Working girl

One of the bars where Dave works is called Calico Jack's. It's in midtown and is a popular place for people who live in other boroughs to stop on their way home from work. Lots of students pass through as well, as well as a fair number of tourists who venture away from Times Square. Dave asked me a few weeks ago whether I'd ever be interested in working the coat check there on a Friday or Saturday night; my schedule is such that a regular working shift would be tough, but I can do an occasionally night here and there. I went in to meet his boss, and we decided that I'd come in on Friday night. (I had my choice of Friday or Saturday, but Dave pointed out that if I worked Friday, I'd get the happy hour crowd as well as the later crowd).

Very cold weather rarely gets me excited, but when one is working coat check, priorities change. The weather report predicted temperatures in the teens, with strong winds, and I was delighted.

On Friday, I showed up at 5:15. The bar, which is also a restaurant with surprisingly decent food, was already much more crowded than I'd imagined it would be. I got myself set up in the coat closet, met a few of the bartenders (they're all girls in tight tank tops and short shorts on Friday nights) who were very nice, and then settled in with a textbook to wait. For the first hour or so, virtually nothing happened, but I'd been expecting that.

I got through two chapters and was just starting on a third when a couple came in to check their coats. I collected $3 from each of them, and gave them each a numbered ticket after hanging a matching ticket from the top of the hanger on which I put their coats. This took a lot of fumbling and I realized I was going to have to streamline the system or I'd get bogged down when things got busy. So I stowed my textbook and began setting up hangers ahead of time, attaching the numbered tickets to about 50 empty ones and hanging them in order within easy reach. This turned out to be a good idea, because things got increasingly busier. For each person that came in, I had to collect the coat shoved at me over the top of the counter (without losing any of the scarves, hats, gloves, sweaters, and headphones people stuffed into pockets and sleeves), put it on a hanger, hang it in the right spot so I could find it again, give the person the correct ticket, and collect the fee. I was amazed by how many people thought that paying a $3 fee with a $20 bill was acceptable, and I actually had two people over the course of the night pay with $50s.

Things got tricky as a line started to form and the closet started to fill. There were two racks, one on either side of the closet, at about waist level and two up above that I could barely reach. (This turned out to be good for tips, because people were pretty amused watching me teetering precariously on a step stool as I lunged for the rack.) The walkway between the racks was fairly narrow, and as they filled with coats, it became harder and harder to push my way through. The sleeves of the coats would wrap around my legs so that I was reminded of scenes from Harry Potter in which enchanted vines ensnare whoever tries to walk by them. I'd been wearing a sweater, but I quickly stripped that off as the room filled and I had to push my way around the closet. I could hardly see the numbers on the coats on the top racks because there were so many of them and they were so high. When I had to back forge my way to the back of the closet, I'd take a deep breath and plunge in with both hands in front of my like a diver, emerging with static-y hair that I could feel hovering around my head in a halo. One of the waitresses brought a glass of water at one point, and I can't remember the last time I wanted one more.

Imagine this room with about 12 times more coats in it. This is where I spent nearly 11 hours.

People were generally friendly, and I was amazed by how many of them tipped me. Personally, I think that $3 for a coat (and additional $3 for a bag) is outrageous. But the girls all smiled at me and the boys all flirted with me, and my tip bucket continued to fill, although I never left more than a couple of dollars into it, as I've heard stories about customers helping themselves when one's back is turned. A DJ works the bar on weekends, and I liked working to a soundtrack. The other employees were really friendly.

At last, I found myself returning coats to their owners rather than hanging them up. The bar emptied, and by the time the DJ announced that customers should close their tabs at 4:00, I was starting to get pretty sleepy. Although I didn't earn a salary, I was allowed to keep all the tips I made and $1 of every $3 that I collected. After checking 168 coats and about ten bags, I walked out with $111 in tips and $289 total. Lots of hours, but not a terrible outcome, and I really sort of enjoyed it.

