Takin' what they're givin' 'cause I'm workin' for a livin'

I was a little surprised I made as many friends as I did as quickly as I did when I first got to New York, because when people would introduce themselves to me, they'd inevitably ask what I was doing in the city. I was never very enthusiastic when describing my work, even sometimes correcting people when they politely commented that my job sounded interesting or exciting. Also, there were at least a few times when there wasn't time for me to find out about the person I was talking to, so the conversation was all about me. I'm surprised more people didn't think I was a self-centered downer.

Yes, the work I did was quite tedious, but in case any of my coworkers are reading this I'll repeat something I've said many times to people: I don't like my work, but I really like my job. My job lets me set my own hours; my job is largely stress free; my job allows me to work virtually unsupervised while I listen to music; my job has decent benefits; best of all, my job got me a free trip to New York. But my work...well, let's take a look.


After I climbed the stairs, I came into my little cave/office to sweat. There was often a lot of sweat--New York is much more humid than what I'm used to--but fortunately nobody could see me. To prevent outside light from affecting the quality of the scans I was getting, I had to cover all of the windows in my office with black construction paper. The lights were controlled from outside the room, so the light bulbs had to be removed too, leaving my computer monitors and big, hot photography lights (I think they were 1ks) as my only light sources. I never really met anyone that worked in the outer office area (the people I worked with were in a different library, they just stuck me where they had space), not even the cute girl with the prosthetic leg. If I somehow knocked myself unconscious or had a heart attack or something, it might have been a really long time before my body was discovered. Even the janitors were instructed to stay out, so we wouldn't have to risk them bumping the equipment.


Here's a wide shot of the scanning area, including the aforementioned lights. My friend Nicole used this same office a year earlier for our first project with Columbia, and she had four lights. Two was hot enough; it must have been pretty bad for her.


This little fan helped, though. As you can see, I keep my wires nice and tidy.


This is the camera I used. On the right you can see the firewire cable, which for a few weeks I had dangling in front of the light, leaving a small shadow on the images that I somehow didn't notice. I had to redo about eight days' work.


Most of the stuff I scanned were bound volumes, so I had to use this book cradle. I'd lift the glass, position the page, lower the glass, take a picture, raise the glass, turn the page, lower the glass...I did this for about 40,000 pages, not counting the ones I had to redo. Yes, it is as monotonous as it sounds. I really enjoyed using the plunger to take pictures at first (I felt like a Sears photographer!), but that novelty wore off by about the third day.


Here's the original piece of glass from the cradle. I broke it in January, and for about 24 hours I was freaking out, thinking I was going to be sent home. They had a spare piece back in Provo, so no major harm done.


My two computers, where I checked the scans I took and created spreadsheets to keep track of the files.


It was the first time I'd ever used a Mac extensively. I'm not a fan. I fear change, plus I'm a big John Hodgman fan.


Good old PC. As you can see, 40,000 images requires many, many hard drives. All this equipment would later be joined by two flatbed scanners that I used to scan a few thousand loose pages. Someone in the Provo office labelled each scanner with a name from the Twilight books. Oh, Bella, why did you jam so much more often than Jacob?


This is the fireproof cabinet I kept the archival documents I was scanning in. Maybe in the next movie, Indiana Jones can climb into one of these when he needs to survive a nuclear blast in a far-fetched way.


Inside the cabinet. Those books were old, some dating back to the 1860s. Just a bunch of corporate reports--end of the year balance sheets and the like. I have no idea who needs access to these things, why these were the items chosen out of millions owned by Columbia for me to scan, but I'd better get some credit in some Econ major's thesis.

Now, you all know why I haven't ever written much about the work I did in New York. You're welcome.

The audacity of slope

I've realized that some who read my blog may have the impression that I was on vacation in New York for six months (in some ways that's an accurate assessment, I guess), because I've written next to nothing about my "official" reason for being there. The next few posts will take care of that.

I was in New York for work. I'm employed by Backstage Library Works, a company that "provides professional and technical services to help [libraries] get information resources into the hands of [their] patrons." We had a contract with Columbia University to scan some archival documents. They didn't want the documents to leave the premises, so we had to send someone to work on site, and I volunteered (so glad that I did). Usually when we have an on site project it's for two weeks or less (the only other time I travelled for work, in August '06, I was in Scotland for ten days, which was very cool), but we estimated that this one would take about four months. It ended up taking six, which I definitely didn't complain about.

I'll save more of the work details for the next post, though. First, I want to show what I had to go through every day just to get to work (well, until I wised up and started walking or taking the bus up to Broadway and catching the 1 train, which goes right to Columbia).

