It's not official for the DMV, the bank, the insurance company or even for me yet, but all my stuff is here, so I officially live in New York.
I feel I must make one outstanding, pervading, overarching observation that I am sure will blow apart every preconceived notion any of you have ever had about the state of New York; this observation may even change your lives with the meteoral impact of the great weight of the information it carries:
IT'S COLD.
Let me allow that mind-numbing wealth of information to set in.
Okay, you think you can go on now?
The hilarious part is that it's not even winter, and it's not even that cold, but it's WINDY. Oswego is a port town, right on Lake Ontario, and my house is, quite literally and God I wish I was kidding, two blocks from the water. So take steady 20-25mph winds that will only get stronger as the season goes on, add clouds and rain that have been around since I arrived, throw in regular Oswego fall temperatures of 55 degrees or so, and for spice sprinkle on a Carolina girl who hasn't unpacked any of her winter clothes yet.
Speaking of rain, it was raining when I left North Carolina; it rained for the two days that my mother and I were on the road; it rained when we got here, and lo and behold it's still raining. We saw the sun yesterday for about two hours. I asked Garrett if it's always like this, and he blinked. "I did tell you, didn't I, that they call Oswego 'the land of the steel sky'?"
"...oh. Guess you did."
But if the weather isn't smiling, the people sure are. I had been excited to get up to Oswego because Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi is at SUNY Oswego, Garrett's alma mater. Nu Chapter is a great bunch of folks; not that my native Mu Chapter isn't, but each Chapter has its own identity and personality, and I feel so at home with the Nus. When I first met them over a year ago, they welcomed me as their own. Granted, we're all Brothers, so we're all each other's keepers, but they didn't make me feel like a Mu visiting Nus. They made me feel like a Brother visiting Brothers, which is how it should be. This time was no different. They were overjoyed to see me when I walked into their Brothers' meeting last night, and they included me in their conversations when we went out to eat afterwards. They're so friendly that one of them even cuddled with me this morning after Garrett left for work-- with his permission, of course (not that I wasn't a little surprised to see a face that was not Garrett's beside me-- she meant well, really).
I haven't had time to feel any real nostalgia for North Carolina, though I do frequently think about the folks I left behind. I miss them already, and I've found myself wondering what they're doing tonight and maybe we can go out to Franklin Street or something. Then I remember that Franklin Street is a bit of a hike for me now.
Just to let everyone know: I am saving up all the hugs I normally give you folks for when I come back for Christmas. So everyone in North Carolina, be prepared to be hugged to death by a small white girl.
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
9/10/09
So Fresh and So Clean Clean
It's hard to believe I started my blog three years ago. I was still in college three years ago, Lord bless me.
I decided to lay it to rest for several reasons. First, its original purpose was to be a public diary for those homebound to read while I was abroad in New Zealand. I wanted to give my friends and family a taste of life over there, filtered through the unique and sometimes humorous lens of my writing. I had intended to delete it after I got back home and save the archives. After I got home, though, I kept at it for a more selfish reason.
Second is the selfish reason. I wanted to keep myself verbally lubricated; I wanted to use it so I wouldn't lose it, but a blog just wasn't the place to do it. A blog, being in a public place like the internet (hard to imagine somewhere more public), should contain material that is tangentially, marginally, slightly, obliquely of interest to the public. My blog, after New Zealand, was not that. It had its moments; in its last year I tried to restrict entries to humorous vignettes and works of semi-fiction.
Third and probably most important was my realization that I was writing freely about events at my place of employment that, if found and connected to the company, would get me in big trouble, despite their truth. So from here on out, I won't mention anything about my work other than in the vaguest terms, because I do not want this blog to appear whenever someone Googles my place of employment.
That being said, welcome to the new blog!
There are yet three more reasons why I'm starting this one: First, even though I haven't done any real writing in a while, the itch never really goes away.
Second, I wanted this one to be a throwback to my last one. I started that one for New Zealand and I'm starting this one for New York. I will be moving there at the end of this month, not for a visit or for a study abroad, but for actual real.
Most of you know that I'm moving upstate, right on lake Ontario, to a college town called Oswego. It is home to SUNY Oswego, which is home to Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi. By no coincidence, SUNY Oz is Garrett's alma mater, and his new teaching job is in the next town over. He's taught at Mexico High School before, so of course all the school knows him and he was given an interview and then a job in two days. Because that's how he rolls.
The third purpose of this entry really is to just flail with glee and proclaim to all the world that I am officially ending my current employment in 12 days. I would have posted something on Facebook, but my boss recently got an account there. Oh what is this world coming to.
Handing in my two weeks' notice usually wouldn't be worth more than the breath it takes to say it, but compare this situation to retiring honorably from a year and a half service in the Revolutionary War, rather than dying (not from your leg being shot off by a six-pounder but) from a botched surgery and gangrene or blood poisoning.
