Day 2: Headed to the Hill

Hey! How ya doing? Long time no see.

The good news is I made it through my first day on the new job without any major difficulties. There really is no bad news, although I do have a lot to learn especially when it comes to my new co-workers and how things are done.

My first major task is kinda-sorta covering a briefing by an assistant SecDef. Should be interesting. Also got assigned to do an interview with our new incoming deputy director when she gets here in a month or so.

All in all, not too bad.

On to some other random things I’ve been meaning to write about, but haven’t gotten around to during the recent unrest.

I read this article last week about the troubles the U.S. Postal Service finds itself in these days. The Post Office lost almost $3 billion last year and is facing even bigger losses in the future.

One idea Post Office leaders have floated is cutting mail delivery from six-days-a-week to five, but congressional leaders have reportedly been cool to this plan.

To Hell with that, I say. Five-day-a-week mail delivery? Who the Hell needs or wants that?

There is nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, arriving in my mailbox today (and yours as well, I’m guessing) I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to get. In fact, most of the crap in my mailbox today, tomorrow, yesterday, last week and last year need not have been there at all. Do your or I really need another unsolicited flyer from the local supermarket telling us about the weekly specials? I think not.

I actually feel bad sometimes picking up my mail while the carrier is still there (my building gets its mail at the end of the day) and I end up throwing most of it away right in front of him. He took the time to haul it from the Post Office to his truck, his truck used fuel to bring it to my building, he then schlepped it from the truck to my mailbox and then took the time to slot it along with everyone else’s.

And then I throw it away, right in front of him. Seems kinda rude.

But, seriously, why should I haul the junk up to my apartment to toss it when it’s so much easier to just chuck it in the can five feet from my mailbox?

I say cutting back from six to five days isn’t nearly enough. Residential delivery should be cut to three days a week (businesses can keep getting their mail on all the week days, though). If you need something to get somewhere tomorrow or Saturday, you can pay the extra cost for express delivery from either the USPS or FedEx or UPS.

When a business stops making money or, in the case of the USPS, stops breaking even, it needs to reexamine how it does business.

The Post Office, like many businesses of the previous century, has been killed of late by the Internet. People don’t send letters and cards and such any more. They send emails, IMs, txts and such. (Note: I'm a bit old fashion, I still like to write the occasional letter. Despite checking our email 53 times a day, we all still get excited by a letter in the mailbox.)

According to its annual report, the Post Office delivered 201 billion (give or take) pieces of mail in 2008. This was off from 210.6 billion in 2007 and 211.5 billion in 2006. The article I mentioned above said the USPS expects a further drop of 10 billion to 15 billion this year.

If my business lost 10 or so percent of its work in a three-year period, I'd say it's time for some serious changes.

Like Lawrence Garfield explained to the workers in the factory he was trying to buy in “Other People’s Money” (a good early 1990s film, I recommend), there was a time when there were many companies making buggy whips. Eventually, there was only one company left making them and they were probably really good buggy whips, but who really cared now that everyone was driving cars?

I don’t know exactly what the Post Office needs to do to keep doing business, but I do know one thing: Like many other companies providing a vital 20th century service that became bloated by the end of that era, it needs to quickly figure out how to operate in a new millennia or it’ll die like the buggy whip manufacturers of the 19th century. (If you care, it's called "Creative Destruction".)

Who’s Your Boss?
Has anyone else seen that ESPN ad ending with the woman wearing a “Who’s Your Boss?” t-shirt and saying “Sweeeet” after she apparently completes a fantasy baseball trade? I must have seen that ad a hundred times in the past couple of weeks, but it wasn’t until this morning it hit me: Is that Alyssa Milano?

I know she’s a serious baseball fan, so this ad would make sense, but I just need another voice to tell me it’s true. Or I will go mad.

Mojitos Anyone?
This just in from the Senate: Some one of these days soon, you and I my fellow Americans, may just have a right our brothers and sisters to the north are lucky enough to enjoy. For a view of what could await us, visit this lovely lady pirate’s place and read about her recent adventures in the land of rum and cigars 90 miles from Florida.

Wending its way through our lovely legislative process is the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act. Should this bill pass the Senate and the House and be signed by the president, we too will be allowed to visit and enjoy the sunny beaches of our Commie southern neighbor. Supposedly, we can’t go there now because of the repressive nature of the ruling regime and the political clout of a couple of aging Cuban ex-pats in South Florida.

Can someone explain to me why it’s wrong to go to Cuba, but it’s OK to do HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in business with China, Vietnam and Russia? If those same ex-pats in South Florida really hated the Castros, they should have been trying to get as many Americans and American businesses to Cuba as possible over the years.

