Reappearing act
So, it seems I've neglected this Web space the past two or three weeks.
As you probably know, I spent a week in Western Pennsylvania, visiting Colleen for her birthday and helping her get ready to go back to school.
Then a little more than a week ago we drove back to Chicago. I helped Colleen move in and clean up the mess left by her summer subletters in her apartment. The following day we moved my stuff into my apartment in Wrigleyville, by which I mean we dumped boxes in the living room and went back to Evanston.
By and large, last week passed without much excitement. We had our cable Internet installed, and I spent the better part of the next 24 hours bitterly cursing Comcast for making a lousy self-installation CD and offering nothing in the way of technical support, until I finally coerced enough information from three different service reps to at last configure my settings so as to access the outside world. Wednesday afternoon I had my Fulbright interview, which went fairly well. I wasn't expecting to get grilled on political philosophy, principally mine, but was fortunate in that, like most history professors, this one is sympathetic to my leftward leanings.
The big news of the past week has been on the job front. As in, I have one. Well, sort of.
Through the end of October, I'm working as a writer for The HistoryMakers, a non-profit African-American oral history project. It's a good mission, and certainly one of value for future historians. Of course, I should make it known privately that this isn't as impressive an assignment as it would seem. I'm not exactly gaining a lot of valuable experience that will translate well to my future career as a professional historian, even one with an interest in oral history. In the words of the organization's executive director, I'm working in a "bio-writing factory."
I'll run you through my typical day:
7 a.m. Wake up. Curse alarm.
7:05 a.m. Slice up banana to add to my bowl of cold cereal. Wolf down my breakfast and locate something preppish to wear to the office.
7:20 a.m. Take over bathroom from Joe. Wash face, put in contacts, brush teeth, shave, shower.
7:40 a.m. Frantically towel off and dress hurriedly.
7:43 a.m. Race out door. Remark on the good fortune to live a block from the El.
7:46 a.m. Race up the stairs and just catch the Brown Line.
7:49 a.m. Disembark at Belmont and ponder how long it will take for a Red Line train to show up.
7:51 a.m. Another Brown Line train arrives. No sign of Red Line.
7:56 a.m. Miracle of miracles! The Red Line deigns to show up today. Pile in car and pray for a vacant seat.
7:57 a.m. Pick a small portion of the aisle to stand in for the duration of the ride. Curse the Fates.
8:06 a.m. Train delayed in subway without evident reason.
8:12 a.m. Train delayed in subway without evident reason. This is going to cost me. Cannot believe the Chicago Transit Authority is this bad. And seems to be getting worse. Public transportation in Egypt was more efficient than this. Cleaner, too.
8:15 a.m. Arrive at Roosevelt. Race out of the station and briskly walk toward Michigan Avenue to catch bus and avoid walking nine-tenths of a mile to work and arriving late.
8:19 a.m. Catch red light. Chances of making the bus slim to none.
8:20 a.m. Watch helplessly as my bus speeds past with no hope of catching it. Contemplate turning around and going back to bed. Decide better of it. Looks like I'll get plenty of exercise.
8:24 a.m. Second bus passes me on my stroll down Michigan Avenue. I could've spared myself the long walk.
8:28 a.m. Third bus drops off in front of the office while I'm a block away. I'll really have to remember to wait for these buses tomorrow.
8:31 a.m. Call the intercom to gain access to the office.
8:32 a.m. At work. Sign in for 8:30 a.m. No one will be the wiser.
8:34 a.m. Smack head on doorway as I walk down the steps out of the kitchen. Hard. This is going to sting.
8:35 a.m. Settle down at my desk. I don't have an actual cubicle, only a meager partition that prevents me from seeing my co-worker Edward. Unless I bother to lean back in my chair.
8:36 a.m. Decide to ease into the day's work. Less than half the office has showed up so far, including my boss. No reason I can't check my personal e-mail and troll the Web a bit.
8:58 a.m. Finish browsing. Minor throbbing sensation in heads persists. Look through the files for the first bio of the day. Rearrange papers repeatedly to give the illusion of work.
9:28 a.m. Settle in to begin actual work. I get to write a bio of a dentist in Harlem. Exciting stuff.
10:22 a.m. Finish first bio. Not record pace, but it usually takes me a while to get settled in. Onward to Bio No. 2.
11:08 a.m. Bio No. 2 complete. Decide to try calling woman whose file only contains the consent form. No answer. Move on to Bio No. 3.
