Guy 1: Did you ….blahblahblah stuff?
Guy 2: I rode my bike in today.
Guy 1: Wow. You have scrotes!

SCROTES? What is this scrotes? Is this the new name for balls? (WM: Scrotes? I don’t even get this. Guys only have one … scrote.) Urban Dictionary confirms it.

Gimme my Chicos wardrobe and my AARP card. I give up trying to understand people younger than me.

Scrotes. Sheesh.

(Locals will get the reference in the title. Non-locals? Here you go.)

The way the office smelled every morning: newspapers and fresh brewed coffee. How can a workday be bad if it starts out smelling like a Sunday morning? (workday suck often triumphed over the pleasant aroma)

My plucky family of coworkers.

Proximity to shopping. There are no stores in lunchtime-walking-distance to TNP.

The patch of grass in the parking lot where I used to pitch my beach chair and read in the warm weather.

Admin privileges on my PC. Every day there is an Adobe update I can’t install. Drives me crazy.

The pride of working for the local newspaper. Love it or hate it, everyone knew of the Courier-Post. And we did good things. I believe if we weren’t owned by Gannett we’d have done even better things. But I used to see the trucks go by and smile because I was a part of that. It used to be really good.

…and that’s about it.

Young people in Philly protest Corporate Greed. Again. Still.

I am by far one of the stupidest people there. By. Far. I used Excel every day at the CP, but these guys have taken it to an art form.

What I see from my desk. Natural light and yes, Virginia, dual monitors.

They use words I haven’t heard in the workplace in years. Like…innovate. Innn-oh-vayte. I have to look that up.

I am also one of the biggest rubes who has walked 16th street. Here’s the thing: I have always loved taking the train into Philly. We did it all the time when I was a kid and we were po’ and only had one car that Dad used to take to work. So every morning, I walk from my train stop to the shuttle top and say to myself, “Look! Homeless guy! Look! Crazy drivers! Look! Mysterious puddle! Hi! Will you steal my phone?” I am the luckiest person ever to be stepping in strange, viscous puddles and walking the wrong way down 16th street.

I have to take a Meyers-Briggs test this weekend. Everytime I take one, I type as an unwashed loner who avoids all eye contact and makes friends with imaginary fleas.

The bathroom is passcode protected.

And my Internet’s monitored. They actually black out certain websites! I’d be irritated about this but I’m so nuts about working for a place where they care if I’m visiting a Chinese illegal download site that I’ll let it slide. (Plus, I’ve been shown how to get around it.)

And there are windows. I can see natural light all day long.

And a cafeteria downstairs.

And every other Friday off in the summer. (Have to make up the time, but still.)

And they replace computers every 2 years.

And I can wear jeans every stinking day.

Surely, there is some horribleness associated with this job, but I havent found it yet.

Health-wise, I’m on the mend. Oh, you wouldn’t know it from looking at me, but I’m not coughing and sniffling constantly. I’m beat tired though. Which is why this weekend, I’m taking it easy.

Outside TNP's back door. Kind of.

My C-P id, ready to turn in.

Later, I prop my iPHone on the edge of the sink as I wash my hands. My elbow bumps the phone into the sink. It falls into the sink and the display promptly winks out. Ugh.

Friday I dealt with the sadness of my last day. Except it really wasn’t all that sad. I had an amazing cake with Mickey Mouse on it, and I got a Toy Story going away card and a $100 Visa gift card. I managed to muddle through my goodbye speech without completely losing my marbles. And I left at 11am, with everyone waving and cheering as I walked out the door for the last time. Again, I thought I’d lose it when I heard the door click behind me, but…it was time. I loved my years at the C-P but the job (d)evolved into something that I’d never apply for if I saw it in the paper. I will miss my coworkers, though.

The $100 gift card went with me from the C-P to the Apple Store at the Cherry Hill Mall, where I bought the iPhone 4S in white. I stop at the post office. I come home. I faceplant into the sofa. Later that night I wake up and have a cough and a 102 degree fever.

This morning, I wake up at 7am (!!) with a cough, a heavy wheeze and a 101.5 degree fever. I make a doctor appointment for 9:10 and hey, it snowed! So WM decides to drive me there, since I’m practically speaking in tongues because of the fever. I don’t do fevers well.

