…and now about that Porshe (click to read part 1). I was lost in the SE boonies of this fair city and desperately late for a writing group meeting. After learning from a corner-store clerk that I was a mere 50(!) blocks away from my destination, I made a bee-line for the nearest bus stop. Long story short, I accepted a ride in a pristine red Porshe sports car from the most gentle-aura’ed, business-suit’ed man I’d ever met. I know, I know, you’re probably rolling your eyes and thinking “those are the dangerous ones”. But, in my defense, he was friends with the store clerk. I said no initially, if that’s any more of a consolation, but when he pulled up in the Porshe… Well, come on, it was a Porshe, and not to mention…a red one.
Turns out he was also good friends with a writer couple I had connections with back in Ottawa. I’d assembled the husband’s Subway sandwich all the way through writing my first novel. Chapter by chapter, lettuce, tomato, onion, month by month. I left the Porshe gentleman with my email address to pass on to my sandwich pal. I know, I know, you’re rolling your eyes again. A month later I was at my uber glamorous watch-battery-replacing-sunglasses-selling job when an email popped up on my screen. It was Porshe man with a even more glamorous day job offer. “Would you like to come work for THE MATRIX?”
I mean, it’s only my favourite movie ever! (ok top three, and no more eye rolling from you) I now work for a geophysics firm that does data analysis for seismic oil sourcing. Am I a number crunching geophysisist? hmmm, not so much. I roll paper for a living. Oh, and I fold it too. But there’s a machine to help with that, so technically, I roll paper for a living. It’s a swell deal. Decent pay for rolling epic printouts and delivering them to the # crunchers.
Now about that folding machine (aka The Beast). It and I are only now developing a positive relationship. I’ve had to try everything, talking to it, a kiss on the control panel (not very hygienic, but temporarily effective), studying the raw physics of it, and it still randomly mangles the plots I feed it. Whenever this happens, the whole top half must be laboriously taken apart and reassembled by poor long suffering Porshe man. I came in too cocky one morning early on, and not only did The Beast attack the plot, it attacked me personally! I turned my back on it for a second and it gave me a wicked electric shock on my behind. Oh the brute!!
The Beast aside, my swanky job is the best nine-to-fiver I’ve ever had – hands down! Now, I wouldn’t go recommending that other young women start jumping into any Porshe that pulls up. Well ok, maybe just the red ones~wink
Posted by Cymbria 