Nothing, and I mean nothing in the world, will bring a vicious dictator to his knees faster (they're usually men) than a green wave of tourist and business dollars.

That’s all for today, gotta get up to the Hill.

Tick..Tock....Tick............Tock

Sitting in my office, last day on the contract, virtually nothing to do.

I've already moved 95 percent of my stuff down the hall to my new cube. A cube with a view in fact, the first view of the outside world I've had during work hours since I worked in Texas. I had the only desk in the newsroom where you could see the river. It wasn't much, but it was more than the guy next to me. It was also in a corner. That was very nice.

What the hell do you do on your last day on a contract? It's not like they're going to let us go early, those are billable hours and the company is going to get every last cent out of us. Before they cut us adrift like the Bounty mutineers did to Capt. William Bligh.

Nothing else to say on this. In a little less than six hours I'm done doing what I do and, on Monday, will be back doing something different. Something infinitely more interesting.

Words you've never heard said before: I can't wait until Monday.

1 p.m. Update: Four out of my five co-workers who were going to be unemployed Monday just got the word they successfully interviewed for the jobs they currently have. I was sitting nearby and listened in as the new contractor's rep was telling them all about how the company is sweetness and light and how they rent out the Air and Space Museum for their Christmas party and this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah-blah.

I was thinking, damn, that sounds like a pretty decent deal.

Then I remembered, out of everyone I work with, I'm the only one who really moved up in this whole situation. I'm extraordinarily pleased for all of them and glad I'll still be working near some of them, but I'm also glad I'll be moving on to something new Monday.

TMI Thursday: Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

It's TMI Thursday my friends. For more stories that will entertain and disgust you at the same time go to LiLu’s place for this week's full list. And now, on to the fun!

Once upon a time, I was visiting the happiest place on earth. No, not Disney, but an even happier place than the kingdom of the rat. Where is this of which I speak?

It was the land of barbecue, sweet tea and Blue Cups of beer, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The intersection of Franklin and Columbia streets, the very heart of Chapel Hill,

a place where I've dance in fires after emerging victorious over dook.

It was a couple of years ago and I was in town for the University of North Carolina’s football game against the University of Maryland. Joining me in this adventure were some of my bestest friends in the whole world including Sarita (and her hubby, a great guy), my oldest friend from school who I met on the very first day of our freshman year.

Also joining in the fun was JJ who, if neither of my brothers or best friends is available on that day in the future, I would seriously consider asking her to be the “Best Woman” at my nuptials.

Since we were grown-ups, instead of crashing on someone’s floor some where, we were staying at the Carolina Inn. A lovely place to rest your head right on campus and a stone’s throw from the football stadium. More importantly, it was an even shorter walk to the eating and drinking (mostly drinking) establishments of Franklin Street.

Friday evening, before the game, we took advantage of both of these aspects of Franklin. Starting with the barbecue platter at Spanky’s, we then headed to (in order) He’s Not for a Blue Cup, Goodfellas for some more beer and, finally, ended the evening at Linda’s Downstairs.

Following a slight at Goodfellas where the doorman neglected to card the then-late-20-something JJ, I was determined this would not happen again as we entered Linda’s.

“Make sure you check her ID,” I told the guy at this door, “Cause you never know who’s going to try to sneak in.”

“Hey there Foggy,” the other guy at the door said, “How’s it going?”

I looked at the guy, didn’t recognize him, and the only thought going through my mind was this: “Which one of my loser friends is still in Chapel Hill working the door at a bar?”

Turning around and smiling after being carded, JJ looked at my inquisitor, leapt at him wrapping her arms around his neck shouting, “Rutland!”

Turns out the guy I couldn’t remember had lived in the suite next to mine in Morrison Residence Hall for a year and had dated JJ for about six months of that time (she lived in the suite on the other side of me, roommates with my girlfriend that year, just to clear things up).

We take a moment to get re-acquainted and I then I pop the question to Rutland, “So, what’re you up to these days?”

“Oh, I bought the bar.”

Sonofabitch! How cool is that? This guy, who spent hours searching for his frat pin in the bushes nine floors below our suites after JJ threw it off the balcony when they broke up, now owned the third (possibly second) coolest bar in Chapel Hill.

“Hey man, that’s great.”

After a couple rounds of beers and a lap or two along Memory Lane downstairs, JJ and I headed (read: stumbled) back to the Carolina Inn to rest up for the next day. By the time we got there we were kinda leaning on one another to help each other along the way.

After modestly changing for bed – simultaneously she in the bathroom, me in the main room – we lay down for our naps. Together, but in more of a “friends spooning to feel the presence of another human being” kind of way. Nothing happened.

