I USED TO WORK VERY CLOSE to the High Line, the venerable elevated railway that used to serve industries along the West Side of Manhattan. I had been dimly aware, as the involuntary end of my employment there approached, of efforts to transform the route into a park. There was a ceremony at the High Line in '07, before I left that job, presumably to celebrate the start of restorative work or the unveiling of plans, I don't recall exactly which. But the city was definitely moving forward in getting it ready to share with the people at large.
I was reminded of these efforts by a story in today's New York Times on the continuing work on the Line, as well as real estate projects around it, in what writer Amy Cortese calls "some of the most ambitious development in the city in years." In the middle of a fierce economic downturn, New York City is forging ahead with a public-works project to rededicate a utility route to civic good. Well done.
I used to walk around the High Line neighborhood during idle times at that job, soaking in the old architecture, marveling at the cobblestones still paving the streets in some spots of the Meatpacking District, admiring the boutiques and galleries that inhabit former commercial spaces. As time and developers claim the decades-old brick-and-iron edifices that face Jersey, the chance to glimpse them from the height of the High Line is one I greatly anticipate.
Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Long-Distance Runners Linked by Radio
I DON'T RUN OR EVEN JOG, but I do appreciate the tradition of the New York Marathon. It highlights the role of the Five Boroughs as the place where people of the world can live, work, and even sweat side by side. Oddly, I prefer to monitor it over the radio, usually over WCBS 880. The unity of coverage—from course-side reporters, the traffic chopper, commentators at the start and finish, even CBS employees running the race—reminds me that there's a clear line of heritage between this teamwork and the global links that CBS established 70 years ago between correspondents across America and Europe to document the march of Nazism across the Continent.
We think of something like today's Marathon coverage as a routine link of technology, but whether it's a simple radio signal streaming through my little portable, a remote broadcast from the WFMU Record Fair, or a debate spanning three continents on NPR, I marvel at the phenomenon. Maybe that's why I prefer the audio coverage; like the Marathon, it's got a tradition and a heritage. Even amid Internet radio streams and increasing corporate concentration of frequency ownership, they still all stem from vibrations in the air and signals along the wire. It would be sad to overlook the wonder behind the technology.
We think of something like today's Marathon coverage as a routine link of technology, but whether it's a simple radio signal streaming through my little portable, a remote broadcast from the WFMU Record Fair, or a debate spanning three continents on NPR, I marvel at the phenomenon. Maybe that's why I prefer the audio coverage; like the Marathon, it's got a tradition and a heritage. Even amid Internet radio streams and increasing corporate concentration of frequency ownership, they still all stem from vibrations in the air and signals along the wire. It would be sad to overlook the wonder behind the technology.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Requiem for OTB in New York?
I'M NOT SURE HOW THEY managed this, but New York State's Off-Track Betting Corporation, set up in the 1970s to manage horse race wagering in and around NYC, may shut down in mid-June because it has achieved the dubious distinction of running a money-losing bookmaking operation.
My grandfather is probably cursing in his grave.
I know nothing about the art of handicapping Thoroughbreds, but my maternal grandfather had the touch. For a Hell-fearing Irish Catholic who survived the Depression, he had no qualms about betting on cards or the ponies. Before OTB, he would study the Daily Racing Form and call my "aunt" Lizzie to transmit bets to the bookie who lived on her apartment building's ground floor. The parlors opened just in time for his retirement, and he enjoyed his trips to the Castle Hill or Parkchester offices in the Bronx, even if they took a bigger bite out of his not infrequent exacta and daily double hits via the state-run pari-mutuel system.
Evidently, this vig was not enough to keep OTB solvent. New York's experiment in taking the race-betting business from the city's bookies and the Mob could end, barring sale of the operation to another manager or a renegotiation of the profit split among the city, state, and the association that runs NYC's tracks. And don't think the Mafia won't welcome the extra business. Hell, they never stopped booking race bets, OTB or not. Via a guy in my poker game, I could reach a bookie within two phone calls if I wanted to get some money down without hauling my ass over to the Meadowlands or into Manhattan.
Sadly, any horse betting on my part is strictly gonna be for fun and small potatoes. My grandfather slipped off to the big OTB parlor in the sky before passing along any of his handicapping secrets. I've only ever thought about betting on a horse when I worked in the city, and could walk two blocks to an office in Midtown to make a nominal bet on the odds leader during one of the Triple Crown races. I did experiment one year with boxing a couple of horses together, which, if I am correctly recalling the details, allows one to win, at a reduced rate, no matter what order your horses come up, as long as you pay for all the potential bets in that combo. I lacked the deep understanding to seal that sort of deal, and lost the $12 or so it cost me to conduct the experiment.
I have to verify the testimony of several commenters in this City Room piece: The environment and crowd at OTB offices is unique. I recall wandering through the crowd of regulars clustered outside the Midtown office, all sucking down cigarettes between races or while reading a Racing Form. Inside, sheets covered one wall, each one listing the individual races and horses at tracks across the country. The decor and seating was the same batch-bought low-bid generic quality as you'd find in a DMV office. Old TVs — no flat screens for this venerable parlor — hung from the ceilings or were set in the walls, so wherever you looked you could watch your financial fate unfold. And of course, dozens of bettors, slouching or sitting with foot-bobbing tension in their seats, chatting like Talmudic touts about some horse's prospects, waiting in line to make or cash in on a bet, from all realms of city life, were there to strive against the odds, play a hunch, or construct some elaborate system of bets across several races to bring home the long green.
Still, with comfy horse parlors in the Connecticut casinos, the Borgata in AC, and of course sharing the same space as the sports books in far greater luxury in Las Vegas, a few hours of two-buck longshots might be a nice side dish to a long day of poker or craps degeneracy with the gang. Just a bummer that I would have to travel so far to do so. As much as it might be worth funding New York's social services via some more reliable and transparent method, it will be a shame, and a piece of city history lost, should the green-and-white OTB signs cross their final finish line this coming June.
My grandfather is probably cursing in his grave.
I know nothing about the art of handicapping Thoroughbreds, but my maternal grandfather had the touch. For a Hell-fearing Irish Catholic who survived the Depression, he had no qualms about betting on cards or the ponies. Before OTB, he would study the Daily Racing Form and call my "aunt" Lizzie to transmit bets to the bookie who lived on her apartment building's ground floor. The parlors opened just in time for his retirement, and he enjoyed his trips to the Castle Hill or Parkchester offices in the Bronx, even if they took a bigger bite out of his not infrequent exacta and daily double hits via the state-run pari-mutuel system.
Evidently, this vig was not enough to keep OTB solvent. New York's experiment in taking the race-betting business from the city's bookies and the Mob could end, barring sale of the operation to another manager or a renegotiation of the profit split among the city, state, and the association that runs NYC's tracks. And don't think the Mafia won't welcome the extra business. Hell, they never stopped booking race bets, OTB or not. Via a guy in my poker game, I could reach a bookie within two phone calls if I wanted to get some money down without hauling my ass over to the Meadowlands or into Manhattan.
Sadly, any horse betting on my part is strictly gonna be for fun and small potatoes. My grandfather slipped off to the big OTB parlor in the sky before passing along any of his handicapping secrets. I've only ever thought about betting on a horse when I worked in the city, and could walk two blocks to an office in Midtown to make a nominal bet on the odds leader during one of the Triple Crown races. I did experiment one year with boxing a couple of horses together, which, if I am correctly recalling the details, allows one to win, at a reduced rate, no matter what order your horses come up, as long as you pay for all the potential bets in that combo. I lacked the deep understanding to seal that sort of deal, and lost the $12 or so it cost me to conduct the experiment.
I have to verify the testimony of several commenters in this City Room piece: The environment and crowd at OTB offices is unique. I recall wandering through the crowd of regulars clustered outside the Midtown office, all sucking down cigarettes between races or while reading a Racing Form. Inside, sheets covered one wall, each one listing the individual races and horses at tracks across the country. The decor and seating was the same batch-bought low-bid generic quality as you'd find in a DMV office. Old TVs — no flat screens for this venerable parlor — hung from the ceilings or were set in the walls, so wherever you looked you could watch your financial fate unfold. And of course, dozens of bettors, slouching or sitting with foot-bobbing tension in their seats, chatting like Talmudic touts about some horse's prospects, waiting in line to make or cash in on a bet, from all realms of city life, were there to strive against the odds, play a hunch, or construct some elaborate system of bets across several races to bring home the long green.
Still, with comfy horse parlors in the Connecticut casinos, the Borgata in AC, and of course sharing the same space as the sports books in far greater luxury in Las Vegas, a few hours of two-buck longshots might be a nice side dish to a long day of poker or craps degeneracy with the gang. Just a bummer that I would have to travel so far to do so. As much as it might be worth funding New York's social services via some more reliable and transparent method, it will be a shame, and a piece of city history lost, should the green-and-white OTB signs cross their final finish line this coming June.
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.
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.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Where the Hell I've Been
BIT OF A GAP there, the longest in recent memory, if memory is worth a damn. I've been busy. Here's a rundown of what's been up with me.
Interview: I was lucky enough to have an interview two Thursdays ago. It's a specialty magazine publishing company that also runs trade shows for consumers and professionals in the magazine readerships' areas of interest. I snagged their ad online and dropped a note to them, and to my great surprise, I got a call back within an hour or so. The location is about 15 minutes away from my house — in fact, it's next door to the career-counseling office I visited through April.
The ad matched several of my skill sets, so I had a good feeling going into the interview. Two people, one live, one over speakerphone, conducted the company side of the discussion. I have to say, the career counseling was of inestimable value for this interview. Although I went into the place somewhat nervous, I felt relaxed by the time I began answering the first query. I was able to answer every question directly, most of them with a story that depicted how I solved a similar problem at a previous job. At one point, they listed the various roles a person in the position would have to fulfill; I jotted them down as one of the interviewers spoke, then, saying, "I can address several of these areas," gave them parts of my work history where I was able to succeed in those realms. At no point was I fumfering for an answer; moreover, they never expressed any displeasure or sarcasm at any of my responses. No trick questions; no lectures or anything demeaning; just a relaxed discussion about an opening that we all hoped I might be able to fill.
Once we wrapped up the three-way chat, I took a brief layout test in Quark. It seemed deceptively easy, but after triple-checking for bad breaks, widows/orphans, and overflow text, I let my contact know it was all set. Frankly, it felt good to do some layout again.
I exited that day with a strong feeling that, whatever happened, I got this one right. This was my first interview out of the training, and I felt like I represented myself well. I took myself to Outback that night as a reward for passing this first test.
Bachelor dinner with Ratatosk: My esteemed fellow blogger and excellent friend, having found himself a fantastic woman whom he shall have the privilege of marrying tomorrow, received his official sendoff from the menfolk the Saturday following my interview. His brother, brother-in-law, three of the gaming gang, and I gathered at Kiku, the Japanese hibachi/sushi joint on Route 17, to stuff him fulla stir-fry.
