Marching to the beat of a different mandolin

I still get lots of press releases from publicists who want me to write about their clients. I guess once you're on those mailing lists, they keep you on. Usually I just delete and move on, but yesterday I saw one that I felt like opening. It's an invitation to go on a press trip to Turkey in September. Well, fuck. The thing I miss most about working for Aol was the huge exposure my writing got and thus the opportunity to do stuff like this. I replied and said that I really do want to go and I appreciate the invitation...but I'm not a travel writer anymore...at least not one with much of an audience... The publicist wrote back and suggested that I try to get a letter of assignment (basically a promise from some major publication that they will publish my story) and then she could still send me on the trip. So I've been barking up a few trees for the last 24 hours, trying to make that work somehow. The trip returns the day before I leave for Hong Kong. Heh. Hopefully everyone at work will understand that I can't just say no to an invitation like this, and if it works out for me to go, they'll be cool with me taking the extra week off. It should be fine. I've already talked to a few of my coworkers about it and they were all like WHY WERE YOU HONEST WITH THE PUBLICIST?! (As in, why did I confess that I no longer have access to post to Aol Travel.) Um, well, because it's the Turkish government paying for the trip, and I don't want to be on a whole country's shit list. But hopefully I find someone who will publish me and then I can go. And now of course I'll also be super heartbroken if it doesn't work out. Sigh.

I sure do miss all the exotic travel I got to do. In the press, you get to live the life of a high roller without actually being one. It feels a little awkward at first, but I got used to it! Almost, anyway. I could never handle other people really serving me the way rich people get treated at hotels...I always wanted to whisper to the staff "you don't have to talk to me like that -- I'm one of you, you know..." And all those amazing opportunities made it ALMOST worthwhile to deal with the stress that came with that job. But not quite. It was the right decision for me to step back from freelancing, but I still identify as a writer, even if I don't really get paid to do it anymore. I've taken the odd gig here and there and the extra money is always nice, but during the assignment I'm always stressed to eleven. Sigh.

You guys.  You guys.  YOU GUYS!  I'm finally getting my seahorse tank!

First it was "I should wait until I get a steady job and am not traveling so much."  Then I got a steady job that required a lot of travel.  Then it was "Well, when I'm done with all this traveling."  Then I quit that job and started over.  Then I got a great job that will keep me in the area and it became "Why get an aquarium now when we're probably moving soon?"  Then it was "All finances go toward the house."  Finally, we are settled into the house, finances are in order, and I'm ready to get going with this.  So I went to the aquarium store in NE Portland after work to talk about setting up a seahorse tank.  Why NE Portland instead of one of the many pet/fish stores closer to me?  Well, that one specializes in seahorses, and I'd talked to the owner before and he definitely has the expertise specific to what I want.  And I'm gonna do this thing RIGHT, y'all.  Which means it'll be like two more months before I actually have any fish, but the ball is rolling for realsies.

Last night I picked out a tank -- a 60-gallon tank with a wood stand and canopy that will fit nicely in my kitchen dining nook area.  Today, the owner is drawing up quotes for all the different possible equipment I'll need and/or want, and then likely tomorrow night, he'll deliver it to my house and I can get the setup started.  It'll take several weeks to go from a dry tank to one that seahorses can make a home in, so for a little while, I'll just be waiting for the water to cycle and get to where it needs to be.  I think that takes around six weeks.  So in that time I'll just be monitoring the water and getting some other basics set up.  I'll get seaweed going, and I'm also basically going to be farming bacteria that the seahorses will eat.  Once I have a good crop of that stuff, I think it will be time to actually introduce the fish.  Seahorses are fish, just to be clear.  So when I talk about the fish that will be in there, I mean the seahorses.  I'm not planning on having any others for now.  So, if all goes according to schedule, I'll be getting some new pets right around my birthday.  I'm so excited!

