friday in a word: wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

first full shift at the newspaper. and, like, wow. it's just completely refreshing and invigorating to work in a place where people appear to genuinely like each other (well, for the most part, anyways) and love what they do (again, for the most part). the workload seems decent. it's advertising, so i guess, deep in my heart, i'd rather be doing something else (i always do), but the people and the environment make all the difference. and these people are impossibly cool.

the rogue's gallery is as follows. barbara is the head of our advertising department. she has sent in two audition tapes for survivor, and has asked for my help in creating a fresh and catchy idea for the third. she's also the one who hired me. put those two things together, and i think she's terrific automatically. honey is my dayside supervisor. she's crusty, but not at all in an unappealing way. her breath smells like coffee and cigarettes, which should stink but really doesn't. she's a middle-aged mom but listens to natalie merchant and nirvana all day; i dislike both musical acts but adore that she listens to them. barb and tina are fellow ad assistants and sit at the two desks behind me. they're both friendly and happy and funny. barb is a sweet-natured, soft-spoken southern-type. tina is more business-like, yet somehow chirpier, and looks like a character from a john waters movie (which i mean in a good way). suzanne is the nightside supervisor, and sarah and amanda are her two ad assistants. suzanne is honey's sister, and she has the same folksy, no-bullshit charm. sarah and amanda are both girls with whom i can see myself going out for a beer downtown after work. (too bad, then, that i don't work nightside.) plus, sarah and amanda remind me of people i worked with on my college newspaper. the physical resemblances are pretty uncanny, actually. and i don't know everybody's names after one day, but i'd also like to mention the bubbly british ad-proofer, who resembles the doris roberts from everybody loves raymond spliced with my aunt ree, and the polite, dark-haired and seemingly-texan ad rep, who patted me on the back after my first ad was done (she drew a smiley face and wrote "great job!!" on the proof) and reminds me of joan collins with vaguely asian features.

the friday-night weather was so lovely that zofie, john and i dined on the rooftop of cacoa lane, which, if memory serves, we haven't done since the night of the ghost tour last summer. (barf.) zofie and i wanted cigarettes while we waited for john to meet us there, so we rock-paper-scissored to see who would go down the uneven stone steps and across the street to this bar where a we knew a creaky old cigarette machine resided. of course, i lost. once inside the bar, a guy was already standing at the cigarette machine, trying to get it to take his money, as the couple sitting at the nearest table offered cheerleading. ("almost ... almost ... almost ... OOOHHHHHH!") and then i suddenly remembered from the last time zofie and i needed a cigarette-fix in ellicott city: this cigarette machine is tempermental and evil. the guy finally finessed his last dollar in, grabbed his smokes and locomoted, and then i stepped up to the plate. it took a lot of teasing and false starts. i had to slide the money in just so it would get the spinning mechanism warmed up, then pull the money out. but after a good seven minutes or so of all this slot-play, i got all my bills in, yanked on the knob and scored my marlboros. booyah.

woman of the nearby couple: wow.
me: what?
woman of the nearby couple: all that action was pretty hot.
me: oh?
woman of the nearby couple: you've done this before, haven't you?
me: heh.

the cigarettes were kinda stale, so they were hardly worth the trouble. but dinner was typically delicious, and i got a little blitzed on several rounds of amaretto sours, then nearly fell asleep in the car on the way back to john and zofie's. too bad about that, because there were several memorable lines during the dinner conversation i wanted to remember, as i really need to resurrect quote of the day. mmm. time for bed, i think. tomorrow, it hopefully won't rain, as i am trudging back to ellicott city for an outdoor performance of romeo & juliet. huzzah!