Summertime and the living is easy

I love summer. I love the smell of grass growing, and freshly cut grass (but not too long after it's been cut, then it starts to smell bad), the way skin smells after it's been slowly heating in the sun. I love the smell of grills, and chlorine, and salt air, and suntan lotion. I love that asphalt is too hot to walk on with bare feet, and the feel of that first jump into a cold pool or lake on a really hot day. I love summer ales, and ice cream trucks, and tomato salad. I love that I don't have to bundle up against the cold (except in my office) and the way the sun doesn't set until 8:30.

But I've had a few too many hot, sleepless nights, lately. Boston, can we dump the humidity out to sea and have a few pleasant days in the low 80's with no humidity? I think I might melt otherwise. Or buy an air conditioner.

Operation: Rescue Herman, Day 28

I have been remiss in blogging, and in updating you on Herman's status. I'm sure you have been on tenterhooks. You needn't have worried; there has been no change.



I forgot to introduce you to Fred.



Fred is a Plant Gnome, hailing from Canadia. He crossed the continent and braved the border to keep Herman company.

Part of my lack of updating is because spring has arrived in Boston.



Yesterday was spent playing Frisbee and learning to play Backgammon in the park. Today is the Boston Marathon, which would have wreaked havoc on my commute and work-day. So I'm relaxing at home today, instead.

Oh right, I'm supposed to talk about knitting here, too

Man...is it too soon to say "it's been a long year"? Because it has. January and February have been crazy busy at work, plus I was sick for two weeks, went to NJ for a wedding, and have just generally been hanging out with people (and playing lots of Rock Band).

We had Weather yesterday. Lots of it. Sun. Snow. Sleet. Sun. Sun and sleet. Sun and snow and thunder. Sun. Clouds. Wind. More snow. Etc. So I spent all afternoon cleaning my room, which was desperately overdue (see: previous paragraph). I even unpacked the last box, which was full of yarn. It lives in an under-the-bed tupperware, now.

There's a lot I want to knit. The subway mittens (of the beast) from the Winter Interweave. Bloody Stupid Johnson from the Winter Knitty. But I was going to cast on for Hanami yesterday if I got a chance to knit. Yes, I'm pretty sure this means I've lost my mind. I think I'm OK with that. I'm just concerned because I REALLY want to use this yarn:



but I don't think it's going to work. (It's 100% Bombyx silk from Spirit Trail Fiberworks, purchased at Fiber Fest this summer.)

She smells sea shores by the C line

I tend to forget that Boston is a coastal city. I hardly ever get down to the Harbor, and let's face it, these days, no one throws tea parties like they used to.

But every now and then, the wind shifts and I catch a scent of the sea. Usually a gray, overcast, wet kind of day like today

Obligatory End of the Year Post

Bear with me, this will hopefully be my last navel-gazing post for a while. Something in the air in December makes me really, really introspective.

Remember when you were a kid, and you always listened to grown-ups complaining about time going soooo fast and not knowing what they were talking about? And then all of a sudden you blinked and you were a grown-up?

Well, all of a sudden, I blinked, and I've been out of college and time just keeps going faster and faster and I want to scream stop! I need to enjoy this! But time doesn't listen, because time is a motherfucker.

December of 2004. I graduated college. (Tip for those of you still in college: Don't graduate a semester early.) I had only just met Jon a couple of months previous, and I was still dating him. I went home to NJ. I was antisocial over "winter break" and played a lot of Super Mario World. I had a definite feeling of "Now what?" And in January, I started looking for jobs, starting with a "part-time" job at B&N. (I was full-time inside of 3 weeks. Wheee.)

December of 2005. I was the head cashier at B&N. I spent my time working, sleeping, or drinking at O'Malley's. I think I was depressed. I was disheartened by my inability to find a real job, but still unwilling to look outside of publishing. I got a wretched cold on Christmas Eve. I got dumped and my brand new boots broke all in the same night. I felt trapped. I hated my job. It was bad.

December of 2006. I was an editorial assistant at Prentice Hall. The job was too easy, and I missed Boston. I'd been applying to jobs in Boston unsuccessfully. I'd been so thrilled to get the job, but I was beyond ready to move on, even though I had only been in the job for 10 months. (See: me going on an interview in January, and telling my boss I was doing so. But without that, we wouldn't have any of the stuff in December of 2007) Living at home was driving me insane)

December of 2007. I'm an assistant editor now, all because I did something kinda stupid and really ballsy. Wow. (For the record, the interview was a disaster.) I moved back to Boston, I've got an awesome group of friends here, I was brave and braved the Midwest. For the first time, life is really looking up in December. Even though the EA job > B&N, and B&N > unemployment, I was so...stuck that December sucked. But I had an awesome year, and I'm looking forward to 2008. (I had to double check this earlier. The thing about working in textbook publishing is that you lose track of what year it is, because our copyright years are so skewed from the calendar year.)

