September 2007 Archives

So today I was featured on our intranet homepage in an in-depth interview:

So, Halee, what's your favorite...?

... film/movie that you've recently watched - Top Secret

... reality TV show - n/a....unless Match Game '76 counts

... childhood TV show - Land of the Lost

... song - "Take on Me" by A-ha

... news source - What Would Tyler Durden Do? (wwtdd.com)

... car - Gravedigger

... book or music CD - John McEnroe's autobiography

... sports to watch - tennis

... item of clothing - my calculator watch

... landmark - Southfork Ranch

... game - blackjack

... amusement park ride - anything at Dollywood!

... city - Helsinki

... candy bar or candy - 100 Grand

... time of day - 8:30PM

... time of year - springtime

... fruit - banana

... breakfast - cinnamon rolls

... cocktail or beverage - hummingbird (half raspberry framboise, half pear cider)

... thing about Americans - our ability to turn any cause into an excuse for a car magnet

... language - Finnish, which is wonderfully robotic and angry-sounding and has words with 25+ letters

... compliment - "Wow, you have a spreadsheet for everything."

... thing about ZAAZ - my window seat with a wonderful view of downtown Seattle



And I am quite tickled to report that my article was immediately followed by this one:

The long, strange journey of Soundgarden's Chris Cornell

At the corner of Fifth and Bell, among what is now a canyon of condos, sits one tiny piece in my own little Seattle rock-history guide: There, in a mid-'80s dive bar, was the first place I saw Soundgarden.  more...

Remember how I mentioned that the CEO at my new place makes it a point to meet individually with every single new hire?  Mine was today.  He's a really young down-to-earth guy, and one of his ulterior motives is to squeeze information about of us about our first impressions and get any criticisms we might have with this place.  He's incredibly open to suggestions/criticism/whatever.

The only thing I could think of to say was about the vibe of the various sections of the office.  This company is growing really really fast, and everyone used to be up on the 5th floor together.  We've bled down to the 4th floor (which is where I sit), and it's mostly all of us analysts and the Help Desk, so we all have a tendency to put our heads inside our computers with headphones on and not interact.  My comment was: "The 4th floor is a little quiet.  It would be nice if it were a little more lively or social."

He looked at me sideways, and said, "What if I gave you a couple of hundred bucks to throw a party down there?"

Me: "Haha!"

Him: "...."

Me: "You're serious?!"

Him: "I'm totally serious.  You know how to submit an expense report, right?"

Me: "Yeah...?"

Him: "Well, either go buy whatever and we'll reimburse you, or just have the receptionist order it for you, whatever you want to do."

Me: "You're serious."

Him: "Yes. Totally serious."

So, whoa!  And you know how I like to plan dumb parties.  The theme is easy: when I accepted this position, the director guy in our group (who is really funny and will tease/cut you down [lovingly]) sent out an announcement about me joining the group.  But...he decided to research me a little before he sent it out, and found this picture on my myspace profile:



...then proceeded to forward that to about 30 people (people I hadn't met yet) saying...

I've included her hero shot from her myspace page below, just because I think it's pretty damn funny. Sorry Halee - Google can quickly turn from friend to foe. Welcome to the team!

Which was followed by...

Halee, welcome to the team!!  If he just completely insulted you (understandably so), please see the attached flyer for new job opportunities.  Your picture resume already proves a great fit!  I just received this email today from a friend of a friend who is casting for this:

"hey guys, question for you san franers...i have to cast up there on the 24th for this wwe diva search and i need extremely hot girls-think maxim, stuf, playboy, etc.. 18-27 ish. i'm attaching the flyer so you have a good grasp of what we want. anyways, if you know of any model/talent agencies in town or where the hot people hang out, i'd appreciate it. OR, if you have anyone that you know would want to try out, awesome. it's $100,000 and a year contract with the wwe. thanks for your help!"

So these people are already marginally aware of Worst T-Shirt night.  And they best start preparing themselves for Worst T-Shirt Night II, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Time is relative.  So is space and distance.  I would like to give you a few examples of this.

