Destiny Continues (1855 Word Count)

Just then the phone rang. I smiled as I strode over to glance at the caller ID. I bet it was my friend Bean checking up on his invitation. When I had opened the envelope, my mind had immediately gone to Jo-Jo as the culprit, but Bean was the only person I knew who was creative enough to think up such a crazy idea like an appointment with destiny and to actually go through with the crazy idea and make the letter.

“Hello?”

“Hey Starr, it’s Bean.”

“I thought it would be you. Are you calling to gloat over your letter?”

“What are you talking about?” Bean asked, sounding extremely puzzled. “I haven’t sent you a letter since last Christmas. And that wasn’t even a letter; it was a Christmas card.”

“And I got it in February,” I retorted. “Come on, you have to be dying to know if I am planning to keep this ‘appointment.’”

“Seriously Starr, I have no idea what you are talking about. What did you get in the mail?”

I sighed at his pretending, but decided to go along with it. “Okay. Well, I got this letter in the mail today in a shiny envelope. And it said…” And I proceeded to read him the letter. Bean was surprisingly silent during as I read it and didn’t make any sarcastic remarks, even when I read aloud the email address for Destiny’s appointment secretary.

“Hmmm,” Bean said. “I think you should keep the appointment.”

I rolled my eyes and shifted the phone to the other ear. “You would think that I should keep it. It was your idea, wasn’t it? Or did you and Jo-Jo come up with this together and you were just in charge of mailing it out? I can totally recognize your handwriting on the front of the envelope.”

“Starr, believe me, I didn’t send you the letter. I’m not really supposed to talk about this, but…” His voice trailed off.

“Talk about what?” My voice sharpened as I seized upon the idea that Bean did know something about this letter.

“Starr, let’s meet for coffee or something. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

“I haven’t dinner yet, and all I have is eggs. You want to meet at the diner and I can eat and you can get some coffee and pie?”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there in a half an hour.”

“All right. I’ll bring the letter. You better have a good explanation about why its not your handwriting.”

“Seriously, I will! See you later.”

“Bye.”

I hung up the phone and stared at the letter in my hand. If Bean hadn’t sent it, who had? Could I really have an appointment with Destiny? I dismissed such crazy thoughts and decided to get ready for a dinner out with Bean. I threw on a pair of jeans and a comfortable T-shirt emblazoned with the logo from my favorite coffee house. I discarded my work clothes in a pile on the floor and kicked them out of sight underneath my bed.

The diner was only a ten-minute walk from my apartment so I still had fifteen minutes to kill before I had to leave to meet Bean. I glanced around the apartment and made mental notes of all the housekeeping that I still had to do. But nothing looked like it could be done in ten minutes, so I flopped down on my futon and turned on the TV. After flipping through all the channels, I determined that nothing of worth was on, and I turned on the VCR. I had stopped in the middle of watching A Stolen Life before going to work. I was crazy about old movies and was constantly taping movies off of Turner Classic Movies to watch during the weekend. As I watched Bette Davis pretend to be her twin sister in order to win the affections of Glenn Ford, one of my movie posters drifted to the ground.

Without bothering to pause the movie, I got up and picked it off the floor. Talking to The Pirate poster, I said, “Oh Gene, what are we going to do with you? You just want to stay on the floor and not on my wall.” Sadly, the poster did not talk back to me and explain why it wanted to be on the floor instead of the wall next to Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause, and Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Desk Set.

As I pulled out yet another hunk of poster tack from my desk, I noticed the clock. Dang, it was time to get going if I wanted to be on time to meet Bean. “Tabby, don’t rip up this poster! I spent a lot of money on Ebay getting this one!” I set it on the couch so it wouldn’t get wrinkled, and then decided to put it on my bed. I shut the door behind me, trapping Tabby in the combination living room/kitchen/dining room. “Be good while I’m out,” I lectured to the cat. “Please don’t use the couch as your scratching post!”

I shrugged on my winter coat and hat and walked out the door. I locked the door behind me and began the quick walk to the diner. When I finally reached the diner, Bean was waiting in the lobby for me. “Wow,” I greeted him. “I can’t believe that you actually showed up on time. Heck, you’re even early!”

Bean shrugged and said, “I already told the hostess that we wanted a table for two, non-smoking. I think it should be ready soon.”

And just as he finished his last sentence, the hostess walked up to him and said, “Sir, your table is ready. And I see that the other member of your party is here. If you could follow me..."

Major Change

I decided that my old novel sucked. I wasn't really digging it, so I've decided to start over. Yeah, that measnt hat I probably won't make it by the end of November...or will I?

I don't know, I've got a ton of ground to make up and my priorities right now are on finishing the darn afghan and getting ready for a party on Saturday. But I shall try to get going with...AN APPOINTMENT WITH DESTINY!

