But before we get to the fact that Gina Curano is my new girl crush, I thought I’d share a few things with you:

sh*t people say in LA

While I have not snorted coke with Skeet Ulrich, I am verbatim guilty of the parking quotes, and yes, a couple of other things:

21 Jump Street? I am SO THERE.

Much to Sachiel‘s horror in the movie theatre lobby, I fully intend to partake of this, because unlike my erstwhile roommate, I’d already seen the trailer:

I love two things about this movie:
1. They’re not even trying to take any of it seriously.
2. The fact that every time they do promos for this movie, they’ll have to say “Oscar nominee Jonah Hill” really is just made of farcical win.

 

How to mess with people on the highway:

That’s right, it’s a storm trooper motorcycle suit.
I’m not even gonna comment, you just go ahead & think up your own remark for this because anything associated with this will automatically be awesome.

Other news?

• I got my arse in gear & fixed the couch, thus making the dogs very happy.
• Slowly but surely unpacking things, thus making the cardboard box recycling plant busy.
• Have been sucked in over on pinterest, thus losing hours of my life, but with some good source material.
• Now need to actually do something with said source material
• I am in a waiting mode for a few things, and it’s driving me beserk.

More to come:

• At one point last week, I tried to work out but was defeated by my lack of a dollar bill. I really wish I was kidding about that.
• Ya know, for a group so up on relaxation, yoga peoples need to chill the eff out.
• Haywire made my world shiny.
• There actually does come a day when you stop missing wheat. Now, if I could just give up sugar.
• When in doubt about a soup recipe, just throw it in the slow cooker for a day. It really does make everything better.
• … except cheesy cauliflower. (don’t worry, the crock pot is fine. I didn’t even try.)

 
Music: Bach, the Cello Suites – Yo-Yo Ma

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

ShareThis

- it would seem that, according to DJT, I have an entire magical adventure within my apartment. More on that later.

- I’m pretty sure Zoey thinks we’re house sitting, as whenever we go out for a walk she tries to find the car. Sorry, ZeeZee, this is where we live now, kiddo.

- Ernie just thinks everything’s an adventure. I’m astounded at how well he’s been behaving as of late – he’s even already figured out to wait until we get down to the sidewalk & pee on the streetlight, as I don’t want him to get in the habit of just lifting leg on the stairs leading up to the building… which I suppose counts as me teaching my puggle not to piss off the neighbors.

- We had a moment to appreciate that I had one large box of clothes and seven medium boxes of books — and that’s after I’d culled the herd.

The result is that I’m torn between getting a Kindle Fire and waiting to see if they actually come out with the iPad Mini (I find the current iPads a bit too large for my taste) and possibly that would help cut down on the space taken up by my book collection.

h/t to k-walla for this one.

- thanks to her present decor involving red sheets over the windows until we figure out curtains, Sachiel‘s room looks a bit boudoir-esque. This impression would probably be greatly improved by a lack of plastic bins, but I figure hey – at least she’s got the lighting down. Gotta start somewhere.

- mostly at this point, I feel like the apartment presently resembles dominoes — if I do this, it will affect this, this & this, which is a bit overwhelming.

Because boundaries are our friend.

In the course of conversation with DJT & Math on Saturday, DJT attempted to share an aspect of the collegiate experience & I quickly interrupted to set up the new rule that, unless it was something of an AfterSchool Special nature, stories involving their sex lives were to be witheld until they’d reached the age of 26.

When DJT wanted to know why 26, I informed him that was we would call the age where they became Actual People instead of Guys I Knew When They Were in High School — the first is acceptable, the second…just kinda creepy, especially since they’re approximately a decade younger than my younger brother. Or, as I have been known to refer to it, Situational Jailbait.
A term which, at one point when I was coaching, led to me walking away from a kid as his teammates explained to him what jailbait was. Ah, the joys of educating the young…

What does it say when me as a sleeper agent wouldn’t really surprise anyone?

Pause for backstory: Math‘s new girlfriend at school is an Illustration major, a fact which he & I have made several jokes about considering my profession.

As we were cleaning out the back closet in my apartment & pulling out a drafting table, art supplies, portfolios of work & paintings, I said to DJT, “See DJT, this is what I meant when I warned Math that dating an artist meant there’d be a lot of stuff to carry around.”

DJT, with one of my paintings in hand, asked, “Well, who was he?”

“Who was who?”

“Ya know… the guy. That you dated. Whose stuff you have.”

“What… what are you talking about?”

DJT pointed to the paintings & asked, “The guy that you dated who did all this stuff.”

At which point I laughed & said, “No, DJT – I’m the artist in question here. My degree is actually in fine arts.”

“Psh. yah, right.” When he realized I wasn’t kidding, there were genuine flabs being ghasted as he cried, “No way! You couldn’t have been an art major! I thought it was like, design & business or whatever… Really? Really? Are you serious?”

“DJT, why is this so weird to you? Yes, outside of all the other stuff, I actually am an artist.”

“Because, it’s just – Okay, you just – you look really normal, that’s all. Most of the time, artists don’t look normal.”

“…thank you?”

Because you see, the truth is that, much like the Boston mob in The Departed, every year the art community takes a few of us art majors aside and says, “Okay, here’s the deal – we understand that you want to dye your hair blue and spend most of the year planning your costumes for Burning Man, but we’ve selected you for a higher cause. We need you to go infiltrate yourselves into everyday society and learn to blend with, well, the Art Muggles, whom we refer to as Auggles. Once amongst the Auggles, it’s your job to subversively promote the art community’s leftist agenda so that when The Revolution comes, we’ll be able to topple the Establishment from within.

“… also, if you get a chance while you’re there, spread around some of The Gay. Even if you’re straight, just… see what you can manage — it’s a side project we’ve been working on. Great distraction, that. Gets ‘em every time.”

But alas, now DJT knows the truth behind the mild-mannered appearance I’ve cultivated via my natural hair color and quiet, understated wallflower-ish personality.

Pity. He seems a decent fellow… I hate to kill him. Ah, well.

Music: My Body – Young the Giant

ShareThis

Expectation:
For the record, I had plans for these last two weeks of the year. Seriously. I was going to go through, finish cleaning out my apartment, organize my electronic files, finish up some lingering projects… you know, all those things that allow one to feel like they’re starting the new year in some semblance of control over their life.

Reality:
…did I mention that I’m moving on Saturday?

But we are! The week before Christmas, Sachiel & I took the Friday beforehand to go look at a couple of possible apartments… and came away completely disheartened. Personally my favorite was the guy that was willing to rent to us and then when he found out I had two dogs, told me the rent had just increased $100/mo. Seriously, dude? I mean, I’ll pay a full deposit or a pet fee, that’s fair, but you want me to pay you $1200 more a year for the entire time I rent from you?

Yeah… we decided to pass.

source

Episode II: The Search Continues

Christmas Eve, we had one place to look at before Sachiel went to visit with Polgara’s cats for two weeks & I migrated with the puppies to the Long Beach Menagerie for a week. When we’d looked at the ad earlier in the week, I’d said to Sachiel, “I vote we just show up at the open house with the dogs and let them charm the landlord the way they do everyone else in the entire world.”

Sachiel was in agreement with this, so when we walked in & the property manager appeared to be a fairly normal, non-shifty lady who responded to my question about two dogs with, “Oh, I have a 13 year old Doberman, that’s fine” — I’m not gonna lie, I could have hugged her. However, this is California, and thanks to the celebrities we have laws about touching & keeping a legal safe distance from strangers, so I held back.

Instead, I offered to bring in the miscreants so Property!Manager could meet them.

On the way in, I looked at my errant canine children & said, “Okay, before we go in, both of you need to pee now or forever hold your peace. Go on, go potty.”

Ernie, always happy to show off that he’s a little boy, obligingly lifted leg & emptied the tank.

Zoey on the other hand, looked at me & was all, “I’m good dude. Totally good. Let’s do this.” Since Ernie is normally my troublemaker, I let it pass & we went in to the potential new apartment.

…where, after prancing about & initiating Property!Manager into their fan club, Zoey promptly trotted over to the smaller bedroom & hunkered down to pee on the carpet.

OMG NOOOOOOOO!!

source

Luckily after a decade of hanging out with Zoey, I know the signs & was able to rush over, pick up her troublesome ass & scoot her out the door with Sachiel before she did any major damage.

After apologizing profusely to my prospective landlord, I went outside to get napkins from my car to sponge things up. Sachiel, who’d been outside with my urinary miscreant, took the napkins inside, and I stood there with Zoey.