Distance: A Study in Seattle

A mile seems to be longer in Seattle than Dallas.  Seattle, as it is sandwiched by water on both sides in what scientists call a "water sandwich", has no space or ability to sprawl.  Dallas on the other hand, is a classic example of urban sprawl where areas that were farmland just a few short years ago are now dotted with malls and home improvement warehouses.  Seattle also seems more European in that residents actually want to be centrally clustered, and downtown is actually a lively, bustling place.  Dallas is very pioneery-old-westy in that they continue their manifest destiny out towards McKinney, and try to be as far from their neighbors as possible.  Downtown is a ghost town.

Neither is wrong or right.  My only point is that I am used to jumping in the car and it taking me 30-60 minutes to get anywhere.  When I look at a map of Dallas, I know how big that is and how long it takes to get where.  When I look at Seattle I just assume it's roughly the same size and plan for it to take me an hour to get all the way from the NW side of town to the SE side....only to find it takes about 20 minutes.  Conversely, Seattliens tend to balk at distances, thinking something that is a 20 minute drive is just ridiculously far.

Time: A Study at Coney Island

When in NYC a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending the day at Coney Island.  (I also attended the US Open Tennis tournament, and you can see the photos from both in my NYC flickr set.)  At one point we happened along some breakdancers on the boardwalk:



They were kind of marching in place, waiting for a crowd to gather before they started their show.  They would shout things out at each other and clap in unison.  The main guy would shout out to his comrades and the crowd: "How many seconds to showtime???"  And the secondary main guy would should back: "Showtime in 30 seconds!!"  Then 30 seconds later...

The main guy would shout out: "How many seconds to showtime???"  And the secondary main guy would should back: "Showtime is 20 seconds!!"  Then 20 seconds later...

The main guy would shout out: "How many seconds to showtime???"  And the secondary main guy would should back: "Showtime in 10 seconds!!"  Then 10 seconds later after a bigger crowd had walked up, and it looked like more people might be coming over...

The main guy would shout out: "How many seconds to showtime???"  And the secondary main guy would should back: "Showtime is in 30 seconds!!"

....

Anji and I were so confused.  Then when we went to the freak/sideshow, the ticket selling girl told us to wait 15 minutes before we bought our tickets.  We sat there at the bar for 10 minutes, and we were going to get up buy tickets, but we heard her tell the next person in line to wait 15 minutes.  !?!?!!??  So this is a warning...Coney Island is running on some crazy offset time, and you must be vigilant so you don't miss SHOWTIME.  Which is in 30 seconds, 30 seconds from now.

Various things I am loving about the new job:

• My phone never rings
• They provide free fruit almost every morning
• They are very big on recognizing/thanking/rewarding people publicly...and sincerely...which is a wonderful change from the old place
• I can look straight out the window and see downtown Seattle, and watch the monorail whiz by on its way to the Space Needle
• My new keyboard has a quick button to launch the calculator
• The CEO wants to meet with every single new hire after they start just to get to know them (mine is tomorrow)
• The developers put easter eggs on zaaz.com...so if you enter their names in the search box, it gets all sorts of retarded (try "Jud" and "Graeme" for funsies)
• I am going to get so good at Excel, that I will be able to pivot-table the shit out of anyone

Various things I am not loving about the new job:

• In addition to the fruit, they provide free candy all the time, which I keep eating
• I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing
• Slow internet
• I kinda miss driving to work a teeny tiny bit, only because I miss all the singing in the car
• The N key on my keyboard sticks really bad
• From November 5-9, I have to do the dishes

Can someone please explain to me why Jason Lee is doing modeling on the side for a relatively obscure retail site?



I mean, I realize it's KarmaLoop.com and all, but isn't that taking the whole Earl/Karma thing a bit far?

Linguistic findings from my trip to Sweden a few weeks ago:

• The literal translation of the title of the Swedish version of "Cinderella" is "Ash Kid."
  
• In Sweden they weren't called "The Golden Girls."  They were called "Panther Ladies!!!"

Tally of various celebrations I attended in Sweden a few weeks ago, despite only being there for 6 days:

• One 50th birthday party in a barn
  
• One 1st birthday party on a patio
• One 26th birthday party in a regular house
  
• One wedding party in a big Valhalla-style banquet hall
  

Photographic findings from my trip to Sweden a few weeks ago:

• Go to my Flickr photo set, and note that I went to the trouble of making it into a bit of a narrative so you'd know what was going on.
  

