Stop smiling at me and fix that damn thing, freakboy, or I'll make you decode my carpet. (courtesy of http://www.airconditionservice.ca)

The date on my calendar is July 23, at least it was when I started this post. School-age kids crowd neighborhood stores and street corners during the day. Michael Bay has arranged some explosions to resemble a movie and released it into theaters. All evidence suggests that summer is in full swing in my fair city. But I just ventured outside to find 65-degree temperatures and rain. I much prefer coolness and precipitation to heat and humidity, so consider this an observation, not a complaint. There’s nothing to see here, weather gods. Go back to your cloud castles, or wherever it is you plot all those natural disasters. I’ll sit down here on earth enjoying the unseasonable weather and saving money on air conditioning.

Me and New York City summer don’t get along so well. We never really had a chance. I arrived here late one night, ten years ago, with my life in a U-Haul. One of that summer’s heatwaves was gripping the city. The temperature had dipped into the high 90s. The air was still. And the humidity was thick. I carried every last thing I owned – including a bed and boxes of CDs – up two flights of stairs to my new apartment. I was drenched after two trips, and managed to sweat through my leather belt within an hour.

I didn’t have a job at the time – story of my life – so I spent the next week sending out resumes in an un-air-conditioned apartment and trying not to drip on them. Very few residential buildings in New York have central air – vestiges of tenement housing and/or cheap builders. Everyone here uses window units. But I didn’t have one, or the money for one. So I sweated, and sweated some more. Relief came from afternoons at the library and evenings at the second-run movie theater, where cool air was free or really cheap. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I charged an air conditioner to my credit card and lugged it home on the subway with a luggage cart. A paycheck would be along eventually. Though when it did arrive I wouldn’t be so desperate for heat relief anymore.

Not only is summer my least favorite season, it’s my least favorite season to be unemployed. I spend many of my days plugging away at my (ok, wifey’s) computer in an apartment with poor airflow. I crank up the ceiling fan and position the Vornado in the window for maximum breeziness. The arrangement keeps me comfortable until about mid-afternoon, when the sun is shining directly on my west-facing windows and the temperature inside has risen far above whatever it is outside. When I feel the sweat on my forehead, when I stick to the throw pillow that cushions my rear end on the dining room chair I’ve worn out, I crank up the AC. I could probably hold out longer, but there’s no need to be a hero. Our finances aren’t that bad.

I regulate the air conditioning because wifey and I are paying for it and I don’t have a job. Our electric bill for a one-bedroom apartment, last summer, when I was employed, was over $200/month. Neither of us were here all day, and the window units were off, barring a heatwave. The cats just slept anyway, maybe barfed a couple times and meowed at the wall – all less-than-taxing tasks. They got by just fine in the heat. Our last electric bill was well under $200, and I was home a good deal of the time. We have the weather to thank for that.

But I still miss central air, a nice ancillary benefit of every one of my post-college jobs. Only the summer after my sophomore year of college, when I worked ground crew on a golf course, did I have to endure the heat. And not only was central air at work free, I got paid to enjoy it. I miss having to keep a sweatshirt in my drawer because building systems still can’t tell the difference between 70 and 50 degrees on an entire floor. Yet some cars can regulate temperatures for driver and passenger… go figure. I miss looking out the window into heat that’s almost visible from an air-conditioned fortress of an office building. I miss being cool all day everyday, and not having to think about it. Unemployment has its benefits, and work has its drawbacks. But employment easily wins the AC battle.

Where to work if the thought of another day at the dining room table makes you suicidal.

I need a new place to go blog and be unemployed during the day with my computer… ok, with wifey’s computer. My requirements are simple. It has to be reasonably close to home, or at least in NYC. It has to be cheap (by which I mean free) and near food and a bathroom. It has to be quiet enough that music through my headphones will drown out any noise. And no one there can care how long I stay. Oh yeah, and it must have unicorns, and rainbows ending in pots of gold. Does anyone out there know of such a mythical place? I’m willing to give a little on the unicorns and rainbows. However, the pots of gold are mandatory, a deal breaker. No pots of gold… no Norm.

I’ve spent much of the last few months working at my dining room table. It’s one giant mess that wifey puts up with but probably secretly hates down to the very core of her existence. Let’s set the scene, shall we? The space where I work is closest to the kitchen facing the wall and a painting of kids on a carousel in France somewhere. I would sit opposite myself (and often do during out-of-body experiences) facing out into the apartment if squeezing into that space weren’t so difficult. My chair has no padding left, so I sit on an old pillow, prompting the occasional hemorrhoid reference from wifey. There’s a pile of printouts, business cards and computer wires pushed off to my left. The cats sit and drool on it whenever they decide to spend quality time with me. I often type with one hand and harass one of them with the other, because I’m ambidextrous like that. When they knock the pile to the floor, I put it back on the table, inevitably mixing it in with the assorted newspapers and magazines strewn about. The salt and pepper grinders stand tall – like beacons of domesticity in a job search wasteland – until I knock them over and scare the cats away.

