Weather report:

We have been having flooding the last few days--the back end of town is straight up flooded out, so good luck going to the doctor over there, apparently! When I walked out the door this morning it was sunny and there was a double rainbow....and then it started pouring. It went back and forth on that sort of thing all day and at one point it HAILED, but I missed that one. I have been debating whether or not it is going to be dry enough/not totally deadly to go to Santa Cruz tomorrow, but I think I am going to risk it. I want to see Meg and if I’m missing a performance opportunity I want to not have wasted it, you know?

Today’s work drama:

I found out that another coworker is retiring. I mentioned that they were going to be down to one old timer left in scheduling? Well, now he’s retiring too! I found out by seeing he left his retirement documents on the printer. (Why am I always the one who finds everyone’s job hunting, salary letters, etc. on the printer? Folks, when you hit print, GET UP AND GO GET YOUR STUFF RIGHT AFTER YOU HIT PRINT.) I am bummed because I used to work with him when I got here and he’s secretly hilarious, which you’d never guess from meeting him because he is super quiet. I miss working with him because I hardly ever see him or get to talk to him since he went into scheduling. I’m sorry to see him go--and he hasn’t even announced it yet but it’s even sooner than his boss is going. Damn. 100% turnover in that unit now. I wonder how that is going to go? I feel sorry for those in the hiring process now (I’m told the 50% person might start in 3 weeks and the interviewing that New Girl will be in starts next week) because everyone interviewing/in the unit will be gone! Crazy! Not my problem, mind you, but I feel sorry for everyone dealing with it.

New Guy (er...I think I need to use a better name for him since I am mentioning him so much...let’s go with “GQ” since it’s a nickname of his and he dresses very nice) went home sick after a few hours--I was kind of concerned when he was trying to compliment my shirt but seemed to be having a hard time keeping his eyes open. He has “Dadurday” scheduled for tomorrow, so let’s hope that doesn’t go too badly if he’s sick!

New Girl told me about how her best friend got ditched on Valentine’s Day/her marital anniversary by her husband who wandered off to talk to some dude for hours. She went to her friend’s house and ended up staying there a long time and eating the anniversary dinner. New Girl also sent her flowers the next day. What a good friend...though husband is sounding not so great.

“UNACCEPTABLE!!” Girl from the other day is now getting what she wants. Whee. So overjoyed for her.

Other than that, my boss is generally very happy with me these days and was super excited when I plowed through a bunch of stuff that needed to get done ASAP. And she said that like her husband I apparently think so fast that I am ahead of other people (true). And we have been approved to start using the international mail company for this cycle! Am so thrilled. I drafted an e-mail to send to potential clientele--I guess for this go-round we will just e-mail people personally. This has to help our usual trainwreck mailing situations.

I forgot to mention that I did hear back about Gumbo, but all he said was that auditions would still be going on and in what room. He did not answer me as to what the theme was, nor did he reply to the question of “how are you directing 2 shows at once?” Nothing. Grrrr, argh. Well, if there’s “no theme,” I guess I can just do whatever for an audition. So...storytelling, I think. I wonder which story? Must ponder this.

I was listening to the Speak Up Storytelling podcast this week. Every week they have someone’s story played on it. This week’s featured a woman who straight up says that she and her family members somehow psychically communicate with each other. Matthew said that he’d advised the lady to maybe not say that in her story because it would alienate/lose certain people in the audience--basically if you go That Weird, it freaks some people out. His wife Elysha just totally LOST IT at him and got VERY angry at him for saying that and said it was very important to have in the story and how dare he say that.

So they asked for other people’s opinions on the topic and I immediately wrote them (again) to say that well, I totally see Matt’s POV on this because if you talk about the Weird Shit, you do alienate people who have not experienced The Weird Shit, and even though I live in NorCal and in general the area is more friendly than usual to Weird Shit Discussion, I still proceed with caution and so far haven’t really told any of my Weird Shit stories outside of improv practice (for those wondering, I told the story of I had a bunch of Sculpey genitalia left over after a Beltane party that nobody picked up after 2 years, so I decided to distribute them throughout the arboretum. They went very quickly.). But at the same time I agree with Elysha that if the lady wants to tell that and take the risks, then it’s up to her. Matthew wrote me back to say that from the mail he was getting, everyone else was saying about the same thing.

I did finally get to meet and hang out with the professor! So that has happened.

Hm, what does one say about this...

So years ago when I was meeting L (the friend of mine who eventually moved to England), for whatever insane-o reason I mentioned having a cauldron around the first or second time I met her. Why did I do this? I do not know. I had no idea on her religious ilk or whether or not that sort of shit would faze her* and yet it wandered out of my mouth anyway. Now clearly it did not since she proceeded to hang out with me for the rest of her time here, but even then in retrospect I was kind of like “erm, why did I do that?”

Now multiply the cauldron remark by a few more even weirder things (see above)... I don’t know why I decided to bust out “I’m a pagan and weird shit happens” stories, but there I went. I mentioned a lot of weird shit. Like “stuff too weird to mention in the blog” level of shit. Why? WHO THE HELL KNOWS, THINGS JUST COME OUT OF MY MOUTH SOMETIMES. (Let’s not get into how I said “you can’t fix stupid people” during the Lean Six Sigma meeting this week, though my boss only talked to me about that one for a few minutes. Yeah, I know, it’s bad, I just meant that sometimes everyone does stupid shit and has brain farts, which was the thing brought up in this case.)

I don’t think any of the weird shit I spouted fazed her, mind you. When you both start out the conversation mentioning how most guys you meet are normal and boring, well, one can certainly say I am not dull (unless I am trying to hide in a corner in certain situations, anyway). But I’m still kinda like “well, that got weird” at myself later. She mentioned maybe trying to go to a movie later on, which would be good. I don’t know when that would happen since she’s very busy and I will hopefully be doing Gumbo rehearsals soon myself, but we shall see.

Other things discussed: public transport, our insane weather (see above), theater stuff, the Han Solo/Princess Leia bouquet I got yesterday, whether or not book clubs actually discuss books at them or just drink, blogging, coworker drama.

And after that, I went to go see Cherry Pie Improv. The campus now has TWO improv teams, something I continue to think is very shocking since when I was in college they had none and couldn’t even maintain a class in it. Birdstrike is the older team, but Cherry Pie was having a free show and what the heck. I don’t think I quite like them as much as Birdstrike somehow (something people walking out ahead of me were also saying), but I did like some things.

* They had bad personal ads for themselves on a slideshow when you entered.
* The show started out with a long discussion of whether or not a girl should break up with someone named “Karlene” (or “Charlene,” or any other name ending in --lene because everyone said different things) because of her Cheeto fingers, and various people in the show spoke up as fellow exes of the girl. The guy video blogging himself was the most memorable in that.
* They played the “world’s worst” game in which they took suggestions and had to come up with examples of stuff like “world’s worst mailman” and “world’s worst SpaceX slogan.” I liked that bit better.
* They played that “Apartment A, B, C” game (kind of a Harold in itself really) featuring people raising chickens, two ‘princess” types, and a man sized Gummy. I have no explanation for that last one.
* They had a game in which two people go on a date and the audience decides while they are out of the room facts about them (jobs, who their exes are, what they want in life) and then someone has to pantomime behind them what these things are. That was pretty funny.
* They had some game called “Exits” I was not that into in which they’d just switch to a different scene.

So that was all right. I saw one Birdstriker in the audience. There was also some weird dude next to me taking sneaky pictures from the side of some girl at the end of the aisle--wtf was that all about?

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