11:52 a.m. Another one bites the dust. Not a lot of information for this one, but then those are the easier one to write. Try calling woman again. No answer. It'd be nice if she had an answering machine so I wouldn't have to keep calling her hourly.
12:37 p.m. Finished with the gospel musician. Call woman again. Still no answer.
1:03 p.m. Write up bio on Atlanta businessman. These are really formulaic. Makes my job easy, but doesn't make it interesting.
1:04 p.m. Someone finally picks up the phone. Success! It's a 95-year-old woman in Maryland. I conduct a quick interview to obtain the information that should've been provided to me already.
1:17 p.m. She's overly modest, so I call another contact to get more information. This person then calls up the woman and sets up three-way calling, so I am once again speaking with her. Not much in the way of new information.
1:22 p.m. I could take my lunch right now, but I want to wait so that I'll get a chance to call Colleen after she gets out of class. Plus, I should write up the bio for the woman I phoned while I still roughly remember what she said and don't have to rely solely on my disjointed notes.
1:43 p.m. Lunch time. Surf the Web a bit to decompress.
1:45 p.m. Sign out for lunch. Nuke my lunch. Still don't have a microwave at the apartment, so have to take leftovers to work to heat them up and eat them. Dinner-sized portion of turkey, stuffing and biscuits. Barely managed to finish off the second biscuit.
2:08 p.m. Call Colleen. No answer. Decide to wash her Tupperware.
2:15 p.m. Back to work. I don't want to be back, and figure that I should be entitled to a long lunch, given that I'm stuck here for nine and a half hours, but no one else seems to take an actual lunch. Edward signs out for all of 10 minutes. Ayana eats her salad at her desk. Wouldn't look good for the new guy to dare to take a full hour to eat. This schedule sucks.
2:17 p.m. Back to the archive room to start another set. These bios are starting to blur together.
3:37 p.m. The boss comes in and tells us to invoice her by Thursday. I ask Edward if he knows how to do that. Like me he is clueless.
4:38 p.m. The boss leaves the office for the day. Time to unwind a bit.
4:47 p.m. A most welcome diversion. Colleen calls me. Sadly she can't talk for long.
5:17 p.m. The boss keeps calling people in the office. So much for letting the mice play.
5:32 p.m. Against my better judgment, I opt to write another bio, my 11th of the day. It's an über-Chicagoan: by day he's a pediatric oncologist, by night a pentacostal bishop. Good grief.
5:51 p.m. Time to e-mail my daily report. Still don't have my own e-mail account. Crystal tells me just to use whatever one comes up when I open Outlook on my computer. Have no idea whose address I'm using. Spend the better part of 10 minutes attaching two bios apiece for 21 people that I've done my first two days.
6:00 p.m. Trying to get out the door. Crystal mutters something about setting up my e-mail.
6:02 p.m. Relieved to hear that Crystal will set up my e-mail after I leave. Pack it up for the day and sign out.
6:03 p.m. Begin the long walk north. Look over my shoulder to see if any buses are going my way. None in sight. Start walking with Edward.
6:12 p.m. Get all the way down Michigan Avenue without seeing a single bus in my direction. Same thing happened yesterday. Passed six(!) southbound buses, but nary a northbound one. I'll be in great shape by the time I finish working here.
6:20 p.m. Reach the subway just in time to see the Red Line leaving the station. Either it's early or very, very late. Wager on the latter.
6:28 p.m. Catch a train. Mercifully there are plenty of open seats. Overcrowding doesn't start until we hit the Loop.
6:51 p.m. Disembark at Belmont. Wonder when the Brown Line will deign to show up.
6:56 p.m. A second Red Line train shows up. I think I see a Brown Line in the distance.
6:57 p.m. I was wrong. It's the Purple Line. I could've walked to Southport by now.
6:59 p.m. At last a Brown Line. I keep questioning the wisdom of waiting 10 minutes for a train when I could walk to my apartment in about 12. But it's 12 minutes of walking I'd rather not do.
7:06 p.m. Reach the Jewel on Southport. Buy fruits and lunch food. The self-checkout is inefficient. I hate things like this that take away good jobs and create greater inconvenience for the consumer.
7:27 p.m. Home sweet home. Drop the groceries on the floor and collapse on the couch. Attempt to summon the courage to fix dinner.
7:52 p.m. Decide to eat. It taKes forever to peel a carrot, even with a peeler. I finish eating most of them by the time I get around to making a sandwich.
7:58 p.m. Sit on the couch to eat. Nothing I like more than eating dinner about three hours before bedtime. Note to self: Find a job with more sensible hours tomorrow.
