divine angst

I am ready for the election to be over.

Like many others in the blogosphere (and blawgosphere), I hope this election is cut-and-dried. I hope there are no recounts, that the Supremes don’t need to get involved, and that we can all go to bed tomorrow night knowing who will be President for the next four years.

Last time around, I had an election party. A last-minute election party, in fact. I sent an email out around 3:00, and about 40 people showed up to my apartment, food and drink in tow. We had a marvelous time. I did not have cable, so we watched the network coverage, heated up DiGiorno’s pizza, baked Brie, and monitored what other coverage there was via a dial-up connection on an ancient ThinkPad.

We drank and ate and what I remember most was a delightful sense of camaraderie. Most of us had voted for the first time in that election—some for the second time, depending on whether or not they’d been living out of state in college. We were excited and having a good time. No one argued about who should win, and quite a few of us laughed about voting for Nader, since we weren’t living in a contested state.

When it became clear that the election results would probably not be official until that Wednesday, the party began to simmer down. People trickled out, all in good spirits.

I remember stumbling to bed around midnight, when everyone but the future Mr. Angst and another friend of ours had left. The other friend was too drunk to drive at that point, so Mr. Angst hung out with him until he sobered up a bit. Mr. Angst came crawling into bed around 2 am. I mumbled, “Who won?” and he said, “Bush.” I probably said something like, “Oh. Well, damn. Good night.”

But the next morning, everything had changed. Bush hadn’t won, at least not yet, and national elections were about to change forever.

I asked Mr. Angst a few weeks ago if we should have an election party this year, since the last one was so successful. His answer was an emphatic, “No.” And I understand why. I’m an eternal optimist; I would hope that our friends would show up and we’d behave just like we did four years ago. We’d eat pizza and drink wine, laugh at the pundits and maniacally hit Refresh on the laptop. Mr. Angst is more realistic, though. That sense of camaraderie would never materialize, replaced this time with some paranoia, cynicism, and probably a little bit of shouting. Politics are no longer polite conversation.

It makes me a bit sad, in fact. But everyone takes everything more seriously now that we know what can happen. I wish we could take ourselves more lightly this year, but that seems unlikely.

So my hope is for an uncontested election. I know who I voted for, and I know that Mr. Angst voted for someone else. But I’m less concerned about whether his candidate or mine wins. I mostly fear for what happens on Wednedsay.

An Open Letter to Whoever is Responsible for that Smell:

Dear Friend,

I bet you were really excited about your leftover [enchiladas, meat chili, taco salad] that you brought into work today. And of course, you should have been! Food made with chili powder is a good thing.

However, chili powder can sometimes, particularly when reheated in the office microwave, smell like B.O. And now our entire office suite smells like B.O. (Of course, I realized this smell could not be B.O. when I noted that it extended throughout the suite. No one needs a shower that badly. But the back of my throat could use some respite from the spice in the air.)

Friend, on behalf of the dozen or so people who share this space with you, I ask sincerely and graciously: Please do not bring these kinds of leftovers again.

Kindly,
K

When I got my current job, I was one of four women hired at the same time. We all had the same job title and (roughly) the same duties.

I have been here since the end of February—approximately eight months. Two of my co-hires have moved on. Somehow, I am now in a position of seniority.

I know I work for an institution with a high degree of turnover. Somehow I have managed, in all my time working for this institution (over five years now) to end up, always, with some level of seniority. In my last position, I was the employee with the third-longest service for the department. (The other two had twice- and three-times as much service as me.)

How does this happen to me? I don’t think of myself as a static person, someone searching only for a steady income and good benefits. I’m obviously willing to shake things up, what with this whole “law school” thing. So how is it that I invariably end up being around longer than everyone else?

I don’t really know where this post is going. I guess I just find it surprising that my employment history is so boring. I think of myself as a seeker of challenges. My resume doesn’t necessarily reflect that.