New Kid on the Hallway

Why the hell I'm up, dressed, and in the car at 6:30 am on a Sunday

Well, I was in the car. I'm back home now, writing this.

So, as I've mentioned, LDH and I are living apart for a year while I'm working this gig. However, he's one state north of me, and it is driveable in a day (not ideal for a weekend because I'd spend more time in the car than with him, but you can do it in a day, easy).

I was recently contacted by the friend of a law school friend, who lives in the northern part of my state. A very rural, very isolated part of my state, where there aren't a whole lot of resources. Over this summer, the friend had essentially adopted a cat - the beastie had wandered up to his house, emaciated and showing signs of abuse, and the friend fed him, nursed him back to health, and got him to trust people again. He turned out to be a delightfully friendly, affectionate creature. (The picture I've seen was of a very handsome long-ish haired gray fellow - that kind of Russian Blue, solid gray.) However, the friend's wife is deathly allergic to cats, so the cat couldn't come in the house. And it gets really cold up in the northern part of my state (in fact, it's currently 21 degrees F where the friend lives, and feels like 7F). The friend, being a kind soul, wanted the cat to have a proper home and not freeze in the winter. So he asked my law school friend if she knew of anyone who might want to take the cat, and she suggested me. 

Well. For a whole lot of boring reasons, we didn't feel comfortable taking the kitty. But after pondering options, I told him I could drive up there and get the cat, and take him up to the shelter in LDH's city where I used to volunteer. I'm sure the shelters here are good (in fact, I know they are, for reasons I'll get to in a second), but I just really trust the former-home-city shelter. It's huge (in a good way - lots of resources), it treats the animals wonderfully, and it will keep them as long as it takes to get them adopted, so I felt good about suggesting this.  Plus I sort of thought if I couched it as just detouring from the route up to see LDH, it wouldn't feel too much like charity to my friend's friend, if that makes any sense.

The friend thought this sounded like a great idea, and I said, How about this weekend? (i.e. now.) Because it's a long weekend, so killing a bunch of time driving north and back wouldn't be so bad. The sort of ironic thing is that I couldn't make the drive yesterday (Saturday) because I had an oriention for volunteering at *this* city's humane society. (Which is why I now know they have a very nice facility.) Volunteers have to go through quite a bit of training, including a required orientation, and the orientation only happens every couple of months. This was the first one since I'd moved here, and if I missed it, I'd have to wait till January, so I wanted to attend. But that meant I wouldn't be able to leave till today (Sunday), and spend most of today driving up and most of tomorrow (Monday) driving back, which would be kinda tiring and wouldn't be that much time with LDH. But I figured, well, I'd have had one proper "weekend" day (Saturday), so driving this weekend wouldn't be any worse than doing it next weekend (and three days after next weekend I'm going home to spend Thanksgiving with LDH anyway, so driving up then seemed a little silly).

Then, of course, we had a winter storm forecast to come through the area last night, so I started to freak out about the weather, and driving 9 hours by myself (6 with a cat) through a lot of mountain roads during/after a snowfall. I spent much of yesterday dithering about the weather and whether I should do the drive, blah blah blah. However, the friend said nothing had really fallen where they were, and I realized I wouldn't get further north until later in the day when things would have probably melted, it wasn't really supposed to snow much more today, etc. etc., so I decided I'd probably go, but would get up really early to check the weather. (I'd have to leave pretty early to be sure to get to the shelter up north before it closed.)

Up at 5:10 am this morning. Various dire warnings still in place (winter weather advisory!!!!!), but no real forecast for snow and the roads seemed reasonable. I thought, if I don't go today, and by 9:30 am everything everywhere has melted, I'm going to feel really silly; worse comes to worst, I can turn around and abort the mission. So I e-mailed the friend that I was on my way, hopped in the shower, threw some stuff in a bag, tossed some Luna Bars in my purse, and headed out, stopping at Starbucks first for breakfast, then at the gas station to fill up my tank. 

Where I realized my phone was ringing. And it was the friend. And I answered, thinking perhaps he had some weather or road advice or something, not realizing he'd already texted and left a voicemail.

He told me not to come. Kitty got hit by a car last night and killed.

It's remarkable how badly you can feel about the death of an animal you've never met before. 