Videographic bonus from my trip to Sweden a few weeks ago, where my friends surprised me at their wedding by forcing the band to learn how to play the theme song from "Dallas" in my honor:

I ditched work early on Friday so I could go to the fair.  The "Puyallup" Fair.  This is one of those tricky Washingtonian words they use to weed out whether or not you're a local.  It's pronounced "pew-AL-up."  Obviously, I pronounced it "pull-y'all-UP."  (I'm not really blending seamlessly, especially on trick words like that.)

It was a really nice drive south, despite only averaging about 15 miles an hour.  There were several casinos along the way, and a transmission shop telling you about how you need to "keep your tranny cool in the summer."  I arrived at the fair grounds in time to see Cowgirl Tricks by Karen Quest, the ding-dong-daddiest cowgirl I've seen in a while.  She cracked whips to break handfuls of spaghetti.  She made Devo jokes as she did it. She twirled a 50 foot lasso around herself.  She brought a bunch of people on stage and gave them all cowbells and told them when to ding them, and suddenly it was a full orchestra of "Home on the Range."

But that isn't the point.  The point is DEVO.  I was very enchanted by the fact they were playing at the fair.  There were plenty of people playing like Reba McEntire, Big & Rich (not to be confused with Rob & Big), Kenny G...all very carny-like entertainment.  But Devo?  They came out in full yellow jumpsuits and red energy domes:

If you look closely at the stage lights behind them, you'll see that they were big robots.  The bright white spotlights came out of the robots' heads.  Red LED lights came out of their tummies.  And I think their arms were spinny-style disco lights.

Then at one point, Mark Mothersbaugh started running around with his microphone, tugging at the other guys' jumpsuits.  Which were apparently made of tear-away paper because they ripped quite easily, and then they all started tearing their own jumpsuits off, revealing black tees, black shorts, and kneepads:

I loved that they played "Whip It" early and got it out of the way.  I loved that they still danced and moved all electronically.  They were obviously a little paunchier than their ultra-skinny nerd days when they looked like the white/debate/moped team on "Midnight Madness," but they were still wonderfully weird.  I loved it that Mark Mothersbaugh was still in his yellow jumpsuit, and went to each side of the stage with big red cheerleading pom-poms to lead the crowd in a chant.  And later threw super happy fun balls to the audience.

Then I rode the Gravitron, got sicky in my tummy, and went home.  And listened to Mission Giant on the way.

Picture it....

A purply lit stage with lots of gossamer and twinkling lights, butterflies, and then the silhouette of someone descending from the ceiling from a swing.

This is how every episode of "Dolly and Friends" begins. Then she brings out her aforementioned friends, they sing, they gab, Dolly changes outfits with virtually every camera angle change...then suddenly you find yourself looking at a darkened stage with Dolly saying/singing to you how she will always love you, ooh-ooh. Then it's over!

Kenny Rogers was the special friend in the episode I watched yesterday. The whole thing started off with Dolly singing that "knock three times on the ceiling if you love me, and twice on the pipes if the answer is no" song. The camera kept cutting away to what I thought was a stagehand in a closet with a wrench and a pipe, working on something. Then I realized he wasn't working, he was playing percussion. Then I realized that wasn't a stagehand, that was Kenny Rogers! Later he sang the Roy Clark hit "The Worlds Needs a Melody."

Both songs were awesome because they were sort of onomatopoeic in that the percussion/backup music features sounds/instruments specifically mentioned in the lyrics of the song, and I LOVE that. When Dolly sang about banging on the pipes, Kenny banged on a pipe. When Kenny sang about the world needing a drum, the drummer went off on a little snare solo. Other examples include:

• "Western Union" where the singers sing part of the chorus in Morse code.
• That Cake song about a phone call where part of the melody is played using phone tones. (I might be making this up, and if I am, Cake can go ahead and use it.)
• Obviously I need to work on this list, create a playlist for it, and get back to you...

Oh, and Kenny kept banging on the damn pipe.  I know that makes more noise so it's funner and all, but why the hell would you say no to DOLLY PARTON??

So I just bought my ticket to go see Devo at the fair tomorrow (yippee!), and when Ticketmaster took me to the anti-ticket-buying bot screen to type in the wonky word image for verification, this is the word it gave me:




I take offense to this. Because if anyone is a lying, cheating slutbag around here, it's definitely Ticketmaster with their charging you 50% of the ticket price for "processing" and "service charges" and "giving each other handjobs."

I'm sorry in advance for this entry. 

