Feets of Fashion

My new job requires a fair bit of walking around town -- to and from the post office twice everyday, with a stop at a private delivery service box, hand deliveries, to and from the bank daily; not to mention trips to the grocery and newsagent for any other sundry items the office needs, as well as occasionally getting take-away lunches for the boss or afternoon runs for milkshakes.

I am not complaining about the walking around town, in fact, I enjoy being out of the office.  But it does make for different clothing requirements than my previous job.  Especially when it comes to footwear.  I have never really worn high-heels, or heels of any height to be perfectly honest, so my shoes tend toward the sensible, if quirky, end of the spectrum.  No, my shoes are a problem with this job -- preventing blisters is.  Toward that end, I have decided that socks are my best defense.  And despite a nagging little voice telling me that socks are not professional-dress footwear, I have decided to indulge my tendencies toward quirky socks.

Work-Day Worlds

I started a new job last week.  Without revealing too much about my job (as I would prefer to keep it), I will say that I have learned that attorneys are the same the world over.  If you have ever worked for attorneys then you know what I mean.  But if your only experience of attorneys comes from television shows/movies, I do not wish to disillusion you, so I will say nothing more.

I work in a small, seaside resort town, which I understand will get busy in about three days and stay pretty much packed through January.  If that is truly the case, I am glad I started when it was relatively quiet.

But already, in the two weeks I have been on the job, I have noticed some distinct differences from my job in New Orleans, none of which have to do with the different areas of law in which I now find myself working.

• Working in a street-level office makes for much more traffic walking by, and many more people dropping in.
• Working next door to a busy veterinarian's practice makes for more puppy dog traffic.  I have lost count of the number of times each day the trash cans on the sidewalk are "marked."
• The US Post Office may be being forced into bankruptcy, but they not only deliver the mail, but they pick it up as well!  And the prices for mailing various items are easily determined on the website and are consistent -- a letter weighing over an ounce will cost the same amount to mail today as it did yesterday and will tomorrow; it is not at the whim of the person accepting the item for mailing.
• Banking is easier in the US.  I am not sure I will ever understand the Australian banking system or checks.
• The entire world should give it up and adopt letter-size paper -- I am certain there is no way to fold a A4 sheet so that it will fit in a standard #10 envelope well.
• There are actually fairly decent file/document management software programs out there - they are just not widely used in the US.
• CodaClips have to be the best invention ever for filing systems!
• Australians, as a people, need to enunciate better.  I feel terrible, but the truth is, half the time I cannot tell the difference between Terry and Jerry when people say their names on the phone.
• And as a related point, cell phones have to be one of the single worst inventions.  I have really come to despise them.  If you are on a cell phone and drop the call more than three times in 2 minutes, please wait until you have better reception to try to make the call again.  Unless someone is bleeding out on your lap, nothing is so important that it cannot wait five minutes.
• Australians seem to be more likely than Americans to take their dogs with them on walks (Australians seem to be more likely than Americans to take walks), but I wish they would consider the dog and not bring them along when visiting places the dogs cannot enter.  It hurts my heart to walk past lonely, forgotten dogs outside the cafes, bakeries, banks, groceries, post offices, or professional offices I pass daily.
• Iced Tea is an amazing beverage.  I do not understand why it has not caught on with the Australians, who drink only marginally less tea than the Irish.  Along those same lines, $3.50 for a 6-ounce cup of hot tea is highway robbery.  It cannot cost anywhere near $3.50 for a bag of Lipton and 6 ounces of near boiling water.  Also, for a country that is as snobbish about their coffee as Australia is, it amazes me that when I order tea, I do not get a choice of gourmet teas, but am automatically brought one bag of plain, run-of-the-mill Lipton.  And while I am here, what is the deal with providing only 1 teaspoon packet of sugar with each pot of tea?  And why no lemons????  Milk in tea is an abomination.
• The US has a bigger variety of candy -- not just chocolate bars and gummi lollies.  I miss things like Bit-O-Honey, Mike & Ike, Sweetarts, and salt water taffy.  Australia has some great candies -- honeycomb among them, but the variety is much less than offered in the US.

Those are just some of my initial observations from my first two weeks at work.  I am sure there will be more as the weeks go on.  The girls at the office talk about how busy it will be getting when the "season" begins, but I am pretty sure I can handle it.  After all, I worked in Downtown New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Super Bowl, Sugar Bowl, NCAA Final Four, Saints Fever, Southern Decadence, and Essence Fest.  I know how to deal with crowds, and drunk crowds at that.  I am anxious to see if the local police should take crowd control lessons from the NOPD, and whether decency standards are the same.  Which reminds me, I wonder if I could make a fortune introducing "go cups."  Come to think of it, 72-ounce frozen daiquiris in insulated Styrofoam cups would be a huge seller!!!

