| Wednesday September 11, 2002 -- 8:00pm Somebody please explain this to me: A web page has received a total of 2 hits. I check to see what page the 2 hits had been accessed from. It tells me that 54% came from the Other Writing page. If there are only 2 hits, and they came from different sources, wouldn't that be 50% from one and 50% from the other? I don't know. Math wasn't really my strongest subject. I spent the day on a sailboat, observing educational programs. It was pretty nice, but - as far as my role goes - pretty pointless. Jake or Angie should have gone instead. Before we left, el jefe made it a point to look at us like we were naughty children and say, "You're on your own for lunch you know." He's talking about taking away the unnecessary expense of our water cooler. I think I will tell him that we need our water cooler because, since he took away our postage machine, we have to lick all our own envelopes. On the sailboat, we saw a giant blue crab. I would have tried to sneak it back for Jake if it hadn't been so very dead. (Actually, it would probably be easier to sneak a dead crab than a live one, but we already have a dead one.) Tuesday September 10, 2002 -- 7:45pm Our new second floor neighbors smoke. I know this because, instead of smelling like a wet dog, our hallway now smells like a wet dog on a pack a day. -- 9:45am Heh. Just had a bad moment in which I accidentally deleted everything on this page. Luckily I have already had some coffee this morning and had the presence of mind necessary to retrieve it. I thought I was going to have to sleep in my car after Wing Chun last night. Sifu wasn't there so Bernie, the most senior student as far as I can tell, ran class. We all worked on Siu Lim Tau, which means that I could barely walk by the time I left. I wasn't sure I was going to make it up to the 3rd floor. Monday September 9, 2002 -- 8:45am Ok. So it's September 9th. Almost September 11th. I haven't been watching the news, or listening to it on the radio. I've carefully avoided the magazines and the conversations. I didn't lose anyone that day. I wasn't in the city. Nevertheless, I have found myself feeling highly emotional in a somewhat un-Deana-like way. I hadn't been planning to comment on it, and I'm sorry if you are September 11thed out, but I wanted to share these stories. They make me cry, but more in a bittersweet way, thinking about how beautiful people can be. To really understand the magnitude of these stories, you'd really have to go to Newfoundland and experience how small the towns are, how an influx of even 1,000 people could have been a challenge. But 5 or 6 times that amount?!? There is some good left in the world. -- 7:45am Good morning! And welcome to my Day Off! *sighs with blissful relief* The next time I buy a coffee maker, it is going to have two very important features. 1. It will be of the variety that stops brewing when you remove the carafe. Whoever came up with that was a genius. 2. It will have a timer, so I can use the smell of already-made coffee to bribe myself out of bed in the morning. I had nightmares about Audrey Rose last night. I would like to dedicate them to my mother, who always thought I was reincarnated from someone who had died a horrible death. Only, in the dream, Audrey Rose was Spanish and the hypnotist and the mom were screaming, "No hablas Espanol!" Very odd. It really does make me happy when someone signs the guest book. Pandaba would not lie to you. While I'm on the subject, I don't get the whole Hello Kitty thing. Obviously I have a strange fixation with Pandaba and Bad Batz Maru, but I don't understand the whole phenomena. Hasn't Hello Kitty been around for ages? What's with the new resurgence of interest? And what is it anyway? Is it some kind of Japanese cartoon? Comic book? Marketing device? And what, exactly, is Bad Batz Maru? I get that Pandaba is a panda, Pochoco is a dog, Hanamaru is a seal of all things. But Batz? Is he a bat? A crow? An owl? These are the sorts of things I think about. If you have any information regarding this very important subject, please let me know. Sunday September 8, 2002 -- 8:30pm What the hell did I do today, anyway? I have nothing to show for the past 24 hours. When I arrived at the museum this afternoon, I found the supervisor and all 4 youth staff sprawled out across the 3rd floor. One was laying on top of a table. Another was in the hollowed out log. It looked like a massacre. But really it was just everyone completely goofing off. Erg. -- 12:35pm I'm such an unbelievable doofus. I hate that about me. Also, I wish I didn't have to go to the museum this afternoon. -- 10:15am My addiction to caffeine is teetering dangerously on the border of Pathetic these days. For some ungodly reason, our household actually ran out of coffee on Friday. Please understand, we have run out of butter, sugar, flour, even toilet