(The poor friend was very upset. And I can't help but feel superstitiously terrible that this happened the morning that I was heading up there to take the creature. I keep thinking that if I hadn't gone to the orientation yesterday, I could have driven yesterday and the cat wouldn't have been on the roads last night/this morning. Which is kind of nonsensical, because if I hadn't had that orientation scheduled, I'd have already bought plane tickets to fly up to see LDH for the long weekend. Since the friend lives three hours north of here, it's not like I'd have driven up there to get the cat, driven back here, and then taken the cat on the airplane with me or something - I'd have chosen to drive another weekend. But it still feels karmically sinister. There was part of me that was kind of dreading the drive and regretting how much of my free time it would take up - and I know it doesn't work that way, but it feels like that part of me had something to do with this happening.)

So. That's why I was up, dressed, and in my car at 6:30 this morning. And am up, still dressed, in my apartment, finishing writing this at 7:45 this morning. So that's what being up this early on a weekend looks like. I can live without it.

My week of three interviews

Interview 1

OMGOMGOMG, I really really really REALLY want this job.

Ahem. So.

I can't really tell how it went. There's nothing I can think of that I wish I had answered differently (thankfully, there were no killer hypos involved). So they got a decent representation of me, and if I don't get the job, it's probably because I'm genuinely not a good fit, or other candidates are just better. However, I was a little out of practice interviewing, and I was nervous because I REALLY want this job. Hence, at least in the first (and most important?) part of the interview, I "um"-ed was wordier than I'd like.

I got some very positive reactions from some people (e.g. one guy called my writing "fantastic" - wish I could have recorded that for future reference!). But I've been doing this too long to read anything into that - nothing means anything until you get an offer. (Thank you, Ask A Manager, particularly posts like this - I mean, I knew this, but it's always helpful to see someone spell it out.) I may be a good candidate - but so are lots and lots and lots of other people. 

On the flip side, other interviewers were stone-faced or skeptical in tone - but I can't read much into that, either. The stone-faced ones were stone-faced from the start, but since no one made them interview me, I figure that has to be an approach to interviewing, rather than an assessment. And I think the skeptical/challenging one just wanted to see how I would handle it. (I actualy enjoyed those questions.)

So, I just have to wait and see. But I reeeeeeeeeeaallllly want this job...*

Interview 2

This, for the position I least want, went probably the best. It was one-on-one, but the interviewer was fairly intense, so I was able to maintain a good energy. (I usually interview better before a panel than one-on-one because there's more energy in the room; one of the worst interviews I've done was one-on-one with a woman who'd traveled literally 24 hours to get there, arrived about an hour before the interview, and couldn't ditch because no one else on the committee was able to even get there. The interviewer was perfectly nice but wow, the room was dead.) I was back in interview mode, and at some points it felt more like a conversation than an interview. (The interviewer was clearly listening really carefully and was really good at follow-up questions, which I appreciated. Interviewing is definitely a skill!)

But again, that doesn't guarantee anything. And this is the position I least want - although I think I'd be pretty good at it.**

Interview 3

Really not sure how this one went, in part because I think the position isn't quite as good a fit for me,*** and in part because the interviewers were fairly low-energy and following a canned script. The job goes in a different direction than what I really want to do, and I think that came through. I also got some "how have you handled situation x?" questions that I didn't have a lot of direct experience with (like, a question about handling poor supervisors. Well, I haven't been in a legal job long enough to have to deal with bad supervisors - the jobs end before anything is an issue. And in academia, you don't really HAVE supervisors). So I answered those questions the best I could, but felt like I was spouting cliches a bit.

* * * * *

Anyway. At least they're done, so now I can think about something else (until it's time to worry about hearing back from them, but I have a few weeks on that). It was kind of a whirlwind experience, entailing 12 hours out of 36 on a plane, plus more time on public transport - tiring, but also fun.

