nothing? Evidently I knew enough, as the process worked, and the calls for assistance I've had to make during the procedure have been getting less frequent.
The only snag is that this sheet is now being reviewed by the ME, who has two other whole magazines to work on in addition to ours. Last time, she took 2½ days to approve it, sending it back at the useless time of 4:00 on a Friday. How do I forward this to the next guy and say with a straight face, "Can you get this out before you go?" I've repeatedly stressed that I will be out of the office (and unlike her, not working while out) next Friday and Monday, so I hope this lights the right kind of fire under her progress.
The exercise plan has been progressing without flaw. When I weighed myself Monday morning, after the siege of Thanksgiving calories, I was gratified to see I had lost a pound since the pre-holiday weigh-in. No small feat, what with my diabolical mother replenishing the M&M dish each time I came back to their house. (She has sequestered several tons of holiday M&Ms in a bag of holding.) I followed the same schedule this week, hitting the gym slightly late only on Wednesday, and only because I decided to take some of the time I'd been spending at work back and get in a half hour late. I regretted it: The gym was significantly more populated. Best to arrive at five. I cannot argue with the results.
I didn't even have to decide whether to play cards or exercise. Either the game didn't roll, or I was left off the invite list for this week. I'd said last Saturday afternoon that I'd play in the usual game, which hadn't rolled Thursday due to the holiday, but by the evening, I was exhausted, so I canceled. The host sounded pissed, but he only had six people to begin with, and he has an unrealistic sense of optimism during busy weekends like this one when he tries to assemble an off-schedule game. One of the players who'd committed did not want to play if we only had five players, which my cancellation caused, but I refuse to play if I'm too tired to make good decisions, and I don't much care for short tables myself. Besides, I was (and still am) mulling a trip to Atlantic City on an upcoming weekend (or may be going there as part of a bachelor party; still in flux at this point). Why play tired, at a short game where the blinds are gonna peck me to death like an insistent duck, with some of the superior players in the gang, when I can just wait until another Thursday or play against certified mongoloids at AC or Foxwoods?
The game might actually be slowing down. Full tables have been less common. As I mentioned in my last post, losses have caused some of our regulars to call a temporary or permanent halt. The host has not grasped the power of restraint, in that he has sometimes hosted two or even three times in a week, which accelerates whatever win–loss trends are present in a group. He needs a little help with impulse control (which admittedly proves profitable at the table sometimes). My own impulse-control problems mostly have resulted in me being a fatass. My job now is to reverse this trend. The cards will come when they come, and they'll be sweeter when they do. If I put my ass in a seat after a long drought of no play, and I've gotta wait an hour for a playable hand, so be it. I'll wait. Let the losers toss chips in on every marginal holding just because they haven't seen a pocket pair all day.
For that matter, let the losers eat all of the holiday sweets that will roll into the office between now and 2008. I've got three scheduled binges: the company party, my own, and Christmas. Outside of them, I will rein in my impulses and enter the new year feeling better than ever.
Today brings a binge of cleaning and party prep. And maybe a little food shopping too: Tomorrow is supposed to be a genuinely foul, wintry day. Good for staying in and writing some Christmas cards while brewing chili and watching the local football teams founder. With the bright sky beckoning me into the cold afternoon, I will get my ass in gear and enjoy being my own boss for a couple of days.
Let's start with Monday. As I described here, one of the team members on my magazine left that day. For breakfast, many of us brought in food. I snagged a cheese danish ring from the local bakery (which, by the way, I escaped without buying anything for myself). The managing editor was in the office that day, and took us all out for a goodbye lunch. This after we had been told the week before that we couldn't go out because the issue is late and we need to concentrate on it. The ME had said she would bring in sandwiches from the local joint, but when the day arrived, she seemed to remember this as a nebulous request that we arrange this. You might have picked up that we occasionally have to work around this person. Still beats the other job by a parsec, but a bit maddening when you need to expend the effort to out-think and anticipate. So we ended up burning extra time out eating lunches that put us to sleep in the afternoon, just when we needed to push hard on the issue and send it out the door.
I ended up staying about an extra hour four days of the five to get this done. Not worthy of a medal in the grand cosmic scheme of things. However, I did note the amount of extra time so I could take it back at a future time. Give nothing to an employer without receiving something tangible. Keep in mind that we are now down one person. My services are now even more in demand. It gives me leverage, at least until we fill that spot and the new person gets up to speed. You never like to look at things in this sort of a mercenary way, but fundamentally, unless you're self-employed, you're just an SSN in an Excel spreadsheet. The moment your financial liability (pay, benefits, training, equipment, etc.) no longer brings a company profit, you're expendable. That I have my fingers in a few crucial pies right now is comforting, but what I really need to do is develop skills that can't be outsourced.
One of these is writing. Foreign companies can compose Web pages, lay out text, even edit in a rudimentary fashion. They will never be as skilled a writer as a native with an ear for the subtleties of the language and an eye on the marketplace. When I started at the new place, I was given a writing assignment within days. I had to interview a source, flesh out her proposal into an actual article, and write it in the magazine's idiom and with the available column inches in mind. I succeeded in all three areas. But it's just a start.
With the departure of my coworker, comes the chance to do more writing of this kind. I've been composing short report-type items for columns that contain industry updates for our specialist readership. It keeps my hand moving. I've also had the privilege of heavily editing or rewriting some of our more personal columns, reminiscences from people about their profession: moments that defined their careers, inspirations that might resonate for others, success stories, and the like. These folks tend not to be writers, and the pieces need a good edit at minimum. I've been careful to be sensitive with them, though, because you don't want to bruise someone's treasured memories in the process of crafting them structurally into a more potent piece of writing. I believe I'm succeeding at that; the contributors have been strongly positive over how I've polished their work. I've done the same for a new fitness columnist whose work we've been running. Though there is less potential emotion wrapped up in each piece, and she's more practiced as a writer than the folks I just mentioned, it's still someone else's work, and I've endeavored to let her passion shine through any stylistic or grammatical revisions I've had to make.
None of these pieces carry my byline, however. I want to produce another piece like my first one, or more if possible, so I can show future employers or possible providers of freelance-work my clips. I recall that in my career exercise, I envisioned being a bylined writer. Perhaps it's not as farfetched as I thought it was, upon writing it, back in April. It's still an impressive list of goals.
Now that I think of it, perhaps this exposure to amateur writing, and the work needed to improve it, is an education in how to produce copy that editors will seek out because it spares them the effort of polishing it. Line up three equally qualified freelance creatives before a deadline-haunted editor. Two produce work that needs tweaking or refinement. One hits the marks nearly every time. Who has the edge for future business from this stressed editor? I recall the very first meeting I had with the career counselor, my first workday of joblessness, in which he said our job was to find ways to convince rich people that giving us money makes their lives easier. The statement as phrased struck me then as a touch "classist," but I understood him to intend rich as "able to purchase your goods, services, or expertise." Then as now, it also strikes me as true.
Back to last week. We all said a regretful "see you later" to our departing coworker. Her office is close by, and two former employees of my company are there and still in close contact with folks at their former workplace, so future group lunches are in the offing. Plus we exchanged email addresses, so I can continue to call upon her experience and good spirits as the months at my current place, I hope, become at least a year or two.
Tuesday through Thursday were blurs of fitting copy, writing last-minute pieces, and getting them down to the artist before having them go through the approval process. Copy was still being approved on Wednesday, and even on Thursday, I had to compose and stick in one more small (100-word) item because the ME thought we needed more in one column. I also secretly wrote a second short piece in case this one didn't work out. (I can use it next issue, though.) This was the craziest schedule since we redesigned the magazine in September. I am told we used to have considerably more time to assemble issues, and I'm not sure how we might reverse the current just-in-time trend, what with one seat unfilled now. I barely have time to plot out items for future issues while racing through the copy for the current ones. I'm sure there's some way to render that state of affairs into a positive resume entry. I did manage to make up a couple of schedules for myself, so pieces get produced and sent around for approval at regular intervals. Such a schedule has been used some months before my arrival, but when they were down one person (sound familiar?) it went off course. I hope to avoid that fate by structuring the production of copy very rigidly, so I don't have to hustle as much and potentially trip while sprinting toward the finish and wreck a deadline. Further.
The ME was in the office through Wednesday before returning to Maryland. We spent Thursday sending PDFs to prepress and approving them via an online proofing system. My immediate supervisor was out taking a much-needed day off, and our other editor was working from home to push a late piece out, so in contrast to the rest of the week, Friday was far more relaxed. My task that day was to compose a spreadsheet of all the articles for the outsourcing folks to make our Quark docs into Internet files. Next week, I will spend two days working on the Website reviewing this work and approving or tinkering with it, then make the site live. My first couple of trips through this process reminded of the last bit of Star Trek II, when Spock has uncorked the Enterprise's reactor and is diddling with its innards while getting a gamma-ray facial. I had instructions for what to, and they seemed to make sense, but Jeebus, do they really want me noodling around the front page only 2 months into my stay? Don't they know I know nothing? Evidently I knew enough, as the process worked, and the calls for assistance I've had to make during the procedure have been getting less frequent.
The only snag is that this sheet is now being reviewed by the ME, who has two other whole magazines to work on in addition to ours. Last time, she took 2½ days to approve it, sending it back at the useless time of 4:00 on a Friday. How do I forward this to the next guy and say with a straight face, "Can you get this out before you go?" I've repeatedly stressed that I will be out of the office (and unlike her, not working while out) next Friday and Monday, so I hope this lights the right kind of fire under her progress.
The exercise plan has been progressing without flaw. When I weighed myself Monday morning, after the siege of Thanksgiving calories, I was gratified to see I had lost a pound since the pre-holiday weigh-in. No small feat, what with my diabolical mother replenishing the M&M dish each time I came back to their house. (She has sequestered several tons of holiday M&Ms in a bag of holding.) I followed the same schedule this week, hitting the gym slightly late only on Wednesday, and only because I decided to take some of the time I'd been spending at work back and get in a half hour late. I regretted it: The gym was significantly more populated. Best to arrive at five. I cannot argue with the results.
I didn't even have to decide whether to play cards or exercise. Either the game didn't roll, or I was left off the invite list for this week. I'd said last Saturday afternoon that I'd play in the usual game, which hadn't rolled Thursday due to the holiday, but by the evening, I was exhausted, so I canceled. The host sounded pissed, but he only had six people to begin with, and he has an unrealistic sense of optimism during busy weekends like this one when he tries to assemble an off-schedule game. One of the players who'd committed did not want to play if we only had five players, which my cancellation caused, but I refuse to play if I'm too tired to make good decisions, and I don't much care for short tables myself. Besides, I was (and still am) mulling a trip to Atlantic City on an upcoming weekend (or may be going there as part of a bachelor party; still in flux at this point). Why play tired, at a short game where the blinds are gonna peck me to death like an insistent duck, with some of the superior players in the gang, when I can just wait until another Thursday or play against certified mongoloids at AC or Foxwoods?
