Emchap's Shit from the Internet 11/29/17 🍠
I started my new job this week! It's been your standard sort of new hire week so far (I'm slowly remembering what changes I'd made to my old work laptop and accounts that weren't part of the out-of-the-box settings and have gotten mostly there), and it's overwhelming and good and I'm still homesick for the people from my old job, all (ALL) of whom texted to ask me how the new gig was on Monday, like well-meaning parents on the first day of college.
I'm a sales engineer at the new gig, and so they've sat me at the table with the technical staff and I feel proud and very much like a fraud. I keep going out to coffee with my new coworkers to Build Connections and have drunk so much caffeine I can see sound, but so far the sales team seems excited that I used to be on a sales team and the support team seems to be excited I used to be on a support team and the engineering team seems mostly to be very busy but kindly inclined towards me so long as I keep it to a dull social roar on Slack.
I was in a technical sales meeting today in which there wasn't a single white dude. There are women engineers everywhere. My whole team is women engineers! A dude asked me today if I knew anything about Ruby because he was having trouble getting a dev environment up and running! (I didn't know anything useful to him, but it was nice to be asked.)
I feel a bit discombobulated and the commute is horrible and I don't know where anything is in the kitchen and I miss everyone from my last job so, so much, but I have not yet had a moment of thinking that I made the wrong call.
Shit to read
This LA studio is balls-to-the-wall bonkers and I love it.
And this one caused a friend to respond "You live in Minneapolis!", which, hah, but the woman does in fact look a bit like me and I fucking love her whole endealment. (My current apartment has all its art hung at exactly eye level for a 5'5" person and no one else, because it's mine and mine alone, fuck guests.)
This interview with a trans man who gave birth was super interesting, in no small part because it made me aware that you can breastfeed after top surgery, apparently.
I love Ursula K. Le Guin and recommend this interview with her.
This article about a woman whose son has cystic fibrosis talks about "wrongful birth" lawsuits and is hard and sad.
This article on the relatively commonplace practice of infanticide is worth reading (though I do disagree with some of its comparisons to non-human primates—no non-human primate has ever been observed harming its own offspring in the wild afaik, which is different than harming others').
I liked/was made sad by this article about organizational rot.
Shit to eat
After two years of not ever needing to feed yourself because your job is functionally your mom, wind up cast back out into the world at lunchtime.
Wander to Chipotle, a store that you still pronounce "chip-ottle" in your head because it's funny.
Accidentally hit a man with your purse. Wonder how you still don't know where to stand in stores in New York after two years.
Ask for a veggie bowl. Be proud of yourself that the employee heard you the first time, which never happens.
Stand in slightly irritated awe at the dude in front of you watching an entire episode of what appears to be a K-drama on his phone while ordering.
Debate getting brown rice.
Get white rice.
Nearly say "black beans" out of a childhood reflex before realizing that you actually strongly prefer pinto beans and ordering them for once your life.
Remember that when you were small, Chipotle seemed to have an endless array of options to put on a burrito, which seems... less true at this location.
It's like four things?
Turn down guacamole because of some weird internalized class issues.
Vow to yourself to make this last two lunches.
Pay nearly 10 whole United States dollars for your bowl of cheese rice, and for actual vow to make this last two lunches.
Return to your office to eat your burrito bowl and make polite smalltalk with well-intentioned new colleagues. Do not spill anything on yourself.
Shit to listen to
"What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" is a holiday song I only became aware of a few years ago, and has quickly taken its place as my favorite of a genre I love. The Ella Fitzgerald version is the best, obviously, but this is the version I first heard and this is good, too. It's an emotionally vulnerable holiday song that doesn't shade in to the gross weird maudlin tone some holiday songs do, and plays on my love of New Year's, which is the one winter holiday that hasn't gotten Emotionally Fraught as I've gotten older. (Plus, I can sing it, and I can't sing most things.)
Shit to buy
This is a bra for mermaids and I love it a LOT.
This pillow from the second link made me laugh.
The idea of owning a sweatshirt that says leggings are real pants pleases me.