You know, though, I worry a little about what my attachment to job applications: they're semi-addicting because they provide an external measure of self-worth. You apply (which is at least a measurable accomplishment - a task completed). Then, if you get an interview, that's another achievement collected. When you interview, everyone is focused on you and nothing but you, and you spend a lot of time talking about yourself (and how amazing you are). Finally, if you get the job, that's another affirmation of your wonderfulness. I worry that collecting job offers is, in some ways, more exciting than actually doing the job I get - and I don't want to tie up my self-worth in getting other people's (employers') approval, rather than in my own assessment of whether I'm growing, learning, and doing a good job. Mind you, clerking - while wonderful - doesn't really give you anywhere to go; you do the same thing over and over again, and the job is by definition short-term. So it's hard not to focus on the next thing rather than what's in front of you. I look forward to having a permanent job, where I can formulate longer-term goals beyond "get another job."**** 

* Really really really amazingly cool work that's hard to break into. The people all seemed really great and I loved the atmosphere. I know this is secondary, but I loved the building and its immediate location in the city. The city itself has pluses and minuses - a good part of the year, the weather sucks rocks. But when the weather doesn't suck rocks, it's amazing.  LDH loves the area. And the cost of living is low - everyone kept pointing out that you could have a decent life there on the salary. Plus, it's a permanent job.

** It's less desirable mostly because in some ways it's very similar to experience I already have (although this is why I think I'd do it well), and because it's temporary, and doesn't lead as directly into a permanent job as the other temporary job. Also, the location is kind of a wildcard.

*** It would be kind of taking a different direction - which could be really really interesting, I might love it - who knows? But I'm a bit hesitant, though it would probably be great experience. It's technically a term position, but it sounds like if they like you, they expect to hire you permanently. The city is amazing in many ways - a great place for legal work, lots and lots and LOTS of things going on. Also closer to my family. But way more expensive and congested, and its own share of crappy weather. And, though this shouldn't matter, the building where I would work was fairly drab. 

**** And I just found out I have a phone interview with another place. Wheee!

Weekend update

I don't buy the idea that people from the east coast are brasher, ruder, more arrogant than people from other parts of the country. (I think it's just different communication styles/expectations.) But if it were true that east coast people are more arrogant than west coast people, I'd be tempted to blame the landscape.

Saturday I drove to the northern part of my state for a fiber festival (hey, I'm a yarn geek). Towards the end of the drive, you wind through some mountain passes, following the bends of a river, and then start climbing up and up. Then you come to the top of the peak, and a vast green plain opens up before you. It's ringed with mountains - and I mean, mountains; there are, ostensibly, mountains where I went to college, for instance, but these look completely different. And dividing the plain is a huge crack in the earth, a jagged brown gorge ripping through the green. 

I felt very, very small. Not in a bad way. But small. 

The northeast is beautiful, and grand, but on a more human scale. And in the built-up cities, what towers above you is an artificial landscape made by humans. 

The west just seems to put you in a completely different relation to the universe.

* * * * 

The fiber festival was fun - it's always neat to be surrounded by beautiful yarn, and fleeces, and wool and leather products. There were alpaca, and fluffy angora bunnies who looked used to being waited on hand and foot. It's also a highly feminized space, without being about beauty or fashion or other things relating to one's looks. (I was going to say "or shopping," but at least it's shopping for the raw materials from which to make things. It's consumerism, but consumerism that facilitates beautiful craftwork. Or even half-assed and not very attractive craftwork, but still something productive. Well, okay, most knitters I know have ridiculous stashes of yarn, but still, the potential for production is there.) Also, there are a lot of older women. Really, it's very different from the average media portrayal of women, which is quite lovely.

* * * *

The town is beautiful - historic, artistic, physically gorgeous. But it was a little jarring to drive through some very impoverished parts of the state, including lots of Indian country, passing lots of little beat-up towns with rickety mobile homes - and then land in this middle of this highly touristic, precious little town filled with wealthy older white people. I mean, I'm white, and in the grand scheme of the world, I'm not badly off, and soon enough I will be one of these people. I'm not saying they're bad people. Just that it was jarring. 

* * * * 

The trip left me a little torn, actually. One way of looking at it is: I drove 5 hours to spend 3 hours looking at things to buy, and I spent $30 on a (large) skein of yarn, when I could have driven 10 minutes to the yarn store nearby and bought the same amount of yarn for probably less money.

Of course, the other way of looking at it is: I got to see quite a bit more of this state, I did something with my weekend besides sit and stare at the TV or the computer or both, I mingled with other people who love the same hobby that I do, and I commemorated the day with lovely yarn dyed by a local/regional dyer whose products aren't sold in your average yarn store. 

(It is awfully pretty yarn - see? Though LDH was like, "Oh, it's purple - I'm SHOCKED." I kind of have a thing for purple yarns.) 

* * * *
So, that was my adventure for the weekend. What about you? Did you do anything fun? 

 

Update, AKA insight into my personal neuroses

1. The wackadoodle shirt (i.e. the first one in the last post) is a truly beautiful shirt. I love it. But the colors don't work with my navy suit. (Still not sure it's interview-friendly, but now I don't have to decide.)

2. The third shirt in the post below sold out before I got one (but I ended up seeing it in the store in another size and it looks less nice in person, so that's fine).

3. The linked, fourth shirt is still en route (man, UPS is sloooowwwww. The first 2 shirts got here from England before that one's made it from Indiana).

4. I really, really, really like the second shirt with my navy suit, and think it looks interview-appropriately formal and tasteful (first, it's actually chiffon, so a more formal fabric, and second, most of it's hidden under the jacket. Which is good as I'm not wild about the sleeves, but would really only ever wear it under something, cause that's the way I roll). However,

5. I would prefer to wear gray shoes with the top, and I don't have any. And,

6. I took my fattest-weight black suit to be altered today because I can't decide between black and navy. So "goes with navy" tops might be right out, anyway.

7. What this really means is I'm assembling two entirely alternate universes of suits, tops, shoes, and bags. These universes keep expanding. (For one thing, I found out I'll be staying overnight, so that complicates things sartorially and luggagely.)

(8. I might have ordered a gray suit out of pure curiosity about whether it would work on me and perhaps provide an alternate to the black/navy dilemma. Shhhhh. Let's pretend this never happened. Until it shows up in my mailbox.)

9. For something ENTIRELY different: does anyone have any suggestions for stretches etc. that would help a tight knee? I started running more (that is, more than not at all), but on Sunday my right knee started feeling tight and today it was worse. It really doesn't hurt - it just literally feels tight, kind of like it's just a little out of alignment and something's pulling on it - almost torquing it like twisting a rubber band. It still doesn't hurt, but feels like if I keep running on it it will pop, or the rubber band will snap? Or at least it will lock up? I can't even really identify where this feeling is, to work on it - maybe just above my knee in the front, and stretching my quad seems to help more than stretching my hamstring (which actually feels a wee bit hyperextended?). But for all I know it's transferred from somewhere else in my body, like my hip or ankle is the issue and my knee just the innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. Anyone have any ideas about this?

Okay. End of highly self-absorbed post! Someday I may actually address something other than myself here. But today is not that day.

Get a job interview, engage in retail therapy

Because, of course, the most important part of a job interview is what you wear, right?

Although it's kinda tempting to buy a new suit (which is of course actually a terrible idea, because buying suits is traumatic and expensive, and buying a suit only for an interview is a sign to the universe that it should not give me the job; although I'd kind of love a light gray one), I'm thinking my navy suit will do. But the blouse I usually wear under the navy suit is getting a wee bit drab and faded. So, enter the suitors from which I (hopefully) shall select:

 

And this shirt, the image of which the retailer will not let you copy (and let's ignore the way the model looks stoned out of her gourd, shall we?). According to the description, the background to the green floral one above is navy, and I think the background of the first one (most multi-colored) is closer to navy than the picture looks. So we'll see how these turn out.

(Unless, of course, I decide to wear my black suit. In which case I will need a whole different pool of blouses to choose from, and new black pumps to boot. And don't even get me started on the bag - the only reason I'm not stressing about that right now is because I haven't committed to blue/black suit yet.)

(This is, of course, all a diversion from actually preparing for the interview. I have totally forgotten how to do an interview, especially since my last interviews were with judges, and most judges just want to shoot the breeze and see what you're like. I have no idea what substantive questions I'm likely to get asked or how to answer them. But look, I can pick really cool tops to go with my suit! That'll get me hired, right?)


 

Glass half-empty

So, I've been here 3 1/2 weeks, and I like the city, and I like my job (trials! so fascinating!). But today was one of those days when I've been thinking, Why did I think this was a good idea again? Oh, all the reasons for doing this clerkship still hold true. But it's been a depressing day.

