My pretty office

So they moved my desk a couple of weeks ago. I was in this side room, basically the entire office was in one section, and then four people, including me, were in this other room. Which at first I hated, but the women who were in that room were pretty nice, and I sat right in a small room with them so I could talk to them.

Then they decided to move me. It was allegedly so that I would be closer to my two attorneys, but I really feel like there was some other weird reason, like maybe the woman who was sitting where I sit now, they wanted her to be somewhere else. I just know that they really were pushing me to like my new desk. So anyway the new desk is like, they basically made an office out of a space in the hallway, and then put up a screen, like a wooden folding screen, and a tall fake plant to create "privacy." So everyone else around me is in offices, real offices with doors, and I'm in the hallway. Every time someone walks by, I hear it, every time people stand out in the hallway talking, I hear it. But, there's no one around me, if I wanted to like, look at another human being's face. And everyone I talk to is like, "Sooooo, how are you liking your new space? Is it more quiet?" My supervisor, Patsy, asked me that, and I was like, "Well I like it, I have more room, but no, it's really not more quiet at all, I can hear everyone walking by and talking all around me." I don't understand why everyone thinks this would be more quiet, it's really odd.

Then yesterday I find out that this other paralegal used to work at this desk, but there was no screen or plant, she was just at a desk in the middle of the hallway, and her attorney didn't like it, so her attorney bought the screen and plant with her own money. Now this woman, Margo (who's apparently the office like, interior decorator because she spends all day moving fake plants around), comes over today and is like, you know I'm thinking of giving you more shelves because it looks like you don't have enough room, you're keeping files on the floor. Which is true, I have piles of files on the floor, but they're files that the attorneys bring in for me or whatever, it's just easier. So I said, yeah but it's not a problem, it works for me. Well, apparently the attorney who "designed" this area is "really funny" about it and needs it to look nice, and files on the floor make it look not-nice, so they're going to disrupt my day to bring in more shelves, that I don't need, and won't be able to access because the way they are going to move the shelves will put the majority of them behind my desk. But it'll look prettier I guess, so it's all worth it. This is the same woman who on my first day occupied an hour and half moving the shelves in my cubicle around so that you wouldn't be able to see the electrical outlet because it was "so ugly." Don't these people have to work to do???

I'm famous!!

I googled my blog, and someone linked to it! And it was a news source that reports on an issue dear to my heart: Bird Flu Breaking News. See that, it says "the Best Bird Flu Blogs." I am officially one of The Best Bird Flu Blogs. I think I need an awards section.

P.S. - I just discovered how to post to my blog from email. Meaning I will be posting all day long from work.

I'm back, and it's important: Dead Birds.

So maybe you've heard about these dead birds they found on the street in Austin, the ones that turned my fifteen- minute morning commute into an hour-and-fifteen-minute iron-clad-excuse-to-be-late- to-work. Well they've pretty much ruled out bird flu, or at least they're claiming to. But I want to know, does anyone think I can somehow like, whip the mob up into a frenzy and get Austin to ban fowl kept as livestock inside the city, namely the rooster next door? I mean it's kind of barbaric in this day and age to have livestock, filthy birds, in an urban area. We are living right on top of each other, and I can smell their chicken coop (can salmonella be air-borne?). I feel like I could start some kind of fear-mongering campaign. I mean it's really pretty archaic that people should be allowed to have these birds. Any thoughts?

We're In!!!!

Okay so much happened yesterday. We went to this street fair thing, like some kind of arts & crafts festival that they roped off 6th Street for. There were lots of stalls with different crafts and things like that. There was a petting zoo, with lots of goats, but they also had a baby kangaroo in there that I felt sooo bad for, because it was obviously completely terrified of all these little kids, and it was all alone, and the other goats were mean to it and would try to butt it. It alternated between trying to escape every time someone came in and cowering in the corner. It was pretty cruel to have it in there, I thought.

We had checked out of the hostel so we just had to drive around all day, trying to find things to do and places to be until 12:01 when we could move in. We went to Book People (which is downtown), and then to Barnes & Noble (which is far away) until they closed, and then we drove back into town at 11pm. We drove around downtown for half an hour, and then headed over to our house. There's a keybox on the gate, which is basically like a padlock with a combination that can hold a key, usually they put it on for realtors to use. Since we didn't want to wait until Monday for them to change the locks and give us keys, Andrea called Eric today and he gave us the combination for the box so we could get in. Well, he gave us THE WRONG F-ING COMBINATION. Honestly. So we are standing there in the middle of the night, with the little keychain light thing that Daddy gave me, trying to figure out how to open this box, hoping that we just didn't understand it, trying to give Eric the benefit of the doubt, that he wasn't that retarded. But he is. So we just decided to call a locksmith.