My spot is nice and central, letting me be a part of wifey and the cats’ madcap escapades. It’s basically the center of my apartment, which is near the center of Jackson Heights, which is the geographical center of New York City. And everyone knows that New York is the center of the universe. So by extrapolation, my workspace is the center of the universe… which explains a lot. But spend enough time anywhere and you’ll tire of it. There has to be another spot.

My desk, where one would think I’d work, is piled high with papers and books and all the other things I’ve been meaning to go through and haven’t. It’s a disaster area, which the city keeps threatening to condemn, and removed from the rest of the apartment besides. I experimented with the couch as a daytime work spot. The TV remains off, because it really wouldn’t be work otherwise. But my urge to watch remains a distraction. So too does the amazingly hot battery in wifey’s computer. An hour of work leaves giant sweat marks on my pants, which would likely raise questions should she come home midday. The UPS guy gives me odd looks too.

My local options are limited… Espresso 77, the bench in front of Espresso 77 and the curb in front of the bench in front of Espresso 77. Starbucks would give me wireless access too if I had AT&T, but I don’t. The good news on that is I actually receive phone calls. Espresso 77 has a strict policy for laptop use. The first hour is free with a purchase on weekdays, and each hour after that costs $5. I’ve never seen it enforced. They did remind me about the policy during my last visit. I was the only one there. And you may remember the outlet-locking episode. I love their coffee, particularly the New Orleans ice coffee, which is some crazy double-brewed concoction with extra milk… sooooooo good. But I don’t feel terribly welcome when I bust out the laptop. The bench out front might work it ever stopped raining and wifey’s laptop weren’t trying to accelerate global warming. As for the curb, I’m not that desperate yet.

Communitea in Long Island City – a short subway ride away and convenient to Manhattan – is another workspace option. The coffee is solid, except for my last cup which tasted like sweetened, milky arsenic. The baked goods are scrumpdilicious. And the place is big enough that no one cares when I hang out awhile; I always make a point to spend more taxpayer money. The other customers are quiet and respectful, except for the smelly hippie guy who taps his ring to the tasteful alt-rock and talks on his cell phone. He’s just asking for a Hong Kong Phooey to the jaw. And maybe a little Captain Caveman action for good measure. I’ll do it, one of these days, so help me. Just keep not showering and sitting next to me. Bad things will happen; I’ve watched too many cartoons and endured too much unemployment.

The Brooklyn Creative League invited me to a blogging event to hype their new workspace for freelancers and small businesses. So I dragged my ass out to Brooklyn yesterday on the subway in a monsoon in search of a change of scenery. This is how desperate I’ve become. The New York subway system floods in a light drizzle, so you can only imagine what it was like in a steady rain. Water poured through the cement ceilings of the station multiple stories below ground. I felt like I was entering an underground torture chamber from a Mel Gibson buddy movie, and some wild-eyed fu manchu guy was going to string me up and shock me with a car battery. Gary Busey didn’t show himself, but I kind of suspect he was there. Why didn’t I just take the ark?

Brooklyn is the blogging capital of the world. It has more bloggers per square inch or per capita or per something than anywhere else. Understandable, since Brooklyn also has more subsidized, tech-savvy white people who are filled with angst, blessed with free time and convinced that everyone cares about their “struggle” than anywhere else on the planet. Maybe that’s just Williamsburg. This temporary relocation actually represented a powerful convergence of centers; the center of the world and the center of the blogosphere were one. Did you feel the great suck pulling you in? Not the pull from Yankee Stadium, the other one, from Brooklyn.

If I were a freelancer or a small business with any sort of steady income and I lived closer, I’d join the Brooklyn Creative League. The space – a decked-out floor of a warehouse with exposed brick walls, shiny wood floors, an open layout, various office necessities and a friendly, accomodating owner – is stellar. And the rates are quite reasonable. Alas, I do not have the wherewithal. But I did take the opportunity to look out a different window down on a different block (Carroll St. and Whitewell Pl.). From my perch, I observed an empty lot with an overflowing dumpster, an elementary school and the back of the Kentile Floors sign that greets F train riders emerging from the tunnel at Carroll St. It was actually fairly scenic in an album liner note photo kind of way. I got a lot done, then trekked back across the city to Queens. It’s back to working at home.

Linus and Pita hard at work.