paper, and every other staple at least once in our 3 years here, but we have never run out of coffee before. So does Deana buy any yesterday? No. Of course not. I think I was actually standing in line at Dunkin Donuts within about 15 minutes of getting out of bed this morning. But it's ok now because I picked up a pound of hazelnut while I was there. Phew. I spent the day yesterday trying not to slip into a coma at work. There were not a lot of visitors yesterday, but a surprising percentage of them were insane. One was a carpenter who seemed to be in actual physical pain after examining the walls to our new holding room. He spent 10 minutes complaining about mysterious carpenter things that no one is actually going to ever know about once the exhibit is complete. I'm glad Jake and Angie weren't there because they probably would have hit the guy over the head with a flounder. I think I may have wrangled the use of some scaffolding out of him though, which would be cool. This guy was actually very nice, but he wanted me to let his 18 month old daughter hold a Ball Python. Sorry buddy. Oh, and a Bearded Dragon went berserko on me during one of the animals shows. Now I look like I had a suicidal fit (which I didn't, by the way). Saturday September 7, 2002 -- 5:30pm "You are getting very sleeeeeepy." Oh no wait. That's me. Friday September 6, 2002 -- 10:15pm Yippee! I had a phone conversation with Joe this evening in which he informed me that one of our more hysterical educators discovered one of our animal care educators "in fetal position" on the floor of the animal nursery this afternoon. They suspect food poisoning or salmonella from the reptiles. Regardless, guess who gets to go in and do animal shows tomorrow. You got it! I can't tell you how excited I am to get up early on a Saturday morning to go handle possibly salmonella-infested reptiles all day. -- 1:00pm Poor Joe took a call from someone wanting to know "the full name of our museum." This is Joe's end of the conversation, which I overheard. (Museum name changed to protect, well, my job I guess.) "The full name of the museum is The BlahBlah Museum. The... BlahBlah... Museum. The. The! Yeah, ok. (long pause) Hi. Ok. The... BlahBlah... Museum. No! THE! THE! T...H...E! THE! (begins to laugh somewhat hysterically) You know what? Just put 'BlahBlah Museum!'" I decided at that point that it was time to leave for the day. Kat's replacement seems ok. (Of course, no one could ever really replace Kat.) We asked her to tell us about herself and she basically said something to the effect of, "I'm doing this because I need to make some money while I figure out what I really want to do, and this seemed more interesting than filing." It's interesting all right! -- 8:10am Today we meet Kathleen's replacement. El jefe was the only one involved in the hiring of this person so, obviously, I am somewhat concerned. Yesterday, Joe announced that one of the candidates "had a 2x4 up her ass." The director replied, "Well, I've hired someone." We all sat in horrified silence for a moment, but luckily it wasn't this one he had hired. Thursday September 5, 2002 -- 9:00pm I feel like pretending I don't have to work tomorrow and just staying up all night, getting red-eyed in front of the computer and listening to music that will offend the delicate sensibilities of the neighbors. In an act of unabashed nepotism, I have added a link to my cousin's band [link dead... hmm... maybe I should call home!] to the Music Links page. My cousin is the guitarist with the long blonde hair. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but in high school he told me he had to quit the football team because the helmet stuck to his hairspray. It was the '80s. Go easy on him. -- 8:00pm Dee had an epiphany regarding the blender tonight. She said, "It's just amazing. I mean, you put a whole bunch of different things in, and it chops them up and mixes them all together for you!" Hmm. Major Accomplishments for Today: - controlled myself in the presence of chocolate cake - bought a new box of my favorite Band-Aids - filled my prescriptions before running completely out of medication - introduced an 18 month old to the wonderful world of Scotch tape Incidentally, if you park illegally in the museum's parking lot, you should be forewarned that I have very few socially acceptable outlets for my aggression. Having your car towed is one of them. -- 7:30am I am getting sick of the blue background on this page. I think it's time for a change, don't you? My friend (and former co-worker) Kathleen has directed the readers of her site here for their museum madness fixes. Oh my God, the pressure!!!! Kat really cornered the market in that area. I'll do my best. :) Speaking of which, I have been awarded (?) a work-study student from RPI. His name is Dan, and he's a Boy Scout. |
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