The quintessential shop assistant

Do I look like everybody's idea of a shop assistant?

I know most people, at some point in their life, have been approached while browsing in a shop by someone and asked if they work there. To most it's happened, once, maybe twice, rarely three times. Less than the fingers on one hand for sure. But to me, IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!!! I can count them on one hand -- about four times over!

Just in the past two weeks, I've been approached by two people in two different stores, and asked if I work there -- and both times, it was in stores that even have uniforms. Ok, so I was wearing a blue top the second time, the same colour as the uniform. But it was a distinctly different shade of blue, and a different kind of top!

Now I know I'm not the sharpest dresser out there, and I don't always look like the elegant, sophisticated journo that I am. But still. . . that's no excuse! If you see someone wearing a handbag, clutching a box of cat food, and seriously contemplating the choice of cereals in the food section of a drug store, you DO NOT go up to them and ask if they work there!

Now I don't mean any disrespect to sales assistants, though I have my own beef with many of them; at least those in the unfriendly New York City anyway. But, if I'm unsure of whether or not someone works at a store where I'm shopping, I at least surreptitiously observe them for a few minutes before approaching them cautiously. When I get to within speaking distance, I usually stand there, staring at them, to see if they respond. If they don't, or if they look at me suspiciously and hold their shopping and their money closer, I slink away.

Why doesn't everyone do that? Surely it beats barging into someone's serious shopping experience and demanding that they help you instead!

A morning toe ritual

Weds and I have a little ritual we perform every morning. (I don't let him sleep in my room at night, for fear that I'll wake up the next morning minus parts of my feet, which he has a penchant for nibbling on).

I get out of bed, walk to the door, and stick my toes out through the half-inch space between the door and the floor. He sleeps just outside the door, so I know he's there. I wait only about a second before I feel a gentle furry nudge, as it dawns on him -- every day -- that the seemingly disjointed toes are actually a part of my anatomy. He excitedly prods at my toes for a bit, enjoying this unexpected diversion, before starting to nibble on them.

Some days, the ritual is slightly different. If I'm moving around in my room, it's not very long before a little white paw sneaks in under the door. I often respond by placing my foot on top of the paw, at which point, a second paw shoots out from under the door, ecstatic at having received a response to his seeking. I play footsie with the two bodiless paws for a bit, before giving in and opening the door.

In either scenario, what follows next is always the same -- the little guy is lying by the door stretched out contentedly, enjoying this game -- and he seems just as excited by it each morning, as if playing it for the first time every time. As soon as I open the door, he gets up, and trots in, rubbing himself against my legs and purring in contented glee.

And I invariably start my day in a good mood, smiling widely, always amazed by how little it takes to make the little guy happy.

A bed. . . and a job offer!

So, after weeks of sleeping on a mattress and on the futon in the living room when the bedroom got too messy, I finally assembled my bed over the weekend.

It shouldn't have taken me 6 weeks to do it. But the person I bought it from had unassembled it, and in doing so, had made the holes the screws went into much larger. And when I tried to put them back, they just wouldn't stay in. So, I had to redrill the holes -- and my drill died about five times in the middle, and the drill bits were too small for the screws. AND, although I had about 20 different Philips and straight screw driver bits, the screws had square heads -- as in, the hole on the screw that the screwdriver head fits into was square. Who does that?!?!? So trying to put square headed screws into holes that were too small with Philips-head screw drivers turned out to be much more difficult that I'd anticipated.

But in the end, I did it! And I managed to lift the extremely heavy flat pieces of wood that the mattress rests on and put them on the frame without doing any permanent damage -- I think anyway. So, I'm just the teensiest, weensiest bit proud of myself. And I'm convinced that I'll be fine if I end up single. Geez, who needs a man when you can build your own furniture!

And, yes, the second part of that title. I got a job offer, but it's a trade magazine, and I'm about to turn it down. Coz I'm a snob, and I don't want to work at a trade magazine -- because that's what I was doing pre-Columbia, and what's the point of this past year if I just go back to doing what I was doing before? So, still no job. And still waiting for a decision from that wire I really wanted. So, everyone who's promised to cross anything, continue to keep 'em crossed!