The title is awesome! I was watching TCM on Sunday and they showed a trailer for Casablanca which just happened to mention the phrase and I thought that would make a really cool novel. I mean, what if someone really had an appointment with Destiny? Wouldn't that be interesting? A hell of a lot more interesting than some autobiographical crap I was working on.

Onward!

Appointment with Destiny

I strode into the waiting room, pausing in the doorway to examine the other people sitting. The room appeared to look like the average waiting room with nondescript floral paintings on the wall, uncomfortable chairs, and stacks of outdated magazines. But I knew that the room was not what it appeared to be because I had an appointment with destiny! But first, let me tell you how I managed to get an appointment with destiny.

It all started one week earlier. I had just gotten home from work and opened the mailbox. The mail looked to be pretty much what I expected – bills and credit card applications. But the last envelope that I pulled out of the mailbox was shiny and glimmered in the flickering hallway light. I frowned, trying to think if any of my friends were getting married or if someone I knew was throwing a formal party. But my friends were all married or very much single, and I didn’t know anyone who would throw a formal party. I got all my invitations through e-mail or word of mouth.

I walked up the two flights up to my tiny one bedroom apartment, resisting the urge to rip open the interesting envelope. Finally, I made it up the stairs and unlocked my door. I tossed the rest of the boring mail on the coffee table and glanced at my answering machine. It was flashing that I had seven messages. Trying to save the fun mail for last, I punched the play button on the answering machine and heard three hang-ups, three telemarketers informing me that I may have just won ten thousand dollars, and a message from my mother asking me to call back that weekend. I erased all the messages and quickly sifted through the mail, opening the bills and giving the dollar amounts due a cursory glance and ripping up the credit card applications.

Finally I had finished all of the boring mail and I held the shiny envelope in my hand. My name and address were written in small script in the middle of the envelope, but there was no return address. I turned the envelope over and slid my finger underneath the flap. I pulled out the heavy paper inside and flipped it open. The letter said:

Dear Ms. Starr Muriat,

You have been selected for an APPOINTMENT WITH DESTINY.

Yes, an appointment with destiny. I know what you are thinking – why have I been selected to meet with Destiny? Well, Ms. Muriat, Destiny will answer that question for you during your appointment.

And what will you learn by meeting with Destiny? Destiny will tell you what your future holds. All those nagging questions you have been having about what you should be doing will be answered after meeting with Destiny.

You don’t want to miss your appointment with Destiny. This appointment is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it will not be repeated for you. Destiny has a very tight schedule and cannot reschedule any of the appointments.

Your appointment is scheduled for next Friday, December 17, 2004, at 2 pm at 24517 West Arlington Avenue. The location for your appointment will appear to be an average waiting room, but let me reassure you, Destiny will keep the appointment.

If for some reason you are unable to make your appointment with Destiny or you prefer not to know your future, please send an e-mail to: appointments@destiny.com

Sincerely,

Harmony Blicker
Appointment Secretary to Destiny
appointments@destiny.com

I put the letter down. An appointment with Destiny? Was Destiny a person? And he – she? – had an email address and an appointment secretary? This was a pretty elaborate prank for any of my friends to be pulling off. Even my younger sister Jo-Jo wouldn’t do something like this to me. Or would she?

I set down my bags and examined the letter more carefully. It had a regular stamp on it, one of the Dr. Seuss. But I couldn’t make out the postmark because it was smeared and illegible. “Hmm,” I said out loud. “An appointment with Destiny. It seems like something my friend Bean might just be crazy enough to think of.”

Just then Tabby, my kitty, began to wind her way around my legs. “Oh Tabby, I haven’t forgotten about you,” I said as I scooped her up for a quick cuddle. She meowed politely and nuzzled the underside of my chin. “Let’s get you some cat food before I start playing detective. I’m going to have to make some phone calls tonight to see who is playing a prank on me.”

I quickly changed out of my work clothes and into my comfortable jeans and a T-shirt. I fed the cat, who was gratefully circled around my legs as I emptied the canned food into her dish. “Yeah, yeah, Tabby,” I said as I placed the dish on the floor. “Here’s your dinner.” The cat began delicately nibbling at her food as I opened the refrigerator to figure out what to make for dinner. There wasn’t much in my refrigerator and it looked like I was going to be having scrabbled eggs again. I needed to get the grocery store this weekend.

Word Count: 5185 (and our story takes a narration change)

At long last, the apartment was pretty much put together and it was time for her parents to leave. Madeline hugged her parents tightly and then sent them on their way. She stood in the parking lot waving as they drove off back to Wisconsin, continuing after the car was long out of sight.

