August 14, 2000

discoveries

It's far too late in the day for me to be coherent. It's an ambitious person who expects me to be articulate during the course of the regular day anyway; since I don't reasonably expect anybody in my acquaintance to be overly optimistic, I'll just meander in my normal way and leave it to complete strangers to be disappointed. They have no business being naive.

It's the beginning of the third week, and I've established the fact that the bagels can occasionally make an appearance on the second floor instead of the first. The doughnuts -- there are doughnuts as a weekly option, though I've yet to get in on that action, either because of a lack of interest or a lack of access -- tend to be on the second floor as a general rule. Today, for whatever reason, so were the bagels. I got a tip along that line from the receptionist, (named Leo, who told me that his weekend was great until he ended up pulling a leg muscle while jogging on Sunday), and pottered upstairs to investigate.

There was a small creche of British people standing around the bagels, slathering marmalade atop of cream cheese and debating the merits of movie music. I have no idea what movie. I hovered around the outskirts and felt wistful that my accent was nothing worth mentioning.

"In England, somebody told me that the American accents were so sexy," my sister told me once. There was a short pause while we made faces at each other: the 'huh?' expression.

"Why?"

"Who knows. They're British. I always thought Australians sounded hot."

There was another moment of silent contemplation.

"Weird Brits."

It's the beginning -- or rather, the end of -- the first day of my third week. Two weeks under my belt. What do I know now that I didn't know then? I know how the server architecture is designed. I know about NetX, a product put out by OSI. I know about Tivoli, another product put out by ... some random person. (It smells like chlorine in my bus. I know about that, too.) I know that Fridays at Four, the week-end get-together for all excite@Home employees, serves beer. I know that if you set up a class for 18 people who insist they have to be allowed to participate, only 10 will show up. Even if you order food. Because they're flakes. I know that 80% of business is done in meetings, and the other 20% of the business day is spent tracking down people to have the meetings.

I know that I don't know enough. I know I need to learn Perl. I know that if I don't learn Perl fast, I'll really, really regret it. And I know that my laptop's case is so damn heavy, in two more weeks I'll be Quasimodo.

Last Friday, the Director took a bunch of us out to lunch. That is to say, we got out of a slightly tense meeting, looked at each other, said "Whew," and then the Director announced, "I'm hungry. Let's go grab some lunch?"

After the final count and round-up was made, five of us went strolling down to the parking lot, an odd assortment of little characters. The Director, my ex-Manager -- did I mention I've already been reorged in a record one-and-a-half weeks? Apparently, this is a real verb in the world of corporate infrastructure; I now answer directly to the Director -- the other Project Coordinator for the group, and then a hilarious man, my height, who claimed to be "half redneck" and "driving the bitter bus." He offered to drive.

His redneck blood was his rationale for the monster truck that we ended up riding in, a behomoth in electric blue. It was a pickup with easily enough room in the cab for five people; there was enough room in the driver's seat alone for two solidly built bodies. "The cupholder expands," he told us with some smug pleasure. It was a truck built for driving down railroad tracks in, for shooting moose and tossing them in the back, for terrifying democrats.

On the way there, a small fracas occurred involving a Viking Delivery Truck and a hostile deliveryman. Our monster truck pulled off of a major boulevard with heavy traffic, turning right into a road that led into the mall. This, too, was a major intersection; there was a building on the right side that extended quite a ways, sidewalk next to it, one lane of road, then a thick concrete median filled with bushes, and on the other side of that two lanes going the other way.

We turned into the single lane to discover a delivery truck parked smack dab in the middle of the lane, blocking the entire road. There was enough room for us to pull up in behind it, and for two other cars to pull up behind us, effectively blocking us in. There wasn't adequate room around the truck for even a normal sized car to steer between him and the median; the immediate response of all the males in our truck was to start shouting. Instant hostility. Just add water.

While I cowered in my seat and snickered, our driver honked madly at the truck's driver, who stepped out of his truck in a leisurely fashion and proceeded to go about his business of opening up the back of his truck and pulling out a dolly. Across the boulevard we'd turned from, a city bus was parked, waiting for our lane to clear so he could take his green light.

"You're blocking traffic! Move your truck!" our driver yelled, leaning out the window.

The deliveryman shrugged. "Go around."

"We can't go around, there's an f***ing median, you dick!"

"Do what you want," the deliveryman said, unimpressed by this show of diplomacy. "The truck stays."

And so he went around his business, moving with deliberate placidity, while the guys in our truck frothed, the women in our truck laughed, and the bus driver across the street -- tired with waiting -- finally crossed the intersection to be stuck behind us and the two cars now sandwiched themselves. As there wasn't enough room for the bus to join us in the bottleneck, he ended up blocking two lanes of traffic in the boulevard. One of the blocked lanes held yet another city bus.

My old manager pulled out his cell phone and began, quite calmly, to talk with the Redwood City police.

"Look at this prick," our driver raved. "He's put a stop to the entire municipal transit system."

I craned my neck to look; the bus driver was red-faced and on a phone of his own, jaw set.

Not good with hostility or driving, for that matter, I made myself small on the back seat and laughed until I cried.

On Sunday, I went and got my hair cut (finally!) by the little Chinese man. He was in a talkative mood; for whatever reason, he was determined to get me reading some sort of magazine, and kept interrupting his clipping to trot back to his magazine rack and fetch me another periodical to replace the ones I'd already rejected.

As usual, I emerged with a great haircut, one that I hadn't asked for but that fits rather nicely on my bulbous head, anyway. In case anybody is interested in this tyrant of a man, -- who really is quite good-natured and perfectly friendly, if absolutely pig-headed on the matter of haircuts -- his name is John, and he works for Versailles on Clay Street, between Montgomery and Grant.

On the Saturday before, I bought a beanie baby, purely by accident. Having not bothered to look at the tags before purchasing the toy, I didn't realize it was a beanie baby (2000!) until standing at the bus station. I was mildly mortified; having sworn never to have anything to do with the beanie baby craze, I was embarrassed to discover that I'd been seduced to the Dark Side without even putting up a token resistance. My only consolation was that I'd fallen in love with the toy, irrespective of the label; it's a small polar bear sitting down, made of some polyester plush fabric that makes it feel like a mix between terrycloth and chenille (sp?)

I've bought a beanie baby, but I've renamed it. They wanted it to be named Aurora. Gag me.

He's named Fred. I've taken him to the office, where he's made fast friends with Spid.

On Sunday, I also opened up an envelope that was sitting in my 'came for Yuhri in the mail' slot, and discovered my paycheck. My first paycheck from my new job. In fact, it was a bit of a shock; the check turned out to be quite a bit more than I'd anticipated, ($300-500 more, in fact), that I instantly overreacted by going to Costco and spending $150+. I bought myself a computer game. And a backpack. And forty-six rolls of toilet paper.

That night, we went for dinner, my sister and Smurfette; there's a great Thai restaurant called 'Thai Spice' that lives right on Polk Street, near Jackson. The food was good. My sister, it turns out, never made it to Mexico. "We kept stopping to surf-kayak," she informed me. They returned two days late, anyway.

"Did you bring me back a present?"

"Yeah. Where is it--?"

"Give me my present."

"Hold on. I think I might have left it in his car...."

"Give me my present. Give me my present. Give me my present. Give me my present. Give me my present."

"Shut up!"

"Give me my present! Give me! Give me...!"

Speaking of, I never did get down to the wharf this weekend. Crud. And I have to remember to get the Flamingo's new address again. Hey, Binky! How do you feel about chocolate?