Chaos Attraction

Went To LA, Got A Tattoo, Met The Devil

2019-05-14, 10:26 p.m.

Today one of my coworkers*--the one that is on the front counter the most (pretty much all day except for breaks and lunch--she’s asked to be moved off of this whenever we hire someone new)--said that her stomach hurts and she can’t sleep 5 nights a week due to job stress. And she’s a natural extreme early bird--those people NEVER say they can’t fall sleep in my experience. Between that and her being in whatever anonymous program(s?) and saying last week she wanted a drink.... this is bad.

* I should probably come up with an alias for her since she has a distinctive enough name for Google that I won’t mention it here and she will be moving into our office space, but the most likely alias has already been used here with someone else in the same situation, so...I dunno yet.

I admitted that minus the stomach hurting, I’ve been feeling like that since January 2013. My other officemate was all, “How do you deal with that?!” I’m all, “I have no choice because I cannot get any other jobs. It’s this or die homeless. What else am I supposed to do?” And I have given up on job hunting because it’s just not working and I’m tired of trying to find what doesn’t exists. Other coworker still wants to fight. I wish her good luck on that.

But as usual, what are you gonna do? She went to our boss and I forget exactly what she said the boss said but I suspect it was something like “don’t take it personally” and probably really boils down to “there’s nothing really we can do to make the stress better.”

This office likes to go on and on about healthiness and having a health committee and whatever, but what it really boils down to is you have to take care of you because there’s nothing we can do to make anything less horrible. Which is true, but also makes me angry and not inclined to join the health committee even though I do some of their stuff on my own.

About ten minutes into the day/after this conversation, we found out that the building was being evacuated for a “funny smell.” (My nose is dead, don’t ask me.) I found this amusing because yesterday I’d found some article about a building being evacuated for a funny smell and it turned out to be that someone had thrown out durian. Though in our case, they never found out what the smell was other than “it’s not toxic!” We stood around outside for an hour while the higher-ups took off and various people that were not us snuck off for food. By the time we got permission to go get food and come back...never mind, we can go back into the smelly building and work again. The building still smelled apparently, but at least they fixed the fire alarm!

That’s just typical.

I did have an interesting discussion on happiness with my therapist based on the lectures from the weekend, on how early birds and Nigerians seem to be happier than others (her theory is that folks in Nigeria are taught to be), I forget what all else.

Someone from the office across the hall brought in her dying pet rat that she’d just brought back from the vet. We immediately called our animal-loving coworker to snuggle the rat, and she mentioned that she used to let a rat run around on her shoulder/in her hair back in the day.

I asked Vera how much tie-dye she ended up tying and she said she’d have to count it because she wasn’t sure, but she had it all laid out and was happy to look at it, wore some to work and warned her boss there was more to come. Aww.


As for rehearsal, we had our first dress rehearsal and went through the entire show tonight! Finally, because lord knows that’s never happened before. It is long. And probably longer if we are waiting for people to eat and stuff like that.

Cameron continues to have priceless dress snark. She is sending “blackmail” photos of herself to all her friends. “I’m sending my own blackmail material to everybody.”
Other quotes:
“Very trashy, which is nice. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.” -Cameron
Cameron’s brother’s reaction to the dress: “Are you the Tooth Fairy?”
“We’re all playing against type around here.” (As I’m saying that my outfit is classy and tasteful and boring.)
“They’re going to come off. But it’s okay, they’re trashy anyway.” -Cameron on the rhinestones on her fishnets.

As Cameron waited for the other bridesmaids to show up and wasn’t enjoying feeling so alone in the outfit, Valentin offered to wear the dress: “I’m willing to take one for the team. It’s not the first time wearing a dress. Or in general.”

Other observations:
So people can see the food fight going on, I am to direct people to line up for food at the FAR side of the building, not the end closest to the stage where the bridal party will be throwing things.
Father Mark forgot the bingo price, chucks Johnny on the chin.
How come Donna and Connie are chewing gum but Mrs. V only ever notices it when Donna does it? I asked and Cameron says they have wondered as well, maybe she’s just too distracted by Donna going first and doing it to not notice that Connie also is.
As Father Mark is going on about how Tony will someday bail on dinner to go out with the guys, there was muttering of “Lovely” and “Asshole.”
Manny/Barry wasn’t there that night and he’s supposed to break up a fight at one point. I commented that Barry wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
Mrs. V wants to dedicate her song to a a man, Nunzio thinks it’s him.
During Vinnie’s standup act, I both yelled and broke out my whistle to try to stop him.
Vinnie is giving me and Tony the evil eye when I dance with him during the Dollar Dance.
I chatted with Joey about the joys of being a wedding caterer and he said he’d be interested in my book of wedding stories. ME TOO.
Mark took the garter off with his teeth, did a fakeout of throwing it out. Tonight Grandma and Joey caught the items.
Mark fell out of his chair

