i was going to go grocery shopping today, but my mornings seem to go by so fast, by the time i was ready to go, it was nearly 11am, and i planned on starting my census shift by 12:30pm, so i decided to postpone my shopping for tomorrow. besides, i still had enough ingredients in the house to make lunch and dinner for the rest of the week.
i got paid again today, seemed like our census direct deposit happens every wednesday morning. i made slightly more than 2x what i made the first week. i worked 33.25 hours that week, but half of that was training and half was actual field work, i won't be able to see the breakdown until i get my pay stub sometime later this week. of course all that money went to pay a credit card bill that was nearly that exact same amount. easy come, easy go!
i made some chicken sausage oatmeal for lunch before heading out for my census work. today was still hot, but temperature in the 80's with a 55% humidity, so better than yesterday at least. all the addresses were close enough that i could walk. a bunch of early cases were in a large apartment building, about 10 addresses. i didn't get a single hit. one woman did answer via the intercom, told me she'd just moved in, and gave me the number of the superintendent. i called but they never got back to me. i called two real estate agents to clear some other cases, one to confirm there was no 4th floor unit, another to get a head count of the people who were living here on april 1st.
most memorable moment today was in a dozen unit apartment where i managed to get someone to do an interview. she was an older woman with purple hair. she turned out to be a great resource, not only completed her interview, but gave me info about all the other people living in her building (he's a hoarder, she's developmentally challenged, they're away on vacation), and even helped me tracked down one of her neighbors to compel her to do a census interview as well. i saw her later in the day, on her bike. i didn't recognize her at first because she had a mask on (she didn't when she was in her apartment, but we were socially distant). she was surprised i was still working, so close to 8pm, i told her i was about to go home. but she did help me one last time by confirming that a spooky neighborhood house was in fact vacant, and vacant for the past 2 years.
i finished all my cases by 7:30pm. i think i only had 3-4 interviews today, one of them was with a guy who didn't know if his girlfriend did the census or not so he did it with me anyway, because he worked as an enumerator back in 1990, when they were still doing paper censuses. i did have one case left, and that was the woman in the large apartment i spoke with earlier; there's a bug with in-mover cases that don't have any info about the previous tenants, those cases don't close, just remain as active, don't even ask for a proxy visit.
i also met another census enumerator. he was out of "uniform" but he stopped to chat with me. he's based in somerville, zone 7. he stopped working by 7pm, which seems like a better time to stop, instead of pushing myself to finish my 8pm. he's been following the census schedule, starting at the supposed start time, when my own supervisor has told us to start whenever we like since the scheduling function is broken. so this guy started at 2:45pm today, worked just 4 hours, no wonder he looked so full of energy.
after a shower, i whipped up a salad for dinner: baby arugula, chopped tomatoes, garbanzo beans, parmesan cheese, feta cheese, onion, with balsamic vinaigrette. it looked good, but wasn't too tasty, a little on the raw side. it was healthy though, and i wasn't hungry afterwards (the beans helped).