First day

First day of work done. Lease signed. Oscar party was a success. Spent Saturday in Jackson Heights (outer Queens) picking up Indian food for the Oscar party (my cousin's roommate is Indian and was extremely excited about Slumdog Millionaire being nominated so many times). Been a nice couple of days. Which is why I haven't been blogging much.

I had a really fun weekend during which I met loads of new friends, went to two parties, networked a bit, participated in an impromptu jam session with two violin players with whom I've never played before and wrapped it all up by finally calling that girl I met on Valentine's day.

And work went well today. It was a fun experience all around, from grabbing the daily newspaper from the guy frantically handing them out at the subway entrance to riding the subway with all the commuters to grabbing an espresso at Rocco's on Bleeker on the way to work. The novelty of the subway ride will probably wear off relatively soon. Grabbing an espresso at Rocco's will probably remain cool, however.

The actual work day was fun too. I met my boss at the reception desk and, after waiting too long for the HR people to get there, I was sent down to meet the guy who would be showing me the ropes. Ernest was a pretty cool guy. An older fellow who said he just bought a house in Charlotte and talked of retiring. I'm assuming, if I get the job, it'll be him I'll be replacing.

I pretty much shadowed him all day and learned the routine, picked his brain when I could and watched when I could. There were a few clients that came in to view movie trailers that they had had done, someone else had a feature to watch and finally, the editor for a certain famous actress' film came in to watch the dailies for that film. I was headed out the door at that point so I didn't get to do more than just meet her.

The day went by incredibly fast. One minute it was 10 am and Ernie was showing me how to thread two of the projectors, do changeovers and change lenses. The next minute, I looked at the clock on my cell phone after having practiced the above routine several times, and it was noon. I took my lunch and then wandered into HR to get all the necessary payroll forms filled out. Then, I wandered back down to shadow Ernie some more. Before I knew it, it was 430 and I was just shootin' the shit with Ernie in the projection booth, hanging out and chattin' about everything from New York City to Charlotte, NC.

Only thing was, my feet were killing me by the time I got to the subway because I had been standing most of the day. Luckily, the 1 train wasn't very crowded and neither was the N (the two trains I have to take to get home).

I think I could get used to this routine of taking the train to work, and then working with cool people, doing a cool job, taking the train back, cooking dinner, doing laundry, just living in this city.

At any rate, I've got another adventure to look forward to (or dread, whichever) this weekend. The Move. I'm renting the Uhaul and driving 9 hours with a cat in cat carrier on the floor board of the cab. We'll have to see how that goes.