The Not-So-Secret Diary of a Bad Luck Girl

So I’ve switched up my classes a bit.

Originally I was signed up for Human Information Behavior, the one that met on Wednesdays at 3:30. Well, this past Wednesday rolled around, and I had every intention of going, but then it was 1, and suddenly I really really didn’t want to go. Partly I hated the rushed feeling of chopping my day short, and partly it was imagining walking back into that room with ~25 students sitting in a stupid circle, and going over the incredibly boring readings we were assigned.

The readings were basically user studies, from literature review to methodology to conclusions (well, sometimes). Typical of academic research papers, and what we would be expected to replicate in our group (yuck) projects. And it all left me with a bad feeling. Maybe because the papers we read were so boring, or because of the group aspect. Or maybe because I didn’t know anyone in that class, and occuring in the afternoon, it had a different vibe than a night class, in which you know everyone has a full-time job.

Or I’m just lazy. Whatever the reason, that Wednesday afternoon I decided to drop that class and pick up another, which is on Thursday nights.

In a way this class is similar to Wednesday’s: it’s more theoretical, specifically about how media and the design of things shape and affect our lives. It’s pretty loosey-goosey – our only assignment is a project on basically anything we want – and there are just eight people in the class. But I think it will at least be interesting, and a good contrast to my other two more pragmatic classes.

I am not 100% clear on what the project is – I think basically it’s a designing a research study on some hypothesis. Initially I thought maybe I’d do something on how certain advertising affects the behavior of a certain part of the population, or maybe something about celebritydom and how though people may snark about celebrities, they still talk about them.

Then it occured to me that maybe I could do something on corp speak, and how it shapes the corporate environment, or vice versa.

When I started at my company as a secretary, I didn’t know corp speak. I’d hear the managers talking – “We can leverage learnings from that initiative to create synergies with key stakeholders” – and think, What the hell are they talking about? The language created a division between those in the club (managers) and those outside (secretaries).

But then I got promoted and started going to more and more meetings (the phenomenon of meetings could be a research topic too), and slowly started to learn this new language. Now a few years later, I’m totally fluent.

When I speak of it, I’m very conscious of it, and can toggle back and forth between corp speak and regular English – though sometimes unconsciously I bring it home. MB hates it when I say, “I reached out to that person,” instead of just “I talked to him,” or “I emailed him.” I wonder if other people are as conscious of it too.

It’s not just overblown words that don’t mean anything, but cliched catch phrases like, “At the end of the day,” and “Walk the walk and talk the talk.” Another one I hate is using “utilize” instead of just, well, “use.” And capitalizing things that don’t need to be capitalized.

But I know that people listen more when I talk corp speak; I’m taken more seriously. And as a communications person, I have to use it all the time.

I’m not sure what kind of study I could do. I’ll have to think about it more.

There is one guy in the class who’s super annoying. He wears a scarf indoors and kept dropping names like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Hegel. Okay, we get it, you’re fucking smart. Or at least you think you’re smart. Then he kept talking about despair and suffering and angst. Why do I have a feeling that this guy has no idea what real suffering is?

We also talked about the idea of heroes, and the teacher asked if we had any, and I realized I don’t really. I mean, there are people I admire, like Madeleine L’Engle and Michael Chabon, but I wouldn’t call them my heroes. The only ones I’d consider my heroes are people who are close to me, who rose out of extenuating circumstances, not unscathed but strong and whole, and who, despite the past, face each day with joy.

MB and I ended up at my parents’ this weekend, not really for the New Year but because their new TV arrived, and they needed help setting it up.

It was much easier than any of us anticipated. The old TV weighs a gazillion pounds. My parents wanted to put it in the next room, and my dad had the idea of dragging it on a sheet. MB thought this would ruin the carpet and that we’d have to carry it, which made me nervous cuz I had a hard enough time just helping to bring it down from its stand to the floor.

But the sheet thing worked! The TV seemed to weigh nothing as we dragged it away.

The new set of course weighs much less so MB was able to set that up on his own. Then he hooked up all the cables, and boom! we were done. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching stuff, going, “Woooow!” and “Look at that!” and bumping our hands against the screen trying to grab at things we thought were real.

