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.