New York, New York

Sorry I've been out of touch for a little while, but I spent all last week in New York City, and I didn't really have the time or the energy or the desire to blog. God, moving to such a scary city, and for the first time being in complete control of my own life, and having to take responsibility for my own choices, is so overwhelming. I don't know where to start explaining the ups and downs of my emotional state over the past seven or eight days. First of all, I was really excited to hang out with Bri, so that was a good thing. And I really do like New York for a lot of reasons, not least is that subway, which I found much easier to navigate than I did last November. I saw a lot of things I hadn't seen before (Central Park, for instance) and went to places I'd never been before (the Village, Queens, Jersey). Sadly, a lot of the plans Cambria and I made before I came (see her cousin's play, see Legally Blonde: The Musical, go back to Vol de Nuit and steal a Delirium Tremens glass) did not materialize, but there is plenty of time for that when I move there. WHEN I move there. It's going to happen. I've decided. It might take me a month or so, but I promise, Kim--by Thanksgiving, I will be there! I'll be living with a total stranger and temping, most likely, but I will be there!

I accomplished a few things while I was out there. Firstly, I had lunch with Julie from Random House, who promised to give my resume and cover letter to the woman who is hiring an assistant at Three Rivers Press, which is an imprint of the division (Crown) where Julie works (I think for the Publisher). She gave me a lot of great insight into the job, the company, and the industry in general, and she was really funny and kind to me. I really hope I get to interview for the job, and I plan on staying in touch with her, because she seems like a great person to hang out with and learn from. So maybe I'll get an interview for that job--they haven't called yet, but I'm sure that has little to do with anything. My experience working for a publishing house is that when an assistant leaves, they really do need to fill the position right away, but instead of doing so immediately they instead pile tons and tons of work upon the remaining assistants and take their sweet time hiring. There are many reasons for this, probably one of which is that hiring people is time consuming and annoying, especially with the turnover rate in these positions, which practically guarantees that even the lowest-rung editor is hiring a new assistant at least once every year and a half, if not more often. That's how it was at Thomson, that's how it probably is everywhere else. So I'm not freaking out yet--if I have any chance at all of getting an interview for a position, it's this one. If I don't get a call from them, I just don't know what I'm going to do.

I also meet with Jessica, who works for Penguin. She didn't have a lot of helpful leads, but she did weigh in on Mary-Kate Olsen's appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brian and Britney's disastrous VMA performance (which, way to stop being either relevant or respectable, MTV). She also told me a lot of stories about her time in the industry that are interesting to almost nobody but me, and she told me about a lot of the books she's been working on and acquiring, all of which sound really great. There's this whole book about body image written by a former Miss USA/America (?) pageant winner that has pictures of real women's bodies in an attempt to show young girls that they don't have to look like porn stars or supermodels to be beautiful. It sounds trite, but the way that Jessica described it to me made me thing it's going to be really awesome--maybe a bit controversial, but awesome. She said she'd keep an eye out for positions I can apply to. It's getting to be that, while I'd still like to work in fiction, I think I'd be perfectly fine with working with nonfiction, and even more than that I think I'd probably enjoy it better in the long run because I only read selected nonfiction, so I wouldn't feel as though my entire life was consumed by the same thing--and I wouldn't run the risk of losing my taste for fiction just because I sit around editing it for a living. So, in other words, this RH position is perfect for me. I hope they take my experience and enthusiasm into account, because I would die to work there.

Um, what else? Oh, I kind of, after much tooling around the metro area looking at apartments, decided that I'm going to have to live with a roommate (makes it less likely I'd have to take any responsibility for fulfilling a lease--I can just pay my rent and utilities and have that be that), and I only want to live in Astoria (Queens) or Manhattan. Also, I only want to live with women in their twenties, and hopefully only one of them. So that should give me someplace to start when I go back at the end of the month. I overheard this girl talking on her cell phone over by the Bloomingdale's where Bri works, telling her friend that she applied to about forty places (looking for roommates, I'm assuming), heard back from about four of them, and only about two were acceptable to her. So it looks like if I want to find the right living situation, I'm going to have to really widen my net (within my set parameters) and hope I get lucky. It'll probably take time, but while I'm there looking for a place I can also be applying to/visiting temp agencies, and hopefully something will come of that as well. I'm actually pretty upbeat about it right now--I wasn't a few days ago, when I cried practically every time I got on the subway. But on Tuesday I didn't want to go home, which was a good sign that I'm ready to stay, and now that I have a plan I can get things underway as soon as I go back. Poor Bri and Jessica (her roommate, not the girl who works at Penguin)--they're going to have to put up with me for at least another week sometime in the future.