My mom as usual cooked a good dinner, though with no dumplings since she usually makes them with pork and MB isn’t a fan of the other white meat (unless it’s in the form of bacon).

My fave was the salmon.

We left around 9 and got back to our place at 11.

School the next day! But I think this is going to be a very relaxed class. We spent the first hour going around the room, introducing ourselves and saying where we wanted to work eventually. On top of the, the teacher asked questions and would sometimes launch into these stories. I thought, Are we going to learn anything today?

He spent the second half lecturing on the history of collection management, but still let us out about 50 minutes early. I expected the lecture to be much longer but suddenly he was letting us go. Ah well.

My Human Information Behavior class on Wednesdays will be a lot more work. Group work, blech. When I walked in last week, I saw that the chairs had been arranged in a circle, and immediately thought, Oh GREAT, this is going to be one of *those* classes. It might be, but the teacher seems to have a good head on her shoulders, though she did drag out the end of class by asking over and over if we had questions, and of course some brown noser would make something up.

What I like about my Sunday class is that I know quite a few people, and we can chat and have inside jokes and stuff. I don’t know anyone in Wednesday one. Normally I don’t care, but that just adds to the weirdness of that class. I’ll find out on 2/2 about my Monday class. That teacher is at the ALA midwinter meeting this week.

Tomorrow I have to go out to NJ again for work, but this time I’m taking a car dammit. Unfortunately I need to be there at 8 so my car is picking me up at 6:45. Ack, so painful.

There is a woman here who’s husband died suddenly a few weeks ago. She’s only in her early 30s, and he died of a brain aneurysm. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. Today is her first day back at work. That must be so weird. How do you deal with people coming up to you, asking you how you’re doing? What do you say? “Well my husband just died – how do you think I’m doing?” She sounds like she’s being very gracious. I mean, what else can you do.

The fall of 1987, I was 14. A freshman in high school, my friend Lynda’s mom drove us to and from school every day. My mother didn’t like this. Since we lived just a few blocks from the high school, I was supposed to walk, but Lynda’s mom passed our house on the way so why not pick me up? I was spoiled rotten, my mother said.

There were eight of us in the van, including me. Lynda was tall and blonde, but had only recently turned beautiful. Before that year, her claim to fame was starring as Dorothy in our fourth grade production of the Wizard of Oz. That year we were 14, she didn’t care about that anymore. She cared about styling her hair and wearing the right clothes. Also, she was love in with a boy named KC, who treated her like dirt.

There was Jeanne, who was very smart and would later go to Harvard; Lisa R., who was short like me and had huge brown eyes. There Lisa V., a tomboy and the one KC really loved. There was Cyndi, who at 5’10″ modeled part-time till in college she became a born-again Christian and married young. There was Nicole – vivacious, obnoxious, a ballerina who would suddenly decide to become a painter. Twenty years later I’d find out she had died, at 33, of cancer, leaving behind three small kids.

There was Norman, the one boy and Chinese like me. There were hardly any Asians in my town, and I was ashamed that he was one of them. Skinny and spastic, he was the quintessential geek who said weird things in biology class. “Don’t you know about passover smoke?” he chided a girl well-known for ducking out for ciggies. He meant second hand smoke.

Finally, there was me. It was not a good year. Compared to my friends, I felt very plain. I was short, I didn’t have huge eyes with long lashes, and my hair hung flat. At the mall boys didn’t look at me the way they did my friends, and none at school showed any interest, or if they did, I thought it must have been some colossal joke. My mother and I fought all the time, mostly about my attitude. She nagged me constantly about everything, and sometimes I got fed up. “You’re just like your dad,” she’d spit. He could only put up with so much nagging as well.

So I withdrew. When the year before, I was chatty and social, now I was taciturn. On the van ride home from school, listening to Crowded House, I stared out the window at the darkening sky while the others talked about this or that. They were tired of me, I knew. I was a bore.

Things changed of course. Things got better. My family moved to a town with wall to wall Asians. Suddenly I was cute. Boys really did look at me. I tried staying in touch with the old gang, but by graduation we had all lost touch. I’m not sure where Lynda is. Lisa R. I think is an architect; Lisa V. might live in London. Jeanne is an archaeologist; Cyndi, still Christian. Nicole, dead.