The game might actually be slowing down. Full tables have been less common. As I mentioned in my last post, losses have caused some of our regulars to call a temporary or permanent halt. The host has not grasped the power of restraint, in that he has sometimes hosted two or even three times in a week, which accelerates whatever win–loss trends are present in a group. He needs a little help with impulse control (which admittedly proves profitable at the table sometimes). My own impulse-control problems mostly have resulted in me being a fatass. My job now is to reverse this trend. The cards will come when they come, and they'll be sweeter when they do. If I put my ass in a seat after a long drought of no play, and I've gotta wait an hour for a playable hand, so be it. I'll wait. Let the losers toss chips in on every marginal holding just because they haven't seen a pocket pair all day.
For that matter, let the losers eat all of the holiday sweets that will roll into the office between now and 2008. I've got three scheduled binges: the company party, my own, and Christmas. Outside of them, I will rein in my impulses and enter the new year feeling better than ever.
Today brings a binge of cleaning and party prep. And maybe a little food shopping too: Tomorrow is supposed to be a genuinely foul, wintry day. Good for staying in and writing some Christmas cards while brewing chili and watching the local football teams founder. With the bright sky beckoning me into the cold afternoon, I will get my ass in gear and enjoy being my own boss for a couple of days.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Two Weeks of Exercise Boot Camp
I JUST COMPLETED TWO solid weeks of gym attendance. Seven days per week. Four days of weights, three of cardiovascular-machine work. A fortnight of fitness.
In October, I had been hitting a rut — progress had slowed, and my home nutrition was shaky. By early November, after missing 5 days to dodge a cold, and ending up feeling like shit due to nonattendance, I took a solid look at my gym routine to see if it was part of the problem.
I concluded that it was. My three-day split was not making things any easier. By split I mean the division of exercises for different body regions over a training period. I had been doing back and biceps on the first day, legs and shoulders the second, and chest and triceps the third. Abs got in there every two days . . . usually.
Not a bad arrangement, but I was wasting a lot of time with more exercise movements per body part than I really needed. I was doing two movements for my chest (dumbbell press and pectoral-fly machine) but three for my shoulders, and six for my legs. The legs/shoulders day felt like a deathmarch as a result, and the chest/triceps day left me wondering if I'd actually done any work at all. Plus I was doing very little cardio work aside from 10 minutes of warmup before hitting the iron.
In mid-November, with about 6 weeks of potentially unhealthful food pouring into the office, and Thanksgiving, my party, and Christmas looming, I decided I needed to simplify that weight-training schedule while stepping up the cardio. I dropped back to only a few motions per region (my legs were most appreciative), made my abdominal exercises part of two specific days on the calendar, and simplified the whole affair by deciding to make every day a gym day:
SAT: Abdominals and cardio (30 minutes elliptical)
SUN: Cardio (20 min each of treadmill, elliptical, and ski machine, in whatever order)
MON: 10 min cardio warmup; back (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and chest (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
TUES: 10 min cardio warmup; legs (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and shoulders (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
WED: Abdominals and cardio (30 minutes elliptical)
THURS: 10 min cardio warmup; back (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and chest (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
FRI: 10 min cardio warmup; legs (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and shoulders (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
This schedule also offers me the flexibility to switch the two consecutive cardio days with the single one in the middle of the week, or to skip one of them, in case I feel like I'm verging on overtraining (which stems from not giving muscles sufficient time to recover between workouts).
Combining this with proper nutrition at home is critical, as I've found that to be the real barrier to progress. Avoiding spare Halloween candy at work is enough of a pain. Sidetracking myself with a crappy dinner is terrible, though. If I can hold to this discipline, I will shake off the negative effects of the holidays, build stamina for putting the party together (last year I was in awful shape heading into the party, and nearly fell asleep halfway through the actual event from exhaustion), and keep my immune system vibrant as cold season flares in full.
A bonus: The workplace has a positive attitude toward employee health. They're hosting a health assessment 2 weeks from now, with tests for bodyfat percentage (I hope they bring the big calipers), blood sugar, and nonfasting cholesterol. Participants get gift cards and can win iPods. Better still, they might be considering some reimbursement for gym fees, and they claim that any net savings in employee healthcare costs as a factor of our combined efforts will come back to us in some fashion. This is on top of offering free flu shots in early November, something the management at my last job unwisely neglected to do.
My target arrival time has been first thing in the morning on weekdays and Saturdays. During my joblessness, I had made 3 p.m. my target time, which worked great. The gym was sparsely populated, teens were still in school and not dawdling on the equipment (which happens at night), and plenty of parking. When the weather was nice, I could even walk it. The only thing to slow me down now has been the need to defrost my car. On Saturdays, the place is jammed at all times except at the open and the last couple of hours, at which point I'm usually doing chores on the road someplace. As for Sundays, with only cardio scheduled, I can get there in time for the 1:00 football game and find whichever machine I want.
One side effect of my efforts has been skipping poker night. This is possibly worth a full post, but lately the host down in Maywood has been having trouble assembling a full table. Successive losses have sidelined some of our regulars, and some folks can only arrive after 11:00 or so. I can't stay that late any more. During the last four months of my previous job and the next three on the bricks, it was easier to attend and play through 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Now, with a job I care about, and a morning training routine I feel is more important, I have cut way back on both my attendance and how late I stay when I go. I've learned to leave after my attention flags — a key skill when in Vegas, land of a million distractions — or when certain players leave for the night, taking their easier money with them, and are replaced by stronger poker talents. So between the occasional no-show night when the host cancels, and my more selective attendance, I've freed up time for the all-important sleep that I need to let muscles heal.
I'm proud to have completed two full weeks on this new schedule, but I have a very long way to go. It can't just be through the end of the year; it's got to be for life. Creating a more flexible, yet more easily followed, schedule of activity is one step. Minding all of the other factors contributing to fitness is the biggie. I'm tracking my progress in a notebook, along with commentary on how much weight I might be able to add next time, quality of reps, etc., so these individual workouts don't exist in a void. I may never fit into size 34 pants again, but I can keep my heart healthy, my bones and joints strong and young, and my mind clear. And maybe when I do get back out to Vegas next year, I'll fill less of the plane seat. At least on the trip out. The buffets out there play havoc with the acreage of my ass.
In October, I had been hitting a rut — progress had slowed, and my home nutrition was shaky. By early November, after missing 5 days to dodge a cold, and ending up feeling like shit due to nonattendance, I took a solid look at my gym routine to see if it was part of the problem.
I concluded that it was. My three-day split was not making things any easier. By split I mean the division of exercises for different body regions over a training period. I had been doing back and biceps on the first day, legs and shoulders the second, and chest and triceps the third. Abs got in there every two days . . . usually.
Not a bad arrangement, but I was wasting a lot of time with more exercise movements per body part than I really needed. I was doing two movements for my chest (dumbbell press and pectoral-fly machine) but three for my shoulders, and six for my legs. The legs/shoulders day felt like a deathmarch as a result, and the chest/triceps day left me wondering if I'd actually done any work at all. Plus I was doing very little cardio work aside from 10 minutes of warmup before hitting the iron.
In mid-November, with about 6 weeks of potentially unhealthful food pouring into the office, and Thanksgiving, my party, and Christmas looming, I decided I needed to simplify that weight-training schedule while stepping up the cardio. I dropped back to only a few motions per region (my legs were most appreciative), made my abdominal exercises part of two specific days on the calendar, and simplified the whole affair by deciding to make every day a gym day:
SAT: Abdominals and cardio (30 minutes elliptical)
SUN: Cardio (20 min each of treadmill, elliptical, and ski machine, in whatever order)
MON: 10 min cardio warmup; back (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and chest (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
TUES: 10 min cardio warmup; legs (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and shoulders (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
WED: Abdominals and cardio (30 minutes elliptical)
THURS: 10 min cardio warmup; back (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and chest (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
FRI: 10 min cardio warmup; legs (3 exercises, 3 sets each) and shoulders (2 exercises, 3 sets each)
This schedule also offers me the flexibility to switch the two consecutive cardio days with the single one in the middle of the week, or to skip one of them, in case I feel like I'm verging on overtraining (which stems from not giving muscles sufficient time to recover between workouts).
Combining this with proper nutrition at home is critical, as I've found that to be the real barrier to progress. Avoiding spare Halloween candy at work is enough of a pain. Sidetracking myself with a crappy dinner is terrible, though. If I can hold to this discipline, I will shake off the negative effects of the holidays, build stamina for putting the party together (last year I was in awful shape heading into the party, and nearly fell asleep halfway through the actual event from exhaustion), and keep my immune system vibrant as cold season flares in full.
A bonus: The workplace has a positive attitude toward employee health. They're hosting a health assessment 2 weeks from now, with tests for bodyfat percentage (I hope they bring the big calipers), blood sugar, and nonfasting cholesterol. Participants get gift cards and can win iPods. Better still, they might be considering some reimbursement for gym fees, and they claim that any net savings in employee healthcare costs as a factor of our combined efforts will come back to us in some fashion. This is on top of offering free flu shots in early November, something the management at my last job unwisely neglected to do.
My target arrival time has been first thing in the morning on weekdays and Saturdays. During my joblessness, I had made 3 p.m. my target time, which worked great. The gym was sparsely populated, teens were still in school and not dawdling on the equipment (which happens at night), and plenty of parking. When the weather was nice, I could even walk it. The only thing to slow me down now has been the need to defrost my car. On Saturdays, the place is jammed at all times except at the open and the last couple of hours, at which point I'm usually doing chores on the road someplace. As for Sundays, with only cardio scheduled, I can get there in time for the 1:00 football game and find whichever machine I want.
One side effect of my efforts has been skipping poker night. This is possibly worth a full post, but lately the host down in Maywood has been having trouble assembling a full table. Successive losses have sidelined some of our regulars, and some folks can only arrive after 11:00 or so. I can't stay that late any more. During the last four months of my previous job and the next three on the bricks, it was easier to attend and play through 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Now, with a job I care about, and a morning training routine I feel is more important, I have cut way back on both my attendance and how late I stay when I go. I've learned to leave after my attention flags — a key skill when in Vegas, land of a million distractions — or when certain players leave for the night, taking their easier money with them, and are replaced by stronger poker talents. So between the occasional no-show night when the host cancels, and my more selective attendance, I've freed up time for the all-important sleep that I need to let muscles heal.
