What a Week

My first week at the new job was a whirlwind that has left me physically and mentally exhausted, not to mention off the internet for most of the week, but I’m feeling oddly energized at the same time.  By today at 5pm it still had that “new job” smell — helped quite a bit by my adding a few personal touches to my first real office space (as opposed to cubicle) since American Express — and I’m looking forward to shifting into high gear next week with a two-day trip up to Boston to tackle the biggest of the three titles I’m now in charge of. It’s still a weird feeling being a “Director”, but it’s a job I felt I was ready for when I was still working in marketing, well before I’d made my first sale as a rep, so I’m ready to jump in with both feet.

My third to trip to Cincinnati earlier this week once again found me sticking to the suburbs, so I’ve yet to see the city itself except for from the highway. I’m hoping to time my next trip out there to catch a baseball game, which would finally get me downtown while also being my first major league game at a park other than Shea or Yankee Stadium. The Cubs and Marlins are in town in early May…

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I just can’t resist

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It6JN7ALF7Y]

[from the Jed Report, via Ben Smith]

And for some background, the Washington Post‘s Mary Ann Akers dug up Sinbad, the comedian who accompanied Clinton on that harrowing peace-keeping mission to Bosnia in 1996, along with other noted crisis negotiators Sheryl Crow and a pre-teen Chelsea Clinton, for this enlightening flashback:

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March Madness

No, it’s not the basketball tournament…it’s the one-week-late March edition of your favorite NYC-centric literary journal, Spindle Magazine!

Log on now for new poetry by Roger Bonair-Agard, Gerard Sarnat, Jeanann Verlee and Beverly Wilkinson; short fiction by Tim Clancy; and creative non-fiction by Anne Germanacos.

Plus, keep an eye out next week for our featured columns: Coffee & Brooklyn, Myers Music Machine and On the 1.

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Monday Mash-Up, 3/17/08

1) I am swamped. Between the start of the new job only one week away (which kicks off with a trip out to Cincinnati) and the [mostly good] stress of our impending house purchase (attorney review is winding down; inspection is on Saturday), I’m a week behind on Spindle‘s March update and am going to have to burn the midnight oil tonight, after attending a Little League Coaches meeting, to get it done for tomorrow.

2) I am thrilled. This will be the oddest and coolest job transition I’ve ever made as it’s effectively a promotion but with a change of employer and scenery. The additional responsibility is a welcome challenge, even with the sharply raised stakes, as is the opportunity to put my stamp on two more magazines. Coupled with the success of Spindle, and my not-always-clearly-thought-out career goals are starting to come to fruition. Throw in the new house, our dream house by almost every realistic definition, and the fact that in general, things seem to really be falling into place all of a sudden — ie: as I’m typing this, our lender just called me to say rates dropped and we just locked in for 5.5%! — and I find myself looking both ways 5 times before I cross the street!

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Spring Cleaning

I spent the morning updating the backends of this site and Spindle’s — WordPress 2.3.3 and Joomla 1.0.15, respectively — as well as a number of the plug-ins and modules that had new updates released recently, and finally found a new WP template I liked better than my previous one which had a couple of cosmetic bugs I never could figure out how to fix.

The picture up top is temporary, at least in size, because I ran out of time, but any feedback on the readability and functionality of everything else would be most appreciated.

PS: Yes, thanks to a hectic couple of weeks, I’m behind on the latest Spindle update which was scheduled for 3/11 but am hoping to have it ready to go on Tuesday morning!

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Lucky to be Black

I really am trying to lower my political caloric intake right now — and, for the most part, have, thanks to a hectic few days of dealing with the adventures of buying a house — but the events of the past week have simply been unavoidable and difficult to let go unremarked upon. The posts I haven’t written this week would have reflected negatively on my chosen candidate, blistered your eyeballs and, in a few cases, possibly even ended casual friendships with a few Clinton supporters who are otherwise wonderful, rational people.

In a situation like this, you hope someone else will put what you’re thinking into more palatable words, and earlier this week, Keith Olbermann did exactly that.  Today, it’s RJ Esko over at the Huffington Post, responding to Clinton supporters who send him hate mail “every time I criticize the Clinton campaign strategy.”

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