Surprises: When things started to slow down, I looked at my hands and realized that my fingernails were BLACK underneath. I thought at first that it was dirt from people's coats (ew ew ew) but realized after examining my fingers more closely that it was lint from all the black wool coats I'd handled – everyone wears black wool coats, it seems. The next day, after getting home at nearly 5:00 A.M. and collapsing into bed, I woke up aching all over. I guess all of the struggling through a jungle of coats and straining upwards again and again to reach the high ones takes a toll. But I'd certainly do it again if given the opportunity.

Spring semester

One semester down, and two to go. Classes for the Spring '10 semester began last Thursday, and as of today I've met with all of them at least once. Here's a quick breakdown of what I'm taking and my impressions:

MONDAY

-Writing Interventions: Theory and Practice - This is something I've always been interested in. According to the professor, we'll learn theories for teaching normally developing students as well as students with special needs to improve their writing. Based on the readings I've downloaded and printed, we're covering very young children (there seem to be a few that are about handwriting and basic spelling) up through older adolescents (structure, style, etc.). While the subject matter is right up my alley, I'm not a huge fan of the professor for reasons I won't go into... Well, an hour and forty minutes a week is unlikely to drive me over the edge.

-Seminar in Consultation and Evaluation in Reading - My beloved Dr. Masullo teaches this class, which begins 20 minutes after the other ends; class from 5:10 until 9:00 is going to be a bit brutal, but it's only one day a week. During the first session, we talked a lot about the role of literacy coaches, which is not something I've learned about yet. We'll be learning about current issues in reading services and about how to work with other teachers in schools on professional development, which apparently is something reading specialists may be asked to do. In fact, there's a theory circulating that every middle and high school should have a literacy coach whose full-time job it is to assist core subject teachers in effective literacy instruction. I don't know if it will go anywhere, but the trend seems to be leaning that way, because, in theory, the specialist can reach more students that way than if she simply taught a few classes of her own. Should be an interesting class.

TUESDAY

-Introduction to Measurement - Ok, math is not my thing, but I have a good feeling about this class, in part because my professor is fabulous. He's incredibly high energy and he's an excellent lecturer. (He is also clearly Italian, so I am predisposed to adore him.) From what I understand, statistics will be involved in the class, but that's not solely what it's about. In education (and psychology), it's important to know how to design tests that will accurately assess whatever it is you're looking for, as well as how to look for flaws in pre-existing tests so that you don't misinterpret the results, how to administer pre-existing tests so you don't cause the results to be flawed, how to analyze test scores, etc. Today, because we hadn't done any reading yet, we spent at least an hour going over the history of measurement. It sounds terribly boring, but it was actually fascinating. My professor really emphasized the way that national and global events caused developments in the field of measurement and I was riveted. For example, the first personality tests were developed in the 1920s. Why? Well, it makes perfect sense if you think about what was going on in the US then. Some veterans, home from WWI, were exhibiting symptoms of shell shock, a condition that had never been observed before. Others were coping well. The military (for practical reasons) and psychologists (for research purposes) were interested in the ways that different people responded to the same sort of trauma, but they needed some kind of way to measure and assess personality. Enter personality tests. So we'll see if I'm as positive about this class once I have to start using my calculator, but at the moment, I think I'll like it a lot.

THURSDAY

Practicum: Literacy Assessment and Intervention II - This one will require the most time on my part, not because of assignments but because of the practicum that goes along with it. For the second semester, I'll be seeing a client twice a week in the school's reading clinic, and writing endless reports about his/her progress. I'll be given my client assignment on Thursday. I like the professor; like a lot of the professors I've had, she's an alum of TC. She'll be covering additional techniques we can use that weren't covered in the co-requisite for Practicum I. Three practica are required to graduate with a reading specialist degree. In the last one, which I'll take in the fall, I'll be tutoring a small group of adults, rather than a single child like this one and like Prac. I.

Tentatively, I'll go to Heritage on Mondays and Tuesdays this semester. Hard to believe my fellowship is halfway over already!

