Has Anyone seen my stapler?

8:30- I’m at work, but I’m apparently here before all of my possible bosses and I have nothing to do. I’ve been aimlessly surfing for an hour now… $8 an hour high-speed Internet boredom. (Because, while I have the capabilities for unlimited Internet fun, I’m being watched. I know this. So I don’t do anything too risqué. Besides the risk of the tech guys, my actual bosses could turn up at any time…and who knows what conclusions they’ll happily leap to if they see me reading Matt’s “Horrors of Sex” propaganda. I can only imagine…)

So, in between the modicum of work they have for me, the uncomfortable chair-yoga and the aimless Internet drifting, I’ve felt like writing. A lot. It seems, in the absence of anything better to do, my urge to write — the same urge that left me two years ago at the Mo’ian — has returned, without my generally having any post-work time to actually do it. And, because I get up at 6:30 a.m. now for work and consequently am exhausted by 11 at night and all of y’all are on college time and sleep all day — and so I never really get to talk to any of you — I thought I’d just update you this way, via the bloggy (that I’m actually typing in Word to dodge the ever-watching Big Brother tech guys).

Every morning, Monday through Friday, anyway, for the past two weeks I’ve gotten up at 6:30, an inhuman time generally, greet the kittens that mewl at my feet , get dressed, remove a kitten from my leg, stumble into the kitchen, where the kittens somehow arrive before me even though I left them in the bathroom a minute ago, pack a lunch and a parental unit drives me to the bus station, on the way passing the park where I had my first kiss, Valentines Day in 2000. I scramble onto the 205, which always happens to stick around for another five minutes, making me look stupid for running.

If the weather is nice and I don’t happen to be wearing heels, I get off the bus 15 to 20 minutes later after it trundles into Uptown. I put my headphones in and dance-walk down a hill for 15 minutes or so before arriving at my shiny 17-story building.

*****
Allow me an aside: I have no problem riding the bus — it’s cheap, good for the environment, low-stress (I don’t have to deal with parking or traffic), and I get in a walk while it is still cool. Very pleasant. I do, however, have a problem with men, in relation to the bus. I’ve mentioned this before, but it happens to me just about every day, so it is fresh on my mind.

As I’m walking to work, waiting for my bus at the downtown station, or riding and quietly listening to my iPod or reading a book, I get hit on or leered at. Every day. I can’t understand it. It isn’t like I’m doing anything all that interesting. I’m dressed about as I would for the Mo’ian or, on a good day, a half step above that. Normally in pants and tennis shoes. My clothes are intentionally conservative (thus, ‘work-appropriate attire’). And yet it happens *constantly.* Men, generally well older and often minorities, honk, gaze for an uncomfortably long time, speak to me, etc. When they speak they are (so far) very polite, asking questions, always ending up with ‘so…what are your plans for the weekend?’ Fine. But they don’t stop when I give all the “leave me alone” signals. My eyes are averted, I still have my headphones in, I shift uncomfortably, I say I’m a student (and, in my mind, that means “and too young for you”), I use monosyllabic answers, I say I have a boyfriend. …And they keep it up.

The problem here is that, as long as they don’t touch me and remain polite, I can’t bring myself to be rude or mean to them. I think ‘well, yes I want to go away, but he’s being nice, so that isn’t a fair reaction. Just wait him out.’ And I do, shifting uncomfortably until I have a good reason to escape.

And, assuming I can’t do anything about the ones that actually speak to me, they aren’t that bad. It’s the looks, the honking cars. They make me feel like I’m a piece of fresh meat sashaying through a pack of dogs while Pavlov’s bell clangs over my head. (can you tell I’ve been thinking about this for awhile?) I want to paste a sign on my shirt — I’m not interested and honking won’t get you anything!

After all, what do they think they are going to gain? That if they honk at me, they’ll catch my eye and I’ll dart through the moving traffic, dodge the other vehicles, jump in their car and give them a hearty romp? Of course not! So what do they gain? It is just rude. It makes me uncomfortable, more than it is flattering. I just wish they’d keep their eyes on the road and off of me. I’m wary enough, a young woman walking through (granted, a safe) part of downtown alone. I don’t need them to let me know they are watching me.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Common experiences? Alternate perspectives? I know I’m not the only one that this has happened to, but, I guess because I’m the only one out when it does, it’s an isolating experience.
*****

Right, so we’ve arrived at my building. I go in, smile at the doormen, and take my elevator to the 12th floor. I swipe my magic security pass in front of the card reader, smile at any of the accountants who happen to be in, toss my lunch in the fridge — noting that my nectarine was apparently pulverized by the waterbottle — and start a cup of hot tea. I need my caffeine fix in the morning, just to stay awake. It’s now 8:30, and I’m officially at work. I plunk down at my poorly-lit little grey box of a desk and check all three of my email accounts — the work account always is first, of course.

