Chaos Attraction

The Aliens Have Landed

2003-05-08, 8:11 p.m.

Aliens landed in front of my work today. See, you knew this place was strange. The location picked for this just amuses me no end, too.

This is a class that every design major has to take, and it can be quite fun. Though we didn't do aliens the year I took it- I believe our equivalent was when we had to pick an item to "worship" and create a shrine/parade/etc. to it. (Our group's was Legos. Yes, that was my idea.) I think doing an alien would have been a lot of fun, though.

These were pretty amusing, and looked great. Even though the wind had knocked over about a third of them. I could tell already which were going to get better grades vs. not-better grades (they're supposed to be 3 feet high, a lot weren't), and the looks people came up with were great. Some did traditional trying-to-look-like-an-ILM aliens, some put random objects together to create some kind of funny figure, some made maps, signs, and passes for theirs.

Sadly, it had to rain on the alien parade today later to boot. I wonder if any of the projects survived.


There's some kind of bad cold going around the office. The guy who always comments on my coughing was coughing today. I was so tempted to go over and say something to him for a change....but since his is only temporary and mine is forever, that would probably only come back and bite me in the butt.


* I read this first thing yesterday morning and wanted to cry at my desk. Today, now as usual, I'm not so sure. Had a meeting today, made plans for the summer, so that seems hopeful. Then again, I was scheduled through December when I got laid off the first time, so what does that mean? Who knows. I did a yes/no tarot reading last night asking if I'd get laid off this year and got a yes (conflicting with my flowers-and-sunshine previous reading.). Gah.


Dave's job interview went well enough. If there is any news, should hear next week. My tarot readings for him were VERY good for the future, and got a "yes" to him getting the job. We shall see.


Someone donated money to a site in my name yesterday, which was kinda flattering. Gee, and all I did was write an oatmeal haiku. Yes, really. For some reason, a guy wanted haikus about oatmeal. What the hell.

Mine was about how oatmeal looks like barf, by the way. Profound, huh? Not to mention extremely attractive!


My other cubicle neighbor finally noticed my hair, two weeks later. This was rather funny, since I know I have to have walked in front of her several times at least.


Haven't heard back from the doctor yet. Breath-o-meter scores are going worse.


Anna and Dave will both be (separately) coming into town around seven tomorrow night. Which should be er, interesting to say the least. We've been invited to party with Anna and co. Saturday night.

So don't expect to see me surfacing till Monday morning, basically!


I seem to be having the same old problem in my ASL class that I've had trying to learn every other language: if I have to speak to someone, I totally freeze up and EVERYTHING I know goes out of my head. I totally blew review session today and felt so stoopid. I hate that. Am I just born inept?

Anyway, I've got to tell you about what else happened there tonight. The teacher's a nice, friendly guy. A friend of his is taking the class, and she has a 7-month-old daughter. From what I've seen of the baby before class, she's a sweetheart and normally tends to be quiet. Tonight, daddy couldn't take the baby until after 7 p.m. (class is 6-8), so she had the baby in class. The baby didn't tend to be a wailer and could be quieted down quickly when something went wrong, so this wouldn't have been too much of a problem had she been the only child in the room.

Yup, I bet you see the drift right there.

Because tonight, for whatever reason, the teacher brought along his wife AND 20-month-old toddler daughter. I think his wife wanted to take the class or something (she said she'd been doing ASL for two years but was still learning), which is fine. And they were teaching the daughter ASL- she was too young to make her own signs, but they showed her things. I did find that rather interesting, even if they had to snap fingers at her to get her attention to look at signs most of the time. Ah, the irony.

However, the daugher was pretty much left to wander around as she saw fit, except for when they were trying to stop her from say, ripping the flyers down off the walls. Don't get me wrong, she was sweet and not really a loud child most of the time, but she was a BIG fat distraction in class. She played with the baby, grabbed chalk and handed it to me (and possibly ate some, as her mouth was chalky at one point), grabbed at people's things, handed out her toys, chewed papers, the usual toddler stuff. During break she apparently went outside, saw some duck sex, and went careening happily towards them. At one point while playing with the baby they both let out a huge wail and started shrieking and crying.

I know it's sign language and you don't need to have quiet to follow the lecture, but well, that was still distracting. And when you spend most of the class watching where the child is going and/or forcibly removing her hands from your keys instead of the teacher's hands, it's not so condusive to learning either.

And periodically she'd run up to Daddy and grab him around the legs. Unfortunately, she was just the right height and her head and his er, little head were in just the right position to look thoroughly bad when she did this. Even worse when she'd shake her head INTO his... I about died laughing.


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