“Well go on then,” I told her, “you might as well pee the rest of it out & finish what you started.”

At which point she laid down on the grass as if to say, “Nah, I’m good. I just wanted to do it there.”

:sigh: Little bitch.

Thankfully, Property!Manager wasn’t offended, and let us know there’d been another dog in the apartment with the last tenant, so Zoey was probably marking territory & they’d been planning to shampoo the carpets before the new tenant moved in anyway.

She was also really nice about the fact that, in the hubub, we’d totally just left Ernie with her in the apartment off his leash.

I don’t know if the two dogs had decided to declare Opposites Day just to screw with the humans or what, but while Zoey was expressing herself, Ernie was, according to Property!Manager, “Such a good little boy — so cute and well-behaved!”

:pause:

source

Okay… okay sure. Why yes, yes, he is like that all the time, it’s great. Awesome. Totally. Right.

Luckily, Virginia, there is a New Apartment Santa Claus.

Needlees to say, we applied for the apartment then & there, and got a call the next day saying that yes, we’d been cleared & it was ours for the taking.

:fist of triumph!:

source

oh, but don’t worry – the universe continued to screw with me. because it’s fun.

For oh yea, there is joy in the land, my beloved miscreant readers – Sachiel & I went forth & offered up two cashiers’ checks to the Gods of Security Deposit & First Month’s Rent, and I left my 30 day notice letter at 1049. We got keys to the new abode, and Property!Manager promised to email us the lease because her printer had run out of ink that morning.

All was well.

Then, as we were at 1049 (where my printer lives) and I was reading the lease, I saw this:

No it is too long, let me sum up: The lease says that if the landlord gets through the condo zoning process & decides to start selling the units off as condos, they can kick us out at any time with 30 days’ notice.

…and I was like, “WHOA. What?”

source

Because no. No way. No way was I going to move into a place, thinking I’d be there for at least a year, & then get told that I’d have to move out & have only 30 days notice to find a place that would take two dogs. No.

I mean, seriously, I was trying to be like, an adult & be calm & reasonable about the whole thing, because hello we’d already put down the deposits & sh*t, so we kinda had to sign the lease & move — but that wasn’t mentioned in our tour or anything, so while I could plan contingency and all, the five year old in my brain was totally not dealing well.

source

However, Anya talked me off the ledge and I emailed Property!Manager & managed to very calmly & casually be all, “Hey – what up with that?”

…and a few hours later, I got a response from Property!Manager that no no, this was just something they have for all their properties, the owners have held the property for nine years & had no intention of selling. It seems the properties had actually been zoned for condos about five years ago, and she kept telling the owners they needed to change the language in the contracts because it keeps causing this question from new renters, etc. ::insert further annoyance with employer here::

Short version: we’re good to go.

source

You know what the hardest part of moving is? The part where you move.

…which is where we are now. Sachiel & I had two options: we could shift things over a bit at a time over the course of the month… or we could just freakin’ do it & try to get everything in by this weekend so it would all just be over.

Of course we chose the crackhead option.

Which meant we spent our New Year’s cleaning the new apartment, and in my case, packing up the old one. and yesterday, doing online traffic school, but we’ll talk about that later.

On Saturday, Math & DJT are going to come help us move the larger furniture-type things (big couch, oversized armchair, bookcase, desk & a trunk) and various other shiznit, after which Sachiel & I will no doubt have to fall over & sleep for a while.

source

Hopefully by Monday the only thing left to do will be for me to go back & clean the old place, hand over the keys, and glare ominously at Old!Landlord to remind him that he should get my deposit (and the 10 years’ interest that West Hollywood renters’ law entitles me to collect) to me quickly because let’s be honest – should the occasion require, sometimes… I’m kind of a bitch.

source

And after all that’s done, I just have to circle back to where we started: Expectation.

because all of those things that I was going to do over Christmas break before I knew I was moving?

Yeah. they still need to get done. But at least now that I’ve moved significantly west towards where The Things That Make Up My Life reside, I’ll have an extra hour & a half of time not spent in traffic each day to work on actually accomplishing them.

Which means I’ll probably only have 45 minutes of free productivity time because really, who are we kidding — I’m totally going to sneak in some sleep.

source

Tru fax?

Honestly, my real fear is now that we have an apartment with a garage to work in, I may come home from work one day & find that Sachiel has decided to give Ernie a makeover.

source

source

Good luck, little dude. Just remember – Mommy loves you.

Music: Jason Mraz – Sleeping to Dream – Live from Montalvo (Selections for Friends)

ShareThis

Thankfully, in what I may dub a Holiday Miracle if it goes through, I think I may have found a place yesterday (application pending).

In the meantime, I took a picture this weekend which best illustrates why we need to get a place so that Sachiel can have a room with a door:

Trust me – it’s even cuter if you click to enlarge.

Ernie: He know when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake.

ShareThis

After my mixed bag exercise at Head of the American, last week was my week off.

Why did I take a week off?

originally asked by Sachiel.
In most training plans, athletes are encouraged to take at least one week a year off. For a lot of rowers, this often happens in August/September — it’s a natural break between sprint season ending & fall head racing beginning.

In my case, it happened in July — I wasn’t going to Canadian Henley, so after tearing down the course at Mercer like a bull in a china shop, I’d had a break and started training for the fall in August.

With my right arm injured & the decision not to row NARF, I took the week after Head of the American off — not only in the hopes of allowing my elbow/forearm to heal up, but also so that I could do a second step test to be compared to the one from earlier this fall. I’ll most likely do lactate testing with the kids at Beach!Boathouse in December, but since my first step test was done right after I’d been Sick Because of the Wheat, we did another to see if there was any difference or I just… suck.
(no, I don’t know the answer to that one yet, The Man Doing the Math had two high school regattas to run that Saturday & Sunday – we squinched it in last Friday due to timing of training schedule, so we both knew he’d get back to me with actual results when he gets a chance to breathe.)

For the record, a week off doesn’t mean I sat around on a couch watching TV & eating bon-bons. Instead of doing say, seven workouts in five days, I only did 3, and I was indeed completely off the water for… actually come to think of it I still haven’t been back on the water – my first days back that the boathouse have been erg workouts. #sad

so this is what other people do…

It’s an odd thing, a week off. The only comparison I can make is that it’s like when you work a 9-to-5 job and then there’s that one day when, for one reason or another, you’re not at your job and are instead out & about in the world. You drive around, go to the grocery store, Do Things Out in the World, and think, “So this is what happens in the rest of the world when I’m avoiding meetings and playing WordsWithFriends compiling code? Huh.”

I remember talking to one of the junior alums Alle when she came home for Christmas her freshman year. After four years rowing in high school, she got to uni in NY and decided that college rowing was not for her.

“It’s kinda weird at first, isn’t it?” I’d asked her.
“Oh my god,” she’d exclaimed, “I got like, twenty hours a week of my life back. I didn’t know what to do with myself!”

…and in a way, it’s like that. You look at your schedule & decide it’s going to be an All the Things! week. You’re going to Clean All the Things! and Make All the Food! and Catch Up on All the Client Work!

…and that totally, totally, completely doesn’t happen.

You think you know … but you have no idea.

What actually happens is that you get home from the regatta, and after having driven 12-14 hours in three days, drop all your crap in the middle of the living room, consider a shower, decide that you’ll just sit on your couch for a moment first, and then wake up on your couch the next morning.

Awesome start to what should have been The Week of Efficiency.

The next morning, when you were going to pack your boat on the car then row Z‘s Filippi before driving to Beach!Boathouse to drop off said boat & then pick up the Canine Brigade from their stint as part of Doggie Devo, you discover that it is not only pitch dark, but the coast has also been enveloped in a fog wall roughly the consistency of pea soup.

Good times driving the 45 minutes south on the 405 with that one, especially since my roll of twine disappeared & I couldn’t tie down the ends:

by the time I got to Beach!Boathouse and stopped after the speed bump to take this picture through my windshield, the fog had thankfully gotten a bit better than when I’d left LA. and yes, it was only my second time driving with $5k of hardware on the roof, so these conditions aren’t nerve-wracking at all.

…and the whole week just kinda goes from there. I got some things done, but not nearly as much as I really should have, or honestly, needed to.

The Week of Efficiency turned out to be The Week of Sludgery. Every time I’d be home to do something, I’d end up putting it off. Or sleeping. Or getting distracted by the dogs because I’m home for once & I should spend time with them. Or…something.

