New Job

Good news! I got a job. Bad news! I cannot escape the vortex of fun and fulfillment that is the movie theater concession stand. Five years, people. Five years I have spent filling drinks and serving popcorn and making change. I'm good at change. I scoff at register aids.

On my first day of work the manager wanted to show me how to use the popcorn machine. I look over and it wasn't just a similar model - it was the exact same one that I had been using for all this time. Apparently there is only one industrial popcorn-making vendor in the biz. It even had that lame 'cornditioner' button. That made me happy.

Everyone there is really nice to me, and going to work is like being at a United Nations of cinema - we have people from Peru, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and more that I just can't remember right now. There was this incredibly cute boy working door on Saturday who gave me his copy of the Village Voice in exchange for my Time Out New York. Literacy! Yesterday, I learned two interesting tidbits about him: first, he's attending a special music school to be a professional tenor, and secondly, he's sixteen years old. Ohh... hm. Yeah. So now he's a hypothetically gay underage stunningly attractive coworker. This is adversity, y'all.

Oh - another interesting tidbit - he lives on 96th street on the West Side. So he's like my neighbor, too.

Going back to the work for a second, I'm very glad that I'm there. The customers are all eighty year old rich women who go to the movies at 11:00 in the morning. However, they are not the crotchety old people of yore who would complain to me about every little thing, for the most part. We have a tip box on the counter and when I saw that I was like, "pfffffffft, no one tips at the movies, it's like the Golden Rule". NOT TRUE! We split the tip box between the two concession workers at the end of the shift. Friday, I made $6. Saturday, $7. Yesterday.... $11. Amazing!

At Carmike we weren't even allowed to accept tips. I remember vividly this kind of creepy guy in his mid-fifties who tried to tip me $5 and how I had to choke back the bile and tell him politely that company policy dictates that employees are not allowed to accept gratuities.

And instead of just the standard popcorn-soda-candy fare, we have a wide selection of pastries that are delicious. We get the shipment in on Fridays from this bakery in Brooklyn and I sample the broken bits. In addition, there are four different kinds of sandwiches, two cakes, and coffee, tea, and a cappucino/espresso machine. We treat you right at the LPC.

Which leads me to the next point - thanks be to the gods that I am not working in some lame multiplex with three screens of Fast and Furious 4 next to some other dumb movie. It's six screens, so already there is a limit, and it's all independent films, which means that the rowdy idiotic patron ratio is lowered.

OH, but there was this older woman that bought some ruggelach the other day. She seemed very high strung, but not out of the ordinary until she started talking about how high strung she was. She said it was because there's a younger woman taking care of an elderly lady in the building and she smokes. I was all, "oh, yeah, that's too bad" and then this lady went way off the deep end and leaned in close and was like, "and do you know what she does? She turns tricks too! She has all these men coming in and out of the apartment". Yes. That's the most likely explanation. I said, "perhaps she just has a lot of friends?" but even as I started saying it I knew I shouldn't even bother because this woman probably loves having some drama in her life. She went on and on about what kind of person would pull these stunts in an old woman's house, blahdee blah. Unstable! She ended the conversation with, "and I know what pot smells like!". If she had a walking stick, it would have been brandished at that moment.

That's Why You Need the Master's

Recent conversational snippet between me and a creepy, overfriendly guy stocking the vending machine:

Vending man: So, you go to school in the city?
Me: Yep.
Vending man: What are you studying?
Me: Library science.
Vending man: You mean like to be a librarian?
Me: Yep.
Vending man: I didn't know you had to go to college to be a librarian.
Me: Actually, you have to go to graduate school.
Vending man: No kidding! You know, I always liked librarians. I liked their glasses and how they had the sexy intellectual thing going on.
Me: Well, we study that too.
Vending man: No kidding!
Me: ...


Speaking of stocking, where is my favorite pseudo-anonymous follower? You know who you are. March 14th came and went, my friend.

Home Again

Back in New York, and it's still cold. Lame.

I had my physical today for one of Mt. Sinai's research studies. This was part two and involved me answering a million personality questions. Thank god my favorite thing in the world is to answer personality questions. Some were not-so-interesting (social anxiety, etc) but others were crazy great, like "I believe that people are plotting to kill me" or "Sometimes I feel like I am rotting on the inside". TRUE and TRUE!

Then I had to walk two blocks away to get my physical, and coincidentally my second favorite thing in life is a medical examination. They put me up in this super-comfy hospital bed and gave me a remote and let me watch infomercials for ten minutes while they took seven vials of blood. Then came the pee test, of course, and an EKG. Those little sticky things hurt like the dickens to take off.

