Why you should listen to your mother

And father and brother and brother-in-law (but not really in law because the laws are unjust):

We registered for and were given some very nice non-stick pots and pans. All of the aforementioned folks said it was a bad idea and that the non-stickness would peel and be bad and all. We thought we were smarter and thought we could take such great care of them that they would not peel. We own no metal utensils. We always waited for them to cool before cleaning. Still, they peeled and probably poisoned us and we'll probably now never conceive children or our children will have extra fingers or toes because we have consumed so much Teflon or whatever it is that made up that non-stick surface. On Saturday we wrapped them up in towels. We called my not quite brother-in-law who used to work at the store they came from, is an expert returner of goods, and an experienced finagler and asked for advice. We successfully returned them after acing a quiz about how we cared for them and got new pots and pans. After about two minutes of contemplation, we allowed ourselves to be talked into very expensive cookware. I think we were led to believe that our food would taste better for the rest of our lives and that our great-great-grandchildren would be able to inherit the set.

The temp work I did working at a packaging expo for the next three days paid for the difference in cost. This temp job is the type of job that I decide future Emoly is up for. Present Emoly has absolute disregard for the feelings of future Emoly. She will sign future Emoly for a variety of things future Emoly is bound to hate. I was told that it would be a lot of standing on my feet and that I would need to be peppy. I was most concerned about the being peppy part. Turns out, I am totally capable of being peppy. I was, however, allergic to the expo. If you're wondering what a packaging expo is, it's an expo where companies that make machines that package come together and try to sell their machines to people who need to package things. During the course of the three days, I sneezed no less than 500 times. That is not an exaggeration. I tried and failed to get out of the third day for I feared it might send me into anaphylactic shock. I suppose that is my punishment for not listening to my family. I did, however, learn a whole lot about shrink wrapping.

Now I can die knowing my existence mattered

I came to work with a sense of purpose today. A sense that I could make a difference. When I went to the kitchen to get some coffee, I realized that the beverages in the refrigerator could stand to be restocked. The fridge is once again fully stocked and organized. I eliminated any and all possibility that problems might occur if like ten people showed up out of the blue and all wanted a cold diet coke.

Next! I straightened the already neatly organized (because the person who was here before me didn't want me to have anything with which to occupy my time) drawers and cabinets. I restocked the cups and candy jars as well. There are five people in the office most of whom do not eat the candy? Surely we need at least five full bowls scattered around the common areas on the off-chance somebody gets a craving. This move may in fact save lives.

Finally, and I don't mean to brag when I say this--but I totally reloaded and fixed two staplers all by myself and in less than four hours. I won't say that I didn't have to go to the Swingline website to look up diagrams and I won't say there was no profanity involved. I will say I now have the option of stapling in either the copy room or at my desk and I can staple up to 150 pages at one time--no problem, whatsoever.

I better take it easy for the rest of the day.

My little dependency

One day while temping a couple of years ago, my gchat stopped working. It was down for almost an hour. I had tried signing out and back in, signing in from various locations, restarting my computer, everything. The error message seemed to indicate a firewall or the network administrator had killed all chat. I called Kenny in a panic and near tears. I was hyperventilating a bit. I could handle the ridiculous lack of work and coworkers I had--but only with my gchat. I imagined all the hours that lay before me sans chat. Online news can only entertain you for so long. I would go insane.

Thankfully gchat came back to me that day. Today, however, the cubicle world has lost another weapon in its collective arsenal against boredom. Scrabulous is gone. Assuming Hasbro and the Scrabulous folks don't work this out and give me back my Scrabulous I think this will be a day I'll always remember. I'll remember where I was the day they took it away. I'll remember work life in terms of before Scrabulous died and after it died. Maybe one day I'll have one of those jobs where I'll be busy all the time. Maybe the pain will lessen over time and I'll find new ways to fill my time. For now, I'll just contemplate this travesty in disbelief--maybe talk to my friends on gchat about it.

Prime resume material.

A big part of being a temp can be finding ways to fill your time. At the job I've been at for the past week or so there is about 5 minutes worth of work in any given day. The rest of the time it is important to be here so that I can answer the phone in case somebody does finally call, and it's not a wrong number and it's not a Spanish recording telling me to dial 1 to claim my prize. The following is a list of things I have had time to do so far this week.

1. Spend 3 hours trying to determine the best place to take my father-in-law to get a hot dog.
2. Take naps in the little fountainy/flowery area in front of the building.
3. Spend 3 hours trying to determine the best place to satisfy my father-in-law's Jewish deli request.
4. Play a good 10 or 11 games of Scrabulous.
5. Go to my high school class reunion site and discover that 80% of my former female classmates have spawned an average of 2 children. Find out that 3-5% of those mothers have given their children socially handicapping names.
6. Get a money order for my boss and prepare his traffic ticket guilty plea.*
7. Both receive AND send letters and various packages.*
8. Apply to 3 jobs. Hmm. Maybe more time should have been devoted to this one.
9. Read 300 archive entries on Dooce.
10. Work on my putting skills with the office's golf set thingy (because corporate offices have those?)
11. Look for an apartment and a dog for a friend.
12. Resort to clicking on links to blogs in various people's comments sections because I have already read all of the blogs I usually read and damn it, I need more blog reading material.
13. Eat all of the M&Ms.