But most of all, last week reminded me of just how much the structure of having an athletic schedule helps to stave off depression.

silver lining: modern creatives have learned to abstain from ear amputation. (mostly)

Here’s the thing about creatives – we’re all a little crazy in our own way. That’s what makes us able to see things differently enough to comment on it in some form which gets your attention. If our brains worked like “normal” people, you’d only get “normal” stuff, and then we’d all just be really friggin’ bored at the office.

and in case anyone’s wondering, I actually did buy my parents AAA for Christmas last year.

And for the public at large, this great — these are the kind of minds that think up how to win a debate with your husband over whether to buy new towels by putting a 4 foot high metal chicken on the front stoop, or Seven Games You Can Play With a Brick.

But it also gets you into places where you freak out because all you can think is that you have no idea what the f*ck you’re doing and you have to be honest with people that the reason you haven’t been writing is that you’ve been trying to figure out why you don’t want to get out of bed.

I think part of it is that it’s just that time of year. Here in SoCal, summer ran out on us faster than a whore the morning after payday, leaving behind cold winds and a fog worthy of a Brontë novel, and everyone’s just like, “ugh… great.”

But across the board, I have several highly creative, incredibly smart friends who are having Life!Crisis!Moments! Whether it’s from a book deadline, job uncertainty, or in one case dog training, there’s a high occurrence of us each talking one another off the ledge as of late, and it just keeps reminding me to thank $deity for the internet. Years ago, we’d have each just been the town weirdo, isolated & told by others that there’s something wrong with us, but thanks to the power of the interwebs, town freaks across the world can connect & discover that it’s not that you’re the only person having these issues, it’s simply that geography separated us from meeting face-to-face, so let’s just go ahead & create our own electronic-based support group.

In terms of helping to create an emotionally stable place for creatives to innovate the ideas in their head, the internet just might be the best thing to ever happen for that weird kid who sat in the back of class in high school.

why? because our fellow crazies help us feel better.

Here’s the thing — just like the brains of creative people have the ability to bring about really great things, it also works in the way of being able to see life in creatively bad ways, the thinking about which can cause one to go completely over the edge — not necessarily into Hacking Apart My Neighbors Mode, but more into a despondent sort of Why the F*ck Am I Even Bothering Mode, where you’re so apathetic that not even the possibility of unicorn bacon could make things better.

In Despondent Mode (as I shall refer to things in a rare attempt at brevity), you just don’t care. Things are never going to work out right anyway, they never have, why bother doing anything? It’s way easier to catch up on Hulu, or take a nap, or walk to Target & get food you shouldn’t be eating even though there’s food that’s good for you which could easily be made in the fridge because things will never change and one day everyone’s going to figure out that I’ve actually been desperately hoping no one will notice that underneath everything I’m just a huge failure so why bother trying in the first place when the inevitable is inevitable — after all, that’s why we call it inevitable because in this case I know that that word means what I think it means, goddammit.

It’s especially hard when you’re alone. When you’re out in the world, at work, or amongst other people, you can take your mind off it and focus on other things, and probably get things done. I am ridiculously productive when I’m at Museum!Co – the thought of going in on a day when I’m not getting paid to be there so I can work on other clients has seriously crossed my mind, I sh*t y’all not.

Because as much as you can email, and call, and connect with the Internet Friends Who Are Your Kind of Crazy, there’s a limit to how much that can help. So if you’re someone that’s single and lives alone, there’s no one to talk you off the ledge in real life, because oh holy jesus you don’t want to talk to someone you see every day about it, because then they’ll look at you and what if they always wonder if you’re about to go crazy, and then they’ll try to be like, sensitive & sh*t & be all, “You know, if you ever need to talk, it’s okay” which is well-intended but just comes off really… patronizing. A relationship? Forget it. Who would want to deal with that? Normal people aren’t like this, after all, and people want to be around people who are normal.

…and that’s the kind of thinking & reasoning that starts things off. The problem is that when you’re by yourself, with only your brain, that’s when things can go… a little off the rails.

it’s called a downward spiral for a reason.

When you’re already tired & you get home to the apartment that for the love of god you’re trying to leave but finding somewhere that doesn’t mind that you have two dogs is such a bitch in LA, and there’s work to be done and food that needs to be made because hey – turns out your body doesn’t like wheat so the majority of any food in packaging has become off-limits, and there’s laundry and it’s just you to do everything, because there is no one else there.
You’re on your own, the same way you’ve always been and sometimes can’t help but think you just might always be if for no other reason than that your brain doesn’t work like other girls which is why guys always ask the tiny cute girl who doesn’t have these problems and knows how to play whatever game it is that I’m supposed to understand but don’t because clearly I missed that day in junior high when everybody else got to go over the rules which is why I always do the wrong thing, and even if I did know what I’m supposed to be doing, it doesn’t really matter because guys in California are only interested in Tiny Cute Girls which my double-digit jeans size ass will never be, ’cause while being able to balance 3/4 slide at a standstill with oars up in a single looks great on the water, turns out that’s not exactly something guys consider a siren song of date-ability, and maybe my mother was right that no man is going to want a girl with a smart mouth like mine so couldn’t I at least try to lose a little weight because you’d probably look just lovely if you lost a few pounds but if you can’t manage that you’d best go make yourself useful & work.
Because work is all I’m really good at, or I would be if I would just finally get everything done and live up to all of my supposed potential that everyone is always telling me I have, except I’m tired and I don’t want to have to do everything myself but there’s no one else and I need to just figure everything out and get everything done and do it on my own because I can’t depend on anyone else to actually do anything, I can’t even trust the woman that’s been walking my dogs because when I came home at 7pm on Wednesday she was only just taking them out for their second walk and when I went to give her the check for the month she reeked of pot and I’m so glad I was able to tell her no es más after November 20 because holy shit you’re old enough to be my mom and I already grew up with Drunk Mommy I don’t need Pothead Dogwalker plus now I’m wondering how many times you’ve come into my house and taken my dogs out onto the street when you’ve been high as a fuckin’ kite and am I the only one in this apartment building that’s not a pot smoker this is why I keep trying to leave, for fuck’s sake I just want an apartment that I like in a neighborhood that doesn’t suck in my price range where they don’t mind that I have two dogs and that one of them is over 40 pounds I hate to break it to ya but both of my dogs will cause far less damage than a cat — have you ever been in an apartment where the cat refuses to use the litter box? Do you know how noxious the smell of fermented cat pee in the walls and carpet is and you’re worried about my dogs? Christ on a crutch I hate this place and I don’t want to do a damn scrap of client work even though that money would make it easier to move because I’m just so tired and I really want a nap because I don’t want to deal with any of this and fuck my potential and accomplishment and all the shit I’m supposedly capable of, I am tired and alone and why does it seems like everyone else knows what they’re doing when I feel so lost and it would be so much easier just to go to sleep.

… because in your head, things sound like that, and you just want to sit down and cry.

A bunch.

…and then when you wake up the next morning, all that stuff from the night before is still there needing to be done, and you have to deal with it.

All. Over. Again.

slicing life into more manageable pieces.   like cake.
mmm… cake.

So how, you might ask, does one get through moments like that and not end up in a padded cell wearing a jacket that hasn’t been fashionable since the completely unexpected Spanish Inquisition?

Everybody’s got their own way – some people have a shrink, some people cry, some people yell at other people on the internet, and I’ve got two friends in San Francisco who became roommates & declared themselves The House that Biochemistry Built.
Warning: While there is very little chance of involuntary anal leakage, morbid humor has been found to be a common side effect of any therapeutic technique.

For me, it’s structure.

Other than my time at Museum!Co, I technically do not have an actual accountability to be anywhere or see anyone at any point in time. I am a freelancer, I make my own schedule – theoretically, I can work from wherever I want whenever I want. While that sounds really great, the whole working-in-your-pajamas concept, it’s actually incredibly hard. Most of the time, for me to get any significant work done, I have to literally physically leave my apartment. The CBTL on Melrose? For some reason, that spot is just incredibly productive for me. I can get more done in one 8 or 12 hour stretch where I’ve glued my arse to the chair in the table by the door than I would in three days spent trying to work in my apartment.

But it’s also about not working 12 hours at a stretch, and giving myself a break.

As one guy I know said, “your brain just never stops working, does it?”
To which I unthinkingly replied, “I was left to my own a lot as a child, and according to my brother’s military recruiter I have a high aptitude for creative problem-solving.”
–> for the record, ^that response tends to be a conversation-stopper. just a tip.

