Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: joysaphine

I have this joke with my bff S. that comes up pretty regularly nowadays. It all started the morning of January 1, 2009. She’d had a party at her apartment and I’d stayed over to avoid having to fight for a cab home at 4 am. I was lying in bed rather hungover/groggy, and she was reading the New York Times—in particular, a story on people found guilty of the torture and sex trafficking of young girls.

“Can you believe it?” she said. “Horrible!”

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photo credit: melbietoast2009

Update on the situation of weirdness yesterday in the apartment building: When I came home from the gym last eve I saw a mattress propped up outside for garbage collectors with a huge burn-hole in it. Which explains why the lobby smelled kinda … singed.

Apartment living! You think you can trust your neighbors not to burn the place down, and then you find out the truth.

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Today I have so little concentration that my to-do list (which has 4 items on it, only 2 of them priority) has not even one thing crossed off.

When my electronic prescription refill failed to go through, I hung up rather than actually speak to a “pharmaceutical representative.” I didn’t answer my hair salon when they called to confirm my Saturday appointment and now I have to call them back, too, but have made no progress in that.

I tried to read this article about how breakups are sooooo hard in today’s era of Facebook and digital blah-blah-blah and then I just stopped. And now all I can think about is lunch.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I did manage to make it to the office and am sitting here ostensibly ready to tackle anything that comes my way, but really, focus is about nil until I’m actually presented with something.

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photo credit: andreac-84

It’s a sad day at the New York Times today. The announcement was made that 100 people in the newsroom (currently 1250 folks) will have to accept a buyout by the end of the year—or there will be layoffs to reach that number.

Somehow appropriately, editor Bill Keller was out sick (this whole thing would make me sick, too) and so delivered the news by email, which you can read here.

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photo credit: Premshree Pillai

Currently, with brother and sis-in-law-to-be, pondering how completely terrible mornings would be without coffee. Imagine, friends (and substitute tea if you must, or a sip from your flask of Jack D.,) but … a morning without your desired caffeinated beverage, pouring down rain and chilly, where you must put a bike rack on a car and motor away to coastal portions of the state? Unbearable.

Thankfully, we have real, whole bean coffee, ground and prepared for easy brewing in the gray am, and the results are delicious. No Splenda; instead, I am partaking in real sugar, but that barely makes a difference enjoyment-wise (frankly, I prefer Splenda because it’s so much more efficient—I only need 2 packs, while with sugar, I just can’t perfect the measurements.)

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photo credit: nffcnnr

I stumbled upon this story in the NYT today while scanning the headlines pre-yoga. Since I too have been dubbed middle-aged (though with less impact given the 25 hopefully good years before I reach the age of 58), I read it. And my heart goes out to this fellow.

I am sure it must be much, much harder to be 58 and unemployed than, say, 33 or 22 and without a job. Like our feelin-sorry-for-hisself 31-year-old employed editor from the Gawker piece, Michael Blattman is also “at a professional dead end”—but without the nimbleness or freedom from the burden of alimony that comes with comparative youth.

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photo credit: Corey Holms

A friend just passed along this New York Times article by David Carr about the Talk magazine launch party. I think it’s a revealing description of where things have been, and where they’re going.

Of this particularly decadent bash—among its attendees were Madonna and Henry Kissinger; George Plimpton narrated—Carr writes, “‘It seems like that happened in the 18th century,’ said Ms. Brown by phone last Friday.”

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photo credit: Nils Bremer

Sounds like Reader’s Digest is having some problems.

Which is interesting, because way back in 2002 I happened to be on the Pleasantville “campus” quite a bit, and even though at that point the company hadn’t sold the majority of their art or consolidated buildings (subletting at least one wing to bring in some cash) or cut the cafeteria offerings or canceled the “late shuttle” (aka, 6:20) to the train station for reverse-commuting Manhattanites, there was still a shabby-chic quality to the place, giving it a feel more like a sleepy retirement home than a burgeoning media conglomerate. It’s never a good thing when you send your employees home early to save money.

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