Things I've learned since starting work at Starbucks:

1. No one looks cute in a big green apron and baseball cap.
2. Not even me.
3. Particularly not at 7 in the morning.
4. In fact, I can't think of anyone that looks cute at 7 in the morning. And I've seen a few.
5. Who the hell are all these people coming to Starbucks at 7 in the morning?!
6. And why are they all wearing cell phone headsets?!
7. People in Beverly Hills totally match the stereotypes.
8. Not me, though. No sirree.
9. I mean, just because I have a tan and highlights and my parents have a membership at a country club...
10. Whatever.
11. The Spanish are totally onto something with that siesta idea. Getting up at 6 a.m. with only five or six hours of sleep has led to a few involuntary naps.
12. Now I get grouchy if I miss my nap.
13. If by 'grouchy' you mean...
14. People actually order regular coffee at Starbucks.
15. That coffee is served hot.
16. They must know something I don't about how to cool it down before drinking it. That or they've killed all the nerve endings in their mouths and that's why they don't bother paying for anything fancier than coffee.
17. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing behind the espresso bar.
18. Or the cash register.
19. But smiling and acting like I do seems to be working.
20. My clothes smell like coffee when I go home.
21. I have ceased to enjoy the smell of coffee.
22. I have not, however, ceased to enjoy any of Starbucks' beverages.
23. It totally rocks to be able to get all the chai tea lattes and mochas and frappucinos that I want for free.
24. Even if that is an unhealthy amount of caffiene. I need it.
25. Damn, I'm tired.

Drool.

Finally, someone on the O.C. that I actually think is hot. That's male, I mean (Rachel Bilson had been in the lead, but the being female thing is kind of holding her back now). They got someone new to play Ryan's brother Trey, and I must say, well done. His name is Logan Marshall-Green, and I hope he sticks around awhile.

Employment gods don't hate local woman; Scrabble gods totally do, though

BEVERLY HILLS, CA--While yesterday marked a turning-point in the post-graduate life of local resident Adrienne Graves as she filled out tax forms for her new job as a Starbucks barista, it seems her luck did not extend to a game of Scrabble against her dad.

"Like, I breathed a sigh of relief when I filled out all the paperwork necessary for Starbucks to actually consider paying me, but I guess it was beginner's luck or something. Cuz, like, that was at the beginning of the day, because I'd overslept until the time I was actually supposed to be there, and then at the end of the day things totally didn't go as well."

Ms. Graves began what she hopes will be a short-term employment as a part-time employee at a local Starbucks, despite coming close to "fucking it all up" by arriving late for her very first day. "I dunno what happened... my cat woke me up at like 6 a.m. and I was awake till 7, but when the alarm actually went off at 8 I turned it off or something because next thing I knew my cell phone was ringing and woke me up at 10:30. At which point I was like, 'Oh shit, I was supposed to be at Starbucks, like, now.' "

Luck was with the local Integrated Marketing Communications Master of Science, however, and her verbal job offer of the previous day was not revoked. She begins formal training in the barista arts tomorrow at 11, presuming a timely arrival.

Unfortunately, it seems she blew all her good luck early in the day. When she returned from a dinner out with her parents that evening, they discovered that a power outage had occurred, and were reduced to doing "whatever it was people in the olden days did when they didn't have, like, light."

In this particular instance, the Graves family agreed upon a candle-lit game of Scrabble. Neither Adrienne nor her father had played in some years, when Adrienne's younger brother had incurred a constant reminder of his humiliation when he attempted to add the letters 'D', 'E' and 'F', in that order, to the preexisting word 'blast.' He had since refused to play and thus obstructed any familial attempts at the pasttime. Mrs. Graves had reportedly never been a fan of the game and had abstained since any of the participants could remember.

Adrienne might have done well to have chosen that particular course of action in this instance.
"I don't know what she was thinking; except for that one game when her brother tried to do the word 'defblast', I don't think I've ever lost to either of my kids," Mr. Graves said.

Things started out promisingly enough for Adrienne, as she was allowed the double word score benefit of placing the first word, 'doves', on the board. However, she soon fell behind, a fact that was made all too clear when Mr. Graves earned 69 points from a single word by exploiting one she'd just added. "Noooooo!" and "Oh my God!" constituted the bulk of her reaction.

"We basically thought the game was over right then," Mr. Graves said. "I was very surprised when she made a comeback not too long after that."

It seems luck did not completely abandon Ms. Graves; it only stayed with her long enough to get her hopes up. "I couldn't even believe how I lucked out with those three letters," she said. "Both of us were convinced there was nothing else to be done, that there wasn't even anywhere else to put a word, and all of a sudden I notice that putting 'jig' [vertically] next to 'rope' [horizontally] makes an actual word, 'grope.' And I got 57 points out of it. Too bad I wasn't able to maintain my lead, though."