Completely unexpectedly, it turns out I am two and three degrees of separation away from two of the Americans killed in Libya today (last night? the news broke this morning). I did not know any of them, am not even particularly close to the people who created the connections, and can't claim any grief. But there's something horrifying about having even this minimal link to people killed by violence half a world away. (Their deaths are, of course, just as horrifying without my teeny connection to them - but there's a difference when such events are personalized - even if there shouldn't be, there just is.) 

At the same time (and I know that in the grand scheme of the world, these things are completely different), one friend's kitty died in the last couple of days, and another friend posted they would have to say goodbye to their kitty whose kidneys are failing. As Middle Cat's kidneys are failing. (When we brought her in for her latest illness, they did an ultrasound for fear she had cancer - or I should say, more cancer. Turns out, she looks great - except for her kidneys, which look terrible. I mean, we knew her kidneys were failing, but it's still depressing.)

It's days like today that living on my own in a city far from my husband and cats just feels like a really dumb idea. 

This may be unpopular

There has been a remarkable amount of discussion exploding in the last 8 hours (? or so) regarding a job ad from Colorado State University, which reads:

The Department of English at Colorado State University invites applications and nominations for the position of Assistant Professor of English with an emphasis on Pre-1900 American literature and culture. The successful candidate will be appointed untenured and at the rank of Assistant Professor. This is a tenure-track, nine-month appointment, beginning August 16, 2013. 

Required qualifications:

1. Ph.D. in English or American Studies or closely related area awarded between 2010 and time of appointment [emphasis added].

[other requirements that aren't relevant here]

I've spewed a bit (too much) about this on Facebook (sorry, meg!), but so I don't go following this ad round the interwebs and grumping on all the blogs of other people who are discussing it, I thought I should just say something here and then I can shut up about it.

1) Yes, it's a dumb ad. There is nothing magical about 2010 that renders those who earned their Ph.D.s after 2010 more qualified than those who earned them before. This requirement shuts out lots of perfectly qualified people.

2) Yes, in practice it will likely have a disparate impact on older candidates, since often the earlier you earned your Ph.D., the older you are (although if you are like me and take ten wonderful amazing years to earn your degree, you will be eligible for this job longer than the bright stars of your program who finished in six or seven!). However, the ad does not select for age. A 72-year-old who finished their degree in 2011 would be eligible, while a 29-year-old who finished in 2009 would not. That's all the law requires, people. Age of graduate degree does not confer protected status. And disparate impact is not in itself enough to show some kind of age discrimination.*

3) Yes, should ads like this become commonplace (and as far as I can tell, this is the only ad of its kind anyone has found), they will create perverse incentives encouraging Ph.D. candidates to put off graduating as long as possible so they can continue to be eligible for jobs with this kind of a requirement.

HOWEVER.

1) I have encountered any number of "early career" faculty fellowships that placed a cut-off date on eligilibity. Not all were aimed exclusively at faculty already in tenure-track jobs. This is not an unheard of practice. 

2) CSU is likely trying to limit a) the number of applicants and b) the amount they have to pay the successful candidate (in that they may have salary requirements, whereby x amount of experience requires a salary bump; or simply that someone with a stronger track record may go up for tenure sooner and hence cost more sooner). It's a pretty arbitrary means of accomplishing (a), but that doesn't mean it won't accomplish the objective.

As for (b), if that is part of the reason behind this, it seems that people are shocked, SHOCKED that the university would let costs dictate something like this and put cost ahead of quality. 

Um. Just a reminder: over 1/2 the nation's faculty are now contingent? Which kind of defines putting cost ahead of quality? (with the caveat that yes, I realize that many many MANY contingent faculty are of equal if not HIGHER quality than tenured/tenure-track faculty, but in many many MANY other cases contingent faculty are unable to offer the same experience as t/t-t faculty due to lack of resources/support, lack of continuity - i.e. they work one semester at one place, one semester at another, and so on, rather than being able to support students through their entire college careers - and the like.) Why is putting cost ahead of quality tragic but un-shocking when dealing with contingent faculty, but incredibly shocking when dealing with tenure-track faculty?

3) There are so many great candidates out there, that while excluding everyone whose degree is from 2009 and earlier is stupid, because it's eliminating a lot of great people, it's unlikely to mean that CSU will draw a less-qualified pool. Because there are also TONS of great candidates who still qualify. That's the problem - compared to the number of [tenure-track] jobs, there are too many great candidates. So it's not like this requirement cuts off CSU's nose to spite its face.

4) Those perverse incentives to drag out the degree as long as possible were alive and well in my grad program, where people regularly delayed defending if they didn't get a job, to stay on the university's health insurance and to continue to be eligible for graduate teaching appointments in their departments. 

Really, I guess my reaction to the ire directed at the post-2010-Ph.D. requirement is this: this is such an egregious example of the problems with the academic job market? This is one teeny tiny tip of one really huge and all-encompassing iceberg. If I can jump to a different-yet-slightly-related metaphor, anger about this particular job ad strikes me as a little bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The academic job market has way bigger problems than this, people.**

*IIRC, you'd have to show that the policy was put in place precisely to create the disparate impact, and not despite the disparate impact (at least, that's the case for race/gender discrimination. Can't remember if it's the same for age). That is, you'd have to have no other purpose but to discriminate. I doubt this ad would be a violation under that standard.*** Plus, constitutionally, age isn't as highly protected a class as race/gender/national origin/religion. I can't remember all the Title VII standards, though my impression is that proving age discrimination is usually very very difficult. 

**I do still love all my academic friends and this is not intended as personal criticism of anyone for whom this ad is rage-inducing. 

***Keep in mind I could be completely wrong on that.

You have the right to remain silent. No, really, shut up.

We have been in trial all week, and it's fascinating. (Yes, you'd think I'd have seen a trial from beginning to end before this, but I haven't. Especially not one where I have access to the behind-the-scenes bits.)

Anyway, I learned a few things about interrogation this week:

• Good cop/bad cop is totally a thing and it totally works.
• It's amazing how quickly an interview room can become this incredibly intimate space, filled with someone's life stories, where people who've never met talk about things you'd never raise with your closest friends.
• If I am ever arrested, even if I'm innocent as a lamb, I am NOT SAYING A DAMN THING TO LAW ENFORCEMENT. Ever. You shouldn't, either. Ask for your lawyer and shut your fool mouth.
• (Not meant as a moral judgment against people who do talk, or a slam on law enforcement. It's just I think it's so easy to want to set the police straight, to explain what things were REALLY like, you can get tripped up. Just be quiet.)

* * * * *

Also, totally un-trial-related: this stuff is, like, the most amazing product. It actually does leave color on my lips at the end of an 8-hour day filled eating messy stuff and drinking (as in liquids generally, not booze). I wish they had more neutral-y kind of colors, but that stain really really works.

* * * * *

And now I need to go to bed. Am so excited to break out the down comforter. It's 62 degrees! My window are open! I can sleep in fresh fresh air!

I am kind of an asshole

I went to my first spin class here in New City this morning. I joined a gym, because I need the structure of a class - I like having someone at the front of the room telling me what to do, and I like that the classes are already scheduled, because otherwise I wibble and agonize over when exactly is the PERFECT time to go work out, such that I might not ever make it into the gym. (I know, I have issues.) 

And class was....fine. I mean, I sat on the bike and cycled for an hour, and it was perfectly strenuous and I got my heartrate up and sweated a whole ton and so on.

But it really made me miss my spin/yoga studio in Former Beloved City.

I realize most of my dissatisfaction is because this new class is DIFFERENT, and everything is DIFFERENT, and I don't want DIFFERENT, because I am very fond of routine and I like the SAME, kthxbai.

The thing is, in Former Beloved City I lived pretty much right downtown. (For instance, my court was in the city center - as they usually are - and I had a 10-minute direct bus ride a block from my apartment to get to work every day.) And here I pretty much live...in the 'burbs. It's in the city, but on the outskirts, and it's at least 25 minutes to work, in my car (because it would be an hour on the bus), including a stint on an interstate. 

There are a lot of reasons for this, in part because I grew up in the 'burbs and when facing a completely new place I default to what feels safe and clean [to an upper-middle-class white girl]. Also (I think I said this before), there aren't a lot of nice modern apartment complexes in the downtown/central part of New City - which doesn't mean there aren't cool places to live - there are - but a lot of the nice rentals were little houses, more expensive, and not quite what I was looking for for a year (I'd love a house, but like the security of an apartment complex when living on my own, plus I'm pretty much crap at yardwork) - also the neighborhoods are more mix-y (a nice street followed by a crap street, that kind of thing). 