I’ve learned that it’s important for me to create times when I can put all of the things in my head aside and just do without thinking, which for me is often achieved by working out.

Some people work out because they’re angry. rowing has a lot of this one.
Some people work out because of their body issues, some people use it to work off stress.

I work out so that my brain is too tired to work itself into Slightly Crazed Despondent Mode.

After growing up & being told that I was chubby & not an athlete, rah rah one of the last kids running around the track on Presidential Fitness Testing Day & all that, I walked into a gym at the age of 18 and discovered something:

High amounts of cardio makes my world better.

The Riddikulus Voice doesn’t think four chess moves ahead because I simply don’t have the mental energy to hear it – truth is, I’m actually kind of okay with the fact that I have a tendency to forget day-to-day operational details — trust me when I say that in my case, better to be absent-minded than overly-minded.

In terms of the largest yield of Fatigue Acquisition in the shortest amount of time, rowing’s hard to beat. Competitive rowers are, well, we’re kinda not right in the head, and most other athletes will openly acknowledge that. I was walking across the pitch at the San Diego Highland Games a few years ago when a very friendly, completely fit Irish guy made a beeline over & tried to recruit me for the San Diego Rugby league. (Like I said, I ain’t a tiny girl.)

I laughed & said, “”First off, I’m from LA, so I’m geographically useless to you, but also the UK already got me in another sport.”
“Oh really,” my would-be recruiter asked, “what’s that?”
“Rowing.”
“Never mind,” his delightful Irish accent informed me as he took a step or two back with his hands in the air. “I used to go running with the rowers at university. You fuckers are crazy.”

That’s right, people. Irish rugby players think the rowers are crazy.

In terms of comparative scale, that’s what one could call “an indicator”.
And every rower that just read that story just had a moment of pride in our sport. #trufax

Exercise also gives me a schedule. I have to get up in the mornings because rowing isn’t something you can do at any ol’ time of day. Or at least, not if you want anything to go well. While Beach!Boathouse is open to members 24/7, it’s a minimum 45 minute drive away.
Thus I have to go to Bear!Boathouse, whose morning hours are from 6am-9am, so if I’m going to go, I’ve got to get up. I try to set up my double days for when I’m not working onsite not only because of scheduling flexibility, but also because then I can’t tell myself I’ll just work later — I have to do it between this time & this time because I’ve already got something to do later.

This way, I don’t have to do everything all at once or feel pressured to Accomplish All the Things in one huge swath — I’ve got a slice of Work Cake built into my schedule, and I’ll do as much as I can in that slice of Work Cake before I go to my next slice of Exercise Cake.
mmm… cake.

except now I have a day without Exercise Cake. omg, no cake!

While it’s admittedly not perfect, this system is sort of what I’ve sussed out for myself, and it wasn’t until this last week when half of my structure was gone that I realized just how much I depend on it to make my world function. Not having that time set aside and not having planned anything to fill that gap in my schedule was just a new kind of horrible, and it really wasn’t until towards the end of the week when I realized that I was running out of time to do all the things that I was supposed to have gotten done over the last week that I actually got my procrastinate-ey depressed arse in gear & was Productive Due to Panic.

I’m not gonna lie — when I put together what we’d discussed for the next stage of my training & sent it to Z for proofing & revisions, I was honestly looking forward to being told, “Yes, go with that”, and being able to have my structure again.

I did not expect the response I got.
“I think everything looks good except that you don’t have a day off. You need one. A complete day off.”

well… crap.

Seriously, this caused me to have a moment.
Like, an actual serious pause where I laid in bed at 4:30am* and had to think about how to do approach this beyond my knee-jerk response to him of, “You & your allowance for HUMANITY.”
*4:30am: Zoey woke me up because she had to pee & I was checking my email on my phone before I let her in & we both raced back under the covers.

learning how to build structure with different materials. I’ve gone from recipe to civil engineering experiment.

The truth is, as scary as the idea might be after the last week, a day off is a good thing. Right now I’m living the present workout/work setup with a specific goal in mind, but I won’t always be able to keep up this pace, either physically or schedule-wise. And Z knows me enough to know that I will just mindlessly work myself into Fail Mode, denying that I need a rest all the way until I hit a wall.

Example: I just got the intro email confirming my membership to CrossFit & they mentioned that on Sundays they have open gym to make up workouts, do extra, or work on certain skills, & my brain went, “I could totally go do that after my 15k steady state… Wait — no, no I’m not supposed to do that anymore. Bad Claris!“

So I’ve got this – the one day free. Baby steps to figure out what it is that everyone else is doing while I’ve been burning off my neurosis. That way, when the time does come for me to step away from things, I don’t have a repeat of last week.

For now, however, it’s time for me to go do an Intro O-lifting class so that I don’t accidentally break myself this Friday when I join up with the regular CrossFit classes. There’s still plenty of time between now & endgame, so I still need to do the work in between.

… which is probably for the best, because I really can’t eat wheat & after writing this, I completely & totally want some freakin’ cake.

Music: Shake it off – Florence + The Machine (Ceremonials)

ShareThis

- Me in conversation with a junior coach, inadvertently providing an abject example of why rowing really is just something you have to experience to understand

…just lie back & it’ll all be over soon – isn’t that what they used to say?

One of the project managers at Civic!Co emailed me yesterday — I’d talked to him late last week (talking=ongoing email chain with the same subj line as a project we finished 3 mos ago) and said, “At this point, I’m kind of overloaded and I’m not taking on any new work until after Nov 5th.” and J, who I’ve worked with since I started subcontracting there two & a half years ago, said sure, no problem.

…and then today I got an email regarding a migration starting November 7th.

On the one hand, it’s nice to be needed.

On the other, I could use a break.

I’d set the Nov 5th date for new work because I made the decision not to row NARF this year. I’m going to do Head of the American this Saturday and then take a week off for myself, both athletically and personally.

I just… I need the time, honestly.

There’s no way around it — I can tell just by looking at my online bank statement & seeing how many times there’s a charge from Whole Foods West Hollywood between the hours of 9:45-10:30pm, which is particularly ridiculous considering that my fridge is completely stocked with things that are perfectly healthy for me if I would just take an hour or two to set everything up so they’re ready to go.

Have I done this? of course not.

And really, it’s not just food – I have at least three client projects to finish up, a personal site that I need to put live Friday night, and a whack of administrative paperwork/recordkeeping crap for my business that’s just… in dire need of seeing to, lest I get to the end of the year & be utterly screwed. Thus, I’m going to take a week off the water (other than finishing teaching Sculling I) which will give me at least two to three hours a day back to myself & should make The Accomplishment of Things easier to… accomplish.
Yeah, my English kinda failed me there. not gonna lie.

Hopefully I’ll be able to hit the ripe old age of 32 having knocked the majority of Things On my List off said list. While they say that people can age like fine wines, I going to guess that’s not supposed to include dust on your to-do list.

Plus by then, the dogs will probably need another bath – and really, who isn’t looking forward to that?

Music: bang bang bang – Christina Perri (Lovestrong, deluxe edition)

ShareThis

I dunno about you guys, but I have been tired. There was a snafu with a client’s job that had me working from 5pm on Sun afternoon until about 6:30am last Monday morning, and I spent last week been trying to play catch up ever since. I’m having one of those stretches where I’ve got a case of The Don’wannas – I don’t wanna work, and I don’t feel like doing pieces at race pace even though there’s a head race next weekend, and I didn’t want to drive three hours round trip that night to pick up a roof rack so I can transport my single on Monday…

…et cetera and so forth. It was Head of the Charles this weekend, and while half the rowers I know were either in Boston or on watching the Cambridge web cam to see how many people would use a boat crash to mark their visit to The Land of Dunkin’ Donuts (mmm…. delicious blueberry cake munchkins that it turns out I’m totally allergic to…) I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed for The Best Nap Ever.

Which would explain why, on Friday afternoon, I fell asleep for about, oh… 14 hours. oops.

Also, because it’s a stretch where I am slightly whiny and oogy (as if this post hadn’t already given that away) I am also having that time where I just want a Nap Boyfriend.
I don’t need sex (although wouldn’t that be nifty), I don’t need an actual relationship right now, but it would be nice to curl up with a nice, solid male-gender type in my attempt at Best Nap Ever.