Indeed, despite an admirable effort on Adrienne's part, her language skills proved no match for those of her father, who eventually won the game. "It was a good game," he said. "We both used up all the letters, and the final score was only 265 to 276." Nonetheless, it is evident that "the Scrabble gods totally had it in for me," Adrienne said. "I mean, after a comeback like that, how do you still lose?! Sure, it's no match for that one-word 69-pointer, but that's just unnatural. What're the odds of getting a double letter score on a 'Z' and then getting a triple word score?! That's crap."

It seems the Graves family will suffer another Scrabble drought. "Dude, I'm never playing that game again," Adrienne reported. "That's bullshit."

Those three little paragraphs

I absolutely loathe cover letters. It’s the part of your job search that actually requires some thought, preferably the creative kind. It’s easy to send your resume--once the damned thing has reached an acceptable level of completeness (because as we’ve heard recruiters say time and again, there’s always room for improvement. Blast improvement. Recruiters too.) it’s done--you just upload it and press send. Maybe a minor modification is needed here and there to emphasize a particular area of expertise that makes you sound like a better fit for the job. Eventually you have several copies of your resume, each geared towards a slightly different career. No more modifications are needed.

But cover letters, now… you have to show personality. It has to be customized for the particular company, industry, job description. You need appropriate language and examples. Sometimes you have to write a whole new one from scratch! (I hate those times.) And all this on the off-chance that someone actually reads it. Someone who can appreciate your subtle wit, or the intelligence implied by the fact that you found a way to insert some Latin phrase like ipso facto (note to self: find out what ipso facto means), or your modesty regarding your exceptional achievements (“During my time as company president, I felt it my duty to work as hard as I possibly could to ensure Microsoft’s success, but always felt it was those with whom I worked who were really responsible for our double-digit annual growth.”).

Most frustrating of all is when you’re applying for a job that you actually really want. A job where you’d give your left arm for an interview. In these cases, you’re faced with knowing that you and this job were made for each other, that it’s a perfect fit, and that you are the only person in the world so convinced. Remember that major crush you had in middle school? Kind of like that. But candygrams were a feasible means of communication. You still had to grapple with linguistic choices: "Should I put 'love' instead of 'from'? Is that too obvious? Is that too subtle?" "Should I throw in a clever, sarcastic comment to show how cool I am? What they don't know what I'm talking about? Or if they don't know who I am?" "Should I use red crayon or black crayon?"

Important questions all, ones to which I never really did figure out the answers (except for the crayon one--I always make sure to use red crayon to write my cover letters). And it's still the same problem: how do you communicate sheer desperation (but, like, the positive kind, not the potential stalker kind)? I find it impossible to reconcile what I want to say with how I want to sound. For example, there’s an opening at Google for which I’m applying as soon as I figure out how to translate the following into something remotely appropriate:

oh my god this job is PERFECT for me i LOVE search engine marketing, think it’s SO cool and even wrote a paper on it. i got a degree in imc which you probably haven’t heard of but which is about customer-centric marketing or something and what’s more customer-centric than ads based on stuff you know people are looking for?! i followed everything going on with the IPO, was one of the first gmail account holders because i had a blogger account (which it’s so cool you guys bought! it’s so much better now! go you!) and then discovered that website where people promise stuff for a gmail account and i even wrote a letter to the WSJ about it. i’m constantly amazed by all the new stuff you guys put out, like that new sms service, and think that marketing one of your products would be SO so cool, i’d love to do it and i know i can, so please please please hire me, i SWEAR you’ll be glad you chose me, this job is perfect for me!

(For those of you who think I’m just making all that up, it is my sad duty to inform you that no, I’m not.)

Unfortunately it’s the last phrase that’s kind of telling. A job that’s perfect for you doesn’t mean you are perfect for it. There are lots of jobs that are perfect for me. Like being Paris Hilton. I’d love to do that. Or be a travel columnist: new place each week. That would fucking rule. However, I think that an argument could be made that I’m not really qualified to be Paris Hilton. Her parents would likely be at the forefront of that one, quickly followed by, like, the rest of the civilized world. (Maybe the uncivilized part, too… they’d probably say that I just don’t look like a Paris, and they’d be right.) And as for being a travel columnist… well, I kind of was a few weeks back. A self-funded travel columnist. Now I’m a Mom-and-Dad-funded job search columnist. Funny how these things work out.

At any rate, I’m not faced with actually trying to convince anyone else that I’m perfect for either of those jobs. (If I thought I had a shot in hell, though, believe me I’d take it.) But there are marketing jobs that I hear about and the job description sounds like a walk in the park compared to what I did in grad school. But the thing is, the person I’m writing to doesn’t know what I did in grad school, and I don’t know how to even begin telling them. They don’t know my interests, either, to understand how perfectly they fit, and it’s hard to follow the rule of ‘show not tell’ when you haven’t got anything to show because THIS IS YOUR FIRST JOB SO HOW ABOUT A FUCKING BREAK, HUH?!

Yeah, I need to learn how to convey that sentiment as well, but in a “I deserve a break and won’t you feel good about yourself if you give me one” kind of way rather than a “My behavior will lead to a lawsuit within the year” kind of way.

I think I need more practice.