But as I was unpacking more stuff last night, I went into serious reminiscing mode.  So when I was in high school I got Rolling Stone magazine for several years, and was too much of a pack rat (and obsessive metal fan) to get rid of any of them.  Before I moved away to college, I went through every damn magazine and clipped out anything of worth and saved it.  (This mostly included anything involving Guns N' Roses, Chris Cornell, surfing, or Conan O'Brien.)  I'll be posting some of the other ridiculous stuff I re-found, but for tonight, I'm going to show you the most awesome thing in my high school heavy metal scrapbook.

The "Can you match each of the Young Ones with their vomit?" match game quiz:




Answers will be posted....never.  If you don't know the answers, go rent both seasons of the Young Ones right away and stay up all night and watch them ALL.  Or do like I've always wanted to do: lock yourself in your house for about 6 months and watch only this show and see if you walk out of your house 6 months later with a British accent or not.

Last night was my first Seattle tennis lesson.  I would like to take this opportunity to compare and contrast the differences between here, and the lessons I took back in Texas:

1. Venue neighborhood - In Texas, the tennis center I went to was in a middle-posh-level suburban neighborhood at a community center next to a library.  In Seattle, it appears that this tennis center is in a very gritty section of town next to a bunch of muffler and/or salvage shops, and lots of houses with bars on the windows.  The parking lot had lots of warning signs that said "High Prowl Area: Do Not Leave Valuables in Car!  Lock Car!"
   
   
2. Venue itself - In Texas, it was about 20 immaculately maintained outdoor courts.  There were lots of benches to sit on and watch other players, plus a little pro shop where they would string your racket or sell you a $200 tennis skirt.  In Seattle, for obvious reasons they have indoor courts.  At the end of each baseline there are huge tarps, and you have to walk down the hallways behind these tarps to get to your court through a little tarp flap doorway.  Along the alleys on each side is a bunch of netting so you don't whack a ball into another court.  It was loud and sneaker-squeaky, and totally felt like P.E.
   
   
3. Coach's fashion - In Texas, all the tennis pros were all-too-aware of what the hot professionals were sporting, and tried to wear the same.  My coach wore Oakley wraparound sunglasses, and after Wimbledon last summer, showed up with the Nike bandana thing just like Federer wore in the tournament.  (Note: only Europeans can pull off that look.  Subnote: my coach was not European.)  In Seattle, all the coaches had on little navy blue pants/sweater uniforms kind of like the linesmen wear.
   
   
4. Coach's age - In Texas, all the tennis pros were probably in their late 20s/early 30s and very fit.  In Seattle, they were easily all over 40, and my coach in particular was probably in his 50s.
   
   
5. Coach's coaching style - In Texas, we hit the ball.  A lot.  A lot of lining up at the baseline or service line and whacking balls and running to get back in line.  And he had little spots for us to aim at on the court.  He thought it was as funny as we did when we tried to nail him with the ball.  There was minimal talk, other than a brief explanation of the drill, a quick reminder on form, and feedback after you hit your shot.  In Seattle, he spent 20-30 minutes of the hour and fifteen minutes talking.  We dribbled the ball with our rackets.  We set our rackets down and tossed the ball to each other.  We picked our rackets back up and practiced swinging them in the air.  He never really told us where to aim, except explicitly to tell us NOT to aim at him.  Hopefully this was all just because it was the first lesson, and he was trying to gauge our skill level, so he can challenge us a little more in the next few weeks.
   
   
6. Coach's philosophy on tennis - In Texas, I'm not sure they had one other than "emulate the people on the pro tour as closely as possible, even to the degree where you wear a stupid bandana."  In Seattle, it was totally obvious that my coach really missed the days of wooden rackets.  Every time he would explain something, first he would explain it, then explain how it "used" to be, then re-explain his original explanation of "modern" tennis in contrast to the old-school way.  He literally called it "modern tennis." 
   
   
7. Degree of exertion - In Texas (and granted it is f'n hot in Texas) I would go through about a quart of water in an hour.  The sweat...oh, the sweat!  My shirt and hair would be damp.  Sometimes I would have to sit in the parking lot with the AC on max blowing directly at my face for 5 minutes to cool off and catch my breath before I could even leave the grounds.  In Seattle, I was never even winded except for maybe once the time *I* decided to run.  Hopefully the coach will crank up the intensity.  I am there to sweat and maybe pass out.  Come on, Tom!

