Archive for the 'work work work' Category

Well, hello there

Been some time since I dropped by this place.  I’m still alive.  I can’t even say I’ve been terribly busy lately, what with having graduated library school and gotten laid off sometime in May.  I *can* say that I’ve been wiped out by the heat and not really all that interested in writing.  I don’t even read many blogs anymore, just a handful, and a lot of them are design blogs.

I’ve spent the summer looking for a permanent library gig, and it’s going well so far.  I had nothing, nothing at all for months, but this month everything’s started happening.  I’ve got some local interviews, and some on the West Coast; any of them would require me to move from my current apartment, if not from New York, so I’ve started packing up. All things being equal, I’d rather not have to change cities and buy a car.  I like my life here.

From what I’ve been hearing from some of my references, the potential employers who’ve been checking up on me don’t seem to really understand what it is I’ve been doing for the past ten years since I jumped off the partnership track — even though I’ve told them in the interview, and on my resume, etc.  It’s like they don’t understand that you can practice law even if you’re not employed by a law firm as a full-time associate on a traditional path.  Well, at least a couple of them have now been educated by my references.  This won’t really be a concern when I go for the next job, because I’ll have a track record as a law librarian, which is something they’ll understand.

Personally?  I’ve been using my time off to focus on fitness.  I looked back over my logbook, which I started in January, and I haven’t really been going to the gym as often as I’d like to think I do.  A lot of that had to do with injury, but a lot of it was just mismanaged time — I’d get a late start to the day, and then didn’t want to start a workout at 8pm when I had to go to work in the morning.  But now I have not a whole lot else to do, since it’s been so hot that a lot of the outdoor stuff I’d like to do seems unappealing.  The gym, however, is air-conditioned (though the weight room’s unit’s been out).  I’ve also just — like, this week — started running again.  It’s going well so far, though I know from experience it’s not until week 5 or so on the Couch to 5K plan that things start really going haywire with my ITB.  My plan is to do each week twice, and hope that’s enough time for my body to adapt, and to foam-roll the living fuck out of my lower body.

Dating’s sort of not been happening.  I’ve gone on a couple, but reluctantly since I don’t know if I’ll be here in a month.  Nothing’s come of them, but they were pleasant enough ways to pass the time.

The pets are both bad and good.  They’re all currently in good health, but Sugarplum had cancer surgery in April and just wasn’t healing, and wasn’t healing, and wasn’t healing.  Every time it looked like her wound was closing, I’d go to check on it and there would be A GIANT HOLE IN MY CAT.  The vet even did a second surgery to clean up the edges, but it still wasn’t healing, and he started taking it personally.  Finally, they decided she has really poor circulation and needed to be treated as if she’s diabetic.  So she spent three weeks at the vet’s office in a sterile cage, getting compresses and wound care and mainlining antibiotics and — strangest of all — snuggling up to the staff.   Amazingly, when I picked her up, the giant hole was down to nothing, and she was indeed all cuddly, for about a week.  Then she became the crankypants I know and love.

Rats.

The bad news:  The project I’ve been working on has ended, quite suddenly, so I’m laid off.  No one seems to know what happened, because all the relevant people in contact with my agency were out of the office when the decision was made.  I’m guessing either they called a halt to the project because we just weren’t finding anything new, or the case settled.

The good news:  Since I’m about to graduate from my MSLIS program (well, in May), I decided to start looking for library/researcher work.  And there’s stuff out there, either temporary or permanent.  Maybe not quite the jobs I had been envisioning, but jobs in New York nonetheless.  And maybe jobs with health insurance.

What I saw

This morning, I saw a woman throwing garbage into the back of a Sanitation truck.  I’ve lived here 12 years now, and I’ve never seen that; Sanitation seemed to be an even bigger boys’ club than FDNY.  For that matter, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman on a garbage truck in my whole life.

