Dialogue

JG and I were watching TV tonight when a commercial prompted me to point and say, “Ooh, look, it’s LL!”

JG: Who is that?
RA: …LL?
JG: LL who?
RA: Uhhh…
JG: No, who do you think it is?
RA: No, wait! It’s… The Bus?
JG: Okay, and who is The Bus?
RA: He’s a football player…who had asthma…and is in a commercial for asthma…with kids who have asthma…
JG: Very good, and what’s his name?
RA: (grasping at straws) It’s…it’s… JEROME BETTIS! YES!

High five!

How the heck did I manage to come up with Jerome Bettis? For what it’s worth, I still kind of think he looks like LL Cool J. At least a little bit.

It's Okay, I'm With the Band

I spent the weekend with my sister at what may have been one of the geekiest events I’ve ever attended. She drove two hours to my house, and then two more hours to a small PA town so that she and I could watch two whole nights of drum and bugle corps performances. That’s right, folks. I’m talking marching band.

It isn’t your old-school, stand-in-place, stiff-as-a-board, your-mom-made-you-join, parade band. It’s not what I call a “dancing band”, the likes of which you may have seen in the movie, Drumline. It’s definitely not the kind of band that spawns “this one time at band camp" jokes, either, so let’s not go down that road.

When I say drum corps, I mean highly-skilled brass players, percussionists, marchers, and dancers between the ages of 14 and 22 who audition against tight competition to make the cut and then spend the entire summer training and rehearsing so that they can travel across the country to perform an 11-minute program, all the while building up their ranking to prepare for the finals competition, which will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, this year. The members of drum corps are at the height of their skill, pulling off maneuvers and tricks – both physical and musical – that test belief. They make it look easy, but it’s deceptive; hours of practice, gallons of water, sore muscles, and countless bruises contribute to the mastery of this sport. Some might call it lame, but I call it awesome.

It was with this mindset that my sister and I arrived at the stadium. Our combined 13 years in marching band (she as a flute/piccolo, I as a color guard member: silk and sabre) had created diehard loyalty to the entire institution, and this event was the closest we could get to these groups this year. We were psyched, gabbing through our tailgate dinner and checking the stats on her Blackberry. We looked with shifty eyes at fellow spectators with their individual corps shirts (“You always see the crazies out here,” my sister muttered), and happily ate our sandwiches against the familiar, comforting thrum of percussion lines in the distance and the tick-tocking of the wood block, urging on color guards. Ah, this is what I love, I thought. It made me want to step on the beat, march 8 steps in 5 yards, and snap my head to the commands of the drum major, and we hadn’t even begun. Oh, the anticipation!

Once inside the stadium, the aroma of fried food (mm, funnel cake) and the rustle of a gathering of band people hinted at the awesomeness to come. We were finally there! My sister and I quickly found our seats, by which I mean those too-small spots on metal bleachers, which are seriously too small for even relatively small people like my sister and me. It was tight, but who cares! Our favorite drum corps rocked the house, and watching them in person for the first time made me so happy. I wanted to stand up and watch their whole show, but seeing as that would have been rude, I settled for cheering every time they did something ridiculously hard, and was it my fault that it ended up being almost every thirty seconds? And then they won! YES! Booyah!!!

After a night crashing at a friend’s house and then taking in some local flavor the next day, my sister and I went back for round two, but not before supplementing our pasta salad dinner with some half-sour pickles and red fish candy from the local farmers’ market. Yum. That night brought a spectacularly original show with tiger “skins” as visual effect and another based on The Godfather. It almost made me wish I had seen the movie, because, sadly, the only things I know about it are the lines quoted in You've Got Mail. Even more fun, my equally-fanatic sister and I created peanut gallery commentary that could have rivaled that of Statler and Waldorf of The Muppets Show fame. All of this excitement culminated with a 2-hour drive home that somehow only took 90 minutes, thanks to my sister’s “driving like a banshee”, as she put it.

Maybe I could have been part of a drum corps at one point, if I had had the guts to try out and the money to finance it. I could have been simultaneously muscular and tan (minus a killer sock line) with thousands of screaming fans, which sounds eerily similar to how I imagine being a rock star might be. But watching it over two gorgeous evenings with my sister next to me was okay with me, too. You can bet that when the finals air on ESPN2 in a few weeks, I am so calling the TV. I sat through almost all of the Penn State bowl game this year, so I think it could be a fair trade. This is my bowl game, baby!

Getting Back On

One of my favorite quotes from my favorite author, Madeleine L’Engle, reads:

I have more hope that someone who has shouted, 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' can get back on and enjoy the ride, than someone who wants more cushions.

Last week was rough for me. I so wanted the world to stop so that I could catch my breath, or sit back and watch for a little bit. I would be content with waiting at the stop and getting back on when the world came back around for me again. But you can’t do that.

The week was characterized by an unexpectedly heavy workload in an unusually unsupportive work environment, and I had to ask myself if this was really the job I wanted to pursue. I knew coming into this job that I would need to figure out what my plan was for The Future, in terms of graduate school or progression up the corporate ladder, but I was fine with camping out in a fortunate entry-level job that has afforded me with unique opportunities and usable skills, but… I didn’t know if I wanted to stay here. It took all I had to simply operate and get my work done, and even that wasn’t accomplished without bursting into tears periodically. I was so tired.

