Weekend Update

What? No poorly written prose? Nope, just a bulleted post explaining why I haven't been posting by summarizing the previous seven days...

• I failed to attend Homecoming at Grove City on Saturday under the assumption that I would stay in Ohio and work on my presentation for PGA checkpoint, and that I would go to bed early since I was getting up at 3:30 am for my flight down to Raleigh. Sometime Sunday night I realized that I was dragging from only getting three hours of sleep, and that I had nothing done on my presentation. Verdict- should have attended Homecoming.
• I passed all my certification requirement at PGA checkpoint (including my presentation- regardless of it being a poorly disguised polemic against the PGA) which should have made me eligible for election into full PGA membership this January. However, it seems that my "firing" has invalidated my long months of underpaid internship. Frustrating, yet oddly appropriate. For me, drafting angry letters against injustice was as much a part of college as videogames, pizza, and beer. Glad I get one more shot at it...
  
• For the fourth time in six flights, I was delayed flying through Atlanta. To me, it seems that if you are going to close runways for maintenance, the least you could do would be to build that into your flight schedules. Instead of getting back to Ohio on Wednesday at 7 and having plenty of time for a good sleep before my first day of work, I got back at 11, got to sleep by 12, and got back up at 5:15. Gross. The rest of my flight experience can be expressed in the following logical progression:
• I have scar tissue on my eardrums from childhood ear infections, making it extremely difficult for me to handle extreme changes in pressure. Dive to the bottom of a ten foot pool I don't.
• I happened to have a cold. Not a drippy, coughy cold, just pure congestion, plugging up my head and my mind.
• Consequently, I experienced the most excruciating pain in the world since Denzel cut off some fingers in "Man on Fire." As soon as the plane started its decent, the pressure became acute in my ears, and as a result of the congestion, it felt like someone was driving a railroad spike through my left eyebrow and into the center of my brain. Only the railroad spike was on fire, and made out of angry badgers. I seriously thought I was seconds away from having an aneurysm and bleeding out on the airplane floor. As soon as the pain hit, my left eye started to water. Well, not water, flood. It just poured tears, Victoria Falls style. I was under such agony that I thought I was going to throw up, and I was forced to grab the vomit bag from the seat back. To make the situation even worse, I happened to be lucky enough (and then unlucky enough) to be sitting amongst the NC State women's varsity volleyball team. They proved extremely sympathetic, while I proved myself the world's biggest wuss.
• As insult to injury, I didn't have a direct flight. Meaning that once I landed, I had two hours to look foward to going through the exact same thing again. Yay!
• While in North Carolina, I stayed at a friend's brand new condo while he was off on his honeymoon. While the wedding gifts we opened in his absence included a shower rod and shower curtain, they didn't included shower rings to bind the two. Consequently, I took my first, second, and third bath in well over a decade, and it was horrible. Seriously, taking a bath is what I'd suggest if I was trying to come up with the longest, most uncomfortable, ineffecient way to get clean. Someone please explain the attraction to me of soaking in your own filth. Also, he didn't have any shampoo yet, but antibacterial hand soap left my hair squeaky clean.
• I started my job on Thursday, and completed my second full day today. Some quick reason my job is better than yours:
• No one keeps track of my hours, or my days off. Consequently, once I'm off the radar for being a rook, I can show up whenever, leave whenever, and travel whenever, within reason.
• We have a kickass coffee maker that brews individual flavors of Green Mountain Coffee.
• Monday afternoon will involve me going to the mall and shopping, in order to chart traffic on a few of the retailers I cover and promotional and pricing trends. I'm not sure if I'll be able to write off things I buy as business expenses though.
• In the hierarchy of interesting-ness, my job ranks highest. For your information, the hierarchy is as follows: Market Research, Culture Research, Theology, Fashion, IT, Computer Programming. Take that Redhurt.
  
• I have an amazing view of the cold, grey Cleveland sky.
• Finally, a quick summary of what I've accomplished at work in the last two days.
• I sat in on some conference calls.
• I sat in on some meetings, including one with the CEO of a major publicly traded company. I'll refuse to name names, but the highlights of the stop included this exchange:
• CEO: "Our line of industrial snow melters faces zero market competition."
• Senior Partner at my firm: "What about the sun?"
• I spent eight hours reading financial reports and company information on the specific retailers that I cover.
• I updated my Facebook profile, read articles at ESPN and NationalReview, talked to some of you through GMail, and was blocked from websites NSFW at least half a dozen times. That's right MySpace, you are officially NSFW.
• Tomorrow, I'm off to meet up with the manic-depressive, former fullback that some of you know who may or not be the direct descendant of a garden gnome. We're going to go car shopping, and probably celebrate my belated birfday at some Japanese restaurant where they grill the food at your table. That's right, I said birfday. For the record, I'm 22, some old hag is old enough to be my... well... older sister, really.