Earlier this week, I was reviewing documents in a case involving the kind of technology companies that illustrate their presentations with photos of young, thin, hip, pretty, multiracial people in airy modern offices in futuristic high-rises.  Occasionally, you’ll see an older man in “boss” posture, but never an older woman, and forget about fat people.  Sometimes, you get a hip young thing in a wheelchair.   But this week, I saw a type of person that I’d never even thought to look for:  a pregnant woman.  In the hip-young-creative-cutting-edge-techno-business setting.   What does it say about me, or at least about my expectations, that that shocked me like nothing else has shocked me?

Busy

Life interrupts.  Pardon the lack of posting, but I’ve been working full-time and taking two compressed summer classes, which is like taking four regular classes.  And I’m taking four in the fall, too, trying to graduate early because who the hell knows if I’ll have a job past August.

The pets are more or less fine, though Sugarplum, on top of everything else she’s had to go through this year, has had a mammary tumor removed.  The edges are clean, but the tumor is highly malignant, which means that if it shows up in her lungs, that’s pretty much all she wrote.

The tomato plants, so promising in early June, have suffered terribly from June’s wet, cold weather.  I don’t think they’re showing signs of blight, but they’re mildewed and the leaves are falling off.  I’ve gotten a few large-cherry-sized tomatoes from them, but nothing to write home about.  It’s going to be a lousy year for tomatoes in the Northeast.

Since I’ve made the decision to graduate in December instead of June of 2010, I’ve begun poking around looking for jobs in law librarianship.  While I can’t really begin looking in earnest until October because I won’t be available until January, the market looks pretty decent in that there are, actually, jobs available if one is willing to relocate.  I’ve also got 11+ years of legal research experience, so I’ll definitely have an advantage over anyone who’s coming right out of law school/library school who doesn’t have that.

Another thing I’m finding out is that either jobs are scarce in New York, or people hang on to their jobs forever so there are never any openings, and if there are any openings, they’re not advertised.  But I’m very willing to relocate, at least within reason (like, I don’t want to get stuck somewhere with miserably hot weather, lots of fundamentalists, and no city life as compensation).  I’ve also been told this is a terrible year to be looking because nobody who was ready to retire can afford to now that their 401(k)s have crashed, so they’re staying put, which means nobody else can move up, which means the entry-level jobs don’t open up.

Hope springs eternal, though, and I’m headed to the AALL annual meeting next weekend in the hopes of at least networking if not actually snagging a few interviews.  Got my suit, got my reasonably-priced hotel not far from the convention site, working on getting business cards, and my shoes are in the mail.

A purchase I didn’t want to make, but nonetheless turned out well

So I just bought myself a netbook.  And I reaaaaallly didn’t want to, but it worked out.

I kinda like the thing.

I bought it because I’m now working on a project at work that’s online, so I can do weekend work from home rather than having to schlep in to Manhattan and waste a lot of my weekend in transit.  But the problem is, the project requires Internet Explorer, which Microsoft no longer supports for the Mac.  And then, I need to be able to open links to native documents, which are all in Windows format.  While I have Open Office,  I can’t even see the links because the program I have to use won’t work on anything but a Microsoft platform.

I thought I’d maybe use the computer lab at school, since I did pay an access fee and all, but the site doesn’t work there, either, possibly because it’s disabled on shared computers.  So off I went to J&R and got myself a cheap little netbook.  It’s really not bad; I don’t have any trouble seeing the screen, it’s got a trial version of Office so I can access everything but PowerPoints (which just won’t load for some reason, but I just skip those for the time being), it’s plenty fast, the keyboard is reasonably comfortable, it’s very light and fits in my purse.  The only drawback is the 3-hour battery (the version that’s $80 more has a 6-hour battery) but since I will primarily be using this at home or at a coffee shop with outlets, it doesn’t really matter.  Oh, and the fact that you can’t view the entire window in your browser, but I’ve already gotten the scroll-click-scroll thing down.

