January 12–15, 2002 — Things come together

It has been a busy few days.

First of all, I have a job. While I’m very thankful for the suggestions and phone numbers that people emailed to me, my desire to work alongside Nathan making juice and smoothies at the corner of Church and Wellesley was just too overwhelming to resist.

A quick explanation, then: On Friday, Nathan gave me the phone number of the owner of a juice bar that is opening this week; he was given the number by a girl that we went to high school with, and he didn’t have a problem getting a job there. On Saturday morning, I got in touch with the owner and setup an interview for 1:30 pm that day.

I arrived outside the juice bar ten minutes early. After forty-five minutes or so, the owner showed up. She was extremely apologetic, explaining that she had had a terrible time with public transit on the way. I think she gave me the job based mostly on my willingness to wait outside in the cold for her to arrive — she told me that I would start the following Thursday without looking at my résumé or asking about previous experience.

Everyone that I know and a lot of people that I don’t seem to find it more than a little bit amusing that Nathan and I will be working together making smoothies in the heart of Toronto’s gay district alongside two more people that we went to high school with. (That our former high school is situated five hours away in a small town on the outskirts of Ottawa makes the situation that much more unlikely.) Johnston says that it sounds like the plot of a bad sitcom, and pretty much everyone agrees that we’ll have plenty of stories to tell by the end of all this.

But, most importantly, I’ll finally be able to try wheatgrass juice. All the pieces are finally falling into place in my life.

But yes. The weekend.

After my job interview on Saturday, I met up with Jeff and Amy. Amy bought a digital camera. Jeff bought an analog delay pedal. I returned a movie. Somewhere in the middle of Saturday, I ran into Andrew, Elaine, Liam, and Tracy and eventually ended up at Elaine’s apartment watching a bit of Willow with them. (I wasn’t there for long, but I saw the part of the movie that involves the Brownies stealing a baby from Val Kilmer, and that’s good enough for me. Because we all know how hard it is to get enough of those Brownies — with their thick French accents and hats made of mouse heads, they’re about as endearing as they come.)

Then I ran into Nathan while buying blank tapes at HMV. We picked up pizza on the way home and talked about our new jobs with Johnston. Then we played a round of Mario Golf that I lost quite thoroughly, and Nathan tried to steal my Boo doll before he left.

And that was it for Saturday.

On Sunday, I didn’t get all that much accomplished. I made a tape for Kerry to reciprocate for the one that she is sending to me, and I cleaned my room. My answers for the internship test that Shift had sent me were due on Monday, but, after staying up until 7:00 am working on the test, I realized that I was putting far too much work into an ambiguously worded question and I emailed to ask what was expected.

I woke up in the middle of the afternoon on Monday and mostly did the same thing all over again, going to bed after sending off my test answers (which weren’t nearly as involved as I originally thought they needed to be).

And now it’s Tuesday.

I woke up during the afternoon again. I found an email from the fellow I’ve been speaking to at Shift asking me to come in for an interview, so I’m doing that tomorrow.

I started digging through my closet for respectable clothes. I don’t have many. Luckily, I found the necktie that my dad let me borrow still tied (which is very important, as I don’t know how to tie a necktie) and a collared shirt that is too big for me. It screams of effort, but I guess I look somewhat respectable dressed that way. In the event that I do get the internship, I have to really hope that they don’t have too strict a dress code — I only have the one collared shirt, after all, and it’s not really mine...

After dinner, I called my dad to ask what I should expect at the interview. I’ve never really had a job interview, so I’m not really sure how terrified I should be. Which is probably good, since it means that I won’t be nervous.

Maybe.

And now I’m feeling exhausted again. But this entry mostly gets me caught up on the major events of the last few days, so I think it’s quite alright to stop here.

Now that I have a job and the internship is going to go one way or the other regardless of what I do, I’ve a lot less to worry about and will probably get back to updating antigreg more often. Over the last few days, I’ve often really wanted to write, but I’ve mostly stopped myself because I had other things that I should be working on, from cover letters to internship tests. But that’s all over with. I finally have a job. I might kind of end up with two.

And so ends four months of idle contemplation.