Advice for the Unemployed

I quite enjoyed my week of unemployment and would like to impart some words of advice to you, dear UFF reader, that might come in handy should you ever find yourself in the glorious predicament of having some amount of time on the pogey, as they say. If I had it to do again, and believe me, I will, because unemployment is really awesome versus working, I'd take at least 3 weeks off.

Week 1 I would spend vising my family/friends (like I did last week).

Week 2, I'd take an intensive class of some sort. For example, the Culinary Institute of America has these 4- and 5-day Boot Camps at their Hyde Park campus and I'd be really into any of them. Scratch that, all of them. (Prospective sugar daddies, please leave me a note in the comments.)

Week 3 I'd get my life together. I got home late last night from watching the best Super Bowl I've ever seen (go Giants!) and then had to do laundry for my first day at scho^H^H^H^Hwork! Oops. I haven't even unpacked from my trip to Canadia last week, and I have a bunch of administrivia that it would be oh-so-nice to get done, like getting a NY driver's license (yes, it has been 8 years, and yes, I still have the Ontario one).

However, I only took a week, and today I started my Brand New Job, which is going to be really great (even though it does cut into my ability to take Scrabulous turns). Happily though, my improv class starts on Wednesday night! Start collecting those rotten tomatoes; the end-of-class show is on March 29 at 1 p.m., and you're invited.

Unemployment: The Budget

Yesterday I figured that even someone who's unemployed needs to do her part for the economy, so I went to a mall. [On my way out of the mall I stopped at Orange Julius and had an old-school Strawberry Julius, which I vaguely regretted when I saw that it contains powdered sugar and dairy creamer (Wikipedia).] As I mentioned earlier, I was in the market for a purse, and had some crazy idea in my head that I'd buy a handbag, even though I somehow made it to age 33 without owning much more than a backpack and a tote bag. I went into Roots and wandered over to the bag section, not even sure where to start. One of the salesgirls came over to ask if she could help, and I confessed that I've never owned a purse. She looked me over and said, "Where do you put your stuff?" I pointed to my coat, out of which my wallet and cell phone were practically hanging with a giant arrow covered in sparkly dollar signs and "ROB ME" Bedazzled across the pocket. She suggested that if I wasn't used to carrying a purse (check!) that I might leave a handbag somewhere, and handed me one of the Roots flat bags. I LOVE IT! My wallet fits perfectly in that zipper pocket on the right, and my cell phone and camera in the pocket on the left.

Speaking of cameras, I'm in the market for a DSLR. Thanks to excellent recommendations from Amy and Elizabeth, I've narrowed it down to three choices:

Nikon D40
Canon Digital Rebel XTi
Olympus Evolt E510

The Nikon is highly recommended by everyone I know who has one, and was initially my first choice. However, the price of the Canon has dropped fairly significantly since I first started looking about a year ago, and I do love my current Canon point-and-shoot. The Olympus package is a bit more expensive, but it comes with 2 lenses and was recently rated Wired magazine's top choice for DSLR. Help! I'm pretty sure the next step is to go to a store and try out all three, but that process interferes with my general impatience now that I've decided to spend the money.

Unemployment: Day 3 continues with the happy surprise that Sirrah!'s first appointment of the day was canceled and she's back home, which means we will probably continue our Beverly Hills, 90210 marathon (we've watched about half a dozen episodes since I got here) with more of Kelly's eating disorder from Season 3. Good times, people. Good times.

Unemployment: Day 2

Well, it's after 10:30 a.m. and my accomplishments so far today include consumption of yogurt, granola and coffee, completion of half of the Post's "Canadian Crisscross" crossword puzzle, and petting a big brown dog.

Last night as I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of wine and reading the paper, Greg whispered loudly: "Uh, Sara, how long is your UNEMPLOYED friend going to be staying with us?" Heh.

I'm off to inject my weak American currency into the Canadian economy - will hopefully return with a new leather purse of some sort.

Unemployment!

For no particular reason I haven't blogged about this yet, but today I am enjoying my first of five days of unemployment before I start a Brand New Job on February 4. (My friend Larry suggested that starting a BNJ the day after the Super Bowl probably isn't a great idea, and he's right, but I didn't think of that at the time.) Right now I'm in Canada visiting the folks and Sirrah's family. We've enjoyed two fabulous brunches, at the Black Forest Inn and Langdon Hall (both recommended if you're in the area), and today has mostly involved playing with babies and dogs and trudging around in the snow. I expect tomorrow and Wednesday to be more of the same, and Wednesday evening I have a Very Important Date with not one but two of my absolute favourite people in the WHOLE WORLD. It's going to be good times.

At one point this morning I was surfing the internets and eating BBQ Fritos (I know, not exactly HBJ-friendly) and I thought, this is how unemployment should be. I highly recommend it.

The Good Ol' Days

When I first moved to NY in February 2000, I didn't know a single person except for the guy who would be heading up my company's soon-to-be-opened office here, and I'd only met him once. Let's call him "Hal." Hal was a real-life Michael Scott. I'm totally serious. In fact, go read the Wikipedia Overview, because it describes Hal EXACTLY. He was sweet and insecure and well-intentioned and frequently said painfully awkward things that were meant to be funny.

Hal was also very neurotic. He had a label maker that I swear he'd have had sex with if he could have found a way. The guy labeled EVERYTHING, including, I kid you not, the shelves in our office fridge as to WHICH CANS OF SODA WENT ON WHICH SHELF:Hilare, right? And totally without irony. Of course, my co-workers and I found the label-obsession hilarious, and on occasion, messed with it a little:
Hee. (Our sales people once labeled all of their office supplies, including STAPLER, MONITOR, CPU, etc. Good times.)

One day, my officemate came over to my desk and conspiratorially said, "Gillian. You have to come see this." He signaled me into the kitchen and pointed me to his lunch leftovers:
Office pranks? Don't get any better than that.

While we're reminiscing, I must also share with you a photo of the worst sunburn I've ever had, in the Summer of 2000:
Ouch.