Yessss...

It's slightly after 7 AM. I just woke up. The temperature is low, but the sun is shining and the electricity is still on.

I'm sore in a few places, so I stayed home from the gym today. This means that I got 10.5 glorious hours of sleep last night.

Good morning, world!

Blackout

I woke this morning at 3:30 to lashing rain, a lightning storm, and a lack of electricity. Fearing a puddle in the foyer, I grabbed a towel and ran to put a stopper at the door, then relaxed as the power came back on.

Then it went off again, this time for the rest of the night.

I don't sleep well once disturbed, and for the next hour and a half, I lay in bed, wondering whether 1) we would have any tornadoes, 2) we would get power by morning, and 3) it would be worth it to go to my intended 5:30 step class. At one point, I turned on my laptop and decided to play on Facebook to numb myself back to sleep, only to realize that, ha, the wireless router was also out with the electricity.

I must have slipped into a doze around 4:30 or so, because I woke again, this time with significantly less pep, when my Jeeves clock roused me at 5. Seeing no change in the power situation, I packed a change of clothes, shampoo, and a hair dryer in my gym bag and headed for the Rec. Class was good, even before caffeine, but the best part was being able to dry my hair afterwards.

My dad met me in the foyer upon my return, fully dressed and with our dinner table votive in his hand. I figured then that it would be one of those days, and began nursing a Coke.

Alabama moment

My mother graciously re-upped the family's membership at the Hoover Rec this weekend ($240/year is the senior family rate - that covers me until May, and then it's only $100 more for me to continue on the plan), so now I can sweat in relative comfort. Granted, treadmill running is boring as hell - I kept looking at the distance indicator and comparing it to lake laps, and wondering what was taking so long - but it beats having to run around in three layers, sweating through your gloves and wishing for June. The good parts about the gym are the weight room, the likes of which I haven't seen since I left Edinburgh last August, and the classes, which I'll try tomorrow. Come on, doesn't 5:30 AM Cardio Step sound like a great way to wake up?

Anyone?

Anyway, as I was driving home this morning - it's only a five-minute trip - the SUV in front of me came to a halt, and I peered around to see what the hold-up was, thinking it would be a cat.

It was a possum. Honest to God, it was a possum, just taking his sweet time crossing the road.

They do exist in Hoover. Fancy that.

Long weekend

For the first time since I started kindergarten, I had Presidents Day off this year. Staring down a long weekend is always fabulous, especially when you're coming off a week of dress rehearsals, one of which was on Valentine's Day. I'm sorry, but there's something horribly depressing about Requiem practice on Valentine's Day. It just doesn't bode well for my love life, ya know?

Anyway, we did our two Brahms concerts (3 of 5 stars, according to the Birmingham News critic, but he's a jerk and sits too close...and he only ragged on the sopranos and tenors, anyway), and by Sunday, I was ready for a day of rest. We had a farewell soup and sides luncheon for Sarah, who's off to rock Midland, Texas in a Ron Burgundy sort of way (She's kind of a big deal. People know her.), and I went to bed that night eagerly awaiting the next morning, when a group of us would make a pilgrimage to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro.

What, you may ask, is the Unclaimed Baggage Center?

It happens all the time - your luggage doesn't meet you at the carousel. Sometimes, if it's my sister's bag, it ends up on the wrong continent. Other times, it winds up lonely and discarded, and then the airlines sell it to this group in Scottsboro. They then dissect the bags, dry clean and tag as needed, and open the goods up to the waiting public.

I kept hearing "Schadenfreude" in my head all weekend, but swore I was doing my patriotic duty for Presidents Day by improving the American economy. As it turned out, however, the joke was on us.

Let me tell you a little about Scottsboro, Alabama. It'll have to be a little, because honestly, there's not much to say. Scottsboro makes Fort Payne look like a booming metropolis. It's tiny. It's tucked up near the Tennessee border, about 30 miles from I-59. Unlike Fort Payne, it doesn't even have a band or a claim to global fame - all it has is the Unclaimed Baggage Center.

We didn't know this when we set off, so Jason, Brandon, and I were looking forward to the excursion when piled into Jason's car for our day trip. After a pit stop to take pictures of Brandon's smashed car (including one of her hugging the car goodbye), we set off, stopping only for gas and for lunch in Fort Payne. Don't you love little restaurants where everyone stares at you as you walk in the door? Still, they make a good cheese sandwich.