I enjoy these places, especially when we have a chef who's into the act, and in this case we did. He kept us laughing with corny jokes, added a dash of trivia questions (most of which I buzzed in correctly on), and of course, executed the Dance of the Flaming Onion Volcano. The food was quite tasty, and didn't seem like a heavy load, even though we had soup, salad, rice, shrimp, and a protein along with veggies.
As for the afterparty . . . well, the soon-to-be Mrs. Ratatosk reads these pages, so I must be circumspect as regards the Guy Code on the off chance she wasn't briefed on our second and final destination. Rest assured, she will receive tomorrow a man as pure as the one she sent out that evening for a hootenanny with his friends. How pure that was to begin with is anybody's guess, but we didn't get him into any trouble aside from some errant wing sauce and cholesterol.
NYC Daily Double: Monday and Tuesday felt like workdays, in that I went into New York on both. Monday was my usual Photoshop class at SVA, for which I needed to bring an object. I thought this was to be scanned and manipulated in the software, but it turned out we were actually going to draw it using various shading, gradation, and manipulation tools to familiarize ourselves with the most common implements of the trade. I had brought a $5 Bellagio chip, a royal flush in hearts, and a Krusty figure (she had said to bring something with a little dimensionality, which — aside from his act — suits Krusty all over). We will indeed do some scanning for next week, but this time around, we just needed to draw. She emphasized that we didn't need to duplicate the objects perfectly, but when I saw some of the samples from other classes, clearly drawn by students with underlying artistic talent, my heart sagged a little.
Still, I was there to learn, so during the 90 minutes we had in class to get cracking, I did my best to draw this schmaltzy clown. The challenge of using the tools for the first time in any useful fashion, combined with the irregular curves of this irregular Simpsons character, began to get me down, and when I left, I was wondering if I would ever get past this phase of the class to the areas of Photoshop I felt most would be needed to answer ads that called for proficiency in the software. This, combined with an extended wait for the bus (I need to take the train on the way out in the future for this class), left my mood fairly low by the time I returned home.
A good session at the gym the next day, combined with an additional communiqué from the place where I had interviewed (see next heading), picked up my spirits Tuesday morning. Also adding promise to the day was a trip I had planned to attend the InDesign Users Group in Manhattan that evening. At least one of my former teammates from the salt mine was scheduled to be there. She had attended previous meetings of this group and had good things to say about the presenters. With no job at the moment, I had committed to attend, and that afternoon found me back on the bus to Midtown.
This presentation connected with the company where I had interviewed in two ways. First, they were beginning to move into using InDesign, and as someone who had assisted with such a transition at my previous job, I had experience in making the jump from Quark. Also, they were investigating the possible role of using XML to repurpose text. This was something I had narrowly missed learning at the last job, and by coincidence, an XML specialist was scheduled to speak at the users group meeting. I still feel like I would need some intensive, one-on-one training in exploiting XML's potential before calling myself qualified to get someone up and running on it, but the demo taught me a few things, and there is apparently a downloadable guide to be had on the users group site.
Interview Part Deux: While I was in the city on Monday, I got a call from the coworker who I met at the IDUG meeting, as well as from M, my former supervisor. Both told me that they had gotten calls from the company where I had interviewed as part of a reference check. I was pleased to hear that they both had praised me to the rafters. The reference check gave me some hope that I had a fairly decent shot at getting the job. Had they not liked me in the interview, they wouldn't have bothered.
Tuesday morning's email brought a note from one of the two folks who emailed me with a proposition. Based on my experience in editing along with layout, would I be interested in taking an editing test to gauge my abilities as a developmental editor? They had an article that needed some direct editing on the beginning and end, but that also needed an outline of guidance for the author on how to ready it for the audience and tone of the magazine. Although this isn't something I've done formally, I have made recommendations to folks (e.g., M with her thesis project) on how to address text for a certain audience or purpose, in a couple of cases to the point of rewriting the text. I had the option to decline and be assessed for the position I had discussed the previous week. But now they were asking me if I'd want to recast the focus of that position, in essence soliciting my opinion on what I might be able to do there. Figuring that saying "no" to such an opportunity was worse than just letting them judge me on what we had already rapped about, I said by all means send it along. I had until Friday/Monday (their words) to return it.
This was the second challenge I would receive this week. The instructions asked the candidate to edit for a more colloquial, less academic tone; to recommend additions or cuts; and to prepare a guide for how, if at all, the article should be revised. I'd only have to copyedit the beginning and end (good thing, too, as the article was fairly dry and technical in the middle and I lack the medical-writing experience to tell them if any of the facts were wrong). I concentrated first on the copyediting, letting the ideas I had for any major reworking simmer. I was at a loss on Wednesday morning, until a solution came to me that night, and I spent Thursday jotting notes and shifting text to enact this plan. By Friday morning, after spell- and grammar-checking the shit out of it, I sent my revisions and outline along. I very delicately said that if I still needed work in this field, I was more than happy to be considered for the original position and to work with them in developing this skill in case I was needed later on to help with this aspect of the job. Again, I didn't want to let any sense of negativity creep in. I wanted all doors to be open, preferably the one to HR in which I signed my "welcome aboard" forms.
I haven't heard back from them yet, though I believe they do flexible time and I might have gotten it to them at the end of their "day." I remain hopeful, and the search continues. I am trying not to stake too much hope on this, not from any sort of self-deprecation or anything — I know I did swimmingly in the interview — but because I know it will be more than a stunning blow if for whatever crazy reason, they decide not to go with me. I don't know if it's because of the proximity of the workplace, or the close match to the job description my skills represent, or what. I am just trying to get any potential disappointment framed properly in case it gets triggered.
So that is where things stand. I watched Ratatosk and Amy rehearse their wedding this evening, and they were kind enough to bring fruit, sandwiches, and cookies to the church so we could chat, eat, and help put them both at ease for the Big Day. I will be reading at the ceremony (Shakespeare's Sonnet 116), so I've got a role to play in making the day a memorable one. After this, I will spend Sunday assembling the materials for the next Photoshop project.
Oh, I did manage, over the course of this week, to find a new, more geometrically regular subject for the drawing project. Once I got the biggest part done, I felt more comfortable with the tools we had been shown, which was the whole point of the exercise anyway. The rest flowed quite easily. Herewith, my rendering of the Happy Massager, or as my friends call it, the Molecule:
Interview: I was lucky enough to have an interview two Thursdays ago. It's a specialty magazine publishing company that also runs trade shows for consumers and professionals in the magazine readerships' areas of interest. I snagged their ad online and dropped a note to them, and to my great surprise, I got a call back within an hour or so. The location is about 15 minutes away from my house — in fact, it's next door to the career-counseling office I visited through April.
The ad matched several of my skill sets, so I had a good feeling going into the interview. Two people, one live, one over speakerphone, conducted the company side of the discussion. I have to say, the career counseling was of inestimable value for this interview. Although I went into the place somewhat nervous, I felt relaxed by the time I began answering the first query. I was able to answer every question directly, most of them with a story that depicted how I solved a similar problem at a previous job. At one point, they listed the various roles a person in the position would have to fulfill; I jotted them down as one of the interviewers spoke, then, saying, "I can address several of these areas," gave them parts of my work history where I was able to succeed in those realms. At no point was I fumfering for an answer; moreover, they never expressed any displeasure or sarcasm at any of my responses. No trick questions; no lectures or anything demeaning; just a relaxed discussion about an opening that we all hoped I might be able to fill.
Once we wrapped up the three-way chat, I took a brief layout test in Quark. It seemed deceptively easy, but after triple-checking for bad breaks, widows/orphans, and overflow text, I let my contact know it was all set. Frankly, it felt good to do some layout again.
I exited that day with a strong feeling that, whatever happened, I got this one right. This was my first interview out of the training, and I felt like I represented myself well. I took myself to Outback that night as a reward for passing this first test.
Bachelor dinner with Ratatosk: My esteemed fellow blogger and excellent friend, having found himself a fantastic woman whom he shall have the privilege of marrying tomorrow, received his official sendoff from the menfolk the Saturday following my interview. His brother, brother-in-law, three of the gaming gang, and I gathered at Kiku, the Japanese hibachi/sushi joint on Route 17, to stuff him fulla stir-fry.
I enjoy these places, especially when we have a chef who's into the act, and in this case we did. He kept us laughing with corny jokes, added a dash of trivia questions (most of which I buzzed in correctly on), and of course, executed the Dance of the Flaming Onion Volcano. The food was quite tasty, and didn't seem like a heavy load, even though we had soup, salad, rice, shrimp, and a protein along with veggies.
As for the afterparty . . . well, the soon-to-be Mrs. Ratatosk reads these pages, so I must be circumspect as regards the Guy Code on the off chance she wasn't briefed on our second and final destination. Rest assured, she will receive tomorrow a man as pure as the one she sent out that evening for a hootenanny with his friends. How pure that was to begin with is anybody's guess, but we didn't get him into any trouble aside from some errant wing sauce and cholesterol.
NYC Daily Double: Monday and Tuesday felt like workdays, in that I went into New York on both. Monday was my usual Photoshop class at SVA, for which I needed to bring an object. I thought this was to be scanned and manipulated in the software, but it turned out we were actually going to draw it using various shading, gradation, and manipulation tools to familiarize ourselves with the most common implements of the trade. I had brought a $5 Bellagio chip, a royal flush in hearts, and a Krusty figure (she had said to bring something with a little dimensionality, which — aside from his act — suits Krusty all over). We will indeed do some scanning for next week, but this time around, we just needed to draw. She emphasized that we didn't need to duplicate the objects perfectly, but when I saw some of the samples from other classes, clearly drawn by students with underlying artistic talent, my heart sagged a little.
Still, I was there to learn, so during the 90 minutes we had in class to get cracking, I did my best to draw this schmaltzy clown. The challenge of using the tools for the first time in any useful fashion, combined with the irregular curves of this irregular Simpsons character, began to get me down, and when I left, I was wondering if I would ever get past this phase of the class to the areas of Photoshop I felt most would be needed to answer ads that called for proficiency in the software. This, combined with an extended wait for the bus (I need to take the train on the way out in the future for this class), left my mood fairly low by the time I returned home.
A good session at the gym the next day, combined with an additional communiqué from the place where I had interviewed (see next heading), picked up my spirits Tuesday morning. Also adding promise to the day was a trip I had planned to attend the InDesign Users Group in Manhattan that evening. At least one of my former teammates from the salt mine was scheduled to be there. She had attended previous meetings of this group and had good things to say about the presenters. With no job at the moment, I had committed to attend, and that afternoon found me back on the bus to Midtown.
This presentation connected with the company where I had interviewed in two ways. First, they were beginning to move into using InDesign, and as someone who had assisted with such a transition at my previous job, I had experience in making the jump from Quark. Also, they were investigating the possible role of using XML to repurpose text. This was something I had narrowly missed learning at the last job, and by coincidence, an XML specialist was scheduled to speak at the users group meeting. I still feel like I would need some intensive, one-on-one training in exploiting XML's potential before calling myself qualified to get someone up and running on it, but the demo taught me a few things, and there is apparently a downloadable guide to be had on the users group site.