Training

As some of you know, I was chosen to run in the NYC half-marathon on March 21st. While this sounds like quite an honor, let me assure you that my selection had nothing to do with me personally; rather, there are a limited number of spaces and without a qualifying time (which I don't have because I've never run a half-marathon) I had to enter a lottery. Happily, my name was randomly chosen, and so I've started to prepare myself for the 13.1-mile race through Manhattan. (And no, I don't know the route yet - it's not posted - but I'll put up a link once I find out.)

A half-marathon isn't really that big a deal. I'm fairly sure I could do it tomorrow if necessary, although I would probably feel pretty awful for the last two miles and end up with a terrible time. So my goal is not simply to finish but to finish it strongly. At this point, I'm hoping for sub-ten minute miles, meaning that I should finish in less than two hours and ten minutes. Not terribly fast, but for a race that long, I think it's a reasonable challenge.

Initially, I decided to prepare for the race by running every day, trying to put in between 6 and 8 miles each time. Then, thanks to a workout with a local running club called the New York Harriers, I realized that I wasn't doing myself any favors by neglecting speed work*, so I added a day or two per week of that to the regimen. In a recent online search, however - whatever did we do without Google? - I learned that, yet again, I was going about it all wrong. Running every day may sound admirable, but it's actually not recommended, nor is going long distances each time. One of the sample training schedules I saw suggested going between three and six miles most days, with one long run each week. While the point about rest days is well taken (I had my first one yesterday and it was lovely), on the days I don't do speed work I plan to put in at least six.

I discussed all of this with an acquaintance of mine over the weekend. He's a runner too, and his first question was whether I planned to do a marathon. Absolutely not. Of course, I say this now, and we'll see how I feel after doing this race. But while doing more half-marathons after I finish this one sounds like fun, a full marathon doesn't really appeal to me. More than anything, I'm not willing to put in the time it takes to train for one. The 20+ mile workouts one is supposed to do in the weeks leading up to a marathon take ages, and you have to devote hours of your day to them instead of the roughly 1.5 hours a day I'm putting in now. So no promises that I won't change my mind, but for the record, currently a marathon is not on the agenda.

*For those of you who are not runners, the focus of speed work is (surprise!) speed rather than distance. On a very basic level, there are two ways one can do this: either fast intervals of a pre-determined duration, or fast intervals of a pre-determined distance. In high school, we did a lot of distance intervals because we ran on a track and it was easy to measure them. One of my favorite workouts was called a ladder. You ran 200m, jogged 200m, ran 300, jogged 300, ran 400, jogged 400... you get the idea. And of course, as with a real ladder, you have to come back down, so after you go your maximum distance, you start to do shorter and shorter intervals until you're back to doing 200s again. Alas, I have no track at my disposal, so I'm doing very simple timed intervals. Using a stopwatch, I run hard for a set period of time, then jog for about half the number of minutes, then run again for a slightly shorter period, then jog again, etc. Very good for strength training and cardiovascular capacity. The other bonus: I can get in an excellent workout in about 40 minutes from beginning to end instead of at least double that time on my distance days.

Experiment

Life in New York can be very exciting because of all the new things there are to see and try. I've decided to try something new that I've been wanting to do for ages, however, which has nothing to do with the city. I bought a jar and a bottle of vodka so that I could at long last give infusing a try. At the moment, I have lemons floating around in it, which I plan to take out fairly soon (it's been a week) after a taste test. Ferran helpfully pointed out a few days ago that it tastes like "vodka and lemons," which I suppose is what I was going for. I hope my friend Sarah will give me a second, and perhaps more profound, opinion this evening.

Note: Since I took this picture, the vodka has become a little on the cloudy side as lemon juice has leached into it and is a very pale yellow color.

With Anthony's help, I came up with quite a long list of flavorings to try next, including pear, green apple, pineapple, cherry, lemon and raspberries, raspberries on their own, and oranges. I've heard of people putting jalepenos in, but I'm not sure that's really my style. I'd better get drinking if I want to try something different, however, because I bought only one jar.