If I took the B or C trains (the ones closest to my apartment), when I got off I'd have to walk a few blocks, then make my way through Morningside Park to get to the Columbia campus. It was nearby Riverside Park that had to deal with the Lopper, but Morningside had something just as killer: 160 steps to climb (only 155 and a small ramp if you used the adjoining entrance, but still...). Here are a few pictures of the ascent that awaited me each time I walked this way.

I was surprised to see a turkey wandering around this area once, but it turns out it's not abnormal.

Somewhat daunting, but when you reach the top you're rewarded with this view.


Ok, the view isn't that great in January. But, at the top of the stairs you do to get to see this statue.



I'm sure most of you can easily read the writing on the statue, and the rest of you probably recognize the man's face immediately, but in case some of you still don't know, this is Carl Schurz, who had a pretty distinguished career but perhaps most notably founded (with his wife) America's first kindergarten. If that hadn't happened, it's doubtful Bryant Salmon and I would've had a venue to chase and catch people, hold them down and say "we don't care, we don't swear, we don't wear no underwear." The man clearly deserves an even bigger statue. I guess I'd better get to work...

America's hat

I haven't seen anything about it in the news, so it seems Canada's attempted invasion of New York City failed.

A few days before I left, I met a friend at Sylvia's, the most famous soul food restaurant in Harlem (I've heard from several people that it's not the best soul food place, though; but I was pleased with my chicken and waffles, and the peach cobbler was excellent). As I walked up to the restaurant, a group of similarly dressed people started pouring out of Sylvia's Too, the adjoining catering hall. They kept coming and coming, mostly teenagers but several adults as well. The sidewalk was filled with 75-100 people when all was said and done.

Although it was a nice spring day, they were all wearing matching black fleeces that said "DW Poppy Music Dept." on the front, and each had a small Canadian flag on the back. That's right, it was a Canadian band or choir tour!

I've heard that it's sometimes safer for Americans to pretend they're Canadian when travelling abroad, since a lot of people hate Americans right now, but I thought the opposite might be true for these Canucks in Harlem. I knew I had a few minutes before my friend arrived, and assuming they were heading just a few blocks down the road to the Apollo for Amateur Night (a correct assumption, by the way), I decided to follow them to see what kind of reactions their presence elicited.

We got a lot of strange looks as we made our way down the street (I didn't realize it right away, but I'm sure I looked like I was part of the group), but I only heard one comment: as the last of the 80 or so white people passed a man about a block from the Apollo, he said, "Man, y'all need to head back downtown. You're gonna get killed."

There was no hostility in his voice, like he would be the one doing the killing, but there wasn't a lot of compassion either. He said it in a very matter-of-fact way, as if he were saying something like "the express train goes faster than the local." Once we arrived at the theater, I turned around and went back to Sylvia's.

The next night I went to a Yankees game with some friends. It was good timing--I wanted to see a game before I left, and my favorite team, the Detroit Tigers, happened to be in town. We endured the rain to see my Tigers complete their first three-game sweep in Yankee Stadium since 1966 (sorry, Katie--well, not really).

In the fifth inning, I wandered through the concession stands, looking for a vendor selling those mini helmets full of ice cream. I didn't find that, but I did see the same group of Canadians! Apparently they hadn't been killed the night before. I started talking to one of the chaperones and told them I had seen them go to the Apollo the previous night. I told her I had been booed off the stage just two weeks previously, and asked them what they thought of the show.

She told me that there had been a rapper who had been booed off very quickly, but he refused to leave the stage when the Executioner came out to get him. He just kept rapping, and eventually security guards had to come out and escort him off stage. That would've been funny to see.

The next night I attended Brook's sock-hop birthday party on Amy's, Becca's and Ashley's roof. The Canadians weren't there, but we did have a couple of uninvited guests: apparently, we weren't actually supposed to be on the roof, and the cops came and shut us down. While we were needlessly distracting some of New York's finest, who knows what kind of shenanigans those British Columbians were up to? They're not to be trusted, what with their free health care, affinity for hockey and Bryan Adams. Watch out, New Yorkers--there'll probably be another batch of 'em back next spring!

After this one, the balcony is closed

My last post got me thinking about some of my favorite non-Emily chick flick experiences. I usually (but certainly not always) enjoy that type of movie more than I think I will going in; in fact, I'm pretty sure A Knight's Tale exceeded my expectations more than any movie I've ever seen (it's not my favorite movie, but I thought I would hate it and I didn't).

One time back in my days as a member of BYU Broadcasting's student studio crew (I wish I had a blog back then; so many funny stories and weird people and pointless drama crammed into two wonderful years), we had one of our days where our boss Steven told us to "find something to do" or "look busy" or something like that. These days with nothing to do probably happened at least once a week (it was a great job), and this time we had even greater freedom because Steven had to leave.