The physician's assistant was this suave, distinguished gentleman who looked like he should have played a doctor on ER or something. And I got a clean bill of health, huzzah.

Oh, and this gem was in a post on the Craigslist volunteer section: "Study involves viewing images on a computer screen and responding on a computer keyboard. This experiment takes only 5-10 minutes and I can award $2 per participant. Referral to additional paid studies is possible." WOWSERS! A whole two dollars? That will pay for half of my transportation costs to get down there.

Speaking of transportation costs, I just went through the whole Chicago rigmarole associated with travel, lodging, and registration. $120 for the conference + $200 for the flight + $115 for three days of hostel = reimburse me soon, please.

Luckily, the next annual conference is in Washington DC, so I can definitely work that one on the cheap. Hi Queshia!

Oh man, I had the best lunch today. It was so good, I made it again for dinner. I took the old food from the fridge that was on the precipice of going bad and said, "what can I cobble together?". The final result, predictably, was an omelet with a hodgepodge of ingredients. I sauteed a quarter of an onion with a cup of frozen spinach, then cooked the egg part with some cheese. Yum!

Can't wait for Daniel to come home. Three more days!

Home

Happy Fake Easter Day! I'm sitting in the living room stuck watching That's so Raven because I'm a lazy foo who doesn't want to get up and change the channel. I'm liking the advertisements even better than Raven since they're the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in my life. Rescue Pets Swim-To-Me Puppies? Sketchers Twinkletoes? Okay!

We're leaving for dinner at 3:15 PM and picking up a gourmet Bob Evans dessert. Oh, and tonight I picked up a mystery shop at a mystery Inn near Oakland. It's the same old same old - check in, get name, evaluate carefully. I have to come up with some problem before tonight. Last time, I called down and requested more shampoo. The shampoo never came. THE SHAMPOO NEVER CAME. Thank god I wasn't really invested in the problem or I would have been cranky.

I'm sure that everyone will be pleased to hear that I was only able to put off doing work for so long before I battened down and got it all done. Prison report? Check! Collaborative efforts? Check! Case studies? Nope! Apparently it's not due until next Friday. This can be done next Friday afternoon.

What else? Well, I've packed about a month's worth of social activity into four days. Tonight's plan will hopefully include $5 poker at Pat's place. Happy almost birthday, Pat!

Lists

I'm sure that everyone is relieved to hear that yes, I was able to get myself up at 5:30 AM so that I could start the packing that should have been done last night. Mornin', Daniel!

My flight is at 9:30 out of LaGuardia (woo!), and that makes me happy indeed. When JFK is my outgoing airport, the trip to get there is longer than the flight itself. Let's hear what it takes, eh?

1) Roll wheely suitcases down to the 1 station at 103rd Street.
2) Heave wheely suitcases down a flight of stairs.
3) Scootch wheely suitcases under rotating gate.
4) Heave wheely suitcases down another flight of stairs.
5) Pray that I get a seat on the train.
6) Transfer to the downtown A train at 59th Street. Heaving of suitcases is involved. And cursing.
7) Transfer to the uptown E train at 42nd Street. More heaving, more praying.
8) Go into a coma for about forty-five minutes.
9) Roll wheely suitcases onto the Airtrain elevator.
11) Pay an additional $5.00 for exclusive Airtrain services.
12) Wait for the Airtrain, hopefully with an obnoxious tourist family and lots of kids.
13) Inevitably, I will be at the last terminal and have to wait through that insufferable ding-dong chime and pleasant voice eight times.
14) Find elevator, continue wheeling suitcases into terminal. Throw them at closest desk attendant with tears of rage.

Total cost: $7.00, my soul.

This entire process can take hours. And you wonder how I developed such marvelously toned upper arms!

In contrast, getting to LaGuardia is almost an enjoyable activity:

1) Wheel suitcases one block away. Stand there for awhile.
2) Get them on the bus, and be spoiled for choice of seats as this is the first stop on the M60.
3) Sit down. Take up two seats. Select literature for the journey.
4) Arrive at the airport an hour later.
5) The end.

Total cost: $2.00.

Saved: $5.00, hours of my life, a throbbing artery in my head.

Latest addictive song: Wuthering Heights, by Kate Bush. I had never heard this song before a few months ago. It's like melodic crack. Hayley Westenra did a cover! So did the Decemberists, link not available!

So in early January, one of my professors asked me to team up with someone and submit an abstract for a poster competition for the ALA national conference this summer. Kelly and I cobbled together something about libraries and science (but not library science) and then I sent it in and forgot about it until the end of March, when I was like "oh, they said they'd get back to us at the end of March and they didn't", (sadeyes). Nay, they waited until freaking March 31st to send out the emails and woo, we have been asked to participate. Huzzah!