On a good day, something is waiting for me. Boss K, the one technically in charge of me, has sent me an email giving me some useless job like researching every stop-smoking method in existence and creating a file on it. Some days there is a story on my chair for me to proof-read. Proofing takes me all of 15 minutes, at the most. You’d think I was working at lightspeed, by the shock on Boss K’s face when I turn it back in.

This has been the way of things recently. I work too quickly and thoroughly the first time and I’m making myself obsolete. By blazing through all the intern work they have on hand, I finish before they’ve had a chance to compile a new list of things for me to do. I don’t mind any of the work I’ve been given, even when it felt like my eyes were going to fall out after reading “funniest” moments since readers were diagnosed with cancer all day. (People a) can’t write for their lives, and b) don’t have a clue what ‘funny’ is.) As I am out for ‘Intern of the Universe,’ I work really hard to be thorough and (relatively) fast with my work. My aim is to look like a better worker than SMUgirl, my comrade in intern-arms. (Some days, this is not hard. …I had to teach her how to use the Google toolbar. Yup. THAT Google toolbar.)

This plan, however, backfires when I have nothing to do. As now…it’s now almost been two hours since I’ve arrived and worked on…nothing. Last week, I was actually told to “go surf the Internet for awhile…We’ll come get you if we need you for anything.” I did the Internet until even that lost its allure, then I worked on the typography puzzle in the breakroom until I was sent home.

I have no idea what to do. Short of inventing work for myself, I do everything I can find that sorta kinda needs doing. I am vigilant with my emails, making sure readers get answers when they submit a letter… I work on stories as far ahead as I can, short of knowing what they want me to write about. And, of course, working ahead just means that I finish my work early, perpetuating the problem. I have no idea how else to fill my time. I don’t feel right about not working while at work… but I don’t really have other options right now. (short, of course, updating my blog for y’all).

Anyway, I work (or not work) until about 5 pm, then I bolt out the door and try to catch the bus that picks up across the street. My luck with this is not good. Several times I’ve stepped out only to see the bus pulling away, and with it my opportunity to get home early-ish.

I loaf around at the bus stop for another 20 minutes or so until the next bus comes by, and ride that trumbling contraption to the bus station. There I cross to the other side and keep an eye out for the bus from downtown to the transit center. Sometimes it is there already. Sometimes it is on time. Sometimes it isn’t and I wait 40 minutes for one of the buses to make it through highway traffic. Finally, I get on and let my eyes glaze over while the bus rolls around downtown picking up other office workers. I doze. I listen to my headphones. I read a book. Finally, an hour and 15 minutes after I left work, I get to the transit center where, hopefully, a parental unit is waiting to take me home.

From there, my life gets really boring. We eat dinner. I play with the kittens (who have apparently doubled in weight in a month. They now each weigh 4 pounds and can jump straight up from the floor to my waist.) I watch the Food, Travel, Animal or Home Improvement Network with my parents. Occasionally it’s a movie, generally in black and white, that my dad has gotten off of NetFlix, or something on the SciFi channel that my dad and brother happen to be watching.

Ah! Victory! At 10:50, I’m finally given a task — research the appropriate ribbon colors for various cancers. …Hurrah?

11:05 – BossM gives me work, spreadsheets and mail merges…due by Thursday. At this rate, I’ll be done with it today. But at least it is work!
12:48- Finally finished compiling a list of ribbons for 8 lesser-known cancers, using only reputable, non-commercial websites. Harder than it sounds. (Can you say busywork?)

3:00- Just finished filling out, copying and compiling four competition applications for BossE (a new one this week!). BossE wanted to enter these contests, but apparently didn’t want to do the busywork bit of it, and so passed it to me. In my opinion, having an intern fill out and handle your applications for prestigious awards is what Mark would call a “poor life decision.” How does she know that the possibly stupid (I mean, she did just meet me) intern who cares not in the least if she wins said competitions, knows nothing about the competitor and has absolutely nothing invested in their winning is going to fill the paperwork out right? All this possibly saves her is the effort of standing at the copy machine as it does it’s little copy job. Woo. As far as I’m concerned, it means she isn’t all invested in winning either. I’d be paranoid, checking over every little detail. She, it seems, is not.

I do it with a smile, though. And I just keep thinking how I’m going to have a ninja-like grip after using a stapler with one hand so often.

Back to the actual work-related work (just two more hours!)

4:45- I’m wrapping up to go home. I didn’t finish the work BossM gave me, but that’s because of the asides by BossE and BossL. It’ll still be done way before Thursday, but filling out a database by reading articles to find names takes awhile. And I think that was the point…slow me down.

It won’t stop me — WonderIntern! The best damn intern in the world!

…I should go, before I miss my bus.

I'm going to go home...and log on to the Mo'ian website and work for THEM for awhile! Yippee!

Office Space

A message for Adam
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birth-day dear Ad-am...Happy birthday to you!
Happy 21! Wish I could have been there to celebrate it with you! We'll just have to make it up later!

