Taking the town by surprise.

As per usual, I've worked myself out of a job again. The US census is ongoing through the end of October, but it's going on without me, because the neighborhood I worked in - basically a fifteen block radius around my apartment - got finished up. It wasn't just me, and it took a lot of slow, exacting grind-work. And I know I helped whenever I closed out a case, getting someone to spell their name or prompt a neighbor to guess the age of the people down the hall or have someone confirm that the building next door to where he worked had been vacant for the last five years. Some people got a first name and a middle name and a last name, and some people were just Woman 1 and Man 1. Some people got birthdays and detailed racial backgrounds, and some people were just in their mid-20s.

I put on a dress every time I went out, knowing that as a white woman in a dress, I could go just about anywhere I wanted with limited consequences. Even sneaking out onto forbidden rooftops didn't get me any repercussions. I got yelled at a couple of times for legitimate reasons, like the aforementioned sneaking, and as bad as those times had me feeling, I knew that "yelled at" was as bad as I'd get it, so I'd better keep going and use my privilege for good.

There was one time I unknowingly violated a building's policies by not buzzing a resident to gain entrance, simply letting the construction guys in the lobby wave me in. I'll admit to that. The super, however, said I was "disrespecting" him. His exact term. There was another time a guy refused to listen to me and got so worked up he said not to come back without a subpoena.

As disappointing and degrading as those moments were, I was able to get past them with enough chocolate and having already taken some sneaky pictures of the inner courtyards from the stairwell.

What was fun was the cross-section of New York City lobbies and stairways and rooftops and windows, a fantastic architectural crash course. Also fun was calling up brokerage firms and realtor offices and pretending to have money to get in touch with a building's owner and never lying to them - because I was interested in learning more about these buildings, and I did want to find out if the place had a basement unit, and I hadn't yet been pre-approved for a mortgage. I was completely truthful with them.

I didn't tell the brokers I was from the census, but the owner didn't mind giving me what I needed.

Some doormen recognized me from going past their buildings a lot from just living in the neighborhood and were happy to talk. One day I got a bunch of cases for my own building, and just waved to the doorman and walked right in and went around ringing doorbells. Every so often, there'd be notes on a case about the doorman not being at all helpful, but most likely because I was a white woman in a dress, I didn't have any problems with them. They couldn't give me names or birthdays, but they'd say yes, there were two people there last April, or yeah, there was just one white woman who was about sixty five, that sort of thing.

There was one day a doorman said he was going to lunch and to come back in an hour. I said I'd see him in an hour, did a few cases a couple of streets over, then went back to wait. When he got back, he was agog: "I thought you were kidding."

There was one day I didn't go out into the field and just made some phone calls to a rental office, wrapping up a building that'd been giving people trouble for weeks. There was another day I got into a fabulous old elevator that the doorman cranked up and down for me. There was another day someone complimented the census's tenacity. "We always get our man," I said, "Us and the U.S. Marshals."

There was one day I came home with a human tooth. Not one of mine. It'd been out on the sidewalk in a little pink plastic box for two days, so I figured, if someone had lost it, they'd have found it by now. I'm not sure what I'll do with it besides marvel at the find.

Tomorrow I drop off my official government phone and official government messenger bag with my supervisor, and give her a couple little jars of jam as a going-away gift. And then I need to start sorting through my photos, because there are multiple lobbies in my neighborhood with stained glass windows, and as much as I like where I live right now, I can't deny the appeal of having something that beautiful around every time I walk through the lobby to give a little joy to my days.