Deviant Dispatches

Hey look! Another mish-mash of recent happenings. I'll be expanding upon a few of these later in the week. I made eggplant parmesan for the first time last night. It was much easier and more fun than I thought it would be (both good signs, as I haven't been very into cooking lately). It was a simple matter of baking the breaded eggplant and making some sauce. Spousal Unit and I found a three-tier cat tree near a dumpster. It had been rained on, but we let it dry in the sun and gave it a thorough cleaning. The cats seem to like it so far, though Oberon is still more of a ground-based kitty. Last week at work, someone used "thru." In a professional report. I headdesked so bad. Another item in my work week: someone emailed saying that if the government shuts down, she'll have to send her report on Monday instead of Tuesday. That should not be a serious sentence. I feel like "If the government shuts down" should be the start of a joke, not a qualifi...

We had a pie contest at work last week. It was hella tasty. I made a gingersnap pumpkin cream pie - I'd only made it once before - in New Mexico - but it turned out about like I remembered. Except this time, the crust was better. We had a spread of seven pies for the contest. From front to back: mini chocolate coconut pies, vegan pumpkin, my GPCP, coconut cream, Fat Elvis (banana and peanut butter), cashew pie, and a Brandy Alexander pie. So much yum. The Fat Elvis ended up winning, and I couldn't disagree - especially when my pie looked like this when cut apart. I think I'll beat the cream longer next time.

Today, I go back to work as usual. But today is different: I am no longer a temp. Today is my first day as a real employee. I've been temping for so long at this company (since October) and I've known for so long that I was going to be hired (a month) that in some ways, it feels like there will be no changes - except for the giant stack of papers I had to take home yesterday. Certain things will change in the way I allot my time; I will get benefits now, too - something I won't actually see change for a month or so. But the thing I'm most excited about right now is having an official email signature. Before, it was just my name. Now, I get to include my title and the company's name, too. Lamest thing ever. But I can't wait to send my first email this morning, just the same, because I'm thrilled and relieved to finally have a permanent job in the field I love. With all the perks. Source

There is a Charlie Brown tree at work. You know the kind. Source It's in a room neither my coworkers nor I spend much time in, but we do go in there to get coffee or tea, or use the microflave. The tree is close enough to that corner of the room that every time I pour myself hot water, I bump the tree. Unfortunately, despite everyone's fairly close proximity to it, we often forget to water the poor thing; it's been looking a bit crispy. One coworker stepped into the editing office this week, leaned against the door frame, and muttered, "I think I killed the ficus ." I must confess: Charlie Brown's utterance of "I killed it" was the first thing that came to mind when she uttered that phrase. We assured her that if it was dead, we were all responsible for not watering it; it was not solely her responsibility to care for it. But it was only in relaying this story to Spousal Unit that I realized how poorly off the poor tree was...

When I start a new job (or anyone, I imagine), I worry far too much about the first impression I make on new coworkers. This week has been no exception. Something like clothing style is perfectly acceptable to change on the first day, I think. On Monday, I wore dress pants, dress shoes, and a business-casual sweater (whatever the hell that means), so that I could properly gauge the office dress code. Since then, I've worn skirts every day - my personal style is dressy enough for my new place of employment, thankfully. But then there's the problem of my geekitude. It's not so much that I want  to hide my geeky, unusual nature from people - the side of me that's a Trekkie and a Star Warsian, who loves apocalyptic sci fi and plays fantasy football. (Poorly this season, but I'm still playing.) All of that stuff is rather bizarre for an office woman to partake of, according to popular thought and general office culture. I know from experience that if I let my nerdi...

Sunday was my last day at the bookstore, which meant several things. 1. No more working with the occasional customer who is eager to hear about what you love to read and buys all three of your recommendations. 2. No more discount for working there. Luckily, I took advantage of both these items while I worked the weekend. I recommended American Gods, The Illumination, and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie to the customer; I bought these for myself. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - I've never read this, which is shameful for a scifi fan and a Bradbury fan. I'm reading this one first. Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink (The Reader) - Trying to keep up my German skills. I've managed to get through the first few chapters without a dictionary, so they're doing okay. (Helps that I read the English version first.) The Italian, or The Confession of the Black Penitants by Ann Radcliffe - I wrote my senior paper on this book and haven't owned ...

So. Part of me was kind of looking forward to the upcoming move as being a bit easier than usual, because this time, I was going to have the same job throughout it all. I still won't be switching jobs when we move, but I am before the move. Yes, I will start a new job in a couple of weeks. This all happened very quickly, once things got rolling. I found out about this position a month ago, through the temp agency that got Spousal Unit his job. Copy editing for a non-profit? It was exactly what I've been looking for since we moved back to Wisconsin last summer. I called the temp agency and tried not to sound like a dog begging for a Milk Bone. (I succeeded. I think.) The company wasn't ready to hire yet, but they'd let me know as soon as the opportunity came. The call came on Monday last week; the interview was set on Tuesday; I interviewed on Wednesday; I got the job on Friday. Throw into that whirlwind an unreasonable leasing agent, a night-before-the-interview d...