So anyway. I'm in the nice, safe 'burbs, with lots of shops and restaurants and nice amenities, and I have a lovely view of the mountains and am across the street from a walking/biking trail that goes along right under the mountains, and is very popular, and it's all really very lovely and comfortable and so on.

But it's not really cool. And I hadn't thought much about this until I went to spin class, and was confronted with the difference between my downtown, granola-hipster, youthful spin studio in Former Beloved City, and my suburban, NOT hipster, NOT youthful gym.

The part where I am an asshole is this: when I first joined FBC's spin studio, I felt kind of out of place - I'd never done spin before and don't think of myself as an athlete, and everyone else there looked like an athlete to me. It's run by people who are hardcore mountain bikers, and I haven't been on a real bike since sometime in the mid-90s. The owner has a lot of tattoos - and actually, a lot of the patrons did, too. The patrons were almost all young women, and it was very, very hipster. I was WAY less hipster than this place - so much so, I initially felt like the old, fat, boring fart infiltrating their coolness.

But people were actually really nice, and the classes were really small, so the instructors actually knew who I was (which has never happened before). And it was really cheap, and it was (literally) three blocks from my house, and it turned out I really LIKED spinning. So I kept going, and eventually came to feel like a part of the place. And it turned out there were some other women my age, too - still fairly hipster types, but I wasn't at all the oldest person there. 

So I went to spin here this morning, to be surrounded by people who are - well, NOT hipster. The average age of the class was probably 20 years higher than in FBC. The instructor was VERY not hipster. It felt very, very suburban. 

And here I was despising this class and this group of people because they're not as cool as the people I felt like I wasn't cool enough to join back in FBC. 

So, yeah - asshole.

(I mean, I was also a little disappointed because I feel like the studio in FBC was more run/patronized by hardcore cyclists, which creates a certain kind of vibe, and there wasn't that kind of vibe at all in this class - it was more like, this class was just exercise, not training to be a better cyclist. I liked the way the instructors at my old place made a lot of use of watts, rpms, and changing gears - here, there was no reference at all to watts, and very little attention to which gear you should be in beyond be where you're comfortable, and very few references to what your cadence should be. Which may have been the nature of this specific class/instructor, and is in part, I'm sure, because all the serious cyclists in town are actually out CYCLING, like, on roads and mountains and things! But still, it was a bit disappointing. Which is yet more of me being an asshole, because I'm NOT a cyclist. I don't even own a bike [I really want one, but don't have the money right now].) 

(Also, I'm kind of a fascist, and hate when people in an exercise class are all CHATTY CHATTY CHATTY with their best buds attending the class with them - because you're there for class, not to socialize, and you're annoying the crap out me. But that's also because I miss having local friends to go to exercise class with, and if I did, I'm sure I'd act exactly the same.)

To be fair, everyone seemed (if no more hipster-cool than I am) really nice and friendly, and the gym's general vibe is perfectly welcoming and unpretentious. (I passed on a fancier gym, although it had really nice facilities, in part because the crowd it served seemed a little too entitled - that, and the class schedule didn't work quite as well, and it cost twice as much for what wasn't twice as much nicer. Nicer, but not twice as much.) And the atmosphere on a Saturday morning class is probably pretty different from the after-work evening classes. So I may get to take back everything I've said here.

(Except the part where I'm an asshole.)

I'm here

My last day at the first clerkship was Wednesday (and I DID manage to get my last draft opinion done, yay!). I got a plaque. It's small but marble and weighs a ton and I actually love it, and plan to schlep it from office to office for the rest of my career.

My first day at the second clerkship is Monday. (EEEK.)

We (by which I mean the nice two guys we hired, with some help from LDH*) loaded the truck on Thursday afternoon, and then we (by which I mean LDH and I) hit the road yesterday morning. It was actually a pretty decent drive and I was never in danger of falling asleep while driving (unlike during most long road trips). The closest came while listening to Lev Grossman's The Magicians on the iPod for a while (during one of those stretches on the road where your options on the radio are fuzz, static, all-country-all-the-time, and hectoring religious rhetoric. I started playing a game: Name That Genre! It's kind of scary how it usually only takes about 5 words to figure out what kind of radio channel you've hit).