Intern-ity
I started my internship at CURE yesterday (www.curetoday.com). It is a free magazine for cancer patients, survivors, doctors offices, and family. It only publishes four times a year, but it has to be doing well. They keep expanding and their offices are *nice.* I mean, there's a tv in the elevators. And they have lots of security, as if they are terrified that someone is going to get their 12th floor office. (no one is going to get their office). They even have a doorman.

So now I've started as an editorial assistant intern. The first day, I thought I'd been in "Office Space." I seriously fought with a printer for three or so hours. It just wouldn't work! It was such a pain. I literally played tug o' war with the printer for the paper, which it just kept eating. Writing this, I sound like a complete idiot, but goodness it was a pain.

Today I got to do some actual work; I edited the other intern's story and have started on my own. I'm assigned a story on the ethics of animal testing for drugs. Lots of icky online reading.

Bigger in Texas
Apparently the "bigger in Texas" rule isn't applying in my office. Everyone is tiny. If they happen to be tall, they are supermodel thin. If they aren't supermodel thin, they are short. In Mo. I end up the smallest in the group. Here, I'm mid-to-high pack. Isn't that bizarre? They are all so petite. I'm hoping I can fit in.

Kittens!
Still cute. Getting a bit irritating though. They attack feet while you sleep. I have kitten scratches. I'll get photos when I can. :)

Stuff Happened

Okay, quick recap of the week:
— Anniversary — Moving out — Summer — Internships —

Anniversary
This week marked the two year anniversary of the more or less official relationship of Adam and me. I say more or less official because there is a bit of a disagreement on when Adam and I became “official,” both in terms of the actual date/time we crossed that line between friends and dating people formerly known as friends and, just to complicate things a bit more, there was some (more) disagreement about whether what happened on that day (the one we haven’t ever properly deduced) actually constituted us being an ‘us.’ Later, just to get rid of some of the insanity, we retcon’d it and decided that we did indeed become a proper couple on the day that we still never pinned down.
So Adam and I celebrated our two-year coupleyness last Sunday, and it was fantastic. Hm. That sounds cliché and a little ridiculous, but it was. It was simple, but it was great. We went to Addisons, where they tricked me into eating the overpriced but absolutely mindblowing special and Adam managed to outsmart them by getting a burger that was apparently also delicious. Then we meandered back to the dorm and cuddled and watched a movie. Sounds boring now that it is written, but it was just what I needed.
So then I forced Adam to sit with me and reminisce/flashback end-of-tv-show style, reliving blips of the past two years of our lives. Charming. And it made me think: I am *so* happy with him. He makes me purr like a kitten and feel warm and fuzzy, even when I am just thinking of him. …And I’m going to miss him this summer.

Moving Out
Yesterday was hellish with a side of stress and ouch. Moving out is a lot of work and very tiring. I woke up accidentally at 9:30ish because the sun invaded my room and proceeded to force me to start packing. Packing is a grueling process that makes it feel like the life is just being drained out of you. So I packed, forever, and then I desperately called Matt and Katie and begged for help. Thankfully, they were okay for volunteering for the job. Thanks so much! A lot of teamwork, hauling of stuff, driving about, sweeping and dusting. 95% of my belongings are in a box, hopefully in a storage unit. And I am semi-officially homeless. Hurrah! Footloose and fancyfreeish!

Summer
And because I am now semi-officially homeless, summer has begun! Summer so far is me on Katie’s couch fairly nonstop, generally watching Gilmore Girls. And it is so great. I have nothing to do. Nothing. There is no schedule in my life right now. It’s fantastic. And making me a tad bit anxious. I don’t even have a plane ticket home yet. Not even sure we decided when I’m going home. I’ve got a few days of TAing at the Mo’ian soon, which I’m a bit looking forward to. And then there is a lot of blank space that I’m hoping to fill with friends and maybe a little more than sitting around and watching Gilmore Girls.

Internships
Wednesday of this week was supposed to be my day of free emptiness working on packing and getting things done. But that was not the case at all. Instead it was a day of phone tag with two different internships that I both desperately wanted to get, and a two-hour intensive, terrifying copyediting test online that I’m still worried that they didn’t get and that I’m now doomed for. But, on the upside of all this crazyiness and phone tag, I got an internship! Yes, a real deal internship! It’s at this magazine based in Dallas called CURE, that is distributed for free to cancer patients and their families. A little depressing-sounding, I know, but I’ll take anything. I have been accepted as an “editorial assistant” (or do whatever the hell we want you to) and I will start as soon as I show up (plane tickets, need plane tickets). It’s full time, but pays less than the camp job, but I hated that job anyway and so am not so sad about leaving it. I am nervous about transportation to and from said amazing internship, as it is close to downtown, I don’t have a car, and my parents are worried about me driving in downtown Dallas anyway. I may be forced into the bus systems, meaning at least an hour-long drive for a trip mapquest claims will take two minutes. It may just have to be an hour each way that I have to sacrifice.
The other internship I was looking into was one for DayPost, an online company that is a branch of the New York Times that writes copy for websites like About.com. And it pays ridiculously well and is freelance copyediting, meaning I can copyedit in my underwear from home if I so desire and no one will care. I’m really hoping I get it, but Scott the recruiter guy said “our further conversations are dependent on how you do on this test.” No pressure, right? I REALLY want it. I mean, the guy asked me, in all seriousness, if I know about Word…Microsoft Word. I could do that job blindfolded — and did I mention it pays REALLY well, which would make up for the lower pay at the other internship. I’m fantastically excited and had to pack all my fancy/business clothes to go home, instead of my shlummy t-shirts.