Stopping the World

Ten years ago today, I was at work, on an otherwise normal Tuesday morning when the world stopped.  I heard a bit of a news story about a plane flying into the World Trade Center in New York.  After turning first to CNN's website, and finding it (and other news sites) overwhelmed with traffic, I called my mother, who was at home, to ask her to turn on the news and tell me what was going on.  She confirmed that yes, at least one plane had been flown into the World Trade Center and more news was coming in.

It was not the first time I had woken my mother with world stopping news.  I had done the same in 1986, when my younger brother and I watched the Space Shuttle Challenger explode moments after liftoff.  I woke her up with similar news one Saturday morning in 2003 when the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost upon re-entry.  It has become a family legend that you should not answer the phone when I call in the mornings.

Having shaken my mother's world, I turned back to mine.  I had work to get done and work that would keep me from checking the Internet for updates, and could thankfully, keep me away from television and the live, never-ceasing coverage of the attacks.

I also had a voice-mail that kept my world grounded.  I nearly wore out the replay button on my voicemail listening over and over to my dearest thanking me for a silly birthday present I had sent him from London.  I had returned to the US on September 7, after a trip to Ireland and London.  While I was there, I found a silly little teddy bear at Harrods and mailed it to him as his gift.  I still have a sound file of that voicemail.

I have been lucky enough to have been able to avoid the now-iconic footage of the planes flying into the World Trade Center, and the subsequent collapse.  I have seen still photos, but never the video footage.  I do not want to.  Once you see that footage, you can never un-see it.  And I do not need to see it to know what happened.

As the ten-year remembrance (I hesitate to call it an anniversary) of the attacks on the US have come, every network has retrospectives -- one of them offers a minute-by-minute oral history from those that were there.  The problem is, WE WERE ALL THERE!  Anyone over 20 years old today was there.  We do not need retrospectives.  We do not need help remembering what happened, or even where we were when the world stopped.  Some of us do not want to remember.  Some of us were scarred enough that and the following days.  The legacy of the event is being lived out daily -- from building IDs and security checks at banks to the need to strip nearly naked at airports.  It has touched every facet of our daily lives.  We cannot forget it if we wanted.  The world is now measured in terms of before 9/11 and after 9/11.  The legacy is everywhere and ever-present.  We cannot forget it.

My acknowledgement of the day will not be at television networks' dictate.  I did not spend that day ten years ago glued to the television nor will I spend my Sunday there.  I will not be watching any of the retrospectives.  I do not need to hear minute-by-minute reports.  I have lived ten years without seeing the video footage, I do not intend to change that.  That is not to say that I will not pause for a moment of prayerful silence today.  I will pause to remember not only those lost at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but also those lost in a field in Pennsylvania.  I will also pause for a moment in thankful memory of those in the Canadian cities who opened their homes and arms to the passengers on the US-bound diverted flights when the airspace was closed, the first responders and clean-up crews who had to sort through the wreckage of all three locations, those men and women of the military who have sacrificed their lives in the fight against terrorism, and everyone the world over who has had to make sense of and muddle through the world since then.

May the Lord Have Mercy on Us All.

Tempus Fugit

I start a new job on Monday morning.  I have not been at work since December 17, 2010.  That's almost nine months I have been on what is essentially an unpaid vacation.  Admittedly, I have moved to the other side of the world in those nine months, so it was not all a relaxing vacation.

I am very excited to start a new job.  Nine months of having nowhere to be weekday mornings at 9:00 am have had me at a loss for what to do with myself and time.  It has truly been since I was 3 or 4, that I have not had somewhere to be at 9:00 am on most weekday mornings.  I have enjoyed being able to sleep late and stay in my pajamas until after noon if I wanted.  But now I am ready to be doing something useful with my time.  I don't know about everyone else, but I found with no demands on my time, I actually ended up doing less with my days than I did when I was at work and had only the time in the evenings in which to get things done.  I started out with grand plans to read books, keep the house neat and tidy, do yoga or exercise everyday, organize my books and other stuff, put boxes of photos in albums, and finish some craft projects...you know all those things you never have time to get done when you are working everyday.  And yet, I have done none of that.  The more time I had, the less I did.

It's time to get back to work every weekday so that I can get things done!  There are projects piling up.  Things need to get done.  I need to have less time to do them all in.  There are 84 hours until I punch that first time clock and I can't wait.