Not that working under my boss is as life-threatening and disease-ridden as marching on the front line of an 18th century battle, but it's just as nerve-wracking and maybe a bit louder.
Soldiers in my department get mown down too soon more often than not, most for no good reason. One quite literally has to keep one's ass down or it will get shot off. That is the philosophy under which I have been operating for these past 17 months. It's paid off for me, but sometimes that's not even enough. I won't try to psychoanalyze her because to attempt it would surely send me down a spiral into madness. But I have known good soldiers, honest soldiers, hard workers with good hearts that she pink slipped out of the blue. Since that is the only thing, I repeat, the only thing about which my boss is tight-lipped, we have to rely on the extensive ant-tunnel spiderweb root system other nature metaphor network of gossipers to get any sort of answer or story about why they were fired. And the only story for some of those folks is a shrug and a tenuous speculation diluted by its frequent use.
But I have survived. I have survived 4 a.m. shifts, three different buyers, a major store renovation, a promotion, a new assistant team leader, a new store manager, two new assistant store managers, several cycles of employee turnover, two summers of slow sales, hundreds of angry customers, an economic meltdown, a personnel meltdown, and most importantly, I have survived the slow and inevitable decline of our department.
And in case you're wondering, yes, it was worth it. I made friends and money. That's one more thing than I was expecting to get out of it.
I decided to lay it to rest for several reasons. First, its original purpose was to be a public diary for those homebound to read while I was abroad in New Zealand. I wanted to give my friends and family a taste of life over there, filtered through the unique and sometimes humorous lens of my writing. I had intended to delete it after I got back home and save the archives. After I got home, though, I kept at it for a more selfish reason.
Second is the selfish reason. I wanted to keep myself verbally lubricated; I wanted to use it so I wouldn't lose it, but a blog just wasn't the place to do it. A blog, being in a public place like the internet (hard to imagine somewhere more public), should contain material that is tangentially, marginally, slightly, obliquely of interest to the public. My blog, after New Zealand, was not that. It had its moments; in its last year I tried to restrict entries to humorous vignettes and works of semi-fiction.
Third and probably most important was my realization that I was writing freely about events at my place of employment that, if found and connected to the company, would get me in big trouble, despite their truth. So from here on out, I won't mention anything about my work other than in the vaguest terms, because I do not want this blog to appear whenever someone Googles my place of employment.
That being said, welcome to the new blog!
There are yet three more reasons why I'm starting this one: First, even though I haven't done any real writing in a while, the itch never really goes away.
Second, I wanted this one to be a throwback to my last one. I started that one for New Zealand and I'm starting this one for New York. I will be moving there at the end of this month, not for a visit or for a study abroad, but for actual real.
Most of you know that I'm moving upstate, right on lake Ontario, to a college town called Oswego. It is home to SUNY Oswego, which is home to Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi. By no coincidence, SUNY Oz is Garrett's alma mater, and his new teaching job is in the next town over. He's taught at Mexico High School before, so of course all the school knows him and he was given an interview and then a job in two days. Because that's how he rolls.
The third purpose of this entry really is to just flail with glee and proclaim to all the world that I am officially ending my current employment in 12 days. I would have posted something on Facebook, but my boss recently got an account there. Oh what is this world coming to.
Handing in my two weeks' notice usually wouldn't be worth more than the breath it takes to say it, but compare this situation to retiring honorably from a year and a half service in the Revolutionary War, rather than dying (not from your leg being shot off by a six-pounder but) from a botched surgery and gangrene or blood poisoning.
Not that working under my boss is as life-threatening and disease-ridden as marching on the front line of an 18th century battle, but it's just as nerve-wracking and maybe a bit louder.
Soldiers in my department get mown down too soon more often than not, most for no good reason. One quite literally has to keep one's ass down or it will get shot off. That is the philosophy under which I have been operating for these past 17 months. It's paid off for me, but sometimes that's not even enough. I won't try to psychoanalyze her because to attempt it would surely send me down a spiral into madness. But I have known good soldiers, honest soldiers, hard workers with good hearts that she pink slipped out of the blue. Since that is the only thing, I repeat, the only thing about which my boss is tight-lipped, we have to rely on the extensive ant-tunnel spiderweb root system other nature metaphor network of gossipers to get any sort of answer or story about why they were fired. And the only story for some of those folks is a shrug and a tenuous speculation diluted by its frequent use.
But I have survived. I have survived 4 a.m. shifts, three different buyers, a major store renovation, a promotion, a new assistant team leader, a new store manager, two new assistant store managers, several cycles of employee turnover, two summers of slow sales, hundreds of angry customers, an economic meltdown, a personnel meltdown, and most importantly, I have survived the slow and inevitable decline of our department.
And in case you're wondering, yes, it was worth it. I made friends and money. That's one more thing than I was expecting to get out of it.
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