As you probably know, I spent a week in Western Pennsylvania, visiting Colleen for her birthday and helping her get ready to go back to school.
Then a little more than a week ago we drove back to Chicago. I helped Colleen move in and clean up the mess left by her summer subletters in her apartment. The following day we moved my stuff into my apartment in Wrigleyville, by which I mean we dumped boxes in the living room and went back to Evanston.
By and large, last week passed without much excitement. We had our cable Internet installed, and I spent the better part of the next 24 hours bitterly cursing Comcast for making a lousy self-installation CD and offering nothing in the way of technical support, until I finally coerced enough information from three different service reps to at last configure my settings so as to access the outside world. Wednesday afternoon I had my Fulbright interview, which went fairly well. I wasn't expecting to get grilled on political philosophy, principally mine, but was fortunate in that, like most history professors, this one is sympathetic to my leftward leanings.
The big news of the past week has been on the job front. As in, I have one. Well, sort of.
Through the end of October, I'm working as a writer for The HistoryMakers, a non-profit African-American oral history project. It's a good mission, and certainly one of value for future historians. Of course, I should make it known privately that this isn't as impressive an assignment as it would seem. I'm not exactly gaining a lot of valuable experience that will translate well to my future career as a professional historian, even one with an interest in oral history. In the words of the organization's executive director, I'm working in a "bio-writing factory."
I'll run you through my typical day:
7 a.m. Wake up. Curse alarm.
7:05 a.m. Slice up banana to add to my bowl of cold cereal. Wolf down my breakfast and locate something preppish to wear to the office.
7:20 a.m. Take over bathroom from Joe. Wash face, put in contacts, brush teeth, shave, shower.
7:40 a.m. Frantically towel off and dress hurriedly.
7:43 a.m. Race out door. Remark on the good fortune to live a block from the El.
7:46 a.m. Race up the stairs and just catch the Brown Line.
7:49 a.m. Disembark at Belmont and ponder how long it will take for a Red Line train to show up.
7:51 a.m. Another Brown Line train arrives. No sign of Red Line.
7:56 a.m. Miracle of miracles! The Red Line deigns to show up today. Pile in car and pray for a vacant seat.
7:57 a.m. Pick a small portion of the aisle to stand in for the duration of the ride. Curse the Fates.
8:06 a.m. Train delayed in subway without evident reason.
8:12 a.m. Train delayed in subway without evident reason. This is going to cost me. Cannot believe the Chicago Transit Authority is this bad. And seems to be getting worse. Public transportation in Egypt was more efficient than this. Cleaner, too.
8:15 a.m. Arrive at Roosevelt. Race out of the station and briskly walk toward Michigan Avenue to catch bus and avoid walking nine-tenths of a mile to work and arriving late.
8:19 a.m. Catch red light. Chances of making the bus slim to none.
8:20 a.m. Watch helplessly as my bus speeds past with no hope of catching it. Contemplate turning around and going back to bed. Decide better of it. Looks like I'll get plenty of exercise.
8:24 a.m. Second bus passes me on my stroll down Michigan Avenue. I could've spared myself the long walk.
8:28 a.m. Third bus drops off in front of the office while I'm a block away. I'll really have to remember to wait for these buses tomorrow.
8:31 a.m. Call the intercom to gain access to the office.
8:32 a.m. At work. Sign in for 8:30 a.m. No one will be the wiser.
8:34 a.m. Smack head on doorway as I walk down the steps out of the kitchen. Hard. This is going to sting.
8:35 a.m. Settle down at my desk. I don't have an actual cubicle, only a meager partition that prevents me from seeing my co-worker Edward. Unless I bother to lean back in my chair.
8:36 a.m. Decide to ease into the day's work. Less than half the office has showed up so far, including my boss. No reason I can't check my personal e-mail and troll the Web a bit.
8:58 a.m. Finish browsing. Minor throbbing sensation in heads persists. Look through the files for the first bio of the day. Rearrange papers repeatedly to give the illusion of work.
9:28 a.m. Settle in to begin actual work. I get to write a bio of a dentist in Harlem. Exciting stuff.
10:22 a.m. Finish first bio. Not record pace, but it usually takes me a while to get settled in. Onward to Bio No. 2.
11:08 a.m. Bio No. 2 complete. Decide to try calling woman whose file only contains the consent form. No answer. Move on to Bio No. 3.
11:52 a.m. Another one bites the dust. Not a lot of information for this one, but then those are the easier one to write. Try calling woman again. No answer. It'd be nice if she had an answering machine so I wouldn't have to keep calling her hourly.
