Glasgow

I've been thinking of Glasgow a lot lately. I think I live there just long enough to really feel like it was my home. I remember sitting in the airport, about to head back to Minnesota for awhile, and really feeling deep down like I lived there. Obviously, Chris and I had a flat there, but I also felt like I knew where the important things--dentist, doctor, liquor store, produce stand-- were, I felt good going grocery shopping, or taking the train to a friend's house on my own, or meeting up with friends in the city center. I knew how to ride my bike, or take the subway, or walk, or take a train just about anywhere, and I had friends, and I could understand even the thickest accent.

But even then, there was something in me that wouldn't let me get too settled in. In the past 10 years or so, I have become very cautious about putting down roots anywhere. Little roots had started to form in Glasgow. I think about being there a lot, and I kind of miss it.

There are lots of things I don't miss, of course. I don't think I would have ever adjusted to having wet feet and hair all the time, or the vast amount of fried food in the diet. But I do miss a lot of other things--riding my bike along the Clyde, the Voltaire bookshop (which was essentially a musty room full of literal piles of books), the subway, DJing at the Bier Stube for 40 pounds a night, walking up the long driveway to the Strathclyde University Jordanhill campus, the enormous cinema in the city center, and the buskers along Buchanan street.

Things here are nice and stable, and I'm grateful for the way things have turned out. Sometimes, though, I wonder what could have happened if I'd been able to stay in Scotland another year or two.

xo

Social Caterpillars

This weekend was kind of a bust. Nothing bad happened, but nothing really exciting happened either. I wonder if maybe 28 is the age where you and your friends are all paired up, people start having babies, and people decide that staying home is less of a bother than going out to bars or out dancing or whatever. I get it. Bars are mostly just for trying to meet people to date (and possibly stay home with on a Saturday night later on). No one's saying, "Hey, longtime lover/partner/spouse, let's go sit in a noisy, crowded bar, pay like $7 for a splash of liquor and some soda or a normal 12-oz. bottle of beer." No one is saying that! Last weekend, we somehow ended up going to a friend's house, where there was keg beer and a baby. It was an odd juxtaposition of life stages. The things we do to avoid going to the bars these days...

My stay-at-home buddy and I were really struggling for something to do last night. Minneapolis is absolutely redolent with good stuff to do on a Saturday night--usually. We were having a hard time deciding what, exactly, would be the perfect thing with which to occupy our evening, despite the array of activities/plays/concerts at our feet.

We decided--OK, I decided--that it would be a great idea to write down 6 possibilities on little pieces of paper and pick one at random. The number 6 came up because that is how many pieces of paper I got out of one large sheet. We actually had a kind of rough time thinking of things to write on that many pieces of paper at one point. This lead to us going to vita.mn, which is a website that tells you what's happening in Minnesota on any given night. We devised an overly-complicated system of each choosing a number and then adding them together, and then that would be the number of the event we would have as a choice. For instance, for the musical events, he chose 32, I chose 8, so we looked at the 40th musical option happening on 3/19.

ANYWAY, here are the events we came up with:

1. Female comedian at ACME Comedy Club (we later YouTubed her and found out she did mostly abortion jokes).

2. Male comedian at some comedy club at the Mall of America.

3. A play called 'Sarah Palin's Minnesota'--this was actually our first choice, but the tickets were something like $35 each, it started at 10PM, and local theater can be sort of hit-or-miss.

4. Music Option #15--some jazz trio at the St. Paul hotel.

5. Stay home.

6. See 'Barney's Version', a Paul Giamatti movie, at the indie cinema in Edina.

The first one I picked out of the hat was 'Stay home'. We were dismayed! So, we threw it out and started again. This time, we picked 'Music Option #15. This would have required putting on new clothes, however, as we were both wearing jeans. (The St. Paul Hotel is a very swanky place.)

The more options we chose, the less we wanted to do any of them! We were at the point that every choice, even staying home, felt like a huge chore. We became very whiny at the thought of having to do any of these things, like it was really difficult to put on a dress, or to drive to Edina to watch a tepidly-reviewed independent film.

In the end, we stayed home, grazed the kitchen for dinner--I had Greek yogurt and berries, he had leftover pizza--and watched the Sopranos. I think we were in bed by 11:30 at the latest. I am very well-rested.

Hope you've all had a good weekend!

xo

Good Grooming

When I was younger and worse at planning, my dad used to use the phrase, "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part" with a certain degree of frequency. It's something I hated to hear, but I now loooove to think. I think this phrase when my bosses fail to take into consideration things that I think are fairly logical. I think this phrase when I am given large projects with unbelievably soon due dates, and when my boss piles work onto my desk at the very end of the day. I say that I think this phrase because I am not yet in the position to say it. The way things are going, however, I may someday be in that position. And then I will say those delicious words with pleasure and a maniacal cackle.

OK, no I won't. I may go my entire life only saying this to any future children I may have. But I still stand by my assertion that I may someday be a position of higher authority. Why's that, you ask? Well, I think I'm being groomed for middle management. Yes, that's right. My parents must be so proud.

My suspicion was aroused for the first time during my latest performance review. First, I got a nice, performance-based pay raise. My manager went on about what great work I do and how much I contribute to the company. My first response was, "Awesome! I'm going to take half of my raise as PTO!" My second thought was, "Hey, wait a minute...I don't think I contribute that much." Almost immediately after my performance review, an eerie though dawned on me: Oh, shit, they're grooming me for middle management! Yes, their praise and their offer of more money are, I believe, a way to keep me in the company, doing their bidding. My boss said things like, "I'll be focusing more on school in the next few months and will be looking to hand off some of my responsibilities," and, "I think you have a lot of promise. Someone told me that when I first started." Oh, shit! Is it wrong that I immediately imagined throwing my ergonomically-correct office chair out the window, jumping out, and running as far away as my office-life-atrophied legs could carry me?

You see, this is just a job for me, and in that sense, it is perfect. I don't worry too much about anything that happens during the day and I rarely, if ever, think of work when I'm not there. It is sometimes acutely stressful, but never chronically so, to do my job. It is trivial, monotonous, and the only part I truly enjoy, besides punching out for the day, is the rare interaction I have with patients when I call to offer scheduling assistance. I've gotten to the desperate point of having a racing pulse when I can find someone the perfect appointment. It is the part of my job I enjoy, and a very, very small part of the job as a whole.

I do a lot of paperwork. I mean, a ton. I have one of those stupid, plastic paper-organizers above my desk, and a lot of my day involves shuffling various stacks of stupid paper around into different piles and then filing them into different file cabinets. I hate paperwork. I think I was born with a gene that gives me an aversion to paperwork and organization. This job is the antithesis of what I should be doing, and it is so out of character for me that it kind of embarrasses me.

For the moment, things are steady--I've been given the responsibility of training the new girl (the one who replaced the co-worker who was smart enough to get out before all of her soul was sucked out). My guard is up, my hackles are raised, my senses keen. I'll be on the lookout for insincere praise, large shifts of responsibility, and extra money in my paycheck. I won't get sucked in. I won't get sucked in. I won't get sucked in...