introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- windswept lifechange storming - eighteenth of may, 2004 "yeah, she was an american girl...raised on promises."~tom petty its been awhile. don't be angry. just read. and have faith. so. the spring has been a whirlwind and with that wind that brought rain and wind and sweet spring smells came life changes galore. brian has been gone for about a month and a half. i mentioned in my last entry eons ago that brian was moving away to DC, a trendy city with trendy neighborhoods and a few thousand faces he's never seen before. he needed to get out of this city and get out he did. he packed up his things in a matter of days and vacated the downstairs apartment that tobers and i were subletting to him for a cheap hundred bones a month. he moved out as quickly as carl, the white haired fifty two year old italian man with the quiet mannerisms and good-natured laugh, moved in. i miss my friend, though. he has been home these last few weekends and that has been good. its good to know that he isn't a continent away like when he went to california. the goodbye party was a smash. we got a keg on a saturday afternoon and kept it on ice til the party on sunday afternoon. the weather had been so mild and gorgeous and then, come goodbye-brian-party-day, the weather turned cold again and there was a bit of snow. this was just last month! snow in april? yeah. but fancy this: we were still able to grill out (we had a barbeque and burgers and hot dogs and i made potato salad and the works) and the cold....well, that was the coldest beer i think i've ever had. we moved the keg outside (after a bit of a fight, i admit) and it stayed cold for days. the ice took two days to melt alone. so yes, the beer was cheap but you could hardly tell after about two or three. and everyone came out for the thing on such short notice and it was good to be around so many friends. and for the record, since thats sort of what it feels like i'm doing here, it was a keg stand free event....a first for many of my friends. carl moved the following sunday with his old antique furniture, a collection of a lifetime of years. he turned what i remember as a storage apartment...a basement of sorts....all disgusting and unlivable into the finest little hobbit hole a hobbit of a man like he could dream up. its a funny little apartment thanks to the shoddy construction and one has to duck down to get into the front door, which is only two thirds the height of any normal door. its a bit of a cave and i'm jealous of the cool that he'll get without an air conditioner this summer. but, with him down there, i've got free guitar lessons, a smoking buddy on occasion, and someone to share the evenings with when the tobers is at work....or when he goes to school. which brings me to my next point: tobers has been accepted to the culinary institute of america in hyde park, new york. first, he was supposed to leave in june, but then it was october and (*drum roll por favor*) we have a date: january 25th, 2005. he's got mad grants and scholarships but still has to actually save up a bit of money, and then he's gone gone gone to new york. i'm talking rocco despirito (not that i'm much of a fan these days) and a 6 week stint in the napa valley to study wine. (read that: six week drunk.) i'm proud of him and got him Jamie Oliver's book, Jaime's Kitchen. "am i going with him", you might ask? the answer there is, "no." "but why?" you might retort. "because i can't. i don't want to leave my new fabulous job." to which you might reply, "what is this new fabulous job of which you are speaking?" and my answer would be this: i got a new job. it really just sort of happened. brian was moving out...leaving a vacated position at Asten Johnson. i applied. they apparently had been interviewing many many people. they needed someone who could learn quickly and all of that important interview stuff. i got the job after two days of interviewing with four different people. (in an office of six, including myself, this means that i was practically interviewed by the whole office in its entirety.) so what do i do? i'm not even sure how to begin to answer that. i am, by title and design, Production Assistant and Office Support who also dabbles in procurement and accounts payables. essentially, what my company does is part of the paper industry in that we make fabrics that go on paper machines that make paper. we don't make paper. we make fabric. and then we sell it to the people that make the paper. they put it on the paper machines. what i do is reflect in computer systems what the people in the plant do on a daily basis. there isn't really an easy way to explain what i do because, in part, i'm not even sure yet. i've only been there a month and i've picked up my duties after two days of training. (read that: NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.) but brian left me a sort of decent manual and i've been teaching myself a lot. i'm dealing with ISO 9000 business methods and have a lot to learn, as i keep up their ISO documents and stuff like that...all of which, to me, a month ago, would have made no sense whatsoever. i do, however, have one gripe about the place. but thats another story on its own about an individual that makes me mostly crazy but whom i've learned to deal with by shutting my door. its working magically. did i say shut my door? ah, yes...allow me to elaborate! i have my own office. my own office. it sounds so....well, its more than i ever intended for myself. hell, i never expected to even *like* an office job, but i do. i love the numbers. i love that i'm not doing math problems for the sake of doing math problems. i think i'm more of a math girl than i ever suspected. but my office...man, i've got two, if you count my procurement office, but i don't spend too much time there. i've got my computer and my desk and lots of beautiful dark wood cabinets. a window looking over the looms in the plant, weaving fabric all the day long. voicemail. email with my name in it. an hour for lunch. weekends off. its more than i would have dreamed for not six months ago and now, here i am, with double the income and hence, double the payed off bills....and benefits on their way by the end of summer. i'm proud of myself for getting the job. at first, i was leary because i thought they'd hired me because i was brian's friend. but i realize that they wouldn't have...couldn't have...just taken anyone. i am still learning, but i feel like i'm showing them what i'm capable of and proving myself. i've lasted through my first month end on my own and the castle of cards has yet to come crashing down. so on that note, i'm proud of me. in other news, nacho left for boot camp last week. my weekends off will give me the oppertunity to travel more this summer and spend more time in the woods. i'll get to see her graduate and then, when she spends the rest of the summer at AIT in virginia beach, i'll be able to scoot down there for the weekend in my new car. new car. new used car. it was nacho's but now its mine. and if it doesn't get fixed up really good this week, i'm going to trade it in on an element. at least, thats the plan. its wierd when i think back to how things were a year ago and where i saw myself a year from then...er...now. and this wasn't what i expected at all. there are all of these life changes. i'm happy. i didn't realize how sad i'd become until i found some happiness again. its a good thing. there will be time for weekly updates in the future...and maybe even some poetry. i don't want to promise that which i cannot provide, however.... we shall see as the time goes by. much love for all of those i've forsaken with these lapses of silence, xoxo. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
||||||
|
||||||