Nothing happened, that is, until the little gnome sitting in the “Digestion Operations Control Room” in my brain was startled from his mid-shift nap about an hour later by the “Massive Abdominal Cramp” warning light blazing a bright red, followed almost instantaneously by the “Holy Shit, Bathroom NOW!” warning siren.

You ever have one of those moments? A moment when, once safely out of bed and in the bathroom in the middle of the night when you just can’t decide what to do? And, especially important, how every action has an equal but opposite reaction?

The brain gnome must have hit both purge buttons within seconds of one another because, just as I started puking my guts into the toilet, the overwhelming force burst through the other end of my digestive tract.

Spectacularly, if I do say so.

A half hour later, after using some of the Inn’s expensive towels to clean up and a quick shower to clean myself up, I slipped back into bed. My own bed, that is, because I didn’t want to take the chance of any accidents in a shared space.

My only lingering question about this whole affair is this: How is it that JJ and I ate and drank the exact same things that night and I’m the only one who ended the evening on the cool tile of the bathroom?

Some mysteries, I guess, aren’t meant to be solved.

Whole lotta nuthin'

Yesterday (Tuesday), when I went for my first day of jury duty, I decided to keep a diary of my experiences dispensing justice for the man. Here's yesterday's entry:

9:40 a.m. Tuesday - Arrived in the jury assembly room with the other members of Group A Sections 1-5 for the first real day of jury duty. The group, so far, looks like a decent selection of "peers" except, yanno, for the fact that but for one South Asian woman, everyone is white.

Most have chosen to read the paper to kill some time. One woman is reading a book and another is working on what looks like office work. I have chosen the book route.

9:44 a.m. - The jury coordinator comes into the room and says, "Thank you for coming, but next time check our Web site before leaving home. We posted a notice at 8:15 we didn't need anyone today."

HUH? Damnit!

I checked that site at 8 a.m. and it still said I needed to show up. I then went out, caught my bus to the Metro and then rode over to the courthouse. When I mention this to the nice lady she reminds me I could also have called the jury information line to check the jury needs for that day.

I, in turn, then remind her that since cell phones are not permitted in the courthouse, and since I rode the Metro like a very good and very eco-conscious citizen, my cell phone is sitting on my dining table at home.

Her response, "What about a pay phone?" draws a bemused look from me and the guy beside me listening in on our conversation. I seriously can't remember the last time I used a pay phone, although I did touch one last weekend at Polly's when, while waiting for the gentlemen's facilities to become unoccupied, I picked up the receiver just to see if it still actually worked (it did).

How about instead you take into account that even to go the five or six miles via bus and train can take a little bit of a while (let alone driving and finding a parking space) and post your final notice about jury needs no later than 8 a.m.?

You think that might be a better idea? I do.

One of 12

Making my last week on the job with my current company even more golly gee swell, I got a letter a couple of weeks ago telling me I was been offered the opportunity to serve my friends and neighbors. So, instead of heading into work I'm heading over to the county courthouse for juror orientation.

I'm actually not kidding, I really can't think of a better way to spend the last week on a job than on jury duty (except vacation, that'd work too). I get paid and I don't have to go in and help clean up the place.

Although, my time as a juror almost didn't happen. I got my summons in February. Early February. And then promptly forgot about it with everything else going on (yanno, losing the job and all that). It wasn't until last Tuesday, during dinner with friends at La Lomita, I was reminded of my civic duty.

“Blah blah blah blah like how they always show Ken Burns shows while you're on jury duty blah blah blah,” my friend Mike said from across the chips and salsa.

“Huh?!? What!?! What was that you said?!? Oh. Holy. Shit!! IhaveJuryDuty!! IForgotIWasSupposeToReportForJuryDuty!!!! WhenWasISupposeToReportForJuryDuty?!?!?! AmIGoingToGetArrested?!?!?!”

Sudden. Total. Overwhelming. Panic. Attack.

OK, at least as sudden and total a panic attack as I can have. I'm pretty low-key and generally unflappable. But the thought was there nagging in my head.

All night long. Like an itch I couldn't scratch.

But, as the Lord looks after fools and drunks and I am thus dual-qualified, turns out Mike's comment gave me the warning I needed to avoid an unpleasant session with a county judge for skipping jury duty. Thanks Mike, I owe you a beer or two for keeping me out of jail.

Aside from judges, lawyers and cops, I've probably spent more time in courtrooms than most people covering this case or that. In fact, I've personally sat through five death penalty cases that ended 4-1 in favor of the needle. What? You're surprised? It was Texas after all.

If there's one thing all my time in courtrooms has taught me it's this: Trials in real life are nothing like they are on TV. Lawyers don't trip up witnesses, it's rarely exciting and it's never, ever over in an hour. Hell, it sometimes takes 20 minutes just to establish the chain of evidence for a single exhibit or establish a witnesses' credentials.

