Today's report:

Work:
(a) My job is ESPECIALLY overloading between July and usually November. We usually have to do about 10k of records during that time, in addition to everything else we have to do. This year we had about 2000 more documents than last year (due next Friday) and 500* other related things (not an exaggeration) sent in. My boss was threatening to make us work overtime even though she didn't want to either. But as of the day before Thanksgiving, I got through the vast majority of them being done and at this point we're down to one (which is having a computer issue, and that's why it's not done), and whatever else they keep sending it. But Giant Pile #1 is done.

(b) After Giant Pile #1, I started working on Giant Pile #2, and as of today that is pretty much done except for the Problem Children that I have to wait to get proofread or hear back from someone about. We're down to 35 problem children down from 500+, so WOOT. I even got responses to three of the nag e-mails I had to send out ("hey, I know so-and-so e-mailed you in May, but...do you still care about this or can I just get rid of it?").

(c) This means that I *gasp* actually ended up with downtime at work for the first time in ages and ages and ages. I would have started something else, but now I'm stuck waiting on someone else to answer back, so I probably won't do it until the afternoon. So....man, that was nice. Got to catch up on Holidailies and start writing this entry.
(d) Of course, we had to have one of those meetings where a bunch of other stuff will be dumped on our heads come winter, so....whee.

Xmas Shopping:
It's not raining today!!!!!! (I don't care, I deeply enjoyed not being sopping wet all day. I once read a fantasy book where the place was magically engineered to rain every night between midnight and six a.m. GOOD IDEA. I wonder if my car has dried out yet?)

While at one of the various craft fairs last weekend, Mom bought a scarf that boiled down to a lot of yarn being made into a necklace. The nice lady told me exactly how she did it because she doesn't give a shit about secrecy. Mom wants one in purple, but I am going to need some kind of giant quad to one of the main classroom buildings on campus. According to a girl on the bus, people have been in there screaming--you know, taking away other people's educations. There are posters all over the place and last week people were straight up writing on the walls--not just in chalk either. This was all, ahem, cleaned up over Thanksgiving break, but the next day there were all the posters again, though people at least didn't go back to straight up wall writing. Hell, someone brought an air mattress.

They are also ah, rioting downtown today, so that's fun. An alert was sent out to avoid driving on the freeway out of town... good luck with that. I didn't see it up close on the bus going home, but there's a long line of cars on every main road in the downtown area and a lot of cop cars and a helicopter overhead right now. Oh, for fuck's sake. What does blocking off the roads here do to stop the powers that be elsewhere from raising tuition?

I continue to think Occupy is well, ridiculous and not working. All it does is to annoy everyone around you (much as I hate to use the word, "your community"), but not the regents or anyone in power. It's STUPID PROTEST.

I saw an article that interviewed Napolitano and...

"UC President Janet Napolitano said in an interview with The Daily Californian that student protests are not the most persuasive way to garner the regents� attention. �When students come up and speak about their personal circumstance, or they have some data, or they have experience � those are very powerful ways to present the students� position,� Napolitano said."

Like I said in the blog entry, this reminds me of the book Don't Care High by Gordon Korman, a book that features all different kinds of protest. I should probably clarify the plot of this: it's the world's most apathetic high school. Two bored guys pick a random weirdo and get him elected student body president, then decide to make it look like he actually does things to improve the school. This actually impresses the apathetic student body. Once the administration figures out the guy had no idea he WAS student body president, he gets the boot....and then PROTEST ERUPTS. It's a lot of fun to read in the book, but....yeah, probably not so fun for the instructors.

One of the methods of protest was having one student stand up at the start of every class and giving a polite little speech saying that they hoped the student body president would be put back into office soon. I'm thinking that the smart thing to do here would be to have our locals give polite little speeches (or e-mails or whatever). Hell, the president SAID to, pretty much. Why not give it a go? Well, except for the part where people are kinda mouth-foaming crazy on this issue and they just want to vent and make noise and get on television again, it seems. Sigh.

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