Me @ my work station.

So they had this retirement luncheon at work for a woman who’s been working at the company for 15 years to the day. She’s their first retiree, so it was especially memorable. The free food wasn’t bad either.

It was weird celebrating and I’d just gotten there and had barely gotten acquainted with the woman. Well, c’est la vie.

Out with the old, in with the new. . .

Let them eat cake.

The beloved retiree. A cookie if you can guess her name.

Work has been pretty good. I like the environment. On the first day I felt seriously overwhelmed when a co-worker was explaining to me what I was to do. My job right now is to process files that customers send via orderprinting.com. I fix the files in Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesgin so they can be made into plates for printing. It’s not quite as boring as it sounds. I get to see tons of bad graphic design, and some of it’s pretty funny.

Today, things got particularly exciting when all the employees took cover in one of the back rooms during a tornado warning. I’ve been through hurricanes, but I’m absolutely terrified of tornadoes. There’s hardly any warning when one is about to touch down, and it’s so much more destructive and unpredictable than a hurricane (example). Yeah. . . scary.

Starting Monday, I’ll be a productive member of the working world. My first ever full time job, besides being a student. Surreal, I know, but that’s how my life worked out. I’ll be working as a typsetter/desktop publisher. I believe I’ll also be learning the 4-color printing process, which I’m really looking forward to. Unfortunately, I won’t be doing any designing, but I’m fine with that. I still have opportunities for freelance and fine art.

Tomorrow, my sister and I are headed off to Destin, FL to attend a friend’s wedding in which I’ll also be photographing. It’s my first job of this kind, and I’m really humbled for her to be putting such faith in my abilities on her special day. But, I get a free meal and dinner cruise along with the deal, so some wonderful shots are bound to come out of the experience. Gosh, I’m so far from packed for the thing, though. . .

I woke up this morning around 7:15 to get ready to go to my job interview. This is only the second interview I’ve been to, the first one with Lewis Communications for an internship. I had gone to be the night before at around 2:30AM. Sad to say, that’s early for me. I think I actually got in bed around midnight, but I curled up with my laptop, and tried to pass the time until I got tired. But then, I was washing some clothes to wear, so I got up twice to switch the load.

All this to say that I didn’t have many hours of sleep. My alarm goes off at 5:30am every morning, but I don’t get up at that time. I suppose it’s just to let me know a new day has started.

So, It’s 7:15, and I get up. I’d had an outfit in mind to wear, some black trousers with a black V-neck sweater and white undershirt with rouching at the top. Looking in the mirror I realized that it was too much black. I mean, it’s winter, but I’m hardly in morning. I changed into a grape-colored sweater, and added a black satin-pinstriped blazer on top (taking a tip from What Not to Wear that a jacket completes an outfit). Bingo! Ready to go.

I get to the office around 8:50. I go in, and there’s no receptionist there to immediately help me, but I can clearly see some people in the other room. Apparently it wasn’t their job to help me. Whatever. I stand there awkwardly for a few moments and then a women comes out and asked me to have a seat while she announced me.

I meet with the owner of the company for the interview, and I guess it went fairly well. I don’t have much experience with interviews, so as cliche’ as it sounds, I decided to just be myself and not say “like” too much, during the course of a sentence. It went pretty well. After I answered a few questions, I was given a little test by manipulated a file in Illustrator CS by making it into business card format, and taking away all the registration information. Then I went back to talk with my interviewer a bit more about what I expected from working at the company and if it seemed like a place I’d like to work (it was). Then it was over.

I should hear from them sometime next week I figure. I hope I get the job, because Sharon needs some health insurance.