Ah, the Gilmore Girls disc has ended. I am forced to get up from the couch of loveliness.

Spring Break Madness

This is ungodly long, but worth the read (I hope). Be my friend, and follow the cuts…but only if you have plenty of time to read about my spring break escapades.

Stuck in the Chicago Midway airport for a two-hour layover, I have my first (laptop-accessible) free time in a week. (this was finished back in CoMo… I didn’t get a full two hours because my plane boarded….) Finally, I can sit down and get to explaining the antics of this odd spring break trip.
I’m going to keep the titles for each little segment, and write about each, as promised. I’ll try to also break it down by day. This definitely wasn’t the most fun break I’ve had (or hope to have) but it is certainly memorable.

MONDAY
Laryngitis
Sunday isn’t remarkable. I had no voice and slept most of the day. By no voice, you might think I had a whisper – on a scale of 1 to 10, my voice was a painful 0.5. Speaking was a challenge. I tried to hum, to see if I could, and I got no vibrations from my throat. I’ve never experienced anything so frustrating, exasperated by my grandparent’s hearing problems and their many questions they would forget I couldn’t respond to. I solved this by sleeping through much of the day.
Monday was a little better. My voice was a strained 1-1.5 all day. This made me either a poor or excellent reporter, depending on your perspective. I couldn’t say much, so the source had to do most of the talking. The worst part was meeting Max; it was an awkward meeting…me not talking and all.

Starry Night editor
I get the whole tour of the newsroom and the building and all that and am dropped off in the newsroom to hang out for the morning. It is here I met Mitch, the hard news editor. He is easily the most aesthetically boring individual I have ever met. He reminds me of the fat guy in ‘Office Space’ after he’s survived Weight Watchers. His boring exterior is matched by a boring personality and a quiet monotone voice.
He apparently tries to make up for the monotony of his life by appreciating art. This, to him, seems to mean plastering Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” on every item he can. He has a print hanging in his ‘office’; he wore a Starry Night tie; his mouse rested on a Starry Night mousepad; he drank his coffee from a Starry Night mug.
I have never been so ashamed of liking a piece of art before meeting Mitch. Now I am horrified to know I have the same print hanging in my dorm room.
The worst part of this, I think, is that to plaster the masterpiece on so many normal items, the original image had to be mutilated. His Starry Night tie moved major elements of the painting to make the tie more appealing, but made it factually wrong.
He wore the Starry Night tie twice in the week I was there.

Debbie, day one
Debbie is the veteran crime reporter and they ostensibly put me with her to see the grittiest part of New Castle with the woman who covers it best. Debbie has a dull voice that almost competes with Mitch’s. She is a woman in her 50s, neither fat nor thin, with dirty blonde hair quickly going gray. She moves nowhere in a hurry, and doesn’t seem to ever have anywhere to go.
As a part of my crime run-down, Debbie takes me to the police station to copy down police reports. I do two; a stolen stereo and an ‘armed robbery.’ A high school student riding his bike claimed a 6 foot tall black man came up to him, “pistol whipped” him in the face (quoted right from the police report), and stole his PlayStation2 that he was carrying around. Interestingly enough, this kid couldn’t describe the attacker at all and had no mark on his face.
This robbery was big news for New Castle. I found it highly improbable that anything of the sort happened and didn’t want to write the article, but Debbie had me write a four-inch brief on it anyway. “Teen claims to have been pistol whipped” indeed.
Then it was on to do two of Debbie’s errands, and I sat in her car and made very small small talk before we headed back to the newsroom. We ended day one of thrilling work with a lesson on iMovie by Andrew, an MU grad about four years older than me. I shocked Debbie by already knowing the program and offering tips during the ‘lesson.’

