his fingers finally stilled, he motioned to a chair.
“I understand you had some fun yesterday.”
Five days in, and I was already going to be reprimanded. “Lars sent me. It’s part of the whole ‘web content’ side of this job.”
He sucked in his cheek. “Hmm. Yes. I’m not really seeing how all that fits in with your day-to-day responsibilities. We’re still waiting for your requirements doc.”
“Right.” I kicked myself for not sending that over the day before. It was all but done.
“And will you be able to attend our daily stand-up today?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of course.”
He turned back to his computer, so I left and went to get the coffee I’d need to wake up. Shane had kept me up way too late.
In the breakroom, while I waited for the machine to finish sputtering, two ladies I hadn’t met came in, midway through a whispered conversation.
“But then he said, ‘Why don’t we just get dinner instead?’ ”
“I bet he didn’t even have tickets to the show.”
“And that was the only reason I said yes.”
They glanced over and caught me staring, so I quickly left the room, wondering if they’d been discussing Gabe and his promise of Kinky Boots tickets. If so, Jo wasn’t wrong. He really was the office Lothario. It would be a relief to know his constant attention wasn’t specific to me.
Armed with a steaming cup of Joe, I dug up my doc, scanned it for thoroughness, then emailed it over to Byron and cc’ed the developers.
Then I started splitting the videos I’d recorded, hunting for the new song Lars wanted. He’d set me up with permissions for the Rock Paper contributors’ section, so I started a new blog post and uploaded the video file.
I’m a huge fan of Theater of the Absurd. Yesterday I had the amazing opportunity to sit in on band practice and soak up the experience. The guys generously allowed me to record them performing their new song ‘Aftershock’ which sounds like a definite hit. Judge for yourself.
I centered the video below my paragraph, then saved it to draft and emailed the link to Lars with the heading: Is this what you had in mind?
My name was going to appear on an article on the freaking Rock Paper. How was this my life?
Freed for the moment, I texted Jo to apologize for abandoning my stuff at her place, promising I’d come and get it, but then what?
As if she read my mind, she texted: Are you sure? You’re welcome to stay here. Or I could have Micah swing your things over to Shane’s.
I couldn’t impose upon her indefinitely, and moving my stuff to Shane’s felt presumptuous and impetuous.
I’ll check craigslist today. I’ve put it off too long.
She had a better proposal: Call or text Zion before you do that. My old room is still vacant.
I stored his phone number in my contacts and made a mental note to call him after lunch.
Then I got back to work for real. I went to the morning meeting where Ajit had no problems with my designs. During lunch, I lined up all the Tweets to send out for the latest articles. Once we got the new features in place, this chore would become obsolete, but there was no reason to ignore the potential click stream.
My Chatter app blinked in the taskbar with a message from Lars. Can you come by?
When I opened his door, I could hear the music from my video playing. Lars bopped his head along with the rhythm.
“I love this. It’s exactly the kind of fan-sourced video feel I wanted.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks.”
“Did you get any other videos? Anything that might add to the insider experience?”
“Yeah. I have a lot of video. Too much, really.”
“And could you put together a bit of a narrative? I was hoping to really capture that excitement of a real hardcore fan getting to hear her favorite band in such an intimate context. Don’t hold it back.”
“You want me write like a fan, not a Rock Paper reporter?” It went against everything I was trying to present here, but he was right that it would appeal to the band’s fan base in the same way as Gabe’s review hadn’t.
“I want you to pick out the videos that you think best encapsulate your experience, and let your readers feel like they were there, ya dig? Like a—”