This is my real job. Yesterday, a coworker and I went to sell books at an offsite event - at a country club. Knowing that, on its own, without knowing what kind of country club or anything, made me think, Yeah. This is going to be interesting.  And unfortunately, I was right. Country clubs can be good things, but generally only if you're a wealthy older white man with a nose so long you have no choice but to look down it at people, or if you married someone who fits that description. True, there are many nice people who belong to country clubs, people who give to charity and appreciate and respect all life, but they sure as hell weren't coming out of the woodwork yesterday. We arrived at the club and pulled our massively unwieldy cart to our display table. I'm telling you the truth here: a lady with terrible (but probably expensive) taste in clothing came up to me, before I'd taken anything off the cart, and shoved her reconstructed nose in my face. "How mu...

Last week, two Germans came to the bookstore. It took me a little while to figure out they were German; one responded in accented English when I asked if he needed help (first clue), and I heard them intently discussing a road map in German later on (near giveaway). As they wandered the store, I began to mentally whisper the German I remembered, hoping to recall something I could say that would not make me look like first-year student, and I began the Great Internal Debate of whether or not to speak with them. You may think this would be an easy decision - I am capable of speaking with them, why not just do it? If the situation was reversed, then it certainly would be an easy decision. Most Germans can speak multiple languages, and an American going over there (more often than not) will even expect  the Germans with whom they interact to speak English. But the double-standard is that Germans coming here are expected to speak English. Such is the common American mindset: we...

I have a new job. Same dance, new song: I'll still be working at a bookstore, but it's a primarily new bookstore instead of a primarily used bookstore. No more books that smell like cigarettes and mold, no more fun discoveries of bugs and underwear in book boxes, no more offering customers 50 cents for nice copies of Walden and Emily Dickinson. No more throwing books away like they're last week's leftovers. I will miss certain things, certain people, certain perks; that is the nature of change. The new job is part-time, at least for now. This means I'll be developing a regimen for novel work and exercise, to be focused on daily (or very, very often). Hopefully, I can get myself and my novel whipped into shape. (Don't worry; I'll still post terrible book covers for you whenever they come my way.) Unfortunately, this also means some degree of insanity in the next several months, yet again. I've already had my first couple of freak-outs about the new...

For most people who have to (or even want to) go somewhere for one reason or another, today is hellish. Those who have been debating, I advise you to just stay home today. Some people are lucky enough to have all of Thanksgiving weekend off. Congratulations - you likely have human working hours, or at least jumped the gun soon enough to be one of your store's two employees with Black Friday off. Huzzah for you! The rest of us are not so lucky. Some are back at the office after a single day to stuff their faces and express thankful thoughts. Many others are back in their stores, after a day (or even less) of pretending to be thankful for something, rather than apprehensive about the dark cloud on the horizon. Others yet didn't even get a single day's respite from the rat race, working through Turkey Day and missing out on the big family dinner. I know that at this point, it's ridiculous of me to ask that you not go shopping, if you have your heart set on it. By all mean...

In high school and early college, I worked for a local grocery store. The store was conveniently located next to the cheapest housing in town, along with halfway houses for those just out of jail or overcoming addictions. We had some fun customers, doncha know. For all the customers who came in completely incoherent, with urine-soaked money, there were those who were actually interesting, too. We the checkers would converse with these regulars, and they made us wonder about them. One of those I remember most clearly was an elderly gentleman. I say gentleman because he was always dressed nicely, with a vest and slacks, and his hair slicked to one side - very 1920. I still maintain you can tell a lot about a person by what they purchase, wherever they go. This seemed especially true at the grocery store. This dapper gentleman would come in once every week or so and buy largely the same items: grapefruit, Listerine, and a big bottle of J. Bavet brandy. Sure, he bought other items too, but...

You deserve an introduction here. Or a warning. Or something like that. The book covers that you are about to see are items removed from our clearance section at work. Whenever books need to be clearanced, the older titles are pulled to make room. The spinny display is full of rejected romance and mystery titles; therefore, the ones I pull to make room are the uber-rejects. And they're really, really horrible things. I now present to you the worst book covers I saw last week. I hope you can survive these. Good luck. Lois Greiman's An Accidental Seduction is apparently a really bizarre book. Check out all the Amazon customer comments - apparently, her regular readers think she writes "historical" novels. This book is a Prince and the Pauper situation (you can read it here ), with two women switching places and (surprise!) there's a handsome guy involved. And he apparently tends to not wear a shirt. The book's tagline: "When she submits, heart and body, t...

Dear Management/Owners, Your attempts at making retail classy are not working. You seem to be under the extremely mistaken impression that changing the language we, the workers, use will change everything about the place in which we work. Carefully chosen words, to you, can make or break the business as a whole. While I agree that language is powerful, you're overlooking something very important: language cannot change facts, only disguise them. And sometimes, not even that. For example. At the tux shop, I've not been allowed to say the common retail phrase, "Can I help you?" The supposed reasons for this are that it's a yes or no question, and that it's very "low-end" retail. Instead, employees are supposed to say, "What brings you in today?" News flash: eliminating the phrase "can I help you" does not change the fact that even if it's expensive, it's still retail. We are still selling useless crap to people who could eas...

