Check it out: I’m a homework assignment. (July 1 item; thanks, Nick!)
I would love to read some of the submissions. Please contact me if you know where to find them.
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This week I begin part-time contract work for Creative Good, where I will immerse myself in usability and brainstorm with some of the best minds in the business. Tomorrow I will get server access, an email account, and other goodies from their tech whiz.
This morning I logged into my Economist email account—I keep getting evites there—and discovered that all my messages have been wiped off the server.
This makes today my first (and perhaps only) day of limbo: for the first time since 1995, I have no business-designated email address and no Web site to which I am commercially bound. It’s just me, netwert.com, and assorted Yahoo email accounts.
The freedom is bewildering.
[Setting: in bed, TV on, doing nothing.]
She: “My head hurts.”
Me: “Did you take some Tylenol?”
She: “No.” [pouts] “I hope I don’t have a tumor.”
Me: “It’s not a tumor.”
She: [affecting Austrian accent] “It’s not a tumor!”
Me: “Oh my.”
She: [plaintively] “You didn’t say it right!”
Me: “You just complained so I would say that?”
She: [giggles]
Me: [cocks an eyebrow]
She: “Say it! Say it!”
Things I have learned since losing my job.
~ Running around town during the day when I used to be at work is every bit as fun as you’d expect it to be.
~ I like sleeping from 2 a.m. to 9 a.m. instead of midnight to seven, but I must be waking up too early, because I keep taking naps.
~ You would think the apartment would get cleaner faster, but you’d be wrong.
~ Theoretically, the longer I go without a new job, the more opportunities I will have to play golf.
~ After scheduling two weeks’ worth of networking, friends, and catch-up medical appointments, I have no time to hang out with my dog.
Charley is sitting on the sofa while I work next to him on the computer. He is chomping away contentedly on a hard, hollow bone.
At one point, the bone clatters to the floor and slides under the coffee table. The pooch puts his head on his hands, stares at the bone, and whines a little. Whether he dropped it on purpose to get my attention or it just fell off the cushion remains a mystery.
Sometimes I let him deal with these issues on his own. Today I come to his rescue.
“What is it, pup?” I ask him (I always talk to him, like an old lady with a cat instead of a husband, never mind that I have a fiancee who’s a good listener), kneeling down on the floor in front of him.
Charley looks up at me, gives me a happy lick on the chin, then furrows his brow—dogs furrow their brows; it’s what makes them more aw-shucks lovable than cats—and stares back at his bone.
“You want your bone back? Gimme another kiss and you can have it.” Smart dog that he is, Charley licks me on the nose. I pick up the bone and toss it on the sofa to his left, expecting him to pounce on it and get back to his fun.
Instead, Charley looks back at me and gives me two big licks on the cheek, as if to say thanks. Then he happily goes back to his chewing.
No number of early and late walks in the rain is too many for such simple affection.
I have, in my years living in New York, turned into a true New Yorker, to the extent that I look and act the part when out of doors. Something about the way I traverse the city—purposeful, distanced look in the eye, fast gait, a tendency to read the newspaper even while walking—flags me as a local. As a result, I get asked a lot of questions.
Summertime in Union Square brings out the visitors, and I have found myself giving directions more and more often. Often, I am walking my dog when I am stopped, which makes sense. On occasion I will be out solo and someone will just look at me and ask me to help find their destination. I am always happy to oblige.
But I was taken completely by surprise last week. Crossing Park Avenue South mid-block in traffic, a man in a Toyota called out from his car. It didn’t register that he was looking for me until he called out a second time. I doubled back to the driver’s window from the front bumper.
Me: “Yeah?”
Him: “Do you know where the Toys ‘R’ Us is?”
Me, businesslike and without hesitation: “Next block up on the right.”
Him, unfazed: “Thanks, man.”
I made it across the street before the light turned. He took off, presumably to find a parking spot.
Jaywalker as information kiosk. Who knew?
The Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure section contains an article this week comparing “Sex and the City” to “The Golden Girls”.
The Arts editor must not read the Style section, because the Times ran an article that came to the same conclusion three years ago this month. (I linked to the first article at the time, too [see June 5, 2000 entry].)
Let’s skip the flowery prose on this one. The Economist Group made me redundant last week. I haven’t signed the official severance papers yet, but I haven’t worked for them since, either.
As a result, a talented, bright, experienced, devastatingly handsome, and surprisingly humble content delivery specialist is now available and looking for full-time employment. Do spread the word.
“[Vincent] Gallo has put the heebie-jeebie on my colon and prostate. I am not too worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than ‘The Brown Bunny’.”
âRoger Ebert, putting a stamp on the Ebert-Gallo tiff regarding Gallo’s new movie