--Lieutenant Piper, in Dreadnought!, by Diane Carey

First things first: Happy birthday, Phebe!

This was not unexpected. What was unexpected was that I have even more paperwork to deal with than I'd had when I began working for the Writing Skills Workshop about one-and-a-half years ago:

• The paper certifying that I'm a U.S. citizen.

• The pink card with my address, and information on a person to be notified in case of emergency. (I'm not even sure what to put down, as my family's moving, and I don't know the new address, let alone the phone number they'll be assigned. I'll probably put down an aunt instead.)

• Two Withholding Allowance Certificates: one for federal taxes, one for state. (Each requires the use of a worksheet, which, naturally, is not supplied.)

• Two copies of a form designating my next of kin, to receive any salary left unpaid should I die before picking up my check. (I strongly suspect the second copy was an accidental inclusion, but why take chances?)

• The paper collecting statistics on employees to verify the effectiveness of the college's Affirmative Action Program, asking for my sex, country of citizenship, and ethnic group name. (I put down "male," "U.S.," and, after wrestling with the question for a few long moments, ignored the ethnic categories given and scribbled down "Other.")

• The paper noting my job title, starting employment date, ending employment date, number of hours per week, hourly salary, and department worked for.

• "Amended Constitutional Oath Upon Appointment," which isn't actually an oath at all, which is good, 'cause I don't do oaths. I did, however, "pledge and declare that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the position of [here I put "College Assistant" in the space left for that purpose] according to the best of my ability." (I suppose that I can follow the shining example of Mayor Giuliani in this regard.)

• The "Short Form" of the Application for Employment, on pink paper. This one gets a bit sticky, in that I'm supposed to write down the schools I've attended, and my employment history (for the last fifteen years), both of which are a bit on the complex side, and each of which involve several judgment calls as to what I should bother listing. Just to make matters even more fun, I don't recall what I did or didn't list the last time I filled out this form, and I find myself wondering whether they'll be checking for inconsistencies.

• Finally, the Short Form is stapled to two more sheets of paper: one pink, one white. On the white one, I assert that I've never been convicted of a crime. The pink one is for use in verifying that claim.

• Oh, and there's the College Assistant Employment Request Form and the accompanying salary breakdown, but those were filled out by the director, not me.

So my policy is like this: on forms that allow lots of space for initials, I put down both, modifying the body text appropriately when necessary (i.e., I add an "s" to the word "initial"). On forms that provide only one small box for the entry of one initial, I leave the box blank. My signature is always just my first and last name. (And, as for that, the signature has evolved to the point that my last name is hardly recognizable as being a name at all; it looks more like a long slash.)

As it happens, this means that most of the forms in this case have both initials, and one lacks them both. But this shouldn't be a problem.

In a nutshell, the department has a certain amount of money that it can spend on me by the end of next semester, at a certain hourly rate. ($1,500 total, and $8.47 an hour, not that it's any of your business. This was supposed to be spread out over the entire year, starting in September, but it took until now to get it approved.) Now, in practice, I'm hoping to put in the majority of that time over Winter Break, leaving the rest for next semester. However, the bookkeeping department doesn't want matters to be that complicated. They want a consistent weekly wage they can apply from start to finish.

So, officially, I'll be working seven hours a week for 25 weeks, with a two-hour orientation before I start. Which leaves 81 cents in the budget, but I can live with that, obviously. While this will reflect the actual total number of hours spent working, the hours-per-week breakdown bears no resemblance to reality, and everybody involved knows it, and, basically, nobody cares, so long as the people in Human Resources are happy. So who am I to argue?

The nice bit about this is that I'll have a steady income throughout next semester; enough to pay for my food and stuff, but not so much coming in at one shot that I'll be making any really dumb impulse buys.

Well, not too many, anyway. My computer's in the middle of molting, and I think I know which bits of hardware are due to be upgraded next... but we'll see. Just now, I'm down to about thirty bucks, so it's sort of pointless to be speculating about anything of the sort. But I'm expecting my student loan to come in any day now...

I can't even work up any indignation over the advertising tactics. I'm too busy drooling.

Columbia House had better be offering this album, so I can take it as one of the selections I'll have to buy over the next two years. That's all I have to say about that.