Usually we'd go get lunch at the Cougareat (on the clock of course), but this time we decided to venture off campus--all the way to some bagel place on Center Street, in fact. We got our food, came back, and as it was a beautiful spring day, ate it on the grass in front of the Museum of Art. While we were there, a few of our nemeses from Master Control waked past, also on their way back from lunch. We ignored them as usual, but weren't surprised when the HR person came out and told us to clock out and go home. Yes, they tattled on us. Which was ridiculous, because we never got in trouble for spending a few hours at the Cougareat, and they had no idea we had left campus. That's probably why there were no long-term repercussions, although when we left work that day we thought there would be, if not for us then for our boss.

We were all really annoyed, and most people just wanted to go home and blow off steam, but my friend Natalie and I went to see Two Weeks Notice (which I felt was somewhat ironic since at the time I thought it may be my last day at my job) with Sandra Bullock and The Charming Hugh Grant. And I liked it.

But my favorite chick flick story happened about a year earlier, in Winter 2002 semester. I remember it well: it was a Friday night, and I had just returned home from an intramural basketball game; my neighbor Jason "Al" Albert came over and asked if I wanted to go to a movie, and said we needed to leave right away. I swapped my shorts for jeans, and Al, his roommate Brent and I jumped into Al's car and sped off to Movies 8.

En route, I finally had some time to ask what movie we were going to.

"We have four tickets to A Walk to Remember," Brent said.

"Oh." Three guys had four tickets to a chick flick. I'm guessing Al and Brent had originally planned to take dates, but must've waited too long to ask anybody (they were two of the cooler guys in the ward, and had they given potential dates even 24 hours' notice they wouldn't have had any trouble getting someone to go with them).

We got to Movies 8 and walked into our theater--remember, this was a Friday night at Movies 8 in Provo, so there were like 45,000 people there--just a few minutes before the movie was supposed to start. If the three of us had wanted to sit together, we would've had to go down to the front row. Later on, I imagined how funny it would've been if we had all walked down there holding hands, but I didn't feel that way at the time.

"No offense, guys," I said, "but I don't really want to see this movie with you tonight."

They agreed, and we left. The movie was sold out, so were able to make a few high school girls' day by giving them our tickets. We rented Zoolander and watched it back at Al's apartment. Two or three years later I finally saw A Walk to Remember (there were several guys and girls present that time), and guess what--I liked it more than I thought I would!

After all this, though, I'm pretty sure the Sex and the City movie will meet my expectations in every conceivable way--which is why I have no desire to see it.

They call them "lassie flicks" over there

I'm working fewer hours, spend less time traveling to and from work, can do my laundry at home whenever I want, and thus far have had a less active social life--yet somehow I've had less blogging time since I returned to Utah than I had in New York. I still have a few NYC loose ends I want to write about, but first I want to write about a movie I saw on Saturday with my friend Emily.

Emily and I have been friends for nearly seven years now. We were in the same ward for a little while, and we were in the same major and had nearly every class together. We talk on the phone a lot, so when we actually hang out we usually go to movies. If it wasn't for Emily I'd probably never see any "chick flicks." Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised, like with The Holiday, and sometimes I see films like License to Wed that tempt me to ignore Emily's calls (kidding, Emily--but that movie stunk).

This time we saw Made of Honor, a Patrick Dempsey (I know him as Ronald Miller from Can't Buy Me Love, Emily knows him as Dr. McDLT or something from some TV show) vehicle that I would've likely found very mediocre, except it's nostalgia factor was through the roof!

(Non-Spoiler Alert: I'm about to give away details of the movie, but it's so predictable that half an hour in you'll know exactly what's going to happen the rest of the way. I bet you'll even predict the horse.)

It starts off with a flashback to 1998, the year I graduated from high school and moved away from home, complete with Smashmouth playing and people dressed as Bill and Monica, and the main character's best friend is played by Kadeem Hardison, the immortal Dwayne Wayne from the Cosby spin-off A Different World. A good start. Plus, the first 15 minutes or so is filled with a lot of the yuppie pretentiousness I love reading about on the great blog Stuff White People Like.

Best of all...the entire movie takes place in the only two places I've ever lived in besides Utah--New York City and Scotland. The New York stuff was all swanky downtown or East Side stuff that I've seen a lot in movies before but didn't have enough money to actually experience while living there, but it was fun to see the city so soon after leaving it.

The Scotland stuff, though, was great. Real Scottish actors, real Highland cows, and unlike the battle scenes in Braveheart, it was really shot in Scotland--in parts of my last mission area, no less. I loved seeing the Isle of Skye, Dunvegan Castle, the Skye Ferry at Kylerhea, and Eilean Donan Castle. I loved seeing that the main tartan used was Murray of Atholl, the same as my own kilt (I have no Scottish ancestry, but I'm from Murray, so I figured that one was kind of my "heritage"). I loved that they didn't bother to translate all of the "Scottish" used in the film. ("Ya ken fit you're gonnae name your bairns yet?" Outstanding.)

Of course, they didn't get everything right. The Scottish guy, Colin MacMurray, supposedly lives in Dunvegan Castle, when everyone knows it's Clan MacLeod that runs the show there. When playing basketball with Dempsey (the funniest scene in the movie), he claims that basketball in Scotland is called netball and is more of a women's game (the games are similar but not identical, and as far as I saw neither are popular over there). Potentially worst of all, when participating in the Highland Games Colin switches from the Murray of Atholl tartan to a red plaid, probably Murray of Tullibardine but I couldn't tell for sure. I say potentially because I don't have a perfect grasp of the system of clans and septs and other family connections, but as far as I know a person wouldn't normally wear two different tartans. (Note: after writing but before posting, I found this site, the first place I've seen red Murray of Atholl paraphernalia, that I can recall. I'm not sure what was worn in the movie. The lesson, as always: I don't nearly as much as I think I do.)

Then there were the plot aspects that bothered me: as the woman at the center of the movie's love triangle has second thoughts about marrying Colin, some of the potential deal-breakers were bagpipe music, haggis, and wearing the tartan--all things that I feel are great. Plus there's the more general problem that Dempsey waited too long to express his true feelings, and when he finally did it he risked ruining lives. In real life, there comes a point where you've missed your chance to be with someone; unfortunately, that line is crossed all the time in movies like this one.

So, if you like Scotland, this movie is worth seeing. If you don't, then I'm not sure--because I like Scotland, which helped me to love this movie despite its flaws. Two thumbs and two big toes up.

I--stopped--in--C-I-N-C-I-N-N-A-T-I, Cincinnati...

The best town in O-H-I-O, Ohio, U-S-A!

On my way back from New York, I had a brief layover in "Ohio's Maserati" (if you don't know what I've been talking about so far, you really need to borrow my copy of the best crappy movie ever).

It was long enough for me to get some lunch, and CVG has a pretty good food court. The comedian Ron White has a bit about getting chili after a show in Cincinnati, where he was told the Queen City was "the chili capital of the world," which caused White to accuse the town of not informing Mexico that a contest was going on. Here's a page that is slightly more modest, calling Cincinnati the "Chili Capital of America."

So I went looking for the local specialty, and found Gold Star Chili. It seems their specialty is chili on spaghetti, a combination I would've never conceived of but which I enjoyed (my seat neighbors on the Cincinnati to SLC leg may have felt differently). It doesn't compare to chicken and waffles on the surprisingly good food combo scale, but I'd eat it again.

When I got home, my dad rained on my parade by telling me CVG is actually in Kentucky. But I'm still very proud of Pete Rose, and all of the other fellas--they're the feistiest I've seen! (Seriously, watch the movie.)

Leaving New York never easy (it's pulling me apart)

Another song lyric-inspired title, this one from a song I wasn't even aware of until a comment from Joey on a recent post. I have returned to Utah (flew back on Monday), which has its pluses and minuses. Three "signs" from the hours just before and after my departure that indicate I should get back to NYC as soon as I can:

1. While walking the three blocks back to my apartment from my going-away dinner I wrote about in my last post, I heard what I'm pretty sure were gunshots nearby--the only ones I heard in that neighborhood in the six months I lived there. It was as if the 'hood knew I was leaving, and was already beginning to unravel.

2. When I got back to Utah and saw my family, they commented that I looked a little thinner. I weighed myself (the first time I stepped on a scale, I think, since I was home at Christmas, eating several pounds of chocolate and peanut brittle a day), and found that I'm about 20 pounds lighter than when I arrived in New York. It's all from forced exercise: having to walk everywhere, climb a lot of steps, and the past few months, daily trips between libraries at Columbia carrying 30-60 pounds of books. I don't think I ever deliberately exercised in New York.

3. I got home and hung out with my family in Murray for a few hours, and was just about to head back to Provo when Quiana, my friend who's been using my car in my absence, called to tell me that it wouldn't start. She ended up getting it towed to Pep Boys, who replaced the starter and battery. So it runs again now, but the driver's side window is stuck down for some reason. And it rained a lot today. Cars suck.

So, yeah, right now the balance is heavily in New York's favor as to where I hope to be living a few months from now. In the last few days before I left, some people asked me what I would miss the most. The obvious answer is "the people," because it covers a lot of related things, and of course the people (both my friends and New Yorkers in general) are pretty outstanding. But here are some other things I'll miss about New York, in no particular order (well, besides the order I type them here):

--Nuts 4 Nuts
--kids playing baseball in the empty swimming pool in the park by my apartment (I wish I had a picture of this)
--"I know, right?" (a favorite phrase of Rachel, Amy, Jessica, Sarah, and likely many others; I think it comes from Mean Girls, but I don't remember girls in Utah saying it much)
--my per diem!
--not having to worry about cars
--seeing places I recognize from TV shows and movies
--having rooftop parties broken up by the cops
--hearing people say "Where you at?" into their Nextels in real life instead of just on commercials
--an amazing array of food options
--cool old buildings
--tons of other stuff

A few things I won't miss:

--humidity (although Utah's dryness isn't always great either)
--trash on the streets
--people talking to you after you've already walked past them (street vendors and panhandlers are the usual culprits for this; I find it really annoying)
--weekend subway service changes
--laundromats (Holly thinks they're great, but she's, well, wrong--doing laundry was definitely the worst part of my trip)

Utah's gonna have to make a pretty sweet offer to keep me here.

Angels of Harlem

I think I've mentioned this before, but look below for one of my top reasons for wanting to stay in New York.

Starting with me (because the world clearly revolves around me) and going clockwise, my angels are (tangential aside: "Angel of Harlem" is a U2 song written as a tribute to Billie Holiday--it's hard to tell that from the lyrics, but it's still a good song): Jen, who organized my going-away dinner, at which this picture was taken, and who would've likely won the stake ping pong tournament if she had been able to use "Angel" as her entrance music, instead of the weird, non-Michael-Jackson "Bad" we chose instead; Amy, who I would accidentally smack in the face a few seconds after this picture was taken; Holly and Elin, sisters, co-hosts of the dinner, and my usual travel companions to church on Sundays; Becca, the one that organized my cheering section at the Apollo; and Ashley, who I stood and sat with at La Boheme.

(Tangential aside #2: I want to apologize to Ashley for assuming that you didn't go on a mission, just because you weren't joining in on telling mission stories. You must've realized that stories people tell about their missions or their dreams (and some people, myself included, managed to do both at the same time) are never as interesting as they think they are.)

(Tangential aside #3: While telling mission stories in regular conversations is not always great, I get annoyed when people apologize in talks or lessons for sharing mission experiences (or other personal experiences). Hopefully your mission was a great time in your life, where you had many experiences that would be relevant when shared in a church setting. Sharing personal experiences are way more powerful than reading about someone else's experiences--so don't apologize!)

Anyway...at most non-Sunday-time-block church events (FHE, Institute, temple trips, parties, whatever), the scene was very similar to the above picture. The girl-to-guy ratio was usually about five or six to one. It was pretty sweet. In fact, to negate this, Jen insisted I invite some dudes to this dinner, and I reluctantly agreed.

So, on my last night in New York, I had good company, good stew, and heard a good fireside address from Elder Nelson. Before I go, here's a bonus pic of Jen in her onion-chopping goggles.

Lookin' good, angel!

It's so close, you can taste it

And that was Saturday afternoon! It's even closer now! I'd better get practicing. Despite my poor performance in an Elders Quorum hot dog contest a year ago, Jeff "The Love Handle" Hofmann is destined to be a competitive eater. You're going down, Chestnut!

I think I gained 800 calories just by walking past this sign.

Mama...mama, I'm comin' home

I hate not being able to blog! I've had a hectic week at work and socially, and spotty Internet service when I get back to my apartment at night, so I haven't been able to write much. I only have time now because I'm waiting for the UPS guy and there's literally nothing else to do.

Said UPS guy will be picking up the last nine boxes of stuff from my office to ship back to Utah. That's right, the work I was sent out here to do is done, which is incredibly exciting, but the corollary to that has me much less enthusiastic--my employer will no longer be paying me to live and love in NYC, so I must return to Utah.

I'm excited to see my family (they have birthday presents for me!), and my friends back home, but I'm definitely sad about leaving New York. It would be great if I could return on a more permanent basis, but I really have no idea what I'll be doing or where this fall and beyond.

But I will keep blogging! I've got lots of stuff about my time in New York that I wanted to write about but never got around to, plus I have an ability (gift? talent? delusion?) to treat mundane, everyday things as important enough to post online for the world to see. So keep reading.