------

I’m not real sure that this is going how I want it to. Perhaps I shall have to change writing styles. Let me introduce myself. My name is Madeline Alice Archer (or MAA!, as I like to call myself.) I am, if you haven’t guessed it already, a librarian who has recently moved from Wisconsin to Baltimore.

And I have a lot of aspirations. You see, I like to challenge myself and I thought writing a novel about my experiences of moving out her might be interesting. But I find myself getting bored with my story. And since now I have our heroine, myself, in Baltimore, I think I am going to change to the first person narration.

------

I stood waving at my parents as they drove out of sight. I was totally alone. My friend Kelly was out of town this weekend, and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. She had arranged for me to get a ride with her carpool on Monday, but after that I had to figure out how to navigate downtown by myself. It just turned out that there were so many details about starting a new job that I hadn’t thought of. It was complicated to move to a new city, and I was only beginning to realize the details I had neglected to even imagined.

After taking a trip to the local grocery store and cooking dinner, I settled down to think about my first day at work. What was I going to wear? I threw open the closet door and stared at my work wardrobe. I had a lot of sweaters, but it was definitely still too warm in Maryland to wear a sweater. In fact, while I was moving in, I had wished that I was wearing shorts instead of jeans. Was this just an Indian summer, or was I in for a dramatic climate change? I eventually settled on not wearing a skirt for my first day. I would wear black pants and my new loafers, a classic look that couldn’t go wrong. And a short sleeved shirt. I set my alarm clock for six-thirty to give me lots of time to shower, dress, and eat breakfast. I was meeting Kelly’s carpool in front of my apartment at eight fifteen on Monday morning. I had only heard about them from Kelly, but I hoped that I wouldn’t have to talk too much.

I packed my lunch the night before, something I rarely did, and then sat down in front of the television. I had a lot of nervous energy to burn, but I didn’t want to unpack my books. After the flurry of unpacking on Friday night and all day Saturday, I was not inclined to spend more time putting up posters and organizing my books. I did, however, have a knitting project to work on. So I busied myself with knitting and purling as I watched bad Sunday night television. Finally, I made myself go to bed.

4597 (almost 10% done!)

-----

My fingers stopped typing. “Damn,” I thought. “This novel is just not getting anywhere. My pacing is just too slow and all I can think about is word count. I was hoping that forcing myself to be creative might spark some burst of brilliance, but this is definitely not it.”

Just then, the phone rang. I answered it on the first ring with a curt, “Hello?”

“Madeline?”

“Yeah, this is her,” I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Who is this?”

“It’s your creative energy calling. You just need to forget about the word count and focus on writing the kind of story that you are good at.”

“What, I should be writing a Remember WENN fanfiction? I won an award for one of those!”

“Uh, no. I think NaNoWriMo strictly forbids the writing of novel length fanfiction. Plus you don’t want to be one of those lame Star Trek people,” her creative energy said. “And who would the audience be for a Remember WENN novel? I mean, there isn’t that many fans left. The show ended back in 1998.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Plus I’d rather come up with my own characters and whatnot. It’s just that I need to get my heroine into Baltimore and away from the dullness that is Wisconsin.”

Her creative energy laughed. “So do it! It’s your story, you can do whatever you want to.”

I thought about that for a second. My creative energy was right. It was my story. I could do whatever I wanted to with, including speeding up the story. So I did.

----

After deciding to take the job with the Baltimore Free Library, the next month of Madeline’s life went by very fast. She gave notice at her job, but managed to continue working full-time. The commute was not so fun, but Madeline appreciated that her boss was willing to work with her. The trip to Baltimore was uneventful, but she did manage to find an apartment to move into in the same apartment complex that Kelly lived in.

The trip from Wisconsin to Baltimore ran fairly smoothly, although there was a bit of a panic on Friday morning about making it to the apartment complex before it closed at five o’clock. Madeline needed to get the keys so she could move in before five, or else she was toast. Despite the hilly highways on West Virginia and western Maryland, the U-Haul trailer filled to the gills with her stuff managed to make the trip into Baltimore in record time. Madeline received the keys to her new apartment and moved in all of her stuff in an hour and a half – a record for her family.

Madeline’s parents convinced her that it would be best if she started working right away. “Seriously Maddie,” her father said, “if you just wait two weeks for the next pay period to start, you’ll just be bored and lonely. Plus then you’ll get paid sooner.” So she decided to start work the Monday after she arrived in Maryland.

The weekend before she started working was busy as her parents helped her arrange the furniture and put up curtains in her new apartment. Madeline’s mom had insisted on buying most of the things before moving to Maryland, including area rugs to cover the hardwood floors and curtains. Madeline hadn’t been too happy about having to get everything in Wisconsin and then hauling it all the way to Baltimore, but she acquised. Later, after getting into Baltimore and not being sure where a Target or Wal-Mart was located, she understood that it had been a good idea.

