Working, moving, and eating

It’s been an exhausting, busy week. I started work last Friday and proceeded to work 8 days in a row. We also moved in on Tuesday (and, yes, I did work while moving, but I got to leave 2 hours early). Working and having our own place is really making the move seem to have been accomplished.

Speaking of moving accomplishments, we also now have a local bank! I’m irrationally excited about it. Opening accounts took forever because the woman we were talking to was super talkative. When we received the “Welcome to our bank!” form letter, the lady we’d spoken to had written a personal note to each of us. A few days later she emails me to make sure that I had figured out how to do the change of address and sign up for e-statements as we’d discussed. I’m utterly amazed at the customer service. Who knew banks could actually have good customer service?

I’ve also been given a raise at work already. Since I work weekdays, and we’re managed from Manhattan, I just naturally became the go-to person for dealing with local things. I was moved to being in charge of ordering, receiving deliveries, and doing inventory. It’s exciting to have more responsibilities because my days usually go something like this:

Get to work. Make sure there’s enough change in the drawer, if not, go to the bank and get some. Start the oven and warmers. Bake cookies. Count the cash in the drawer. Put down the stools. Take the cookies out of the oven. Put more in. Open store. (End first hour.)

Happily sell cookies to the after-lunch crowd.

Sit.

Sit.

Sit.

Laugh to myself because there’s a car outside with a mattress on it that’s being held onto the car by four college boys holding onto the mattress handles.

Sit.

Sell a few cookies!

Sit.

Answer the phone.

Sell a few more cookies. (End next four-five hours)

Bake cookies. Sell cookies to the pre-dinner crowd. Remove cookies from oven. Sell more cookies. Do closing paperwork. Count cash in the drawer. Sell more cookies. Deposit the profit at the bank. (End last one-two hours)

Our apartment is treating us reasonably well. We left a number of essentials in Iowa with the understanding that they’ll get driven out here soon. We’re sleeping on two borrowing camping mats with borrowed sheets. At least we brought blankets. Also, a few vital kitchen boxes are missing, such as the one containing all of our dishes. We purchased plastic plates, and were gifted extra bowls by the woman who lives upstairs—so we have three bowls now! It’s pretty hilarious to have no furniture, no dishes, and lilac walls. The smoke detectors have the unfortunate habit of going off for no apparent reason (making pasta? taking a bath?) but hopefully they'll figure themselves out soon.

Yesterday we walked to the Brooktondale farmers’ market, which is two buildings away. It was small, but all the venders were super happy to chat. We learned about the Brooktondale Apple Festival in later October. It’s apparently a big deal and has tons of pies and cider and fresh fruit. We’re definitely planning to make it to that.

We bought a purple bell pepper for 15 cents and a beautiful onion for 2 cents. Can’t beat those prices! I suspect we’re supposed to get produce from them in bulk and make pickles or do some canning? We also tried samples of raw honey (basswood, orange blossom, and fall wildflowers), and homemade jams. We went home with their hottest pepper jelly. After trying it, the hot and medium were just kind of bland. It’s mostly going to be used in cooking, but there may be some crackers and cream cheese broken out with them.

And now I must go eat a pie made from locally-grown peaches (not made by me, sadly).

Dariana

Here Come the Jobs

Oh, and the apartment, too.

Let me first say that I’m sorry for the late posting, but those of you who know me well are likely not surprised and probably could’ve predicted it. You’re chuckling to yourself right now about how some things never change.

How right you are.

The past week, I’m happy to say, was a productive one. Dariana started her first day at her new job last Friday! She works at a place called Insomnia Cookies where she peddles late-night cookies and milk to studying college students. Apparently the company was first dreamt up by two college guys who were fed up (har har) with there being no food except pizza available for delivery at two in the morning. So they started baking cookies for themselves, then for their friends, and then decided to make some money off the idea by turning it into a business. Thus, a system of deploying freshly-baked cookies to book-weary students was born. No, Dariana doesn’t work until 2:00 a.m. and she doesn’t deliver (although the bulk of the store’s business does come in the evening and through deliveries). She opens the store at noon and bakes several batches of cookies before the rush later on. Currently she is a one-woman band, baking and cleaning and peddling cookies all by herself until 7:00. She enjoys the baking and the customer interactions, but the seven straight hours by herself are lonely. As for the cookies themselves, she says they’re definitely not like home-made, but they’re pretty darn close. I can’t say one way or the other, as she has not yet brought some home for me to try. *grumble grumble

I just had a job interview with Cornell University this morning, and have another interview with them (different department) this afternoon. The first interview was for the very prestigious position of Administrative Assistant III (I know, I know, you’d like to just faint right now, wouldn’t you?) in the College of Arts and Sciences, one of Cornell’s seven undergraduate colleges. I would be working in Academic Advising, but don’t go thinking that I’d be the one doing the advising. No, no, I would simply schedule the students for appointments with advisers. But I still think getting to welcome in the students would be nice. Especially the poor firsties.