12:37 p.m. Finished with the gospel musician. Call woman again. Still no answer.
1:03 p.m. Write up bio on Atlanta businessman. These are really formulaic. Makes my job easy, but doesn't make it interesting.
1:04 p.m. Someone finally picks up the phone. Success! It's a 95-year-old woman in Maryland. I conduct a quick interview to obtain the information that should've been provided to me already.
1:17 p.m. She's overly modest, so I call another contact to get more information. This person then calls up the woman and sets up three-way calling, so I am once again speaking with her. Not much in the way of new information.
1:22 p.m. I could take my lunch right now, but I want to wait so that I'll get a chance to call Colleen after she gets out of class. Plus, I should write up the bio for the woman I phoned while I still roughly remember what she said and don't have to rely solely on my disjointed notes.
1:43 p.m. Lunch time. Surf the Web a bit to decompress.
1:45 p.m. Sign out for lunch. Nuke my lunch. Still don't have a microwave at the apartment, so have to take leftovers to work to heat them up and eat them. Dinner-sized portion of turkey, stuffing and biscuits. Barely managed to finish off the second biscuit.
2:08 p.m. Call Colleen. No answer. Decide to wash her Tupperware.
2:15 p.m. Back to work. I don't want to be back, and figure that I should be entitled to a long lunch, given that I'm stuck here for nine and a half hours, but no one else seems to take an actual lunch. Edward signs out for all of 10 minutes. Ayana eats her salad at her desk. Wouldn't look good for the new guy to dare to take a full hour to eat. This schedule sucks.
2:17 p.m. Back to the archive room to start another set. These bios are starting to blur together.
3:37 p.m. The boss comes in and tells us to invoice her by Thursday. I ask Edward if he knows how to do that. Like me he is clueless.
4:38 p.m. The boss leaves the office for the day. Time to unwind a bit.
4:47 p.m. A most welcome diversion. Colleen calls me. Sadly she can't talk for long.
5:17 p.m. The boss keeps calling people in the office. So much for letting the mice play.
5:32 p.m. Against my better judgment, I opt to write another bio, my 11th of the day. It's an über-Chicagoan: by day he's a pediatric oncologist, by night a pentacostal bishop. Good grief.
5:51 p.m. Time to e-mail my daily report. Still don't have my own e-mail account. Crystal tells me just to use whatever one comes up when I open Outlook on my computer. Have no idea whose address I'm using. Spend the better part of 10 minutes attaching two bios apiece for 21 people that I've done my first two days.
6:00 p.m. Trying to get out the door. Crystal mutters something about setting up my e-mail.
6:02 p.m. Relieved to hear that Crystal will set up my e-mail after I leave. Pack it up for the day and sign out.
6:03 p.m. Begin the long walk north. Look over my shoulder to see if any buses are going my way. None in sight. Start walking with Edward.
6:12 p.m. Get all the way down Michigan Avenue without seeing a single bus in my direction. Same thing happened yesterday. Passed six(!) southbound buses, but nary a northbound one. I'll be in great shape by the time I finish working here.
6:20 p.m. Reach the subway just in time to see the Red Line leaving the station. Either it's early or very, very late. Wager on the latter.
6:28 p.m. Catch a train. Mercifully there are plenty of open seats. Overcrowding doesn't start until we hit the Loop.
6:51 p.m. Disembark at Belmont. Wonder when the Brown Line will deign to show up.
6:56 p.m. A second Red Line train shows up. I think I see a Brown Line in the distance.
6:57 p.m. I was wrong. It's the Purple Line. I could've walked to Southport by now.
6:59 p.m. At last a Brown Line. I keep questioning the wisdom of waiting 10 minutes for a train when I could walk to my apartment in about 12. But it's 12 minutes of walking I'd rather not do.
7:06 p.m. Reach the Jewel on Southport. Buy fruits and lunch food. The self-checkout is inefficient. I hate things like this that take away good jobs and create greater inconvenience for the consumer.
7:27 p.m. Home sweet home. Drop the groceries on the floor and collapse on the couch. Attempt to summon the courage to fix dinner.
7:52 p.m. Decide to eat. It taKes forever to peel a carrot, even with a peeler. I finish eating most of them by the time I get around to making a sandwich.
7:58 p.m. Sit on the couch to eat. Nothing I like more than eating dinner about three hours before bedtime. Note to self: Find a job with more sensible hours tomorrow.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 21:30
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