The other exciting new thing going on right now is that I picked up a new freelance gig.  My former executive editor from Aol co-founded a media brokerage company that is just getting started right now, and asked me to do some work with them.  The company is called CODE20, and what they do is broker amateur video to professional news agencies, primarily for breaking news stories.  My work with them is mainly dealing in social media for now, as the company creates a presence for itself.  Breaking news isn't just police chases and mass homicides (we really don't want video of that), but basically anything from which a news station might want a little video.  So my job is to keep an eye/ear out for these events (today I covered a pillow fight flash mob), write a blip on our website about it, compose a few tweets and facebook updates, and try to get users to upload video.  Then other people on the CODE20 team work to get those user-submitted videos on television or a news website.  If you're interested in supporting me in this endeavor, please go to the CODE20 Facebook page and like us, and follow @code20news on twitter.  There's a smartphone app, too.  If you ever do take film of a breaking news event (using the word "news" liberally), you can upload it to us and we pay you if it gets on air anywhere.

The people behind CODE20 are really bright, fun, good people.  I loved working for Robin at Aol and it's so great working with her again.  She really appreciates me and I love working for someone who values me as much as she does.  I think it's going to be really interesting.  My work with them is really just about an hour or so a day, so it's not taking the place of any of my other work or extracurriculars, and shouldn't add much stress to my life.  We don't know if it'll be a raging success or not, but it definitely has potential, and I'm psyched to be involved.  I'd love it if you guys would check it out and spread the word if you feel so inclined.

I have always known that I am not a good driver.  I prefer not to drive.  I try to be safe and careful but I just suck at it. 

Yesterday, I rear-ended a guy on the way home from work.  I had looked down for maybe 2 seconds, while creeping along at about 15mph in rush hour traffic.  (I was trying to find the mp3 player that I had hooked up to my car stereo, because I wanted to see the name of the song that was playing.  I didn't see it when I immediately looked down, and then I looked up again to check the road like a responsible person.)  When I looked up, traffic had stopped moving, and I slammed on my brakes.  There should have been space to stop, but the roads were slick and I hydroplaned into the car in front of me.  Do you know how awful it feels to be at-fault in an accident when your job is to process accident details all day long?  Ugh.

Luckily, everyone's fine.  It was a very light impact, and aside from my license plate being bent, there wasn't really any other damage.  The other driver was super nice, too.  He wasn't mad at me for hitting him at all -- he just wanted to be sure that I was okay.  I was so flustered, I didn't think to take pictures or get his info at all.  I would have gotten his info if my phone were handy, but I couldn't find it after the impact and was too shaken up to do much.  Knowing what I know from my job, it was stupid of me not to take any pictures or get his info, but the fact that he volunteered to give it to me anyway is a good sign.  He seemed like a trustworthy dude, not the type who's going to sue me for 3 months of chiropractor bills now.  His car didn't appear to be damaged at all, but he said he had *just* gotten the bumper fixed from another accident, and he wanted to take it to a body shop to check it out.  I told him I would pay for everything and I really would prefer not to have insurance involved in it, but I think he was going to report it...English wasn't his first language so I'm not sure he understood me when I tried to say I would pay out of pocket, and again, I was too shaken up to be thorough about it.  So it's possible I could get totally screwed by this incident, but if I do, it's my own stupid fault. 

I held it together well enough to give my info to the guy and get back in the car and drive the rest of the way home, but when I got home, I fucking lost it.  I just couldn't stop sobbing, even though everything's really okay.  No damage, no injuries, whatever comes of the repairs is not going to bankrupt me...it's fine, really.  But I think the fear of a car accident is so deeply ingrained in me from when I was a teenager and I knew that if I ever did anything to my car (accident, ticket, whatever), my parents would KILL me, and even though my parents have nothing to do with this now, I think that fear is just hard to shake.  McKenzie wasn't mad at me at all, but he kept asking if I wanted him to get mad, because the way I was crying and apologizing, it sure seemed like I thought someone should be mad at me. 

Really, it's ok.  These things happen, and it wasn't a big deal, and I know all that on an intellectual level.  Emotionally, though, it might take a while to recover from the jolt of it.  I made myself drive to work this morning, because I didn't want to develop a phobia of getting behind the wheel again.  It was fine.  I was extra attentive and didn't have a panic attack or anything.  But I probably won't be able to relax very much behind the wheel for a while.  I guess that's not entirely a bad thing.

