daily life: September 2007 Archives

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

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."

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'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!

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!!!!"

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.