Two questions have plagued pet owners for ages. What does my pet do all day while I’m at work? And am I a bad person for leaving them alone? Let’s take care of the second and easier question first. Yes, you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve to live. As for the first, the answer could be anything. Maybe little Mr. Snuggie Poopikins McFuzzywuzzy sits anxiously by the door all day waiting for the sound of the key in the lock. Maybe he lunches in the park, playing dominoes and drinking 40s with all the other home-alone homies in the hood. Maybe he plots against you – the unsuspecting owner – for being such a terrible person. Wouldn’t you like to know?

Lucky for everyone, I have the time and wherewithal to explore this age-old question. After seven months of intense study in my pets’ natural habitat, funded by the state of New York and a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation, I have the answer. Pets really don’t do much of anything at all.

Wifey and I have two cats – Linus and Pita – who served as my unknowing subjects. She adopted them ten years ago as three year olds and kept the names. Who knows why or what they mean? I did figure out a few months back that PITA is an acronym for “Pain In The Ass,” which is fitting. The cats are sisters and each a little small. Both are missing teeth and like to drool, barf, meow at nothing and lick plastic. If they weren’t cats, I’d swear they were junkies.

This morning – like most mornings – the cats got up with us. Linus slept on wifey’s pillow, snuggled up against her head. Who knows where Pita was? They spent the next hour following us around and meowing. Linus wanted to be let back in the bedroom; Pita was probably just confused from huffing pilot light gas fumes. Eventually they shut up and perched themselves on windowsills to watch our preparations for the day. When wifey left, the cats started back in with the meowing.

Pretty soon they got bored. Linus retired to wifey’s desk, nestled up against the warm modem and router, and Pita to the stove top, within sniffing distance of her drug of choice. I went about my business of being unemployed. Later in the morning, Pita decided it was time to rid herself of an unsightly fur ball. Usually they head straight for a carpet or the couch – someplace where real damage can be done. But this time she made her patented “goose choking” sound and let loose on the wood floor. I cleaned it up. Linus, not to be out done, responded in kind an hour later… twice. I cleaned that up too.

Around 1:00, I went to put on my shoes, so I could go get some lunch. Linus hurried over from the kitchen windowsill, meowing as she ran. I picked her up, scratched her stomach and put her down. When she tried to run away, I picked her up again, pretended she was flying and put her down. When she tried to run away again, I picked her up again and made her dance to the Depeche Mode song on the stereo. Pita slept on the couch, on her back, paws up in the air, killing time before her next fix. I returned about a half hour later to find Linus waiting at the door and Pita where I left her.

They slept away most of the afternoon, occasionally rising to switch locations. Pita likes to sleep on, in or under things like boxes and furniture. At one point she relocated to the paper J. Crew bag that wifey left out for just that purpose. Linus climbed up on the dining room table where I was working and fell asleep, head buried in her crotch and her crotch on a New York Times picture of Eminem. I suspect Animal Planet set up the stunt beforehand.

Late in the afternoon, Pita decided to do her vocal exercises – drugged-out diva that she is – right next to my chair but just out of reach. Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. When I finally got up to rip out her larynx, she scampered off, only to return a couple minutes later and continue. I asked her what the problem was, literally. She stopped, looked at me and walked away.

And that brings us up to this very moment. The cats are both off doing nothing, and I’m here typing. If I were in an office somewhere, they’d still be here doing nothing. They might vary it up with a quick skirmish, perhaps some staring at the wall or scratching the couch. Pita might even break into the cabinet under the sink to experiement with harder drugs… teenagers. But that’s about it. Seven months of intense study have lead me to this startling conclusion. That’s some groundbreaking science. Just think what I could have accomplished in a proper work setting. So now, about the next installment of my genius grant…

An Obama presidency means hope for the unemployed. So yeah us! But now what?

My wife asked me this morning if I would be writing about Barack Obama’s inauguration. I hadn’t been planning on it, as everyone and their brother, sister, father, mother, son and daughter would be weighing in. Probably honorary family members and pets too. One of my cats, for example, is planning a three-part exposé on this historical moment, including an interview with Barney, one of the outgoing First Dogs. What did I really have to add to the discussion? Her answer was both obvious and appropriate…

My point of view.

Like everyone else, I have one. But unlike everyone else, mine is unique. (And me do ok sometimes expression it too.) Thank you to my smart and beautiful wife for pointing this out; I’ll let you beat me at Scrabble again (but only once more, then it’s so on!).

At 11:45 a.m. I switched to CNN, hoping to catch all the important stuff but miss most of the mindless commentary. Mission accomplished – Obama was making his way onto the stage and Wolf Blitzer to the bathroom. In my sweaty gym clothes, alone in my living room but with the rest of the world, I watched.