But there were still a few things that she needed in order to have a smoothly running household, and the family tried to find a mega-store to buy the last minute things at. Apparently no one knew where a Target was located, so they ended up out on the beltway, driving to White Marsh.

Word Count 4211

Madeline got ready for work quickly and while she ate breakfast and watched the Today show, she reminisced about what was going to be her last day at the apartment on Murray Avenue. But then Madeline noticed the time was slipping past a little too quickly and stuffed the last bite of her bagel into her mouth. She grabbed her bookbag and ran to catch the bus downtown.

Her last day of working part-time the library at St. Mark’s was fairly uneventful. Madeline was understandably distracted and spent quite a bit of time staring at the map of the United States that hung above her desk. She had never really contemplated where Baltimore and Maryland were located before. It wasn’t that far away from Wisconsin.

“Madeline?” Her boss asked, standing over her desk.

“Oh, hi, Donna.”

“You seem a little distracted today. Is every thing okay?” she asked with a concerned look on her face. “I know you’re moving home soon.”

“Actually,” Madeline said, pulling her thoughts together, “I’m moving back to Cedar Grove tonight. Since it’s Friday and everything. My lease isn’t up until Sunday, but I thought it would be easier to just move back home on Friday. Plus my parents have already brought most of my stuff home and everything.”

“Okay. That’s good to hear.”

“Actually, I need to fill out a vacation request for next week. I forget where we keep the forms.”

“Wow,” Donna said. “I thought you were never going to use your vacation!”

“Well, when I was a student I didn’t really have a need to go on vacation. Or funds! I’m going to visit a friend from grad school in Baltimore. It was a last minute decision, but they were having a good deal on flights there.”

“It sounds like it should be fun,” Donna said. “I don’t think anyone else is out on vacation that week, so it shouldn’t be a problem. The leave slips are in the supply closet. They’re the magenta ones on the middle shelf.”

“Great!” Madeline exclaimed. “I should probably be getting back to work though. These requests won’t fill themselves,” she said, gesturing to the pile of interlibrary loan requests stacked next to her computer.

“Too true,” Donna said. “But we’ll have you full-time starting next week, so don’t worry too much about getting these in before you leave. It’s Labor Day weekend. Why don’t you leave a half an hour early so that you can beat the traffic home to Cedar Grove?”

Madeline smiled. “That would be fantastic! Thank you so much, Donna.”

“No problem,” she replied. “Have a good weekend and I’ll see you on Tuesday. Make sure that you leave your vacation request on my desk before you leave.” Donna walked into her office, leaving Madeline alone in the Interlibrary Loan office. Everyone else had either taken the day off or left early.

Madeline quickly logged off her computer and neatly stacked the unfilled interlibrary loan requests in a pile on the corner of her desk. She quickly pulled out a leave request slip and began to rapidly fill out the relevant information. Madeline felt a little guilty about fibbing about her reason for needing the days off, but she also wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that she was going to be taking the job at the Baltimore Free Library. Honestly, she was going to see a friend from grad school. It’s just that she happened to be touring the library there too.

After salving her conscience with these thoughts, Madeline signed the slip with a flourish and popped into Donna’s office. She dropped the slip onto the overflowing in-box and said, “Have a good weekend, Donna. Thanks for letting me leave early. I really appreciate it!”

She caught the early bus back to her apartment on Murray Avenue and quickly began hauling all of the remaining things in her bedroom down to her car. In the middle of her last trip, Suzanne came bounding up the stairs. “Hey Madeline,” she said. “How are you doing? Have you made up your mind about the job yet?”

“No, but I’m going to be flying out there next weekend to check things out. I just got it okayed with my boss – although she doesn’t know that I’ve been offered a job. I don’t want to jinx things by quitting my job right now before I know if I want to take the new one!”

Suzanne looked thoughtful. “That’s probably a good idea. Plus you can look for an apartment while you are in Baltimore. I bet your friend Kelly will be helpful for that.”

Madeline laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. Well, this is my last trip down to the car. I finished cleaning everything yesterday before I went to work, so it should be ready for your new roommate to move in whenever they want to.”

“I think Brian is going to be moving in on Labor Day,” Suzanne said. “He’s kind of up in the air about it, but I figure as long as he pays for half the rent check and utilities, it’s fine with me!”

Suzanne accompanied Madeline down the stairs for the final trip. “Oh, I’m going to miss having you around,” Madeline said. “It’s been a fun year living with you.”

“Ditto -- although I haven’t been around that much. Law school is just such a drag,” she said wryly. “Let me know how things go with your job search and where you end up. Maybe I can come see you sometime over spring break.”

“And we can email, definitely,” Madeline said. She popped the trunk of her car and stuffed in the last box. She held out her arms and the two girls hugged. “Let me know how law school is going. You never know, I might need a good lawyer in the future!”

