Monday, June 26, 2006

At the suggestion of Cathy, I have decided to start blogging. This is an act of desparation, to be sure, but it's 10:19 a.m. and I have completely exhausted the supply of legitimate work to be done. Checking my e-mail roughly 30,000 times a minute has its perks, but I think blogging looks a little more like work to the casual observer. In the interest of full disclosure, I must now own up to a brief and ill-fated LiveJournal, which was preceded by an OpenDiary, the depths of whose misdirected adolescent angst cannot even be described. If you were unfortunate enough to experience either of the above, I apologize. I can't honestly say I've changed that much, but mercifully, I no longer channel my woes into verse. All things considered, I believe the cringe factor promises to be slightly lower this time around.

The basic gist of my problem is the following: I have a lot of energy. I like work. I'm eager to please. I'm a lot like how I imagine Al Gore might have been as a nineteen-year-old. I am currently stuck 40 hours a week in a summer job with nothing to do. I have no idea how I'm going to swing a good reference out of this experience. "Yes, Susie did a phenomenal job sitting in our office. Really stellar. She looked very decorative."


I pick up this entry again after having done an actual hour of real work (!). Filing award letters--it's a living. Also, just got back from an interesting talk on the recent solar eclipse over Turkey. It was interesting, but the best part was hearing the scientists say things like "Well, the ro-vibrations are clearly going to make your Si9 readings inaccurate." I mean,
obviously.

One of my fellow interns has a handmade picture frame on her desk. It's one of those things you get as a birthday present from your best friend, filled with goofy photos, one of those tacky but theoretically meaningful knick-knacks that say "Friends!!!!!" at the top in pink glittery pen. (I have to admit, those things really give me the ass. Like, if you have a picture of someone on your desk, it's not as if you don't already know your relationship to them. I've never looked at a picture on my desk and wondered, "You know, who is that fucker?") Anyway, "Friends" is what it's supposed to say. What it really says, though, is "Frieds."

1 comment:

Cathy said...

Glad to see you've started using your time productively. Perhaps it's better that your fellow intern's pals are "frieds" rather than "fiends." Maybe her friends are fried rather than fiendish; it's often hard to tell from a photo.

I'm looking forward to further blogs about your Endless Summer.