fox

So this project I'm working on has human subjects. ( (Everyone who's ever done live-subject research is already on my side, I know.) )

This made me very depressed -- the whole sum of it, I mean, not just the prospect of schlepping every day but the fact that the special key-getting effort I'd made had been for nothing, combined with a separate issue in which someone gave the traveling researchers a bunch of copies of an older version of the IRB statement and I think people think it was me and I'm the one person it couldn't possibly have been -- and the very-depression combined with the fighting-something-off-or-maybe-allergies-being-a-massive-pain conspired to convince me to blow off rehearsal last night. So I went home, and watched some TV, and ate some ice cream (augh! backsliding!), and went to bed early.

And this morning, I hadn't backslid as much as I'd feared (just held steady, in fact, so that's all right), but I had to hurry, because when the boss brings me stuff he tends to do so first thing, so if I roll in at 9:30 or even 9:15 he has to find somewhere to leave things before I get there (which is harder when my office is locked).

( Of course, he's not here when I get here at 8:55. )

Very vivid dream last night (or, more likely, this morning between snooze alarms) that I was getting married to (of all people) Paul McGann, of whom I have been aware only as Lt. Bush in the later Horatio Hornblower movies and not, it shouldn't surprise you to learn, as the Eighth Doctor. An odd choice. There was another couple whose plans were moving along at a speedier clip than ours, and at one point we joined hands and, like, leaped down a flight of stairs, this being supposed to symbolically -- or, for all I know, literally -- place us ahead of something. My parents had hurried up getting to town to attend the wedding.

Anyone?


In other news, Jonathan Coulton concert last night, hurrah, with fun (but poss. overlong) opening act Paul and Storm (with special appearance by Richard and Bernie, so, yay, the whole band together again, and they did "Enormous Penis" rather than "Title of the Song", but what can you do). (Opening acts, particularly good ones, are good and all, but I fear nothing will ever top the grooviness -- because of the surprise -- of getting to the Jon Stewart show and learning that the opening act was Mike Birbiglia, whom I knew in college. So all other opening acts are doomed -- or at least until I discover that, like, my best friend from elementary school is opening for Elton John, or something.) osymandias will be particularly interested to hear that Jonathan C. included "Mandelbrot Set" in his, well, set. :-D

In other other news, my boss's father died on Saturday night. This is primarily very sad for him and his family (in particular, his wife is like seven months pregnant, so, you know, no good when grandfathers never get to meet their grandbabies), but it impacts me in the following ways: I predict I will have even less to do today this week than usual, and I will need to ask someone else to approve my juggling-around of spring break non-working days.

Time on the last 28 minutes: 2 hours.

Time on the proofread (crank up the sound and read along): 45 minutes (for a 39-minute recording, so, not bad).

As is so often the case, the dreading was worse than the doing.

Friday, "on the way" home from the airport (which was actually a side trip that added and hour and a half to the trip home, but whatever, I was by myself, plus I got to make sure the backup route works for when the Howard Road exit is closed, as it will be most weekends from now until forever), I picked up and deposited my paycheck, because payday omg.  And, dudes, it's like drinking water after a long slog across the desert.  Look how many numbers are in my checkbook!  [looks proudly]  Granted, it's a paycheck and a half.  But two-thirds of what I just put in there, coming to me every two weeks?  Oh, I'm a happier Fox indeed, yes I am.

Annoying thing that happened today:  I skinned my elbow.  On my desk.

True story.

Yeah, here's the thing. I'm not a huge fan of making cold calls, but I'm not bad at it -- when I know what I'm talking about. In this case, where you want me to call Random Businesses and get contact names and whatnot, I'm likely to freeze up and stammer and there's a very real possibility that I'll get something wrong and misrepresent your organization, all because I don't really work here and I'm not a hundred percent sure what's going on.

Fortunately, after a couple of hours' worth of hemming and hawing and doing a project for someone else, I went back to the person who had given me the assignment whose next task was going to involve the cold calls, and I said listen, [above stuff about not really knowing the details], so is there something else I can do for her that would give her the time to make whatever calls she needed made, and she said Sure, she completely understood. So I'm off that particular hook. Thank god.

