More work drama this morning, shocking, I know. The drama from yesterday of "We changed our program in 2018, didn't really tell anybody what was going on so much, and now we want you to redo everything for the last two years" continues. I had Surprise Meeting about it, during which Grandboss was coming in totally staticky and I couldn't understand a damn thing she said all day. Asking her about this did no good because she told me to put on a headset (um...no, it's definitely you, my boss was fine soundwise), so I had to pretend I was understanding her and jeebus christ, I could not. They are washing the entire building today as well*, so that's not helping, but my boss was coming in fine, it was just Grandboss being staticky as hell so I think it's something on her end. But I literally can't say that. And Coworker Sarah was having problems and wanted to go on Zoom and I couldn't, and....

Sigh.

* As for the building washing, they sent a notice saying to put a towel by the door--okay, fine, it wasn't too wet there-- but how the hell is my bathroom floor sopping wet when I haven't even taken a shower in a few days (shut up, I'm alone forever, why bother)? How the shit did this happen?

Added fun bonus: one of our younger employees--one of the ones who had to go into the office in order to work and a favorite of mine--is out for potential COVID-19. We literally can't afford to be short one person, they said. And apparently some other office is down to having one lone employee, so now we are getting their phone calls and got 178 phone calls in a day rather than the typical 80. Jeebus. What the hell is this office going to do if every public service team member working in the office comes down with it?

It sounds like Coworker Sarah is going to get the job--they only do one interview, picked her out of 60 people and want references as of two days after the interview. This NEVER happens at my giant org. I said the reason why she will get this job is Murphy's Law: what is the worst possible thing that can happen to me/this office? That she gets another job ASAP and I'm the only one left to train a stranger. I bet this will happen. Once again...happy for her, sad for me.

We're having bad news in this area: Jamba (Juice) is now closed because someone got it and we are having cases erupting all over the place. 26 damn outbreaks being investigated. Eight in this town, including athletics and "a retail establishment, a restaurant, two schools, a childcare facility, two manufacturers and five food-packaging worksites." Somehow my town still has the smallest number, but that'll change come fall. This article is a good one on the feeling of getting annoyed when people break the rules and are still fine...until, y'know, they're not.

I did this assessment today and I came out with a score of 1. I am literally the least at risk person you know, thanks to no human contact. But this wasn't fun to read: "We found data from Yolo County, CA for your zip code. This county has 526 confirmed cases out of a population of 220,500 as of 2020-06-30 , and we estimated that your county under-reports by a factor of 6x . This means there may be 3,144 actual (confirmed and unconfirmed) cases because many are untested or unreported." Then I tried looking up my mom's score and since that county's a lot worse, her score was 49.

On a not super related note, my bee-stung foot is still swollen as fuck, and ice packs and Benadryl haven't done shit for the swelling. However, it seems to take me about four days to have swelling go down from bug bite reactions of that nature and it swelled up on Sunday, so we're on day four. It's starting to look bruised and mottled, which is (weirdly enough) kind of a good sign for this stage. I assume it'll go down tomorrow, but if it's still bad after a week I might have to go deal with some telemedicine or whatever. As long as it doesn't start turning black or growing mold, it's probably fine. I do feel guilty for not doing 90 minute walks in the house the last 4 days though, especially on nights where I could have done it and wasn't doing much and then attempted to have brownies and ice cream for dinner. But it's not super fun to walk right now (not painful, just awkward moving that much), so fuck it.

During lunch, I watched "Author Pet Show," in which sci-fi authors showed their pets, including, of course, the becatted Seanan McGuire showing off the recently-not-dead Elsie, who nearly died two weeks ago. Once I had the time to write down the weird stuff, OMG:

"I used to live in a cage! Vote for me!" -Mike Chen on his rescue dog River.
Mallory O'Meara referred to her cats as "trash children." "What happens when he poops floss?" Also, one of her cats loves to be butt spanked. "On her chair,at the spanking station, waiting for spanks" in the middle of the night. And I'm not sure what this came from, but "I was not emotionally prepared for the worm coming out of the butt."
Chuck Wendig: "why should your pets win the pageant?" "They shouldn't, to be honest." He also cited near pet death and others not wanting them. I feel like a pity vote is going on?

Then they had a talent show: Seanan broke out a mealworm to feed to her axolotl. "And her talent today is NOT eating. She is profoundly stupid." "She has tried to eat the water and not the worm, twice." She ate it. Mallory tried to feed her cat garbage (i.e. a Post-It). The cat wouldn't eat it. Fonda Lee said she'd demonstration some of the things her dog THINKS roll over means. She started a rollover, at least. In the end, everybody won!

On the good news side, Linda is going to revise the Robin Hood play, cut people out, make parts bigger, etc. and asked me to be a lady-in-waiting (it will be expanded) and any other extras that come up. Rehearse on Sunday night. Huzzah! "I'm excited about having you be a part of this. You bring a lot of good energy and great ideas." Awwwww. Likewise, we have scheduled the reading of Kelly's women's suffrage play for a few Saturdays from now and have enough people to do it, huzzah. Shanna is excited.

I went to Story Studio's open tell again tonight (I missed June due to having other class) and there was a new host in there tonight, Amy. Oh my, Amy. One of those folks I would hit it off with right off the bat, as she had hippie decor (tie-dye wall decor, a hula hoop on the AC), flashy glasses, making cracks about living in a studio. There was another Jennifer in there--we made the requisite snark about having a popular name--and it turned out that Other Jennifer is the partner of Amy's dad, which she announced like "Jennifer's partner contributed half my DNA."

I did the butterfly story, which I admit is possibly not a story exactly, right now telling it is an experiment, hence the workshopping. Amy likes to ask how you feel about the story (it's an experiment) and said she used to work in a science museum with a butterfly garden and has had someone tell a story about how her SO was afraid of butterflies. I admit I think it is somewhere between actual story and anecdote at this point and not something I would tell at an event at this moment myself. She said some stuff about why am I this person who's so easily afraid of things? and I made a crack about years of therapy, but really it's because my parents are/were hairtriggers, and she said hers are too. So...more to ponder on the validity of this one.

Another lady told a story about how she was auditioning for commercials and teaching an extremely dull community college class, which she decided to liven up one night with a poem about an early death, which really set the students on fire, and one kid who never spoke was all, what about my homes all dying of AIDS? Now, the lady telling didn't try to do his accent or any particular imitation of him other than talking slow like he did, but to someone it kinda sounded like an accent, which led to a discussion of whether or not it is okay to imitate someone of another culture without people taking offense--some said it's your truth, you do you boo, others (Amy) said it might be offensive, especially right now. Amy was all, "We should have a Topics in Storytelling event! I wanna host it!"

The last guy of the night had invited several of his family members to see this, including a friend of his he mentioned in his story, which was about going to some kind of adult summer camp for singles and meeting his wife there. This was adorable, of course, but what was even more hilarious was that Amy--who has performed at RISK! and apparently did a story about an orgy--got very much obsessed with the idea that he went to adult swingers camp or nudist camp or orgy camp and just wasn't straight up saying so (y'know, in front of his relatives). "If it's a swingers club, just tell us it's a swingers club!" The aforementioned friend in the story (who also attended this adult camp) was all, "SOMEONE is stuck on this swingers party idea. I'm not saying who," and signed off on chat for the night with "I've got an orgy to go to."

That name is still following me around. Just saying.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry