for real this time

[aruan]

Brief recaps of the past two months, and a day-in-the-life photo meme to kick off March.

JANUARY
Started new job as crime reporter.
Freaked out about new job.
Submitted letter of resignation after three weeks.
Seven editors spent my two weeks' notice talking me back into it.
But really, it was me realizing that after years of wanting it and investing a college degree in it, I'd never forgive myself if I didn't give journalism a proper chance. And it was the beginning, I was incredibly stressed out by getting the routine down, overcoming my desperate fear and hatred of the telephone (even when I wasn't calling people at possibly the worst moments of their lives) and generally had issues that when I really looked at them, experience would resolve.

FEBRUARY
Got into Naruto. So much better than it has any right to be.
Bought eight seasons of SG-1 on sale for $20 each at Best Buy. Mainlining continues. The Fifth Race will never, ever lose its luster, especially Jack's "We're out there now" line.
Discovered Scrabulous. Have since played with people in Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, England and India. Going to bed at ungodly hours has its advantages.
Valentine's Day - We ate Moe's (his treat) and Coldstone ice cream (mine) on the sofa while watching SG-1. Honestly, it means more to me that he knows my drink of choice is the nonfat toffee nut latte, and brings some for me at work if he stops at Starbucks on his way in.
The 18th was MegaCon, where I met the president of the 12 colonies' alter ego. Mary McDonell is the classiest woman ever with a wicked sense of humor. Also purchased a notebook modeled after the novel Kakashi is always reading. Don't let the photo fool you - he can kick your ass well into next week.

MARCH
A day in the life, through pictures. I used a table, which is forced below the userinfo bar, so you might have to scroll a little.