Diagnosis: Bronchitis, which could have turned into walking pneumonia if I didn’t nip it in the bud early (which I really had to because OMG I START A NEW JOB ON MONDAY AND I NEED TO NOT BABBLE!) The doc gave me a nebulizer treatment while I was there. Never had one before, and I’d like not to have one again.

Now I’m on an inhaler, cough medicine, a Z-pac, and an anti-inflammation steroid. My fever is slowly breaking (down to 99.5) and I feel human again for the first time in over 24 hours.

But at least struggling to breathe kept me from worrying about sucking at the new job. Yay perspective!

I don’t need to be at 100% health on Monday — but I need to be well enough to fake it. (I would like to feel better enough to go to Target tomorrow, though. Because I’d like a new notebook and some new pens to bring to the NEW JOB AND I REALLY HOPE I DON’T SUCK AT IT AND THE PEOPLE LIKE ME!)

From 2008. I actually miss that paneling.

So on Monday, January 23, I start my new job. It’s in Philadelphia, so I get to ride the train in every day. My apartment complex runs daily shuttles to the train station, and the office complex runs daily shuttles from the train station. There are even food trucks outside the building! I bought a messenger bag! Right now this all sounds thrilling but I give it 4 months before it starts to get old.

This is truly the end of an era in my life, because I’m also leaving behind “web work” as my day job. My internet love will have to be satisfied by doing jobs on the side, which I’m already looking into doing. And I’ll really miss about 90% of the people at the C-P. But after all of the layoffs and furloughs, it’ll be nice to get into a place that’s actually growing and thriving.

Gannett stock prices during my tenure. Yeesh.

Here’s the ugly part: It’s taken me a year and a half of searching for me to get a new job. Only in the last six months have I really received responses from my resume. I’ve been interviewed and rejected by “Plucky Local Newspaper Company,” (phone interview, in-person interview) “Big SJ Hospital System Who Loves Numbers,” (phone interview, 2 in-person interviews; resubmitted my resume for a related position and got no calls) and “Evil Cable Company” (phone interview, in-person interview). For TNP, I had an informal lunch, a phone interview and 2 in-person interviews, one that consisted of my meeting with 7 people over the course of 2 1/2 hours. I also never would have found the TNP position without knowing someone who already worked there who tipped me off about the job.

That also explains why my blogging has been sparse. Because when your employers are constantly making lists of who to lay off next, blogging that you’re taking another day off to go into Philly to interview isn’t very smart. This has been an 18-month non-bloggable issue.

This coming week will be sad. There will be a cake for me on Wednesday morning, a happy hour for me Thursday after work, and my exit interview at 10am Friday, during which I’ll hand over my access badge. Then at around 11:30am Friday, I’ll walk out the door.

In 2012 I will start a new job, get married, and turn 40. If that doesn’t convince you that it’s all going to end in December, nothing will.

Grab your juggling balls & unicycles, for the end of the world is nigh*. REPENT!

*originally spoken in my 20′s as I flushed a colony of sick and dying Sea Monkeys down the toilet

This means that I have to dress in layers for work.

When I get into work, it’ll be cold. Our building is older and doesn’t adjust well to changes in temperature.

Then at around 10am, someone will meander by, unlock the plastic box over our department’s thermostat, turn the heat up and re-lock the box. One coworker will complain that the temperature is fine, ignoring the 8 women sitting around him/her wearing coats and shawls. But soon, it’ll be lovely in the office.

At noon, the one coworker who is always hot will mention that it is hot. This coworker will continue saying this in a louder and louder voice (much like a child who wants you to look at him and nod) until eventually this person emails building services saying that it’s BOILING in there.

Then someone will come out, unlock the plastic box over the thermostat, turn the heat down (or off) and re-lock the box.

And our shawls will come out again.

Your lesson for today: Never doubt the ability of one person to make everyone uncomfortable!

Updated to add: iStoopid! My phone somehow changed from Fahrenheit to Celsius while I slept. I know, I’m not a believer in the “it changed it all by itself!” school of thought so I must have done it myself. But the end result is a VERY TOASTY me here at work, with a long sleeved shirt, sweater and scarf over top.

Nice, healed cuticles. A millimeter of fingernail growth. Too bad I have to go back today, hm?