Ghost Writer

I started this post an hour or so ago, but I got temporarily sidetracked playing around with a new look for my blog. I think I'm in an "artsy" mood because I've been playing with pictures and stuff at work. I stumbled upon a blog by another displaced Yankee living in the South. She has horses, which made me think of my mom, and writes full-time, which brings me back to the post I intended to write.

I desperately wanted my current job because it involved more writing and less talking than my former one. Not that I am opposed to talking to people, but I like to talk to people for fun, not for work. I'm just the kind of person who has a quota for how much human interaction I want to have in a day, and I don't like to waste it all at work. And maybe I'm a little bit on the shy side.

Now that I'm writing at work instead of staring at my computer doing other things all day, maybe I'll write more at home instead of doing other things, like playing games and finding perfectly valid reasons not to do laundry tonight. Which brings me to my next great idea.

Most people who have jobs like mine have to do a certain amount of schmoozing. In my case, my office already has a very successful resident schmoozer, so I am largely off the hook. I am getting the impression that people really will not be offended if I sit in my office, or (if it ever stops raining) on my back deck, and write. Which doesn't bother me at all.

When I first met my super-schmoozer co-worker, I thought that he and I would make a perfect team. I should first clarify that in this case "schmooze" is not a derogatory term; it's a vital part of the job description, and one that I am glad that he does well so that I don't have to. It saved me a lot of money on golf lessons. We balance each other well: I'm the thinker-writer-planner-dreamer, he's the talker-mover-shaker-schemer. Ideally, he'll make me a more confident talker over time, but I doubt there's much he can do for my golf game.

Apparently I'm not the only one that noticed our particular yin-and-yang balance. Today, upon finishing one of his many anecdotes about his colorful life, my co-worker pointed out that I would make a good ghost writer. "You could write -- you write well -- and I could just talk, 'cause I have tons of stories." (See above re: my observation that I write and he talks).

I have to admit that it would probably be a lot of fun, and an excellent education on how to become an expert schmoozer. I could see him at book signings, doing NPR interviews, schmoozing, taking all the credit. And me working on the tell-all sequel...

Tradition Revisted

My first job out of college was in Omaha, Nebraska, and I developed the after-work tradition of sitting out in the back yard each night with a cigarette and a beer while I was cooking dinner. Back then I did the kind of dinner-cooking that actually allowed time for the consumption of beer and a cigarette, unlike the five-minutes-in-the-microwave cooking that I do now.

Now that it appears to finally be spring for real and not just as a protracted (and repeated) April Fool's Day prank, I'm suddenly waxing nostalgic. But six weeks without Taco Bell and Milky Ways taught me the finer points of resisting temptation, so I managed to make it home (2.5 miles -- I love my new job) without stopping to buy a pack of cigarettes.

I grabbed a beer and headed out onto my back deck, which is usually as sadly neglected as my poor blog. On this particular night, however, I was joined by two dogs (neither of them mine), a baby (definitely not mine), and my neighbor (owner of one of the dogs and father of the baby). As I tried to juggle beer and laptop without accidentally locking myself out, my downstairs neighbor's adorable puppy squeezed past me into the kitchen and promptly began eating the cat food. My alpha-male, dog-averse cat took this surprisingly well, and I managed to get the puppy back out the door in one piece. I spent the rest of the evening nursing my beer and watching the baby unwittingly feed crackers to the dogs, while my cat sat wide-eyed and defensive on the other side of the security door.

I thought this post might turn into a long, rambling reflection on how much my life has changed since the summer of 1997, when my grandmothers were still alive and Google didn't exist yet (and yes, I did google Google to find this out for sure). But then my dad called, and all the words that I might have poured out onto the screen ended up in my conversation with him, so I'm honestly left with just one profound thought: a cold beer on a warm afternoon still tastes every bit as good as it did in 1997.