“And for helping me get through my first year of school, I’ll give you a reduced rate,” Suzanne joked.

“What, I don’t get free service?” Madeline asked in mock dismay.

“If you’d stayed for the full three years that I was in law school, maybe. But you only managed to survive one year with me.”

“I can’t help it that I managed to finish my master’s degree in one year instead of the usual two,” Madeline protested.

Suzanne smiled and said, “Go on, get out of here. You’re going to get stuck in rush hour traffic.”

“Okay. Here’s my apartment key,” she said, slipping the apartment key off of her key ring. “I’ll miss having you around! Have a good Labor Day weekend and I’ll talk to you later.”

“See you!”

Madeline got into her car and made her way out of the apartment parking lot. She cranked up her music to celebrate and was greeted by the melancholy stylings of Travis and “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” I like this song, she thought, but it totally doesn’t celebrate the fact that I am moving away from Milwaukee. It’s not even raining today! She rummaged through her CD collection and came up with a mix CD that her friend Bean had made for her before moving to Boston. The CD started with Simon and Garfunkle’s “Homeward Bound.” Well, it’s not exactly celebratory, but it’s oddly appropriate! she thought to herself.

The trip home to Cedar Grove took longer than normal, but Madeline grooved to her music as a distraction. She finally pulled into the driveway at home and began unpacking her laden car.

Today and this evening

Okay, I'm still going to be working on writing the novel. I didn't work real hard last night, but I promise that I will get a good output today and tomorrow and hopefully on Friday as well. Election day will inspire me!

I will also be trying to liven things up -- I have a tendancy to get bogged down into too much detail. But still, it's my freakin' novel. I didn't say that it was going to be good, just that it was going to be novel length. So there.

The goal for tonight: 4000 words. I've got almost 3000 right now so it's just another thousand before I can hit the hay. Let's see if I can do it!

This Evening

Pros:

REAL job!
Know somebody who works at the library/lives in Baltimore
Right subject area
East Coast!

Cons:

Pretty far away from Wisconsin family and friends
Don’t know anyone either than Kelly
Public library!
Salary not quite what I had hoped for

Madeline looked over her list carefully. It was just her initial impression of the situation, but she realized that it pretty much summed up the decision she was going to have to make: staying in Wisconsin/the Midwest near her family or striking out on her own and moving to a completely different location.

“I wish this job was offered to me in Chicago or something like that,” she thought out loud. “Because if it was a little closer to home, I wouldn’t even really think twice about accepting the job. But what other options do I have? I’ve only got one other possibility – that academic library in Kansas. And I don’t know any one there! Plus it’s a lot smaller than Baltimore.”

Her mother had always characterized Madeline as a big city girl. She cited the ease that Madeline had in adjusting to life in Milwaukee, but Madeline tried to brush that assessment away by complaining that Milwaukee wasn’t that big. But deep down inside, she recognized that what her mother had to say was probably right. Madeline liked having things to do available nearby. And Milwaukee had a really awesome movie theater just down the block from her that showed all kinds of independent and arty films. Plus there was always something going on in the summer. Yeah, she probably was a city girl. Just a city girl who understood the smaller town life too.

Madeline went to bed and slept on her decision. She had to work at St. Mark University in the morning before heading back to Cedar Grove.
The next morning broke with muggy August air oozing in through the open windows. Madeline had tossed and turned all evening, both from the momentous decision that was upon her and also from the fact that she was sleeping on a cot in the hottest weather she had experienced so far in Milwaukee. The usual breeze off of Lake Michigan had not started and the air was just hanging over the city.

Lunch Hour

After the initial flurry of excitement about being offered a job, Madeline began to think over her preliminary decision to take the job. She talked to her mom about it, who suggested that she write a list of pros and cons about taking the job. “And Maddie,” Mom said, “remember that you don’t have to take your first job offer. You just finished graduate school and you’ve still got a full-time job to fall back on. If you want to wait for a better job to come along or something more inline with what you want to do in the long run, your father and I will support you.”

“I think I’m going to make the pros and cons list tonight. It’s just hard to figure out what to do. And I don’t know if someone else is going to want to hire me – I’ve sent out over fifty applications and most of what I get back has been rejection letters.”

“Well, just remember that you have been offered a job. That’s not a rejection letter!” her mother said, trying to be upbeat about Madeline’s situation.

“Okay,” Madeline said, “I’ll try to remember that. I’m almost ready to move home tomorrow. I’ll be packing up my car tonight and driving home after work. I should be back in Cedar Grove by six o’clock this evening.”

She ended the conversation quickly and brought out a piece of paper. Madeline drew a line quickly down the middle and wrote at the top “Taking the Job in Baltimore – Pros and Cons.”

