Last week, I endeavored to put a few of our vacation pictures up on the wall behind my desk. In all of our Paris pictures, we are flushed and glazed with dampness because it was 80 degrees and nothing was air-conditioned (I am not a complete baby, but the third floor of the Musée Carnavalet nearly took me out, and not because I was feeling emotional about liberté égalité fraternité). Fortunately, this sheen passes for Instagram dewiness in our impromptu selfie in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. I don’t look a day over 40.
(I can also tell in the picture why so many hotel ballrooms look the way they do, no offense Louis XIV, your gaudy ballroom is of course the real deal. But the influence of pink marble, excessivly mirrored surfaces, and gilt on the Marriotts of the world cannot be ignored.)
I said last week to my friend Christina that I would like to write a McSweeney’s list about dumbass job application questions, but the list would be one item long, because the worst question is Why do you want to work for this company? My good sister in Christ, I don’t. The job description sounds fine and the money is right, so ask me all the questions you want about SEO and content marketing, but please do not request (at no cost!!) a prose poem about how I locked eyes with your software company across a crowded room and had to know more. It is, without reservation or qualification, simply not that deep.
Yes, I’m still “opportunistically looking” for a new job. The market seems to be opening up a little, but people still wanna be putting ridiculous questions on their applications. And while I’d like to put an honest answer in the (always) required text box, the universe is watching, as my Chinese carryout recently reminded me:
Rude AF!!!! But probably the best choice in this one, single, very specific situation.
Other than that, there is nothing much interesting going on. I had an in-person work meeting a couple of weeks ago and it was fine but exhausting. Years of working from home have atrophied the pleasure centers in my brain that used to be perked up by office drone things like riding in an elevator all alone, making a new pot of coffee, or snacks I would never choose to eat outside the office (for example, these monstrosities). After the first day of the meeting, my face hurt from doing things like talking, smiling, and looking like I am paying attention to a PowerPoint on a large screen. I have been in recovery ever since.
You’ll read this on a Monday so I’m not sure how my weekend was. Thus far, the outlook is: damp. A foot of snow began melting sometime around Tuesday and that is still happening – there’s one small tenacious hump of it on our tree lawn collecting dirt and, I’m sure, Cheetos bags or empty soda bottles that fell out of the neighbors’ trash bins during what would have been a very chaotic (and snowy) garbage collection. Ah, winter in Ohio! I’d say “never change” but winter in my declining years is likely to be very changed indeed from the ones I knew as a wee peerie lass.
I hate ending abruptly, so I will just leave you with a recommendation (as if Drizzilicious wasn’t enough for you!), which is the new season of All Creatures Great and Small on PBS. This is the remake version I’ve spoken about before; it’s less soapy than Gilded Age (and things actually, you know, happen) but everything always turns out all right in the end. This year they have gone in a little heavy-handed on animal surgery and whatnot but that can be when you get up to refill your popcorn bowl. Soon enough you’ll be answering your phone (lol) with a cheerfully restrained “Darrowby 2297!” just like my homemaking idol Mrs. Hall. (Or Mrs. ‘all, to be precise about it.)
We are also watching Masters of the Air, another WWII fantasy from your friends Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, but also there’s Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan if that’s your thing. I’m not sure how many times these guys are going to remake Band of Brothers or whatever but it’s pretty watchable and if you always wished the movie Memphis Belle was a series, wish granted.