I've finally got a full day of Tribune work under my belt (I don't count the first day I was here because there was a lot of ceremony and not a lot of substance for me). That alone is reason enough to make my suggested weekly post to the intern blog. My last two were a bit long (and inevitably I'll slip into that pitfall again now), so I'll just toss out some bullet points with my thoughts:

The Sports Department crew is incredibly nice. Everyone is willing to help, the ambiance in our corner is relaxed and stress-free, and everyone loves to talk sports and bust each other (two of my favorite pasttimes). I even made myself a target of that with my purple shirt today.

The other interns are great. They seem like the kind of kids I’d hang out with normally (you know, if I wasn’t a shy college kid in some foreign town for a few months). But seriously, they make me want to go to work in the morning. If I’m judging books by their covers, they're all NYT Best Sellers (and if making puns is cool, consider me Miles Davis).

I want to vary my work wardrobe a bit. I wear ties when I'm going out for the night because of the film "Swingers" so I'd have no problem bringing it to work (even though that's probably asking for it). Also, I didn't bring a ton of dress pants because I assumed the area was uncomfortably warm. Well, I was clearly wrong and now I'm left with a bunch of dressy shorts I probably won't wear more than once or twice. One final fashion note, although I intend to sneak dressier sneakers in here from time to time: The hideous dockers I bought for this are surprisingly comfortable. I can see why my father and all his midlife and beyond friends adore them

The trip to work ... 10 minutes to get here, an hour to get home. The first day Jefferson Street was ridiculously backed up going both north and south. I ended up finding a Wal-Mart and hiding out for 20 minutes until the road cleared a bit. I've never seen traffic like that without some type of collision causing it. The worst part of the traffic - inadequate car ride music. My iPod tape-deck adapter is useless since my car is without a tape deck. I bought CD-RWs to make mix tapes (a favorite past time of mine, if anyone wants to trade music I’m in), but when I tried to pop in the “Driving-home-(late-at-night)-in-Albuquerque-alone,” mix, I found out the car CD player is useless. Ugh.

Note: The aforementioned mixtape features Albuquerque’s own The Shins (“Kissing The Lipless,” track one) and my pick for the best driving song of all time (“The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth,” by Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, track nine)

Finally, it's kind of cool to have varying hours. Sure, I have to be in at 9 a.m. everyday, but the rest of my day is entirely flexible. Like, if I have to do an interview at 3, I can take off afterwards, or if I have a game to cover at night, I can take the afternoon off (like the ‘Topes game escapades from last night - lots of fun but I shouldn't have made it a 12-hour day). My only gripe with it is that I’d like to know in advance what nights are free so I can schedule some non-work activity. In particular, the other interns have lovingly decided to take me to the library twice (once for a Harry Potter indie-rock band and again for girls in scant school uniforms), and I'd be disappointed if I miss out.

That's it for now. Back to waiting for callbacks and lunchtime. Expect a sports post sometime this week since I interpreted the "post at least once a week," note as one life-as-an-intern post and one I'm-a-sports-intern post.

Posted by Intern at 11:35 AM | Permalink