She chewed on the top of her pen thoughtfully before slowing starting to write down on the paper:

Slow Going

Yeah, I'm not real excited about how things are going. I'm afraid that I'm getting into too much detail and won't be able to get Madeline to Maryland soon enough. But the last installment finishes out chapter 1. Yeah, chapter 1. I'm 2300 words in -- about 5% finished. I should be writing a lot more today 'cuz I've got the day off and I need to get ahead to finish by the end of November...but I just don't want to write right now!!!

Any suggestions on where the story should be heading? Twists, turns, etc? I think the story needs to be more silly. I think things are a little too close to real life and I'm more of an outrageous writer. (See my fanfic from Remember WENN -- and it's award-winning. Hee!) Yeah, so perhaps things will change once our heroine gets to Maryland. Or as I like to say, Merlin.

Election Day Writings

Madeline hung up the phone and turned on her computer. While it warmed up, she sat back and basked in the happiness of finding a job. Once the welcome screen was displayed, she logged onto the Internet and quickly went to a travel web site. She found a flight for the weekend after Labor Day that was on sale. Madeline pulled out her credit card and punched in all the relevant information to purchase the flight. Before clicking on the confirmation button, she closed her eyes and said a quick prayer that she was making the right decisions. The flight was bought and Madeline was going to Baltimore now.

There was a light tapping on her bedroom door. Suzanne popped her head into the room and asked, her face hopeful, “How did the interview go?”

“They offered me the job.”

“No way!” Suzanne shouted. She strode into the room and plopped down on the cot. “That is so great. You were so worried that you weren’t going to get a job before you graduated.”

“Well,” Madeline said thoughfully, “I didn’t exactly. I finished school two weeks ago. But I did get a job offer before I moved away from Milwaukee.”

Kelly shrugged. “Same difference. Where is this job, anyway? I know you had a couple phone interviews this week – is this one Kansas or Maryland?”

“Maryland. I’d be working at the Baltimore Free Library. I mean, I’m almost one-hundred percent sure that I’m going to be taking the job, but I want to go out there first and check everything out. I’ve got a friend from grad school who got a job at the library who said she’d be willing to put me up.”

“That’s awesome,” Suzanne said. “I’d give you a hug, but I’m all sweaty from my jog and I’d better shower first. Let’s go out tonight to celebrate.”

“That sounds good. I’ve got to call my dad and let me know first though.”

While Suzanne cleaned up, Madeline got on the phone again and shared the good news with her dad. He was very excited to hear that she had been offered a job, and happy to hear that she was already planning to fly out there to check things out. Madeline’s younger brother Matt was home too, and he congratulated Madeline, but said, “Maddie, you’re going to be so far away from Wisconsin.”

Madeline answered reassuringly, “Well, I haven’t taken the job yet. You can come visit me though; it’s not that far. You’ve never been the east coast either so it’ll be an adventure!”

After Madeline finished spreading her good news to her family, she got ready to go out with Suzanne to celebrate the job offer.

After One Day...

I'm actually not feeling too bad about things.

Heck, our heroine is still in Milwaukee! And I managed to write 1846 words. If I can keep up the pace, I'll be done with novella before the end of Novemeber. Plus I managed to keep up with the afghan crocheting. (Wedding present.) Yeah, it will all get done! I just need to write during my lunch hour instead of socializing. I suppose it can be a good excuse -- I'm writing a novel in November. Heh. It can get me out of sitting with people I don't like!

Right! I should go to bed -- I can get up early tomorrow to keep going.

Last Installment for Day 1

“Okay. It’ll be fun. I’ll talk to some of the other librarians to get suggestions about apartments to look at.”

“That would be fantastic,” Madeline said. “I was planning to look online and hopefully make some appointments to see some places while I’m there, but if you can help me out with finding a place that’s reputable, that would be great. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to take the job, but I’d really like to see the library first.”

“I understand. That’s what I did,” Kelly confided. “You’ll get a tour of BFL and the department manager will probably take you out to lunch.”

Madeline smiled. She’d never been wined and dined before, and it was a novel feeling. “Where is that you live?”

“The Rodgers Forge Apartments. They’re really quite nice, and the cheapest that I could find in the north Baltimore area. But I don’t really live in the city – I’m just over the county line.”

“Just over the county line?” Madeline was confused by the geographic terms.

“Uh, yeah. Baltimore is a little different than most cities – it’s an independent entity. It’s surrounded by Baltimore County. I’ll explain it once you get here. Or else you can talk to the librarians in the Maryland Department. I’m sorry, but I really got to get going. I’ve got somewhere to go tonight.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to you soon and let you know about my flight out there.”

“Congratulations again, Madeline. I really hope that you take the job. It’ll be really cool to have another Wisconsinite out here.”

