Give Your Pole A Name

Sorry it's been a few days. I've been fairly busy at my new job and still trying to get settled in the new crib.

When I say "busy at my new job," that could be misleading, so let's clarify, shall we? The fact that I've been required to be somewhere other than where I'd rather be means that I've been quite busy. Quite frankly, somewhere where I'd rather be really adds up to anywhere other than work. Don't get me wrong; I like my career and I know that without it I'd be unable to live in this glorious shoebox, but wouldn't we all prefer to be on an island or at least the couch?

But back to busy; I hate to say it, but I just haven't been doing that much work at work. My offer letter a month ago included what read like a very official sentence, something like, "You must report to (such-n-such address) for orientation at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, June 5."

Well, guess who's turned in four solid days on the new job and is still waiting to be, um, orientated? Shoot, I'd be happy with my own computer. Before Thursday, all that was on my 1970s-style metal desk (think Glengarry Glen Ross) was a phone. But today I took in a black-n-white picture I took of Jennifer when we first started dating. For those of you ones of readers, you might not know that Jennifer was a baton twirler for her college marching band. I took this fairly cool picture of her performing last fall, just a few weeks after we'd met. I'm so cute.

So now there are two things on my desk. Perhaps Friday I'll take in a pencil or two, AND a dozen or so paper clips. After all, it is Friday. One should live it up.

I guess there was one funny highlight about Thursday. I was doing some light training over the telephone with a gal who has my same job but in Los Angeles. She's been on the job a few weeks, so she was teaching me how to set up surveys. Remember, I work in online news. Anyway, surveys are often called polls. So she told me how to create it in the content management system, and then how to save it and post it. At one point during the instructions, she said, "Give your poll a name," a statement that my immature and rated-R ass interpreted as, "Give your pole a name." Who said the news business is boring?