From Visalia, With Love

Yeah yeah, this blog is supposed to be about my glamourous life in New York (I say that rather sarcastically, as I haven't done anything noteworthy since being back) and not humdrum Visalia, but this final picture, which I took next door to our house, was too funny to keep to myself. New York news to come, pinkie swear!

I'm studying to be a reading specialist and even that background leaves me pretty much clueless as to pronouncing this word. I hate to be pessimistic, but I can't imagine they've managed to sell the thing (whatever it is) yet.

The rest of the family

Anthony was missed in Visalia, but I really enjoyed spending time with David, my parents, and my grandparents. But I want to take a moment to recognize some other members of the household, Atticus (feathers) and Henrietta (fur).

A Series of Unfortunate Events

You thought you'd had a rough evening? Get a load of this:

I went for an evening run for about an hour, and returned to my dorm, sweaty and quickly getting chilly; it's 36 degrees at the moment, and while I was plenty warm while still moving, slowing down was lethal. I unlocked my door using the key I'd removed from my key ring, as I always do when I go running, and turned on the heater in my room so it would be nice and toasty when I emerged from the shower, toweled off and cozy in my bathrobe. I stripped off my clothes, cranked the hot water up as high as it would go, and stepped in. I felt blissful as I let the water do an initial rinse, blissful as I reached for the shampoo, and blissful as I rubbed it into my hair. I felt less blissful as the water suddenly began to cool. And cool. And cool. Within ten seconds, I was cowering as far from the jet of icy water as I could with shampoo suds running down my face. I waited for a few minutes, and when this produced no favorable result, tried turning the water on and off a few times. Nothing worked. Somehow, the water heater intended for who-knows-how-many of my fellow dorm-mates, had cut out.

Had my head not been saturated in shampoo, things may have been different, but as it was, I felt I had to at least rinse the suds out. There was no way I was getting back under that Arctic stream, however, as at this point my teeth were chattering and I was starting to shiver. Instead, I wrapped a towel around myself, twisted my soapy hair up into a clip, and filled my electric teapot. It took ten minutes to boil two pots of water (turns out a watched pot does boil, it just takes a really, really long time). Adding some cold water from the tap rewarded me with about 3/4" of tepid water at the bottom of the tub. In this, I performed some admirable contortions that would be the envy of any yogi and managed to rinse the soap from my hair and from wherever else it had dripped while I was hopping from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm. The heater, which does a very nice job of making me feel warmer when I am dry, turned out to be not so great when I was wet, as it blew gusts of barely warm air that made me feel even colder.

Hair rinsed, I felt a bit calmer. I put my hair, which was matted enough to have given Anthony some competition during his dreadlock days, into a towel, and called my friend Michael who lives a floor below me. (Keep in mind that the last time I saw Michael was about a month ago, just before we both left for the winter break.) "Hi!" he said happily, no doubt looking forward to a chat. "Do you have hot water?" I interrupted. "Uh, hang on," he replied, and there followed the sound of running water. "Yeah," he returned after a moment. "Totally hot. I assume you don't, and you discovered this at the most inopportune moment?" I hate Michael. "Yes," I began, "I got back from a run and I was freezing and then when I was all soapy..." "Put on a robe and get down here," he said. I love Michael.

About 90 seconds later, I arrived, clutching my key ring, a conditioner bottle, and hairbrush, and he let me in and pushed me straight into the bathroom. "I warmed up the pipes for you," he said, "and I'll make you some tea for when you get out." God, I love Michael. I applied conditioner to my head of sailor's knots and they dissolved nicely. Then I joined Michael for tea and a chat while my fingernails slowly turned from blue back to pink.

After about ten minutes, Michael headed out the door to go to a meeting. Feeling that life was pretty good after all, I headed up the stairs, still wrapped in my bathrobe with my hair in a towel. At my door, I fumbled for my key. And fumbled. And then it hit me: I couldn't find my key because my key wasn't there. It was not on my key ring because I never put it back after my run. It was sitting uselessly on my desk, where I'd tossed it pre-shower(s).