“Thanks! I’ll talk to you later, Kelly. Bye!”

“Bye.”

Goal! (Almost)

I wrote on my lunch hour for like twenty minutes today. I am really close to meeting my goal today -- just another two hundred words. I think I can pound it out once I get home. Anyway, I think once I get lil' Maddie to Baltimore, things will begin to diverge from my own experience. I'm hoping to have it end up being a silly chick-lit-esque novel, but we'll see. Who frickin' knows -- and I've got quite a bit of the novel(la) to finish writing. I'm only like 3% done so far! Whooooooo!

Part 2 (during my lunch hour)

She glanced at her watch and noticed that it was only four o’clock. It was a little too early to be calling Kelly, even with the time zone difference. Madeline looked around the empty room and sat down on the cot that was serving as her bed until the end of the week. ‘I can’t believe they offered me a job after just a phone interview!’ she thought to herself.

After Madeline had found out about that the Baltimore Free Library wanted to interview her, she anxiously called up her grad school friend Kelly. Kelly graduated a semester earlier than Madeline and managed to find a job within a month of graduation. Kelly had emailed Madeline with her news and also mentioned that the library was looking for more entry-level librarians and perhaps Madeline might be interested in applying. So Madeline had applied, despite the fact that she had never really been interested in working in a public library or living in Baltimore. Kelly had been a godsend for preparing for the interview. And now she was hopefully going to be helpful in learning more about the area. Madeline had never been further east than Florida, so a trip to Baltimore would be her first visit the east coast.

Madeline basked the happiness of knowing that there was a job out there for her, even if it was all the way in Maryland instead of Wisconsin or Minnesota. The rejection letters that had piled up in her mailbox were finally forgotten. After a few minutes, she got up and logged on to the Internet to price flights. After some searching, she realized that she could call Kelly now and figure out when a good time to come visit would be.

“Kelly?”

“Madeline?”

“Yeah, did you--"

“I heard that you got offered the job! Congratulations!”

Madeline was confused. “But I just got offered the job a couple of hours ago. How did you find out?”

“I carpool with one of your interviewers. He was teasing me about prepping you for the interview, but it sounds like you did a great job.”

“Well, I had a definite in with knowing you!”

“Riiiight,” Kelly drawled sarcastically. “Did they tell you what subject department you were going to be in?”

“Humanities. But I haven’t accepted the job yet.”

“I don’t know any one from Humanities. But I can look into for you,” Kelly reassured Madeline.

“I was hoping to come out to Baltimore to meet the people I would be working with, see the library, and maybe look for an apartment. Would you be able to put me up while I’m there?”

Kelly paused and Madeline could hear pages flipping. “Uh…yeah. I don’t have anything planned in the next couple weeks. Next weekend is Labor Day and the library is going to be closed then. But how about the weekend after that?”

“That’s exactly what I was hoping you would say. Thanks so much, Kelly. I’m going to book my flight and then I’ll let you know when I’ll be there.”

Uh, It's only SEMI-autobiographical. Right.

I started! And wrote 1075 words in an hour. Yay!

And it's only semi-autobiographical. Yeah, semi. Uh, not so much. But I think writing my story -- or my story so far -- will perhaps be good for me. I've got my issues with the whole East Coast vs. Midwest (see my other blog for further discussion of that). And maybe this will help me work out what I want to do in the long room.

But right now, that's pretty much how I got my job here! Except I didn't miss my bus. But they were late with calling me. I might go back today and add to the interview. It's my first day!

The Start

Madeline Archer was running late. She had missed her usual bus home from work, and as a consequence, the bus stopped further away from her apartment in Milwaukee. It was late August and Madeline had a job interview in twenty minutes.

She puffed as she jogged on the sidewalk. ‘I can’t believe I missed the bus!’ she thought to herself She turned the corner and her apartment building was in sight. Madeline checked her watch and noted that she had fifteen minutes before the phone interview was to start. She slowed to a speedy walk and raced up the stairs to the apartment entrance.

Madeline lived in a converted house near the University. Before starting school in Milwaukee, she had found a roommate online and they had searched for apartments on the one day that both could make it down to Milwaukee. Madeline and Suzanne, the online roommate, had looked at three dreadful places and one not-so-dreadful place. They signed the lease on the not-so-dreadful place and moved in on Labor Day. The apartment wasn’t ideal, but Madeline was done with school and was ready to move out in a week.

The door opened and Suzanne, dressed in her jogging clothes, almost ran into Madeline. “Oh hey Madeline,” she said. “I’m heading out. I need to clear my head.” Suzanne was an architecture grad student and still had another two years of school left. She hadn’t taken summer classes like Madeline, but she had started working for a architecture firm downtown.

“Okay, I’ll see you later. I’ve got that interview in--" she glanced down at her watch again “-- ten minutes! I gotta go get ready for it!”