I may use this for my travel computer, since it weighs nothing and it’s cheap enough that I can easily replace it if it gets lost, stolen or dropped.  It’s also cheap enough that it’ll pay for itself in no time since it will allow me to bill a little extra time evenings and weekends.

A good question

A LTTE from the New York Times:

To the Editor:

I fully agree with Bob Herbert and President-elect Barack Obama that we must fix the infrastructure. But big-muscle construction jobs seem male-oriented. So what about the women? What retooling for jobs is being considered for all those women who have lost their employment?

Alison Goodwin Schiff
New York, Nov. 26, 2008

Yes, what about the women?  Are there further plans for economic stimulus that would involve jobs that wouldn’t require women to break into male-dominated fields and all the hassle that entails if they want a piece of the economic-stimulus pie?  Are there plans to ensure that a substantial portion of the construction jobs go to women and women-owned businesses?  Are there plans to ensure that women don’t face discrimination on the job while employed with these infrastructure projects?

And while we’re asking, what about unions and prevailing-wage laws?   Are there plans to ensure that the stimulus plan will strengthen rather than weaken these?

What Barack Obama could learn from Mike Rowe

Gorgeous and fuzzy

No, not how to look good shirtless. How to talk to, and about, working-class (and specifically white working-class) people.

Because Obama’s really screwed the pooch on that.

Mike Rowe hosts a show on the Discovery Channel called Dirty Jobs, in which he “explore[s] the country, looking for people who aren’t afraid to get dirty.” He’s been doing this since 2003 — and by his own admission, never expected the show to get past the pilot stage — and has done nearly 175 jobs at this point.

What’s very interesting about the jobs featured is that they’re a combination of pure blue-collar and multi-degreed scientific/engineering jobs. And one of the things that keeps the show going is that Mike, even though he’s had “six years of college” as he mentioned in a segment on septic-tank technicians* in Wisconsin, and has been a singer in the chorus in the Baltimore Opera for a few years, he (almost) never looks down on the people he’s working with (with a few exceptions, which always make for the most uncomfortable segments, such as Ruby the brick stacker). Usually, he makes himself into the fool, even if he spouts Shelley while doing so. And he’s gotten a really good reception from working people, who are eager to use his show to highlight how hard and/or dirty their jobs are in a way that doesn’t overly valorize them but also doesn’t condescend to them.

In other words, treats them like people.

Enjoy the following clips. Continue reading ‘What Barack Obama could learn from Mike Rowe’

Job interview today

Possibly for a “real” job. Though they reserve the right to offer temp-to-perm as well.

In any event, it will pay a lot better than what I’m doing now, and be far more interesting work. I swear, if I never have to look at another Power Point presentation on marketing, I can die happy.

Best part? The job’s downtown, which would make moving to Queens less than ideal at this point.  Best laid plans and all…

Updates

The apartment is 98% clutter-free and 99% in good repair. It’s amaaaazing how different it is to have the place look nice and neat. I’m even keeping it that way, now that I’ve gotten it there, which astonishes me. And now that it’s neat, it doesn’t take long at all to clean. Pictures on the weekend, when I actually have everything finished.

I’ve also signed a contract with a realtor, and the open house will be a week from Sunday. I’m hoping I get an offer that day, so I have minimal disruption in my life. For one thing, Junebug will have to be farmed out while people are coming in to look at it.

I’m also back at work, at the place I’d been working at before. They have a few last documents on the project I’d been working on to finish, since there had been some kind of problem with migrating old emails when the company was bought out. And this is where all the good stuff is, too.

Then, there’s another doc review starting up this week. This firm likes to keep people around who have institutional memory, so they don’t have to keep training people. Though they’ll get rid of you if you fail to grasp the concept that you can’t let privileged documents through the net.

Drat.

I didn’t get the legal-analyst gig I really, really wanted.

Oh, well.  This frees me up to go to school.