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Good morning! Oh my god, you guys, overnight the temperature dropped like thirty degrees. I went outside this morning and felt human again.

Also, Groupon has been very obliging lately.

( A Cheaper World: Volume 3 )

White Collar: The Hired Man

Title: The Hired Man
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Peter Burke, ex-FBI agent, met Neal Caffrey, thief, during a bar fight. Peter was in need of a job, and Neal was in need of a bodyguard. Everything was going fine until this art-restorer named Elizabeth hired them to steal a statue...
Notes: Do I need to actually say this is an AU? This is an AU. It's based off a short AU I wrote in a post ironically titled 5 AUs Sam Didn't Write.
Warnings: None.

( They met during a bar fight. )

Fake cut takes you to the fic at Dreamwidth.

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A while ago I did a post on Storyteller called Five AUs Sam Didn't Write.

And then I kinda wrote one.

The "bodyguard AU" seemed really popular and was, admittedly, really fun, so I expanded and enhanced it and after much wrestling with how to end the damn thing (I am so bad at endings) it's ready to post. Enjoy :)

Title: The Hired Man
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Peter Burke, ex-FBI agent, met Neal Caffrey, thief, during a bar fight. Peter was in need of a job, and Neal was in need of a bodyguard. Everything was going fine until this art-restorer named Elizabeth hired them to steal a statue...

(no subject)

I haven't been offered the job of BossBoss yet, but I am PREPARING. I am doing research on my own company!

It's only fair. They're going to do a background check on me, a new requirement for all hires, even internal ones. Apparently working for the company for three years is no proof that I am not secretly a criminal mastermind or an ex-felon. Surely they'll never think to ask Interpol about that incident in Vienna...

I jest. Aside from breaking into a historic graveyard* and spending a night in the Boston PD headquarters** when I was nineteen, I have lived a life unmarred by police action.

* It was closed, it should have been open, I wanted to see Prince Hall's grave, and anyway I didn't actually break anything. Besides, after I hid out in the Old North Church they stopped looking for me.
** Unrelated to above, if in the same era. I was coming back to my hostel from a concert when I tried to help a man in a tipped-over wheelchair and he accused me of trying to rob him. The police decided to sort it out at the station. No charges filed, very exciting night for me.

I've been trying to figure out how to do salary negotiation. It's never been an issue before; when they offered me the job I'm in, I was so desperate for a job and so awed by the idea of making five times the yearly salary I had ever made anywhere else, I just said yes.

The internet has, so far, been of limited use. I know how to talk about the advantages I bring -- experience, more education than BossBoss had, not to mention the fact that I am really the only person everyone in the company knows on sight -- and I know what BossBoss made. I've been researching the salary range for this position, which isn't easy since it has the most generic job title in the world. It is, in fact, the job title some search engines list as an example, which is a real ego-boost let me tell you.

The problem is that nobody wants to tell you how to actually engage in salary negotiation. I know you're supposed to let them make the first offer, but what then? Should I high-ball in the anticipation of a haggling session? Should I ask for the salary I genuinely want and think is appropriate? Or should I just ask them to increase it and see what a second offer brings?

On another note, wow, I thought our executive staff made way more than they do. If the salary information on the website is even close to correct, I'm currently drastically overpaid for the amount of work I do compared to nearly everyone else in the company. Apparently the staff members who live downtown and buy clothing in places that don't also sell groceries are either mad skilled at salary negotiation or they're selling drugs on the side to augment their budget.

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Okay, so I really tried hard to get into In The Land Of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent, but I give up.

It should be really interesting. Synthetic languages! Crazy historical figures! Klingon and Esperanto! And yet.

It seems to me that I keep encountering books which -- whether or not they actually are -- feel like expanded doctoral dissertations. There seem to be some common characteristics, like only vaguely explaining important concepts, or taking random digressions that are clearly mostly there to satisfy the writer's sense of humour (I am guilty of this myself, so I understand the urge). Also, these books are about historical events or trying to trace historical developments but never, ever actually present things in historical order. The attitude seems to be something on the lines of "Which makes the best anecdote? Let's put THAT first! We'll give the background a few chapters later."

It makes me a little nuts. And it makes the book very hard to follow, especially when chapter one already left me in the dust due to being mostly about math rather than about language.

So yeah, that was In The Land Of Invented Languages.

Coworker Crush loaned me Bret Easton Ellis's "Less Than Zero" yesterday, which I have to say at least had "it's not boring!" going for it. I was supposed to go to a concert last night but it got rained out, so instead I went home, curled up in a chair, and read for most of the evening.

( Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis )

Final Verdict: Less Than Zero is a really fast read, which is just as well because nobody in it is terribly likeable as a character. It's a good book, but it has its flaws, and I wouldn't start out reading it as one's first introduction to Ellis. On the other hand, more and more I'm coming to see that reading any of these books in isolation -- which can be done easily -- means losing out on a larger subtext to the set.

It's a strange experience, because the whole grouping is like a little self-contained...codex, almost. Ellis has written six novels and one book of short stories in about 25 years, all interlinked in some fashion, and there's not much available about them or him online, comparatively speaking. It's a bit like playing a puzzle game like Myst or Legend of Zelda -- nothing quite makes sense until you see everything together.

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You guys.

Somehow, somewhere, preferably as soon as possible, I must see this film.

STARBUCK.

A film about a man with 533 children.

Christ, no wonder I'm so tired all the time.

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So, it's Tuesday night, I should be asleep, time for Sam's Three Things About White Collar!

Spoilers for 3.10: ( Countdown )

3a. So that's it for White Collar until January. As much as I love that some American shows are now following a more BBC-based structure, with what essentially amounts to a short season followed by a "hiatus" gap -- and as much as I like that apparently they're better at scheduling things properly than the Beeb, wtf Sherlock in 2012 -- the wait is admittedly frustrating.

And now I have to start writing Exquisite, not that I have a god damned clue how...