Thanks for getting me a gig beginning today, when the previous one ended yesterday. I appreciate that. But listen, was it too much to expect that you'd also tell them I was beginning today, so they might not have been a surprise to them when I turned up at 9am and they might not have left me sitting in the lobby for 20 minutes while they tried to work out what the hell was going on? Cheers.

signed,
Fox.


Of course, now that I'm here, around the corner from me two or three people are arguing with increasing vehemence (but not increasing variety of argumentative strategies) about whether one of them does or doesn't really know what it's like to live in the ghetto, based on the fact that she's lived in a majority Latino neighborhood but not a majority black one. The one woman says "That don't count", and the other (more reasonable!) one says "You just don't know what 'ghetto' means", and the first says "THAT DON'T COUNT", and it goes on from there. At one point the second woman said something about Mexicans, and the first said "Well, if you'd said Mexicans, that'd be different, but you didn't, you said Latinos, and that don't count", and the second woman was now in a position to point out that the first woman didn't know what 'Latino' meant, which, of course, didn't count.

This is among the most upsetting conversations I've ever overheard.

Interview is in less than an hour. Let us hope they love me so much they offer to pay me enough to live on.

So the sort of job I think I'm looking for is a kind of research associate sort of deal, such as might be found in a think tank or even a law firm, handling the research and writing aspects of a thing in a way that would free up the lawyers to, you know, practice law, which I am neither qualified nor legally permitted to do. (I am extraordinarily qualified to perform research according to someone else's instructions. The fact that I didn't go on to do doctoral work just shows that I'm not really so groovy with original research, but that's fine; if someone else says "You know what I've always wondered", I'm the girl to find the answer.)

And it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that my old firm has what I think are that kind of people. They were called Technical Specialists, and they had master's or doctoral degrees in relevant subjects, and they researched stuff and so on. Now, my academic work has not been in practical patent-related fields like engineering or molecular biology, but I could do that sort of work in the trademark and copyright area, surely. They could bill my time at a rate higher than that of a legal assistant, but they wouldn't have to pay me as much as they'd pay a lawyer. Everybody wins!

Unfortunately, says my friend and former manager, the tech specs (as we used to call them) are hired for a maximum of two years in that position and it's en route to becoming a lawyer -- they're all law students or at least planning to go to law school in the immediate future, and I have no such plans. Plus they don't really have any similar positions in non-patent kind of areas; in the trademark group the student associates do all the research and everyone knows I don't want to be a legal assistant.

So that's a bit of a strikeout, although at least I've re-established contact with people who know people, etc., so it wasn't a waste of two e-mails and a phone call. But the real thing is this: the manager of litigation legal assistants, who knows that I don't want to come back and work for her When I Grow Up, is nevertheless interested in the fact that I'm back in town and wonders if I'd like to come work for her while I'm finding The Right Job, on account of the case I was working on two years ago is still there and going to trial soon. (There was a trial, I think, and then appeals, and some other things -- so maybe it's going to trial again. Who knows.) So I'm going to drop her a line, because I can totally work there if it's not forever, and I made good money last time I was up there. We'll see.

But one really feels, at times, like Michael Corleone, you know what I mean?

I called around 9:30 and got the voice mail. Left a message, natch. She hasn't called back. Am I allowed to try once more to return the call (tomorrow, obviously, not today)?

Dear author: Yes, if you tell me your paper is over the word limit, I'm going to bounce it back without looking to see whether it contains the appropriate sections etc. and without handing it up to the chief for assignment to an editor. No, it's not my concern that you had the same experience with my colleague a week ago; if you made cuts based on her communication and then resubmitted the paper without changing the cover note to reflect the correct word count, I'm going to see a declared word count over the limit and bounce the paper back to you. Don't tell me you haven't done the same thing to your students.

signed,
i'm just a temp following the rules

[points to subject line] This is part of what compels me to ask: is it cold in here, or do I have malaria?