Drudge

On the Riverwalk...taken when I was an hour early for work
(haven't mastered the bus schedule yet).

I had a last lovely few days of unemployment, and last week I started my new job.  Remember how depressed I was when I wasn't busy?  Well, now I'm busy, and feeling uglier than ever.  I always dislike day jobs for their complicated details: learning the ropes, getting to know co-workers, etc.  Usually, I am nervous all the time until I get used to the job, then I settle down into a mild dislike of the hours, the work, the boredom and the lazy or annoying co-workers, I might get into a decent mood and make a couple of friends, but after a while I start to really, really hate the place.  I blame all my problems on it and look for reasons to quit.  Then I do quit.  It's a destructive pattern, but I always tell myself that if I got a "real job"--which, for me, is a full-time teaching job--I would not follow the same pattern.  I don't know whether I'll ever get that kind of "real job."  It's recently occurred to me that my "real job" might be what I've done for the past 12 years: cobble together a few days of teaching college with a few days of teaching lessons and a couple days, or half-days, of a part-time retail gig.  I don't like that.

Anyway.  This is the most complicated job I've ever had.  I'm working in a hotel, with millions of departments and rules--my shop is a glorified convenience store.  I have a uniform which is surprisingly comfy and flattering, but I have to check it out, change at my locker, dump it back in the bin to be dry cleaned and make sure I have a uniform for the next day, when I might get there earlier than the uniform room opens.  I take breaks in a break room where breakfast is free, lunch is $1.50 and is paid for with the same kind of machine that we use to clock in--a fingerprint ID system, and there's always soda and cereal for free, if we don't want to pay the buck fifty.  I have a million little duties and ways I'm supposed to speak to customers and other employees.  The coworkers, so far, are mostly very nice.  I can tell which types they are: the responsible ones, the fun ones, the lazy ones, the call-in-sick ones.  There's one guy who annoys the fuck out of me--he always has to have the last word on everything; if you tell him to stop complaining he complains about that; if the manager tells him to do something, he turns around and tells me to do it, then can't understand why anyone would object, when he's just trying to train the new girl.

It's been forever since I worked for a large company--last time was the summer I spent working in the JCPenney optical department in college.  Also in college, I worked for a couple of regional grocery store chains.  Since then, I've only worked for independent business owners.  Honestly, I considered myself to be unemployable EXCEPT by small business owners--not counting teaching, of course.  I'm not used to having this chain of command, these rules and restrictions and breaks.  Sheesh, I haven't had a job with "breaks" in years--my bosses would say, "get all the work done, then chill out, but make sure the work gets done."  Need to run to the store for tampons?  Put a "back in 5" sign on the window.  Want to sit down and drink a coffee? Hell, what are you waiting for?

And parking!  Jesus.  I can pay $50 a month to park in the hotel garage; I can pay $5-$10 per day to park in a downtown lot, or I can park in the Park-N-Ride lot 5 blocks away and take the bus to the hotel.  The hotel gave me a bus pass sticker for my ID (which I have to show when I enter and exit through the employee entrance behind the valet station), so I've settled on the bus thing for now.  Maybe Santa will buy me a few months' worth of hotel parking.  Maybe I'll get smart enough to figure out the citywide bus system.  Maybe I'll get a visit from the gig fairy.

My feet hurt.  Naturally, I can't wear the comfy-but-hideous crocs that I wore at my last coffee shop--they don't go with the hotel uniform.  Kitchen workers can wear them, but I'm in the lobby with guests, so I have to wear respectable shoes.  I feel so old, complaining about my shoes.

Wah, wah, wah.  I keep reminding myself that I'm grateful to have a job.  It really does pay well.  I think my supervisors like me--I KNOW one of them does.  The little benefits are nice--they have raffle drawings for prizes all the time, and those free breakfasts, and good benefits for full-timers, which I probably will be, if I want it.  It's going to be rough work hours, but it's in a comfortably air-conditioned lobby with good security and, strangely enough, flattering lighting.  I'm just goddamn tired.

Guten Días, San AnTouristTrap

I woke yesterday morning at 7:15, despite having gone to sleep around 3, because there were some of Satan's Cicadas buzzing happily outside my window.  Normally I don't mind insect noises (provided they're coming from outside my house).  This was loud enough to wake me from a Tylenol-PM coma.  I lay in bed for half an hour, and then noticed the temperature on my weather app: 79 degrees.  79 degrees!  I hadn't seen it below 90 during daylight hours since I came back from my trip up north.