I'm proud to have completed two full weeks on this new schedule, but I have a very long way to go. It can't just be through the end of the year; it's got to be for life. Creating a more flexible, yet more easily followed, schedule of activity is one step. Minding all of the other factors contributing to fitness is the biggie. I'm tracking my progress in a notebook, along with commentary on how much weight I might be able to add next time, quality of reps, etc., so these individual workouts don't exist in a void. I may never fit into size 34 pants again, but I can keep my heart healthy, my bones and joints strong and young, and my mind clear. And maybe when I do get back out to Vegas next year, I'll fill less of the plane seat. At least on the trip out. The buffets out there play havoc with the acreage of my ass.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Winter Offers a Fleeting Preview
IF YOU RECKON THE beginning of winter from the first snowfall, and you live in New Jersey, then today you noted the change of seasons. I awoke to fat, wet flakes fluttering down gently. No accumulation, I noted as I exited to the car on the way to the gym; just a wet street and lawn.
By the time I was heading to work, however, the pace had picked up, and the snow was now slanting down at a sharp angle to the ground. Driving through it was like streaking through space at high warp, the flakes only lacking blueshift. The streets were still wet, not covered, but snow was beginning to cling to trees, parked cars, and grass.
As I approached my office, which entails an ascent of a hundred feet or so in elevation, I was confronted by a fairy-land spectacle of frosted trees. Red and yellow leaves, still in the full blaze of fall, appeared dusted with powdered sugar. The sky above my company's parking lot was a blank off-white, and judging by the full-throttle siege of flakes, the ground seemed in danger of finally yielding to the influx of snow and building up a white, wet layer. I regretted not having a digital camera sharp enough to capture the fine brushstrokes of snow along the trees bracketing the parking lot. I took one last long look, then entered to face the first workday of the week.
A camera would have been helpful. By 2 p.m., every trace of frozen water was gone. The trees had reasserted their colors, the grass had absorbed its drapery of particulate ice, and all that lay on the parking lot were a couple of puddles. The only way I would've convinced a new arrival to the area of the previous spectacle would've been either a photo or spirited debate.
By the time I was heading to work, however, the pace had picked up, and the snow was now slanting down at a sharp angle to the ground. Driving through it was like streaking through space at high warp, the flakes only lacking blueshift. The streets were still wet, not covered, but snow was beginning to cling to trees, parked cars, and grass.
As I approached my office, which entails an ascent of a hundred feet or so in elevation, I was confronted by a fairy-land spectacle of frosted trees. Red and yellow leaves, still in the full blaze of fall, appeared dusted with powdered sugar. The sky above my company's parking lot was a blank off-white, and judging by the full-throttle siege of flakes, the ground seemed in danger of finally yielding to the influx of snow and building up a white, wet layer. I regretted not having a digital camera sharp enough to capture the fine brushstrokes of snow along the trees bracketing the parking lot. I took one last long look, then entered to face the first workday of the week.
A camera would have been helpful. By 2 p.m., every trace of frozen water was gone. The trees had reasserted their colors, the grass had absorbed its drapery of particulate ice, and all that lay on the parking lot were a couple of puddles. The only way I would've convinced a new arrival to the area of the previous spectacle would've been either a photo or spirited debate.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Catching up With the Week
A MIXED WEEK THIS was, the last before the final plunge into the holiday season. The week ahead, though truncated, might be even crazier, at least until I go home on Wednesday night . . . which might not be at 5:00. But first, this week.
On Monday and Tuesday, the managing editor (who works in another office) was in our department. She greeted me Monday morning by asking me to write another whole column for the December issue, which is supposed to go to press on 11/20. The issue was already running late, partially due to her; she made some requests on a nearly completed article, queries of a frankly passive and paranoid nature, and requested that the PR department of the institution mentioned in the article review it. This set off a mini-mutiny in the department, but it typifies the very tentative approach our boss takes in making decisions or trying to change things at the 11th hour. It's one of the few negatives of the job, but insofar as she's otherwise a pleasant person who can be swayed by reason, it's mitigated somewhat. Still, there are limits. But adding a new column that late wasn't one of them; I'd come to expect it.
For the next two days, I was fiercely busy at work, mostly writing, which I enjoyed. Autumn weather also returned, with chill nights and gemlike skies of pure blue. The trees in my workplace's parking lot blazed in the sun like raging gas fires. We had a company Thanksgiving lunch Tuesday, an actual catered turkey dinner but at midday. The company also ran a side-dish and dessert competition, so we had a wide variety of both to choose from. The rest of that day was a bit of a blur, though my progress list did have other stuff I'd written on it in a tryptophan-and-sugar-induced coma. That evening, I went with Steve and Jen to a local pizza/Italian joint for dinner. This wasn't one of those weeks that showed a net drop in weight, as you might imagine.
On Wednesday, despite my immediate boss splitting time between the December issue and a year-end special publication that she'd gotten at the last minute from our managing editor, we seemed to be making headway. Then one of the group who works on the magazine announced she'd be quitting at the end of the month. This detonated like a bomb that leaves buildings intact but destroys motivation. The employee in question is a former professional in the field the magazine covers, so her input into content-heavy articles is critical. She is also able to explain complex concepts in that field to the rest of us in accessible English. She writes our editorials, and her experience helped us connect directly with our readers in ways the rest of us might not. Worse, she is an absolute blast to work with. But she'd been butting heads with the managing editor, including a couple of times recently when said supervisor took issue with pathetically ridiculous minutiae. With several of our former colleagues working at local publishers in our field, our coworker cast her eye around, found a better option to the one she faced under this regime, and gave notice.
So this cast a pall over the rest of the week. The department had been under full strength before this year, after my predecessor left in the early spring, and I'm told those three months before my arrival were hellish. (Not that I'm Superman, but even a thoroughly new trainee doing some of the basic labor would've been preferable to folks doubling up on duties as they were during that stretch.) Getting email from my managing editor, the immediate cause of the problem, was difficult, as was replying civilly . . . especially, as is typical, when the requests had nothing at all to do with completing the December issue.
But Wednesday and Thursday were otherwise writing days — again, among my favorites. I felt a cold command of the various projects, as I did when I regularly typeset a complex, table-heavy accounting newsletter in 48 hours back at the salt mine. Priorities were clear. Tools were readily available. Distractions melted away. On Thursday night, I put in a half-evening at the regular poker game. I should note that I had hit the gym every day this week since the previous Saturday, and I am convinced that this physical devotion kept my mood and energy up to the level the week's chaos would demand. Only playing until 11:00 was part of this fitness drive, because I wanted to hit the gym Friday morning. Although I lost two buy-ins (ran high pocket pairs into AA twice, goodnight!), I rode home with a high spirit; I'd dodged a couple of dangerous traps, too, something I wasn't capable of this time last year.
I did indeed go to the gym on Friday morning, and I erased one more item from my to-do list at work. Then I grappled with the column my boss had told me on Monday to slip into this issue . . . and I screeched to a brake-locking halt. This column is best written over the course of the month leading up to deadline, not the week; it comprises small items harvested from various Web sources, which were not yielding their usual bushels of fruit when shaken. I spent much of the day trying not to grow more frustrated than the task warranted by wrapping the stress of my coworker's reasons for departure up with this current challenge, but by lunchtime, it was too much. Even at the best job, one needs to get the hell out now and again. So I bailed for a local Chinese joint and sank into some Empress Chicken and a book on investing for an hour, bookended by leisurely drives beneath wind-buffeted trees and swirling storms of gorgeous leaves. In sum, quite therapeutic.
My boss and I already have accepted that this book will be late, primarily due to our boss's tampering. So when I returned to the office, I set the troublesome task aside and concentrated on another item I had to write (which by its nature goes in last minute anyway, so now was the time). Just to keep my hand moving in the Natalie Goldberg sense. It worked, and in fact I was able to pull in a lot of material for the January issue. I feel if we can get back to setting these issues up a lot earlier than we currently are, we'll be able to negotiate around the tendency of the managing editor to tinker with things and greatly offset the schedules. That might have to wait until we have a full crew again. Busy winter, this may turn out to be. At least it's an employed one. And as the soon-to-depart employee confided in me, "You're gonna have no problem. We know a lot of people in this industry. You're in." Hopefully not something I need immediately, but I did give her my personal email address so we can stay in touch.
Still, this last day of the week wasn't without further twists. The managing editor has been paranoid about licensing, and she sent a letter requesting rights to run a chart to one of our story sources for the December issue. The source freaked out and denied us permission to run the chart. For this article, it subtracts the same sort of structure as removing the actual road from the George Washington Bridge might. The group's artist had already scanned, retouched, and placed this piece, amid laying out the year-end publication ensnaring my boss — in essence, he was doing two issues this month. He was blissfully unaware of this, having taken Friday off. I dread his reaction upon arrival tomorrow.
By Friday night, I was looking forward to an idle weekend. Or at least a weekend that followed my own schedule, which I had in spades. I needed to begin prepping for a Christmas party next month. I also had to grab a gift and card for my mother's birthday today. The day went well. I hit the gym shortly after the opening and had a fine 30-minute stroll on the elliptical trainer and hit my abs (or at least the region of my abs, which are in there somewhere, I suspect). Chores went well and were limited to my town, which at least afforded me the privilege of walking through the chill fall air to get them done. I headed down to the Edgewater Whole Foods to secure a box of Seventh Generation dishwashing powder with one of several coupons kindly provided by their customer relations point person.
New York City lies just across the river from that Whole Foods location, and I sat for a while regarding the apartments of the Upper West Side, Columbia University, and, more distant, the rise of Midtown's skyscrapers. I do miss working there, even if I understand how much the commute took out of my daily life. Fortunately, tourism has become considerably easier: New Jersey Transit now runs more trains to Secaucus and Hoboken on our local line, not only on weekends, but inbound late on weekdays. Now catching a weekend show or attending an evening event doesn't require negotiating rush-hour traffic to get to Hoboken, and then the accompanying parking nightmare . . . just catch the late train on a weekday, or any of them on the weekend, and you're all set. I'm still getting used to hearing trains pass my window on Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm sure they'll prove valuable as long as I'm living in this area. Getting my weekend dose of the city is now as easy as buying a couple of tickets. Very exciting.
As evening fell, I hit the Blockbuster for a movie. I'm all but committed to securing a Netflix account. Blockbuster is sorely lacking. I did manage to find the film I wanted, Untergang (a 2004 German film about the last days in the Führerbunker, as seen through the eyes of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge), which turned out to be very good (aside from three minor-to-moderate historical inaccuracies that someone who hadn't recently reread The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and who wasn't an anal former Jeopardy! winner, might not have picked up). But for them not to have any Family Guy discs aside from the last season — not even the first season, monstrous sales of which were the trigger for getting the show back on the air — or the first season of Venture Bros. marked this place as no longer suitable for my erratic video needs. If I can justify the monthly outlay against the films I actually want to see (and there are a lot; I've shaded my theatergoing way back in the past 18 months, because it's seemingly still illegal to shoot movie-house cellphone users in the back of the head), I'll sign up.
