Jeanine and Calvin's Trip to NYC

Time Line

Friday, April 13th = Friday the 13th

12:30 AM: Finally get into bed after working late until 9:45 on Thursday and distracting myself from worrying about my interview by watching TiVo'd episodes of "The Office."

1:30 AM: Fall asleep

3:30 AM: Alarm goes off. Wake up. Want to kill myself.

5:30 AM: Leave for NYC (a half hour late)

5:30 AM - 6:30 AM: Calvin speed demons his way through PA. I brought a bunch of stuff to study for my interview in the car, but it's too dark to read anything...shit...so I look out of the side window in an attempt to not notice how fast we are going.

6:30AM - 7:00AM: Calvin slows down somewhat because he has a speeding ticket he hasn't paid yet in New Jersey and I told him if he got arrested on the way to my interview for unpaid tickets I was never going to speak to him again.

7:00AM - 7:15AM: Fall asleep for the briefest of moments and wake up to the realization that Calvin missed our exit to the Holland Tunnel. The exit sign said "Blah, Blah and the Holland Tunnel, exits 22A,B and C" So, in Calvin's defense he thought he had until 22C to get off the turnpike, but in reality the sign was to get off for all three exits at once. Had I been awake, I'm confident I would have realized this.

7:30AM - Try to take the Lincoln Tunnel, but Calvin gets frustrated because of traffic and decides to turn around to go try the Holland Tunnel again. I sit there and don't say anything because I don't want to get into a fight before my interview. "Ahhhh Serenity Now!!!"

7:30AM - 8:00AM - Listen to "Freestyle Fridays" on a progressive talk radio station. They were talking about the Imus issue, people were calling in and such. At some point Calvin says in retaliation to a caller "If stupid people are too stupid to realize how stupid they are then they must be stupid." I laugh and he is my friend again. It also turns out he was right to turn around and go back to the Holland Tunnel because it took us right where we needed to go.

8:15ish AM - Arrive in Downtown NYC. I know the address to the company to be 165 Broadway. We find Broadway and something within the street number range and I convince Calvin that it's better to park and walk to find it then to drive around until we see the building. This is right by the World Trade Center site so roads are all blocked off and it's confusing.

8:20ish AM - We set off to find the building. Instantly my comfy new shoes start to hurt and it's colder than I thought it was going to be. I quickly realize the street numbers are going in the opposite direction than where we need to be headed, so we turn around. The conversation goes something like this...

Me: Walking...."This isn't the right way, we are going into Tribecca, we need to be going towards the World Trade Center."

Calvin: Walking...."I told you we should've found the building before we parked." "This is West Broadway, lets walk over a couple of streets and see if we find just plain Broadway"

Me: Turn around and walking..."There can't be two Broadways, the street numbers must start over again on the other side of the World Trade Center." "Then it probably changes into East Broadway or something." This, I feel is totally logical.

Calvin: Walking some more..."That seems like quite a ways (we were in the 90's)."

Me: Walking...."No it's not we're at 90 now, they will go down to 0 in a block or two."

Calvin: Walking more..."Um nooo. They have to go from 90 to 80 to 70 etc."

Me: Stop walking. Out comes the map!

Me: "Oh, there is another Broadway a couple of blocks over."

Calvin: Just looks at me and smiles. I'm not is friend anymore.

Me: I'm so tired of being wrong. I also realized I left my black pen in the car and all I have is a red pen with psychedelic designs on it that I got in my stocking at Christmas.

8:45 AM: Jeanine and Calvin make a pit stop at Duane Reade for a normal pen.

8:50 AM: Find the Zurich Building. It's right next to the World Trade Center site (scary), but also right next to Century 21 (SWEET!) (for those of you who don't know it is a huge store full of discounted designer stuff Wooohaa!!).

9:00 AM: I down a coffee and a glazed doughnut. I don't even like glazed doughnuts, but after going on about 3 hours sleep and the adventure into the city, I feel like I'm going to fall over. The sugar works and I pray it will get me through the whole interview. I also blame my grogginess for the reason I was not up to parr with the whole directions thing.

9:30 AM: Interview. I think it went well on my part. But the 2nd person to interview me, who will be one of my managers should I get the job, was kind of weird. She was a bit on the rough side and ended up complaining about how the Swedes were taking over Zurich.

Jeanine (in my head): Ummmm...It is a Swiss company...Zurich is in Switzerland...wouldn't it be the Swiss taking over the company?...Why is she telling me this???? Wow, this kinda sucks.

11:30 AM: Interview over and back to Calvin and Starbucks

Calvin: "How did it go?"

Jeanine: "Good I guess, but I don't know about working here anymore."

Calvin: "OK, what's wrong?"

Jeanine: What a nice guy. He takes off work and takes me into NYC, waits while I'm in the interview and I probably won't take the job anyway now. And I'm wrong with all the directions. And he still doesn't want to kill me.

Lucky me.