Here's the other thing I've learned: Innocent people almost never end up in a courtroom. Defendants on trial are usually the ones who A) couldn't cut a deal and plea out or, B) Think they can beat the charges.

But it's like I said, this is usually the case. You never know when you'll come across an honest man or someone who's been wrongly charged.

If nothing else, I'll definitely have a story or two to tell. When it's all over of course, I wouldn't want to do anything illegal. 

“Oh, What I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak”

So I signed off kinda abruptly last week and, except for the P-I's obit on Tuesday, I haven't written anything since my “Awwww, Damn!” post. There is a reason for this and, continuing a theme, Let me 'splain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Last Wednesday around 11 a.m. I lost my job. Not right then at that exact moment, but for all intents and purposes, I was about to become a statistic the government announces each week.

Long story short(er), I work on a government contract. Since October my company's been rebidding the contract and, after all those months of work, we got underbid by a competitor named after a euphemism for alcohol.

Let's just say I've been in better meetings than the one where our business group president, division V.P. and account lead broke the news. I was seriously concerned for one of my co-workers who's six months pregnant, and it truly hurt to see my production manager trying valiantly not to cry – and not totally succeeding in her efforts.

Mother. Fucker.

Don't know if anyone reading this has ever lost a job, but it's a pretty shitty experience. Everything after “We lost the contract” was pretty meaningless. I worked as a reporter for a long time and I like to think I'm pretty good at telling when someone is either A) bullshitting me, or B) just plain flat out lying their ass off. The first time I heard “Our main concern right now if for you,” (it was actually said about four times in total) I knew that as a group the people I'd worked with for more than three years were pretty much screwed.

That doesn't leave much time for dilly-dallying.

The contract I work on ends March 28 (actually the 27th since the 28th is a Saturday). Two and a half weeks to find a new job. Sixteen and a half days before the paychecks stop coming. No severance.

Anyone care for a little advice? Unlike most things it's free and, in this case, worth more than you're paying.

One: Keep your resume current. If you haven't updated your resume in the last three months, pull it out, shake the dust off and make sure the lies you told when you wrote it still stand up to the light of day. There are few things higher on the “Sucks Scale" than having to start a job search by rewriting your resume.

Two: Drink less, save more. Even though I had a hard unemployment date rushing at me like a pissed off hippopotamus, I wasn't yet between the rock and the hard place. Part of every paycheck since I moved to D.C. has gone straight into a savings account. It's my “raining cats and fucking dogs and if I don't need it for that a down payment on a house” fund.

I've always heard you should sock away six months salary just in case, but a better measure would be six months of living expenses. What does it cost you to pay your rent, eat, keep the Internet flowing into your house and, here's the biggie, buy health insurance every month? (And remember, you're going to be paying the full price for your insurance.)

You got that number figured? Good, now multiply by six and start saving.

Three: network. I really can't overemphasize this point. Talk to your friends. Talk to their friends. Talk to the people in the next office around the water cooler. Go to alumni events. Call old girl/boyfriends. Leave no stone unturned.

I've always been a quick healer. What are our liabilities?

So, what have I done over the past week? Well, Friday morning just before I was set to spend the day lounging on my giant couch while watching the ACC Tournament, I spent 15 minutes on the phone with the guy who runs another contract in my office.



















Then I sent him my up-to-date resume around 11 a.m.

Monday I interview with the government client.

At 3 p.m. Wednesday (today when I wrote this) I signed an offer letter.

For a better job.

It's possible, Pig, I might be bluffing. It's conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass, that I'm only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. But, then again... perhaps I have the strength after all.

DROP... YOUR... SWORD!

Like a fairy tale, this story too has a happy ending. I end one job next Friday and, after a relaxing weekend, I walk back into the same office and start another.

You know what? I can't wait to see what's on the other side of sunset.

9 a.m. Update
How's this for funny: I just got a call from my current company's corporate recruiter. She'd like to schedule an interview for me tomorrow with one of the other business groups.

Just a bit outside.

A day late and, as good as my company's been to me, probably a couple grand short. My word is my bond and the offer I accepted is really good. No turning back now.

Requiscat in Pace

(Just a quick post today on a topic near and dear to my heart)

Rest In Peace Seattle P-I.


The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last Dead Tree Edition today. From here on out, the P-I will be an online-only newspaper.

I talked about this topic last month, but the death of a big-city newspaper is still a bit of a shocking turn of events. The P-I is owned by Hearst, the company I once worked for, and if it's getting rid of the P-I, which one of its other major dailies is now facing the headsman? My guess, either the San Francisco Chronicle or the Beaumont Enterprise, respectively one of the bigger and the smallest metro dailies the company owns.

The newspaper business is indeed living in interesting times.