8/22:

I have nothing much to say about today other than well, I tried something out magically and it worked. Namely, I was at the CC and Jed wandered by saying he’d lost his headphones and has anyone seen them. I got the bright idea, per the St. Anthony Jenny’s Purse story, to write an e-mail and send it to myself asking St. Anthony to find (a) Jed’s headphones and (b) a missing ball of yarn of mine I haven’t been able to find in months that I want to use in a project now. Not less than about 15-30 seconds later, someone found Jed’s headphones, and when I got home, I found that the yarn was in a bag for another project. SCORE!

I think I also need to try this on all the lost pet signs I see in the neighborhood when I walk around. Someone lost an orange kitten....

(Note: by the time I'm posting this on 9/8, it didn't work. The lost kitten signs have been updated to say that the kitten is still lost. Which makes me think the cat is dead.)

8/23:

Well, work was wonky today:

(a) Got an email from someone saying “Can you do X?” I sent her much evidence saying no, I can’t do X, X is no longer viable. She continued to harass me until I caved in and gave her X, because she has more power than I do. That was a fucking joy.

(b) Dawn told me a story about some woman who used to be a boss in her building and told people she didn’t like decorations or something like that. Some guy who was her best buddy printed out a ton of red panda pictures--apparently her favorite animal-- and somehow those were allowed to remain.

Completely coincidentally, I have now printed several photos of Tahoe and put them up in my office.

(c) I had to sit through a long bigwig meeting in which the #2 person here literally SHOWED HIS VACATION SNAPS FROM EUROPE for like 20-25 minutes. This was his entire presentation as the #2 here, and he tried to finish up with something like “if you want to do this thing, let me or the CEO know.” Uh, what?

When I got back to my office, they sent out a(n actually anonymous or else I would have said nothing) survey asking how the meeting went. I marked #2 as a straight up one out of five and when they asked why I gave it a low score, I said that when he posts his snaps from his European vacation this summer, when most of us can’t actually either afford financially or workwise to go on a nice vacation, made me feel...well, I said “terrible” but really wanted to say something like “it was tone-deaf” or “privileged much?”, and then said that if this was a business meeting, shouldn’t #2 have presented something business-ish, and if he had no business to talk about because he was on vacation, maybe he should have skipped having a presentation slot altogether?

Anyway, insert giant eye-roll here. I haven’t been so bored since I had to sit through my aunt and uncle’s photos of the terracotta warriors.

(d) Then I got a vicious forwarded on email from BigBoss (and cc’ing every bigshot here) from some snothead with a doctorate in the Midwest who wanted one of my big deal documents but I guess can’t figure out how to use Google, because instead he was calling random offices. He got one guy on the phone I have never heard of, in an office I have never heard of, and that guy gave him a link to order some other documents that presumably he found on our website. So Doctor Snothead proceeded to complain that he has to use a website to get it, says it is “quite difficult” (it’s not, it’s called “print and send your fucking form in, you moron”) to get one because he had to call people and spend a lot of money (note: he has not actually done any of this, and the documents aren’t actually all that expensive if you’re not buying a rush job. A lot of comparable businesses charge more than we are. It’s about the price of a new hardback book.) and THEN proceeded to bitch about California, and that he could get his documents from Minnesota instantly because he’s a big shot, and then bitched that California has poor hospitality and our people are dumb and broke, and maybe it’s a cultural issue of shitty Californians versus perfect Midwestern people.

Also, he can’t spell. I repeat: Mr. Big Shot Doctor misspelled some words in his bitchrant.

I immediately went to my supervisor to have her tell me what to write about this, and she was basically making snorting noises and being all, “I’m from the Midwest, and come onnnnnnnnnnn” about it. That was delightful. She told me not to apologize for shit that’s not my fault and I should be a queen bee diva about these things, but I really don’t think that would go over if I actually DID do that, y’know.

(Note: upon posting this much later, I never did hear back from the fucker. I guess he didn’t want it that bad, or that printing out a form is too haaaaaaaaard for a PhD.)

Yeah, I was ready to fucking leave by 4. I was so looking forward to tonight’s Earthquake Festival like mad.

I got over to Sarah’s house and Robert and Janene and I hung around the backyard while the kids ran around naked or close to it (“Hey, (kid’s name), let’s not be naked”*) and Sarah got them dressed and tried to figure out if she could get any of the strollers in shape enough (“The kids are used to spiders anyway”) to haul the kids in them, then eventually put one kid on his scooter and carried the other one. Sarah was kinda fried already. We ended up not hanging out with them much once we got there because the kids went to the bounce house and the adults went to look for food, and I believe Sarah and kids left early (they did not respond to the “where did everyone go?” texting).

* If the last kissing I’ve gotten was from Mark’s dog, the last live penis I’ve seen is now both of Sarah’s kids. FML, right?

I ran into various locals I know over there and got recognized for storytelling by someone at CASA, so that’s cool .Saw Pyrate Matthew, Robbin, Kaden, Pam, all briefly. Got introduced to some of Robert and Janene’s friends and hung out with them.=. Found another unicorn headband for Janene there (score!). Mostly just wandered around and ate for the first few hours, really. Never did find the supposed karaoke contest.

We attempted to pick Scott up from work around 6:30 and hung around there for a bit, but he didn't leave for awhile after that. Once he finally came out, we all hung out for about an hour-ish, discussing food allergies and anaphylactic shock and random nickel allergies (he also has one, which was discovered via...guitar strings? Well, there’s a random thing, and I guess it’s good I never tried acoustic guitar and only electric?), escape rooms and how theoretically we may all go to one sometime, giant bounce houses that Jackie told me about, genetic testing and finding out about relatives you never knew existed... And oh, all of them got into the play but me. They all got calls on Thursday. I have heard nothing, of course. They were surprised at that and I said you never hear anything if you’re rejected, that’s typical.

Janene got the hippie character I wanted-well, good for her, she was clearly better at it. Scott got the middle brother and not the one one would have figured, but Cody auditioned so he got that part and nobody would argue with that. Robert got the eldest brother. I’m not sure if they know exactly who got everything else but they had some guesses--Cory may have been cast as the youngest brother, Chris probably was cast as the mortician because Janene said he rocked it in the audition. I guess they will have to reconfigure the ages somehow.

Not much you can say to that. I didn’t do well and I’m not surprised and I don’t do well in competitions anyway. Scott was trying to be nice about it. Janene told me later that her day job is being a drama professor and that I actually read really well, so it’s not that I’m bad. That really helped. Probably woulda tackle hugged her for that one but we were in the middle of a street at the time.

So for various reasons I am into the chocolate wine upon getting home tonight.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry