This can only end in tears. But not for about 10 months!
Oh, and just for kicks:
* niqui ponders run.
<niqui> the next run in the queue is a ridiculous 20 minute uninterrupted run.
<niqui> like, this whole time it’s been intervals, warm up, jog walk jog walk jog, cool down
<niqui> it started out with 60 seconds of jogging, 90 seconds of walking, alternated for 20 minutes. the last one was 8 mins run, 5 mins walk, 8 mins run.
<niqui> but this one is just warm up, 20 minute jog, cool down.
<wasy> this all sounds pretty ridiculous
<niqui> then the next one goes back to intervals again
<niqui> but this one’s going to be haaaaaard. i mean. 20 minutes.
<niqui> and there’s this one ugly hill on the lake front path, where it goes under the street that leads to the adler planetarium
<niqui> it’s just a short hill on the shedd side, but on the harbor side, it’s a long incline way way back up to street level
<niqui> and i am always whipped by the time i run all the way around the shedd and then up that damn hill
<wasy> maybe you should just go on a nice, relaxing bike ride down the expressway instead. beats running!
<not_wasy> won’t have to do it twice
<niqui> the 8 minute run goes all that way and a little longer, maybe half the way from “solidarity dr,” which is a stupid street name, (roughly 1300 s) to waldron
<niqui> so at the end of that stupid hill i won’t even be halfway through my run, i’ll still have to head down probably past 18th st most of the way to mccormick before i turn around and head back
* niqui eyes the map. hm. if i do do that 20 minute run, i’ll basically be jogging two miles straight.
<niqui> that is pretty badass of me, considering i couldn’t even run all the way around the back of the shedd when i started out
<wasy> this is all crazy talk
<niqui> you’re just jealous of my newfound badassitude
<niqui> best of all, i still look like a schlump, so it’s *stealth* badassitude. i’m practically a ninja.
<wasy> will niqui be going on the reality tv show for people who want to be ninjas?
<niqui> no, going on tv is antithetical to my schlumpy stealth ninja philosophy.
<wasy> ninjaqui?
<niqui> NO ONE MUST KNOW ABOUT NINJAQUI.
* niqui dresses in all black, jogs silently back into the shadows to lurk ominously
It seems pretty typical for a job interview process to go like this:
Step 1: Employer receives CV. Employer drinks enough caffeine to decide that CV is not completely awful.
Step 2: First pass: HR tries to make sure candidate has a heartbeat and is not a zombie.
Step 3: Second stage: phone screen. Actual sysadmin calls to make sure candidate is not entirely full of shit.
Step 4: Candidate gets to go to actual face-to-face interview! Once, twice, or possibly many times, depending on how dedicated employer is to exhausting candidate’s interview wardrobe.
Step 5: PROFIT.
So you’ll note that very early on in this process, the use of a telephone is indicated. You’d think it wouldn’t really be much of a problem, because phones are, like, old, and stuff, and they just work, and stuff. And maybe that would be the case if I had a real phone. But I don’t. I am the one out of four Americans who has given up her landline and has only a mobile phone, because I’m only one person and how many phones do I need? (Especially because I kind of hate using the phone a little. I never was one of those people who sat around for hours and just chatted.) I haven’t had a real phone as a matter of course for few years. I had one in my old apartment at Printer’s Square, because I had to have one for the door intercom buzzer to let people in, and I had one in my apartment in Wicker Park because I thought pizza delivery people would push back (prank caller!) if I gave an 847 number — which was clearly just me being old and paranoid, nobody cares about area codes anymore. But in my place now, I just have the mobile. And even though sometimes service is spotty in my apartment, it doesn’t really matter much to me because I do all my social outing arranging via text, basically, and about the only time I use phones is if I have to call customer service for something. And I have Skype for that.
Except now, you see, it’s the end of my delicious, delicious summer vacation and I have to go back to being a grown-up now, which means hunting for a job. (I loved you, summer vacation. You were so awesome. Let’s do it again sometime!) And what does Step 2 of interviewing involve? THE PHONE! continue reading…
This was easily my favorite essay for my writing class this quarter, chiefly because I got to stick my nose in to two great loves: architecture, and trains. It’s about Chicago Union Station, and that means it’s all about COOL STUFF. Well, except the food court. Food court people are scary, man.
Here’s another of my essays for class. This one, I kind of dug a little bit. It’s a short story, set in a bar, with a couple of guys talking. I slam the Cubs once, but, hey, it was in the well-intended service of historical accuracy, baby!
I don’t think I’m very good at writing short stories — for starters, this is 3,462 words, which is roughly 2000 more than the assignment called for. So I missed on the “short” part, but it is technically still a story. Though I’m not convinced it’s much of one. But that’s okay, I’m not very practiced at writing fiction. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I wrote any fiction was one time like eight years ago I was goofing off and a friend was refusing to tell me why he dropped out of college, so I started writing this epic tale of battles on the quads with vicious squirrels terrorizing undergrads, and fires and explosions and, you know, all those good things that pretty much never actually happen in real life at the University of Chicago, except for the squirrels. I kind of wish I still had a copy of that one, actually, I remember it fairly fondly. Stupid jerkface transient medium of e-mail. SQUIRRELS ARE FUNNY! GIVE ME MY STORY BACK, MAGIC INTARWEBS!
…Ahem. Anyways. Without Further Ado, I present: “The Strange Case of the Goat and the Paperboy.”
continue reading…