Alas, most likely it will be as things normally are — I’ll tell Ernie to go sleep on his bed, he’ll jump over his bed (often because Zoey’s already in it since she’s left all of her toys on her bed) and he’ll hang out on the couch until I’ve fallen asleep, at which point both dogs will take advantage of my unconscious state to climb onto my bed and drape themselves on top of or wedge next to my body so that I wake up hot as hell and pinned down to my own mattress like a mental patient that’s been strapped in for safety.

This is my life, people. Welcome to the whirlygig.

…because clearly a single woman over the age of 30 must be in want of a sailor.

Okay, you know what Google? Meet me at Camera 3.

Do I even want to know what on earth in my internet workings caused your algorithm to present me with this ad?

Really, Google? Really?

When I said I wanted a Nap Boyfriend, it didn’t mean I was going to be trolling the docks to provide any port in a storm, thankyouverymuch.

and now for a #TwitterFail of Olympic proportions

… you ever have that day where you make a joke on twitter about your neighbor being a pothead right as your friend on the National team twitters & cc’s the world championship 8+ to thank you for the baked goods you sent them?

… yeah. Me neither. :cough:

um, hi guys. < /awkward>

Honestly, what I really like about this is the educational opportunity that @thisismagda created:

You ever have that moment where you just look at your world & think, “our lives aren’t like other people.”

… yeah. me neither.

ShareThis

I was like, this >< close to becoming one of them. You just don’t even understand.

As those of you connected to me on twitter know, I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday being annoyed at a guy named Zuckerberg.

And so, I sat down on Friday and wrote a whole entry regarding Facebook, and the fact that it wasn’t that the new products are bad, it’s that Zuckerberg and his friends rolled things out in a completely douchebag fashion.

It was concise. It was thorough. It explored the psychology behind creating a product that your customers would want versus cramming your upgrades down the users’ throat. It gave examples, and presented an alternate approach which might not have had so many people utilizing the convenience of what happens when replacing the Z in Mark’s last name with an F.

I wrote this, and I finished, and I felt so much better. Then I started proofing and thought… what am I doing?

Oh holy jesus, I almost became an Angry Internet Person.

Let’s be honest – there’s like 50 of you guys reading this at the most. (Hullo mah peeples!! :waves:) What, precisely, would free-ranging on the internet regarding what some guy who I’ll probably never meet nor have the professional ear of actually accomplish?

Most likely nothing, that’s what.

Back when I was working at Spiffy!Hotel, there was a night when I brought yet another high-end car up to the curb, held the door for a Hollywood fit/artfully tan guy wearing artistically worn-out jeans that cost more than I got paid in a day, shoes whose leather was most likely shipped in from Italy for a value outside of what I make in a week, and a t-shirt no doubt carefully chosen to let us all know exactly how hard he’s not trying because he was inherently Cool Enough to be Above Such Things.

Unlike most patrons of such ilk, he actually did tip me, and as I headed over to put the cash in the tip box, I remember Brandon saying to me, “Why did you walk away? Do you know who that was?”
Claris: Someone who actually tipped?
Brandon: That was Michael Bay.
Claris: …. so?
Brandon: Michael Bay!! The director! This is LA, why didn’t you talk to him!
Claris: Okay, seriously, let me break this down for you – I’m a web designer at a vitamin company. Talking to a director of any kind? Not something that’s going to affect my paycheck, because my landlord doesn’t take “I talked to Michael Bay” in lieu of rent.

–> In retrospect, if I’d know how he was going to portray women in the Transformers movies, I would have smacked him upside the head pre-emptively, rent be damned, but eh, whatcha gonna do. On the plus side, viewed from a purely technical standpoint, the use of 3-D in the highway chase scene in Transformers 3 was pretty freakin’ awesome.

The point being, I kind of had to remind myself of that on Friday afternoon. I can write all I want about how things should be and what the better way to do things would be, but that’s not going to actually change the reality of life. Do you know why?

Because yelling at someone on the internet doesn’t change their mind, it just makes them dig in to their position even more.
Before you comment, the use of bold here is indeed for irony. Don’t be that guy.

One of the best things I’ve heard about changing the way that people think of things comes from an authoress who, due to her request that “What is said at book signings will be denied in public”, shall remain… nameless — an awesome descriptive since that’s actually been suggested as a title for one of her books.

Anyway, she was talking about the prevalence of gay characters in her books, and the fact that there’s no big thing of “Gay and here to stay!” about their sexual preference in the stories, it’s simply something that is, and the reason for that is that in the creative community that her parents worked while she was growing up, that’s how it was treated — there was no ABC After-School Special Sit-Down Talk about the fact that Uncle Timmy was “gay”, it was just that Uncle Timmy loved Uncle John, and that’s the way life was.

One of the things that she said was that she finds it fantastic that her books have a huge following in Texas. The fact that there are swathes of teenage girls in the Bible belt and other such communities who are reading this, and for what is most likely the first time in their lives, these girls are having this concept of homosexuality as an accepted way of life presented to them in a way that is neither confrontational nor demonized, and because it’s being done through the vehicle of fiction, many don’t even realize that this idea has just become part of their sphere of comprehension, or that it will probably influence how they view such things as they get older and are of an age to make decisions in the future.

I’ve been around the internet for… well, we’ll just call it a while. Some of the sh*t y’all do as normal internet behaviors are stuff that other people wrote textbooks on because my friends were the ones that started it. I have seen flame wars, I have seen trolls, I have seen fandoms come and go, I have seen (and been in) feuds that just… make your brain hurt. But you know what I have never seen?

I have never seen someone change their mind because someone else typed about how wrong they are in capital letters.

——————————————–

I had someone tell me once that I’m not a very good feminist. They said this because I wasn’t commenting on things like birth control, or abortion rights, or rape awareness. I heard this, and I’m not gonna lie, I kinda laughed. I laughed because outside of the internet, I had just spent the past year breaking down some bullsh*t allegations made against me by a bunch of good old boys who’d thought they could pin the issues in their personal lives on me to cover up their crap and then sweep me under the rug. Unfortunately for them, I don’t scare that easy, and while one ended up on what I hear was a pretty severe employment probation, I really hope the other truly absorbed some learning from his employer-mandated anger management therapy.

Earlier this spring, I had to explain to someone why I wasn’t coaching anymore, and in doing so I said that, penalties to those men aside, the thing which came out of it that I’m actually happy about is that the day after AngerManagement!Issue backed me against a wall and bullied me in front of a bunch of teenagers, I got up, I went out, I went to the boathouse, and I rowed. I’m glad I did that not only for myself, but also because, completely by chance, when I was finishing my workout and pulling back into the dock, I looked up and at the top of the hill were five or six of the girls who’d seen me get yelled at the day before.

Rowers really aren’t verbal people. As a rule, they don’t Sit Down and Talk About Things. (at least, not well.) They looked at me. I looked at them. We all did the Head Nod Thing, and then everybody moved on.

What I said to the guy that I was explaining things to was this – I am glad I rowed that morning because if those girls learned anything at all from what they saw happen to me, I would want them to have seen that I would not be bullied away from being an athlete. No one would drive me out simply because they needed a scapegoat.
I would want them to learn that standing up for the right thing does sometimes mean you’ll get bumps and bruises along the way, but if you are willing to live by the courage of your convictions and work from a place of what is right, ultimately you will find you’ve won by simple dint of having outlasted the idiots.

I don’t need to write about being a philosophical feminist on the internet because I prefer to be a functional feminist in how I live my life.

Anger, bigotry, horrible acts against others — these things have existed since one brother took a rock to the other. But what has been there before any of that is the right thing to do. We do not know the story of Cain and Abel because murder is the way things were set up to work. We know of it because it deviates from the way the Higher Power supposedly set things up to be.

I am at best what could be classified a Recovering Catholic. Bless you, George Carlin.
So while not an active practitioner of… anything at the moment, I do have 13 years of Catholic school studies in my academic repertoire, and just off the top of my head I’m pretty sure that at no point in the story of creation is the line, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. AND THEN HE RUBBED IT IN LUCIFER’S STUPID FCUKING FACE ON TUMBLR.”

With the exception of the junior boy whom I caught trying to do a one-off 2k test in the middle of August, telling someone they are a dumbass will most likely not change the way that person views the world.
And even in that case, he was willing to acknowledge his stupidity because he’d just learned the futility of his uninformed decision. In short, he laughed when I went, “Okay, you know you’re a dumbass, right?” because, while admittedly a rather painful lesson, he’d learned something new.

Education breeds awareness.

If you don’t like the way things are, stop writing about it to other people that agree with you, and get up and do something to help change it. But do so with the knowledge that these things take time, and anger will not open minds.