I hope your New Year's Eve is everything you want it to be, and that 2008 is an awesome year for everyone.

If It Snowed Cats And Dogs, That Would Hurt. A Lot.

It is, you are no doubt aware, pissing down snow on Boston, and has been since about 1 pm this afternoon. I left work a little early as a result--I'm mostly glad that I beat the rush, though I wonder how many T-riders really stayed it out?

Snow generally turns me into a huge Grinch. There is something about the gray sky, the cold, the wet AND cold things that are coating my jacket and sneaking into my shoes, the need to shovel, the ice, the salt, the--you get the picture--that just makes me absolutely Grumpy. Granted, I can sympathize with Grumpy Bear, the Grinch, and Squidward on the best of days. But snow? Forget it. I just want to crawl into my bed and give everyone the finger until the snow has melted.

No, I don't know why I moved back to Boston either.



But when it's snowing this hard? When a New England city practically shuts down in the face of the rapid accumulation (we're getting 1"-3" an hour)? It does get pretty. And I like the reminder that Nature can kick our asses any time it wants, and there's not much we can do about it, all our technology aside.

Touché, snow. Well-played.

Neither here nor there nor anywhere

I feel a bit.. I don't know. I need to finish packing, I have stuff to take care of (getting my rent check for my sublet sent out, stuff like that) and figure out and I don't want to do any of it. I need to finish wrapping up my old job, and start tackling projects for my new job (okay, I need to be given the projects first) and the first makes me want to cry with boredom and the second with fear. I'm half chomping at the bit, ready to start the new job, half convinced I can't do it and I'm going to fail miserably. I hate in-between stages, living in more than one state. I'm currently an editorial assistant/assistant editor, I work for Boston and New Jersey, live in NJ but need to get to Boston. I hate living with boxes and around boxes and out of and into boxes. I have friends I need to see before I leave and I'm in a hermit phase. There's just too much for me to do and think about. So instead I play WoW. Great.

I had to do the whole in-between-stage thing in 2005. I had to pack up most of my stuff and move out of what had been my bedroom, the entire downstairs of our old house, and into my old bedroom, a much smaller room after G-pa moved in with us. But we were waiting on selling our house and buying a new one, so I spent the summer in that in-between stuff. We had stuff in storage, more than half our life was packed up. And then we finally moved in October and it was like life started moving again. (Okay, so it ground to a bit of a halt for the horror of Holiday 2005. That was the longest month of December ever. But it also really started to move again in January, because that's when I got this job.)

I'm stuck again, and time is running out and not moving and god I just want this all over.

Beantown Bound

So for those of you who don't know me, (though I'm pretty sure no strangers are reading this, at least not yet) I went to Boston University, graduated in December of 2005 and moved home jobless. I got a job down here in NJ, as an editorial assistant at Prentice Hall. Despite an utter hatred for all things Red Sox, I absolutely love Boston and miss it to death. I also love working in publishing, and opportunities in Boston are very limited in comparison with New York. So I had mostly resigned myself to living in NYC.

BUT I just got promoted to Assistant Editor, for another list--located in Boston! I'm so freaking excited. The job is kind of "more of the same," but more intensely, and with less administrative crap. Poo on administrative crap. (Haha, get it?) It's weird, because I didn't even really formally interview. My editor gave me rave reviews, there were a couple of phone calls to an editor up there, plus the Editorial Director (like an Editor-in-Chief, but responsible for more $$), and bam, I was offered the job on Thursday.

So I start May 1st from the office down here, and am going to spend May traveling up to find a sublet for the summer, and probably also training a replacement, assuming my editor hires someone before I move. I just kind of shut down when I think about HOW MUCH I have to do in the mean time. I have a big list of stuff my editor wants done before I leave, plus I have to find a sublet in Boston, possibly buy furniture, figure out what exactly I have and need for apartment living (I still have a lot of stuff from my college apartment, but a Swiffer, for instance, will need to be purchased, because I don't know what happened to mine), pack, say goodbye to everyone down here, start figuring out what to do with my car, etc, etc, etc. Oh, and learn how to do my new job! They want me in Boston in June, hopefully, so that's a lot on my plate. Have started looking over craigslist, have done so math to figure out what I can afford, etc. I think I'm going to need to move fast to find a good place for the summer, though.

Oh, and I'm supposed to be writing a paper right now. Oops.