Eerily quiet day

I am working in ghost town today - for a week, starting today, in fact. It is the first day of "dead week," the second week after a double issue, when there's no magazine to put out for the following week. Everybody -- including my boss, my boss' boss, my psuedo-bosses (when you're at the bottom of the food chain, EVERYBODY's your boss or pseudo-boss) have all left.

Or are trying to, at any rate. This morning's bomb threats have turned the long-awaited holidays of many here into airport nightmares. My editor, always attached to the office by an invisible umbilical cord, called me this morning from the airport, to make sure everything was ok. Everything's fine, I reassured him. He wasn't so fine. He was stuck at the airport, trying to get to the south.

It's something between a lazy and a productive day. It's been pretty quiet, and, with no deadlines, I haven't been too motivated to work. But I have actually been somewhat productive - even if it's not a work-related productive. I've updated my serious blog which I'm learning is a lot of work. And I've been reading, and actually concentrating, without the usual jumble of voices around me.

Plus it's the official good bye cocktail day for the interns -- only it looks like the interns will be the only ones around. I am not leaving, so the good byes don't apply to me. But I plan to go anyway. To have some human company for the first time today. Of course, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the free drinks!

Return of the Internet

Dear sweet Internet. How I've missed you!And now that you've arrived, I feel as if a part of me that I'd lost has returned to me!

And so, dear reader, I've created a new blog -- mostly because I want to write more seriously and on topics of more gravity than I have been in this one. Not that I will necessarily succeed, but I want to at least try.

I created this blog because I wanted to make myself read and think and form opinions. I take in what I read, but I find that unless I make myself, I don't always think about them or form opinions. The latter especially, I find especially difficult to do.

I feel like I have not particularly succeeded in my aim with this one. And since it has taken a different direction altogether, I thought it might be easier to start again, rather than try to change course now. So my new blog, The Musings ofNichola is an attempt to awaken my brain. And, while I'm aware that I am probably not the most informed or knowledgable person on most topics, I do hope that some good will come of it, somewhere, somehow.

What about this blog, I hear you ask, betraying the sinking feeling of losing something you absolutely cannot do without:P Fear not, dear reader, this blog will still continue, as the place where I vent, where I mutter and muse (???) about my own life. So, please continue to visit. . .

Job news jitters

If it’s not the aftermath of a mediocre date, it’s the aftermath of a mediocre job interview. The staring-at-the-phone-willing-it-to-ring scenario takes on many forms these days. The date says, “I’ll call you,” and you sit and wait, biting your fingernails, wondering if your phone has developed an aversion to ringing for some unfathomable reason. The job interviewer says “I’ll call you,” and it’s the post-mediocre-date scenario all over again.

In the past few weeks – the past many weeks actually – I’ve been waiting for my phone to ring – from a prospective employer, not a prospective love of my life – though the former might morph into the latter, given the way things are going with me. It is a financial news wire, and I want the job for several reasons – because I want to work for a wire, because I want to work on daily, or even hourly, deadlines, to better understand financial news, to work for an international news organization and one that sponsors foreign employees.

Things haven’t gone as smoothly as I expected. I had a trial and a second interview exactly a month ago tomorrow. As I thanked the interviewer after a very intense three days, I was told that they would contact me in a week. Remembering that it took them longer than that to get back to me after my first interview, I took this information with a pinch of salt.

So when the first week came and went with no news, I didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. As the second week inched to its close, though, I started to worry. The earnings season was starting, and they had warned me that it would be a busy time. I knew there would be no news for a long time after. So I called. I called the editor, her assistant, left messages and emailed both. I heard not a peep.

And then the first earnings week arrived and my faith started to ebb. I waited till the end of the week, and called again. This time I got the editor. Had they made a decision yet? Sort of. Apparently, my test had been “on the fence,” not good enough to make me a shoo-in, but not bad enough to send me off into the newswire netherworld either. “Call back in a week,” she said.

And so I did. This morning. “I’ll call you back this afternoon,” she said.

So, here I am, back to the staring-at-the-phone-willing-it-to-ring scenario all over again.

More to come soon!

Oh my poor neglected blog! Yes, I am aware that I have not blogged in a long time. But I will get Internet connection in my apartment on Saturday, and it will write lots after that!

And, I'm starting a new blog! More on that to come later! Watch this space! :)