Welcome to Lakeland in perpetually sunny Florida. It's in the middle-ish, about halfway between Disney and the beach. This is my apartment, which was quaint for one but for two it's little more than a glorified storage closet. It's on the second story of a quiet little red-brick complex about five minutes from work. And yet, promptness continues to elude me.
I wake up here, on the left. Oh, and that's Brandon, with his pirate-befitting beard.
The first thing I see, once I put on my glasses. Yes, the clock does say 1:05 p.m. - in my defense, it's 13 minutes fast and we're usually up until 5 a.m.
My home office, from where I live most of my non-working life. The coffee table was a gift from Brandon, who knew well my struggle to find a wood-finish table that I could sit under. The laptop is Ferdinand, named for the explorer Magellan, who was the first to circumnavigate the globe, for he is very small and weighs about 5 lbs. with battery. The television was my single major purchase after graduation for my foray into the real world - 42 inches of plasma make Daniel Jackson even PRETTIER.
Where I get clean. Sudoku books on the toilet tank (his and her) and yes, we're both slackers about hanging the toilet paper.
This is me, not intentionally trying to do my best impression of Elizabeth Weir - if I could, I'd live my life in jeans, but the workplace (the badge marks me as a tool of the man) has not yet acknowledged their respectability. I'm looking for a snack, as in all likelihood I won't get to take a dinner break during work. Behind me on the counter is the purse that marks my official entry into womanhood. You can't see its size - the thing could fit an entire human head, if I were so inclined one day with one of my wretched sources. If you knew, you wouldn't judge.
There's a better shot of my car coming, but there are clues here. Note the scrunchie - I drive a convertible. And the gear layout on the shifter - it's a manual transmission, which was oodles of fun when I was learning to drive at 16. In the center console is my iPod shuffle, which is all the iPod I need.
At the end of my street is a great little Starbucks that was converted from a gas station. Quaint and ingenius, but there is never any parking. Brandon and I walk there sometimes when the weather is breezy. I see it every morning and every night, but try to make this, taken out of the window of my car, the view I know best.
This is where I work - for the popslashers in the audience, it's located across the street from The Lakeland Center. The building is neat - with the three-quarter wall windows all around, it looks like a steel fortress when you're coming at it from the north. Plus they provide plenty of natural light inside. The paper is called The Ledger, a New York Times subsidiary, though they're alike only in ownership, and I am a crime reporter.
My cubicle. I cranked up the contrast to make it more surreal and edgy, like a comic book. Cubicles are not interesting, though I am glad for the low walls. The head at the top left is my co-crime reporter, Gabrielle, who has a fantastic sense of humor about the job. She's got the day shift, which keeps me on my beloved college schedule. On my desk is my computer that doesn't have enough memory to run our new intraoffice software, a plate from lunch, miscellaneous paperwork, a reporter's notebook and a pamphlet on alligator safety for a story I was working on about a guy smoking meth near a lake being mauled. Don't do it, kids. On the wall are sheets detailing the codes that law enforcement agencies use on the radio sitting on top of the cubicle wall, which one of us, one day, will throw against a window to land spectacularly three stories below. And there will be much rejoicing.
By far my favorite part of the office. Since the photo department went entirely digital, there has been no use for the dark room, so some ingenious person decided to convert it into a cafe! We have two coffeemakers for those of us who despise the smell, much less taste, of fake blueberry, company-purchased creamer, sweetener and coffees in many varieties, and a great little place to escape when the bullpen becomes unbearable.
The main office for my bank is a few blocks up from my work in the middle of downtown, an area that always makes me think of Rodney - to drive through it, you go from Lemon to Orange to Lime streets (citrus has always been one of Polk County's big exports.) There's been a lot of revitalization, especially in the past decade; luckily, it's the kind that preserves old buildings while adding new businesses. The bank is all old school: vaulted ceilings, marble and gleaming brass fixtures everywhere. Outside is something significant to all Lakeland - a swan statue. Allegedly, when Queen Victoria visited our little town, she brough a flock of the birds as a gift, and they've been sacred here ever since. Some years back, as a public art project several businesses and artists were given blank swans and asked to decorate and display them, comme ca.
Stopped to get gas at the station on the other end of my street en route to an assignment. This is my car - a 1997 Ford Mustang GT. I've been driving it for nine years and love it liek woah. However, I owe the planet at least a hybrid as my next vehicle. The damage for today's fill-up: $34.08.
One of my routines is driving to the Polk County Sheriff's jail book-in office to look at the day's arrest reports, which I have to admit is both the best and most depressing parts of my job. This, Lake Hollingsworth, would be part of the former. The trip takes me halfway of the 2.78 miles around the lake, ringed by some of the most expensive homes in the county, and oh, yes, Florida Southern College. So you've got million-dollar houses with drunk kids blazing down the roads, their music audible for blocks every night. In the photo is the church that marked the one-third point when we used to jog around it every other night after work. Three times, I made it without stopping. I should get back to trying for four.
Next on the road is U.S. 98, a nice speedy rural highway that, at certain times of the year, smells like oranges. The ride takes me out of Lakeland and into Bartow, whose slogan is "Touching Tomorrow Together." Personally, if I were tomorrow, I wouldn't want Bartow touching me. However, Bartow does have what is the classiest Denny's I've ever seen, with a cool metal cul-de-sac and free wireless Internet.
And here is the seedy waiting room of hell. Seriously, this is probably the closest that any location on Earth comes to Limbo. It is a 6-foot-by-14-foot room marginally air conditioned through a ceiling panel that's been pushed aside. The benches are all metal, detention deputies flit and are often ignorant about public records laws, there are no bathrooms, and people wait there for hours in each others' stench and disease and crying children and desperation. And they're not even the ones who are in trouble. It makes me sick to my soul to see old ladies and weary laborers, waiting six hours and more to bail out and pick up their loved ones who in all likelihood were caught with a recreational amount of pot or their license suspended. Yes, there is a story coming about it. As for me, I ask for the arrest reports, leaf through a huge, depressing stack of the aforementioned drug users and drivers, and domestic abusers - 95 percent of the arrests in Polk - and get copies of the assault/battery cases, the robberies, child pornographers, drug dealers and anyone unfortunate enough to be famous on any charge. It's hard to keep your faith in people sometimes when what you see most is how hideous they can be.
On the way back, I pass under the Polk Parkway, which joins up with Interstate 4 at both ends, at a junction with these signs. The one on the far left leads me back to Lakeland. The one in the midde directs me toward Tampa on the west coast, and the right one tempts me to Orlando. Some nights, it's really, REALLY hard to keep driving straight.
This movie location would be easier to recognize during the daytime, when the sky is endless and blue and the sun overexposes everything. But this is the view I usually see. It's the shopping center from Edward Scissorhands, right down the other way from my street. We get subs at the Publix there sometimes, and thankfully have yet to come across any sad experiments in human engineering. God that movie destroyed me.
The rest of the route includes a sports bar called T.A. Slammers, a mom-and-pop restaurant, Reececliff - literally a mashup of their names - that has been there since the 1930s, and this sign. It belongs to a dry cleaner, but instead of advertising shirt specials the sign bears a new phrase every week that's usually a takeoff of some cliche. Sometimes they're clever; often, they're lame. To wit: "Diets are mainly food for thought." What?
At 11 p.m. officially, though the earliest I usually manage to get away is 11:30, my shift ends. Back home, we settle in the living room, Brandon for either World of Warcraft or XBox, me for LiveJournal or Scrabble. And we drink coffee - yes, at the wrong end of the day. On the occasion of my birthday (though I still don't really know how to work the thing) he bought this Escalade of coffeemakers, an almost $100 tower of caffeine that I suspect beats up the other appliances when we're away. With the help of my gigantic Alaska mug, at bottom, from my mom.

And there you have it. Minus the speaking with dead people's families, watching houses burn down, useless at-our-convenience information officers and driving through seedy neighborhoods to it all. Why did I stay again?

Comments

Randomness

[krissi518.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love this post. Thanks, seriously.

There's a dry cleaner (or maybe a vacuum shop?) here that does the same thing with their sign. They always have some cheesy, not funny take on a cliche.

I've got an interview at the Sun on Monday. Keep your fingers crossed please. :)

Oh, also, I'm going to Paris this summer. In July. I'm SO stoked about this. :D

Re: Randomness

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it! I've loved this meme, getting to see an ordinary day in the lives of ordinary people.

And congrats on the interview! All the best.

Oh, and now you've now managed to mash my jealousy button. What's the occasion?

Re: Randomness

[krissi518.livejournal.com]

Matt was invited to attend the Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, Germany this summer. So, after the conference, I'm meeting him in Paris and we're doing our honeymoon right. :D