Interview Part Deux: While I was in the city on Monday, I got a call from the coworker who I met at the IDUG meeting, as well as from M, my former supervisor. Both told me that they had gotten calls from the company where I had interviewed as part of a reference check. I was pleased to hear that they both had praised me to the rafters. The reference check gave me some hope that I had a fairly decent shot at getting the job. Had they not liked me in the interview, they wouldn't have bothered.
Tuesday morning's email brought a note from one of the two folks who emailed me with a proposition. Based on my experience in editing along with layout, would I be interested in taking an editing test to gauge my abilities as a developmental editor? They had an article that needed some direct editing on the beginning and end, but that also needed an outline of guidance for the author on how to ready it for the audience and tone of the magazine. Although this isn't something I've done formally, I have made recommendations to folks (e.g., M with her thesis project) on how to address text for a certain audience or purpose, in a couple of cases to the point of rewriting the text. I had the option to decline and be assessed for the position I had discussed the previous week. But now they were asking me if I'd want to recast the focus of that position, in essence soliciting my opinion on what I might be able to do there. Figuring that saying "no" to such an opportunity was worse than just letting them judge me on what we had already rapped about, I said by all means send it along. I had until Friday/Monday (their words) to return it.
This was the second challenge I would receive this week. The instructions asked the candidate to edit for a more colloquial, less academic tone; to recommend additions or cuts; and to prepare a guide for how, if at all, the article should be revised. I'd only have to copyedit the beginning and end (good thing, too, as the article was fairly dry and technical in the middle and I lack the medical-writing experience to tell them if any of the facts were wrong). I concentrated first on the copyediting, letting the ideas I had for any major reworking simmer. I was at a loss on Wednesday morning, until a solution came to me that night, and I spent Thursday jotting notes and shifting text to enact this plan. By Friday morning, after spell- and grammar-checking the shit out of it, I sent my revisions and outline along. I very delicately said that if I still needed work in this field, I was more than happy to be considered for the original position and to work with them in developing this skill in case I was needed later on to help with this aspect of the job. Again, I didn't want to let any sense of negativity creep in. I wanted all doors to be open, preferably the one to HR in which I signed my "welcome aboard" forms.
I haven't heard back from them yet, though I believe they do flexible time and I might have gotten it to them at the end of their "day." I remain hopeful, and the search continues. I am trying not to stake too much hope on this, not from any sort of self-deprecation or anything — I know I did swimmingly in the interview — but because I know it will be more than a stunning blow if for whatever crazy reason, they decide not to go with me. I don't know if it's because of the proximity of the workplace, or the close match to the job description my skills represent, or what. I am just trying to get any potential disappointment framed properly in case it gets triggered.
So that is where things stand. I watched Ratatosk and Amy rehearse their wedding this evening, and they were kind enough to bring fruit, sandwiches, and cookies to the church so we could chat, eat, and help put them both at ease for the Big Day. I will be reading at the ceremony (Shakespeare's Sonnet 116), so I've got a role to play in making the day a memorable one. After this, I will spend Sunday assembling the materials for the next Photoshop project.
Oh, I did manage, over the course of this week, to find a new, more geometrically regular subject for the drawing project. Once I got the biggest part done, I felt more comfortable with the tools we had been shown, which was the whole point of the exercise anyway. The rest flowed quite easily. Herewith, my rendering of the Happy Massager, or as my friends call it, the Molecule:
Saturday, May 19, 2007
These Dreams Began When I Closed My Eyes
I DON'T NORMALLY REMEMBER many of my dreams. Last night was different. This is how the film festival went, with my interpretation/footnotes in italics.
1. I am walking along a NYC street in daylight, probably Chelsea or the Village in Manhattan, on my way to the weekly poker game (which is held in Bergen County, so this was odd). It is held in a nondescript basement store front, so I walk down a short flight of stairs and open the curtain-covered door. About half of the regular players are sitting around the two tables in the store, including the host and, to my surprise, my buddy Len. We greet each other happily and ask what brings us to this game.
Len mentions that there is also a no-limit hold'em tournament in progress in the store next door, but that it seems tough, because "the players look like pros." I wasn't aware there was another game so close by, so I walk over to take a peek. Sure enough, there's a tourney in progress: four full tables (so it must've been early in the game), no talking, just the sounds of cards and chips being shuffled. I assume that Len took this silence for professionalism, rather than there being any actual TV pros present, and I go back to the first store and share my skepticism.
I also notice that the regular host has disappeared. Nobody knows where he went. A couple more players show up over the next several minutes and ask where he is too. By the time we have enough for a single full table, the players are restless, so I tell them, "The hell with this, I'll get it rolling." Amid grunts of assent, the guys and Len gather around one of the tables. A player begins selecting cards from A through 9 for the seat draw, and I retrieve the cash box and begin cutting out stacks of chips, $100 worth each.
Len is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We saw each other at Jen and Steve's wedding recently, and he mentioned playing poker with family members. The host and players were both from my regular, real-life Thursday game, which due to job-hunting, I haven't played in for a few weeks. I was also contemplating going to Foxwoods yesterday afternoon and trawling in the fishy waters of shite players through the afternoon and evening, but I decided against it.
I used to host the regular game, until Danny, one of my players, volunteered his finished basement; now I act as occasional backup. Even at his place, I helped run the game for several months by selling chips and running cashout at the end of the night. As for the location, one of the former regulars in the game, a hustler type of guy who always seemed to have watches or iPods to sell, mentioned he was trying to start an illicit game in a disused storefront somewhere in Hudson County. Also, my walk to and from my former workplace in Chelsea led along a street with just these sorts of basement-level shops. So the game and tourney in the dream were literally and legally "underground."
2. I am in the bedroom of my present apartment, but it is located in the Bronx, at least 4 stories up, My friend Leanne is my next-door neighbor. I am looking out my window, and spot her looking out of hers. She is holding a camera, and says she has one more shot on the roll before she can get it developed. I volunteer myself as a subject. I try to strike a pose in which I am nonchalant, gazing into the distance in a sort of James Dean/Jack Kerouac casual way. For some reason I even imagine she's shooting me with black-and-white film. She takes the picture, but she seems displeased with it because of the awkward twisting to get the shot while hanging out thew window, and she withdraws back into her apartment.
While getting myself posed, I noticed that a bookseller on the ground floor had set up his wares outside, so now I look down to see what he has for sale. Paperbacks mostly, old ones . . . nonfiction texts from the 1960s and early 1970s, and pulps from the golden age of the medium. The spines indicate these books have been read repeatedly. One of them looks like a book I own. I want a better look, but I'm nervous about leaning too far out the window.
From my recent trips to the Bronx and Queens, city apartment dwelling has been on my mind. Leanne is another longtime friend who I saw at the wedding two weeks ago. Doubtless I saw her taking pictures when she wasn't serving in the capacity of bridesmaid. Also, she circulated a note last night about Memorial Day doings at her house. As regards my pose and the monochrome nature of the film, I probably had in mind some of the shots in the magnificent book The Birth of the Beat Generation. I can tell you that living over a used bookstore is as much a waking dream of mine as a sleeping one, and whenever I pass such displays in the city, I always dig in. Old nonfiction paperbacks that were probably someone's textbooks intrigue me; I page through to dig the highlighting or marginalia. I've also been thinking about old pulp novels, in particular Chip Kidd's use of Thomas Allen's sculptures on the reprints of three old James Ellroy novels, and the long lost B&M Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston, a frequent cash-sink during my college years. And of course you can usually find a wealth of Beat lit in any decent used bookstore.
3. I am in the front yard of my childhood home in Jersey. This is some time ago, because a birch tree that in real life succumbed to fungus is growing in good health next to the patio. I hear the cheep cheep of small birds coming from the tree, but I also hear barking! In the main crotch of the tree there is a very large nest. A voiceover, in the style of a nature special, informs me that a mother bird has captured a puppy to feed to her young. The mother bird returns at this point — a raptor resembling a giant, angry crow — and I realize it's standing on a struggling black furry mound, presumably the puppy.
I am not letting some shitty bird tear up a puppy and feed it to its young. I retrieve a .22 rifle from just inside the house and plink at the bird until it flies off. (I do hit it directly a couple of times, but the bullets don't drop it.) I then climb up to the nest. The puppy is a black Labrador retriever, unharmed and feisty, and he is snapping at four big black birds in the bottom of the nest. I lift the puppy by the scruff of its neck and set him down on the lawn, hoping he won't run into the street. Still angry at the bird, I then invert the nest and dump the four chicks onto the lawn. They continue cheep cheeping, but are too young to fly away. The voiceover says, as the puppy notices them, "Then the puppy expresses an instinct even deeper than the mother's need to feed her young: revenge." The dog tries to bite them, but they have big yellow beaks and nip back, at which he jumps back in surprise. I decide to even the battle up and stomp once on each chick. The dream ends with the pup chomping one of the chicks — still alive but subdued — and shaking his head wildly.
I do miss the birches that used to stand on my parents' property. My childhood dog was a black Labrador/beagle mix, and I have loved the pure strains of both breeds since. I am a longtime nature-show viewer, and one of my most hated moments in these shows is when a baby animal gets snapped up by some predator, such as the skua eating penguin eggs or sea turtles getting snapped up by prick shorebirds. Perhaps the urban legend of an owl or hawk grabbing a person's poodle before their horrified eyes also played into the setup for this dream. Either way, I make no apologies for stomping on baby birds that might grow up to steal some kid's puppy. Insert stock nature-special line here about man being the world's worst predator.
The rifle is one that my parents retrieved from my maternal uncle's condo in Parkchester after he was murdered. They wrapped it in a couple of pink towels with rubber bands, then drove it and an amber-plastic box of .22 shells back to New Jersey. It stood behind the door to the dining room for a week or so, still swathed absurdly in pink, while my parents tried to figure out how to get rid of it. They eventually took the rifle and ammo to the cops and let them dispose of it. For most of my life, I have had dreams in which the [weapon] I use to kill or repel [adversary] does not work. Look that up in your Interpretation of Dreams.
4. I am in the bedroom of an apartment, presumably mine, but the layout and my possessions are all different. Not sure where it's located. I live next door to a woman I have not seen in real life in many years. My door is open, and I can see into her apartment, where she is weighing herself. Dissatisfied with the read on the first scale, she tries a second. This also fails to please. (She is fully dressed, which can't help the reading.)
"Do you want to try mine? You could average the three of them," I offer, half serious.
She looks at me for a second, then rushes past to try my scale. I discreetly peek at the LED: 206. Completely inaccurate; the woman probably doesn't weigh more than 155 in the altogether. This seems to please her anyway, and she walks over to me and thanks me. What weight she carries is very nicely distributed. "So, do you invite people in to weigh themselves every day?"
"Maybe I just wanted a pretty girl in my apartment."