So that gets us to today. The three days of next week's work week will be, er, interesting. I am taking it one task at a time; I just need to complete the work that had me frustrated on Friday, and then I'll just assist my boss in anything I can do . . . assuming, of course, she can extricate herself from the year-end thing she's been tangling with reluctantly, instead of the December issue. I don't have any significant holiday travel to worry about next weekend, just cleaning and party planning. Assuming the art director doesn't go after the managing editor — who is scheduled to be up here tomorrow and Tuesday — because of the art swap. Then you might hear about my office on the news.
On Monday and Tuesday, the managing editor (who works in another office) was in our department. She greeted me Monday morning by asking me to write another whole column for the December issue, which is supposed to go to press on 11/20. The issue was already running late, partially due to her; she made some requests on a nearly completed article, queries of a frankly passive and paranoid nature, and requested that the PR department of the institution mentioned in the article review it. This set off a mini-mutiny in the department, but it typifies the very tentative approach our boss takes in making decisions or trying to change things at the 11th hour. It's one of the few negatives of the job, but insofar as she's otherwise a pleasant person who can be swayed by reason, it's mitigated somewhat. Still, there are limits. But adding a new column that late wasn't one of them; I'd come to expect it.
For the next two days, I was fiercely busy at work, mostly writing, which I enjoyed. Autumn weather also returned, with chill nights and gemlike skies of pure blue. The trees in my workplace's parking lot blazed in the sun like raging gas fires. We had a company Thanksgiving lunch Tuesday, an actual catered turkey dinner but at midday. The company also ran a side-dish and dessert competition, so we had a wide variety of both to choose from. The rest of that day was a bit of a blur, though my progress list did have other stuff I'd written on it in a tryptophan-and-sugar-induced coma. That evening, I went with Steve and Jen to a local pizza/Italian joint for dinner. This wasn't one of those weeks that showed a net drop in weight, as you might imagine.
On Wednesday, despite my immediate boss splitting time between the December issue and a year-end special publication that she'd gotten at the last minute from our managing editor, we seemed to be making headway. Then one of the group who works on the magazine announced she'd be quitting at the end of the month. This detonated like a bomb that leaves buildings intact but destroys motivation. The employee in question is a former professional in the field the magazine covers, so her input into content-heavy articles is critical. She is also able to explain complex concepts in that field to the rest of us in accessible English. She writes our editorials, and her experience helped us connect directly with our readers in ways the rest of us might not. Worse, she is an absolute blast to work with. But she'd been butting heads with the managing editor, including a couple of times recently when said supervisor took issue with pathetically ridiculous minutiae. With several of our former colleagues working at local publishers in our field, our coworker cast her eye around, found a better option to the one she faced under this regime, and gave notice.
So this cast a pall over the rest of the week. The department had been under full strength before this year, after my predecessor left in the early spring, and I'm told those three months before my arrival were hellish. (Not that I'm Superman, but even a thoroughly new trainee doing some of the basic labor would've been preferable to folks doubling up on duties as they were during that stretch.) Getting email from my managing editor, the immediate cause of the problem, was difficult, as was replying civilly . . . especially, as is typical, when the requests had nothing at all to do with completing the December issue.
But Wednesday and Thursday were otherwise writing days — again, among my favorites. I felt a cold command of the various projects, as I did when I regularly typeset a complex, table-heavy accounting newsletter in 48 hours back at the salt mine. Priorities were clear. Tools were readily available. Distractions melted away. On Thursday night, I put in a half-evening at the regular poker game. I should note that I had hit the gym every day this week since the previous Saturday, and I am convinced that this physical devotion kept my mood and energy up to the level the week's chaos would demand. Only playing until 11:00 was part of this fitness drive, because I wanted to hit the gym Friday morning. Although I lost two buy-ins (ran high pocket pairs into AA twice, goodnight!), I rode home with a high spirit; I'd dodged a couple of dangerous traps, too, something I wasn't capable of this time last year.
I did indeed go to the gym on Friday morning, and I erased one more item from my to-do list at work. Then I grappled with the column my boss had told me on Monday to slip into this issue . . . and I screeched to a brake-locking halt. This column is best written over the course of the month leading up to deadline, not the week; it comprises small items harvested from various Web sources, which were not yielding their usual bushels of fruit when shaken. I spent much of the day trying not to grow more frustrated than the task warranted by wrapping the stress of my coworker's reasons for departure up with this current challenge, but by lunchtime, it was too much. Even at the best job, one needs to get the hell out now and again. So I bailed for a local Chinese joint and sank into some Empress Chicken and a book on investing for an hour, bookended by leisurely drives beneath wind-buffeted trees and swirling storms of gorgeous leaves. In sum, quite therapeutic.
My boss and I already have accepted that this book will be late, primarily due to our boss's tampering. So when I returned to the office, I set the troublesome task aside and concentrated on another item I had to write (which by its nature goes in last minute anyway, so now was the time). Just to keep my hand moving in the Natalie Goldberg sense. It worked, and in fact I was able to pull in a lot of material for the January issue. I feel if we can get back to setting these issues up a lot earlier than we currently are, we'll be able to negotiate around the tendency of the managing editor to tinker with things and greatly offset the schedules. That might have to wait until we have a full crew again. Busy winter, this may turn out to be. At least it's an employed one. And as the soon-to-depart employee confided in me, "You're gonna have no problem. We know a lot of people in this industry. You're in." Hopefully not something I need immediately, but I did give her my personal email address so we can stay in touch.
Still, this last day of the week wasn't without further twists. The managing editor has been paranoid about licensing, and she sent a letter requesting rights to run a chart to one of our story sources for the December issue. The source freaked out and denied us permission to run the chart. For this article, it subtracts the same sort of structure as removing the actual road from the George Washington Bridge might. The group's artist had already scanned, retouched, and placed this piece, amid laying out the year-end publication ensnaring my boss — in essence, he was doing two issues this month. He was blissfully unaware of this, having taken Friday off. I dread his reaction upon arrival tomorrow.
By Friday night, I was looking forward to an idle weekend. Or at least a weekend that followed my own schedule, which I had in spades. I needed to begin prepping for a Christmas party next month. I also had to grab a gift and card for my mother's birthday today. The day went well. I hit the gym shortly after the opening and had a fine 30-minute stroll on the elliptical trainer and hit my abs (or at least the region of my abs, which are in there somewhere, I suspect). Chores went well and were limited to my town, which at least afforded me the privilege of walking through the chill fall air to get them done. I headed down to the Edgewater Whole Foods to secure a box of Seventh Generation dishwashing powder with one of several coupons kindly provided by their customer relations point person.
New York City lies just across the river from that Whole Foods location, and I sat for a while regarding the apartments of the Upper West Side, Columbia University, and, more distant, the rise of Midtown's skyscrapers. I do miss working there, even if I understand how much the commute took out of my daily life. Fortunately, tourism has become considerably easier: New Jersey Transit now runs more trains to Secaucus and Hoboken on our local line, not only on weekends, but inbound late on weekdays. Now catching a weekend show or attending an evening event doesn't require negotiating rush-hour traffic to get to Hoboken, and then the accompanying parking nightmare . . . just catch the late train on a weekday, or any of them on the weekend, and you're all set. I'm still getting used to hearing trains pass my window on Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm sure they'll prove valuable as long as I'm living in this area. Getting my weekend dose of the city is now as easy as buying a couple of tickets. Very exciting.
As evening fell, I hit the Blockbuster for a movie. I'm all but committed to securing a Netflix account. Blockbuster is sorely lacking. I did manage to find the film I wanted, Untergang (a 2004 German film about the last days in the Führerbunker, as seen through the eyes of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge), which turned out to be very good (aside from three minor-to-moderate historical inaccuracies that someone who hadn't recently reread The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and who wasn't an anal former Jeopardy! winner, might not have picked up). But for them not to have any Family Guy discs aside from the last season — not even the first season, monstrous sales of which were the trigger for getting the show back on the air — or the first season of Venture Bros. marked this place as no longer suitable for my erratic video needs. If I can justify the monthly outlay against the films I actually want to see (and there are a lot; I've shaded my theatergoing way back in the past 18 months, because it's seemingly still illegal to shoot movie-house cellphone users in the back of the head), I'll sign up.
So that gets us to today. The three days of next week's work week will be, er, interesting. I am taking it one task at a time; I just need to complete the work that had me frustrated on Friday, and then I'll just assist my boss in anything I can do . . . assuming, of course, she can extricate herself from the year-end thing she's been tangling with reluctantly, instead of the December issue. I don't have any significant holiday travel to worry about next weekend, just cleaning and party planning. Assuming the art director doesn't go after the managing editor — who is scheduled to be up here tomorrow and Tuesday — because of the art swap. Then you might hear about my office on the news.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Finally, a Simpsons Reference Even I Don't Get
LAST NIGHT ON The Simpsons, Bart made a reference to something called "crumping" as a way to win back the attention of his classmates, who now found the apparently orphaned Milhouse cool. (I'm spoiling nothing because it was an otherwise crappy episode.) Bart then started some sort of urban-style dancing of the You Got Served/"You Got F'd in the A" type. This failed to sway the other kids, whereupon Marge crows, "I'll crump with ya, Bart!" Whereupon Marge began doing the same dance.
For the first time in 18 years of watching the show, I had no fucking idea what they were talking about.
I thought maybe this had some connection to crunk, which I do know about (yet another sub-sub-genre of rap now immortalized by a couple of Dave Chapelle bits). Other than that, and the use of crump as an onomatopoetic noun in World War I for heavy artillery, I was drawing a complete blank.
I had to go online to unwrap this mystery. There, I learned that it's called krumping, and that it's indeed a form of dancing descended from breakdancing. How many other viewers got this reference, I have no idea. Not a moment destined to enter the long and varied halls of heavily quoted Simpsons moments, I'll warrant.
Still made me feel just a little old, though.
For the first time in 18 years of watching the show, I had no fucking idea what they were talking about.
I thought maybe this had some connection to crunk, which I do know about (yet another sub-sub-genre of rap now immortalized by a couple of Dave Chapelle bits). Other than that, and the use of crump as an onomatopoetic noun in World War I for heavy artillery, I was drawing a complete blank.
I had to go online to unwrap this mystery. There, I learned that it's called krumping, and that it's indeed a form of dancing descended from breakdancing. How many other viewers got this reference, I have no idea. Not a moment destined to enter the long and varied halls of heavily quoted Simpsons moments, I'll warrant.
Still made me feel just a little old, though.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
First-Name Basis
DURING SNIPPETS OF THE Democratic presidential contenders' debates, I've heard some of the candidates refer to one another by their first names. I particularly recall Senators Obama and Clinton doing this. This rubs me the wrong way.
Maybe they're being collegial, seeing as they hail from the same legislature. Maybe Obama is following the lead of just about half the media in referring to Clinton as "Hillary," perhaps to distinguish her from former President Clinton.