• Total digression: Does anyone out there really LIKE The Magicians? I have a terrible time evaluating books-on-tape, because they go way slower than I can actually read a book, and I can't judge pacing at all. When I listened to Middlesex on tape I'd have sworn it was about 2000 pp long, the time it took. But I'm not loving The Magicians - I find it a little hard to empathize with Quentin's ennui/angst at the beginning of the book; I feel like we're supposed to see going to Brakebills as this amazing rescue from dreary mundanity, but I have a hard time seeing the misery in growing up going to whatever private school in [I think] Brooklyn, having a thing for your best friend's girl, and agonizing over which expensive college you'll go to. He's a little too privileged for me to care much about, is what I'm saying. That said, it could be that I just don't like the guy who's reading the book.

Anyway, we made it, and we only had one real moment where we wanted to kill each other (at the end of the drive, in the apartment parking lot, before the two nice guys we hired to unload us showed up, when both of us really really needed something to eat; I just kept telling myself, "I do NOT need to do this NOW," where "this" is basically "tell partner where he gets off and why he's being completely unjust." I would imagine LDH was thinking pretty much the same.)

The nice surprise was finding out the rug and carpet have just been replaced in my unit (it's cheap carpet and flooring, but hey, it's brand new, and it's not an investment in my own property, so who cares?). The less nice surprise was that the shower curtain was not actually attached to the wall and that the kitchen sink seems to leak, but a tension rod from Target fixed the former and I put in a maintenance request for the latter, so I'm sure it will be fine.

(The even NICER surprise was meeting an old bloggy friend at breakfast this morning! She doesn't live here now, but grew up here and is here visiting her parents. LDH "checked in" on Facebook at the place we went to breakfast - which is the same place we got dinner Friday night, but hey, don't judge, it was really close and we liked it a lot and mid-move is not always the time to be all gourmet and adventurous and so on - and she saw it and realized she was in THE SAME RESTAURANT WE WERE. So LDH and I are eating away and this lovely person walks up to us and says, "New Kid?" So that was a really great introduction to this city.) 

Oh, and we did not bring the cats. First, we suddenly realized that since we weren't both moving, the cats did not HAVE to come with us, and that the actual logistics of moving would probably be easier without two cats. (Short answer: YES.) And second, after we realized the first thing, Middle Cat (the magical 20-year-old cat) got sick again (well, actively sick; she currently has hyperthyroidism, kidney failure, and a brain tumor, so sick is sort of her default state), and we really didn't want to bung her in a car and drive her 8 hours to an unfamiliar apartment where she would proceed to freak out (in a quiet, OCD kind of way) and stress for 3-4 weeks. Nor did we want to take her from her beloved vets. So the kitties stayed home. (edited: home! ha! no-longer-home. gotta come up with useful pseudonyms.]

I was an absolute wreck when I said goodbye to them, kept thinking they were in the car, then when we got here, kept thinking I heard them walking around, and when I woke up this morning, I expected to find them in/around the bed with us. I miss them TERRIBLY. But MAN, a long-distance move is so much easier without cats! We didn't have to worry about feeding them or not feeding them (we didn't usually feed our cats the morning of a drive), or how they'd handle the drive, or how to make sure they were never unaccompanied in the car, or whether they'd get out while the furniture is being moved in, etc. etc. The plan is that in a few weeks (probably at least a month, though) LDH will drive them down one weekend, so they can move from an already established place to an already established place, and avoid the trauma of de-/re-establishing. (To be perfectly horribly blunt: I am not confident Middle Cat will actually make it down here. But we'll see what we see.)

Okay, I don't really have an end to this post but exhaustion has suddenly struck, along with the realization I have to get up in 5 hours (don't worry, I plan to go straight back to bed post-airport and drown my misery in sleep, but I really should also get some sleep now). And since I will be here all by my lonesome most of the time, you can expect to see me show up in this space more frequently! So I can come up with better endings in the future. 

*LDH = long-distance husband. He was LDH, then he was NLLDH (No-Longer-Long-Distance Husband - the no-longer part applied ONLY to the long distance, NOT to the husband part), and now he's back to LDH.