Signs you've spent too much time doing random historical map research: you look at your Google directions for picking people up for Readercon, and think for a split second, "Hey, is that a Roman road?"

In other news, I had a dream last night that BRCF was going to pay me in Bitcoins, and also it turned out that Bitcoins were actually issued as physical objects--little blue plastic squares, labeled in red and gold "Good for Five (5) Bitcoins!" which you then had to redeem online.

Mostly for my own reference:

https://www.chelseagreen.com/blogs/slack-taut-defining-systems-resilience/

There's a contra dance in Cambridge tonight, and I'm just not feelin' it. Which is a pity, since (a) I think practically every bellringer under 30 is going, and (b) this is very possibly going to be my last opportunity til sometime in September.

ETA: Subsequently fell down an internet rabbit hole, and now I hate all the political parties of England AND France, and most shades of political opinion in the US, too.
Remind me never to go on Facebook again unless it's absolutely the only way to coordinate something important. (Though "looking up stuff on random bits of Anglo-Saxon history" was also a contributing factor, so maybe I need to just never go on the internet again.)

OK, well, I should be putting an Arisia proposal together right now. Well, TECHNICALLY I said I was going to do my Census post-class self-study today, so I should be doing that, but for reasons that will become clear in a few moments, Fuck That.

Sooo... the week before last, I think it was, I applied for a job as a...junior researcher, I think it was, at [Boston Research Consulting Firm]. VERY unusually, from my experience, the department head subsequently got back in touch, albeit mainly to tell me that I was horribly overqualified. (Which was possibly true, but a) I'm switching careers, kinda, so that's expected, and b) Hey, it's a job.) Usually, even if they DO get in touch to tell you you're overqualified, that's the end of it, and you're left feeling like "Well, fuck." In THIS case, though, he said he was going to forward my résumé on to Matt, the head of their Editorial department, because they might have some freelance editorial work down the line. And that could STILL have been the end of it, but Matt actually DID email me, to say "...please let me know your bandwidth (how many hours a week you would be available to edit our research content) and let’s set up a time to talk." So I write back, and then don't hear from him for over a week, while I sit around wondering what the heck has happened THIS time.

On Wednesday, after asking myself What Would My Dad Do?, I took a moment before Census training and called Matt's number to ask more or less exactly that question, and in due course we set up an appointment for this morning.*

-------

So I get there--it's the fifth floor in a faceless office park in Waltham--and have to wait a bit, and then meet Matt and get ushered into a conference room: all of which was expected. And THEN we spend like fifteen minutes chatting about German History--which was definitely NOT--before we get down to the nitty gritty of what the job entails. As I had expected, it was going to be more of what I've been doing for [cheapskate client in Germany], namely taking stuff written by experts and editing it so it's actually decent prose.
What I had NOT been assuming was an on-the-spot job offer.

And then came the moment I had been hoping wouldn't happen. "So what do you think would be a reasonable starting rate?" he asked.

Oh Shit. I mean, I know I've been horribly underpaid in the past, but this is a potentially globalized field, and I don't want to get to greedy, because I REALLY want this job...

"Let's start me at $15?"

Matt actually laughed in my face.** "Well, I'd LIKE to employ you at that rate--or at any rate my bosses would..."
"What can I say, I've been really underpaid!"
Anyway, I somehow managed to recover from this screw-up,*** and we agreed that I should start at their standard starting rate for editors.

...which is $45 per hour.

Pause to let that sink in.
Yeah.
I'm going to be working part time, but still.
wow.


I guess I should have learned from Harvard Business School that any time you add the word "business" to a job description, they jack up the salary.

* At this point in writing this, I took a pause to go look at what was probably a juvenile bald eagle, sitting on a tree about fifty yards down the shore. As you can guess from the preceding, I'm in Maine again.

** You probably just did too, given that $15 was what we figured MRE should have been paying me, and this is a much more highly-skilled job. (Though it's also a much more pleasant one, and you can't outsource [University]'s mailroom work to someone with good English in Mumbai.) What can I say, I panicked. Fortunately, [see above]

*** I should perhaps note at this juncture that Matt is yet another person who got a PhD but then decided he didn't want to teach, AND got it in German studies, so PART of all this was that he took pity on my post-academic floundering.
That sounds more self-pitying than I feel, I guess: the OTHER part is that I'm hella good at editing papers in questionable English, and amply demonstrated that I'm experienced in the same in the course of the interview.

OK. So, while it's somewhat fresh in my mind, I should write up a quick review of the play I saw on riday night, namely

( LEGBALA IS A RIVER )

"I'd tell you to tell more people to come," the stage manager told the audience at the end of the show, "but our last performance is tomorrow, and we're sold out already." So I will tell you: go see this show when they do it again, in Summer Stock or at Portland Stage or wherever. Badger people to bring it to Boston, to Chicago, to the up-and-coming theater in the suburbs or the new performance space that just opened or the outdoor theater festival. Go see it, when- and wherever it goes up again.
This was an incredible experience.

( Footnotes. )

It is way too bloody hot. "OK, Hell has officially frozen over," I told my barrista. "I'm getting an iced coffee." ("I think the problem is actually the other way around," was her reply.)
So while I did actually get myself to go running this morning (ugh!), I am abandoning plans to take the train and walk across Boston for my thing this evening. Air conditioned T, all the way.

Meantime, everybody remind me that TOMORROW I need to actually get my car to the mechanic. And NOT blow the entire morning modding maps of AU 10th-century England.

- I should look up the details on the U.K. election results, though from what I'm hearing, it doesn't sound like anyone here is going to like them much...
- Related: qotd from someone here in Boston: "Remind me never to go to a casino with a Tory MP."

- Broke down and actually BOUGHT A Closed and Common Orbit Thursday; have spent waayy too much of the intervening time reading it.

- I seem to have found someone to replace one of the bell parts at Church of the Advent, which is good. I seem to have been suckered into helping him make it, which is less good, especially since I haven't done woodworking since I was, ooo, 12.

And of course, having given up on the Census, they called me today. So: yay employment! albeit part-time, temporary, mostly-at-inconvenient-hours employment starting (functionally) the week after next. So I should keep on with job applications and stuff, groan.

Today, I am reflecting on paradoxes, and on some minor fails on my part.
(Well, also the weekend. Mostly the weekend, actually.)
( Read more... )