| Wednesday August 21, 2002 -- 2:50pm Bad People: Send invitations to people for events happening 2 days from now, assuming I have nothing better to do on a Friday evening but watch kids I don't know graduate from some hokey anti-smoking program. (It might be true, but at least give me the benefit of the doubt.) Good People: Make coffee and leave lots for me. Monday August 19, 2002 -- 7:30pm I am entirely too excited to go to work tomorrow and see if the slime experiment was successful. I am feeling oddly healthy tonight, both mentally and physically. Maybe this is because there is a very young boy outside thrashing the hell out an old tree stump with a golf club and I am making a comparison. There was a lot of bad news waiting for me at work this morning. I knew the baseball thing was going to be a disaster no matter what, but it probably wouldn't have made us look quite so bad if I'd managed to show up. Sadly, at about the time I was supposed to show up, I was in my bed with a fever, crying because I am a huge baby when I am sick. This just goes to prove, oh Idiot Director, that two weeks is not enough time in which to effectively plan an event, given the other two full time jobs I am trying to cram into a 40 hour week. It's ok though. I got my revenge by writing a letter to the Board from the staff about the ridiculousness of not fixing the HVAC system. Fish are dropping like flies (which drop at a faster rate than fish). Joe described it as, "left-handed." I'm sure el jefe won't actually read it to the Board. It was still satisfying to write. My, this is one very angry little boy. Bennett is watching him with a great deal of interest. Picking up pointers, maybe. Bennett has been supplying me with an unusual amount of puncture wounds lately. Sunday August 18, 2002 -- 8:30am Despite having only gotten 4 hours of sleep, I was convinced that it would be a good idea to go up to the track for the afternoon. We do this once a year. It's completely frivolous, but oddly fun. I have never liked to make bets on anything, but when I go to the track, I like it. I pick my horses based on their names, or on the likelihood that they will lose. So yesterday I started with $25 and left with 52 cents. (Now you understand why I only go once a season.) Mostly, I enjoy the excitement of other people, who have put real money into their bets. They are nuts. My favorite bad bet yesterday was in the final race. The horse's name was "Tumble Twice," which couldn't possibly be a good sign. The odds were fairly outrageously against him. Something like 1 in 32 by the time the race started. It was only his 3rd race ever, and he'd come in 8th and 5th in the previous 2. When they walked him on the track, he kept turning perpendicular to it and trotting sideways. I had faith in him. He came in last. Hehehe. The most interesting race was the one in which one of the favored horses stumbled coming out of the gate and threw its rider. The rider was uninjured, luckily. The horse kept running and came in first. It didn't count of course, but it got me wondering about the horses and how they feel about all of it. I mean, it was freaking hot. That horse could have said, "To Hell with this nonsense," and stopped, but it ran as fast as it could and just kept going until it crossed the finish. I wonder if, in being raised for this, they develop a sort of desire to win. Or if they just like running really fast. Friday August 16, 2002 -- noon It's one of those days in August when toweling off from a shower leaves you sweatier than you were before the shower. I am planning to move myself to any air conditioned location very soon. Albany has been entertained by fantastic 15 minute hurricanes over the past few days. The first tried to take out the International Food Festival on Wednesday afternoon. 70 mile an hour winds ripped through the Plaza and carried off tents, food, and merchandise. Albanians are tough, and frequently drunk, so the festival went on as planned, once the wreckage had been carted away. Last night I was waiting around in the museum for it to be time to leave for an outreach program when another mini-hurricane plowed through, hurling rain against the building and knocking down trees. The museum lost power for about 1/4 second. Apparently this is all it takes to wreak havoc on Troy's traffic lights. When I left for home, at about 9pm last night, I found myself involved in a traffic adventure. At the end of the street the museum is on is an intersection that is challenging enough on a regular day. At the end of our street you find yourself at a traffic light, and bombarded by 65 mile an hour traffic coming off 787, traffic barreling up and down a major city road at about 50 miles an hour, and traffic building up speed to get on 787. To get home, I must wait for a green light and turn left across all of this, and against on-coming traffic from the other side of 8th Street. Last night the traffic lights had become stuck. The only lanes that had the green lights were the on and off ramps to 787. Even at 9pm, traffic is heavy here. Eventually it became clear that I was going to have to take my life into my hands, turn left against 5 lanes of speeding drivers who were oblivious to the sitution, and just hope for the best. I thought I was home free when I successfully completed this manouever, but when I finally got onto 787, the traffic was at a dead stop. They've been working on 787 - repaving it - which is a good thing. However, last night they had narrowed its drivable section down to the right shoulder. I drove at about 35 miles an hour from Troy to Menands. Needless to say, even though it was