'Twas the night before

Okay, I was going to write a highly creative re-write of A Night Before Christmas, beginning with something like "Twas the night before corporate robot whoredom began," but then I realized I just didn't have it in me tonight. Sorry, world!

This is my first corporate job. I've worked for private companies before, but they were all sort of public-interest-oriented: an exhibit design shop that focused on serving state and federal museums, a publishing company that put out guides to federal funding for non-profits. Tomorrow I become a real corporate drone.

It feels unreal still. Like, what if I just didn't go to the office tomorrow? Just stayed in the studio and watched cable that's for some reason lingering from the last occupant's account?

Sigh. It's been a very productive week. I found out on Tuesday that I got the apartment and discovered that I needed to move in on Friday. On Wednesday, the moving company surveyed my stuff, gave me an estimate, and I hired them. On Thursday, I saw my stuff off, saw a friend, got fitted for new contact lenses, and then got on the plane, getting to Mrs. Esq's palace at midnight. On Friday, I supervised the delivery and then spent the rest of the day in torpor, enjoying Mr. and Mrs. Esq's DVR'd television shows and having a kick-ass sushi meal on Mr. Esq. (I mean, he paid for it, not that we ate it on him. You and your dirty mind!) (Mm. Crispy fried asparagus.) And on Saturday, yesterday, I really moved in.

Today, The Ringleted One drove into town bearing a gratin in a casserole dish and her amazing inflatable bed in the Green Elephant. Ah, Green Elephant! How frightened you must have been to be taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard! But not as frightened as we were when we came out of the dim sum place and The Ringleted One asked, "Uh, where's my car?"

Stupid obscured bus stop sign! But for your obscured state (by the stupid pedestrian walk sign!), we would not have had those moments when we thought, "Oh dear. I hope, hope, hope it was towed. Because otherwise the Green Elephant is in the hands of a thief!"

Fortunately, all ended well, albeit $300 lighter of wallet due to tickets and towing fees and the like. And Brooklyn has a Target, whereas Manhattan does not, so perhaps it was all meant to be. I have a personal superstition about moving -- when you move to a new place, something goes wrong in the first few days. Her Majesty Ro got beaten up the first weekend he lived in London; The Ringleted One's bike got stolen from her first condo in Our Nation's Capital. Of course, today's unfortunate towing happened not to me but to another. Does that count?

Well, between towage and shopping at Target, I was pretty well distracted from thinking about my imminent robotitude and corporate whore-itization. But here is my last thought about it tonight: 730 days. That's two years. In two years, I will pay off every last penny of my law school loans. That is my raison d'etre for the next 104 weeks, the burning thought that will be behind every Starbucks coffee I forego, every piece of furniture I buy on the cheap, every time I check out a table with a "FREE" sign sitting on it.

This is not to say I am grimly determined to have no fun at all. That would suck. I just don't want to forget that the reason I'm here is to get through and past this dreadful mistake I made of going to law school, so that I can be free.

Tomorrow the countdown begins. T minus 730.

She sprang to her air bed, to her room gave a sigh,
And stared in the darkness till the sandman came by,
But she heard in her mind, 'ere she drifted to sleep,
"Corporate whoredom to all, and oft shall ye weep!"