Twenty years later this song still makes me think of that fall and riding in that van, wallowing in self-pity. It reminds how quickly things can change, though it often seems like they never will. The old cliche: growing up seems to take forever while growing older happens so fast.

Too short though it was a three-day.

Saturday YP and I had our photo outing. The theme: Fairy Tales. In other words, use the pictures we take to depict a fairy tale, whether already existing or made up. A fun idea but it was frigging COLD! We’d last about 15 or 20 minutes, then would have to duck into a store or cafe. We ended up spending a lot of time at Chelsea Market.

The rest of the day, MB and I just hung out, him practicing and me reading and being a bum. It’s so hard to get out and do stuff when it’s in the single digits. All we ended up doing was grabbing some dinner at our favorite Italian place.

The next day I had my first day of class for the semester, Collection Development. Since it’s on a Sunday, the class has a cozy, relaxed feel. Plus the teacher is 83 years old (the first thing he told us) and from Iran, I think, so he has this cute accent. He seems smart and his assistant has organized the class well. The assignments are quite flexible. We have a long reading list, and are supposed to read whatever interests us, but at least two articles a week.

Since it was positively balmy out (low 30s), I ran some errands after class. Got sneakers for possible weekend workouts, new headphones from Virgin, and some groceries from the Asian grocery store.

That night MB and I hit Whole Foods, and he made chilean sea bass for dinner. The dish called for fennel sauteed in anchovy paste. We didn’t see the paste and used real anchovies, mashed up, and it came out delicious! The sea bass was a pain to cook though. It was so thick, it took forever, and then was very filling. Plus expensive! Like $20+ a pound. Next time we’ll go with a lighter, less expensive fish.

We’ve started watching Damages on Hulu. We like it, though the evil people seem a little too all-powerful. Glenn Close is very scary. I would hate to have her as a boss.

I hope I get a chance to see the inauguration today. I believe it’s at 11:30. Gonna try to dash down to the gym at that time, and watch on one of the TVs there.

Was in NJ for two days but it felt like much longer.

The meeting started at 9 AM on Wednesday so I went down Tuesday night. I thought taking the train wouldn’t be a big deal, but man it was a pain in the ass. I had to switch at Newark where I just missed my connection and had to wait around for almost half an hour. And that is not a nice station. I thought New York Penn was crummy, but that’s a palace compared to Newark. Plus I had my suitcase that I had to drag up and down steps.

The train ride itself was fine. But my station stop was deserted and I had to call a cab, which meant waiting in the cold.

I know, I’m a big fat whiner. If it were for myself, I wouldn’t complain as much, but since it was for work, I feel I have every right.

On the way back to New York yesterday, I hitched a ride with my new boss, who had booked a car. I don’t really know why he didn’t check with me to see about transportation. On my old team, we always tried to coordinate so that we didn’t end up booking a bunch of separate cars.

I’m not sure how I feel about my new boss overall. He seems nice, but I do like my old one better, at least our personalities matched more. He has a softer touch and is more organized and visual, like me. We both need to look at things to understand them, and he’ll often draw his ideas out, which is perfect website work.

My new boss is much more of a talker. For instance, he’ll want to discuss some document without actually looking at the document till finally in frustration I have to say, “Can you please take a look at it and you’ll see it already includes what you’re mentioning?” Plus he’s a big fucking joker. I mean, I like someone with a sense of humor, but the way he jokes around is irritating. I can’t even explain it. What he says isn’t clever or ironic – he’ll just state the opposite of what’s obvious, and then laugh and laugh and laugh.

At dinner this week, he mentioned that if he had to do it all over, he’d have been in sales instead. I say he’s a perfect fit.

The meeting itself was incredibly boring. I don’t think I needed to be there. It was everyone discussing all this shit, when really all I need to know is the outcome so that I can implement it on various websites and whatnot. I don’t need to be on the “journey.” But of course I have pretend to be interested, otherwise I’m not a “team player.” (Barf.) One good thing is my old boss was also there, in his new promoted role, and he praised the work I did on this Sharepoint site, and my new boss was there to hear it.