approximately 5,000 degrees in our apartment, I was glad to get home. Wednesday August 14, 2002 -- 2:45pm I don't expect to have children, and I don't believe in an afterlife. I intend to achieve immortality through the differences I am able to make in the lives of the kids I work with. So, if you are the chaperone of a group of behaviorally challenged teens, please don't make me stand there pretending to feel really bad when one of your unsupervised kids picks a fight with one of my kids. Chaperone them! Geez! Sometimes I wish I wasn't so afraid of making unimportant people mad at me, and that I didn't value my job quite so much. I wish I was the type of person who could say things like, "Well, your student must have really crossed the boundaries to upset So and So to the point where she'd get in a physical altercation, because she is a terrific kid and I know for a fact that she is able to walk away from most stuff. And I just love the model you have presented for your kids. Could you please yell at me a little more?" Come to think of it, I could have said most of that, in a non-aggressive way, and I'd be feeling much better about the way I handled today's situation than I do now. I just don't think quickly and aggressively enough. I go into automatic Customer Service Mode and just say whatever I have to to make the customer happy. I'm such a wimp. Tuesday August 13, 2002 -- 3:15pm Well. It is always comforting to come in to work on the day of your job review and find not one but two complaints in your email about the staff you are supposed to be supervising. Not even about the same things! It's even better when one of them is from your boss, who is the one reviewing you. That was how my day started at 7:45 this morning. The review was fine though. Joe complimented me and made me feel better. He supported my decision to change my hours to make me more available for the youth. Now I just have to get past the director. The temperature in our new fish tanks changes by up to 10 degrees in a given day due to our uncontrollable air conditioning. Any guesses on how good this is for the fish? If anyone out there has a few thousand dollars they would like to donate to a very nice not-for-profit, please let me know. 8:00am My day is off to a remarkably lousy start, but I take comfort in knowing that 101 stolen gnomes were recently found by a mushroom hunter in France, in the woods, in circle formation. Heh heh. (What kind of gun do you use to hunt mushrooms?) Monday August 12, 2002 -- 2:30pm Well, back to the real world today, after a really terrific weekend in CT with the museum kids. They had such a great time. It made it worth the lack of sleep and complete absence of coffee. I am home early from work, due to an excess of hours and some aggravation. I don't want to go into it. I am currently washing stuffed animals from the museum in the machine downstairs. I decided that if they can't handle a run through the washer, they shouldn't be in the museum being manhandled by hundreds of children a year. We got new fish for the Discovery Room tank: 2 orange somethings and 2 angel fish. I am not going to get attached to them until they survive at least one week. Thursday August 8, 2002 -- 12:40pm Today is my last day with some of the youth staff. They said they might stay on as volunteers, but I doubt any of them will. Aside from the first week of the summer staff, this is the time I hate the most. We're having a goodbye party for them today, but I'm not at it. I'm covering the desk so Kat can be there. It's only right. She supervised them most of the time, and was the one they bonded with. As long as I get some ice cream.... I don't like parties anyway. Too much noise and confusion. Tomorrow I leave for CT with 3 of the kids. It's the annual Youth Summit. I'll be back Sunday afternoon. Have a good weekend! Wednesday August 7, 2002 -- 9:15am Fun with Health Insurance: In one month I am sure I will have all of this figured out, but right now.... The person I chose as my primary care physician is away on maternity leave, which makes getting a referral to my shrink challenging. Well, whatever. I'll just get my prescription refilled and deal with the pcp thing later. Guess again! The pharmacy I've been using doesn't take my health insurance! Woo-hoo! I am now on Day 3 of not taking one of my meds and my head is way too spinny for anything good to happen. Ugh. Clearly I am not equipped to be a grown up. Once again, I would like to express my thanks to the universe that I do not have children. I would definitely be receiving house calls from CPS. Tuesday August 6, 2002 -- 8:45am I have today off and, by some miracle, I was able to get things settled as far as staffing the museum goes, so I actually won't have to go in on my day off. Yay! There is much I hope to accomplish today: -- take Bennett to the vet -- get my hair cut -- buy some clothes -- return bottles -- get groceries -- get prescription refilled -- figure out insurance debacle -- go to therapy -- finish all the dishes -- do some laundry Care to place any bets on how much of this I will actually do? -- 8:00pm Actual Accomplishments: -- took Bennett to the vet (he has a heart murmur!) -- got my hair cut -- bought some clothes -- got groceries -- went to therapy OK. I probably could have done better, and it might have been wise to get my prescription refilled. The problem with having food in the house is this tendency I have to eat it all immediately. Lots of sick people and animals right now. So I'm sending out general vibes of good will and health to all tonight. Be well, and keep your fingers crossed for those that aren't. |
 |
 |