The moment was brilliant, cathartic, and more followed. The first few striking notes from Itzhak Perlman’s violin actually made me cry. Obama’s opening words made my eyes well up again. It was really happening – the end of a dark era and the beginning of a brighter one. Obama moved through his speech with practiced eloquence, sampling JFK and MLK, hitting all the right notes. I listened to my president, for the first time in months. I believed him and believed in him. I was proud of him. And I had hope again for my country.

Obama finished his remarks and sat down. I listened for a minute and then wandered into the kitchen to get some lunch, mulling over two questions…

• Does anyone else feel bad for that poet following Obama?
• What does an Obama presidency mean for the unemployed?

No one follows that speech at that moment. It’s impossible, for anyone. Her poem was probably exceptional. But the enraptured masses were savoring their highs. The home audience needed a commercial break. Nobody was listening.

An Obama presidency probably means very little for the unemployed in a practical sense, at least in the short-run. Today, we’re filled with pride and patriotism, and unemployed. Tomorrow, our feelings will dissipate a bit, and we’ll still be unemployed. Next week, the same. Few jobs will be available, and we’ll still be in competition for them with way too many other applicants.

What we do have now is hope for a coming change. This hope may infuse companies in the coming weeks, boosting outlooks and improving the job market in some small way. It will give job seekers a better outlook. This change may mean New Deal-style public works programs, government incentives or fiscal policy moves that free up corporate America to hire again. It will take months or years to show results.

The country faces many challenges beyond unemployment – the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the housing crisis, the banking crisis and others. All demand immediate attention too. The jobless masses may have to get in line and wait our turn, all the while keeping up the search. At least we have hope now, to cushion the economic fall.

Unemployed and all alone. And there are wolves after me.

Money issues aside, it’s pretty easy to forget about unemployment over the holidays. There’s just so much to do. And everybody who would otherwise be working is around and, barring family commitments, willing to hang out. This year, with Christmas and New Years on Thursdays, the calendar lined up nicely. Even those who didn’t get off the last week of December had two four-day weekends in a row and possibly a couple more half days. I started to forget that my wife even had a job, other than playing Prince of Persia, that is. We got to sleep late and hang out. To quote Office Space, “I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.”

But the holidays are over, and the distractions are gone. Everyone is back to work, and here I am – at home, alone and still unemployed. The cats keep me company; they’re sort of like people – little furry people who barf a lot. I can hear the neighbors clomping around through the walls. And the occasional comment or funny link comes through on IM. But really, it’s just me here.

Putting it this way sounds so depressing, so hopeless, so pathetic – like I’m the only unemployed person on the face of the planet. This, of course, is not true; that’s what I keep telling myself. The government maintains that 6.7% of working-age adults are jobless. The percentage is probably closer to 10-11% when factoring in those who’ve stopped looking for work. And the jobless masses will likely keep growing. I encounter or hear about unemployed acquaintances all the time. Some of the people I see on the street are unemployed too. Maybe the person sitting right next to you this very moment… unless you’re reading this at work, in which case, nevermind.

The jobless are everywhere. And they’ve all got at least one problem. So things could be way worse.

Sometimes I just get to feeling sorry for myself. Us unemployed types are prone to that. It’s perfectly normal, even healthy, to wallow a little, if I keep my perspective. I got a bad break or four. But at some point feeling sorry ceases to be indulgent and just becomes counterproductive. I have to suck it up, rub some dirt on it and be a man.

I frequently go through some variation of this cycle – feeling sorry, wallowing and bucking up. It’s common enough that I recognize it happening, and know how to push through. This latest bout was mild and probably spurred by the rain and post-holiday letdown. Surfacing wasn’t hard. I just rationalized my way out of it. More severe bouts can require some effort (and junkfood) to break. Whatever works…

Looking back or looking down is much easier than looking forward. But it won’t get me anywhere. That’s also what I keep telling myself.

Did you ever wonder what happens at your apartment everyday while you’re not there? Probably a whole lot of nothing. The sun rises and sets, changing the light that comes in through the windows. Menus for Chinese takeout places with bulletproof glass get shoved under your door. Your pets lay around, maybe barf on the carpet if they feel up to it. That’s it.

Unless you live in my building where they forever do construction on the roof right above my apartment or on the fire escape outside my window. There’s nothing like coming out into the living room in your boxers first thing to find some little Hispanic construction worker standing on your fire escape. And then the work on the building started back up again. All day it’s the grinding of cement and the banging of metal. Occasionally they break for what sounds like a game of tackle football (like right now). And then back to it.

This has been going on since before I lost my job. And I feel like it will never end. Sure is hard to concentrate.