New Job.

As most of you know, I have a new job. The bookstore is a (somewhat) distant memory, as I have now been at the prestigious university across the river for six weeks now. I am a faculty assistant, which ranges from showing the most brilliant scholars in America how to use the copier to organizing a LOT of data to ordering tea. It is a great job and I love it.

I do miss the bookstore. I miss my friends and I miss my boss. I miss my favorite customers--I worry about Gerda, my elderly Danish lady, and my favorite businessman, who still asks about me. I even somewhat miss BL, as she offered a specific brand of flavour to my everyday life. I miss the Otis guys--we have them too, but they're definitely NOT Timmy and Chris. I even somewhat missing the morning meetings when we'd roll our eyes and watch customers strain against the red stanchion tape. I miss giving Tracy, the LP (Loss Prevention) manager, crazy eyes and saying, "Let them in even a minute early and I will cut you." And I miss giving George, the LP guy who closed with me on Tuesdays, crazy eyes at 8:59pm and saying, "If you let anyone else in I will throw books at you."

It's hard going into the store now. The new people don't know me. I feel like an outsider when I talk to my friends who stand behind the register. The control-freak in me wants to get behind there, move things around. I wanted to go into the store on Columbus Day but I didn't--I felt like I would be acknowledging the fact that I wasn't working and they were. (But it's amazing to have holidays off now. I even have the whole week after Christmas off, paid. No rushing back the morning after Christmas, or Thanksgiving either.) But it's weird to not feel comfortable in a place where I spent two years of my life. It was my place of employment, but so much more. I met some of my best friends there--I can't even imagine my life without M or H or my previous boss. But especially H. She's my bird, my non-sexual domestic life partner, and it's killing me to not see her every day, to not be greeted in the morning with "Good morning birdface!" (Cause she obviously always beat me to work.) H has, actually, left the bookstore as of today. She's nannying for the snuggliest little baby. Less hours, more money. And a little punkinhead to mind vs. many annoying people. I'm happy for her, but my sister is pissed that she now officially has no one to go bother at the store in between classes.

I feel very, very fortunate to have this new job. So far, my new bosses like me and are impressed with my work--they're not used to having an assistant whose previous job did not allow idleness. I've learned that it's acceptable for me to browse the internet and just chill--my boss told me at the beginning, when I didn't have anything to do, "Sometimes your job is just being here...you help faculty and students and answer phone questions....I'm sorry I don't have anything for you to do..."

She's sorry? I'm elated. They bought me a brand new iMac my second week. I have applications to play with, I have an entire itunes library to download, and I have the internet to read.

Real conversation:
"So, what did you do today?"
"I read the internet."
"Haha, like the whole thing?"
"Pretty much."
And checked facebook and myspace and my email--which I HAVE to be on, because we use g-chat--it's pretty much the best job ever.

I couldn't be happier. And if you've read this blog from the beginning, that's a really, really exciting thing.