Dignon: Pointless Act! You don't give a 500 hundred dollar tip to the housekeeper that's innappropriate! That's inexcusable! That I don't forgive! What were you thinking?! What were you thinking?!
Anthony: Don't call her the housekeeper!
Dignon: That's what she is! Don't threaten me! That's what she is. She is a housekeeper right? People are housekeepers.
Anthony: You better watch it Dignon you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're talking about
Dignon: Don't threaten me. Don't threaten me man!
Anthony: Her name's Inez.
Dignon: and my name's Dignon, man... so what?
Out at work it has been pretty hectic as we tried to get this new home opened. For those of you who don't know after only a couple weeks at the home for adolescents I was moved to a newly opening home for three young men who are higher functioning, either graduating or in their last years of school and preparing to enter the real world. The program is structured around independence which means I do more teaching and helping than reprimanding, punishing, and restraining. One of the new residents, Ricky, is deaf so I have been trying to pound out learning ASL into a matter of a couple of days. It's coming pretty quickly because I get a chance to use it and see it everyday, but it's still pretty hard, harder than I would have imagined anyway. The staff also seem to be more pleasant at the new home too, of course that could be because the house is a lot quieter and less stressful. I have been working with Zach, one of the older residents from the home I used to work at that has moved to the new home. It has been fun getting to know him and work with him. He's a good kid. Sure he outweighs me and is 4 or 5 inches taller than me and could probably kill me if he wanted, but luckily I haven't seen him want to yet. Today we went to the dinosaur park in Ogden as an activity for a summer youth group him and some other guys are involved in. These are some off the deck of the new house at 6 in the morning. Who knew it was so beautiful in the morning?
Life has been pretty boring. More boring that usual even. I really haven't been able to play video games or basketball since I started working. So I spend all my time eating, sleeping, in front of the computer hoping something exciting will happen. (It's hard to believe with all the time I spend at the computer that I haven't updated in a few days.) Anyway I went to staff meeting yesterday and on my way home I stopped to get something that came in the package for my mother framed. About 130 dollars later I am regretting having stopped, but oh well. I was fortunate to come home and find my water-bed with a leak in it. So another 70 something dollars and a headache later and I am back into debt since the costs more than doubled the check I got for my two days last week. We also watched a little Shanghai Knights last night. Greg brought a girl that was all into him. It was the sausage and one... and for some reason she didn't really seem to mind. Good for her. Good for us too, because while she was busy flirting with Greg she didn't notice the rest of us staring at her like a pack of wolves. I stayed up until 3 last night watching Gosford Park that I had downloaded from Kazaa. I had heard nothing about it other than there was a cute girl in it so I didn't know what to expect. It wasn't all bad. The affairs of the house had some good analogies for life. (In the picture Jeff has his hand on my new bladder as I fill up my bed.)
Today was a rather busy day. I had cleaned my room this morning and discovered my application for the Roth IRA I thought I had already opened. It turns out I just thought about it so much I assumed I had already done it. I went in and opened it officially today. I also got a haircut and a TB test. The problem with my working a swing shift is that I can never force myself to leave the house or accomplish anything in the few hours after I wake up before I go to work. Luckily it's only a part time job so there are still days where I might accomplish something because I doubt I can force myself to go out and get stuff done like I did today. Work was alright. Aside from a brief incident with one of the clients who refused to take his meds and insisted on calling everyone a jackass while taking swings and throwing objects. I had to talk him out of it since I am not certified to restrain. It took me over a half an hour, but luckily it worked before I had to resort to crying or throwing objects of my own. I didn't want to read the kids files because I didn't want to judge them based on their background, but only on what I knew them for. Well boredom and curiousity got the best of me after they were all gone to sleep. I busted out the files. Some of these kids have had a sad sad life. It makes you angry and sad all at the same time. I came home to find that I had received a package from Korea. These pictures below were among the contents. Looking at them really made me miss Korea. It was a good time. The kids on top were in one of my english classes. The picture below is of me and the chinese students and teacher. We had nothing really in common except sharing the same building. The chinese teacher, Jo Laoshu (or something which is mandarin for teacher) was a riot and was one of the coolest people I met on this trip back. The comments suck but hopefully I will have that fixed soon. Just keep hitting refresh if they don't show.
Well I started work last Wednesday and Thursday. It was pretty good except for the newbie jitters. I feel like I get them at every job for the first couple of days. You either feel like you're asking too many questions or just don't know what to do. Anyway I am sure it will pass in time. I mean how hard could it be for me to get in the groove of playing video games, football, basketball, and breaking up the occassional fight? It's what I do every day with my friends anyway, just now I am getting paid for it. Then on Friday night Jeff, Jared and I went to a wedding reception for a girl we are friends with. We sat around and talked with some of our friends from high school and came to the startling conclusion that everyone there except the three of us and one other girl were either engaged or married. It was startling how normail being abnormal felt (abnormal as defined as living in Utah and being over 21 and not tied down for eternity or even thinking about it.) Tonight I watched one of the movies I bought when I was in Korea. It's called "집으로" ("The Way Home.") It's a story about a kid whose mom takes him to stay with his grandma in the country for a few weeks. I usually understand a good deal of what is said in Korean movies, but I must say this one had me baffled in some places. The dialect they were using was extreme and it was all old people using it. A combination that makes for very little understanding. Fortunately since the Grandma is supposed to be mute there isn't a whole lot of talking anyway. I enjoyed the movie for the most part despite some awkward scenes where it felt like they were running footage until the music stopped.