The hotel was pretty nice though nothing special. At least it was clean and seemed new. And dinner was good though my entree choice, the mahi mahi, was sorta boring. My appetizer, roasted beet salad with arugala and goat cheese, however, was delish.

I didn’t work out at all at the hotel. I had big plans to get up at 6 and get in a run before leaving for the meeting, but I couldn’t get up before 7 either day. This morning I had my follow up appointment with my doctor and found out my cholesterol level is higher than it was last year – over 200. Last year it was around 180.

I think the culprit is this delicious Greek yogurt that I had been eating every night for the past several months. MB got me hooked on it. I thought I was being all healthy eatiing something with calcium and live cultures, but I ignored the fact that it has like 10 grams a fat per serving. And I was downing that stuff just about every day.

So I’ve switched to low or non-fat yogurt, and will try to swap out my second cup of coffee with green tea, and have more nuts, fish, oatmeal, and berries. And be more consistent with exercise. This whole year I’ve been pretty lax. Hence, the additional 5-8 pounds on my hips and thighs, and the higher cholesterol.

I hope to check out the Y near my apartment this weekend. They’re offering a free day pass to be used before February 2. Now that I have class Wednesday afternoons, I won’t have time to work out on that day, so I want to incorporate weekend workouts. The Y is only slightly cheaper than New York Sports Club, but it’s much closer to my place. I could go on my way home from class on Sundays.

I can’t believe it’s only 1:15.

This weekend was quiet and relaxing. Friday night we attempted to see Milk, but got to the theater early and decided to see From Within instead, part of the After Dark Horrorfest. Bit mistake. Cheesy and melodromatic. Only moderately entertaining.

We all have songs that we associate with certain periods of our lives. Maybe “In Your Eyes” reminds you of your prom while “Borderline” makes you think of junior high and hanging out in the parking lot of Stop ‘n Shop on Friday nights (maybe that’s just me).

Some songs give me a visceral reaction – I hear it and it’s like I’ve traveled back in time.

Back in 2003 I was still married, and had been for about three years. I was happy off and on – my husband and I were comfortable with each other, and had fun sometimes. But I also worried a lot. I felt like I wasn’t meeting a lot of expectations, from not driving more to not making enough money to buy a house.

I don’t know why I hate driving. In high school I developed a phobia, then going to college in New York and living in Boston afterwards, I just never really had a need. My husband HATED that I didn’t like to drive, and put tremendous pressure on me. Once he tried to teach me to drive stick in a parking lot, which was a disaster. I was very sensitive, and he interpreted my sensitivity as stubornness and just pressed harder till finally he lost his temper.

In 2003 I was still a secretary making about $50K, which to my ex wasn’t enough. By then, he thought, we should have had enough to buy a condo or townhouse. I thought saving some money every month would help, but he thought somehow we should have a big chunk of change all at once. He wanted me to switch careers into something with more upward mobility, like going back into publishing, although I didn’t want to do that and wanted to focus on my writing.

“You’d be happier if I gave up my writing altogether,” I said. He didn’t deny it.

So I tried to write a best seller. The experience was awful. It took a toll on how I approached and felt about my writing. I hated the pressure, and when I kept getting rejected, I felt at a loss as to what I could do to make money.

It was all about money. When one of my short stories got accepted by a literary magazine, my ex’s first question was, “How much will they pay you?” I had a feeling they wouldn’t, as most lit journals just can’t afford it, but still I asked and felt like such an asshole when the editor answered that most authors are happy to simply be published.

At the gym in the mornings they’d play this Jimmy Eat World song again and again. It’s sort of vapid, but the words would make me want to cry:

Hey, you know they’re all the same.
You know you’re doing better on your own,
So don’t buy in.
Live right now.
Yeah, just be yourself.
It doesn’t matter if it’s good enough
For someone else.

It just takes some time,
Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride.
Everything, everything will be just fine,
Everything, everything will be alright. (alright)

And listening to the song on my iPod on the bus this morning still brought a tear to my eye. Not so much in a self-pitying way, but like who I was in 2003 was someone else, a girl I want to tell that everything will be all right.