She laughs and steps within my reach, fixing my gaze. "Are you being facetious?"
"Nope."
She puts her arms around me and kisses me deeply. I return it like I was waiting for it. Evidently I've known this woman longer than just the 2 minutes that have passed thus far in the dream . . . which, annoyingly, cuts off about ten seconds after this.
I am tempted to say I was living in a college dorm. The halls were painted cinderblock and uncarpeted. In many of the dorms I've seen, one could open a door and see straight across into your neighbor's cell. This seemed more like a suite of rooms, one that uncharacteristically had a second entrance in the bedroom. Giggity. I do weigh myself each morning, and I had discussed my loss of a pound this week with M. the previous evening, so weight loss was on my mind before I hit the hay.
As for the woman . . . the Internet and Google being what they are, I will leave her ID blank. She was quite curvaceous, had a sweet smile and gorgeous face, and she appreciated my sense of humor. I look fondly on the short time I knew her. As for me, such rêves de l'amour are extremely uncommon for me, a surprise considering I haven't been in a relationship since the Clinton Administration.
1. I am walking along a NYC street in daylight, probably Chelsea or the Village in Manhattan, on my way to the weekly poker game (which is held in Bergen County, so this was odd). It is held in a nondescript basement store front, so I walk down a short flight of stairs and open the curtain-covered door. About half of the regular players are sitting around the two tables in the store, including the host and, to my surprise, my buddy Len. We greet each other happily and ask what brings us to this game.
Len mentions that there is also a no-limit hold'em tournament in progress in the store next door, but that it seems tough, because "the players look like pros." I wasn't aware there was another game so close by, so I walk over to take a peek. Sure enough, there's a tourney in progress: four full tables (so it must've been early in the game), no talking, just the sounds of cards and chips being shuffled. I assume that Len took this silence for professionalism, rather than there being any actual TV pros present, and I go back to the first store and share my skepticism.
I also notice that the regular host has disappeared. Nobody knows where he went. A couple more players show up over the next several minutes and ask where he is too. By the time we have enough for a single full table, the players are restless, so I tell them, "The hell with this, I'll get it rolling." Amid grunts of assent, the guys and Len gather around one of the tables. A player begins selecting cards from A through 9 for the seat draw, and I retrieve the cash box and begin cutting out stacks of chips, $100 worth each.
Len is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We saw each other at Jen and Steve's wedding recently, and he mentioned playing poker with family members. The host and players were both from my regular, real-life Thursday game, which due to job-hunting, I haven't played in for a few weeks. I was also contemplating going to Foxwoods yesterday afternoon and trawling in the fishy waters of shite players through the afternoon and evening, but I decided against it.
I used to host the regular game, until Danny, one of my players, volunteered his finished basement; now I act as occasional backup. Even at his place, I helped run the game for several months by selling chips and running cashout at the end of the night. As for the location, one of the former regulars in the game, a hustler type of guy who always seemed to have watches or iPods to sell, mentioned he was trying to start an illicit game in a disused storefront somewhere in Hudson County. Also, my walk to and from my former workplace in Chelsea led along a street with just these sorts of basement-level shops. So the game and tourney in the dream were literally and legally "underground."
2. I am in the bedroom of my present apartment, but it is located in the Bronx, at least 4 stories up, My friend Leanne is my next-door neighbor. I am looking out my window, and spot her looking out of hers. She is holding a camera, and says she has one more shot on the roll before she can get it developed. I volunteer myself as a subject. I try to strike a pose in which I am nonchalant, gazing into the distance in a sort of James Dean/Jack Kerouac casual way. For some reason I even imagine she's shooting me with black-and-white film. She takes the picture, but she seems displeased with it because of the awkward twisting to get the shot while hanging out thew window, and she withdraws back into her apartment.
While getting myself posed, I noticed that a bookseller on the ground floor had set up his wares outside, so now I look down to see what he has for sale. Paperbacks mostly, old ones . . . nonfiction texts from the 1960s and early 1970s, and pulps from the golden age of the medium. The spines indicate these books have been read repeatedly. One of them looks like a book I own. I want a better look, but I'm nervous about leaning too far out the window.
From my recent trips to the Bronx and Queens, city apartment dwelling has been on my mind. Leanne is another longtime friend who I saw at the wedding two weeks ago. Doubtless I saw her taking pictures when she wasn't serving in the capacity of bridesmaid. Also, she circulated a note last night about Memorial Day doings at her house. As regards my pose and the monochrome nature of the film, I probably had in mind some of the shots in the magnificent book The Birth of the Beat Generation. I can tell you that living over a used bookstore is as much a waking dream of mine as a sleeping one, and whenever I pass such displays in the city, I always dig in. Old nonfiction paperbacks that were probably someone's textbooks intrigue me; I page through to dig the highlighting or marginalia. I've also been thinking about old pulp novels, in particular Chip Kidd's use of Thomas Allen's sculptures on the reprints of three old James Ellroy novels, and the long lost B&M Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore on Newbury Street in Boston, a frequent cash-sink during my college years. And of course you can usually find a wealth of Beat lit in any decent used bookstore.
3. I am in the front yard of my childhood home in Jersey. This is some time ago, because a birch tree that in real life succumbed to fungus is growing in good health next to the patio. I hear the cheep cheep of small birds coming from the tree, but I also hear barking! In the main crotch of the tree there is a very large nest. A voiceover, in the style of a nature special, informs me that a mother bird has captured a puppy to feed to her young. The mother bird returns at this point — a raptor resembling a giant, angry crow — and I realize it's standing on a struggling black furry mound, presumably the puppy.
I am not letting some shitty bird tear up a puppy and feed it to its young. I retrieve a .22 rifle from just inside the house and plink at the bird until it flies off. (I do hit it directly a couple of times, but the bullets don't drop it.) I then climb up to the nest. The puppy is a black Labrador retriever, unharmed and feisty, and he is snapping at four big black birds in the bottom of the nest. I lift the puppy by the scruff of its neck and set him down on the lawn, hoping he won't run into the street. Still angry at the bird, I then invert the nest and dump the four chicks onto the lawn. They continue cheep cheeping, but are too young to fly away. The voiceover says, as the puppy notices them, "Then the puppy expresses an instinct even deeper than the mother's need to feed her young: revenge." The dog tries to bite them, but they have big yellow beaks and nip back, at which he jumps back in surprise. I decide to even the battle up and stomp once on each chick. The dream ends with the pup chomping one of the chicks — still alive but subdued — and shaking his head wildly.
I do miss the birches that used to stand on my parents' property. My childhood dog was a black Labrador/beagle mix, and I have loved the pure strains of both breeds since. I am a longtime nature-show viewer, and one of my most hated moments in these shows is when a baby animal gets snapped up by some predator, such as the skua eating penguin eggs or sea turtles getting snapped up by prick shorebirds. Perhaps the urban legend of an owl or hawk grabbing a person's poodle before their horrified eyes also played into the setup for this dream. Either way, I make no apologies for stomping on baby birds that might grow up to steal some kid's puppy. Insert stock nature-special line here about man being the world's worst predator.
The rifle is one that my parents retrieved from my maternal uncle's condo in Parkchester after he was murdered. They wrapped it in a couple of pink towels with rubber bands, then drove it and an amber-plastic box of .22 shells back to New Jersey. It stood behind the door to the dining room for a week or so, still swathed absurdly in pink, while my parents tried to figure out how to get rid of it. They eventually took the rifle and ammo to the cops and let them dispose of it. For most of my life, I have had dreams in which the [weapon] I use to kill or repel [adversary] does not work. Look that up in your Interpretation of Dreams.
4. I am in the bedroom of an apartment, presumably mine, but the layout and my possessions are all different. Not sure where it's located. I live next door to a woman I have not seen in real life in many years. My door is open, and I can see into her apartment, where she is weighing herself. Dissatisfied with the read on the first scale, she tries a second. This also fails to please. (She is fully dressed, which can't help the reading.)
"Do you want to try mine? You could average the three of them," I offer, half serious.
She looks at me for a second, then rushes past to try my scale. I discreetly peek at the LED: 206. Completely inaccurate; the woman probably doesn't weigh more than 155 in the altogether. This seems to please her anyway, and she walks over to me and thanks me. What weight she carries is very nicely distributed. "So, do you invite people in to weigh themselves every day?"
"Maybe I just wanted a pretty girl in my apartment."
She laughs and steps within my reach, fixing my gaze. "Are you being facetious?"
"Nope."
She puts her arms around me and kisses me deeply. I return it like I was waiting for it. Evidently I've known this woman longer than just the 2 minutes that have passed thus far in the dream . . . which, annoyingly, cuts off about ten seconds after this.
I am tempted to say I was living in a college dorm. The halls were painted cinderblock and uncarpeted. In many of the dorms I've seen, one could open a door and see straight across into your neighbor's cell. This seemed more like a suite of rooms, one that uncharacteristically had a second entrance in the bedroom. Giggity. I do weigh myself each morning, and I had discussed my loss of a pound this week with M. the previous evening, so weight loss was on my mind before I hit the hay.
As for the woman . . . the Internet and Google being what they are, I will leave her ID blank. She was quite curvaceous, had a sweet smile and gorgeous face, and she appreciated my sense of humor. I look fondly on the short time I knew her. As for me, such rêves de l'amour are extremely uncommon for me, a surprise considering I haven't been in a relationship since the Clinton Administration.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Career and Fitness Roundup
IT'S BEEN BUSY AROUND here. I spent Thursday and Friday in all-day seminars at the career-counseling office. On Saturday, I ran errands and entered my sixth week of thrice-weekly weight training with a newly revised routine. Between the two, I was capsized by a weird and intense wave of nostalgia for the greatest city in the world. I'll touch on all of these.
I woke up on Thursday grumpy. I'd just spent three days at home working through the career-center materials. This program will leave me more prepared and confident in my job search, so I am not knocking it. The prospect of two more full days of the same, stuck in an office without the local park, library, gym, or even walking path for an escape, was not encouraging.
I got to the office early and found most of the other participants had done the same. Only two empty seats remained. Everyone had already written their names on the cards provided, so I took this as a sign that folks were willing to contribute. My grumpiness began to lift somewhat, if only from seeing other people.
The instructor showed up right on time, and we began with an introductory exercise. She asked each of us to give our profession and describe our last position, our reason for departing, one good thing that's happened in our lives (in work or outside), our hopes and concerns over the process, and what we would truly like to do next in our career. I was fourth in line, so I had some time to think of answers. The "one good thing" stumped me at first; the lingering funk I was in clouded my objectivity.
By the time they got to me, I had recalled a piece of advice from P., the career coach who had visited our office shortly after the layoff news. When speaking on the phone during our job hunt, he said, stand. You project more forcefully when speaking in a standing position than when sitting. Taking this cue, I said, while rising, "I feel more comfortable talking to a crowd when I stand, so I'm gonna stand." I tried to hold everyone's gaze for at least one sentence while I said my piece, which I managed to deliver without my usual storm of "uh"s and "y'know"s. As for the "one good thing" example, I briefly summarized my successful writing devotion.