Those teachers? The ones that you loved? That you were eager to go to class to see? You went there because you wanted to be around them. Because being around them made you feel better, so you were willing to find out what knowledge they had to share, and maybe give it a try yourself.

The same goes for educating the public, especially when you’re bringing information or a point of view that’s different from what they’ve been taught is the way of the world. These things don’t happen instantaneously, they don’t happen because you’ve RT’d a Facebook opinion, or because you said “F*ck you!” on the internet. Change occurs because you’ve gained someone’s attention through trust or interest, and they are now willing to consider your point of view. The problem is, nobody wants to listen to the person that’s always angry all the time.

So please, stop yelling. Stop bold-italicizing your caps lock. Start using the brains that you were given, and participate.

——————————————–

You know why the people who don’t agree with you appear to be winning?
They’re the ones that show up.

——————————————–

Get up. Get out. Go to the people who are doing the work and ask how you can help — if you’re in an area of the country where like-minded people are hard to find, they need you that much more. Stuff envelopes, make phone calls, stand outside of Trader Joe’s with your clipboard and know that you’re going to get shot down a bunch, but you’ll also end up explaining who and what you are to people who probably didn’t know before they talked to you.

Create education. Find ways to express your opinion without profanity or hostility. If there’s anything that the recent electoral processes should have taught us, it is that the world needs less negativity more people willing to stand up for sanity.

Do something. Do anything. Get offline, and get into the world, because no matter how much Zuckerberg’s douche-ily presented new products want us to think that our lives are only fulfilled by the right combination of apps, the truth is that Out There is where the people are.

There is a difference between what is conscientious & what is convenient – so if you want to change things Out There, why are you still In Here?

Music: Everything’ll Be All Right – Joshua Radin

ShareThis

… I will have the street cred to say the following sentence:
That is obscene and hilarious RT @scottfish75: I thought you might like a picture of barrowman wanking off a kranky. bit.ly/nOQFJf – @McKelvie
(Warning: Link pretty darn NSFW)

I don’t even need to know what’s in the damn link, I just like the idea of being able to legitimately use the phrase “barrowman wanking off a kranky” in conversation because it just sounds cool.

Because if there’s anything the universe should let me learn, it’s how to make weapons with nothing but nature & a knife.

and yet, there’s the opportunity to do so for a mere $17.
…sometimes, I just love the internet. Don’t you?

It’s like I’m almost a real fake celebrity!

Fake Jonah Hill is following me. I’m kinda tempted to follow him just for this tweet:
In some parts of the world they don’t have clean water, but they also don’t have Kardashians. Sept 13

What up, fake Jonah Hill! Can you send real Brad Pitt to my house for some awesomesauce time?

Keep it up and I’m gonna get out of the car and drop you like 3rd period French.

I have two clients right now where I have the feeling that they’re trying to skeeve me out of being paid. I don’t necessarily know this for sure, yet, but some of the responses I’ve gotten make me think it may be easier to just drop the project(s) than attempt to bother dealing with the problem(s).

One of them currently owes me (a small sum of) money that’s inconsequential in the actual amount, but when I emailed regarding our discussion about using the end of the fiscal quarter to nail down the tracking method so that I’d be able to look & calculate my own commissions, & invoice for the quarter, suddenly emails aren’t being answered.

It’s taken 3 mos just to get to the point where I have the professional freedom to just go ahead & do what needs to be done to create a site that will actually generate revenue, and I’m hesitant to actually move forward with any of that work because they can’t seem to answer that question and/or pay up the piddling $40 from the last quarter that’s my commission because the site was pretty much dormant.

Really, dude? If Amazon can make sure that I get the whopping $1.44 that I was owed before they shut down all their CA affiliates one week into the new fiscal year back in July, I think I’ll be holding off on doing anything for your site until you can show yourself capable of fulfilling quarterly payments, thanks.

The other is just… I don’t know if he’s actually trying to scam me, or just busy & doesn’t realize that he sounds sketchy around the edges because he’s doing a headless chicken impression due to his work’s normal state of being at this time of the year.

If you’re saying someone might be working on what I just proposed already, then tell me that they can’t produce the list of what they’re theoretically working on because they’re out of town, I’m gonna call bullsh*t, because even if you’re not deliberately running it, it sounds really close to that.

Someone in Customer #2′s industry tried a similar thing with me last winter — I made a pitch, they tried to do it without me so they wouldn’t have to pay my fee. Not only did their attempt at a homemade campaign fail, but they ended up writing me a check for the amount I’d have been paid  if the project had made the goal I projected because I sat down with them & had a little chat about a thing we call “Intellectual Property”.

I’m just… I’m freakin’ tired, man.
I’m tired to constantly having to double check to make sure that people aren’t trying to pull a fast one — my business is to make your business profitable. I’m not trying to take money from you, I’m trying to help you make more, so if you just play things straight & pay what I charge to make that happen, you will make back my fee and then quite a bit more.

I’m just annoyed because it’s like, “Dude, if you stand back & let me do my work & everything goes through, you will receive about $125k in materials & cash between now & June, and I’d only be charging commission for $100k of it. Just work with me, let me do my freakin’ job & stop acting like you have to hoard every scrap of info away in a safe deposit box because I’m going to beat you with a stick & then try to sacrifice the kitten you don’t even have — if I frack up & you don’t make money, I don’t make money. It’s just that simple. I want you to look good so you make  money so that I can make money. The end.”

It’s all I can do lately to not just look at people & share the tagline of WilWheaton.net – “Don’t be a dick!”

Everything I need to know about business, I learned from pop music.
No, really.

As I once said to Anisa, “Oh my god, why do people keep acting like this — have we learned nothing from the immortal words of Justin Timberlake?”
and she started laughing, which is why we’re friends.

Mistah JT was totally right, so let’s just start from an important principle that everyone should abide by without each of us having to experience a totally heinous public breakup with Britney — what goes around comes around, biznatches.

If there’s one fact I have seen in practice it’s that karma is effin’ real, dude. Call it ju-ju, call it business philosophy, whatever you want. It might not be now, but oh yeah. If you set about to screw people whenever you can, they’ll make sure you get it right back.

I know a couple of guys in rowing who literally pride themselves on being assholes to other people. They’re totally proud of it.

The problem with that is that while it sounds fun & might work in the short term… nobody actually likes an asshole. They might hang out with you while you’re in charge or have something they want, but when the time comes that you need honest help with something… nobody wants to help an asshole. It’s just that simple.

So while you might think it’s funny & that you have the right to do whatever you want, I can tell you right now I have seen that sh*t come back & bite you in the ass as you watch everybody else get the job you were looking for or the salary you wish you had, and you’ll be left wondering why.

I try really hard to treat people fairly, especially when it comes to money. There have been times here at Museum!Co when I was in on an extra day and the work that I was supposed to take care of either wasn’t ready or just didn’t manifest at all, and I’ve gone to CaptJack and said, “Hey, I don’t have anything to do, do you have anything? Otherwise I’ll just head out so we don’t blow through your contractor budget.”

And you know what? He was okay with that. At one point, he actually thanked me for thinking of it that way. Hey, no lie — I totally could have bullsh*tted some stuff & gotten the extra day’s pay in that invoice for now, but because CaptJack knows that I’ll treat Museum!Co honestly, that’s one of the factors which I know he’ll consider as he extends my contract out further so that in the long term I’ll continue to have a paycheck much much later.

So it bothers me when I have clients that are trying to jigger sh*t so that they can pull my ideas or work for themselves without paying me for it.

I don’t screw with your ability to make a living, why on earth do you think it’s all right to try to hurt mine?
This isn’t like shopping around to find cheaper DVDs on the internet, buddy — this is me having gone out & sourced information and resources & created materials specific to your business & offering an opportunity that I know you didn’t have available to you before where my fee will literally be returned to your organization nine times over, because I only charge 10% commission, so really? Work with me, motherf*cker, & stop acting like I’m some airhead LA girl who you think doesn’t know when you’re lying. ‘cause at the end of the day, I am actually so very East Coast, & Homie don’t play ‘dat.

Because I was born in one & spent a decade in the other, someone once asked me what the difference is between New York & Boston, & this was my answer:

“In Boston, when you piss people off enough, they’ll take you out back & beat you with a pipe, and that’s how things get done.
That’s actually pretty nice of them, ‘cause a pipe is hollow.

 

In New York, they’d use a brick.”

More and more lately, no matter how nicely I try to treat people, their reactions just make me feel like gettin’ my New York on.