I don't recall if Senators Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, or John Edwards have done the same, either with the two senators previously mentioned or among themselves. What I do recall is how Senator Bob Dole, while running for president in 1996, got his hackles up with President Clinton when the incumbent referred to him as "Bob" during a debate. The irascible veteran pointed out how he was extending Clinton the courtesy of using his official title even though Clinton had failed to do so in turn. I'm not certain whether the resurrected Christ could've beaten Clinton in that election, but that outburst fit into an existing pattern of seeming grumpiness on Dole's part, and he went on to pimp for Viagra and Pepsi instead of moving from the Watergate to the White House. So perhaps the greater point Dole was making got lost.
I know legislators employ the "distinguished gentleman/lady" flourish while addressing one another while in chamber. I don't see why they can't apply the same high tone to their debates. It hits me in the same decorum nerve as kids who call their parents by their first names, or the concept of addressing my friends' parents as anyone but "Mr./Mrs. [X]." In a campaign that no doubt will see new lows of dirty tricks and attack ads, in which, according to NPR, a billion dollars will be spent to boost one of these clowns into the Big Seat, it's a little sad to see one of the old social graces of Washington life be cast aside.
Maybe they're being collegial, seeing as they hail from the same legislature. Maybe Obama is following the lead of just about half the media in referring to Clinton as "Hillary," perhaps to distinguish her from former President Clinton.
I don't recall if Senators Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, or John Edwards have done the same, either with the two senators previously mentioned or among themselves. What I do recall is how Senator Bob Dole, while running for president in 1996, got his hackles up with President Clinton when the incumbent referred to him as "Bob" during a debate. The irascible veteran pointed out how he was extending Clinton the courtesy of using his official title even though Clinton had failed to do so in turn. I'm not certain whether the resurrected Christ could've beaten Clinton in that election, but that outburst fit into an existing pattern of seeming grumpiness on Dole's part, and he went on to pimp for Viagra and Pepsi instead of moving from the Watergate to the White House. So perhaps the greater point Dole was making got lost.
I know legislators employ the "distinguished gentleman/lady" flourish while addressing one another while in chamber. I don't see why they can't apply the same high tone to their debates. It hits me in the same decorum nerve as kids who call their parents by their first names, or the concept of addressing my friends' parents as anyone but "Mr./Mrs. [X]." In a campaign that no doubt will see new lows of dirty tricks and attack ads, in which, according to NPR, a billion dollars will be spent to boost one of these clowns into the Big Seat, it's a little sad to see one of the old social graces of Washington life be cast aside.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Record Fair Part II: Normal Vital Signs
I AM HAPPY TO report that I did not die in my sleep Saturday night. Far from it. I in fact woke up on time, at 5:00 a.m. for my second round of volunteer shifts at the WFMU Record and CD Fair. The extra hour of slumber did a lot of good in helping my feet, which were sore from the miles of walking I did around the Metropolitan Pavilion. Those miles and the aches were both for a good cause, one I was sad to have cut short when I left Saturday with a racing heartbeat and a couple of other frightening symptoms that hit out of the blue.
Said symptoms were absent as I got myself cleaned up and out the door Sunday morning. My pulse was still as unremarkable as it was when I had gone to bed the night before. With the thought that caffeine overdose actually was the cause of the palpitations, I started the day with a simple can of Diet Coke and a bagel with cream cheese, and I resolved not to repeat my cholesterol-bomb of a breakfast when I got to the venue. I knew I'd be sampling the Two Boots Pizza later that day anyway, as well as a few Oreos from the A/V Lounge, so the junk food would come in its own time. No sense in pushing things.
Sunday proved to be a full day, if my heart didn't start driving me nuts again. Another security shift until 10 or so, then working the ticket booth for the opening rush through lunch. From there, I actually didn't recall what I had scheduled next. All I knew is that I was eager to put in a full day of helping out my favorite radio station and make up the couple of hours I had lost by leaving early Saturday. I had flirted with sticking around Sunday night to help the station staff with breaking down and loading out their gear. I figured I'd play it by ear.
One thing I love about volunteering for WFMU is that no matter whom you work with on various station tasks, you've got something in common: a love for fine radio. I've nearly always found this was a gateway to finding interesting folks with whom to chat on topics in addition to the freeform station of the nation. My partner at the ticket both on Sunday was a man who'd recently completed computer science schooling and was now doing layout on a local Ukrainian newspaper. This sparked a discussion of Quark, InDesign, the idiosyncracies of editors, and the like. I shared a good conversation, if not a similar design background, with the guy with whom I worked at the flexi-disc museum.
An additional aspect of working a public venue like this was the chance to meet listeners, collectors, and flat-out fans of hawt rekkids. Many folks who examined the stunning collection of flexi-discs commented on their own interest in the format, the records they'd had either as children or collectors, and the specifics of some of the rarer or stranger finds hanging on the wall. Two people actually came by to offer their own discs to the curator, MAC, who hosts WFMU's Antique Phonograph Hour. MAC himself came by late in the day to begin disassembling the discs and to not only thank me and the other volunteer for keeping watch, but to offer us a beer from the concession stand! This is typical of the FMU staff and DJs who work the fair: They are tremendously grateful for the work the volunteers put in to make this a success. I can report that we volunteers are in turn grateful for the staff for giving us a chance to help keep the station we love on the air.
From the ticket booth, I moved to the A/V Lounge, to make free coffee for the slow-awakening record fair attendees and to screen films for folks who might want to take a break from the rush of having so many wonderful opportunities to trade greenbacks for vinyl. I've worked the Lounge before, and it's been a real education for me, as I've mentioned before. This time around, we had You're Gonna Miss Me, a chilling documentary about stricken psych-rock genius Roky Erickson, which was produced by the same company that released the beautiful and heartbreaking Nomi Song. I caught part of a Neil Young documentary as well before I had to start my next shift. I only got as far as the early 80s, when Young released Trans, a Krautrock/Kraftwerk-inspired disc that was about as far from something like Freedom or Harvest as you can imagine. (FMU used to run a compilation disc of videos between feature films in the Lounge, which contained a blistering rendition of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" done about 50% faster than usual with Devo on backing instros and vocals. One of the most fiery performances I've ever seen.) I would have liked to hear "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World," a sonic boot in the balls of the Reagan/Bush era that has lost none of its nutcrunching impact since its release.
Throughout the day, from the uneventful drive in, across my shifts, I had no physical problems at all. Even my feet were hanging in there after my security shift and a couple of hours sitting on a stool while selling tickets. The previous day's symptoms seemed like an extended, overlaid dream. So when DJ and volunteer director Scott asked if I could help out with load-out, I said yes, as long as I could grab a half hour beforehand to get some food to pull my Popeye act and refuel.
This I did. At 6:30, I slid out to Sixth Avenue for a Chicago Burger at New York Burger Co. (another side benefit, in addition to the Chipotle next door, of attending SVA). The first "early" night of Standard Time was falling, the air was cool, a vendor was clearing his tables of paperbacks at the end of his workday, and the streets were alive with New Yorkers heading to a thousand different errands. I felt a strong pang of longing. I hadn't been in the city since my classes wrapped up, and even then, not at night, as I had occasionally been while still working there. I looked up at the old architecture, the office buildings that had seen a multitude of thriving and dying businesses over their lifetimes; the brownstones and apartment blocks perched over bodegas and bars; folks walking dogs, heading to dinner or delivering it via cycle; or just enjoying a mid-autumn night before the work week began. As much trouble as it sometimes was to get in and out of Manhattan, as much as I love my current commute, and as little as that job held for me even the day before I was told I'd have to leave, losing daily access to NYC remains my only lasting regret of the layoff. But at least I have events like the WFMU Record Fair to pull me back in for a day with Big Apple sidewalks under my feet.
Re-energized as much by the city as the food, I returned to the Pavilion. Some kind volunteer, or perhaps the station's staff, had bought several pies for those who made the show run, and I grabbed a sweet, drippy slice of blueberry. I then spent the last hour of my day there disassembling, removing, and packing FMU's gear as best I could. Not being as practiced a hand at the ritual, I put myself at the disposal of anyone who seemed to need a second pair of hands.
By 8:00, I was finally feeling tired. I bade everyone a fond farewell and motored home, still sound of heart, if feeling a little heartache for leaving behind the night-cloaked streets of the city. They're only a train ride away, especially now that the line I used to take during the week has begun weekend service.
Aside from wearing sneakers on Monday to give my feet an easier return to office footwear, I suffered no ill effects the next day. I still stand by my too-much-caffeine theory for Saturday's odd cardiac hilarity. Should it recur, I'll take off for the doc like a shot. For now, I'm looking forward to this and the next few weeks, when FMU DJs begin playing their Record Fair finds, and weird and wonderful music will waft from my speakers and headphones like the rich scent of fertile, freshly turned earth.
Said symptoms were absent as I got myself cleaned up and out the door Sunday morning. My pulse was still as unremarkable as it was when I had gone to bed the night before. With the thought that caffeine overdose actually was the cause of the palpitations, I started the day with a simple can of Diet Coke and a bagel with cream cheese, and I resolved not to repeat my cholesterol-bomb of a breakfast when I got to the venue. I knew I'd be sampling the Two Boots Pizza later that day anyway, as well as a few Oreos from the A/V Lounge, so the junk food would come in its own time. No sense in pushing things.
Sunday proved to be a full day, if my heart didn't start driving me nuts again. Another security shift until 10 or so, then working the ticket booth for the opening rush through lunch. From there, I actually didn't recall what I had scheduled next. All I knew is that I was eager to put in a full day of helping out my favorite radio station and make up the couple of hours I had lost by leaving early Saturday. I had flirted with sticking around Sunday night to help the station staff with breaking down and loading out their gear. I figured I'd play it by ear.
One thing I love about volunteering for WFMU is that no matter whom you work with on various station tasks, you've got something in common: a love for fine radio. I've nearly always found this was a gateway to finding interesting folks with whom to chat on topics in addition to the freeform station of the nation. My partner at the ticket both on Sunday was a man who'd recently completed computer science schooling and was now doing layout on a local Ukrainian newspaper. This sparked a discussion of Quark, InDesign, the idiosyncracies of editors, and the like. I shared a good conversation, if not a similar design background, with the guy with whom I worked at the flexi-disc museum.
An additional aspect of working a public venue like this was the chance to meet listeners, collectors, and flat-out fans of hawt rekkids. Many folks who examined the stunning collection of flexi-discs commented on their own interest in the format, the records they'd had either as children or collectors, and the specifics of some of the rarer or stranger finds hanging on the wall. Two people actually came by to offer their own discs to the curator, MAC, who hosts WFMU's Antique Phonograph Hour. MAC himself came by late in the day to begin disassembling the discs and to not only thank me and the other volunteer for keeping watch, but to offer us a beer from the concession stand! This is typical of the FMU staff and DJs who work the fair: They are tremendously grateful for the work the volunteers put in to make this a success. I can report that we volunteers are in turn grateful for the staff for giving us a chance to help keep the station we love on the air.
From the ticket booth, I moved to the A/V Lounge, to make free coffee for the slow-awakening record fair attendees and to screen films for folks who might want to take a break from the rush of having so many wonderful opportunities to trade greenbacks for vinyl. I've worked the Lounge before, and it's been a real education for me, as I've mentioned before. This time around, we had You're Gonna Miss Me, a chilling documentary about stricken psych-rock genius Roky Erickson, which was produced by the same company that released the beautiful and heartbreaking Nomi Song. I caught part of a Neil Young documentary as well before I had to start my next shift. I only got as far as the early 80s, when Young released Trans, a Krautrock/Kraftwerk-inspired disc that was about as far from something like Freedom or Harvest as you can imagine. (FMU used to run a compilation disc of videos between feature films in the Lounge, which contained a blistering rendition of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" done about 50% faster than usual with Devo on backing instros and vocals. One of the most fiery performances I've ever seen.) I would have liked to hear "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World," a sonic boot in the balls of the Reagan/Bush era that has lost none of its nutcrunching impact since its release.
Throughout the day, from the uneventful drive in, across my shifts, I had no physical problems at all. Even my feet were hanging in there after my security shift and a couple of hours sitting on a stool while selling tickets. The previous day's symptoms seemed like an extended, overlaid dream. So when DJ and volunteer director Scott asked if I could help out with load-out, I said yes, as long as I could grab a half hour beforehand to get some food to pull my Popeye act and refuel.
This I did. At 6:30, I slid out to Sixth Avenue for a Chicago Burger at New York Burger Co. (another side benefit, in addition to the Chipotle next door, of attending SVA). The first "early" night of Standard Time was falling, the air was cool, a vendor was clearing his tables of paperbacks at the end of his workday, and the streets were alive with New Yorkers heading to a thousand different errands. I felt a strong pang of longing. I hadn't been in the city since my classes wrapped up, and even then, not at night, as I had occasionally been while still working there. I looked up at the old architecture, the office buildings that had seen a multitude of thriving and dying businesses over their lifetimes; the brownstones and apartment blocks perched over bodegas and bars; folks walking dogs, heading to dinner or delivering it via cycle; or just enjoying a mid-autumn night before the work week began. As much trouble as it sometimes was to get in and out of Manhattan, as much as I love my current commute, and as little as that job held for me even the day before I was told I'd have to leave, losing daily access to NYC remains my only lasting regret of the layoff. But at least I have events like the WFMU Record Fair to pull me back in for a day with Big Apple sidewalks under my feet.
Re-energized as much by the city as the food, I returned to the Pavilion. Some kind volunteer, or perhaps the station's staff, had bought several pies for those who made the show run, and I grabbed a sweet, drippy slice of blueberry. I then spent the last hour of my day there disassembling, removing, and packing FMU's gear as best I could. Not being as practiced a hand at the ritual, I put myself at the disposal of anyone who seemed to need a second pair of hands.
By 8:00, I was finally feeling tired. I bade everyone a fond farewell and motored home, still sound of heart, if feeling a little heartache for leaving behind the night-cloaked streets of the city. They're only a train ride away, especially now that the line I used to take during the week has begun weekend service.
Aside from wearing sneakers on Monday to give my feet an easier return to office footwear, I suffered no ill effects the next day. I still stand by my too-much-caffeine theory for Saturday's odd cardiac hilarity. Should it recur, I'll take off for the doc like a shot. For now, I'm looking forward to this and the next few weeks, when FMU DJs begin playing their Record Fair finds, and weird and wonderful music will waft from my speakers and headphones like the rich scent of fertile, freshly turned earth.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Picture Discs, Palpitations, and Petty Theft
I JUST HAD A day that went from fun to frightening to ridiculous. At least I get another hour of sleep tonight to put it past me.
Today was my first of two days of volunteer work at the WFMU Record and CD Fair. I had booked just about the entire day, beginning with the earliest shift, the security patrol. Record dealers are admitted at 7 a.m. on the Saturday and Sunday of the fair to set up their displays in the 3 hours preceding general admission. At night, the hall is locked up, so dealers leave their wares on the tables, to avoid dragging them back home, to storage rentals, or motel rooms (we get dealers from up and down the Eastern Seaboard). However, the FMU staff realized not so long after starting the fair that, if left unwatched, early-arriving dealers will uncover their fellow dealers' record crates and burrow through them like packs of curious primates. With records worth up to three figures in some of these crates, theft is a very real worry.
So the early-Saturday and early-Sunday security volunteer shift was born. My job today (and tomorrow, if I make it in) was to walk the Metropolitan Pavilion floor while the record dealers carted in their gear; to ensure that nobody's crates were rifled through unless that table's dealer was present; and to ensure that anyone walking around was wearing either a WFMU volunteer sticker or a dealer badge, was an FMU staffer, or worked for the Metro Pavilion. (Oh, and also to discipline the occasional indoor smoker.)
I therefore arose today at 5:00 for my drive into Chelsea. I got out of the house at ten to six, but I was a little worried about a report of the 495 helix being closed down for work and traffic to NYC being routed onto local streets. This still left the Holland Tunnel as an alternative to the Lincoln, which — after spotting a huge mass of cars stopped on 495 after getting off of 3 — I reached via the back route through a just-awakening Union City. I still hit the fair at just after 7:00, a bagel with cream cheese, a Diet Coke, and half a Trader Joe's green drink (one of those Naked/Bolthouse Farms clones) under my belt.
The security shift went very smoothly. Nearly all the dealers were wearing their badges, and I didn't have to guide anyone away from untended crates. The only knock is that it's a little tiring, because one is walking around more or less constantly for 2½ hours. I did grab a break at 9:00 for my annual descent into misguided food, a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with coffee. Where would NYC be without this delicious but deadly breakfast combo? I never eat this sort of thing except at the Record Fair. The FMU Special Events Coordinator, Mike, not only joined me in this but sprung for it like the mensch that he is. This sort of camaraderie is what erases the fatigue of a slow-motion marathon around the joint as the dealers attack their fellows' crates with pirahña-like ferocity.
As admission time neared, I switched over to cash box duty at the ticket booth. I deliberately chose a second shift that would allow me to sit for a while and give my dogs a rest. The Record Fair is very popular among the collecting community, and due to sympathetic mentions in the NYC area news, and our ads in the Voice and the New York Press (complete with discount admission coupon), our casual foot traffic is thick. So when we threw open the doors, a mass of cold, vinyl-hungry folks was already lined up down the block. The swift blur of making change for what felt like hundreds of music lovers was a sharp contrast to my quiet pacing around the hall some hours before.
One o'clock rolled around surprisingly swiftly, and I was relieved shortly before the hour to take on my third shift, at the WFMU dollar-record tables. FMU has three main points of sale at the fair: cheapo cutout vinyl at a buck a record, more expensive commercial or collectible records and CDs, and station-branded items from the prize lists of past fundraising Marathons. All proceeds from these sales directly fund WFMU (as does the admission fee). Before reaching my post, I hooked into the Audiovisual Lounge (where we show movies for tired shoppers) to grab some free coffee and an Oreo. I wasn't lunch hungry just yet, but I wanted to get my next daily dose of caffeine on schedule.
The dollar record crates were seething with people flipping through them, half of them dealers, occasionally yanking out an album to inspect the track listing or the grooves themselves, then either sliding it back in to flip through some more or placing them on growing piles of must-haves. Space was tight among the crates, with folks queuing up behind the searchers, anxiously seeing their chance to belly up and mine out a hidden treasure. As these quests tended to take some time, I was actually far less busy here than at the front door, so I finally decided to skip out and grab lunch. Two Boots Pizza has the food concession at the fair, but to my discontent they were out of plain slices. I recalled the proximity of a Chipotle Fresh Mexican joint, so out I went with visions of lime-spiced chips and a steak burrito dancing in my head. These I got, along with a Diet Coke.
About an hour after downing this, I noticed my pulse was up. I could feel it in my lips and chest. It felt like I had just finished some moderate exercise. I found this odd, then alarming after it didn't settle down for several minutes. I excused myself from my post and took my pulse with some difficulty (a nurse I'm not). Somewhere around 90. I finished out my shift, then wandered over to Volunteer Director Scott to see if he still needed anyone for the final shift of the day. He said they could use a second person to watch over the exhibit of flexi-discs we had in one corner (you know those plastic records you used to get in magazines or on cereal boxes? Imagine these in every size, color, and product-shilling capacity across something like 120 square feet of wall.). I agreed, figuring this spell of tachycardia would either pass or not, and that I could leave early if so.
A brief pair of flashbacks. That morning, when I got out of my car in Chelsea, I did the usual pocket-pat many men do to ensure we have our gear. My keys, cellphone, and dough were present, but I had left my wallet at home. I had driven all the way into NYC without my license, to say nothing of my healthcare cards, AAA ID, or my credit or ATM cards. I had a couple of hundred in cash, so life in Manhattan or return therefrom wouldn't be hindered by being broke. But unless you've done this, you can't imagine how naked I felt for a moment.
Now keep in mind, I also parked quite close to the entrance of the hall, the streets being fairly uncluttered save for some digging down the street. My parking luck calls to mind George Costanza's "fortune" at finding a spot right in front of the hospital, only to have a jumper crash through the roof of his car. In my case, after I heard a number of emergency vehicles close to the hall, I wandered outside to see my car surrounded by cones and blocked in by Office of Emergency Management and Con Ed trucks, and a rush of water flowing under my vehicle and down the street. According to my Web research, the contractor struck a water main. I checked on my car a couple of times in the next hour, and when I watched the various trucks move out of the way to let another trapped car escape, and they gratefully let me back my car into the space thus vacated, I relaxed a little . . . until I tried to restart the car to adjust it again and the key wouldn't turn in the lock. I tried it a couple of times, then figured, between my stint at the fair, the time the city agencies would need to fix the leak, and the need to get back in to keep working the door, I wasn't going anywhere at the moment, I decided not to think about it.
Or did I? Between my wallet being a state away, and my car possibly being stuck, I already may have been on edge.
Not that I felt it for the bulk of the day. Which is why, when I took a seat next to the flexi-disc museum, and felt very conscious of my breathing, and a fullness in my chest, in addition to the continuing tachycardia, I started to worry. Naturally, like anyone near middle age with a spare tire, I began ticking off the symptoms of heart attacks. No pain in my chest, just that fullness. No sweating or chills. No pain anywhere else, especially not radiating through my jaw or arms. Of course, merely thinking about this list was making me jumpier, and I didn't need to find a vessel to know that my heart was still thumping away.
There was an alternative. Panic attacks run in my family. Though I don't believe the syndrome was popularly called "panic disorder" in the 1980s as much as it is today, both my mother and her father were treated for the symptoms I was experiencing. Their cases were much more severe, and they both received tranquilizer prescriptions . . . but not before both of them thought they were having heart attacks and had to wear tape-recorder-sized heart monitors to screen out possible cardiac causes.
I took a couple of breaks to air out my head in the chill November afternoon. Both times, I felt a little less panicky, though my pulse rate didn't drop much. I could breathe more easily, and my palms stopped the bit of sweating they were doing. I wasn't dizzy or nauseated or anything, and I didn't have the sort of sense of impending doom that both panic-disorder and infarct victims report.
What I was now consciously nervous about was my health cards being a state away and the reaction my parents might have to calling home about this. The license I was willing to gamble on not being pulled over while returning home, the money cards I didn't give a shit about, but the health card was quite different. In my slow slide into middle age, I've taken to bringing my health card with my driver's license to the gym. It's a second form of ID at minimum, and it reduces possible hassles at the hospital, to say nothing of its billing department. After hearing the process of determining a patient's insurance status as a wallet autopsy, I need that card to bypass red tape for me when I can't do it myself.
As for my parents, especially my still panic-vulnerable mother . . . all I'll say is that when my father's had to go into the hospital now and again, she's been a nervous wreck. The reaction to my admission might be a second admission that night. Not that I'd keep myself out of the hospital for that reason, but it would be something else weighing on me while riding in an ambulance or sitting in the ER.
The symptoms returned both times I resumed my duties, passing through thick masses of shoppers, dealers, and taggers-along in an increasingly hot and loud event hall. By 5:30, I decided to terminate this final, optional shift. I checked in with FMU staff (not giving the exact reasons why) and went straight to Duane Reade for a bottle of St. Joseph's baby aspirin. I flashed back to childhood sick days as I chewed up and dry-swallowed two on the return walk to the car. If this was the Big One, I at least wanted to open my vessels up just a bit before it hit in full force.
My condition was lessening by the time I reached my car, which was now unblocked. The key turned easily in the lock this time. I eased past the watery wound in the street, and, after consulting traffic radio, proceeded directly to the Lincoln Tunnel, Jersey, and home. My heartbeat, respiration, and chest pressure resolved themselves by the time I was through the tunnel, replaced by far more reasonable tiredness (from the early waking time, the dearth of sleep from the previous week, and the aftereffect of so much goddamn adrenaline in my system).
The ride back to my apartment took just under an hour, not too bad for that time of night. I felt for a pulse when I got out of the car, and took my difficulty in even locating it as a good sign. My lungs filled easily with refreshing autumn-night air. I wasn't dizzy, in pain, or sensing impending doom. Truthfully, I was beginning to wonder what the hell had gotten into me. I've been in big crowds — casinos, sports stadiums, packed trains, Lollapalooza — without panic before.
Could it have been the two coffees? I don't drink much more than a cup every 6 to 8 weeks or so. My usual caffeine dose is three cans of Diet Coke a day, at 34 or so mg of caffeine per can. Between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., I had had probably about 30 oz. of coffee, containing around 500 mg, in addition to a 20-oz. Diet Coke in the morning and a large Chipotle cup of the shit with lunch. My symptoms were not dissimilar to those of what the dubious slough of Wikipedia dubs caffeine intoxication.
Either way, I was feeling much better, if concerned, as I entered my building's vestibule. I looked instinctively for mail and any packages, especially as I anticipated a replacement box of dishwashing soap from the folks at Seventh Generation.
What I found was a shipping box, opened, lined with packing material, from Seventh Generation, with my name as addressee.
This failed to register for a minute, then I picked up the nearly empty box, reinspected it, and came to the inescapable conclusion that someone had stolen my dishwashing soap. Even setting aside the possibility that the thief had no idea what Seventh Generation was, you'd think they would have left the box there upon discovering that the contents had no value beyond the kitchen, that it wasn't a blank hard drive or car stereo. No. They took it anyway.
The day had taken a hard turn into the ludicrous. But at least I wasn't dying, or at least not yet.
I knocked on the door of the resident manager to begin the reporting procedure. No reply. With the town municipal building in eyesight of my complex, I saw no reason not to file the police report right then. Hell, mail tampering is a Federal crime. So it was that I spent the next 15 minutes or so reporting the theft of my dishwashing soap.
As I suspected, there was little the police could immediately do. I figured this was most useful in getting the act on record, or adding it to an existing record, so a pattern would develop of any thefts in the building. Years ago, some fucking nutcase stole dozens of parcels over time from the vestibule. Rumor and truth may be mingling in my memory, but I recall reading a blotter report in the local paper describing the cops finding no utilities and lots of garbage in the perp's apartment, in addition to a dead letter office's worth of jacked FedEx and UPS boxes. But this person and our complex parted permanently thereafter.
The vestibule where parcels are dropped is not being a locked door. This could have been done by a passerby instead of a resident. After I heard about the nutcase, I had all Amazon and other gear sent to my workplace or my parents' house. Foolishly, I thought a box from Seventh Generation, marked as such obviously or not, that made sifty noises when inverted, would be safe. I was wrong.
With the theft on record, I returned home, still feeling good, not even feeling my blood pressure rise as something this intrusive and thoughtless might otherwise evoke, and tried the resident manager again. Nothing; no light in the peephole or from under the door. I will try again tomorrow and follow up by contacting the management company directly. The vestibule has a camera, which is rumored not to be hooked up to anything (it was billed as being closed circuit and accessible through our TVs, so the typically elderly residents here could scope callers, but this was bullshit), so either someone knew this and stole my soap anyway, or somehow didn't see it and was possibly captured on videotape. I should call the cops tomorrow to note the presence of the camera, if there's any chance this was recorded. I may have been out some soap, but the last thief got someone's golf club, not a cheap item. With the holidays coming, so will all manner of gifts, and if these packages don't arrive with a signature due, who knows how many will go missing?
So that's my day. I reported the same info to FedEx, probably only to the effect of getting Seventh Generation a refund on their postage and maybe a settlement claim (it wasn't their fault at all, and not really FedEx's fault, that this package was intercepted). I spent a little time on WebMD checking panic and MI symptoms and generally feeling asymptomatic, if, as I said, somewhat tired. That "somewhat" has become "very," and I will head to bed soon. I've rested my tender feet and had a protein shake with a banana, a cup of frozen blueberries, the rest of the green drink, and a scoop of whey, just to have something simple and healthful on my stomach, and it's been digesting without controversy while I've been writing.
If I feel jumpy at all when I awaken, I will regretfully call and email the gang at FMU to let them know why I've opted out. Nothing, not even the freeform station of the nation, is more important than my cardiac health. If I go, and there is any recurrence at all, I will jet. (My wallet is already under my keys so it doesn't stay behind tomorrow, whether I go to Chelsea or Valley Hospital.) I am very much looking forward to a longer sleep tonight, but even more to waking up tomorrow and setting the bizarre physiological and criminal-justice events of today completely behind me. I'll settle just for the waking-up part.
Today was my first of two days of volunteer work at the WFMU Record and CD Fair. I had booked just about the entire day, beginning with the earliest shift, the security patrol. Record dealers are admitted at 7 a.m. on the Saturday and Sunday of the fair to set up their displays in the 3 hours preceding general admission. At night, the hall is locked up, so dealers leave their wares on the tables, to avoid dragging them back home, to storage rentals, or motel rooms (we get dealers from up and down the Eastern Seaboard). However, the FMU staff realized not so long after starting the fair that, if left unwatched, early-arriving dealers will uncover their fellow dealers' record crates and burrow through them like packs of curious primates. With records worth up to three figures in some of these crates, theft is a very real worry.
So the early-Saturday and early-Sunday security volunteer shift was born. My job today (and tomorrow, if I make it in) was to walk the Metropolitan Pavilion floor while the record dealers carted in their gear; to ensure that nobody's crates were rifled through unless that table's dealer was present; and to ensure that anyone walking around was wearing either a WFMU volunteer sticker or a dealer badge, was an FMU staffer, or worked for the Metro Pavilion. (Oh, and also to discipline the occasional indoor smoker.)
I therefore arose today at 5:00 for my drive into Chelsea. I got out of the house at ten to six, but I was a little worried about a report of the 495 helix being closed down for work and traffic to NYC being routed onto local streets. This still left the Holland Tunnel as an alternative to the Lincoln, which — after spotting a huge mass of cars stopped on 495 after getting off of 3 — I reached via the back route through a just-awakening Union City. I still hit the fair at just after 7:00, a bagel with cream cheese, a Diet Coke, and half a Trader Joe's green drink (one of those Naked/Bolthouse Farms clones) under my belt.
The security shift went very smoothly. Nearly all the dealers were wearing their badges, and I didn't have to guide anyone away from untended crates. The only knock is that it's a little tiring, because one is walking around more or less constantly for 2½ hours. I did grab a break at 9:00 for my annual descent into misguided food, a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with coffee. Where would NYC be without this delicious but deadly breakfast combo? I never eat this sort of thing except at the Record Fair. The FMU Special Events Coordinator, Mike, not only joined me in this but sprung for it like the mensch that he is. This sort of camaraderie is what erases the fatigue of a slow-motion marathon around the joint as the dealers attack their fellows' crates with pirahña-like ferocity.
As admission time neared, I switched over to cash box duty at the ticket booth. I deliberately chose a second shift that would allow me to sit for a while and give my dogs a rest. The Record Fair is very popular among the collecting community, and due to sympathetic mentions in the NYC area news, and our ads in the Voice and the New York Press (complete with discount admission coupon), our casual foot traffic is thick. So when we threw open the doors, a mass of cold, vinyl-hungry folks was already lined up down the block. The swift blur of making change for what felt like hundreds of music lovers was a sharp contrast to my quiet pacing around the hall some hours before.
One o'clock rolled around surprisingly swiftly, and I was relieved shortly before the hour to take on my third shift, at the WFMU dollar-record tables. FMU has three main points of sale at the fair: cheapo cutout vinyl at a buck a record, more expensive commercial or collectible records and CDs, and station-branded items from the prize lists of past fundraising Marathons. All proceeds from these sales directly fund WFMU (as does the admission fee). Before reaching my post, I hooked into the Audiovisual Lounge (where we show movies for tired shoppers) to grab some free coffee and an Oreo. I wasn't lunch hungry just yet, but I wanted to get my next daily dose of caffeine on schedule.
The dollar record crates were seething with people flipping through them, half of them dealers, occasionally yanking out an album to inspect the track listing or the grooves themselves, then either sliding it back in to flip through some more or placing them on growing piles of must-haves. Space was tight among the crates, with folks queuing up behind the searchers, anxiously seeing their chance to belly up and mine out a hidden treasure. As these quests tended to take some time, I was actually far less busy here than at the front door, so I finally decided to skip out and grab lunch. Two Boots Pizza has the food concession at the fair, but to my discontent they were out of plain slices. I recalled the proximity of a Chipotle Fresh Mexican joint, so out I went with visions of lime-spiced chips and a steak burrito dancing in my head. These I got, along with a Diet Coke.
About an hour after downing this, I noticed my pulse was up. I could feel it in my lips and chest. It felt like I had just finished some moderate exercise. I found this odd, then alarming after it didn't settle down for several minutes. I excused myself from my post and took my pulse with some difficulty (a nurse I'm not). Somewhere around 90. I finished out my shift, then wandered over to Volunteer Director Scott to see if he still needed anyone for the final shift of the day. He said they could use a second person to watch over the exhibit of flexi-discs we had in one corner (you know those plastic records you used to get in magazines or on cereal boxes? Imagine these in every size, color, and product-shilling capacity across something like 120 square feet of wall.). I agreed, figuring this spell of tachycardia would either pass or not, and that I could leave early if so.
A brief pair of flashbacks. That morning, when I got out of my car in Chelsea, I did the usual pocket-pat many men do to ensure we have our gear. My keys, cellphone, and dough were present, but I had left my wallet at home. I had driven all the way into NYC without my license, to say nothing of my healthcare cards, AAA ID, or my credit or ATM cards. I had a couple of hundred in cash, so life in Manhattan or return therefrom wouldn't be hindered by being broke. But unless you've done this, you can't imagine how naked I felt for a moment.
Now keep in mind, I also parked quite close to the entrance of the hall, the streets being fairly uncluttered save for some digging down the street. My parking luck calls to mind George Costanza's "fortune" at finding a spot right in front of the hospital, only to have a jumper crash through the roof of his car. In my case, after I heard a number of emergency vehicles close to the hall, I wandered outside to see my car surrounded by cones and blocked in by Office of Emergency Management and Con Ed trucks, and a rush of water flowing under my vehicle and down the street. According to my Web research, the contractor struck a water main. I checked on my car a couple of times in the next hour, and when I watched the various trucks move out of the way to let another trapped car escape, and they gratefully let me back my car into the space thus vacated, I relaxed a little . . . until I tried to restart the car to adjust it again and the key wouldn't turn in the lock. I tried it a couple of times, then figured, between my stint at the fair, the time the city agencies would need to fix the leak, and the need to get back in to keep working the door, I wasn't going anywhere at the moment, I decided not to think about it.
Or did I? Between my wallet being a state away, and my car possibly being stuck, I already may have been on edge.
Not that I felt it for the bulk of the day. Which is why, when I took a seat next to the flexi-disc museum, and felt very conscious of my breathing, and a fullness in my chest, in addition to the continuing tachycardia, I started to worry. Naturally, like anyone near middle age with a spare tire, I began ticking off the symptoms of heart attacks. No pain in my chest, just that fullness. No sweating or chills. No pain anywhere else, especially not radiating through my jaw or arms. Of course, merely thinking about this list was making me jumpier, and I didn't need to find a vessel to know that my heart was still thumping away.
There was an alternative. Panic attacks run in my family. Though I don't believe the syndrome was popularly called "panic disorder" in the 1980s as much as it is today, both my mother and her father were treated for the symptoms I was experiencing. Their cases were much more severe, and they both received tranquilizer prescriptions . . . but not before both of them thought they were having heart attacks and had to wear tape-recorder-sized heart monitors to screen out possible cardiac causes.
I took a couple of breaks to air out my head in the chill November afternoon. Both times, I felt a little less panicky, though my pulse rate didn't drop much. I could breathe more easily, and my palms stopped the bit of sweating they were doing. I wasn't dizzy or nauseated or anything, and I didn't have the sort of sense of impending doom that both panic-disorder and infarct victims report.
What I was now consciously nervous about was my health cards being a state away and the reaction my parents might have to calling home about this. The license I was willing to gamble on not being pulled over while returning home, the money cards I didn't give a shit about, but the health card was quite different. In my slow slide into middle age, I've taken to bringing my health card with my driver's license to the gym. It's a second form of ID at minimum, and it reduces possible hassles at the hospital, to say nothing of its billing department. After hearing the process of determining a patient's insurance status as a wallet autopsy, I need that card to bypass red tape for me when I can't do it myself.
As for my parents, especially my still panic-vulnerable mother . . . all I'll say is that when my father's had to go into the hospital now and again, she's been a nervous wreck. The reaction to my admission might be a second admission that night. Not that I'd keep myself out of the hospital for that reason, but it would be something else weighing on me while riding in an ambulance or sitting in the ER.
The symptoms returned both times I resumed my duties, passing through thick masses of shoppers, dealers, and taggers-along in an increasingly hot and loud event hall. By 5:30, I decided to terminate this final, optional shift. I checked in with FMU staff (not giving the exact reasons why) and went straight to Duane Reade for a bottle of St. Joseph's baby aspirin. I flashed back to childhood sick days as I chewed up and dry-swallowed two on the return walk to the car. If this was the Big One, I at least wanted to open my vessels up just a bit before it hit in full force.
My condition was lessening by the time I reached my car, which was now unblocked. The key turned easily in the lock this time. I eased past the watery wound in the street, and, after consulting traffic radio, proceeded directly to the Lincoln Tunnel, Jersey, and home. My heartbeat, respiration, and chest pressure resolved themselves by the time I was through the tunnel, replaced by far more reasonable tiredness (from the early waking time, the dearth of sleep from the previous week, and the aftereffect of so much goddamn adrenaline in my system).
The ride back to my apartment took just under an hour, not too bad for that time of night. I felt for a pulse when I got out of the car, and took my difficulty in even locating it as a good sign. My lungs filled easily with refreshing autumn-night air. I wasn't dizzy, in pain, or sensing impending doom. Truthfully, I was beginning to wonder what the hell had gotten into me. I've been in big crowds — casinos, sports stadiums, packed trains, Lollapalooza — without panic before.
Could it have been the two coffees? I don't drink much more than a cup every 6 to 8 weeks or so. My usual caffeine dose is three cans of Diet Coke a day, at 34 or so mg of caffeine per can. Between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., I had had probably about 30 oz. of coffee, containing around 500 mg, in addition to a 20-oz. Diet Coke in the morning and a large Chipotle cup of the shit with lunch. My symptoms were not dissimilar to those of what the dubious slough of Wikipedia dubs caffeine intoxication.
Either way, I was feeling much better, if concerned, as I entered my building's vestibule. I looked instinctively for mail and any packages, especially as I anticipated a replacement box of dishwashing soap from the folks at Seventh Generation.
What I found was a shipping box, opened, lined with packing material, from Seventh Generation, with my name as addressee.
This failed to register for a minute, then I picked up the nearly empty box, reinspected it, and came to the inescapable conclusion that someone had stolen my dishwashing soap. Even setting aside the possibility that the thief had no idea what Seventh Generation was, you'd think they would have left the box there upon discovering that the contents had no value beyond the kitchen, that it wasn't a blank hard drive or car stereo. No. They took it anyway.
The day had taken a hard turn into the ludicrous. But at least I wasn't dying, or at least not yet.
I knocked on the door of the resident manager to begin the reporting procedure. No reply. With the town municipal building in eyesight of my complex, I saw no reason not to file the police report right then. Hell, mail tampering is a Federal crime. So it was that I spent the next 15 minutes or so reporting the theft of my dishwashing soap.
As I suspected, there was little the police could immediately do. I figured this was most useful in getting the act on record, or adding it to an existing record, so a pattern would develop of any thefts in the building. Years ago, some fucking nutcase stole dozens of parcels over time from the vestibule. Rumor and truth may be mingling in my memory, but I recall reading a blotter report in the local paper describing the cops finding no utilities and lots of garbage in the perp's apartment, in addition to a dead letter office's worth of jacked FedEx and UPS boxes. But this person and our complex parted permanently thereafter.
The vestibule where parcels are dropped is not being a locked door. This could have been done by a passerby instead of a resident. After I heard about the nutcase, I had all Amazon and other gear sent to my workplace or my parents' house. Foolishly, I thought a box from Seventh Generation, marked as such obviously or not, that made sifty noises when inverted, would be safe. I was wrong.
With the theft on record, I returned home, still feeling good, not even feeling my blood pressure rise as something this intrusive and thoughtless might otherwise evoke, and tried the resident manager again. Nothing; no light in the peephole or from under the door. I will try again tomorrow and follow up by contacting the management company directly. The vestibule has a camera, which is rumored not to be hooked up to anything (it was billed as being closed circuit and accessible through our TVs, so the typically elderly residents here could scope callers, but this was bullshit), so either someone knew this and stole my soap anyway, or somehow didn't see it and was possibly captured on videotape. I should call the cops tomorrow to note the presence of the camera, if there's any chance this was recorded. I may have been out some soap, but the last thief got someone's golf club, not a cheap item. With the holidays coming, so will all manner of gifts, and if these packages don't arrive with a signature due, who knows how many will go missing?
So that's my day. I reported the same info to FedEx, probably only to the effect of getting Seventh Generation a refund on their postage and maybe a settlement claim (it wasn't their fault at all, and not really FedEx's fault, that this package was intercepted). I spent a little time on WebMD checking panic and MI symptoms and generally feeling asymptomatic, if, as I said, somewhat tired. That "somewhat" has become "very," and I will head to bed soon. I've rested my tender feet and had a protein shake with a banana, a cup of frozen blueberries, the rest of the green drink, and a scoop of whey, just to have something simple and healthful on my stomach, and it's been digesting without controversy while I've been writing.
If I feel jumpy at all when I awaken, I will regretfully call and email the gang at FMU to let them know why I've opted out. Nothing, not even the freeform station of the nation, is more important than my cardiac health. If I go, and there is any recurrence at all, I will jet. (My wallet is already under my keys so it doesn't stay behind tomorrow, whether I go to Chelsea or Valley Hospital.) I am very much looking forward to a longer sleep tonight, but even more to waking up tomorrow and setting the bizarre physiological and criminal-justice events of today completely behind me. I'll settle just for the waking-up part.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Calm Before the Record Fair Storm
BY THIS TIME TOMORROW, I will be finishing one of my two days' commitment to volunteer at the WFMU Record and CD Fair, possibly quite tired, but most likely quite happy. As in recent years, I'll be pitching in to help the radio station raise money at this event, one of the two major ways it raises money to keep independent, listener-supported music on the air and the Net. It will be a fun weekend, but a long one, and I'm just a little afraid that by Sunday night, I'm gonna feel like I didn't have any time to myself. Both of my groups of shifts start at 7:00 a.m., so I've got to drag my carcass out of bed at around 5:00 to get ready and down to Chelsea. Heading off now will aid that quest, as will hitting the hay at a reasonable hour on Saturday night, when I eventually escape from New York (har). The past couple of days were more sleep deprived than usual, particularly last night, though for the good cause of winning some poker money. Money can't buy sleep, though, and I am going to turn in early to recover some of my lost slumber. No sense trying to drive into New York City and pirouetting off the 495 helix while in a swoon.
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