Hearing the others gave me a sense of their optimism. Aside from one guy who was a salesman and seemed like a bluff-hearty bullshit artist, the others varied from tentative to shellshocked. Putting folks on the spot to speak in front of 10 strangers is rough for some folks. When I learned that two of the most reticent people were also in the business of corporate communications and executive-level event planning, respectively, I wondered how this had affected their work. These professions require effective speech and confidence, both of which seemed muted in their body language and projection. As far as optimism, their manner and tone conveyed more of a "what choice do I have?" attitude toward the learning that lay ahead.
The class that day and next alternated through enlightenment, pulling teeth, and contrariness on the part of some of the participants. The instructor was not forceful enough in keeping the people on track. They easily diverted into areas inessential to the course materials, or even the job hunt. The instructor had a bad habit of engaging folks on these points, rather than diverting the course firmly through its many stages. Worse, when she tried to return to the materials, she would often think of something at the last minute to offer the person who was diverging — a website, an humorous rejoinder to the person's point, a reference to another person's wisecrack earlier that sparks said person to sound off for a minute — and delay our return to the defined path.
I understand it's important to have a dialogue in these events. I know how helpful it is for folks going through the often lonely effort of job hunting to know there are others enduring the same quest, and how others in meetings like this can not only provide advice, but actual leads on jobs. But when the instructor mentions an online networking tool, and the conversation diverts for 15 minutes because the class is split on whether it's a pay service, whether you have to be invited like Gmail, et cetera — I had a strong feeling that we would give the final stages of the process short shrift. One of these stages was the interview, no small part of the process.
The inability of some of the participants to let the instructor help them was disturbing. I know being thrown out of a long-term position is demoralizing and leads one to question one's worth. But the attitude of some of these folks went from submission to surrender. This includes the corporate communications person and the event planner. The former was responsible for producing award-winning annual reports —writing, collating financial data, working with legal departments, contracting artists and printers, and quality control. She claimed she wouldn't be of use to an organization these days simply because she had been doing this one thing, in addition to her other daily duties, for so long. The event planner, who surely had contact with caterers, florists, event halls and staffing agencies, and the executive staffs of the bigwigs throughout her own firm, said she had no connections. The instructor tried to pry some details out of her on what she did, but could not get this 18-year veteran of corporate event planning to do so or even realize the value of her network. This went beyond shyness or poor speaking skills. This was a failure to let a skilled professional help. Few things make me angrier.
Add to this a microbiologist who contradicted several pieces of advice or research-tested techniques that the company had developed. Sometimes he wouldn't even offer evidence, just saying something like, "Are employers really going to accept that?" or "Does [technique] really apply to people in my industry?" At one point, after grinding my teeth through a day and a half of this guy's shit, when the instructor took a moment to describe the details of corporate-recruiter compensation, he said, "Do we really need to know this?"
"Excuse me." I halted the instructor. To him: "I find this useful. I've registered for a recruiter conference that [the firm] is offering on April [X]. [Firm] thinks it's important enough to invite recruiters to tell us how they do their job, so I want to hear what [instructor] has to say on this point too."
That was his last interjection.
I had a break between these classes when my friends Jen and Steve held a dinner party Thursday night to give me, Felix, and his girlfriend a chance to see their new house. It was very relaxing and gave me a chance to speak about anything but the job hunt for a few hours. I confess, I woke up Friday morning even more grumpy than Thursday, faced as I was with another full day with these jokers.
It was a grind. The incident I mentioned earlier with the online networking tool occurred Friday. We were just about to enter the networking chapter, which is one of the areas in which I am weakest, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming as the instructor kept letting herself get diverted from the coursework. I had 2½ weeks left to exploit the services of the career counselors. Any distraction over useless bullshit took unrecoverable time from that total.
I went home Friday feeling very drained. I had taken lunch across the street to avoid contact with any of the students (though I wasn't able to avoid the salesman, who unfortunately came into the men's room where I was trapped and kept asking me questions about myself, despite the implicit signals of my one-word answers to fuck off). I knew there was great value in the course materials, and I had been hoping to explore them in greater depth with a career expert and willing students. Instead, I found that this path, like many in my life, would most profitably be followed solo.
My guard was sufficiently down by bedtime to feel deeply nostalgic about not going to New York City each day. I couldn't get the various experiences of the past 7 years out of my head. The Manhattan skyline capped with dense, low clouds from the vista of the Lincoln Tunnel helix. Neon reflecting on wet Times Square pavement. Empty avenues barely lit with dawn and free of cars when I came in before 6 a.m. to bust out a newsletter on tight time. The cannon knocking down the toy soldiers atop the Radio City Music Hall marquee each Christmas season. The steps of the Treasury Building downtown, where traders, bankers, and the statue of George Washington watched a presidential hopeful address the creche of world capital. The feeling, wherever in the city I was standing, of being in the center of the universe, which I have not felt in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, or Las Vegas. I know I can return there with a quick dash down to the Hudson, either via tunnel or ferry, but 2 weeks without walking on its streets hit me at a vulnerable moment, and I felt sad to have lost the daily opportunity.
Eight hours of sleep set my mind right. I had other matters to worry about. Saturday marked the beginning of my sixth week of devoted gym visits. Though the close of my last job and the need to launch my career search led me to move the specific dates around, I still got to the gym for a full-body weight-training workout three days a week. I also used the aerobics floor at least one day on top of those each week. I've added a little muscle, and my weight dropped by a few more pounds.
Now that I've established the habit, I want to return to one of the more successful routines I used when I was still going to work. It is a two-day split of body areas, done twice per week with a day separating the visits. Rather than using one long set per exercise, this one broke it into three shorter sets, with more weight each time. In the past, I allowed schedules, mood, or other distractions to pull me off of the program, but when I stuck with it, it worked well. This time, I have clear early mornings and late afternoons — the perfect time to push the advantage. I've taken a break from the Thursday night game to keep my sleep cycle on track (work or not, and winning or losing, recovering from a 3 a.m. bedtime is rough).
I wrote up a sample routine and hit the gym late yesterday afternoon to try it out. I found my intro circuit, useful as it was in establishing a habit, missed some areas I wanted to cover, like my lower back. (Whatever else I did at the gym, I always made sure to work my back muscles, to avoid the problems many of my friends were now encountering in their late 30s.) I lowballed the weight so I could get my form down, as I hadn't performed a couple of these exercises in a few months. I got a good start, hitting abs, back, chest, and biceps. Today is legs, shoulders, and triceps. Once I get the specific exercises chosen, I'll make up a new chart and get my progress on paper.
One useful tip: I left space on my last chart to jot notes. Nothing too complex; little hints for the next visit, like "Strong throughout. Move up," or "Weak form past rep 12." Just something to keep my progress steady but forward. If I've been stuck on a certain resistance or even a whole exercise, I want to know. I've also been writing down what aerobic work I've done between weight-training visits.
I am hopeful that my job hunt and my fitness work will mesh. Success in one field has to build confidence in other areas. Plus, if I have a frustrating day searching for work, I can always dash over to the gym for 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer or take a long walk. And I am documenting all of my work in finding a job, not unlike the records I'm keeping of my gym visits. The program actually mandates that you track your time in searching, all the contacts you make, the volume of correspondence you send out, and other tangible markers of job-hunt work, so if you're lingering uselessly in one area, it becomes evident, and you can correct course.
I have solid notes from the seminar on what to do next, despite the distractions. I will let the other students inspire me to dig deep into my abilities and to inquire constructively, rather than hide behind my achievements and let cynicism paralyze action. As for the gym, well, completing a long walk up and over a tall hill yesterday without stopping or losing my wind was solid evidence of my progress. I have a long way to go, but at least I can see results.
If I can still fit into my interview suit when the time comes to dust it off, I know I will have passed major milestones in both fields.
I woke up on Thursday grumpy. I'd just spent three days at home working through the career-center materials. This program will leave me more prepared and confident in my job search, so I am not knocking it. The prospect of two more full days of the same, stuck in an office without the local park, library, gym, or even walking path for an escape, was not encouraging.
I got to the office early and found most of the other participants had done the same. Only two empty seats remained. Everyone had already written their names on the cards provided, so I took this as a sign that folks were willing to contribute. My grumpiness began to lift somewhat, if only from seeing other people.
The instructor showed up right on time, and we began with an introductory exercise. She asked each of us to give our profession and describe our last position, our reason for departing, one good thing that's happened in our lives (in work or outside), our hopes and concerns over the process, and what we would truly like to do next in our career. I was fourth in line, so I had some time to think of answers. The "one good thing" stumped me at first; the lingering funk I was in clouded my objectivity.
By the time they got to me, I had recalled a piece of advice from P., the career coach who had visited our office shortly after the layoff news. When speaking on the phone during our job hunt, he said, stand. You project more forcefully when speaking in a standing position than when sitting. Taking this cue, I said, while rising, "I feel more comfortable talking to a crowd when I stand, so I'm gonna stand." I tried to hold everyone's gaze for at least one sentence while I said my piece, which I managed to deliver without my usual storm of "uh"s and "y'know"s. As for the "one good thing" example, I briefly summarized my successful writing devotion.
Hearing the others gave me a sense of their optimism. Aside from one guy who was a salesman and seemed like a bluff-hearty bullshit artist, the others varied from tentative to shellshocked. Putting folks on the spot to speak in front of 10 strangers is rough for some folks. When I learned that two of the most reticent people were also in the business of corporate communications and executive-level event planning, respectively, I wondered how this had affected their work. These professions require effective speech and confidence, both of which seemed muted in their body language and projection. As far as optimism, their manner and tone conveyed more of a "what choice do I have?" attitude toward the learning that lay ahead.
The class that day and next alternated through enlightenment, pulling teeth, and contrariness on the part of some of the participants. The instructor was not forceful enough in keeping the people on track. They easily diverted into areas inessential to the course materials, or even the job hunt. The instructor had a bad habit of engaging folks on these points, rather than diverting the course firmly through its many stages. Worse, when she tried to return to the materials, she would often think of something at the last minute to offer the person who was diverging — a website, an humorous rejoinder to the person's point, a reference to another person's wisecrack earlier that sparks said person to sound off for a minute — and delay our return to the defined path.
I understand it's important to have a dialogue in these events. I know how helpful it is for folks going through the often lonely effort of job hunting to know there are others enduring the same quest, and how others in meetings like this can not only provide advice, but actual leads on jobs. But when the instructor mentions an online networking tool, and the conversation diverts for 15 minutes because the class is split on whether it's a pay service, whether you have to be invited like Gmail, et cetera — I had a strong feeling that we would give the final stages of the process short shrift. One of these stages was the interview, no small part of the process.