*These items were actually required of me by said job.

I want to be a Temp when I grow up.

This week I babysit the silent phone in the fancy office. It's not the worst thing in the world, really. It's like couch time, but more productive.

Julie tagged me in her blog to write 6 random things about myself. I'm not sure how this is different than any other post I write, but let's give it a try.

1. Sometimes I check my own blog to see if there are any new posts.
2. I have a history of becoming emotionally attached to objects in a somewhat socially ostracizing way. First there was a collection of tiny plastic farm animals I would occasionally set up on my desk in junior high. Then there was the plastic corn and banana necklaces my friend Molly and I wore at debate tournaments in highschool. Finally there has been Booger--who at least appears to me to have generated less ridicule than the earlier objects.
3. I had an irrational yet debilitating fear of Eyeore for years.
4. Speaking of the irrational, I don't eat veal, duck, goat or sheep--mostly because I find them to be too cute and similar to puppies.
5. All of the men on this floor have to come get keys from me so they can go potty.
6. I hate mini-golf. I suck at it, and I am convinced that nobody really enjoys it after the first 4 holes.
   

I am taggging Megan, Courtney, Lindsey, Molly, Jack, and Jack's friend.

here are the rules:
link to the person who tagged you.
post the rules on your blog.
write six random things about yourself.
tag six people at the end of your post.
let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
let the tagger know when your entry is up.

4 Things

1. I got fired.
Except that is an exaggeration and completely not true. My temp job ends next week so it might be back to the couch for me.

2. Maybe we're just on vacation.
Or maybe we should act like it. I think we should go to the beach and if lastminute.com can make it happen, we just might. Nothing quite gets your mind off the finances and joblessness like an all-inclusive getaway.

3. Kenny is buying Jack's affection with copius amounts of food and treats while I'm at work.
I think the tide is turning and Jack might love Kenny more than he loves me now. I can't compete with the daily bits of lox, spontaneous peanut butter kongs, and hamburger grease Kenny's been feeding him.

4. I just asked Kenny for a glass of water and some brownies.
He's in the kitchen baking now. He's the best. Maybe he buys everybody's affection with food?

The good stuff

I was at my last job for over a year--in some ways, I was there for two years. About a year and a half into the job I got my name put on a mailbox. The end.

After being at my new temp-to-perm job for two days, I was given a real-life-printed name plaque on my cubicle. Today I was handed a new directory with my name on it. I've met at least 90% of the staff and have had lunch with many of them. Many people stop working during lunch and go into a room that is completely separate from their desks. It's awesome. Also, we have free coffee, tea, soda, and the occasional goldfish snack.

In other news, we've lived here for about six weeks and have been visited on various weekends (plus) by my mother, my brother and his partner, a friend, and my father. The in-laws arrive in a few days. So this is what it's like to have a guest room...interesting.

All of these visits have forced us to get out of our house and do a little Chicago exploring. I'm starting to feel like maybe I live here, and maybe I'm not just a visitor. I still gotta figure out the good places to take people, but that takes time--it did in DC too.

For now, here is my top of list reasons why all of my friends should move here:

1) Better prices (groceries, restaurants, housing, airline tickets...I could go on)
2) Friendly people (cliche, but true)
3) BYOB restaurants
4) The flatness--it's incredibly easy to bike here
5) The spring/summer weather--I know a lot of people think the weather is a good reason to not move here (and yes, I know it's not winter and I will probably be singing a different tune then), but it's been so nice and 60s and 70s ish for most of the time we've been here. There's also been plenty of rain and thunderstorms. I'll probably eat my words, but man I love snow and I am looking forward to that too.
6) Pizza. It's everywhere--and not just deep dish. Oh pizza, I love you so much.
7) Water--we got a lake AND a river.

Helping the rich and other lifelong dreams fulfilled

I've begun working for an association that helps ultra high net worth people out. It's like working for a nonprofit and it's like social work except different. When I got my degree in sociology, I must say--I was not focusing on this particular segment of society.

It's a temp-to-perm job, thus continuing my lifelong streak of never having a job with any sort of permanence. I understand people often submit their resumes, get interviewed, and get offered jobs outright. Not sure I believe it. But I hear it happens, and maybe that will happen to me one day.

There are very nice people at the job and free pop and coffee and snacks. Also, it pays real, live money. I managed to wait an entire day before reorganizing the desk and redoing the filing system.

I went to work today!

For real! Kind of. I had my first day of temping today. I got up at a totally unreasonable hour and put on clothes with buttons and zippers and left the house and had to be somewhere at a certain time and everything! I mean, it was not glamorous or anything. I counted things and put them into an Excel spreadsheet all day. But! I left the house with purpose and made some money today. See! Mindless data entry can be rewarding :-).