Everyone who knows me knows how little I care about appearances on a day-to-day basis. I don't wear makeup. I wear white whenever the hell I feel like it, even if Labor Day's come and gone. My favorite shirt features a cartoon character . My favorite shoe designer is whichever one happens to be most comfortable (and I never care enough to remember the name). With that in mind, let me tell you how glad I am to be leaving the formalwear industry of DOOM. In the last month, I've felt my soul be squished, twisted, and crushed by having to memorize vest patterns and coat styles. Honestly, I don't think there's anything in the world I care less about. Telling the difference between and remembering the names of four different dot patterns? Not high on my list of priorities. Being able to tell a customer why this notch lapel with two buttons and a satin collar is different from that one, with the same description? I don't care, and I can't tell them the difference w...

Yesterday at work, I was reminded of a scene from the movie Fern Gully. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it to everyone, even though it's a kid's cartoon. It's about a rainforest full of fairies and other creatures that are way too adorable to be real, fighting for survival against evil humanity's drive to have more stuff. Robin Williams plays an excellent roll in the movie as Batty, who is (surprise) a bat, recently escaped from a lab where he was experimented on repeatedly. His rap is one of the most incredible things I've ever heard, and I still listen to the full version on a regular basis. Makes me feel better when I'm having a bad day - at least I haven't been electrified and dipped in paint and all that. Another great character in the movie is Hexxus, who was locked away by weird fairy magic in a weird tree in the rainforest. He's the embodiment of pollution, and when he's accidentally freed, he starts getting his sli...

It's only Wednesday morning and I'm already exhausted. I have no good reason to be. My two workdays so far have only been three hours long each. That's how today will be, too. I chalk it all up to not having gone anywhere or learned anything on a daily basis for the last two months. To suddenly jump back into it is overwhelming and a bit terrifying. Another part of that is the number of interviews I have this week. Yesterday was my first, and I still have three to go. Plus the two I had last week. Six interviews and two (short) days of work in one week. I guess that explains my sleepiness pretty well. These interviews are stressful for a couple of reasons. 1.) I don't know where they are, being new to this city, so I have to leave early just in case I get lost. I almost did yesterday heading to a tux shop interview. 2.) I always get nervous when I have to perform. Yes, everyone has to deal with that, but it's still a physically exhausting thing. 3.) I don't real...

As I write this, on Sunday night, I am excited, nervous, and eye-poppingly shocked. As in, my eyes are popping out just a little because I've waited months for this day to come. The day before my new job starts. The hours of searching, the replies in my inbox that want a credit check for a secretarial job, the days wondering if I'd be able to afford food again have finally reached fruition. Small fruit is better than no fruit, and I will eventually get a second job. But on Monday (that's today for you peeps), I start work as... a studio photographer. Yes, I have no studio photography experience. But regardless of the part-time hours, it's a paying job that will cover my current bills, and I think I will enjoy what I'll be doing. There's a certain amount of creativity involved (even if it's just in posing people awkwardly and making them laugh at my monkey dance). It should be clear by now to all y'all that I like taking pictures. And it will get me into...

Yesterday, I was in charge of a program for a class of 17 students who came to the bookstore. I've done plenty of storytimes before, but never something on such a large scale, so I was way nervous. (That's where the dream about ballet and puppets and 200 parents came from.) I more or less reused an old storytime idea, but there was still the matter of the tour and a craft. The class was from the Spanish immersion school, so w hen I said, "Good morning!" they all responded, "Buenos dias!" When I asked, "How are you all today?" they all responded, "Muy bien, y tu?" Not only was it very sweet, but it helped make me feel better. They were a well-behaved class from the start. Having a couple of coworkers to help me was wonderful, too (especially since they both knew more Spanish than I). The kids were really excited about several things: they loved having a story read to them, they loved getting to make their own book for a craft, and they j...

Have you ever listened to the way someone else talks to your cat? I don't have a cat, but Sadie the Mistress of the Bookstore is pretty close. Customers are always amazed to see her when they come in, exclaiming, "Wow, look! A cat! There's a cat in here! It's a kitty! She's so pretty! Come here, kitty kitty. Aren't you precious?!" I kind of want to strangle them. It's all well and good to talk to a cat, but when people treat Sadie like she's less intelligent than a baby, I think she knows what they think of her. It's something in her eyes and the way she walks away from those people, tail switching self-righteously. She's saying, "I may be small and fuzzy, but even I know you sound like an idiot." Yesterday there were two cases of this. One: a customer walked in the front door, and before even entering the store I heard him exclaim, "Woooooow! tk tk tk, kitty kitty kitty! Meeeeeooow!" and, hunched over, he ambled out of...