Anyway, let this serve as a PSA.  I wasn't texting or phoning or anything.  I was just trying to look for a second at something that wasn't the road.  And that was enough of a distraction for me to have an accident.  So learn from my mistakes and just keep your eyes on the road, mmkay?

Today was largely uneventful for me, but at the same time so full of good things!

It was my first day back at the office in a week due to a schedule switcharoo last week, and I was good 'n' busy all day long, which I like.  The most stressful part of my workday is boredom.  I love that about it.  Also, we have a new adjuster, so I'm not the new kid anymore.  Not that I mind or that the hazing was too bad or anything.  It's just cool to grow up in the company a little bit.

Then at the end of the day, things cooled down enough that I had just a few minutes to kill -- not enough time to get into too much trouble, but enough time to surf Craigslist for bass clarinets.  McKenzie says that I'm noticeably better at clarinet already after just a week of reteaching myself, and I'm so enthusiastic about it.  Sethy's enthusiasm for his new sax habit is quite contagious, and since the majority of my musical skill lies with the woodwinds, I figure my best shot at a decent jam session with some of my favorite musicians is to hone those skills.  Anyway, I always played bass clarinet in school, and I like the sound a lot better (deeper, more resonant), but bass clarinet parts in bands and orchestras tend to be on the boring side.  Not that I'm joining any orchestras or anything.  The fingering is exactly the same, it's just the blowing that's different (too easy, let it slide), so there's nothing stopping me from playing fun clarinet music on a bass clarinet...except the whole not owning a bass clarinet thing.

Bass clarinets aren't exactly common, either, so it's not like I can just find one at a garage sale.  Even Craigslist offers slim pickins, so I figured I'd save up for a little while and maybe buy a nice used one the next time I have a few thousand dollars laying around, and until then I'll keep working with the clarinet.  But with my few minutes to spare this afternoon, I pulled up Craigslist Portland...then looked at the Charlottesville one, just to see...turns out, a recently-graduated student is leaving town and doesn't want to take her instruments with her.  She has both a clarinet and a bass, and she's unloading them at a truly bargain basement price.  I pounced, and hit Facebook to enlist a Virginian friend or relative to make the deal for me.  Then, my sister-in-law Rachel saw my post and sent me a text saying not to buy one, she will give me her dad's.  Holy shit!

Backstory -- Rachel grew up in Brooklyn and went to LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts.  The Fame high school.  She was in Jennifer Aniston's class.  Anyway, her performance art was clarinet.  Her dad passed away a long time ago (20 years or more, I believe), and I didn't know that he was a musician at all, but apparently he was quite a gifted one, and he took up bass clarinet late in life.  He left it to Rachel, his clarinet-playing daughter, but she doesn't really use it, and so when she saw that I was jonesing for one, she realized where it would have a good home.  I am SO HONORED.  She says it hasn't been played in at least 15 years and will need some work probably, but she is going to bring it to Charlottesville next week, and I'll have my mom take it to a local shop for a tuneup.  Yay!

Still, I don't know the condition of this bass for sure, and I do know that there's a good deal to be had on one in Waynesboro, so I'm still going to buy that one if it checks out okay.  My uncle is going to look at it for me tomorrow or Friday.  He's a musician, so I trust he'll make a good call on it.  If it happens that I end up with two playable instruments, I'll give the one that's not a family heirloom to Shanon, because she also played bass clarinet in school, and I'll make her play duets with me.  I'm so excited!

Rachel also told me that she ran into Paul McCartney at lunch today.  They were eating at the same restaurant, and when Paul and his son were leaving, they walked by Rachel's table and he said "Hello," then peeked in Bess's stroller and said "She's beautiful.  I was admiring her before."  Paul McCartney thinks my niece is beautiful!  It's quite silly I know, but I'm completely starstruck-from-afar.  When I heard this story, I promptly looked up all the Beatles sheet music I could find for clarinet and dedicated tonight's practice to Paul.  And Bess.  Heh.  (Seth -- a lot of their stuff is musically pretty simple.  You and me, woodwind Beatles cover show at Falcon Ridge next year?  Everyone else sings?)