While we were standing around outside waiting for the locksmith to come, one of our neighbors, Will, came home, with his girlfriend Lauren. They're from Beaumont, which I guess is near Houston, they've been dating since they were in highschool (aw). They stood outside for a while talking to us about Austin and New York (Will and Lauren are huge Seinfeld fans and asked if I knew where their diner was). And then when I was starting to feel awkward because we had been keeping them outside for a while, Will invited us inside to wait for the locksmith, because "we're neighbors now." Sooo nice. The inside of their house is all covered in Longhorns (the UT football team) and drinking paraphernalia. There's a shelf that runs along the top of their kitchen cabinets where they arranged all these beer bottles in rows. Oh college. We watched South Park and talked more about what goes on in Austin, apparently Halloween is a huge deal here so I'm pretty excited for that.

Finally the locksmith came, so we said good night and went over with him to the door. The locksmith said he was from New York, although he had an accent so was from somewhere else originally. He was really friendly, in a good way, and we were talking a lot while he was opening the door, and then he mentioned that his name was Levi like, Bronstein or something and he was Israeli. What are the odds of having an Israeli locksmith in Texas. Then we talked about how there were no good bagels in Austin and how they don't have scallion cream cheese, and he said New York was great because there was a big Jewish population there and there were Hebrew newspapers etc, so then Andrea said Yeah, she's Jewish, pointing to me, so he said Oh! Well then you know all about it. And when Andrea asked how he'd learned to pick locks, he said Oh well she can tell you, you know Israelis, we just need to look at something once and we can figure it out. Yes, that's exactly what my family has told me about Israelis. He was really nice, though, and really funny, kind of hyped-up, definitely another Character, and he gave us his phone number in case we ever needed anything. Speaking of phone numbers, Will, our neighbor, also came over with his phone number while the locksmith was there, in case we ever needed "to borrow a cup of sugar." So, now we have a house.

Kvetch

This morning we called Eric (I guess the property manager?) about our lease. He emailed it to us, and today we went in to sign it and give him the check and like, basically officially have this house. And we weren't even going to be able to do that, he wanted us to wait until Monday because he couldn't meet us on Sunday, which is the 1st. Andrea had to keep convincing him and solving the problems he had so that we could move in when we wanted to. We had to meet him today with a copy of the lease to sign, and the check, and then tomorrow night he'll give us the combination for the keybox, so that we can move in at 12:01 AM on the 1st. I kind of want "The Camdens" to be there, so we can kick them out. I hate them. Anyway, for some reason, we had to print out the lease, even though Eric knows that we've been staying in a hotel and don't have a printer, and even though I'm assuming they have printing facilities at their office, but in spite of all of this, we were running around trying to find Kinkos so we could pay like $5 to print out the lease and get to Eric's office in time. But we did everything in time, he kind of quickly bulldozed over all of our issues with the lease, "it's a standard Texas lease," and that was pretty annoying. But whatever, it's done, we're moving in tomorrow and tonight is our LAST NIGHT IN THE HOSTEL!!!!!!! Tomorrow morning will be my last disgusting mildew shower!

For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant called Brick Oven, because Andrea has recently gotten into caprese, which is amusing because I used to be obsessed, and now she is. This place wasn't my fave though. What's weird is that at home, caprese usually comes in really big portions, so much mozzarella and tomatoes that you're too full for the main course. But here they're tiny. Plus they sat us at the worst table ever. First of all, every other person in the restaurant was seated in one room, and they put us alone in the other room. And, it was literally in a dark corner, the furthest like tucked-away corner in the restaurant, like they were ashamed of us or something. We were looking into the open door to like, the storage room, and we were right next to the bar where staffmembers were polishing glasses and watching and loudly commenting on some sports game. I could barely read the menu and then whenever the tall waiter came over and stood next to the table, we were plunged into total darkness. I'd showed Andrea some parts of the book by the authors of that Broadway show Jewtopia, they talk about the quest for the perfect table, drafts and being near the door and being in bad-service areas or near loud tables, so now she always laughs when I complain about the table.

Camden voodoo dolls?

We have our house!!! Well, after stalking this Eric person, he's the broker for the house, he told us that our application and credit checks all worked out. But, we can't move in early. Which is SO frustrating and ridiculous because when we went to look at the house, the people were so obviously 99% moved out. They weren't sleeping there, there were no beds, no shower curtain, nothing in the whole house except except literally an ironing board in one bedroom with like, some shoe boxes on it. These people, "The Camdens," are obviously already living somewhere else and are just taking their sweet time moving out. We had assumed that they'd want to end their lease early and get some money back so that two nice girls could stop paying to stay in bunk beds and move in before October 1st. But no, there is no way that "The Camdens" can move out early, it's just not possible. I want to move in at like, 12:01 AM on Sunday, which I feel like legally we have the right to do.