Maybe I should iTunes gift them some Justin Timberlake instead.

Music: Be OK – Ingrid Michaelson

ShareThis

Here’s the thing about being a contractor — in some ways it’s great. In others… I’m kind of at the whim of the fact that I’m not a permanent employee.

One aspect of this is my IT access. For the first nine months here at Museum!Co, every time we renewed my contract, we also had to renew my security & IT access, at which point the IT access would inevitably lapse even though we’d done the paperwork, & I’d end up spending half an hour to an hour on the phone with IT, explaining that yes, I really do work here & it would be great if I could access…anything.

The highlight of this process was hands down the day they tried to email me the new password for my computer.

The email I couldn’t log in to.

Because my password didn’t work anymore.

Because IT had shut it off.

It was hearing that story that, upon the renewal of my contract for the new fiscal year, CaptJack had my access extended for a full year so that, theoretically, we’d have a full 12 months of me not having to dial 1*99.

You can see where this is going, fellow miscreants? I’ll bet you do. Read on, my friends. Read the emm-eff on.

Recently at Museum!Co, they moved me out to a cubicle of my very own. This new location is…forty feet from my old location. Sitting at my present chair, I can actually look left and see my old location.

Forty. Feet.
^ keep this in mind.

Now, because of the way things work in their IT system, I can’t just pick up my laptop & put it in the dock at the new cubicle. No no — we fill out a form to request an IT person come over & physically move my laptop, screen & keyboard (forty feet), set everything up, & then authorize my computer to be able to access the network/internet from that particular port at that particular station.

So we filled out the form on Thursday, & on Monday… ta-da! There was ITGuy, moving things around when I got in that morning. He was actually shifting around the contents of three cubicles at once, so when he walked away to fix the other two, I just went ahead & hooked the system up myself.
(It’s not like I could do anything else, I figured why not.)

ITGuy came back, hooked up my port for access, and sha-bam! said the lady^{™@NathanFillion} I was good to go. Everyone had said it would be a big pain, I don’t know what they were so worried about — that was actually really easy.

I should have known.

Flip the page to Wednesday morning, where I sit down at my computer & go to log in only to discover… it won’t let me. Wait, what? It’s been two days since I moved, I don’t know why there’s a problem now…

Bracing for impact, I call the IT line.

Into the breach…

Now, I’ve never been to India, but like many Americans, I’ve got a fair amount of experience calling India.

It is from this experience that I suspect should I ever actually be cool enough to go on one of the retreats that Christian runs every two years, the first three days of my two week stay will involve me repressing the urge to answer every question with, “Last name ‘Hunter’, h-u-n-t-e-r, first name Claris. My ID number is…”

… somehow, I just don’t think that the local merchants would appreciate that.

But hey – my potential inability to avoid international incident aside, let’s mosey back to the situation at hand.

Having gone through the required details, we discover that for some wacky awesome reason, my user login had become disassociated from my computer.

Why did this happen two days after my workstation was moved? For that I can only offer a lesson from Shakespeare In Love: It’s a mystery.

We get to the end of the call, & the guy says, “May I have your employee number?”

For those who haven’t worked with outsourced tech support, this is done for a reason. Any time you call one of those lines, the company charges your employer per request ticket, whether it be email, over the phone, whatever. When my sister worked as a subcontractor for the help desk supporting Fidelity, they charged $125 per ticket. Yes, for real. And this meant anything – if they talked to you, the company is charged. So the day that my sister got a request message over the in-house system that simply said, “The shredder is full, please come empty it” — yup, that cost Fidelity $125.
For the record, my sister was kind enough to notify Operations.

Kinda puts non-bank ATM fees into perspective, eh?

The things is, I’m a contractor. I don’t have an employee number. Usually, that question gets asked at the beginning of each call & I have stop, go get a colleague & have them pretend to be my supervisor & give their employee number. Now, I have my boss’ actual employee number, as he got tired of us being forced to jump through these hoops & just gave it to me to use, but I didn’t think now would be the best time to hit that note, since:

1. he was on the East Coast that particular day
2. I’m pretty sure that as soon as they ran that ID, they’d figure out real quick I’m not someone named Jack.

Lesson to be learned from the list above: It’s the little details that kill a plan, people — never forget that.

Not in the mood to run around & find a willing employee ID co-worker, I said, “I’m a contractor, I don’t have an employee number.”

Problem is, the guy’s stuck. On the one hand, he should make me go get someone. On the other, he should have made me do that before he did anything, never mind actually solving my problem. His quandry — pretend like nothing’s happened, or ‘fess up to his own omission & make me go get the info.

So I waited, breath fully bated to see if he would let this one slide.

And he did.

Score! Got my ticket number for reference, carried on with my day, IT gods in their kingdom, all right in my internet world.

Then we got to Thursday. Oh, Thursday.

…because it can always get better.

Tuesdays & Thursdays involve me taking care of an admin function for the department — basically, it’s the majority of the reason my contract keeps getting renewed.
besides, you know, my sparkling personality. :bats eyelashes, polishes halo:

I sit down on Thursday, ready to go. I’ve got my iPod charged, Second Breakfast at the ready, rarin’ to get down with my Productive Member of Society guise. It is all good.

…and then my computer won’t let me log on to the network.

eeeuuuuhhhhhh… :squinchyface:headdesk:

To be fair, this is different than yesterday. Yesterday, I couldn’t get on the computer at all. Today, I can log into my computer, I just can’t connect to the network, or the internet, or access the email system.

For those of you new to my world, I work in the Web department. You know, on the internet — where the crazy lives.

The upshot being that there I am, dialing me some 1*99. Again.

So there I am, spelling my last name. Again. This time however, I had yesterday’s ticket number…

…which, according to the guy on the phone, does not exist.

I’m sorry, what? No dude, I have a ticket number. It’s right here, the guy gave it to me yesterday.

Yeah no… it doesn’t exist.

< Scooby-Doo> Ba-roooo? < /Scooby-Doo>

While no one on their end of the line would ever admit it to me, I’m going to draw upon my time working help desk & suggest that possibly, just maybe Mr. Forgot to Get an Employee Number from yesterday let that question slide because he didn’t save my tech ticket, thus saving himself from having to answer why there was a ticket without an attributable number. I had a ticket number & thus thought I was cool, he figured the problem was solved, so hey – no harm, no foul.

Unfortunately, what this resulted in was that there was no frame of reference for the guy I was on the phone with now, so I got to re-explain the process of moving & login issue. Awesome-sauce, dude. Completely Motts.

However, today’s voice on the line, whom I shall call 2nd IT Guy, was smarter than Yesterday’s Guy. 2nd IT Guy asked for the employee # ahead of time, so I had to go hunt down a co-worker & do the thing with the thing & the yeah, because hullo, CaptJack still on East Coast & me with the Not-A-Guy Voice.

We get that settled, 2nd IT Guy & I try a couple things, and discover that’s a negative Ghostrider – the pattern, she be chock-a-block full. At this point, there was only one thing to be done:

I needed a real person.

Crap.

The wait on a tech can be up to 24 hours. 2nd IT Guy inquired, “would you classify this as an urgent issue?”

At this point, I’m still trying to be like, patient, and an adult, and embracing my yoga practice & sh*t, so I take a deep breath and very calmly reply, “Well, I work as a contractor in the web department, so for the amount of time that my computer doesn’t let me go online, Museum!Co is paying an hourly fee for me to sit in a cubicle and do nothing while I wait for you. I think they might view that as an urgent issue, yes.”

Next up – the TK-421 moment :
What is the location/space number of my workstation?

I… I honestly have no idea. Seriously, I was at the spare desk in someone else’s office for the last eleven months, and I just moved three days ago. Much like a four year old walking home from the corner store, I can get here, but I can’t necessarily tell you how to get here.
in the process of this, the New Hampshire girl in me can only think that this is the corporate version of, “Dude, just turn right three miles after you pass where the barn burned down two years ago, it’s not hard.”

Step 1: encounter problem.

Step 2: apply yoga breath.

Step 3: attempt solution.
“Okay, so we know that my computer number is 1*878. Shouldn’t it say that machine’s location as part of the asset tracking system?”
I know it does, because that’s part of why you have an asset tracking system – to track your f*cking assets.

Contrary to my understanding of such things, it would seem that they do not have that ability, and could I please supply my location?

After a minute or two of hunting around, I discover that hey, our locations are in teeny print at the bottom of everyone’s nametags on their cube wall. (except me, because I’m a contractor & don’t have a name. My tag is blank. I kinda like that — it makes me mysterious, and harder to find, & thus less able to assign work to. Score!)

I am assured that this will be marked as an “urgent” request, given my ticket number, and we both hang up the phone, leaving me able to do…

…absolutely nothing.

Hey – remember that admin function that I have to do every Tues & Thurs?

Yah. It still needs to get done.

That in mind, I get up, walk across the office, & say hi to Polgara, who through process of elimination caused by vacations & maternity leave, is the other remaining programmer in the office & has enough work for three people at the moment. She’s also the other person on the push list actually in the office.

Since I’m down for the count, guess who gets to do my job until IT shows up.

Sorry dude.

To her credit, Polgara’s reaction was rather low-key given the situation (no, not really) and she showed great patience with the limitations of our IT process. (so totally not.)
I now have the theory that part of the reason so much IT is being sourced to India is that it’s safer that IT is out of physical proximity for their well-being and eliminating the possibility of assault on company property.

It was during this measured adult conversation regarding how to best work the problem & mitigate an interim solution* that Polgara mentioned normal tickets for in-person help were supposed to be answered within 24 hours, but “urgent” tickets had a window of 4 hours. I assured her that the guy specifically used the word “urgent”, so we should be good.
*interim solution = Polgara doing pushes on top of her other work while I sat at my desk like a useless git & waited for IT

Then I went back to my desk, took out my laptop from my bag, & got paid by Museum!Co to work on things that didn’t involve the internet for four hours while I waited for IT to show up.

Four hours and ten minutes after my conversation with Polgara, I dialled 1*99.

Say hello to my new acquaintance, 3rd IT Guy.

I give 3rd IT Guy my ticket number from this morning, and am greeted by the inevitable question, “May I have your employee number?”

Yoga breath.. failing, _failing…

Urge to kill… _rising, rising…

Claris: I’m a contractor, I don’t have an employee number.
3rd IT Guy: Can you please get your supervisor so that they can authorize this phone call?

:deep, cleansing breath… calm cerulean breezes…

Claris: Did the ticket number I gave you come up?
3rd IT Guy: yes.
Claris: well then, shouldn’t my supervisor’s employee ID already be on your screen since it was required to authorize the ticket in the first place?
3rd IT Guy: Oh. Yes, it is.
Claris: Well okay then.

Logic, peoples — whaddaya gonna do?.

I explain the issue, and the fact that it’s been longer than four hours, so I was calling back.

3rd IT Guy: the ticket has been assigned to SA and is awaiting processing. Is the matter urgent?
Claris: Well, I’m sitting at my desk doing nothing for the last four hours, so I’d say… yes. The matter is urgent.
3rd IT Guy: Would you like me to mark the ticket as “urgent”?
Claris: it already should be.

….yeah. It wasn’t.

:squinchyface: :rubforeheadwithheelofhand:

It gets marked “urgent” (again), and I hang up to wait for IT (again).

I walk away and see Polgara, whom I give the current sit-rep. Once again, she was totally open to the limitations of our IT line (no) and possibly threatened lives understood that everyone is falliable, so sometimes things like this slip through the cracks.

Polgara: what?
Claris: Look, all I know is that now I’m supposedly actually marked “urgent”, and I really want a cookie.

:gazes in meaningful manner over Polgara’s shoulder:
when our pregnant co-worker went on leave, she left four boxes of Girl Scout cookies at Polgara’s desk.

Polgara: But you ate all the cookies that won’t make you sick.
Claris: I know, but right now, I don’t care. Because it’s like that.

:silence as Polgara eyes me with the unsaid answer:

Claris: :sigh: I’ll go eat my orange.

As I was leaving the kitchen (with my orange instead of the desired cookie) Polgara’s tea break brought about this Great Moment in Employees Conspiring to Circumvent the System & Actually Get Something Done:

Claris: I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is that it was assigned to SA.
Polgara: oh, I know her. she’s totally cool… we could just call her and ask.
Claris: Can we?
Polgara: crap. I don’t have her extension, & they don’t list IT in the directory.
(yes, this is done to prevent people like us from avoiding the Help Desk call center by doing things like this.)

However, Abrams walked in just then & said, “What’s going on?” We explained, & blessed woman that she is, went, “I have her extension. Every time an IT person comes to my desk, I get their extension & keep it hidden at my desk.”

Wow. Abrams just became Today’s Best Person Ever.

I head back to Abrams‘ office with her, and as she’s getting the info, she throws out, “Hey, you’re going to be busy catching up once this is fixed — if you want to reschedule for another day, I totally understand.”

Now, Abrams is cool, & we’ve spoken a couple times, but we don’t actually work together and generally I don’t have meetings, so I was a little puzzled, an emotion which I guess I communicated by my utterly blank look and response of, “Reschedule…. what?”

Abrams: You know, coffee. This afternoon? I emailed you earlier in the week?
Claris: well, yes, I’m down for that, but I never got an email.

:moment of silence:

Abrams reaching for my ID tag: Wait, how do you spell your last name?
Claris: Dude, who did you actually email?
Abrams: I don’t know…
Claris: well on a bright note, someone thinks they’re seeing you today. So…good luck??

After agreeing to re-schedule, I went back to my desk to call SA. Upon getting her voicemail, I opened my mouth to leave a message and realized… I didn’t know where to have her call back.

I just moved. I don’t know my extension.

What? I never call me.

In my defense, no one else does either — we’re the web department, we email everything. On the rare occasions I use the phone, it’s generally because I’ve gotten an email saying, “Can you please call me at :extensionhere:”

Literally, in eleven months, I don’t think anyone’s actually called me. So I really don’t know how to call me.

I hung up and walked over to Polgara’s desk.

Claris: :sigh: Can you call SA for me?
Polgara: Why can’t you call her?
Claris: I started to, then I realized that I don’t know my extension to leave on her voicemail so she can call me back.

She laughed at me. I know, right? At that point I snickered too, because seriously? wtf ya gonna do, man. wtf ya gonna do.

We called her extension, which got us not just voicemail but also the correct spelling of SA‘s last name.

Polgara: We could just email her.

:my turn to unleash the pointed look previously used for my cookie yearning:

Polgara Okay, I could email her.

As Polgara was doing that, I walked away under the idea that it was time for a bathroom break, and coming in the front door of our section was a woman who looked… Well, I don’t know how to put this other than to say she set off my Nerd-dar — I had the unassailable feeling that this was someone who could fix computers & the spontaneous urge to bribe her with baked goods^* in order to begin a legacy of sterling customer service for my computer needs. In my world, that usually signals someone that works in IT.
*Damn straight, people — you want to get in good with IT? Sugar, chocolate, and caffeine. Those are my tools and they have served me well. The first two also work well on rowers. Just a tip.

I decided to hold on to it, and made a (hopefully) unobtrusive beeline for my desk, where sure enough, SA appeared not three minutes later.

And thus, through the magic of Network Admin Awesomesauce, within ten minutes everything worked again. SA replaced a little gray box under my desk with a different little gray box under my desk, hooked up a wire to something, and before I knew it, the heavens opened up, cherubim soundtracked the moment, and the holy light of my monitor shone out from a network-connected system once more.

Claris: Hey, I’m back up & running, so I can do pushes again.
Polgara: thank god. SA got you taken care of?
Claris: Yeah, she’s awesome. So glad I called IT back that second time, she told me that sort of ticket was marked for 5-7 day turnaround.
Polgara: Five to seven days? What were you supposed to do in the meantime? You work in the web department…
Claris: okay, breathe, breathe.. Let’s focus on the positive here — computer is fixed and I didn’t give in to the urge to get a cookie. I’m calling it a win.

Plus, thanks to Abrams, now we’ve got the direct extensions for three people in IT. That right there is corporate gold, my friends. Corporate freakin’ gold.

Which reminds me…

>>> Claris 8/11/2011 1:23 PM >>>
Hey, what’s your extension?

>>> Polgara 8/11/2011 1:28 PM >>>
6*05

:dial 6*05:

Polgara: what’s up?
Claris: what’s my extension?
Polgara: how would I know?
Claris: doesn’t it say it on your phone?
Polgara: really quick when I pick up. Call me back.

:hang up:
:dial 6*05:

Polgara: 6*92
Claris: thanks.

… well at least now I know*.
*truth told, I don’t actually know, I just I wrote it down on a post-it in case someone asks later.

Music: Don’t Start Lying to Me Now – Joss Stone (LP1)

ShareThis