It felt like when I had inklings that maybe I didn’t want to be a chemistry lab rat for the rest of my life, as alluring as a Ph.D. may have been. I took two full semesters of only science and math, and I ached without reading and writing. I tried to fit in leisure reading, but my giant chemistry texts beckoned. So, in my sophomore year, I changed my major to English, amid noises of cautious support from my parents (who were sure that I’d end up living at home trying to be “artistic”) and looks of betrayal from my lab partners (who were sure that I was ditching them for a mere B.A.). I tried to laugh off my nervousness by calling it my “major identity crisis”, and I waded into the world of literature students, the majority of whom, to my surprise, did not enjoy either reading or writing. I loved most of my new professors and I felt myself growing in a way that chemistry did not allow, although I maintained a minor so that I could exercise that part of my brain.

So, that worked out okay.

But this is different; job decisions affect your income and commute and overall happiness scale. It’s half of your waking hours and, at least for me, a significant component of how you measure your life’s progress. I can’t think about leaving my current job without understanding what’s ahead of me, but there’s no way to do that without actually leaving my job and taking another one. Then there’s always the possibility that I wouldn’t like it more – what do I do then? Should I just figure out what I want my grad degree in and take a loss to be a student? Doesn’t it make more sense to have a company pay for at least some of that tuition?

Stop the world, I want to get off!

What do I know for sure?

• I have no idea what I want to do for graduate school. It’s not smart to start a program when I am uncertain.
• I don’t need to find a new job, like when I graduated. I still have this position to fall back on if necessary. This is not a search borne of desperation.
• It doesn’t hurt to apply for jobs, and I owe it to myself to try. If I am offered a position, I have the option to take it, but I don't have to.
• If I start this process, then I know that I am taking action, and not just spinning in what might feel like a hopeless situation.

I took a deep breath, revised my resume, and did preliminary job searches in my area. It’s amazing what some experience will do to your prospects. I asked people to be references, and last night, I applied to three positions at companies that I know to have good reputations.

I feel different this morning. Weariness and resignation have been replaced by tentative excitement, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. The things I know are still the same. I don’t need a new job, and I am not desperate. I got back on the world over the weekend, and it’s nice to be here.

How You Say...?

I had one of those “am I speaking a different language?” moments this week when I went to pick up my guitar from the music store after some repairs. I gave my name to the guy at the counter, who seemed to recognize it, which I admit was slightly eerie, and he laid my guitar on the counter, saying, “You’re all set.”

RA: (internally) I know I didn’t pay for this yet. Maybe he didn’t do a good job. I’d better check. (out loud, after checking) Well, it looks good to me. What do I owe you?
Guy: Nothing, you’re all set.
(pause...)
RA: When I brought this in, I wasn’t charged for anything, and I assumed that I would just pay when I picked it up.
Guy: Nope, you’re all set. No charge.
RA: Um, I’m pretty sure that I should be charged for this. I haven’t paid for anything yet.
Guy: You’re…all…set…

And so I left, guitar in hand, bewildered and baffled. What in the world just happened back there? Isn't it customary in this country to pay for repairs and/or materials? How did I not have to pay after I practically begged the guy to charge me?

The strangest part was the whole wink-wink-nudge-nudge aspect. Whatever was going on, I so did not get the code. Maybe to this guitar guy, I was saying, “You’re really hot,” or “I’ll come back with baked goods,” and he decided to let me go without charging me the forty bucks. For all I know, I uttered the secret code to sign on for some mob operation, and I’ll miss out on the job we’re pulling this weekend. I hope that’s not the case. Even when I think about it in hindsight, it is just plain weird. I have no idea what happened.

Afternoon Craving

It’s about that time in the afternoon when I get restlessly hungry. I can’t focus well on whatever spreadsheet or presentation is currently at hand, and I keep watching the clock to see if I can go home to dinner yet. My stomach growls and I wander into the office kitchen to see if anything has magically added to the supply of Wheat Thins, tootsie rolls, or pretzel stubs. Or whatever they’re called. No, nothing new! I’ve already had a handful and a half of Wheat Thins, and the rest doesn’t appeal to me. So far today, I’ve had some grapes, watermelon, and salad… How herbivore of me. Not that I want meat… No, I want carbs, glorious carbs! And not in the form of some dried-out pretzel/cheese ball variety! I want mac and cheese or a Cup of Noodles, carryovers from my hot pot-inspired diet of college days. Comfort to me is a Styrofoam cup of tangled-up yellow noodles (chicken flavored, please), with the gratuitous sprinkling of mixed, dehydrated veggies. I’m all about a balanced diet.

But I know that the drugstore down the way doesn’t even carry Cup of Noodles. It was a sad day when I made that realization on just such an afternoon. I'd have to get Easy Mac, another college revelation that was advertised toward 8-year-olds, but is actually most applicable for students, especially in its new handy packs. If I had had this in college, the number orange-encrusted dollar store bowls on top of my microwave would have greatly decreased.

Did I mention that my mom is the Queen of Making Things from Scratch? We absolutely never had mac and cheese out of a box, and I didn’t even know what Bisquick was until college. Forget about bottled pasta sauce, without which my baked ziti habit could not be fulfilled. I’ve quietly slunk over to the dark side. She would be mortified at my now-dependence on pre-packaged pasta-type products, but I can still make a mean pumpkin cheesecake from scratch. Doesn’t that count for something?

Mm, cheesecake.

That’s it. I have to go get a snack.

Sorry, Mom.