Luckily, our moving truck, which had to be delivered by Thursday, won't be picked up until Monday since we have two business days to unpack it. So it was delivered this morning, and it just is going to sit there all weekend. We went and talked to the people who live in the front part of our duplex, and they were totally fine with having the truck there. They're five guys who are in college and seemed pretty laid-back. Andrea thinks the one guy who answered the door is really cute, but I reminded her that he's in college and is basically fifteen years old, but she maintains that the other four guys in the house are probably all grad students. We'll see. Hopefully they won't be having ridiculous parties, but I'm just glad that they aren't that type of fussy person who would've had all kinds of issues with our truck being in front of the house. They also confirmed our suspicions that "The Camdens" were idiots: the guy said that he sees them every few days walking out with one tiny box, and that they've had a car parked on the street for a really long time, but it's that kind of parking job where you park too far forward and ruin the other spot for anyone else.

So now we only have three days left until we get to move in. Actually not "only," it's like an eternity. The hostel is so repulsive. The beds are awful, we're both on top bunks, and the people who sleep under us don't seem to realize that we have to use the ladders to get up, so they hang towels on the rungs and put their gigantic "fragile--don't move" suitcases at the bottom. And the bathrooms, okay so I guess this hostel used to be some kind of public pool-house or something since it's right on the lake, so the showers are just one big shower room with like, these totally pathetic curtains dividing it into four not-private-at-all sections. The water comes out so hard from the shower heads, like a WaterPik, which could be nice except when you're being Waterpik'd in places that you really would rather not be. They also must really like the color dark green, because the cloth shower curtains are covered in dark green spots, and the grout between all the tiles is dark green, and there's this dark green gunk all around the sink faucets.

But I think the absolute worst news of all is that we won't have anywhere to watch the Smallville season premiere tonight. Sigh.

Oh...it's you.

Since we're so sick of hanging out in the hostel common room, with foreigners bothering while we are so clearly busy on our computers, Andrea and I usually go to Whole Foods to use their free interent (I heart Whole Foods), but today it wasn't working. So we went to Jo's, one of these hyped-up coffeehouses where all the "hip kids" go. It was pretty nice, there's a nice outside area and they have coffee and sandwiches, and free wireless internet. Of course something odd happened: this old Australian man in purple crocs is hanging around, turns to Andrea and says, "Oh, it's you," as if in recognition. Obviously neither of us has been here before. Then another old man, a very Texan man, while talking with the Australian about massage parlors in Melbourne, turns to me and says, "Oh hello again darlin'," and I said, what? And he says, We met last time, and I said, No I've never been here before. So he says, Oh you must have a twin, and then says, but I'll talk to you about it later, and turns back to the Australian. Do I have a twin, or was this just some cliched old-man pickup line? Anyway, true to his promise he begins talking to me later, about how he comes here all the time, and some director, Martin Scorcese or Quentin Tarantino, someone like that, is shooting a movie in Austin and he's gonna be in it, and did I like good music, because he's a singer, he has a CD, and he doesn't like to charge people for it, but he does gratefully accept donations, and he puts a CD in front of me, and above the track list is a little American flag with "Veteran" underneath, and a cross with "God Bless You" written in flowers. So eventually I just say, you know I don't have any cash, and he says Oh well darlin' I couldn't let you have it for free, but next time I'm around, because I'm around here a lot (is that a threat?) and you have some cash, you can get one of my CDs. So I guess, in conclusion, Jo's is not my new favorite place after all.

After loitering around Jo's for a while longer, we decided to go see a movie. We saw The Illusionist, which I really liked because of Rufus Sewell, but also kind of didn't like because of Jessica Biel (poor man's Scarlet Johanssen). But I think it's worth seeing. Anyway after the movie, we remembered that "the band" was doing a show at a place called A Hole in the Wall, so we went over to see that. Unfortunately by the time we got there, they had just finished and the next band was going on. They seemed kind of hurt, but we didn't know what time they were going to be playing. We hung out through the next few bands and talked and drank. I had a Heineken, and realized that since I hadn't had dinner, one was enough to make Andrea the designated driver for the evening, and so I had another. Andrea tried to explain to Nick and Drew what a "foul slattern" was, which I've kind of been in the habit of calling people lately, but I'm not sure if she got through to them.

By the time we left and went back to the hostel, I was pretty tipsy, and Andrea and I were loudly discussing really inappropriate things in our room, thinking there was no one else there, until we realized that there was. Whoops. That's what you get for staying in a hostel I guess.