So I got up, got dressed and collected my wallet, phone, keys, cemetery notebook, camera, SD cards, camera bag, extra lens, lip balm, bug spray, and three kinds of sunblock.  I needed a bag to get out of the house--this is ridiculous--I WILL get back to my minimal house-leaving routine.  Anyway, I drove downtown and went to the City Cemeteries, which I hadn't seen yet.

They were ugly.  I didn't even take pictures, they were so ugly.  I miss my Rose Hill.

So I drove to a little fancypants neighborhood called King William.  It was not ugly.  I left my car at the corner of Madison and St. Mary's, and walked all the way up Madison, taking pictures of houses.  I turned a corner and realized I knew where I was, right near the Blue Star Brewery that John and I went to a while back.  I remembered an entrance to the Riverwalk there, so I figured what the heck, I'd check out the Riverwalk at 10 am on a Wednesday.  The only other time I've been there was Thanksgiving day, and it was PACKED.  So I found my way there, and discovered it was the less-traveled end of the Riverwalk, the scenic, park-like end, not the trendy sports-bar-and-overpriced-ice-cream-shop end.  I walked toward downtown on the Riverwalk till I got tired, climbed the Durango St. Bridge and took that shot of the river up there, and went back down to the river on the other side of the street.  Walked back the way I came, crossed back over to Madison Street, walked back down to my car.  Drove home.

All these directions are so I can tell you what happened when I got home.  My legs were tired, and I wondered how far I had walked, so I looked it up on Google maps.  Up Madison, over to Riverwalk, down to Durango St....and I was only about 2 blocks from my car.  I made a big U.  Then, because I was dumb and left my phone in the car, and I was scared of getting lost, I just followed my breadcrumbs all the way back.  I walked about 2.5 miles and only went .3 miles away from my car.

It was a nice walk, though.  I wish I'd known where I was, because I'd've kept walking into neighborhoods I hadn't seen yet, if I'd known how close my car was.

Oh yeah, the title of the entry is a goof.  Everything here is in Spanish, but it's plastered with German names and styles.  It really is a lovely combination; I like the personality of San Antonio more than any place I've lived, except maybe Ann Arbor.  (I still miss Atlanta.)  The Riverwalk?  Yeah, locals don't go there much.  There were runners and dogwalkers on the part where I was this morning, but it's not a place to shop or hang out, unless you work there.

Which I do, now.  Today I got offered that job that I interviewed for two weeks ago.  I don't know why they waited so long to call me; maybe they called a bunch of other people first and there was something bad about it.  However it worked, I got the job, and I have orientation next week.  I'm not going to write much about it here.  This blog isn't anonymous.  I will say it's in a hotel, I'm making coffee, I will probably be working overnight shifts.  It's on the Riverwalk--the trendy, overpriced end, of course.  I liked my coffee shop job a few years ago, and this will give me plenty of opportunities for people-watching.  It'll also give me a paycheck, unless I screw it up by writing about it on the internet.

Stargazing

I finally got my debit card, so I bought gas and went out the other night to try and see the Perseid meteor shower.  It supposedly peaked around midnight on Friday night.  I didn't have the slightest idea where to drive, since, you know, I'm not from here.  I headed for the Hill Country, out west of San Antonio.  I don't know how far into the hills you have to be to actually be in Hill Country, but I drove west until I was driving up and down some hills, and then I looked for a place where I could see Cassiopeia in the northeast sky.

(Cassiopeia is the one that looks like a W.  Perseus is below it.  No, I'm not an astronomy whiz; I just know where to look for the good meteor showers--for the Perseids in August, look at Perseus.  For the Taurids in November, look at Taurus.  Got it?

[Actually, I always wanted to be an astronomy whiz.  I just had other things on my plate.  Plus, I have ADD, and lying down looking at the sky without getting bored was more than I could handle as a kid.])