"Crit-R-Done"
During the day with Debbie, we were sent out to cover a story about the Adopt-a-Highway program because of a ‘Cleanup PA’ month. We headed out into the boonies to interview Wes, a man who was ridiculously fired up about litter. Wes lived in a relatively new log-cabin lodge. He drives a pickup truck with a covered bed and a license plate that read “Redneck” over the confederate flag. He owns many businesses in the area; he builds hunting blinds, manages a lawn-care service, does some wood work, and has a company called “Crit-R-Done.” It’s a ‘nuisance animal control’ company specializing in raccoons, groundhogs, foxes, and other pests. We learned this as soon as we met him; he had on the company t-shirt and hat. His belt buckle, almost the size of my palm, had snakeskin and a brass rattler tail.
We were invited into his house/lodge to conduct the interview, saw his Jack Russell terrier, and then entered his dining room.
He had more preserved animals/animal heads than I have ever seen in my life, and these were just in the two rooms I saw…the kitchen/dining room and the living room. He had a bear, an albino deer, several deer racks, a hawk, a bobcat, a turkey (or two or 17, I lost count), and other various critters that I have forgotten. It was like a natural history museum.
On top of his outer zaniness/redneckery, he is a man obsessed with litter. He has a section of Adopt-a-Highway and he is apparently really concerned with keeping it litter-free. He bought his own dumpster just for the trash he collects. We interviewed him, shot some short video footage and drove out to ‘his’ road for some shots. And so ends the saga of the man who hated trash because it was bad for the environment, who went to work each day to kill animals.


TUESDAY
Debbie, day two

I was back in the newsroom at the oh-so-delightful time of 8 a.m., again partnered with Debbie. Today we also had an addition; Laura, the 16-year-old senior from the area high school who is actually a student from Venezuela, was on a work-study program in the newsroom for the day. She can’t decide between studying architecture or journalism. After the snooze of a day we spent with captivating Debbie, she’ll probably choose architecture. We went to the police station, again and there was only one pathetic police report. “We”(read: Debbie) schmoozed with the guy behind the desk for a good 20 minutes. Then we went to the court, because what is more exciting than a courthouse in the morning? Here we rode the elevator several times and did, essentially nothing. We did meet Judge Motto, just because we could. We did nothing fruitful in the least. We ‘rushed’ off to lunch at the library, where Debbie had to attend her charitable organization’s meeting and encouraged us to mooch off of the poor blokes. I ate pizza on the Lions (an organization for the blind, it turns out) and faked interest in their meeting. It was exceptionally awkward.
Then Laura had to go back to school and since I had no good excuse for escape, it was back to the courthouse with Debbie. We did more random walking about and riding of the elevator before I got to go home.

Max the Publisher

I have no idea what I intended to write about Max. He’s an MU grad who happened to know my professor, thus I got to go on the trip. He’s a nice fellow with two daughters older than me, and he also happens to attend the same church as my grandparents. He has a face that reminds me of a bulldog and a very quiet voice that makes him hard to talk to. He was nice. He gave me rides home a few times, which disappointed Debbie because she seemed sure we were best buddies and impressed my grandparents to no end.

Inside Dirt
It is amazing. Maybe it was the fact that I had no voice to speak of *ba bum bum!*, but everyone I met seemed to think “intern” didn’t mean “grunt work” as I’d expected, but “reveal all your office gossip/secrets to me.” Debbie and the hard news crew (all three of them), apparently hate the “troublemakers,” (all three of them) the ‘special projects’ group. They’d only been organized into these groups for two weeks; everyone hated it, Max was oblivious to the tension. Debbie made the ethically shady decision to promote her husband, running for judge, to every citizen she met – so much for staying out of politics.
Debbie also told me all about her divorce from her first husband and marriage to her second. All about it. Max told me about a woman who was going to lose her job and didn’t know it. He also told me about Josiah (I’ll get to him) and the way his girlfriend broke up with him on New Years Eve in Times Square, after he’d flown out to meet her. EVERYONE I met told me a juicy secret or two about the business. I still can’t believe all the dirt that was filling up that newsroom.


WEDNESDAY
Shannon and Ohio
Wednesday I was moved to advertising, with Shannon, a single mom who apparently works almost entirely out of her car. This means her car is more or less her office. Which, in turn, meant she worked as if she was in the office, with the only difference being that she was hurtling down the highway at upwards of 60 mph while she was writing notes, getting stuff from the backseat, checking her voicemail, fixing her hair, smoking a cigarette.
I thought I was going to die. Multiple times.
Turns out I didn’t, lucky me. It was a boring day; I just rode around with her, listened to Shannon complain about her deadbeat lazy ex-husband (or was he just the father of her young son? Not sure), and watched her not make a sale. And at the end of the day she was terrified that I was going to say bad things about her to the boss (I didn’t.)

Samurai Sword
So my grandfather served as an Army airplane mechanic in WWII somewhere in the Pacific area. At some point, a Kamikaze pilot crashed near the airfield (apparently he wasn’t the best Kamikaze) and my grandfather took his Japanese flag and his Samurai sword. He had decided that he will give these things to the boys in my family; after all, he said, you wouldn’t want that. I so would! What an amazing piece of history! Too bad my cousin Peter is sure to get it, just ‘cuz he’s the eldest boy…

Life in New Castle
…is incredibly boring. My grandparents’ microwave oven looks more like an actual oven than any microwave I’ve ever seen. It had a dial. It was ridiculous…
I can’t remember what I was going to say in this post. It is a dying former steel town, no new economic developments. And apparently everyone I met was a wacko and only 10% of the people are under 50 years old.

PEO and exotic birds
Speaking of 50-year-olds, no one at my grandmother’s charity organization’s meeting (PEO) was under…65? Except for me, that is. I stuck out like an exotic bird in a room full of chickens – they all came over to cluck over me and ask about why I was there, what I was doing, and then to tell me every dull detail about *their* grandkids/great-grandkids.
The speaker at the meeting talked about his job as a custom’s agent. Whoopee! 

This experience made me realize I need to take a lot of photos of myself now – no telling what I‘ll look like when I’m 97!


THURSDAY
Picking up chicks
My oh-so-important assignment was with the ‘special projects’ group, Pat and Lisa. I was going over to a nearby preschool to watch them play with baby chickens for a cute pre-Easter story (see post below). Except the preschool closed at 11 (we learned this at 10:10ish) and I had to get over there. So off we scampered and Pat met me there (Lisa had to go to a meeting at the office).
Pat did the camera work, and seems to think he’d make a pretty great TV reporter. He sucked, mostly because he talked over EVERYTHING, ruining most of the shots. Anyway, we got the cutesy footage and went back to the office to have me write it and edit the footage.
They were soo impressed that I knew how to use iMovie. I had to do all sorts of crazy stuff (because Pat talked over most of it!), but I’m really proud of the video. Check it out.

Young people!
My first interaction with people younger than 30! When I got back to the office and was waiting for the video footage to download, I was invited to lunch by Justin and Josiah. Justin is a freelance photographer and Josiah is the head of/whole design department. They are maybe two years older than me, and it was so nice to talk about pop culture-type things!
We went to the local greasy spoon, and I got to eat a Philly cheese steak (yea, I was closer to Pittsburg, but it was the same state). It was easily my most pleasant lunch.
And Josiah hit on me. Yup. But I think his flirting was more due to the fact that I’m under 30, something rare in that town, than to my cute little self. He was a nice guy, but kinda bland. He was working at the paper because it was his hometown paper. He really wanted to be a reporter, but he knew how to do design, so he was *the* designer. Poor dear, he started work at 5 a.m. Anyway, like I was saying, I would date him, but only because he was also the only young person around, because he was nice and all, but if a more interesting person came around…yea, I’d switch to the other guy. Not that it really matters. It’s all theoretical, but it was nice to be flirted with. Before he left for the day, he wished me a safe travel back and encouraged me to leave an email address, so “people” could keep in touch. *smirk*

'Dedicated'
At about 5 p.m. Max came down and offered me a ride home. I accepted, knowing I should get home for Pop’s pinochle night, but emailed my story-in-progress to myself. This apparently greatly impressed everyone there. My ‘dedication’ was the impressive part.
Finishing off the story would take less that half an hour, and I wanted to get it done before I left for the week (even though others volunteered to finish it for me…no!).
I just find it hilarious that this one not-that-hard bit of work really really impressed these people, and it’s a great example of their general work ethics. I’d never leave a story partially-finished for someone else to tie up…

Pinochle (pronounced "pea-knuckle")
My grandfather plays pinochle every Thursday with a group of friends. I had never played the game (or even heard of it), so he taught me how to play on Wednesday. It is like no other game I’ve ever heard of.
It is played with a deck of 48 cards. The deck is made up of 9s, 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces, two of each suit. (so there are two Aces of spades, two 10’s of diamonds, etc). Aces are highest, followed by 10s, then Kings, then Queens, then Jacks, and then 9s, which are almost worthless. A ‘pinochle’ is a Queen of spades and a jack of diamonds. You can also get four of a kind (different suits), a run (numerical order), and a marriage (a suited king and queen). These give you points. There is also betting involved, but not with money, with points. You work “with” the partner across from you to rack up points. The rest of the game is played more or less like hearts, except you WANT points.
Anyway, we played. It was interesting. I beat Pop the first time we played with our two imaginary partners, and he beat me the second time. When we played with real people, I didn’t do as well; they moved to fast.

Wolfie and the wooden hats
Wolfie was one of the pinochle players. He is the grandson-in-law of Winnie and Henry, Pop’s buddies, and he was there to fill out the group. Wolfie, so called because his last name is Wolf, is some sort of high school math teacher, and is built like a linebacker. He’s a generally jolly fellow; nice-ish.
Henry, like I said, is more or less related to him. Henry is a retired construction worker. Apparently he has decided to use his free time to create hats. Okay, all well and good. …to create hats out of wood…weird. He showed me his newspaper-boy-esque hat and his cowboy-type hat. Very well made, really amazing craftsmanship. They fit on my head, on his. Weird hobby. He also showed me two of the canes he had carved. On the top of one, a fish with a feline head…a catfish. The other had a grapevine motif. Really stunning to see. Odd as hell.