Somewhat satiated, we headed out into what can only be described as God's country, hoping for bargains. What we found was, to put it mildly, disappointing; the place was rather like a flea market with a high price point. Granted, they had some jewelry and a few fur coats, plus a selection of iPods, a couple electric guitars, and two saddles, but the only thing any of us bought was a paperback, and that cost me a whopping $4.36.

There was one bright spot, however. They had this:

It's Hoggle, from that Bowie classic, Labyrinth. (Thanks, Roadside America, for taking a picture!) The puppet arrived in someone's suitcase and has lived there ever since. Go figure.

Frustrated, we tried the knock-off unclaimed baggage store across the street. This proved to be a mistake, as the proprietor was of the surly, probably-has-a-gun-under-the-desk variety, and the best item for sale in the shack was a giant box of Tampax. Doesn't get much better than that, I suppose.

Tiring of this exercise in futility, we got back in the car and headed home, planning to reconvene that evening for pub trivia. As I was driving back to Hoover, I couldn't believe I'd failed in my mission to acquire cheap goods. On a whim, I pulled into the TJ Maxx parking lot - I'd only been in once before - and took a look at the women's racks. Half an hour later, I emerged with a black Dana Buchman sport coat and a khaki linen Tahari jacket, for which I paid only $175. If I'd been at Saks, they would have set me back around $825, so I felt pretty good about myself. I'll be going back to TJ Maxx.

Trivia was fun but for the cigarettes, to which I am annoyingly allergic. We only missed one point all evening, but so did three other teams, one of which had fewer players and thus won. If only we'd known that a Black Velvet is Guinness and champagne, we wouldn't have had this problem.

Evil empires and all that

As a Republican Southern Baptist from Alabama who spent the better part of her undergraduate Sundays at Mass, doesn't care about her friends' orientations, wants to see women in the pulpit, and has a fairly strong conviction that the world is, in fact, more than 6,000 years old, I've been associated with various evil empires for most of my life. This week, it pays off.

Along with the preceding, I'm also a bred PC user. I grew up with an IBM my parents bought from the Spiegel catalogue, a computer with 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drives but no CD reader, a sweet little machine running on an 386 processor with glorious Windows 3.1. My mother instructed me never to push the Delete key, as she was afraid I might remove something important. Consequently, I got cozy with Backspace.

My school computers were even sadder than what I had at home - they had actual boot diskettes, and you could only access SimCity through DOS. We had a few Apples floating around, but I never used those but for Oregon Trail and Scarab of Ra. Now those were some good times.

Around sixth grade, after I complained that my friends were teasing me because we didn't have a color printer and my mother realized that this newfangled AOL 3.0 needed more space than the old computer could give, we got a spiffy new one with Windows 95 and the Aptiva software package. It even had a CD-ROM. I loved that thing, and then I got my first laptop, a Gateway Solo that weighed about 10 pounds, and forgot all about the PC. Since then, the family has upgraded and I've been through two more laptops (a giant Averatec and a much smaller Vaio), and I spent many of my college vacations troubleshooting issues with the family computer. I've done things in the registry no novice should be allowed to do, but everything still seems to be working, at least for the time being. (We do need to re-up our anti-spyware software, after all.)

Suffice it to say I've seen my share of frozen screens, error messages, and the Task Manager, but I can't help it - I love my Windows, and I love my PCs. Don't get me wrong, Apple's products are intuitive and shiny, but there's somehow less of a challenge when the icon jumps up and down, practically screaming, "Pick me, pick me, you moron! Click the button!" These Apple features have come in handy, however, as I've been forced to jump in and use them at work since my college internships.

And yet, beginning tomorrow, some of my department's Macs will be replaced by - gasp! - Dell desktop computers. The staff isn't too pleased to be losing their Macs, especially since almost no one is comfortable with PCs, but we're all going to PC training on Thursday to get us on the same page.

The Mac tech called me today to see which programs he'd have to transfer to my new computer. While I had him on the phone, I asked how useful the three-hour PC seminar would be, since I already know my way around XP. "You're going to be bored for quite a bit of it," he said. Good times.

