I went back to the Harvest Festival today for about an hour and a half to finish up. I bought a few more things and I wore my Christmas light-up apron to show a few vendors. People seemed to really like it, though it got more notice once I turned the lights on.

Here's a California moment for you: as I was walking up to the building, a couple dressed up like Mr. and Mrs. Santa were playing "Let It Snow," outside. Hey, remember what the first few lines of that song are? "Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful." That has a sudden new horrible twist these days, doesn't it? Rather inappropriate! I was relieved later to see them playing inside, but unfortunately the front doors remained open the entire freaking time so I don't think that's great. The staff today had those masks, at least (the good ones people can't get). I felt sorry for the outdoor staff.

After that I went back to Barnes and Noble to do a book exchange and then drove back home and frankly, I think that amount of ick in the air was starting to get to me today. I think I'm going back to spending my time indoors come next week. I think that open building + my car not exactly being airtight (and it took half the day to get the AC to come on in there for some reason) wasn't helping.

Which reminds me, work is closed until the 26th! Huzzah!

I did get forced to check my work e-mail today (the super important e-mail I HAD to check was "those of you who can work from home, great, except btw, the main computer system is totally down and you can't use it...."), which I have been ignoring because there is nothing I can do about all of the panic and fear e-mails I get constantly. (Also, if you might have to go back to work the next day, it might get taken care of...but nope, not this week.) Sure 'nuff, there they were. I wrote back to the ones that weren't local explaining that we were closed until the 26th, I can't work from home and therefore I can't do anything to help them right now, apologize apologize for shit that ain't my fault.

For those of you wondering why I can't work from home, between my lack of printer/mail access and a general inability to log into the systems I need remotely (they're supposed to be available to do this, but they just don't freaking work when us clerical workers try to use them at home), the only thing I can do "from home" is read e-mail, and when 95% of my e-mail is "can you look this up for me" and the answer is NO, then uh....nope, can't work from home. This really isn't a job that you can or should be doing from home anyway though, so until now it hasn't been a problem (though if campus is closed and they said officially we're not supposed to be working...come on, guys). Also, I don't want to read all of the panic-and-fear when there is nothing I can do about any of it (and theoretically last week we might have been back the next day). I set up auto-notifications for my account saying why I can't help them right now, but sadly I can't do that for the general e-mail addresses I have to check, so argh there. Check the media, people.

I have received NO notifications about the missing packages I was supposed to be receiving during the closure, so knowing UPS they are probably all lost in a void from hell. It would be nice if UPS read the news today and just held all packages until the 26th, but UPS is generally chaotic evil so I doubt it.

I have decided to go home early on Wednesday--if rain is supposed to be kicking in Thursday and I still don't have the windshield wipers dealt with, I'd rather go to Mom's before that happens.

Okay, back to the rest of the day: in the afternoon I went to Tellebration, a free storytelling event that goes on nationally in mid-November. Most of the guests today were from the storytelling festival area in Petaluma--the guy that puts it on and what I am guessing are a few of his friends. Dave Pokorny used to do stand-up and told stories of being on the road doing stand-up, including one in which a woman he knew used to do 7 shots in a night on stage, except she'd pay the bartender to just pour her water after the first shot. Dave paid the bartender to give her real shots, because "never tell another magician your tricks." She waited until the end of the night to do all those shots once she did the second one! In his second go-round, he told the story of his brother-in-law dying of cancer and the non-coincidences that went on around his death.

The second one was former drama teacher Leslie Scatchard, who told a fable about a girl who thought she wasn't beautiful until she got a wig and false eyelashes and a lot of lipstick, until she met a guy who was fine with her without those. I liked the second story better, which was a real life one about getting in her first "adult" play at age 18 and wanting to come off as sophisticated. Escargot was served at dinner and while she managed to swallow one down without barfing, it got caught in her retainer...and she had to out herself as having had that happen to all the adults. Who thought it was hilarious. Now that's the kind of thing that would happen to me, so it's a good thing I never combined escargot with my own "'permanent" retainer back in the day.

Ed did a story about a preschool music program, teaching kids to learn how to scat, and then they performed with Manhattan Transfer (uh, is that the right name...?).

The third one was Neshama Franklin, who did a folk tale about a rakshasha (?) (not my favorite), but then did a real impressive one about having a one night stand with a professor when she was working at a college, having to get an abortion in Cuba because it was the 1950's, and then falling in love with her coworker after that.

At this point I must note that there was one fifth grader in the audience for this. She seemed unfazed by both this tale and what came next.

The fourth speaker was Tanner, who has previously been mentioned here as the guy with the idiot neighbors/roommate. He does one story and Ed invites him to be in this? Wow. Anyway, his first story was about getting a new phone number and realizing that the guy who previously had it was Not A Good Guy, given the nature of the phone calls he was getting. Dude hasn't paid his taxes and abused an ex-girlfriend, apparently. Recently, the bad dude has been made aware of this going on and his new phone number was passed on, and Tanner said he wasn't sure what to do about it--do I contact this guy out of curiosity or stay the heck out of it because he sounds very bad? He asked for advice about this, and I said to him afterwards, "you know, he does know how to call you," and he was all "ohhhh, hadn't thought of that." Maybe put the guy's new phone number in so that if he calls you, you know it's him, at least. I said I'd be conflicted between "interesting story" and "uh, dude isn't safe," but I'm a woman so you know what would win out there. We shall see, I guess.

After that, Ed asked Tanner to recount his story with the prostitutes again, which I am writing down for further posterity even though I suspect it will end up on YouTube. What it boils down to was:
(a) Doofy roommate and upstairs neighbor get into a fight because doofy roommate is one of those guys who thinks he should get n-word privileges. Upstairs neighbor has two misdemeanors and a PoC babymamma and objected to this.
(b) Tanner got high one day and went to a Jill Stein rally, at which Jill Stein herself did not even bother to show up. When he's leaving the rally, he starts getting very panicky messages from the doofy roommate begging him to come home.
(c) Upon coming home, they find a woman who's in distress about an injured cat that she probably hit with her car that she can't find. The obviously injured cat turns up and crawls into an open, abandoned car. The stoned dudes don't know what to do about this, but hey, look, here's some policemen, let's ask them!
(d) Doofy roommate was in a panic because a prostitute had come to his house and wanted to be paid. Doofy did not call for a prostitute. Police were called.
(e) Turns out upstairs neighbor likes to call for prostitutes as pranks on people, and did this to both doofy roommate and their even more upstairs neighbor because dude got the address wrong. Upstairs neighbor has apparently made the "blacklist" for Riverside prostitutes and it sounds like the local one vowed revenge upon him.
Upstairs neighbor has since been kicked out of school and is presumably "making friends" with the prostitutes in DC.

Once again, I found myself thinking, "Jeebus Christ, how fucking stupid are these people to get into this college they're at?!" Which has a fairly snooty reputation these days even if it ain't Stanford.

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