The inability of some of the participants to let the instructor help them was disturbing. I know being thrown out of a long-term position is demoralizing and leads one to question one's worth. But the attitude of some of these folks went from submission to surrender. This includes the corporate communications person and the event planner. The former was responsible for producing award-winning annual reports —writing, collating financial data, working with legal departments, contracting artists and printers, and quality control. She claimed she wouldn't be of use to an organization these days simply because she had been doing this one thing, in addition to her other daily duties, for so long. The event planner, who surely had contact with caterers, florists, event halls and staffing agencies, and the executive staffs of the bigwigs throughout her own firm, said she had no connections. The instructor tried to pry some details out of her on what she did, but could not get this 18-year veteran of corporate event planning to do so or even realize the value of her network. This went beyond shyness or poor speaking skills. This was a failure to let a skilled professional help. Few things make me angrier.
Add to this a microbiologist who contradicted several pieces of advice or research-tested techniques that the company had developed. Sometimes he wouldn't even offer evidence, just saying something like, "Are employers really going to accept that?" or "Does [technique] really apply to people in my industry?" At one point, after grinding my teeth through a day and a half of this guy's shit, when the instructor took a moment to describe the details of corporate-recruiter compensation, he said, "Do we really need to know this?"
"Excuse me." I halted the instructor. To him: "I find this useful. I've registered for a recruiter conference that [the firm] is offering on April [X]. [Firm] thinks it's important enough to invite recruiters to tell us how they do their job, so I want to hear what [instructor] has to say on this point too."
That was his last interjection.
I had a break between these classes when my friends Jen and Steve held a dinner party Thursday night to give me, Felix, and his girlfriend a chance to see their new house. It was very relaxing and gave me a chance to speak about anything but the job hunt for a few hours. I confess, I woke up Friday morning even more grumpy than Thursday, faced as I was with another full day with these jokers.
It was a grind. The incident I mentioned earlier with the online networking tool occurred Friday. We were just about to enter the networking chapter, which is one of the areas in which I am weakest, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming as the instructor kept letting herself get diverted from the coursework. I had 2½ weeks left to exploit the services of the career counselors. Any distraction over useless bullshit took unrecoverable time from that total.
I went home Friday feeling very drained. I had taken lunch across the street to avoid contact with any of the students (though I wasn't able to avoid the salesman, who unfortunately came into the men's room where I was trapped and kept asking me questions about myself, despite the implicit signals of my one-word answers to fuck off). I knew there was great value in the course materials, and I had been hoping to explore them in greater depth with a career expert and willing students. Instead, I found that this path, like many in my life, would most profitably be followed solo.
My guard was sufficiently down by bedtime to feel deeply nostalgic about not going to New York City each day. I couldn't get the various experiences of the past 7 years out of my head. The Manhattan skyline capped with dense, low clouds from the vista of the Lincoln Tunnel helix. Neon reflecting on wet Times Square pavement. Empty avenues barely lit with dawn and free of cars when I came in before 6 a.m. to bust out a newsletter on tight time. The cannon knocking down the toy soldiers atop the Radio City Music Hall marquee each Christmas season. The steps of the Treasury Building downtown, where traders, bankers, and the statue of George Washington watched a presidential hopeful address the creche of world capital. The feeling, wherever in the city I was standing, of being in the center of the universe, which I have not felt in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, or Las Vegas. I know I can return there with a quick dash down to the Hudson, either via tunnel or ferry, but 2 weeks without walking on its streets hit me at a vulnerable moment, and I felt sad to have lost the daily opportunity.
Eight hours of sleep set my mind right. I had other matters to worry about. Saturday marked the beginning of my sixth week of devoted gym visits. Though the close of my last job and the need to launch my career search led me to move the specific dates around, I still got to the gym for a full-body weight-training workout three days a week. I also used the aerobics floor at least one day on top of those each week. I've added a little muscle, and my weight dropped by a few more pounds.
Now that I've established the habit, I want to return to one of the more successful routines I used when I was still going to work. It is a two-day split of body areas, done twice per week with a day separating the visits. Rather than using one long set per exercise, this one broke it into three shorter sets, with more weight each time. In the past, I allowed schedules, mood, or other distractions to pull me off of the program, but when I stuck with it, it worked well. This time, I have clear early mornings and late afternoons — the perfect time to push the advantage. I've taken a break from the Thursday night game to keep my sleep cycle on track (work or not, and winning or losing, recovering from a 3 a.m. bedtime is rough).
I wrote up a sample routine and hit the gym late yesterday afternoon to try it out. I found my intro circuit, useful as it was in establishing a habit, missed some areas I wanted to cover, like my lower back. (Whatever else I did at the gym, I always made sure to work my back muscles, to avoid the problems many of my friends were now encountering in their late 30s.) I lowballed the weight so I could get my form down, as I hadn't performed a couple of these exercises in a few months. I got a good start, hitting abs, back, chest, and biceps. Today is legs, shoulders, and triceps. Once I get the specific exercises chosen, I'll make up a new chart and get my progress on paper.
One useful tip: I left space on my last chart to jot notes. Nothing too complex; little hints for the next visit, like "Strong throughout. Move up," or "Weak form past rep 12." Just something to keep my progress steady but forward. If I've been stuck on a certain resistance or even a whole exercise, I want to know. I've also been writing down what aerobic work I've done between weight-training visits.
I am hopeful that my job hunt and my fitness work will mesh. Success in one field has to build confidence in other areas. Plus, if I have a frustrating day searching for work, I can always dash over to the gym for 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer or take a long walk. And I am documenting all of my work in finding a job, not unlike the records I'm keeping of my gym visits. The program actually mandates that you track your time in searching, all the contacts you make, the volume of correspondence you send out, and other tangible markers of job-hunt work, so if you're lingering uselessly in one area, it becomes evident, and you can correct course.
I have solid notes from the seminar on what to do next, despite the distractions. I will let the other students inspire me to dig deep into my abilities and to inquire constructively, rather than hide behind my achievements and let cynicism paralyze action. As for the gym, well, completing a long walk up and over a tall hill yesterday without stopping or losing my wind was solid evidence of my progress. I have a long way to go, but at least I can see results.
If I can still fit into my interview suit when the time comes to dust it off, I know I will have passed major milestones in both fields.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Clock Ticking on Chelsea
I'M STARTING TO TAKE notice of the many features of Chelsea that I will miss when I leave my job in 8 days. Even with a blanket of increasingly filthy snow draped over the area, I realize that each walk I take between the PATH station and my building brings me closer to the final march out the door. The physical office itself I can take or leave. Chelsea, and its proximity to the Village, I'm going to miss.
It amazes me that great areas of this district were, not 20 years ago, still only marginally habitable. Life pulses through these streets, in the shadow of century-old brownstones and brand-new condo towers. True, this trend can go too far, and we don't want to lose all of the deep character that lends the area its charm. I hope to find the same combination of lively commerce and sleepy residences there if I have the opportunity to return for recreation or even future employment. If nothing else, I will be eager to greet a new menagerie of dogs and their humans making their rounds about the neighborhood.
Of course, there's little to rival a three-minute walk that gets you into Greenwich Village. I didn't need a crappy day in the office for an excuse to drift south and wander amid irregular streets, carefully appointed window displays, and bookstores groaning with ancient paperbacks and academic tomes waiting to share their wisdom and reduce my pocket money by a notch.
I also enjoyed my close proximity to the Hudson. I had a rare opportunity in being so near to the water's edge. There were times when I would get frustrated with work, claustrophobic, or starved for sunlight and waterfront wind, and dashing across the West Side Highway to watch the water roll along was precisely what I needed. Sometimes I would steal over in the late afternoon, feeling the sinking sun on my face, believing that being fully awake in the majesty of that river was infinitely better than drowsing off over the half-baked tasks my department director set blindly out for us to interpret.
I don't know where the next job will be. Maybe in the city, maybe New Jersey, quite possibly someday the same place where I live. I hope it affords me the chance to get back into the city as a tourist, sometimes as an admirer, for myself rather than as a forced march through the valley of absurdity. Whether in Midtown or Chelsea, it was sometimes easy to lose perspective, to forget that my desk just happened to be in the greatest city in the world. One of my goals this year was to get outside more and enjoy nature. I believe that can be broadened to appreciating the world without a roof, be it from the edge of the Hudson while watching Hoboken twitter and buzz, or in the shadow of Rockefeller Center, surrounded by tourists, letting my gaze slide up the skyscrapers into the limitless blue toward which they strive.
It amazes me that great areas of this district were, not 20 years ago, still only marginally habitable. Life pulses through these streets, in the shadow of century-old brownstones and brand-new condo towers. True, this trend can go too far, and we don't want to lose all of the deep character that lends the area its charm. I hope to find the same combination of lively commerce and sleepy residences there if I have the opportunity to return for recreation or even future employment. If nothing else, I will be eager to greet a new menagerie of dogs and their humans making their rounds about the neighborhood.
Of course, there's little to rival a three-minute walk that gets you into Greenwich Village. I didn't need a crappy day in the office for an excuse to drift south and wander amid irregular streets, carefully appointed window displays, and bookstores groaning with ancient paperbacks and academic tomes waiting to share their wisdom and reduce my pocket money by a notch.
I also enjoyed my close proximity to the Hudson. I had a rare opportunity in being so near to the water's edge. There were times when I would get frustrated with work, claustrophobic, or starved for sunlight and waterfront wind, and dashing across the West Side Highway to watch the water roll along was precisely what I needed. Sometimes I would steal over in the late afternoon, feeling the sinking sun on my face, believing that being fully awake in the majesty of that river was infinitely better than drowsing off over the half-baked tasks my department director set blindly out for us to interpret.
I don't know where the next job will be. Maybe in the city, maybe New Jersey, quite possibly someday the same place where I live. I hope it affords me the chance to get back into the city as a tourist, sometimes as an admirer, for myself rather than as a forced march through the valley of absurdity. Whether in Midtown or Chelsea, it was sometimes easy to lose perspective, to forget that my desk just happened to be in the greatest city in the world. One of my goals this year was to get outside more and enjoy nature. I believe that can be broadened to appreciating the world without a roof, be it from the edge of the Hudson while watching Hoboken twitter and buzz, or in the shadow of Rockefeller Center, surrounded by tourists, letting my gaze slide up the skyscrapers into the limitless blue toward which they strive.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Wandering Monster
I TAKE THE TRAIN in and out of the city each workday. Others settle for just the tracks.
While entering the 14th Street PATH station this week, I passed two street people on their way out. Both wore layers of dirty clothing, disintegrating shoes, and heavy facial hair. They also carried huge garbage bags over their shoulders. Not an uncommon sight in New York City, though usually not in the PATH stations, because the range of transit through the city is far more limited than via the New York Subway proper.
For those unfamiliar with the PATH tubes, the far wall of the station is lined with shallow niches. Some of them are open and join with the tracks on the other side, permitting pipes, wires, and workers to pass through. Also, evidently, street people.
As I took a place on the platform, a third street person emerged through one of those open nooks. Keep in mind that the third rail hugs the far wall as well. I watched — never having seen someone get electrocuted before — as this guy stepped with practiced ease over the shielded third rail, walked casually to the platform edge even as a train approached down the tunnel, and heaved first his bundle and then himself up onto the main floor. He then strode out the turnstile to join his comrades as casually as if he had debarked the train that screeched to a halt in the space he had just traversed.
While entering the 14th Street PATH station this week, I passed two street people on their way out. Both wore layers of dirty clothing, disintegrating shoes, and heavy facial hair. They also carried huge garbage bags over their shoulders. Not an uncommon sight in New York City, though usually not in the PATH stations, because the range of transit through the city is far more limited than via the New York Subway proper.
For those unfamiliar with the PATH tubes, the far wall of the station is lined with shallow niches. Some of them are open and join with the tracks on the other side, permitting pipes, wires, and workers to pass through. Also, evidently, street people.
As I took a place on the platform, a third street person emerged through one of those open nooks. Keep in mind that the third rail hugs the far wall as well. I watched — never having seen someone get electrocuted before — as this guy stepped with practiced ease over the shielded third rail, walked casually to the platform edge even as a train approached down the tunnel, and heaved first his bundle and then himself up onto the main floor. He then strode out the turnstile to join his comrades as casually as if he had debarked the train that screeched to a halt in the space he had just traversed.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Deluge Racks up a Casualty
WHEN I LEFT MY apartment this morning — staggering into my second Monday of the week and aiming to board the latest acceptable train — it was raining gently. I hadn't heard anything about heavier precipitation, so I didn't turn around to get my raincoat or waterproof the contents of my backpack. This proved to be a mistake.
The rain worsened as the train streaked south through Bergen County. Ominous clouds awaited over the Meadowlands. The drainage ditches next to the tracks began to brim. I started to have my doubts.
Because I was already late, I eschewed the routes that might have prevented what was to come. Had I taken the World Trade Center PATH train, or had I ridden the 33rd St. PATH all the way to the last stop, and from either of these, taken the NYT subway to my building, I would have been a lot better off. Instead, I got off as usual from the 33rd St. train at 14th.
My first hint that this was a mistake came when I noticed the clot of people unmoving on the steps to the street. This means (a) someone fell or took ill on the stairs, (b) people are deploying their umbrellas and holding up the line, or (c) the rain is intense enough for people to pretend this winding stile is the London Underground during the Blitz. At any rate, the line was moving with the "next, next, next" pace of people shuffling up to receive Communion or pick up a gym towel.
Option (c) turned out to be the winnah. The rain I had beheld an hour and change ago was now a slanting torrent. Without pausing to hold up the line further, I popped my feeble umbrella and headed out.
In two blocks, I caught a healthy water ration. Without awnings or sufficient tree cover (these are medium-sized city trees, not the massive canopies of suburbia or Central Park), I was stuck virtually in the open. The umbrella made things worse. Because it was so small, the runoff soaked my left arm completely, and poured over the back of my pack. This I didn't discover until I finally got upstairs, shoes feeling squishy from the spilling waters.
I calmly walked the long axis of my office, pausing to query an editor about a manuscript I suspected I would soon receive, and to compliment a slender, fetching department-mate on her attire, dripping all the while. I reached my desk, dumped the impotent black parody of an umbrella on the rug, and discovered my backpack was compromised:
I bagged up the dripping, swollen mass of wisdom, bagged it in plastic so the sight of it wouldn't upset me all day, and deposited it in my trashcan. Only the fact that I was barefoot prevented me from dropping it in the kitchen trash. It bothered me that much.
I wrung out my socks and draped them over my trashcan, then stuffed my shoes full of paper toweling from my desk's overhead cabinet. (We continually run out of kitchen toweling, so every week or so I jack a fat sheaf of hand towels from the men's room. Sue me.) My plan was to visit the clothing store that occupies part of my building's first story at opening time, which conveniently was in a half hour. I worked as much as I could while drying out over that stretch, then told my boss I would need to step out for a dry shirt (she is way too overworked for me to have gotten a rise out of her by using the "wet clothes/dry martini" gag).
My errand was well intentioned but futile: This store, a planet in the Gap system, does not carry XXL clothing. Pissed, I walked back the way I had come, in rain less intense but still slanting beneath my cover, to the Urban Outfitters near my PATH stop. My reasoning:
My bolthole of hope was a tourist trap store. If you've entered New York via any of the major mass-transit options, you've seen those long, narrow clothing stores, usually with a bunch of NYC-themed shirt out front, sometimes even with a fake "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS" sign to lure the rube. Near my previous workplace, these were readily available. I could have had a I♥NY knockoff in a trice, maybe even a "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK" if this were a staff-meeting day. In Chelsea, these only occur along the main, two-way streets, so I had to hike a bit more. The first store I tried had every size except XXL. I could have walked back to work in a 6XL looking like a human Liberty Bell if I had wanted. Not today, perhaps in the future if I need a nightshirt.
My salvation came at the humble emporium called Tico Tico, between Fifth and Sixth on 14th St. It had the usual canopy of cheap luggage hanging from the entrance, and surely had done a thriving trade in umbrellas that morning. I held mine carefully as I stalked in, so as not to drip on the wares of the shopkeep who might help me out. Which he did. His female coworker directed me to a range of XXL tees, from which I selected a nice plain black one . . . which was more or less my work uniform for the first 5 years at my company. I threw in a three-pack of black athletic socks, forked over my cash, and bade the two of them good day.
I emerged from my company bathroom a quarter hour later, wearing the new shirt and one pair of the socks, the other shirt and socks now scrunched up in the Tico Tico bag, soon to be stretched out and drying in my cube. I put in a productive day, and I stayed an hour later to compensate for the wandering of earlier.
Losing the book still bugs me, though. Not because I can't afford another one. I do, after all, have that gift card. Rather, I hate the thought of books being destroyed. I was raised to take good care of them, to avoid writing in them or dog-earing pages. Aside from making critical notes in my poker books or others, my volumes are pristine. the I don't even like to see extras of various books my company has on hand being dumped in the annual thin-the-herd Dumpster fest we have. When I am done with a book, I give it away, or donate it, or sell it if my local B&N is buying. Someone else can enjoy it. It lives on. In the case of this poker book, I rather would have lost $30 in a game than had a book I didn't even peruse yet go to shit without cause. Shoes I can shine. Socks and shirts I can launder. A backpack I can air out. I had to throw out a chunk of someone's thought today. It doesn't sit well.
The rain worsened as the train streaked south through Bergen County. Ominous clouds awaited over the Meadowlands. The drainage ditches next to the tracks began to brim. I started to have my doubts.
Because I was already late, I eschewed the routes that might have prevented what was to come. Had I taken the World Trade Center PATH train, or had I ridden the 33rd St. PATH all the way to the last stop, and from either of these, taken the NYT subway to my building, I would have been a lot better off. Instead, I got off as usual from the 33rd St. train at 14th.
My first hint that this was a mistake came when I noticed the clot of people unmoving on the steps to the street. This means (a) someone fell or took ill on the stairs, (b) people are deploying their umbrellas and holding up the line, or (c) the rain is intense enough for people to pretend this winding stile is the London Underground during the Blitz. At any rate, the line was moving with the "next, next, next" pace of people shuffling up to receive Communion or pick up a gym towel.
Option (c) turned out to be the winnah. The rain I had beheld an hour and change ago was now a slanting torrent. Without pausing to hold up the line further, I popped my feeble umbrella and headed out.
In two blocks, I caught a healthy water ration. Without awnings or sufficient tree cover (these are medium-sized city trees, not the massive canopies of suburbia or Central Park), I was stuck virtually in the open. The umbrella made things worse. Because it was so small, the runoff soaked my left arm completely, and poured over the back of my pack. This I didn't discover until I finally got upstairs, shoes feeling squishy from the spilling waters.
I calmly walked the long axis of my office, pausing to query an editor about a manuscript I suspected I would soon receive, and to compliment a slender, fetching department-mate on her attire, dripping all the while. I reached my desk, dumped the impotent black parody of an umbrella on the rug, and discovered my backpack was compromised:
- Four Ricola in the upper compartment were now exuding sugary throat medicine on my keys, wallet, and other loose items;
- The rest of my Wall Street Journal was sodden;
- My iPod had gotten a bath, and a wee bit of water emerged from the seam when I shook it slightly;
- The iPod's battery pack was now refusing to turn off, and likewise dripped a bit of water, which made me nervous about plugging it into the charger when the time came;
- A pool of water rested at the bottom of the bag's main chamber, which contributed to;
- The ruin of my brand-new copy of No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice.
I bagged up the dripping, swollen mass of wisdom, bagged it in plastic so the sight of it wouldn't upset me all day, and deposited it in my trashcan. Only the fact that I was barefoot prevented me from dropping it in the kitchen trash. It bothered me that much.
I wrung out my socks and draped them over my trashcan, then stuffed my shoes full of paper toweling from my desk's overhead cabinet. (We continually run out of kitchen toweling, so every week or so I jack a fat sheaf of hand towels from the men's room. Sue me.) My plan was to visit the clothing store that occupies part of my building's first story at opening time, which conveniently was in a half hour. I worked as much as I could while drying out over that stretch, then told my boss I would need to step out for a dry shirt (she is way too overworked for me to have gotten a rise out of her by using the "wet clothes/dry martini" gag).
My errand was well intentioned but futile: This store, a planet in the Gap system, does not carry XXL clothing. Pissed, I walked back the way I had come, in rain less intense but still slanting beneath my cover, to the Urban Outfitters near my PATH stop. My reasoning:
- Many Goths are fat.
- I am fat.
- Ergo, I can get a T-shirt here.
My bolthole of hope was a tourist trap store. If you've entered New York via any of the major mass-transit options, you've seen those long, narrow clothing stores, usually with a bunch of NYC-themed shirt out front, sometimes even with a fake "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS" sign to lure the rube. Near my previous workplace, these were readily available. I could have had a I♥NY knockoff in a trice, maybe even a "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCK" if this were a staff-meeting day. In Chelsea, these only occur along the main, two-way streets, so I had to hike a bit more. The first store I tried had every size except XXL. I could have walked back to work in a 6XL looking like a human Liberty Bell if I had wanted. Not today, perhaps in the future if I need a nightshirt.
My salvation came at the humble emporium called Tico Tico, between Fifth and Sixth on 14th St. It had the usual canopy of cheap luggage hanging from the entrance, and surely had done a thriving trade in umbrellas that morning. I held mine carefully as I stalked in, so as not to drip on the wares of the shopkeep who might help me out. Which he did. His female coworker directed me to a range of XXL tees, from which I selected a nice plain black one . . . which was more or less my work uniform for the first 5 years at my company. I threw in a three-pack of black athletic socks, forked over my cash, and bade the two of them good day.
I emerged from my company bathroom a quarter hour later, wearing the new shirt and one pair of the socks, the other shirt and socks now scrunched up in the Tico Tico bag, soon to be stretched out and drying in my cube. I put in a productive day, and I stayed an hour later to compensate for the wandering of earlier.
Losing the book still bugs me, though. Not because I can't afford another one. I do, after all, have that gift card. Rather, I hate the thought of books being destroyed. I was raised to take good care of them, to avoid writing in them or dog-earing pages. Aside from making critical notes in my poker books or others, my volumes are pristine. the I don't even like to see extras of various books my company has on hand being dumped in the annual thin-the-herd Dumpster fest we have. When I am done with a book, I give it away, or donate it, or sell it if my local B&N is buying. Someone else can enjoy it. It lives on. In the case of this poker book, I rather would have lost $30 in a game than had a book I didn't even peruse yet go to shit without cause. Shoes I can shine. Socks and shirts I can launder. A backpack I can air out. I had to throw out a chunk of someone's thought today. It doesn't sit well.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
That Street Is Poi-son!
ME: WALKING EAST ON 15th Street to the subway station on Friday night. Ahead: a slower, smoking woman talking on a cellphone. I speed up to pass. As I do, I hear her say, "I'll meet you on Bell Biv DeVoe Street."
I slow down to hear the rest of this.
"Yeah, Bell Biv DeVoe Street. 'That girl is poi-son!'"
I turn at this point, laughing at loud, to catch her eye. She smiles and says, "No, he's totally laughing with us."
She catches up with me at the corner of Seventh Avenue. I ask, "There's really a Bell Biv DeVoe Street?"
"No, it's Devoe Street in Brooklyn. My friends and I call it Bell Biv DeVoe Street."
"Oh," I laugh. "I thought some overzealous borough president had decided to name a street after them. Right next to Naughty by Nature Boulevard."
She laughs even harder, and walks up Seventh and away.
I slow down to hear the rest of this.
"Yeah, Bell Biv DeVoe Street. 'That girl is poi-son!'"
I turn at this point, laughing at loud, to catch her eye. She smiles and says, "No, he's totally laughing with us."
She catches up with me at the corner of Seventh Avenue. I ask, "There's really a Bell Biv DeVoe Street?"
"No, it's Devoe Street in Brooklyn. My friends and I call it Bell Biv DeVoe Street."
"Oh," I laugh. "I thought some overzealous borough president had decided to name a street after them. Right next to Naughty by Nature Boulevard."
She laughs even harder, and walks up Seventh and away.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Two Days I Can't Get Back
THE WORD WENT FORTH at my place of work: All must learn Word. Yes, somehow some of us had escaped using the dominant word processing software of the last 10 years and needed to be schooled. We were all scheduled to take a 2-day Word tutorial at a Midtown computer-learning center. I was told a couple of weeks ago that this Tuesday and Wednesday, it would be my turn.
I initially offered a protest — or at least the verbal equivalent of a raised eyebrow — because I have used Word for years, as a copyeditor and on both sides of the manuscript-to-typesetter publishing process. My father had a good point, though, about how one should never refuse when one's company offers the opportunity to train on some new software or system. Besides, I was led to believe that these Word classes would teach the editors (and at least acquaint the managers and designers) how to style text for the new XML method of crafting newsletters. So I relented.
One of the editors with whom I work took the classes before I did. She reported, unfortunately, that the course material had nothing to do with the new production process. In fact, the most sophisticated new technique she learned was . . . mail merging. Among other topics covered were applying paragraph styles to text — something the editors already do hundreds of times every day. My hopes for learning a new skill with the jaunty stiff upper lip my father had advised were dwindling.
Tuesday rolled around, and I headed back to Midtown, coincidentally one year to the day after the company threw open the doors of its new office to the troops. I realized that no matter how the classes actually went, I would still have the chance to see Manhattan's tourist district in full Christmas splendor. Huge wreaths and tree ornaments adorned corporate lobbies. Santas and Salvation Army volunteers chimed bells and played Christmas carols on radios placed discreetly next to their change cauldrons. Toys R Us bags from the giant outlet on the edge of Times Square were in abundance, clasped in heavily gloved hands due to the subzero cold. I also got to see the tree in Rockefeller Center. Although its true beauty is only truly realized at night, I still marveled at the size of this massive conifer. Between the tree and the folks ice-skating on the rink in its shadow, I felt much in the holiday mood.
That was the high point of my daylight hours for the past two days. I have no problem with the school, the helpful and poised instructor who tutored us in various features of Word deemed important by our bosses, or the course materials. What did frustrate me was the lack of direct, personal concern in my career development that the entire undertaking represented. My boss flat out signed the four designers up for this class. I found out that everyone else in my particular class had been tested to gauge their proficiency at Word. Were there some folks who had placed out of the requirement to go to these classes, as I did decades ago with Spanish via an AP exam score that mollified the Boston College registrar? I could easily have joined them.
What's more, the version of Word used in the class is not the one I and my fellow Mac-head designers employ. Word for the Mac has not progressed since 2001, whereas Word for Windows — or at least the version now being placed on the PCs in the office — is up to 2003. This rendered much of what the teacher demonstrated useless to us except if we sit down at a PC for some reason (gun barrel to temple, perhaps). Sure, it's good to know this stuff, and we were given course books and online support we can call upon should we want to practice, but we were expecting something that would apply to us, specifically for the crafting and tagging of XML files. Although Word 2003 does support XML, it remained unaddressed in the course.
Now, there are a couple of software packages that I would like to learn. I know almost nothing about Excel. My bosses use this all the time. Not knowing it leaves me ignorant and less qualified to ascend to a management position. Also, for a graphic designer, I am seriously undereducated in the practical use of Adobe Photoshop. I took a course devoted to Illustrator and Photoshop in the fall of 2001 at the School of Visual Arts, which is in fact fairly close by my current workplace. At the time, though, all I knew is I was spending each Monday night way too close to Ground Zero than I would have preferred, and coming home at 11:00 after a 3-hour class in the city and a 90-minute bus ride that stopped approximately 284 times between the Port Authority and my destination. I skipped out on the last two classes, never telling my boss that I had missed part of the Photoshop half of the course.
Now, these are two topics on which I would love some formal education. But I was not consulted on what I might want to learn. I understand that the company wants us all on the same skill level. But most of the people in the class these past two days needed no introduction to the Word skills our intrepid instructor demonstrated for us. I actually began to feel like someone else should have been given the opportunity to call upon her assistance, someone for whom this information would have opened a door to a first, or better, job . . . not to a crowd that was finishing the exercises in half the allotted time, if that, and splitting the remaining time between answering work email and computer solitaire.
I flat out said in my post-class evaluation questionnaire that I wanted to be given more of a voice in determining the training that would best benefit me and the company. I don't know who will read this. If it goes to the instructor's bosses, they will at least also read that I thought she did a fine job and that the course materials and examples were very helpful. But not to me. And that sure wasn't her fault.
Hopefully, somewhere out there is a midlevel publishing executive who just spent two very confusing days learning the basics of Photoshop. I need to bump into that person on the train and exchange notes.
I initially offered a protest — or at least the verbal equivalent of a raised eyebrow — because I have used Word for years, as a copyeditor and on both sides of the manuscript-to-typesetter publishing process. My father had a good point, though, about how one should never refuse when one's company offers the opportunity to train on some new software or system. Besides, I was led to believe that these Word classes would teach the editors (and at least acquaint the managers and designers) how to style text for the new XML method of crafting newsletters. So I relented.
One of the editors with whom I work took the classes before I did. She reported, unfortunately, that the course material had nothing to do with the new production process. In fact, the most sophisticated new technique she learned was . . . mail merging. Among other topics covered were applying paragraph styles to text — something the editors already do hundreds of times every day. My hopes for learning a new skill with the jaunty stiff upper lip my father had advised were dwindling.
Tuesday rolled around, and I headed back to Midtown, coincidentally one year to the day after the company threw open the doors of its new office to the troops. I realized that no matter how the classes actually went, I would still have the chance to see Manhattan's tourist district in full Christmas splendor. Huge wreaths and tree ornaments adorned corporate lobbies. Santas and Salvation Army volunteers chimed bells and played Christmas carols on radios placed discreetly next to their change cauldrons. Toys R Us bags from the giant outlet on the edge of Times Square were in abundance, clasped in heavily gloved hands due to the subzero cold. I also got to see the tree in Rockefeller Center. Although its true beauty is only truly realized at night, I still marveled at the size of this massive conifer. Between the tree and the folks ice-skating on the rink in its shadow, I felt much in the holiday mood.
That was the high point of my daylight hours for the past two days. I have no problem with the school, the helpful and poised instructor who tutored us in various features of Word deemed important by our bosses, or the course materials. What did frustrate me was the lack of direct, personal concern in my career development that the entire undertaking represented. My boss flat out signed the four designers up for this class. I found out that everyone else in my particular class had been tested to gauge their proficiency at Word. Were there some folks who had placed out of the requirement to go to these classes, as I did decades ago with Spanish via an AP exam score that mollified the Boston College registrar? I could easily have joined them.
What's more, the version of Word used in the class is not the one I and my fellow Mac-head designers employ. Word for the Mac has not progressed since 2001, whereas Word for Windows — or at least the version now being placed on the PCs in the office — is up to 2003. This rendered much of what the teacher demonstrated useless to us except if we sit down at a PC for some reason (gun barrel to temple, perhaps). Sure, it's good to know this stuff, and we were given course books and online support we can call upon should we want to practice, but we were expecting something that would apply to us, specifically for the crafting and tagging of XML files. Although Word 2003 does support XML, it remained unaddressed in the course.
Now, there are a couple of software packages that I would like to learn. I know almost nothing about Excel. My bosses use this all the time. Not knowing it leaves me ignorant and less qualified to ascend to a management position. Also, for a graphic designer, I am seriously undereducated in the practical use of Adobe Photoshop. I took a course devoted to Illustrator and Photoshop in the fall of 2001 at the School of Visual Arts, which is in fact fairly close by my current workplace. At the time, though, all I knew is I was spending each Monday night way too close to Ground Zero than I would have preferred, and coming home at 11:00 after a 3-hour class in the city and a 90-minute bus ride that stopped approximately 284 times between the Port Authority and my destination. I skipped out on the last two classes, never telling my boss that I had missed part of the Photoshop half of the course.
Now, these are two topics on which I would love some formal education. But I was not consulted on what I might want to learn. I understand that the company wants us all on the same skill level. But most of the people in the class these past two days needed no introduction to the Word skills our intrepid instructor demonstrated for us. I actually began to feel like someone else should have been given the opportunity to call upon her assistance, someone for whom this information would have opened a door to a first, or better, job . . . not to a crowd that was finishing the exercises in half the allotted time, if that, and splitting the remaining time between answering work email and computer solitaire.
I flat out said in my post-class evaluation questionnaire that I wanted to be given more of a voice in determining the training that would best benefit me and the company. I don't know who will read this. If it goes to the instructor's bosses, they will at least also read that I thought she did a fine job and that the course materials and examples were very helpful. But not to me. And that sure wasn't her fault.
Hopefully, somewhere out there is a midlevel publishing executive who just spent two very confusing days learning the basics of Photoshop. I need to bump into that person on the train and exchange notes.
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