FRIDAY
Beth, the home-schoolin’, paper-deliverin’ tragic Christian
Friday I was to deliver papers and work the circulation routes. This had me partnered with Beth. Beth is a very nice woman who works both in the office and as a downroute paper deliverer, which means she’s a substitute paper carrier. I walked with her on a “short” route (my feet were killing me in my pleather boots). Her car had one bumper sticker: “Family+Values+Learning = HOME SCHOOLING!” She took our walking time as an opportunity to tell me all about her home schooled children (two, a 17-year-old daughter who wants to be a youth minister and a 13-year-old boy), how she doesn’t approve at all of divorce but how her husband up and left her and the kids when he lost his factory job and they couldn’t find him for some time. They’d been separated for two years, but he called up this week to say he’d been fired back at the factory because the union had worked things out…so he was coming back. We also talked about her Christian values and how she is working on a description of every single house on every single paper route to make the job easier on new carriers. She got the job after her son got the same job as a kid mailcarrier.

Stellar job
After I finished my walking with Beth, I went back in and checked with Max to see if there was anything else I needed to do. There wasn’t…I’ve worked in that paper in every job from top to bottom, so he sent me home (at 3:30! So early!). Before I left, Max told me he’d email my professor to ask him to help me get a summer internship. This was nice, and I went my way.
That night I got an email from my professor. It said, “Max T. said you did a stellar job. See you Tuesday.”
I guess I did okay by them, huh? (Nothing I didn’t know; several people in the office semi-jokingly asked if they could just hire me right then and there. But it was nice to know they liked me. Good thing they don’t know how loony I think the place is.)

Step-cousin Julie
For ‘my birthday’ my grandparents took me out to eat at the nicest place in town, the Mill Street Grille, which is in the same building as the first Warner Brothers movie theater. *historical tidbit of the day!* Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you want to look at it), Max had taken me there earlier that same day. I got the Parmesan Chicken for lunch and it was literally half a chicken.
But we went back for dinner because…it’s the only goodish restaurant in town. The odd thing was that we “invited” (read: dragged) Julie and her father to go with us. Julie is a 22-year-old granddaughter of my step-grandmother, making her more or less my stepcousin, which means nothing at all. I don’t really know the girl from ..anyone. We went on a trip, once, when I was about 10, to Niagara Falls. I remember very very little. And yet my grandparents seemed to expect us to be bestest friends and for me to be thrilled that she was there.
Well, it was awkward, but we made it through. I had this food called Gnocchi (knock-ee?). It’s potato stuffed inside tubes of pasta. It was…interesting. Much like this trip.

Well, if you have read this far, you are a real trooper. Thanks, pal. Everything was true, even the parts that seem unreal.

Can I get a new break? I don’t feel like I got one…I demand a do-over!

Cutesy Eastery story

Here are the photos/video for the centerpiece story that I wrote during my internship. Not too shabby, eh?

Apparently they didn't post the actual story to the web, so see below for the unedited version I wrote. (This is the version I'd rather you read anyway, seeing as they added some sexist language I would never have used...)

****
All the ordinary sounds of a preschool are there: kids laughing, squabbling over glue, the ‘peep, peep’ of baby birds.
...The ‘peep, peep’ of baby birds?
It’s to be expected at the Sweet Pea Patch daycare, at 264 Route 224 in Edinburg, where for the second year students have taken care of eggs, watching them grow and hatch into soft yellow chicks.
“We were all proud parents when they hatched,” Tina Robinson, the owner and director of the daycare, said.
She has worked with the Pennsylvania State University co-op extension to bring 24 chicken eggs, an incubator, a warming light and food to the daycare to give the 38 3- to 5-year-olds hands-on learning opportunities as they learn how an egg develops into a tiny chick.
The students were responsible for turning the eggs several times a day for 17 days to make sure they were heated evenly. In class, teacher Joy Croach explained the growing baby inside the egg. After two weeks, Croach held a light up to the eggs, in a process called candling, to show the developing embryo.
“They loved the candling...just to see the veins,” Croach said. “The girls were all ‘gross!’ and the boys were loving it.”
The incubator was kept in a corner of the room decorated with a “when will they hatch?” countdown calendar, fliers explaining what the developing chicks look like each day and how they hatch from the safety of the egg, surrounded by pictures of newborn chicks.
Four of the chicks hatched March 26, 21 days after the preschool started the project. Six chicks have hatched so far, and Robinson said no more are expected.
“I think we [the teachers] are as curious, if not more curious, than the kids sometimes,” she said with a smile.
The classes love the experience, particularly when they get to hold the chicks. Croach and her aide Hillary Carlo send the kids to wash their hands before they corral the kids into a rough circle on the carpet. Robinson reminds the more exuberant children to be quiet so they don’t scare the birds as she gently lifts them out of their box. Her warnings are futile – as soon as a bird is put in the circle, the kids converge. Everyone wants to pet it, hold it, listen to the chirping. It is all Croach, Carlo, and Robinson can do to keep the birds from being accidentally crushed or overly frightened as the kids pass the chicks from hand to hand.
The kids offer names for the little birds. The first bird is named Curly-Toe; two toes on his left foot curl back toward his foot. One of them is Hercules. Another suggestion is ‘Fire.’ Someone proposes ‘Quack’; Croach points out that it is a fine name, even though chickens don’t say ‘quack.’
“What do they say?” she asks the class.
“Cheep, cheep! Peep!” the kids chorus back.
It doesn’t take long for the fuzzy birds to look a bit dazed by the chaos, and Robinson collects all six chicks and returns them to their habitat while Croach and Carlo send the kids back to wash their hands with soap and water. The kids sing the A,B,C’s while they scrub to make sure they take enough time.
Sanitation is important to protect both the chicks and the children. This week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning about chicks given as Easter gifts; last year 81 people in 22 states got sick after contracting salmonella from Easter chicks and ducks. The children can also give the birds diseases, so Robinson insists on a strict hand-washing regimen whenever the eggs or chicks are handled and the teachers closely supervise the activities.
The birds have been a hit with the daycare kids of all ages and even with parents, who eagerly stop by the chick box as they pick up their kids to go home.
The birds will have to leave on April 3, when the Pennsylvania State University co-op extension will be back to collect the birds and take them to a farm.
The birds will be missed, but Robinson has a plan.
“We’re looking for something else we can hatch,” she said with a grin.