First it was Save Ferris

...and now it seems as if we have to save everything. It's only a matter of time until we move beyond our own planet and start having protesters in favor of protecting the theoretical microbes on Mars. But if you like bunnies, or really, really hate them, then you should look into what it takes to Save Toby.

A friend sent me this link this morning. It's comforting to know that, if I get really desperate for cash, I can just take a cute animal hostage. Hell, I already have a pet named Toby, I'm halfway there.

The great outdoors

I do miss Chicago (really! I swear!), but can't help having a grudging appreciation for LA, a la my last post. The entertainment industry is what bugs me most about it (even though I have friends who work in it for whom I continue to have a good deal of respect... particularly when they complain about the idiocy of their coworkers), followed by traffic and the fact that you can't avoid it. Both have silver linings. Yes, traffic too. After living in LA for awhile, you begin to have a tolerance for spending a lot of time in the car. A half-hour seems like nothing compared to that hour-long commute you used to make. An hour isn't too bad when you think about that time it took you almost two hours to get from Dodger Stadium to USC. Two to three hours is tolerable in comparison to the drive to Vegas, particularly when you know In N Out is there for you next to the freeway when you get hungry. And when the radius for a day trip extends up to a three hour travel time, there are a lot of places you can go. The entirety of the California coast is a worthwhile destination, but there are plenty of places inland as well. The San Gabriel Mountains. Death Valley. The Valley (yes, there's stuff there worth seeing). There are gardens, museums, national and state parks full of forests, rivers, waterfalls, and even islands (ok, that last one is on the coast). I should schedule a trip to Catalina soon, as I haven't been there in at least 10 years. There's a diving center there, and dive sites include a kelp forest and a shipwreck. There are loads of good hikes (as outlined in an excellent feature in the LA Times today). In general, I'd have to say that there's a lot to do.

Those are all just future plans, to be undertaken when I can afford them (a tolerance for drive time, unfortunately, is not synonymous with being able to afford all the gasoline required). Closer to home, I have continued with my efforts to learn golf and surfing, both with decidedly laughable results. I've had one lesson in each and have managed to regress, if that's possible. I practiced putting the other day and became so discouraged that I didn't even get to chipping. And I never learned driving--I seem to recall that when I was forced into lessons at the age of 8, I thought driving was really cool until I tried it and missed the ball completely on three out of four swings. When I did make contact, I topped it. Hardly the smooth, solid swing I'd envisioned.

And then there's surfing. I gave it a shot again today, down at Manhattan Beach. I borrowed a foam board from a friend (the first thing ever that was so big I couldn't fit it in my car) and spent maybe 45 minutes in the water. It was a perfect day. Cloudless, close to 70, 1 to 3 foot waves. I even found a place where, when the waves got closer to shore, the bottom suddenly dropped down a few feet to really soft sand, which is much friendlier to fall onto than 6 inches of water covering sand that had slightly less give than rock. I caught a few waves, and even attempted to stand up a few times (it was one of those that led me to make that last assessment). However, I remain convinced that there's some error in how other people assess the height of waves. Most of the time I was dealing with 3 to 5-footers, but then every so often (actually far too often) this massive 10-foot wave would suddenly form. And I was inevitably where it broke. In the overall scheme of things, that's a very bad place to be, even with respect to waves that are shorter than you are (you haven't felt like a jackass until you've eaten it because of a wave that only came up to your chest when you were standing in two and a half feet of water). What I used to think was pretty--the crest of a wave rising up and sparkling in the sun shortly before it crashed into white foam--now strikes terror into my heart. Because it sucks to be under that thing when it crashes. I have a headache and a rash on my left ankle from where the leash kept pulling.

Nevertheless, I shall persevere. I'm sure that when I actually undertake some of the other outdoor activities mentioned here with such zeal, I'll have similar-sounding tales of defeat. I think it's safe to say that, in almost anything I attempt outdoors (and probably most things indoors as well), Mother Nature has me beat. But hey, it builds character. And it doesn't cost too much. I mean, can you really put a price on dignity?

Muzak

As much as I complain about the entertainment industry owning this town, it seems that has a few upsides. And I'm not talking about that time I saw Seth Green next to the Beverly Center (dude's short). The music scene here is awesome. We have an indie rock-dedicated radio station, tons of venues, great performers that pack them, and no shortage of bands trying to make it big. I've found another band to obsess over: Silent Gray. They're local, but they're good, and I'm looking forward to seeing them on Friday night. (You can hear their music on their Myspace site or on their official website--I encourage giving them a listen.)

All my favorite bands come through here, too. Well, except BTE, who seem to prefer hanging out in the South. But the Killers are here this month. Keane and Snow Patrol will be at Coachella at the end of next month (I really need to find someone to go to that with me). Rhett Miller, of Old 97's, is doing a solo act soon. I saw Guster at the Greek Theater in September. And I saw Aimee Mann, one of my favorite singers of all time, on Saturday at the House of Blues in Anaheim. Great show, even from behind a row of heads on the second floor (note to self: always get there early enough to avoid getting stuck on the second floor).

Hmm, now if only I had a job, I could actually afford tickets to go see all these people...