My second interview is by phone with the Cornell Press. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I may have another publishing job. The position is Production Coordinator; I would be helping oversee the actual printing and distribution of the University’s books. True, I wouldn’t be editing, but I’d still get to handle the books, and I’d be using my impeccable communication skills to build solid relationships with the Press’s vendors. And who knows? Maybe someone in the editing department will be just overwhelmed by the sheer knowledge of grammar and mechanics leaking out of my pores that he or she will up and quit, leaving the position open for little old unsuspecting moi.

The downside to the Press is that it is not actually on the Cornell campus, so I won’t be around the students as much. I mean, I’ll still see them around; there are more students in this town than townies. But there were just so MANY of them when I arrived on campus for my interview at 10:30 this morning. I think today must have been an orientation of sorts, because people were scurrying around like ants, glued to their maps or phones or friends. After my interview, when I had an opportunity to walk around, I just kind of allowed myself to get swallowed up in the world of student-dom. And I surprised myself with how much I missed being around all that energy. The average college student is all but bursting with hopes and dreams and insecurities. Put 20,000 of them together and the experience of walking among them is like walking down an aisle of humming appliances.

I just compared students to kitchen accessories. Wow, it must be late.

Before I go, I’ll quickly tell you about the apartment Dariana and I intend to move into tomorrow. It is a basement apartment, so all the windows start at ground level. I have hilarious mental images of us waking up in the winter to several inches of snow piled up outside our windows. But we’ll simply shovel the windows out to let the light fall in on the yellow-painted living room (which is quite cheerful) and the two bedrooms. The bedrooms are currently painted lilac and peach, which we’re thinking to change as soon as humanly possible. The kitchen is small but has plenty of cabinets and counter space, and that’s really what you want a kitchen for, right? Curiously, the bathroom is elevated above the rest of the flooring; three tiled steps lead up to it. I guess we’ll just always feel a sense of grandeur when we attend to the call of nature, since we’ll be “ascending to a higher level,” as it were.

Oh, and this is the best part: the apartment building is actually a converted church. This makes us, as a friend so endearingly put it, “church mice.”

I think that does it for this week. Wish us luck with our move, and we’ll see you next week!

Kim

P.S. Dariana would like to rescind the earlier slander about her cookies-from-work-providing. She brought home two (broken, but still delicious) cookies after work today.

Welcome to the blog!

The whole purpose of this blog is to attempt to break our terrible record of keeping in touch with people. The idea is for one of us to post once a week. Since we've been here a week, let's do week 1!

This week was all about job and apartment searching. Our personal two favorite apartments so far are:

1) A two-story one with a gorgeous downstairs, big kitchen with tile counters and tons of counter space, a dishwasher, washer/dryer, and deck/backyard. Unfortunately, the bedrooms upstairs had a dorm room feel to them, and the bathroom was tiny and tub-less. The upstairs was such a con to the huge pro of the downstairs. It was quite disappointing. Also, we suspect the landlord works in the fracking industry. We're not sure if we should infiltrate or stand clear.

2) The top floor of an old, but well-maintained house (built in 1840) to the south of Ithaca. Really nice view, really nice feel to the apartment. We like this one best, except for the location (8 minutes to downtown, 12 to Cornell) and the lack of laundry facilities. We're not enchanted by the idea of needing to do laundry in January and having to shelp it all into a car, drive for a while, and then wait.

Our least favorite was one relatively close to Cornell with a lovely view on the drive up to it. There were farms with hills rising behind them not close enough to feel shut-in. The apartment is in a slight valley. Inside it's kind of damp feeling. (No washer/dryer, but the laundry is only one block away!) There are windows, but for some reason there doesn't seem to be space in any of the rooms for beds because of the way the windows and doors are located. The kitchen was big, but only had things on one wall. By things I mean the refrigerator, stove, counters, and cabinets. It might have been workable with an island, a dining table, and some shelving units. This was also the first apartment that we looked at. At least everything looks better compared to it...

Job-wise, Kim is applying to Cornell as I write this. I have a job offer at a bakery that specializes in cookies and dairy products (milk/ice cream) delivered to college students. Tomorrow I'm going to stalk down the offices of a place in town that apparently organizes tutoring for the area. I'd love to work part time at each place.

When we're not madly working at the basic logistics of living here, we've done a little bit of sightseeing. We took a brief walk/hike on a trail that runs along the rim of the gorge that Taughannock Falls falls into. On one side were trees, and the other more trees and then a steep drop. Way down was a wide, flat stream bed with a shallow stream in part of it. 

It's amazing to consider that I'm going to live somewhere so pretty. Perhaps sometime we'll even post pictures.

-Dariana