“Good luck!” Suzanne bounced down the stairs and started jogging off down the street.

Madeline clattered up the stairs and into her room. Her parents had came down earlier in the week to help her start moving her things home. It had become obvious that she wasn’t going to have a professional job before her lease ran out, so she was going to continue working at her paraprofessional job and commute from home. Plopping her bookbag down by the door, Madeline walked over to the card table and did a quick look through of her interview prep materials. After regaining her breathing returned to normal from the run home, she became nervous once again. Tapping her fingers on the card table top, she once again checked the clock. The interview was supposed to start ten minutes ago. Then an explanation came to her – the interviewers were in the Eastern time zone. Maybe they had scheduled the interview in the Central time zone instead and she had fifty minutes to get ready for it. Madeline put her head down on the table to take a short nap and drifted into a light sleep.

Riiiiiiiing!

Madeline’s eyes popped open and she grabbed the phone and answered. “Hello?”

“Hello. Can I speak to Madeline Archer?”

“This is her.”

“Madeline, this is Sylvia Brown from the Baltimore Free Library. I’m facilitating your
interview.”

“Okay.” Madeline was confused, but donned her friendly interview voice. She needed to get a professional job soon or else moving back home and living with her parents was going to drive her crazy.

“You’re going to be interviewed by a group…”

And with the Madeline’s interview commenced over a speakerphone.

-------------

She hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Her eyes widened and she jubilantly shouted “I can’t believe that they offered me a job after a phone interview! Yes, yes, yes!” She quickly picked back up the phone and punched in the numbers to call home. Her fingers trembled slightly from excitement and nervousness.

“Hello?”

“Hi Mom. It’s Madeline.”

“Hi Maddie. You got the job?”

“How did you know?”

“Well, after you said that they offered it to Kelly after she interviewed there. And I knew they’d do the same thing with my girl. Congratulations!”

Madeline sighed, equally embarrassed and happy by her mother’s confidence in her. “I still have to hear back from the University in Kansas though. But I don’t know…a little University town in Kansas or a public library in Baltimore.”

“Did you take the job?”

“Not yet. I said that I would need some time to think about it. I have to get back to them in two weeks. I’d really like to do what Kelly did before she started working at the library.”

“That sounds like a good idea. You’ve still got some time to make up your mind.”

Madeline sighed again. “I hate to just take the first job that is offered to me, and especially since I really wanted to work at a University, but this just seems like it would be such a great opportunity.”

“Do you know where you would be working? Did they tell you what subject department?”

“Yeah,” Madeline replied. “I’m so happy it’s not Business, Science and Technology. They want me to work in the Humanities Department. I know it’s not an academic library, but at least I would be getting reference experience in the subject area that I really want to work in. And plus it’s not a rinky-dink public library like at home.”

“Honey,” her mom cut in, “it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

“Yeah…I probably have. I don’t know a soul in Kansas and at least in Baltimore, I know Kelly.”

“Why don’t you look for a flight out there and check out the library? You can meet the people who would be your co-workers, get a feel for Baltimore, talk to Kelly, and look for an apartment.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Great minds think a like. Dad’s not home yet. Do you want to call back in an hour or so to let him know about your news?”

“Sure. I’m going to try calling Kelly to see if I could stay with her. I think she should be home from work by now.”

“If you can’t stay with her, we can help you out with getting a hotel.”

“I really appreciate your offer, Mom. Thanks. Well, I’d better go so I can try calling Kelly and then book a flight online.”

“Congratulations, Maddie. I knew you would get a job before you moved back home.”

Madeline smiled. “I’ll call back in about an hour. Love you!”

“Love you too. Bye.”

“Bye Mom.” Madeline hung up the phone.

Opening Line 3

It was a dark and stormy night when Madeline pulled in the parking lot of the Rogers Forge Apartments. 'Was moving here a mistake?' she asked herself.

Opening Line 2

"Excuse me, I think someone has just pooped over there, behind the computers."

She went over and confirmed the existence of the feces and called for facilities. Another fun filled day at the library was beginning.

(Based on real life)

Opening Line 1

Sometimes she wondered if this was all life was going to be.

(Lame!)

Opening Line

Inspired by one of the forums on Nanowrimo, I am trying to think up a good opening line. Let's see how many I can come up with while I am on desk until 3:30 today. That gives me two hours....starting now.

Our Heroine

I kind of like the name Madeline. Because then you can call her Maddy for short (or Maddie) and it's not as lame as Madison. I'm not a fan of Madison -- mostly because it is a CITY in Wisconsin and because the lame-o baby-sitter on Everwood was named Madison. That and it's just too trendy. Madeline is kind of pseudo-French. It's also the name of some delicious cookies.