In my building, lock-outs are no big deal. I've done it several times (sometimes on the same day). You simply walk down to the front desk, tell them your room number, and sign out a key which you must return within 30 minutes. Never, however, have I done it in a bathrobe and Uggs with streaming hair. Michael was already off to his meeting and my cell phone was in my room. I have no one's phone numbers committed to memory - no one in the New York area at least. I briefly considered sitting outside his door until he returned, but I had no idea how long that would take. I was not eager to go down to the front desk myself. You see all kinds of eccentric people in this city, but I was not prepared to be one of them.

Luckily, it sounded as though my neighbor was home. I knew her name, Corrine, because it was posted on her door, but I'd never actually spoken with her - ships passing in the night, I guess. The time had come, I decided, to change that.

Corrine, as it turns out, is a lovely person. She had never locked herself out of her room before, dressed or undressed, but she was delighted to dash down to the front desk for me and returned in minutes brandishing a key. I have big plans to buy Corrine the chocolate she deserves. I thanked her profusely, and she replied brightly "Any time!" How often does she think I plan on doing this?

And now, near the bottom of my second mug of tea, with blow dried hair and wearing warm, dry clothes that provide decent coverage, I feel reflective. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is exactly, but I'm sure there is one.

Home for Christmas

Over the next few days, I'll post a few pictures/anecdotes from my time in Visalia, since classes haven't gotten going yet.

David and I went home for Christmas this year, but Anthony, who had traveled to California for my cousin's wedding a month before, didn't have the time off nor the resources to make another trip out to the left coast. My dad, however, with help from David, made sure that Anthony was there in more than just spirit.

Updated airport security

After a very relaxing three weeks at home (thanks again, Mom and Dad!) I headed to Fresno yesterday morning to fly back, at last, to my beloved New York. My flight was scheduled to leave at 6:55 A.M. For those of you lucky enough not to know this, Fresno's wait times are highly variable. Although it's a small airport, the volume of people who fly out on early flights is often more than the security forces can efficiently handle, resulting in very long lines. (At other times, the place is a ghost town, but I've never been able to find a pattern.) This fact, combined with the eager young go-getter who tried to blow up the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam, worried my mother. She insisted that I allow about an hour and a half to get through security instead of the usual hour, and I reluctantly agreed it was probably best.

Bleary-eyed, we left Visalia at 4:30 the next morning and arrived at the Fresno airport at about 5:20. The parking lot looked full indeed, but I discovered when I went in to drop off my bag that the check in line wasn't long at all. It looked long at first, but the back-up turned out to be the fault of the Fresno State men's basketball team, whose members are enormous and therefore take up lots of room. From there, I headed to the security line. There were about ten people in it, and as my mom and I watched, the number dwindled until it was totally empty. Hmmm.

Mom and I spent the extra time chatting in Fresno's pleasant waiting area, which has been redone to look like a redwood forest. When there were about five minutes left before boarding, we said our goodbyes and I headed straight to the first checkpoint without passing Go or collecting $200 (pity). There were three security guards hanging around the podium where my driver's license was compared to my boarding pass. Check. Next, I got in the "line" to have my bag x-rayed, where I was forced to wait behind four people. Although the metal detector did not beep as I walked through, I was still directed to step to the side for a pat down of my sweater which was, apparently, suspiciously bulky. Thirty seconds later, I was pulling on my boots and preparing to head to the gate. Check. It occurred to me as I collected everything that there seemed to be a lot of security personnel buzzing around the area. I did a quick headcount: ten guards to seven passengers.

I boarded my on-time flight to Laguardia via Dallas, feeling no more secure than usual, but optimistic that at least this new security risk my help us chip away at unemployment rates.

Local Flavor - West Coast edition

I never imagined that I'd find anything in humble Visalia worthy of recording in my blog, but a contrast I saw while running yesterday proved me wrong. I was jogging along the road that divides Mooney's Grove, a nearby park, with its neighboring trailer park. I saw a breathtaking male peacock (I guess that's redundant), in all his iridescent splendor, perched, king-like, on top of a double wide.