In conclusion, so far I really miss Texas tennis and last night was a bit of a let-down.  I want to go get my aggression out by smacking a tennis ball as hard as I can, and get a solid hour of high intensity exercise.  I don't want a history lesson or a lot of chat.  Don't make me listen, make me run.

I rented "The Omen" a few months ago off Netflix, and it was so creepy-good.  I wouldn't watch it past sundown because my Catholic fear would have gone too haywire if it was dark out, because that's Satan o'clock.  If you haven't ever read the trivia regarding all the weird, spooky things that happened during filming, you should definitely read the trivia regarding all the weird, spooky things that happened during filming.

After watching it, I immediately went to add Omens II and III to my queue, and was ever so sad to see that they weren't available.  But I was dorking around on my new digital cable TV, and happened upon a button on my remote that said "On Demand" and I have about 100 free on-demand movies I can watch literally on demand whenever I want, and I was so so so excited to see that Omen II was on the list!

Impressions:

• It amuses me endlessly to see the fashions of teenagers in the 70s, and see how seamlessly they would be able to walk the streets of today.
• Okay.  Fact check.  Damien's father (Gregory Peck) in the first one was an American ambassador in Europe, right?  I can't remember if he had an accent or not...but I vaguely remember that baby Damien did have a British accent.  But Damien was only five (or six?) in the first one, and killed his parents.  In the beginning of the second one we learn that he was sent to live with his father's American brother, IN America.  And the second movie takes place when Damien is twelve (or thirteen?).  Yet...Damien has a British accent.  If he had been living in America from ages 5-12, wouldn't his accent have faded?
• If you were born of a jackal, wouldn't you have fur?  Or was the jackal just a surrogate womb?  Or am I not giving Satan enough credit here for his various options for outputting his spawn?
• Deaths were very inventive.  Especially the uncle one, totally didn't see that coming.
• It ended exactly the same, with Damien staring evilly into the camera.  But an evil five-year-old staring into the camera is infinitely creepier than an evil twelve-year-old.  Or maybe just all twelve-year-olds are evil, so it made less of an impression on me?

All in all, I give it 3 out of 5 stars.  Or pentagrams.  Whatever.

I'm not courageous enough to start covertly taking pictures of people on the street and/or outright stopping people on the street to ask them to pose like the fantastically awesome documentical girls at hel-looks.com, but I do notice certain patterns at play on the streets of Seattle:

• curiously high percentage of people using canes (not just the elderly)
• small but interesting percentage of people (okay, just one) of a girl with a broken leg who, instead of using crutches, had a little cart thingie that she used to half-kneel her bad leg on the little seat, then held onto the handlebars and rode the little thing around like those old-timey scooters that Marty McFly broke in two to make himself a skateboard.
  
• in certain geographical zones, increased cases of girls with clothes and hair modeled closely after Molly Ringwald c. 1982-1986
• unexpectedly high occurrence of sports fan fashion, particularly in support of the Mariners and University of Washington (special UW note: their mascot is the "Huskies" and I passed a store called "Husky Headquarters" the other day on the bus.  I sincerely thought this was a store for overweight children, much like the store where Bobby Hill worked at as a husky-sized model in that one episode of King of the Hill.)
• lots of cyclists = lots of one legged pants rollup
• dogs
• and at the bus stop on the corner of 3rd and Pike at 2:30AM only...one guy in a Cuban military beret and an eyepatch.  But he totally had style, like a combination of Dave Chapelle and Andre 3000.  Oh, and Dale Chihuly.

I'll be thinking about what fashion contributions I plan to make to this city.  I'm sensing some sort of pattern here related to healthcare-type accessories (canes, scooters, eyepatches), so I'm thinking like a bedazzled neck brace, maybe?

So, I was bragging about all the cool stuff I was planning to do last week, and then didn't do half of it.

Square dancing didn't work out.  The girl I was supposed to meet there backed out, and I got too shy to go square-dancing by myself.  But it's okay...they have it once a month, which will give me time to find that puffy underskirt stuff for maximized twirling.

The Riverboat Gamblers didn't work out.  My other friends backed out on me there too, and I was going to go by myself...but started watching "Damien: Omen II" and then fell asleep on the sofa.