Don't worry Joe, you're a superb manager

Hello everyone! I enjoy that people have been updating recently with ridiculously long posts updating everyone on their lives. I feel as though I have been so busy that I don't even have time to log on and update the blog. Scott- I too read the blog regularly and think that I should update but feel like I don't have the time. Sadly, this is often true.

My new apartment is great! I'm still working slowly to unpack, but I did a lot of work this weekend. Unfortunately, from the hours of 11am-3pm everyday this weekend I couldn't actually muster the energy to get up off the couch and unpack because it was soooooo unbearably hot! It was in the high 90's-low 100's all weekend, the humidity is higher than normal because of tropical storm activity down on the tip of Baja, I have no a/c, AND on top of it all on Saturday my block was victim to the infamous "rolling blackouts" California hasn't experienced since we were in high school. With no fans my apartment was ridiculous!

Although I do have a GREAT story about my time without power though. My upstairs neighbor is a very interesting character. He came by about three days after I moved in and introduced himself, TOTALLY DRUNK, at 10:30pm. And he came by on Saturday and asked me for a lighter. I had no problem with this, except that I had to dig through a couple of boxes to find one. Well, I handed him the lighter and watched him light his JOINT in front of my apartment. I was so stunned that I had no idea how to react. I didn't really know what to do. When I told this to Cambria she told me that I should have told him to share. "Puff, puff, pass!"

So yeah, I've been trying to keep myself busy. Last Thursday Dani came over and we walked down to the Subway near my apartment. It was an experience to say the least. First, this subway has plexiglass enclosing the sandwich making area. The employees have to put your sandwich and drink cup into a box and close the door before you can open a door and get your food. This makes me feel totally safe BTW. So, we go and the guy behind the counter is totally weird to us, he doesn't speak at all to us the entire time until we got to the register. Dani asked him why they had the plexiglass and he simply shrugged. He and his buddy who work there then proceeded to both leave the restaurant and stand right out front and smoke a cigarette. When they came back in they were totally weird to us as well...anyways, not as interesting as I write it.

So, after subway we decided to take an adventure and wander my neighborhood. We passed multiple eateries (including Jack, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Coco's, Denny's- I am totally set on drunk food) and wandered to this local bar and decided to pop in for a "night cap" (at 6pm). This bar was AWESOME! It's a total local dive bar, but the bartender (michelle) came by and introduced herself and told us that they do kareoke on weekends, DJ's during the week, and grill steaks out back on Tuesday nights. I'm totally going back. Well, I called Jenny and she stopped by. We drove Dani back to my place to get her car to go home and headed back to the bar. When we got back the bartender remembered my name and my drink (impressive since the bar was getting crowded) and Jenny and I stayed and chatted for a while. She's doing well. Her store opened almost two weeks ago and she's enjoying herself. She told me she dropped a tray of pearls and ruined like $14000 worth of merchandise, but her manager told her that "accidents happen". I can't even imagine.

So yeah, that is really the exciting update that I have for now. I'm super busy in the next 12 days so I will probably not be updating for a while. This Sunday I move into a hotel to live with the Sorority Recruitment Counselors for ten days. Get excited. I'm going to go crazy. Oh and on top of the insanity with everything at work (recruitment and such) the university decided to finish up our move with electrical repairs, etc. starting tomorrow. Groan, it's going to be a rough couple of weeks.

On another note, my mother is doing well and she sends you all her love. :) Oh, and Jennifer and Steve are moving to a two bedroom apartment in the next week. And they now have a joint bank account ::gasp::! Jennifer is enjoying her new job. I can tell you all about it if you want to know.

The end.

PS: The title of this post is simply because I watched Empire Records last night.

PPS: I watched Pan's Labyrinth this weekend on "watch now" Netflix. I would recommend it. It was complicated and at times tough to follow, but totally worth it for the deep meanings associated with the story.

The end. For real yo.