Other than that, today was a mixed bag. I had a great impromptu lunch with a friend at Urban Standard, a relatively new cafe/coffeehouse on the north side that has the best grilled cheese sandwiches I've ever tasted (they come with balsamic dipping sauce), but then I had a mall pretzel for dinner. I found a copy of Live at The X Lounge III at What's on Second for $2, but I fell down a few stairs on my way to purchase it. I had to drive to Brahms practice in a monsoon, but I saw a fox running across the road when I was leaving work, and that made it all better.

Taking the scenic tour of Birmingham

I realized somewhere around mile 10 of my half-marathon today why the iPod was invented. No, it wasn't so listeners could have their entire CD collections at their fingertips. It was so runners coming down off a hilly course and flagging with three miles to go wouldn't get that perennial classic, "Running on Empty," stuck in their heads.

Man, I missed my iPod.

I had heard headphones were allowed at Mercedes, but when I checked over my race instructions last night, I found otherwise. Reluctant to leave my Queen at home but unwilling to risk having my iPod confiscated, I left it behind this morning and decided to run my first distance race without music. Considering the last time I ran anything without music was ninth grade, this development only made my stomach knot more tightly.

I'm going to be honest, I was nervous going into this race today. Prior to this morning, I'd hit the half-marathon point exactly once, and that was a) on a flat course, b) in December, and c) before I was out for the better part of a month with an injury. Suffice it to say I was feeling under-trained already - hey, I've really only been running since October - and rumors were circulating about the course. Mercedes is a Boston qualifier, and they make you work for it. Birmingham's anything but flat, though you wouldn't know this from the Vulcan 10K, which has only one decent hill. The Mercedes course, on the other hand, is bitchy. The city's fine, but around the fourth mile, you hit the bottom of Greensprings, which is a solid uphill mile. Following that ordeal (the band at the top helps you on), you hit Valley, which undulates, and then the road descends (briefly) into English Village. Once in the Village, you head for the hill and start making the trek back into Birmingham proper. By mile 9, the worst of the hills are behind you, but that's small consolation when you're running on empty.

Undaunted (and blissfully unaware of exactly how demanding the course is), I was dropped off downtown at 6:15, bib pinned in place and chip strapped to my shoe, and spent most of the following 45 minutes waiting in bathroom lines. When better than 3,000 people are racing, there are long bathroom lines, especially for the women. We just can't be rushed. While waiting, I happened to notice that at least a quarter of the people around me had earbuds and iPods, and thought unkind things about reading the race rules. Slipping out of the waiting area just before 7, I entered the chute between the 9- and 10-minute mile groups, and waited for the 7:03 (don't ask) gun.

The first few miles were largely flat, and everyone seemed to be doing well, even the asses who had been smoking stogies in the chute before we started. Several people laughed when we came upon the first portalets and found racers lined up outside, but the biggest shock of the morning, at least for me, was looking down and seeing that the ex-Marine-type beside me was running barefoot. Some people just feel that need to be a little more hard-core than everyone else, I guess.

We left town, heading for Greensprings, and then the yells started - "Man, I love this hill! Yay, Greensprings!" - which were most definitely facetious. I didn't allow myself to walk on that hill - we were only four miles in, after all - but I was a bit shaky at the top, and midway down Valley, I gave up and walked for a few minutes. This pattern continued for most of the remaining hill course, running as far as possible and then walking to recover, but I wasn't the only one who hit the steep English Village hill, looked up, and said, "Ah, screw it, I'm taking my sweet time on this one."

To keep us from collapsing, refreshment stands had been set up at nearly every mile, and the small army of volunteers was busy handing out water, Powerade, gels, and bits of fruit as we passed. I became fond of those stands very quickly, and so when I saw one on the south side of Birmingham, I picked up the pace, hoping for another drink. Then I got close enough to hear them, and realized this stand was passing out Twinkies and beer. Something tells me it wasn't an official stop on the route.

Finally, wet, cold, and more than a little crusty, I crossed, got my medal and finisher's shirt, picked up a banana and couple of Powerades, wrapped myself in glorified aluminum foil to stay warm, and met my mother and Sarah, who had come down to watch me finish. It took me two hours, 12 minutes and change from the gun start to finish - the chip results aren't up yet - but by the gun time, I was the 493rd woman to cross. I'm not winning cash any time soon, but I finished respectably, and that was the goal in the first place - just finishing.