Out of character quotes:
“You’ll be back...” -Mark’s reaction to hearing that Sierra is seeing Hamilton tomorrow night.
Linda said she’d fill in for Sister. “You look kinda nunnish...” -Nancy
“I’m wondering about the darned food fight, guys.” -Linda
“I remember having bread fly by me.” -Nancy on when she saw the show.
The men’s room is closed, leading to some commentary about whether or not men will pee in the sink in the ladies. “If you pee in the sink, please rinse it out. Have some dignity.” -me.
Linda told That70’sScott to stick to the script and his response was, “A script is just a suggestion” and “I’ve gotten by without a script for 35 years.” Later... “Oh yeah, I just read the stage directions. I’m doing what the director said.”

In character quotes:
I’m supposed to now give Nunzio the shot glasses. “She can run but she can’t hide.” -Nunzio
““How do you acquire love?” -Tony “ATM!” -Marina
When Donna sings about a dude being cryptic during Hot N’ Cold, Dom flips the bird and yells, “How’s this for cryptic?”
Why did Dom kiss Sister? “I FIXED IT.” He seems to be trying to break her crush on him?
“I’m not laughing, you’re laughing.” -Tony as he and Tina make up.
“I get to sing!” Vinnie finally reads the end of the script. (Linda doesn’t want him to.)
Mrs. V got Tony a gift. “Is it lingerie for me?” (It was a nice sculpture of a couple. We may gift it to Linda later.)

As for karaoke...we didn’t get there until after 10 and didn’t have too many come along except for Robert, Brian and Yarn Empire Scott. This kind of turned into a “guy’s table” and “girl’s table” situation because the guys sat next to some theater-adjacent (or so I’m told) people that also do karaoke and love tie-dye (guess what I talked to them about) and ... Sarah was in, along with her roommate, at a table a bit farther away. After realizing that she’s not really IN the play, she dropped out and then skipped off to LA, got a tattoo, and met the devil.

It should probably be pretty telling that this didn’t even faze me.

While I cannot say for sure if this dude was the devil or not, he sounded strange, I think he went by the name of “Lament”(?) and after that encounter they saw a giant sign that said “JESUS SAVES.” Sarah said that when she’s mentioned this to other people they had no reaction whatsoever. Meanwhile I’m all, “this reminds me of the time when a former friend met a guy at the hippiecon who told her she’d teach voodoo someday and she was horrified but did actually end up doing that.” Because she was raised Catholic, it turns out Haitian voodoo has a lot of elements of Catholicism, a lot of Haitians were wiped out in the hurricane so someone’s needed to teach about it... yes, I went to that lecture out of curiosity.

Anyway, Sarah said we are still friends even if she disappears. And probably won’t make the show this weekend (she could theoretically be at it since she runs the bar at the venue) because she has a baby shower in Monterey to go to on Saturday. I pointed out that Monterey is not as long of a drive as she thought it was, so it might be doable to make it at least 1-2 days of the show. We shall see, but I am lowering expectations on that. It’d be nice if she made it at least once, y’know?

She was also wearing a “Total Eclipse of the Heart” T-shirt under her sweater, which she showed to me. This immediately decided for me what I was singing at karaoke tonight. I also ah, decided to dedicate my song to her shirt, which made her go ‘aaaah, I’m going to have to take off my sweater?” Even though I didn’t exactly think she was the sort to be fazed by that, and later she said she wasn’t (and indeed, the sweater was off by the time I finished). This went over well with the general public, or at least Mah People.

It was some bartender’s goodbye party that night and there were various amusing balloons blown up (and confetti) about this, and a banner that said “Adios Bitchachos.” Sarah kept saying she wanted it, and Sarajean looked it up and it was bought on Amazon, Sarah said she was boycotting Amazon (it sounds like she boycotts the Internet in general, really, which is an interesting life choice at her age, which I think is 31 or so), so I dunno how she’s gonna work that one!

I was amused when the last song of the night, done by Matthew the Pyrate, was “Right Here Waiting,” one of the audition songs of the play (which seems to have been cut out at this point). I told him the whole story of how that went with me!

I did ask Robert and Sarah together (since as far as I’ve been able to determine, seem to be karaoke diehards) if this sort of thing was still going to continue even if rehearsal wasn’t going on, and they essentially said yes and to text them if I wanted confirmation that someone else was going before I hauled ass out here for nothing but karaoke. So we shall see.


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