I did manage to accomplish the following:

• watch about 8 consecutive episodes of "How It's Made"
• went out to Kandice's for a personal BBQ
• saw Superbad
• got a Seattle library card
  and...
• got Washington license plates for my car, meaning I'm pretty official now

Now for this week:

• first tennis lesson tomorrow
• the Puyallup Fair, which looks like it will be a more than adequate replacement for the Texas State Fair.  Let me put it this way: Devo is playing Friday night!?  (Apparently the fair has a dedicated theme song, available at the official fair website in both the regular AND gospel versions.)
  

At the bar last night, I got into a "who has a more retarded text message in their phone history?" battle with Jeremy.  My best entry was from the one I sent to Micah after Colleen gave us our MeanBags™.  It said:

"Dear fuckstick,
Hope you're enjoying your new douchebag as much as I'm enjoying mine!
love,
dicktard"

Then this turned into a whole conversation about the usefulness of the word "douche," its increased use in our respective vocabularies, and the awesomeness of the variation "douchedragon."  To prove that I had been using the word "douche" a lot (perhaps even over-using it), I mentioned how when I type in the letter D on a text message, my predictive text brings up "douchebag" as one of the first suggested words.  When I typed it in my phone to demonstrate, all the oft-used D words actually made up a sentence.  A relatively amazing sentence:

"Do, don't down doing down...will do-me Dollywood douchebag."

Ack!  Which I just realized could be a really great twist on the Andy Milonakis song "Me No Like Hollywood Douchebags!"  Filming on location at Dollywood will begin next summer!

This cannot be real.  Ric Flair Finance?  Which uses the Figure 4 Process? 

1. Select the type of loan
2. Complete the application
3. Submit the application
4. Get the loan

P.S. Don't bother looking up tullyblanchardfinance.com, arnandersonfinance.com, or barrywindhamfinance.com.

So today was all-day orientation, and one of the leaders of one of the sessions was telling a story about his previous job.  About 20 people worked in the front office, and about 20 people worked in the back warehouse packing boxes, doing fulfillment.  Apparently this guy was sort of the liaison between the two groups, and said:

"I went back and forth between the wall all the time."

And I was 0.001mm away from shouting out:

"SHAPESHIFTER!!!!"

In unpacking, I came across a couple of surprises I left for myself when I left Dallas.  Two sticky-notes.  Sticky-note quotes, the best kind of sticky-notes.

So at my going away party about a month ago, I set up all these little storefronts for all the various crap I was trying to get rid of.  In the Bed Bath and Beyond section, one of the items I was trying to give away was a classic wooden rolling pin I got from my mom, and it had a ribbed cotton protective sleevie thingie.  George saw it, and asked:

The second note is slightly more mysterious, because I only caught the tail end of whatever Micah was talking about.  Your guess is as good as mine...

First major observations on the differences between working at an agency and working at a not-agency:

• You have to account for every hour of your time, and describe exactly what you did.  My timesheet notes are already really stupid: "created directory folders", "went on a tour of the basement," etc.
  
  
• People say "whack" instead of "slash".  "If you'll open up your browser and go to w-w-w dot google dot com whack notebook...."  Whack?  Slash?  Axl?
  
  
• I don't know if this is specific to this agency or all agencies, but there aren't any walls.  We're all out here in the open, screen a-blazing for all to see, susceptible to any and all viruses and wild animal attacks.
  
  
• I don't know if this is specific to this agency or all agencies, but there aren't any drawers.  We all have very plain IKEA desks with legs and a top and that's it.  I haven't brought my chair throw or my portrait of Brak or my books because I'm confused on where to put them.  I'm thinking about getting some dining room placemats or something to set my phone and computer on.  And then maybe a folded linen napkin to the right of my laptop for my pen and highlighter to sit on.
  
  
• Goofing off is completely encouraged.  There is a conference room full of bean bags.  There is a conference room specifically for playing Wii. 
  

So far, I likes.

I’m getting lots of questions on how I am and how life is in Seattle. Well: great and great!  I’m putting together this little extension of kotaraindustries.com to keep you all up-to-date on what’s happening in my new life.  (Queue theme song from Alice, aka “There’s a New Girl in Town.”)  Here is an expanded FAQ on my general status since moving…

Are you settled yet?