I changed clothes, hit the after-party, and discovered, once again, that I don't do well with food after a long run, no matter how good the barbeque sandwich tastes going down. Skipping the Michelob and the massages, I called my poor mother, who made her third 20-mile round-trip to Birmingham today, and went home before I could be sick or pass out. Once back at the house, Mom gave me a most welcome massage, and then I curled up on my bed, slightly sweaty clothes be damned, and didn't move for two hours.

It's 9 PM, and I'm going to bed. Something tells me I'm going to be a bit on the stiff side at 6:30 tomorrow morning, but there's no time for that - it's Brahms week.

One of those weeks

Ever have one of those weeks in which it feels like you're running on a treadmill and can't find the red emergency button?

To summarize: work, Brahms, proofreading, vote, doctor, work, emergency baby shower gift, House, proofreading, get Brahms score bound, work, proofreading, work, mix crabmeat dip, finally get a 20-minute run in, finally get back to Duma Key, which I haven't touched all week, work, bake crabmeat, dinner party (thanks, Jerry!), more Duma Key.

And...breathe. I'm going to the pre-race expo in a bit, then out for fro-yo with Sarah. Then I'm coming home and taking it easy, because tomorrow's race starts at 7:03, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I'm going to wake on the hour tonight. And that just sucks.

Next week: nightly Brahms practice, then two concerts. We were supposed to be at the Alys Stephens Center for our first rehearsal with the conductor on Monday night, but we got bumped by the Indigo Girls. That's fine by me; Briarwood's a heck of a lot closer than the ASC.

Super Bowl commercials

The best part of the game -the advertisements.



Bud Light: Jackie Moon


Bud Light: Caveman party


Bridgestone: Running over Richard

Whistlestop tour

This weekend has to go down as one of the briefest home visits in collegiate history.

Stuck in Chicago when her flight was cancelled on Friday, my sister made it home around 10:45 Saturday morning. Twenty-three hours, a shopping trip, and a salmon-and-field-peas birthday dinner later, we drove her to Nashville for her grad school interview tomorrow morning. A strange weekend, certainly, but it was great to see the kid again.

We made it home at 5 PM, just in time for kickoff. I don't particularly care for football, and I have no great love for New York, but I was so psyched to see that touchdown pass with two minutes to go. (Actually, I looked up just as they announced it - I began reading Stephen King's newest during the second quarter. I said I don't care for football...) Oh man, why can't Yale play like that?

Actually, Yale did play like that. They played like the Patriots to Harvard's Giants, only much, much worse...

Huzzah for democracy

It's sad, and yet somehow reassuring.

Poor Florida. I normally have no sympathy for Democrats, but the party has done them dirty. For holding their primary early, they get no delegates. As Fox put it, "The Democratic race is a beauty pageant."

Still, they've been voting all day. With 24% of the precincts in right now, Hillary already has nearly 300,000 votes, and Obama over half that. Nice that the democratic process lives on, even if the Democratic Party's national officials suck. Let them hold their primary early! Who cares? Heck, hold all the primaries on the same day and let's get this charade over with!

In other news, Ron Paul has a whopping 3% of the vote at this point. I'd say he's next to go, but then he's crazy.

Prop sale postscript

This afternoon, I bought a plastic bin in which to store my prop sale purchases, and, on a whim, a roll of bubble wrap. While I was taking the price stickers off my pieces and wrapping them, I finally got a good look at the markings.

Several pieces are handmade and dated.

One set, for which I paid $10, is signed, dated, and numbered (2/1000, to be exact).

And the real clincher: the two plates I'm not crazy about, the delicate ones with the blue and gold rims, are Wedgwood bone china.

I love prop sales.

Prop sale

Everyone (at least on the east coast of this country) has probably glimpsed a bit of news footage from the Filene's wedding gown sale. On a signal, the doors are opened and hundreds of brides-to-be stampede in, grab as many dresses as they can carry - whether they like them or not - and frantically strip in an effort to find the perfect gown at a fraction of the cost.

Today's prop sale was somewhat like that, minus the stripping.

What, then, is a prop sale? Periodically, one of the magazines' closets will get too full, and so they'll put out props from old photo shoots, priced at a fraction of the cost. This might not be so exciting if one has a nice, established home, but if one is a twenty-something female, the prospect of cheap plates is thrilling.

Of course, there are a ton of twenty-something females at the company, so one needs a decent bit of strategy to successfully manage a prop sale. Fortunately, our supervisors were only too happy to pass on tips.

First, you must arrive well in advance. As today's sale began at 12, a group of us interns gathered outside the doors at 11:15, sack lunches in hand, and ate in the hallway while we watched the pre-sale people leaving with their purchases. As soon as the hour rolled around, we rushed inside, grabbing items and only really considering whether we wanted them while we waited to check out.

Secondly, one needs to bring a bag of some sort. I neglected to do this, and ended up holding roughly 20 pounds of pottery in my arms for a good half-hour, waiting to check out. When I got back to my desk, my co-workers asked how I made out. "Well," I panted, "but I can't feel my arms."

Thirdly, one must not only go at the beginning of the sale, as the prices drop toward the end of the afternoon. When I went again at 2:15, everything was half-price. When my supervisor went shortly thereafter, everything was $1. And when I went for the final time, just after she returned, everything was 50 cents. I bought four $9 place mats and two chargers for a whopping $3. Not too shabby.

Fourth, one must look out for fights. I didn't see any today, but then again, this wasn't the largest prop show - they've had shows in the parking lot before. The things we do for castoffs...

Overall, I'm pleased with my purchases. I brought home two small plates I'm not crazy about - I grabbed them almost as soon as I got through the door - but most of the loot is nice, and I even managed to snag a bit for my sister. The crazy thing is thinking about how much this stuff would have cost at retail - my best buy of the day was a handmade bowl, originally $20, that I got for $2. They might not all match, but hey, now I have some serving pieces for my hypothetical apartment.

Come on, prop people, I need furniture.

Snow?

I'm feeling rather cheated right about now.

We were promised snow this weekend. For days, the weathermen cautiously built up the idea that Birmingham - yes, this Birmingham - would receive up to four inches of the white stuff. We haven't had a really decent snow since 1993, the infamous "Storm of the Century" that dumped a whole foot in places and paralyzed the city for a week, and we still have a Flexible Flyer in the garage that has yet to go for its maiden run, an impulse buy purchased in the hope that '93 would be repeated. To date, it has not, making northern transplants and southern kids who've never seen snow sad.

Anyway, we were gearing up for our four inches. Bread and milk were flying off the shelves. Firewood was purchased by the truckload. Pipes were dripped. And then...

...and then, we got maybe a whopping inch. Insult to injury, the temperature warmed enough to melt the damned stuff, leaving us with brown grass and sporadic patches of roadside ice. All the planning (and cancellation) came to nought, and the Great Blizzard of 2008 turned out to be a great big bust in Birmingham.

Still, Callie saw her first snow, and was predictably confused. She didn't like to pick up her snow-covered football, heaven only knows why. Border collies.

Sweeney Todd

My friend Roy braved the possible sleet (hey, this is Birmingham, and we take our winter weather seriously!) to see Sweeney Todd with me tonight. Having never seen the musical, I had heard that the movie was good but gory, and I was looking forward to seeing it, even if I ended up watching bits with my eyes closed.

I've got to hand it to Tim Burton and Johnny Depp - they make one heck of a weird, wonderful team. Add Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Timothy Spall to the mix, and you've got a great cast of slightly twisted actors. Spall's a great toady - I recognized him from Enchanted, then later realized he's Peter Pettigrew in HP3 - and Alan Rickman has 'unlikeable' down to a science. The scenery is classically Burton-esque, the blood is so over-the-top it's only slightly disturbing, and the eyeshadow is abundant. Plus, someone is singing every time you turn around. It borders on camp, but it's a good time.

The only downside to the evening was the theater lights, which came on sporadically throughout the screening. Bizarre...

Nostalgia

It has taken me better than a week, what with work and a proofreading job to occupy my time, but I finally managed to complete my scrapbook tonight. This is my largest by far - I had to add an additional ten pages to the album, and that's the jumbo size - but since it begins back in the summer of 2006, I think it's justifiably large.

I've been doing yearly albums since China Tour at the end of high school. They make nice souvenirs, since I have a tendency to hold on to ticket stubs and programs. This one is more photo-heavy than my albums usually are, but Scotland's just so photogenic. Actually, most of my best pictures aren't in this album; landscapes are nice, but when you've only got room for so many pictures, you've got to maximize your space. I'll have some of those printed and framed when I get an apartment, and hang them near my Skye boat and coo pictures.

Strange, to look back over a year and a half of accumulated detritus. I've got everything in there from a plane ticket stub to Randy Owen's autograph...

What a weird year 2007 turned out to be.

Happy hour

This afternoon, I joined Dennis, Sarah, Sarah Louise, Amelia, Jen, Jason, and Jason's sister for Happy Hour at McCormick and Schmick's. The lure was the promise of $2 hamburgers. The catch was the two-drink minimum. Knowing that I would be joining my parents for dinner, I drank my wine, ate my hummus, and tried to pass my second carafe off on the only underage person at the table. I don't know if anyone finished it - I had to go early - but I hope someone did; $6 for a glass of house Riesling is a little steep.

My folks met me at Habañeros for dinner, and shortly thereafter, we met Juan, our server. Juan was a nice guy - he actually spoke English! - and he had us introduce ourselves after dinner: "You are Mom, you are Dad, and Princess is..."

Damn, I hate it when I blush.

Book fest!

Remember the book sale back in grade school? Every year, Scholastic would drive up with a truck of paperbacks and catalogues for the kiddies, and you'd take a catalogue home to your parents, who would either make a list of books for you to buy or (as you got older) just give you a blank check.

Man, I miss those days. My sister got me onto Susan Cooper, thanks to the book sale.

Today was kind of like that, minus the Animorphs titles. Apparently, books sent to the company that aren't used are occasionally given away. I snagged a few this afternoon, and was shocked by the selection sent to the department. Look, no matter how relevant to southern life the PR person thinks it might be, it's pretty safe to say that Tor's catalogue isn't going to be reviewed by this magazine any time soon.

Hey, I'm not complaining. I like Tor, and I'm a sucker for books.

Fun with airports

Bright and early this morning, we loaded up the car and drove Jen to the airport for her 9:55 flight back to school.

When we arrived, the desk clerk told us the plane had been delayed, so it wouldn't even arrive until 9:25 and boarding would be pushed back half an hour. Departure was scheduled for 10:20. Jen, being responsible, called her driver in Chicago and informed him of the change.

I called Jen after we got home to ask if she had meant to leave certain things behind. She had, and her flight had been delayed an hour or so, now due to mechanical problems.

Around 12:30, as we were finishing lunch, Jen called. Her flight had been cancelled and she was booked in for a 5 PM flight, but in the interim, she wanted to be rescued from the hell that is the Birmingham International Airport. As it turned out, the plane was having fairly significant issues, but it being Sunday, the mechanic had to be called in from home. He lives an hour away, and so there was quite a lag in informing the passengers that they wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon.

Half an hour later, we pulled up, loaded her luggage back into the car, and took her home. She and I then joined our friend Sarah for TCBY (because everything is better with frozen yogurt) before we took her back to the airport, making it our third trip of the day.

Around 8 PM, she called to say she made it safely back to Chicago, many hours after she'd planned to get there. Poor kid.

Mmm

This being Jen's last night home, we went out to dinner at Jackson's in SoHo. It's a cute restaurant, fairly trendy, and the menu seems appealing. I saved room, however, as I had been warned about a dessert I needed to try.

Cookie dough eggrolls, anyone?

Oh. My. God. Take two eggroll wrappers. Fill them with cookie dough. Flash-fry, then add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and liberally apply chocolate sauce to the whole thing.

Actually, it reminded me of a deep-fried Mars bar. Something one does once, perhaps, then reminisces upon fondly as one's arteries harden.

Suiting up

This morning began my new internship, meaning I was up at 6, pulled a business suit from the closet, and made it to work by quarter of 8. Yes, it was a bit on the early side, but I'll get to come in at 9 from now on. Of course, I also get to stay there until 5:30, but that's alright - I got the full tour today, and SPC has a truly amazing campus, complete with waterfall and patios that will be lovely once the temperature gets above 30. Say, Friday. We're in a bit of a cold snap at the moment.

I've only been there one day, but I'm really liking SPC. The people couldn't be friendlier, and the organization is incredible. Having only worked with small publications to this point, I was shocked at the sheer functionality. Then again, I've worked places where having an art bag is considered highly organized, so it may take me a bit to get acclimated. It's a very different environment, but I think I'm going to get a lot out of the next six months.

Now, if only my suit wardrobe lasts...