Tuesday, December 3, 2013

A Trip to the Port of Long Bridges

It ain't easy being a personal assistant. And I'm not saying that in the "It ain't easy being cheesy" way. Clearly there is nothing easier for Chester Cheeto than being cheesy. However, it is legitimately extremely difficult to be a personal assistant, and to be honest, the past few days I feel like I've been drowning. Had I taken so much as one course or workshop on business administration I might have a clue as to what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. But nope, I just had to take "Monotheisms" and "The Films of Clint Eastwood."

While there is definite credit to learning something completely through hands-on experience, PAing has got to be one of the most challenging ways to go about that. I seem to only be figuring out what I'm doing right or wrong by making mistakes. Mistakes are healthy and normal, sure. But these mistakes aren't endearing little, "Ohh, you set the margins too wide on this report, but now you know for next time" ones. They are fuck-ups in a person's life schedule. HER LIFE IS IN MY HANDS PEOPLE.

In this example, Hades is the new phone whose voicemail she can't figure out how to access.
Missing doctor appointments, saving all the best typos for emails to wealthy investors... it's no bueno. Which is why I just spent the past hour reading the first twelve Google results for "how to be a good personal assistant." The top thing they all stress is confidentiality, so maybe blogging about everything I do has been my biggest mistake so far. I guess when you're a personal assistant you're not supposed to talk about it. What if 90% of the world population are actually just really really good personal assistants? I have no way of knowing.

Though in this political climate it'd probably be closer to 99%AMIRIGHT?!

That's right, I push the limits with my satirical political humor. Look out.

I've spent all day stressing at work so I'm going to attempt to decompress from that for a bit. Hey, let's talk about that thing that happened when I missed my exit heading down to San Diego this weekend.

Don't ask me how, but one second I was driving on the 110 and the next I was looking up ahead and seeing all these massive curved bridges and thinking to myself, "Whoah, that would probably be super trippy to drive on." And sure enough, 30 seconds later the freeway curved around and my little car was hoofing it up the spine of these gigantic brontosauri. Over water.

Driving Home Alone... 3
Yessir, as it turns out I had somehow navigated myself straight into the Port of Long Beach. For anyone who's never been, it looks like a ship-themed level in a video game... or maybe it just looked that way from the heavy dose of acid I ingested about a half hour prior. It was definitely a weird-looking place of intimidating size. Like if Texas opened a Splash Zone. Everything was just so... big. The bridges must have been several hundred feet high and stretched across open water for close to a mile. Don't believe me? Check out this cRaZy AeRiAl pHoTo:

Yes, Super Stock, we all see you.
And on either end of the bridge were cement platforms stacked with thousands of massive/plentiful cargo crates.


What is in there?! Cheese? Taxidermy buffalos? High-quality imported pornography? There's just no need for that much high-quality pornography. The people have spoken and they want the free cheap kind!

The experience was a little thrilling and terrifying, if not solely because I had no idea this would be the day I would tour the Port of Long Beach. Driving over the bridge was kind of gnarly... but I was braver about it than I probably would have been had I not crossed this bridge earlier this summer:

At least we're in New Orleans, where I know I have nothing to worry about.
It was a very symbolic moment of crossing bridges and achieving new heights, and other things I'll include in my article about children's education.

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