Then I was like, "geez oh man, I gotta get to Chicago, which is far and pricy and I don't know anyone there who I could freeload off of for a few days and save myself a pretty penny on accommodations." However, we had a meeting yesterday with the aforementioned professor and she informed us that each student had a professional development stipend of $1000 to be used for just these kinds of situations. Huzzah again! Secret money! Everyone else was talking about sharing rooms at the freaking Marriott and sleeping on the floor to save money and I was like, "psssh, have fun guys. I'm going to a hostel". It's like $35.00 a night compared to whatever ungodly rates the hotels are charging. My total expenditure should be in the range of $500 - $600 total, which means that I still have enough left over to go to another conference should I so desire.

But ugh, now we have to actually do the project, which involves links and resources and the NY Hall of Science, and obviously constructing a poster is also on the agenda. OH, and both of my professors are also presenting some kind of seminar about our grant and since the six of us will be there anyway, they're going to use us as poster children (heh) for how successful it's been. We get to smile and wave and circulate around the room and let people grill us on the program.

This work is now in addition to the work that is piling up which I haven't really started:

1) An original proposal for how to integrate a library system or program into a diverse population. I chose prisons. Due today.
2) An original collaborative lesson for grades 4-6 in the field of English/Language Arts. Standards are involved. Evaluations are involved. I chose a unit on scary stories, to be completed around Halloween. Due Friday.
3) A case studies analysis. I can't even begin to tell you what this is about, because I haven't even opened the file yet. Due Friday.

Obviously, my procrastination habits include making lists.

Whelp, this has been fun but now it is 6:14 and this underwear will not pack itself. Oh, if only Merlin would drop by for awhile, things would go more smoothly.

It's Cat Stevens From Here On Out

I'm listening to Pandora radio right now because their "let's get music close to a song you pick" is usually pretty good. But they just threw on Enya's "Only Time", from that ubiquitous Pure Moods soundtrack. I feel like such an old fogey.

Update: now it's "Moon River". This needs to change!

Gimme Scorn

There was this big project that I had due tomorrow for one of my school library classes, and I was really dragging my feet on it and thinking of every possible excuse not to do it. Well, I got an email today from the professor that was like, "oopsies! We put the wrong date on the dropbox so I guess we'll honor that instead!" So now I have until April 10th to keep procrastinating my heart out. That'll be something fun to do when I'm in Pittsburgh and would rather be doing anything else. Good times.

Speaking of good times, Suzy and I went out on Tuesday night because I had work that day and wanted relaxing times. We didn't really get relaxing times because there was a band playing (surprise!) at the bar. Impromptu tunes! We ended up sitting on a long bench next to this guy from Germany who was in some design competition and Marriott sponsored the entire group to come to the States for seventeen days and check out a ton of art galleries. He was so fun! And, coincidentally enough, his group is going to be in Pittsburgh to check out the Warhol Museum at the same time that I'll be home. Small world.

Oh, work. It was okay. There was a lot of prep involved (chairs down, tables wiped, limes chopped) but overall not bad. I found out that I'm much better at serving than tending bar (not knowing drink ingredients plus not knowing where everything is in the bar = disaster) and I'm glad that I started out during the day because it was definitely less crowded.

I have a mystery shoppe tonight at the Texas BBQ, this time on the Upper East Side. I kind of want to branch out and order something different from my usual pulled pork sandwich, but I can't bring myself to do it. The sandwich is so good! Why mess that up? I rely on the other person to choose something different and then we can share.

Oh, Daniel and the furry cassock. I think it was like fifty-five degrees outside when he wore it last. Man's got sensitive ears.





Pretty much, the guy who wrote this movie was like, "13 Going on 30 was great! Who doesn't like age-related hijinks!? I know... let's make that movie in reverse! Instead of waking up 17 years older, he'll wake up 17 years younger! It's brilliant!". Only time will tell.


Sheep in a planter!








New York had this brief two-day span of wonderful weather and things started to bloom.









Then it got cold again. Hopefully April will bring warmth.








Kitteh! KITTEH! This, obviously, is Suzy's cat. Adorable.











Rub ma leopardy belleh!








I was walking down in the 80s the other day and I saw this sign outside. Oh dear. Pre-fix. That sounds suspiciously like prix-fixe.





OH NOOO, it was even printed on the sign!











Yes, I would like a giant heap of scorn with my morning coffee. Only $1.25? Best price in town! This was up by the Columbia Medical Center and I passed it about five times before I finally had a camera on me.