Chaos Attraction

Keep Being Awesome

2013-07-13, 10:44 p.m.

Well, it's been an interesting day.

I found out that a pendulum class (and a few other lectures I was pondering attending) were being held at a hippie store in Sacramento today. Amazingly enough during the summer, I was able to rent a Zipcar on Friday so that I could go to it the next day--Zipcar is not typically a "rent a car tomorrow" sort of thing what with the usual demand and all. I have also started reading this book series that I totally got addicted to on book 2 and was unable to find the rest of the series in town, but Barnes and Noble had all of them, so I figured I had time to drive over there and pop in and get the books and then go to the hippie store. Though, uh....

Happily, this time the car had a key in it so I could drive the sucker. It was a very new car with very sensitive controls--I'll admit that really easily hit controls kind of scare me to drive, but eh, I've done it before. What was kind of not so good was its air conditioning. I had it on as high as it could go, and technically speaking it was blowing cold air...on my right hand and that was kind of about it. Which made the car kind of boiling. I have high heat tolerance, but even I will have a bit of an issue with a hot car being driven around in daylight hours in the summer.

And....there was the worst traffic jam I have ever driven in. I've been in about one traffic jam before (going to Redding there was a bit of one for awhile), but hoo boy, this was crowded and slooooow and was pretty much crawlng for about 90% of my drive to Sacramento. It probably didn't help that I was driving to Arden first...which is the same direction as the state fair...which opened this weekend.... And it was still crawling on that side when I was going home around 3:45. I just e-mailed L to let her know that may be something to watch out for tomorrow when we actually go there.

I normally would be delighted to go slow on the freeway, but this was pretty claustrophobic feeling, and for most of the way there there was a giant monster truck literally hovering on my tail. Seriously, why do the biggest trucks tailgate so fucking bad? I was really surprised that truck didn't hit me at any point. I was feeling fairly stressed out and less crazy comfortable driving--which is probably a good thing, I need more paranoia so that I am safe about it! It was a good thing I booked more time to get over to Sacramento than I normally would have.

I was planning on going to two lectures, but by the time I got to Arden at 1:10 (lecture was at 1:30), I figured my "quick run in and get books and then go" would probably not work so well.

So instead I went to DSW and spent a fair chunk of money on replacement sandals because a third of the way through the summer, I'm starting to wonder how long the ones I am using now will hold up--the elastic looks like it's about to keel over on both pairs. So it was probably a good thing I took time out to do that--the shoe shopping where I live boils down to "the super expensive store" or Target. And then I went to B&N and got the rest of that book series. Which is going very well on book 3 and check the book blog later for more info on that.

Then I went to the hippie store for the pendulum talk. It was interesting--I've attempted to do that sort of thing in the past and got nowhere, so it was nice to get some tips on how to do it properly. The talk was only a half hour--which yeah, was kind of short for it, but on the other hand, given how worried I was about the traffic and whether or not I'd have to book more time on Zipcar to get home, it was probably a good thing I left the store about 45 minutes before having to get it back rather than the usual 30. The traffic going back was less bad--there is usually a slowdown when you're getting onto the causeway and this time it was worse than usual, but I still got the car back with time to spare. Then I hiked my boiling hot ass home and took a shower before going to the party tonight.

I was supposed to have theater tickets at Woodminster this weekend, but I asked Mom to move them so that I could go to Jan (one of the two CC managers)'s retirement party tonight. (And Weird Al tomorrow.) It was definitely worth it. It was kind of a CC reunion with all kinds of folks who have departed working at the CC but still live in the area (except for the dude who came up from San Diego) popping in. I actually didn't know like maybe a third of the party there, but the folks were nice, because the CC folks are always nice. One of our City Council dudes is apparently married to an ex-CC manager. He's always seemed like a nice dude when I've seen him around the neighborhood, and he was nice at this party too. Glad I voted for him!

There was a ton of food, as CC folks do. There was a craft table where you could sign quilt squares for Jan--and there were, no joke, face masks of Jan being made at this party. Most of us put them on and there were many amusing group shots of this. We were also supposed to wear CC shirts (well, that happened with a fair chunk of people). I wondered if any of them would be repeated since there are so many shirts that us long-term folk have. I wore my favorite, "Just Another Tie-Dyed, Henna-Tattooed, Craft Center Employee" shirt--two other folks wore it too because it was their favorite shirt. And we told the story of how it came about to those who were not here then--a campus newspaper reporter came to one of our parties to do a story on the new lampworking setup and described us all as looking like that. I was at this party and can tell you that the volunteers were not bedecked in either substance, not even me. So naturally, the next party we held involved tie-dying those shirts and henna painting on ourselves. Meanwhile, Jan and another lady were wearing the same "Birds Of A Feather Flock Together" CC shirt, and were wearing similar pants, and have similar glasses...so there were some amusing photos of that taken as well.

There was a brief "roast" moment, though nobody could really come up with much to roast her about since she's so nice and awesome. I think the worst said about her was that she tended to burn popcorn. We told stories of CC parties then and now, and heard about the "snake board" (it's basically a wiggly skateboard and looks incredibly dicey to ride) that Jan has and how they used to make all the student managers learn how to ride it. Later on, former manager Sue tried it out to see if she can still ride it--she can, and told us the secret. "When you turn your feet in, your hands have to go out, and vice versa. Just do that back and forth." Well, better you than me....

I had a good time talking to folks. I talked to one former manager for probably 2 hours or so--I'd been missing having conversations with him because he always used to be around, I think we pretty much made up for it tonight. Hopefully I have talked him into coming to hang out there again in the future when he has time off from work. It's sad when people leave, but it's nice when the locals reunite.

I asked Jan if we were likely to see her around in the future, and she said yeah, she planned on coming in from time to time. Maybe more during the nights than the daytime though so as to not wig out the current staff or anything. I said come by at night, you weren't around that much then usually and it's a fun time. Hopefully she will.

It was a good night, full of awesome. Which was also Jan's signoff for the night: "Keep being awesome."


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