Survived My First Week

At the new job. I'm not going to lie, it was a little touch-and-go. But I made it. Still alive, still hired, people seem to like me. Now I just have the rest of my career to go.

Anyone know a good eye cream?

My old friend "Bobby" rolled in last night at a bright and early 1:25 am, and to kill time before I picked him up, I went salsa dancing. And then he and I stayed up until 4 am talking, laughing, and gossiping, over wine. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

This morning I'm blearily staring at my computer screen and this pops up:

Tri-Tip: "You went to salsa and then picked up "Bobby" at 1 AM? You, ma'am, are truly hardcore."

Me: "More like two am, because his plane was delayed."

Tri-Tip: "I salute you."

(Note: Those of you reading along at home may wonder why Tri-Tip knows I went salsa-dancing last night, when this IM conversation is obviously the first time we've communicated today. Is he my boyfriend? Do we talk in the evenings? The answer to both questions is no. He knows because he follows me on Foursquare and Twitter, and has access to the places I check in. If this entire tangent confuses you, welcome to the 21st century. Moving on.)

About 9 am I IMed Kentucky. (Who is new on this blog! Welcome, Kentucky!) The New Job moved me to her work site, which is great because a) I don't see her enough, b) it gives me someone to bug at times like 9 AM when I've gotten two hours of sleep. "Today would be a GREAT day for our first Tully's run," I write to her. "Just saying."

Fifteen minutes later she hits me back. "YES. See you in five."

Turns out she was ALSO at the airport at 1:30 am. We could have gotten a damn drink in the airport while we were waiting for our respective arrivals. We laugh about this, back in her office, comparing how little sleep we got.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure my eye-bags are purple," I said, mainly joking.

She gives me a critical look. "I wouldn't go so far as to call them purple," she says. "More like lavender."

"Hmph. Well, I haven't slept much in four days," I said, pulling out my concealer, which I happened to put in my pocket this morning, even while sleep-walking, because I knew this was going to happen.

"I'm not judging you, doll! I feel you! But they ARE there," she says, pulling out her mirror. I futzed--gently--with the skin under my eyes, and the concealer, and looked at her for approval. "Much better," she says, encouragingly. "No longer purple. They're still puffy, but you can't fix that without cream."

See Title.

Cheese and Coffee and Lipstick

This describes most of my breakfasts. And the following describes the past five of my mornings:

I bit into a chunk of Manchego and sipped my barely-warm VIA as my boss held a hand mirror for me, sneaking around the corner of my cubicle wall, so I could apply eyeliner before the foreign nationals came in. She talked at me a mile a minute as I kicked off my ballet flats and stepped into my brand-new black slingbacks, breaking off only to say, "Cute shoes!"

My slingbacks are the tallest work shoes I've ever owned, and my boss is so well-dressed that I'm currently overhauling my wardrobe so I can keep up. So when she says, "Cute shoes!" I say, "Thank you!"

She turned the mirror around and applied her own lipstick. "It probably wouldn't kill you to be here earlier," says the petite powerhouse, who is going to school full time while managing my department for two continents and half of Europe and Asia, as she wielded her lip pencil.

I make a mental note to overhaul my wardrobe AND go shopping AND drink more water AND eat healthier. Whatever this woman is doing, I would like to also do.

Contentment

It's 78 degrees. I'm wearing a white t-shirt dress. I'm drinking a strawberry daiquiri which, miraculously, I have not yet spilled on the white T-shirt dress.

I have a strawberry daiquiri because I had extra strawberry filling from making 12 strawberry tarts a week ago, which I'll talk more about in a later post. Also being made as I sip my strawberry daiquiri: a strawberry pie, with the extra strawberry filling, and a loaf of gougere, with extra dough from making cheese puffs, also a week ago. The extra ham and cucumber has been made into sandwiches with the extra white bread, the chicken from TWO weeks ago has been picked clean and tossed--with the leftover meat waiting to be a part of another meal--and I am listening to this song:

Into the Fire

I have a new job here at the Lazy B, and so far it most reminds me of a mix of the West Wing and the Devil Wears Prada, except that my boss is totally awesome. It's fast-paced, tons of things happen all at once, things change minute by minute, so I'm behind already, and really I just want to take my boss out for coffee and listen to her talk because she's that cool.

My meals here at work have consisted of peanuts, granola bars, and slices of cheese, because I'm too busy to eat or cook, and last night I came home at 4:30 pm and went to bed an hour later.

Whew.

P.S. Hi, mom. I have eaten some quinoa and yogurt as well. And YES, I am drinking enough water.

Staying Enaged

It's hard.

It's hard to stay focused. It's hard to take the long way around. It's hard to come home after work and devote four hours to your side projects. It's hard to remember how to spell "devote".

It's hard to wake up early in order to bike or take the bus, when it's easier just jump in your car. It's hard to pack a lunch the night before, when it's so easy just to buy pre-made food. It's hard to pre-set your coffeemaker, when you can just buy a latte. It's hard to eat simply, when it's so much easier to buy fancy restaurant food. It's hard to read Shakespeare, when it's so easy to read Agatha Christie. (Or worse, blogs.) It's hard to just walk to J.Crew when you need new clothes, instead of scouring thrift stores.

And now that you've taken the easy and more expensive way out of all your obligations, you find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands, so it's even harder to pare your life down to its basic necessities instead of filling it with things that fill your extra gobs of free time.

It's even harder to bitch about these very, very small concerns in the face of so many REAL problems in the world. That is all.

Overwhelmed by Other People Today

On gray June Gloom Seattle days, it's wonderful to know that other people are creating amazing things, so I can just sit, and drink my coffee, and stare out the window, and enjoy their things instead.



All of this woman's photographs are so amazing.





Oh, just check out her flickr stream.

And a slightly different take on art, aesthetics, and fantasy:





This is a real artist's commune, only not a commune. From the NYT article:

"The woman, J. Morgan Puett, a fashion designer and artist, is also a kind of radical homesteader, having staked a claim here on land stalked by black bears, deer, coyotes and porcupine. Along with her 8-year-old son, Grey Rabbit, and a changing cast of friends and romantic partners, she has built a home that is an ongoing experiment in art, design and aestheticized living, an artist colony conceived in the communal spirit of 20th-century institutions like Roycroft and Black Mountain College, with her own house, just now being finished, at its heart."

People who can do this with their lives make me think I'm wasting my allotment of oxygen.

And finally, it's probably more artistically appropriate that you listen to something like Ratatat or Tom Waits as you look at the above images, but THIS is what's in my head:

Share Ghost In The Machine by B.o.B

Love the amazing, AMAZING, almost-an-afterthought, harmony in this song.