I drove around the hilly hill area, which may or may not have been in the Hill Country, looking for a place to a) see the sky, b) not get eaten by coyotes, and c) not get eaten by crazy Texan serial killers.  I found myself on a hilltop among some mansions...by the time I got there, I knew I wasn't going to see any meteors, because the moon was so full and bright that it might as well have been daytime.  Still, I found a stretch of gravel road where there wasn't a lot of artificial light and I watched the sky for a while.  Then I took pictures of the moon for a while.  Then I took pictures of the mansions for a while.  When I got tired of smacking mosquitoes off my ankles, I packed up my tripod and headed for home.  It wasn't until I got in the car that I realized there are scorpions in Texas.  "And snakes," says Tom.  Yes, and snakes.  "And spiders!" says John.  Yes.  There were probably snakes and scorpions and tarantulas organizing a feast as I stood there fiddling with the shutter release on my camera.  I was more worried that someone would come out of the mansion with a shotgun and ask why in the hell I was taking pictures of their house with a long lens at 1:30 in the morning.

moon, with leaves out of focus

moon, with leaves in focus

Mansion, with cool bleedy light painting

mansion, on 24-sec. shutter release

The Dude

The Dude is a girl.  Just so you know.

She likes the low-calorie Iams that I feed Fleck and Lily, but I think I'm going to get her something with more calories, since she's so skinny.

She likes to sleep in front of the apartment, in a little messy area under my kitchen window.  I'm trying to train her to come to the back door, but until today she would only come back there when I tempted her with food.  She'd eat, then go back to the front.  The upstairs neighbor's air conditioner drips down onto that place under the window, so there's a little puddle for The Dude to drink from.  Today, I gave her a dish of cold water at the back door and now she's been camped out on the patio all afternoon.

I'm scared she'll get pregnant, but I 'm hesitant to take her to be fixed.  The spay/neuter organizations "tag" the cats that are fixed by clipping about an inch off of one ear.  I don't want them to tag her ear.  She's tame, for pete's sake...she is going to end up being my outside cat, if she's not sick.  She doesn't need an ear trim...but if I don't let them tag the ear, they will know she's MY cat, not a feral cat, and they will charge me more than $10 to get her fixed and cleaned up.

Lily does not approve of Patio Cat.

Still alive

It seems like there should be tons of news and stuff to write in a blog entry, but I mostly just sit around my apartment.  I clean stuff sometimes, and I go to the grocery store.  Even that has gone away, because my debit card expired and the new one got sent to my address in Georgia, and it couldn't be forwarded.  So I can't buy groceries.  I sit around, check my facebook, read books I've read before, and eat popcorn.  John is either working or going to yoga or going out, so I have a lot of time to myself.

This week I started making to-do lists and sending emails.  I'm doing some work for the brass band association, and making some Texas contacts...and sort of half-way thinking of getting out of here next year.  Maybe.  I found out that the reason I didn't get the assistantship I wanted was because the dean of the school knew from the beginning that he wasn't going to give it to a euphonium player.  He's gone now, and there's a possibility that I could go for it again, with different results.

The sad thing is, I kinda like it here.  I miss my band and my friends, but I have a new band here and they think I'm great.  I've gone to three rehearsals and I go out with the ones who hang after rehearsals.  They've given me a lot of leads for other bands, most of which don't pay, but they'd fill up my schedule and put me right in the path of people who DO have gigs that pay.  I also had two interviews for a day job last week, and I know they're still interested because they checked my references.  It's not my ideal job, but it's a job, and I've worked in that field before...and I enjoyed it.  For the interview, I was waiting in a hotel lobby downtown and got stuck right in the middle of a huge mob because the Dallas Cowboys were checking in; they do their summer training at the Alamo Dome in San Antonio.  The downside of the job is that it's probably going to be the overnight shift, so that would suck.  I'd get some interesting people-watching, that's for sure, but I'd probably have to start an anonymous blog if I wanted to write about it, hehe.

I might have gotten a teaching gig for next week, working with high school students on their all-state etudes.  It came from a friend-of-a-friend-of-John, though, and the first friend isn't calling me.  I think he probably wanted the first guy he called, and I sound like a third-string suggestion, so he's not going to bother.

I befriended a cat.  The Dude is a female tabby who likes our front porch, and the food that I give her.  She's very sweet, and I think I might have an outside cat now.

I haven't gotten out to take a lot of pictures.  It's just too hot.  And I've been a little depressed, honestly.  Life goes on.