I am nowhere close to being settled. There were too many little things that needed to be done before I could really unpack (installing extra clothes rods in the closet, figuring out the best way to arrange all the furniture, etc). My buddies Matt and Chris came over on Saturday for some much-needed “man help.” Pretty much everything in my house elicited this response from Chris: “My mom has that exact thing in our cabin!”

They helped me get the essential stuff taken care of so I can finally unpack all my clothes and stop wearing the exact same outfit on a three day cycle. I also got a new cascading magical powerflow showerhead to replace the evil schizophrenic one that came with the place. 70% of it spat out mist, which was cold by the time it hit me. The remaining 30% was a concentrated stream of scalding hot water. But now I have perfectly balanced and pressurized beads of plump water hitting me at a consistent rate and density.

I’m honestly having trouble finding time to work on my house, because there is way too much to do here. I don’t want to turn down any invitations to go sight-seeing or beer-drinking or tennis-playing!! My Tuesdays are about to be taken up by tennis lessons that start next week. My Thursdays will be taken up by going to a local bar in my neighborhood that plays old-timey country and has Tater Tot Thursday. Other various days throughout the week will be spent on Matt and Chris’s porch. My downstairs neighbor AND the random guy I knew from when I went to Spain 10 years ago are up for tennis. Jackie wants to go rollerskating. And this week?? I love this week! See:

• Monday - square-dancing at a mythical establishment called the Tractor Tavern.
• Tuesday - Taco Tuesdays at Bimbo’s Cantina, where the Mexican food is completely bland and therefore perfect for me.
• Thursday - Country night, followed by karaoke.
• Friday - Riverboat Gamblers are in town right after I get here!?

How is the new job?

This requires categorization:

• Actual work - Once I get a clue, it’s going to be great. It’s a very slow, laid-back initiation…so I really haven’t done much yet, which has been wonderful. At the old job, I typically had 4 hours of meetings a day, somewhere between 50-200 emails a day, and guaranteed interruptions approximately every half hour with some emergency that had to be addressed. Now I’m one of many people who has the position I’m in, and we split up the work. I’m getting maybe one legitimate email a day, it’s so awesome. I’m sure it will pick up soon, but for now I’m just riding the new-girl wave and enjoying a stress-free life. The work itself is pretty much going to be EXACTLY what I wanted to get into, and for you web analytics dorks out there (hi, Sonia!) who have any idea what I’m talking about…I’m so excited the client I’ll be working on has a full-blown implementation of Omniture with Discover! And these people know the shit out of Excel, so I don’t even think I’ll be throwing down the Excel gauntlet because I’ll lose! I was seriously in a meeting last week where we talked about “standard deviations” and “binomials” and I was in heaven even though I had no idea what was going on.
  
  
• Inside Environment - There are doggies everywhere! This office has an open dog policy, which will be excellent for curbing my desire to get a doggie of my own. There is an adorable little black pug named Pearl on my floor. And one of the guys in my group has a fluffy white dog who loves to be petted, and I like her a lot…except her name is Hallie. I’m not excited about potentially getting my name mixed up with a dog’s. Particularly a dog’s whose name came from “halitosis”. A dog whose breathe was once so bad the only solution was to pull all her teeth except her two bottom fangs. In addition to the doggie policy, the other awesome thing is that there is a bar here. IN the office. BEHIND the receptionist’s desk. There was an official happy hour on Friday afternoon, although it sounds like that’s a weekly occurrence. Around 4:30 they paged everyone to leave their desks and come up to the bar. The company pays to have a fully-stocked bar, complete with cold beers and a Jaeger machine.
  
  
• Outside Environment - I work in a weird old v-shaped building downtown that’s on a weird dissected intersection where 3 roads come together. I take the bus to work, and it drops me off just a couple of blocks from the front door. Downtown Seattle is pretty busy-body-ish, and there is pretty much every kind of shop imaginable within a 5 block radius of the office. (Which means about 25 Starbucks.)
  
  
• People - Everyone seems very smart and very friendly. For example, Christina just brought me a banana! This proves she’s smart (I mentioned last week that bananas were my favorite fruit) and nice (the banana was unsolicited).

How much has it rained so far?

Only on one day, suckers! The weather has been beautiful and sunny and temperate. I know it’s just a matter of time before it gets icky, but even then it will be okay because I’m going to buy these cute rainboots:



Seattle has changed you, we don’t know you anymore.

No it hasn’t, Lindy.