Then, just when I thought I'd met my quota for happy in one day, I got a message from the abovementioned Seth, who is in Philly right now with our good friend and fellow Shantytowner, Tony, telling me that he just witnessed Tony's purchase of a plane ticket to Portland next month.  I'm gonna have my first Shanty visitor!  You guys.  I cannot contain the happy.  

I had a kind of funny realization today at work.  My little sister and I have a lot in common, but we're way different in a lot of big ways.  Academically, for instance.  Our interests barely intersect.  I'm way on the humanities side of the spectrum, and she's all sciency.  I live in the awesome Pacific Northwest, and for reasons I'm not sure either one of us will ever understand, she's chosen the midwest for her home.  As a teenager, I always worked retail, and she worked construction.  We've followed very different trajectories.  And yet, on the phone this afternoon, we spent about 30 minutes comparing notes on trucking accidents, because somehow we both ended up working jobs that revolve around trucking accidents.  

I process insurance claims for the trucking industry, and she works as an environmental consultant, and has to follow up on spills of any kind that happen in truck crashes.  I've known one trucker in my entire life.  Other than that, I don't think I have ever known anyone whose occupation was even remotely related to the trucking industry, and now both my kid sis and I have jobs in the field.  Just strikes me as weird.  Actually I guess neither one of us is in the industry, so much as in the business of dealing with their shit.  

In other news, the NBA draft is going on right now.  I don't follow college hoops enough to really have an opinion about it, but it's still exciting to have news.  Blazers fans on Twitter and FB seem to be pretty disappointed with our picks, though.  I did read the scouting reports and projections about who everyone thought we'd pick, and while one of those was accurate, we used our #6 pick to get him when he was still projected to be there at #11, our second pick.  And the guy we took at #11 is...who?  Some white guy from Illinois.  I'd never heard his name before, which suggests to me that he was not in any of the scouting reports I read, which further suggests to me that no one expected him to even be a first-round pick.  Sigh.  Blazers, why you gotta gamble?  Best case scenario, it's a gamble that pays off.  Worst case?  Well, I'm already used to my team sucking a lot.  And I still love them anyway.  

I am officially a bike commuter!  I still feel like a poser in the cycling world, but by the end of this week, I will have done almost 70 miles.  That's worth some cred.  My legs are pretty sore, but my crotch is by far the sorest.  I know I'll get used to it and it won't stay sore, but it's pretty brutal to ride on such a bumpy trail for 10.5 miles each way.  It's all paved, but a lot of it is just shitty quality trail, with lots of roots and cracks in the pavement or just really bumpy pavement in general.  Still, I'm thankful it exists and my ride is really beautiful.  Once I get past the newbie pains, it'll be nothing less than awesome.

My alarm went off at the absolute perfect time this morning.  I was having a dream where a toilet was overflowing, and panic was setting in.  Never have I been so relieved to be jolted out of sleep!

Work was relatively slow today.  We didn't get the Lindsay Lohan claim.  Oh well.  (She was in an accident with a commercial truck, and our office handles insurance claims for the trucking industry, mostly in California...so it wasn't too far-fetched.)  I really like it there.  How long is the honeymoon phase for a new job?  I started four weeks ago.  Anyway it feels like a good fit.  I'm really happy with the way things are going these days.

It's amazing how much faster my workday goes at this office compared to my temp job.  Perhaps it's because I get to leave at 4:30 instead of 5, or maybe it has something to do with not having to ask permission to leave my desk to do something like use the restroom.  Anyway, I really like it.  Of course, we're still in the honeymoon...

I discovered an amazing new food today, too.  I was shopping for things I could take to work to snack on at my desk and have for lunch, since there's a full kitchen in the office and also not much in the way of restaurants nearby.  Save money and be healthier?  Yeah, guess I can do that.  So anyway I was in the natural foods section at Fred Meyer and I saw these little pouches of instant Indian food.  I bought a bunch of them and had a spinach daal one tonight.  Holy shit that was amazing.  And a whole serving is only 2 WW points!  SO GOOD.  So I think I'll be eating those every day for the rest of forever now.