Mid-week update

It's 11:36 EST on the Wednesday of Spring Break. Do you know where your kids are?

I'm here in Pennsylvania, with a partially-recovered voice (still fluxuates in and out sometimes), a wicked cough (just sounds bad, not contagious), and a very bizarre internship.

I just realized I don't have time to actually write all this tonight, as I still have work in the morning...so I'll leave you with this odd list of things for me to elaborate on:

"Crit-R-Done"
Starry Night editor
Debbie, day one and two
Shannon and Ohio
Max the Publisher
Inside Dirt
Pinochle (pronounced "pea-knuckle")
Samuri Sword
Life in New Castle
Laryngitis
PEO and exotic birds

Update: Thursday
Picking up chicks
Young people!
Cat's pajamas
'Dedicated'

Geez, I have a lot to write about...Maybe I'll get more time to myself later and I'll work on it. 'Night!

Two more reasons to take to the bottle...

[Writers' note: Please excuse some of the language in this post. I'm very angry.]
...Or maybe it's just one big reason: rejection. Seems like I've been getting a lot of that lately.

A few days ago I got a letter back from the Star-Telegram about my internship. "Oh, we just had so many qualified applicants, and we could *only* take six. Sorry, you're not one of them."

And today, the CA/PA letters arrived. They apparently " do not have an opening which matches your unique skills and abilities" (<-- direct quote; AND it has a grammatical error...which should be that. Ha! So there!) Which is a total and complete lie.
"WTF?" you are thinking. "Didn't you not really want that position anyway?"

Yes, noble reader, you are right. I didn't really want the position. But I didn't want to be rejected. The two preferable scenarios I had in mind were a) be accepted and suck it up and do it for my parents' benefit or b) be accepted for somewhere I didn't want and boldly decline. Instead I was just flat-out rejected.

Rejection hurts.

Especially because I KNOW I could be one rockin' CA. I could kick the position's ass. This may be cruel of me to say, but I am 110% certain that I would be a better PA than some we've had: I don't have a problem maintaining a 3.0 GPA, I don't go to crazy drinking parties, I'm not a total moron, and I honestly care about the community.

Now I feel like all my volunteering in the community was/is worthless. It's like the community went, "nah, we don't really need *YOU* to get by. You just needed something to keep you busy." WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAVE I BEEN SACRIFICING MYSELF FOR???? Clearly the powers that be don't think my efforts amount to anything. And now some fucking idiot is going to wind up in FARC and destroy all the things we've worked so hard for.

"Oh, come on Megan, it won't be that bad!" you're saying. "Now you can just move into the girls' apartment! Hurray!" Yea, well, I'm not really sure that is all that likely. After I so meticulously prepared a letter for my parents, trying to initiate that conversation (several times), I just got brushed off. I'm fairly sure they'll just have me living in FARC. With nothing for me to do about it.


And, just to add insult to injury, I come home from *nicely* covering another girls' copyediting shift to find The Roommate in bed with her (ex)boyfriend. They'd broken up sometime this week because he was walking all over her, or something like that. And he was begging to get back together. She was holding strong. For the first time since I met her, I was liking The Roommate's decision and was silently rooting for her. And then I come home to them asleep in each others' arms. She gave in. AND they're in my room... they probably assumed I'd left. (they've never slept together in the room before). Argh!

I'm confused...

So...I just finished talking to one of the guys at PegasusNews (a Dallas-area news website), and he essentially asked me the basic "why do you want this job" questions then said, "sure, we'll take you and you can do whatever. Great, thanks Bye."

I'm a little stunned. It shouldn't be that easy.


Or maybe it really isn't that easy. After all, it is an unpaid internship, and I need moolah...but he said I can call him again in April to reconfirm, so I guess if I get a better offer...?