mythplaced_logic

Budget negotiations were unsuccessful: the market pay is the standard pay, is the pay I'll get. There's a little comfort in knowing I'm at market rate, and in knowing the commute's going to be as minimal as it gets. We discussed how to tackle the project and how to embed metadata into PDF files, so that should be interesting.

Grocery shopping was successful: When I was buying some onions and root crops, a woman came up to ask the vendor if they had any basil. He said no, it's not in season. After she left, I said, "She must be new here." The success came in how much he laughed. I pointed out everyone's got to go to their first rodeo at some point, which he agreed with - and he still liked how I'd said, "She must be new here."

Tomorrow, I have a scheduled meeting for contract negotiations. It's a phone call for the new archive and cataloging gig, where I'll talk to the client to see what he needs and how best to accomplish that, plus to work out the pay rate. There probably won't be any paperwork involved, though I doubt he'll go to the extreme end of the spectrum I enjoyed last summer where I got paid in cash to stay as under the table as possible.

Still. Contract negotiation. It sounds genuinely professional, which is the mentality I know I should bring to the discussion. Professionalism, and my salary record for similar jobs, and a track record for doing good work and being worth the money. I don't think it'll be a full time five day nine to five job, but possibly full time three day nine to five. I'll see how the other outstanding gig goes this coming week to better judge that.

This last Friday afternoon, I held my hand out and a ladybug landed on me. All I'd seen was a tiny bit of movement coming my way, and in holding my hand out, I gave a ladybug a place to sit a moment. Yesterday, I got sunburned from walking around under early cherry blossoms on an absolutely gorgeous late March day. I'm still sore and a little itchy, and I'll be wearing high-necked clothes for a while. There was boba tea, and three different bakeries, and pizza and tacos and a lot of fandom talk with the friend I was staying with - making the other laugh was something we both tried to do a fair amount of, in a game where both sides come out ahead of where they started.

The train got me there early, and got me back a little late. I gave my friend excuse to take me to some of her favorite places, and reason to visit a few more. The both of us stepped away from our regular lives for a while in a mutually beneficial relationship, and now the prospect of the real world looms for tomorrow morning. There was a lot of freedom to be found in basically cutting myself off from the internet - the extent to what I could do on a practical level was check email. My phone wasn't connected to a wifi network, so I couldn't get anything but plain text messages, and it was a surprise to see how many non-text messages I'd missed when I got back to my place.

Bread Furst, Rose Ave, Un Je Ne Sais Quoi, Comet Ping Pong, 801, Spot of Tea, various Smithsonian cafeterias, my friend's kitchen. Various Smithsonian museums, the tidal basin and its various memorials, the circle at Dupont Circle, Metro stations, my friend's apartment. Her roommate and her two cats. A short walk along an urban trail that took us to the Ann and Donald Brown House, which I knew looked impressive enough to be worth talking about. A lot of time with nothing to do and no reason to worry about that. Some TV watched, some movies, not much writing but a good deal of reading and talking. She'll be leaving Washington DC soon, possibly to another coast, possibly somewhere still reasonably close by. I'm glad I got to visit her before she left, when I could still do it by train and be home well before bedtime when it was over.

Bus reroutes, long detours, long lines, slow crowds, and other such inconveniences are made easier with a friend there with you for commiserations and conversations.

The Smithsonian’s African American museum deserves two days to really take in, but we managed a decent overview with about six hours, minus 30 for lunch. The building used every minute of all the years it took to design and construct.

In DC, safe and well-fed on ramen, my friend and I waited for the bus to her place. I looked around in the full night of a city I’ve rarely been to, in a neighborhood I’d never visited, and couldn’t shake an odd feeling.

Then it hit me, and I had to say, “Holy shit.” I’d needed a specific spot for something in a novel, and it’d looked familiar because she’d taken me to a spot just around the corner.

It wasn’t quite deja vu. More likes dream where you know the building already, even though you’ve never been.

Time I would've spent writing this evening was spent on cooking risotto for lunch and filling out tax forms as best I could. I opened the document and poked at it a bit to feel something and say I'd at least poked at it, and that helped me relax from the taxes enough I can think about doing something else with the night. Not much, but something else.

It's probably just going to be a couple days' of Stardew Valley, though.