I also made a salad tonight to take in for the next few days.  Spring mix, walnut pieces, dried cranberries, goat cheese crumbles, and olive oil.  Nomnomnom look at me being healthy.  Okay, I know, there are a lot of healthier things I could put in a salad, but I'm getting there!  And I'm practically cooking :)  I also have a boatload of fruit to take with me, and I'm keeping a stash of Diet Dr. Pepper there, too.  Still don't let myself have it at home, but I drink kind of a lot of it everywhere that's not home.  The whole giving up soda thing just wasn't worth it.  

I had a late session with Ertan tonight.  He really killed my shoulders.  So many different shoulder sets tonight, holy shit.  I'm not going to be able to lift my arms tomorrow.  Last week after our session, I had to use my left arm to hold up my right arm just so I could brush my teeth.  This week was way more shoulder-intensive.  This is going to hurt a lot...

It is really amazing how much more time I feel like I have when the workday ends at 4:30 instead of 5.  I actually got a lot of stuff done tonight.  But now I'm gonna crash :)

I drove down to Medford yesterday with my Grand National Teammates, Chris and Laurie.  Well, Chris drove.  Five hours.  Ick.  The three of us have been rotating as partners, while David and Don anchor at the other table.  Only three teams entered the event this year, but it's a two-day qualifier, so today we played a 56-board three-way KO to get it down to two teams for tomorrow's 56-board head-to-head final.  We won both of our matches, and will have a 10-imp carryover for tomorrow's final.  Not huge, but not completely insignificant.

The bridge is good -- no major disasters, and it's nice to play in a strong field after the mindfuck that was Richland.  Chris is my most regular Portland partner, and I like him and we tend to score very well together, but our fundamental philosophies are so different.  He is a very strong player, and almost undoubtedly better than I am, but I feel very, very strongly that my methods are better...by a lot.  And he disagrees.  We play a card that is a compromise of our favorite things, and it's all fine and dandy, but it's not the card I want to take into battle with me in major events.  So I don't know if our partnership has much of a future beyond local events.  But that may be completely moot anyway, because I don't know how much of a future I myself have beyond local events now that I'm taking on basically full-time work.

I've started my training with WW -- the first little bit is all online (but it's paid!), and it's actually a really well-done training program.  I was prepared for it to be dull and hokey and full of information I already know, but while I am familiar with almost all of the information, it's presented very well, and I'm actually learning a lot already.  Yay for that :)  I start on Monday at the claims office.  I think I have a pretty good handle on what my responsibilities will be, but obviously I'll know more once I've actually done a little bit of it.  I think the main piece is data entry, but it's not like there's so much of it that I'll just be typing numbers into the computer all day -- there's filing and processing and administrative gophering, but I think I'll also get to try my hand at writing and editing mediations, which could be cool.  That's basically when instead of going to court and having a trial over an insurance case, both sides just present written statements to a judge...I think.  I'm sure I'll learn more about the process soon enough.  

I went for a run today after bridge.  It was only OK.  There's a great trail along a creek here, and I went out about 1.5 miles before turning around.  Basically as soon as I started, I was feeling pretty shitty...there was no bounce in my step and my pace was much slower than normal.  I told myself to run for at least a mile, then reassess.  My goal was to do 3 miles, since I have a 5K next weekend, but as soon as I started, I knew that wasn't happening.  I turned around after 13 minutes, having gone not quite a mile and a half, but something between 1.2 and 1.4 miles.  At that point, it was just a matter of pushing myself to keep running for two more minutes, over and over again until I was back where I started.  I just felt so slow, though.  I wasn't fatigued, but my feet hurt, and I had a stitch in my side.  I'm way overdue for a new pair of running shoes.  I've been putting off buying them, though, because I do have a connection at the Nike employee store, where I can get 50% off, it's just a matter of lining up our schedules, and that hasn't worked out yet.  But I don't think I'm going to enjoy next week's race if I have to run it in these worn out kicks, so if I can't make it to the Nike store this week, I'll just suck it up and pay full price like everyone else.  

It sucks to have a bad run, though.  Like...I know I worked hard and got decent exercise and I should feel good about that, but overall it's just really disappointing how not athletic I felt while I was doing it.  And I feel like a 2.5-mile run should be easy for me now, especially if I'm not pushing myself for speed.  Bleh.  And how much of that can I blame on the shoes?  New shoes before the race, for sure...