If Norway Doesn't Work Out, I Might Settle for Boston

I loooooved Boston. I tried to convince The Funasaurus that we should move there, but he said, “no.” I intend to bribe him with sex. It’s too fun of a city to pass up. (Although I vaguely remember thinking not-so-much when we went in early February and got caught in a snowstorm… eh.) I had a wonderful time, and immediately felt at home on the 14th floor of a gorgeous old building right in downtown, with beautiful New England-y architecture and columns, and marble, and yellow walls lined with pretty books. (I am working for a publisher again, although this time it’s more assistant-y stuff rather than the fun marketing/editorial stuff I did before, for those of you who were wondering in my last set of comments.) They day-to-day database maintenance may not be fun, but the people are, and when a publisher is able to put you up in a fancy-schmancy hotel, you know they're doing something right! I sat in the waiting room, on my first day, marveling at my good fortune and reapplying lip gloss because I’m sure that’s what really matters to the New England bookish crowd for about an hour and a half… until I realized I was done reading all the covers on the displays in the room, and wasn’t it a little odd that the woman who told me to be there at 8:30 had still not shown up by 10:00? The security desk (!) called someone else in the group, and a woman we’ll call Monique came and got me, apologizing profusely because Hester, the woman who was supposed to train me, had taken the day off. But Monique leaned over with a twinkling eye, her very red pageboy haircut swinging across her face dramatically, “WelcEHm to Baaahstin!” She led me through the mahogany (!) doors and up the elevator that required an ID badge (!) and said, “Dontchew werry, I’ll shew you the really important stuff. The cawfee room, the caeh-feh-teria, the vieuww…..” So we spent the day sipping our cawfee, sitting on the deck, admiring the skyline of Boston in 70-some degree weather with about half of the rest of the office that managed to trickle in sometime between 9 and 10 and I had found my home.

They let me go about 4:00, and suggested I go shopping on Newbury Street for the rest of the afternoon. And. You know. Who am I to turn down such a sensible suggestion? Hester came in the next day, with leathery skin, a moustache, a tight chignon, and the raspiest voice I’ve ever heard. She had taken two cigarette breaks by the time we got my computer up and running, and then we took a walk back to my hotel for a tour of the new ballroom because she’s also the event coordinator for the company. The ballroom was lovely, I turned down a 10:30 bloody mary, mostly because I could not juggle tomato juice plus celery stick AND my luggage (which I was dragging along, by this point) and by the time we got back to the office, we had just enough time to have another leisurely lunch on the deck, admiring the view, before I had to catch a cab back to the airport.

Now I'm off to California for a weekend of drinking and debauchery with pretty much the most fabulous women, ever.

This is the life for me.