It was a quiet week in San Jose, at least on my part. I had a painting project due in my Color class on Wednesday, and my project was well-received. It wasn't exciting; we had to do color charts based on the Munsell Color system, starting with grayscale and working with a certain hue to maximum saturation based on the value. I chose yellow because it was the easiest - or, at least, it would have fewer squares to blend and paint. It turned out OK; the painting was a little sloppy because I can't control a brush for the life of me but not bad. When we hung the paintings in class, it was really interesting because you could see that some people really struggle with the concept of value. But most of the paintings were really good, and made me wish I'd picked a more challenging color. The majority of the class went with blue or green. I overheard several people saying stuff like "Oh, the yellow one looks really good" while they were in front of mine, so that was uplifting. There's one guy in the class who is really good with paint and color - he finishes the assignments in a single day and spaces out during the lectures, but still does just fine - and I saw him talking to another student about my color grid and giving it a thumbs-up. That was a mood lifter, since he can be really critical when he thinks you've done something wrong.

I had several assignments that I had neglected to turn in for my painting class, so I got those to my teacher and that was a relief, too.

--

Last night Seanie and I went over to Bonbon's house for tea. That was fun. Her apartment is really cute. She works at Teavana so she had a bookshelf that was competely filled with Teavana tea tins; it was amazing. It was a very last minute thing; she texted me around 8 or so to see if I wanted to come over and eat brownies and drink tea (but of course I want to) and we headed over right around 10. It's nice having one of my co-workers living out in my area of town; most of the rest of the Lush crew live out by Valley Fair so last-minute visits are a much more difficult proposition.

--

The Manager at RHA is going to be gone for a few weeks on a cruise. Lucky guy. I'm jealous. It's his first big vacation since he started here, and it's going to be weird not having him around. Hopefully nothing major happens while he's away.

Ooh! One of the residents just offered me a free lunch, so I gotta go mooch. :D Talk to ya later, Internet!

So for Halloween this year I was Norma Desmond*:


*Just kidding. But seriously, I've got the face down, don't you think?

--

So for Halloween, there were no parties or crazy nights out because I went to work at Lush. Luckily, we were having a party at the store, so it was less work-like than usual, but that meant I had to dress up in a costume. Naturally, I just wanted to cheap out and refused to buy a new costume, so I spent some time rummaging through my closet and eventually concluded I could pull together some sort of Amy Brown fairy outfit. I had everything except wings, so last night I sent Seanie out to brave the crowds at one of those super-sized Halloween stores and he bought me some cheap black angel wings. Quality-wise, they're awful, of course, and the straps were made so poorly the wings didn't come close to sitting in the proper part of my back. But with a couple of pins we were able to get them to stay in place.

My final costume (and my manager as a pirate wench):


While I was at work, kids were trick-or-treating at the mall. So many kids. We ran out of candy after only about an hour and a half, and we'd had at least 8 or 9 bags of the stuff. It was crazy. There were a lot of customers, considering it was Halloween, but that was all thanks to the fact that Lush was having a 'Dead Man's Party' and you got tons of free stuff if you came in. But the customers came in waves, and there were a lot of employees milling around, so I didn't really have much to do in the store at the beginning of my shift. I ended up going to the doorway and telling kids we had no more candy, cutting them off before they could come in the store and set off our conversion tracker.
(Not that it worked. They'd still go in the store anyway, hoping someone else was nicer.)

It's funny, but I got a lot of parents asking if they could take pictures with their kid. I guess they can't get candy so they'll take a picture of the gothic angel instead? Sure, why not? It warms the cockles of my heart to know that in ten years, kids will look through the family photos and will stop and look at the strange woman and say "Mom, who the hell is that?" and Mom will reply "I dunno, some random mall chick."

One of my coworkers was dressed up as Lady Gaga, so if you walked through Valley Fair between the hours of 6 and 8 you very likely saw this dancing in the doorway of our store:


It was so funny. "Lady Gaga" was really into the dancing, and we had people stopping to stare, take photos, and record videos of her dancing. I could not stop laughing. It was so funny. Bonnie is my hero for having the balls to dance while strangers gawk for at least ten repetitions of Gaga's songs.


Lady Gaga and I.


Gaga, Abby and Peter:


Lady Gaga, a crazy 80's Lady and a Pirate Wench walk into a bar...

...actually, I just realized that set-up doesn't work because only the Pirate is of legal drinking age.

One of my newest co-workers, Elena was the other gothically-inclined lady. She had this fantastic kestrel mask and mantle that she couldn't wear because it scared too many kids, apparently. I thought it looked great.


A customer came in wearing the cutest Max (Where the Wild Things Are) costume:


Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella (actually a Marie Antoinette costume):


At nine o'clock the store was closed, registers shut down and we were ready to go home. We made our monthly sales target and blew our store into bonus-land. Great night!

The store is closed and it is time to go home!

What a nasty week.

Four midterms, one of which I didn't even find out about until this Monday!
Monday the 26th - Accounting
Wednesday the 28th - Art History (Modern)
Thursday the 29th - Archaeology
Friday the 30th - Statistics

I feel so burned out, but at least there's only one more to force myself through.

--

In other news, there was an event at DeAnza for transfer students today, so I talked to representatives from San Jose State, San Francisco State, and CSU East Bay. Sounds like my plan for a double major may get scuttled; apparently the schools are really cracking down on students spending an extra year at university to get extra degrees. Man. That sucks. The best chance I would have would be at East Bay, but that's my back-up back-up school. It's geographically inconvenient, and hasn't got a reputation that can compare with other schools. I mean, I only know one person who ever went there. But they're the only school that doesn't currently have a policy in place against second bachelor's degrees.

San Jose State is still my first choice, though, since it's close to home. SFSU is the convenient back-up, but I might have to quit my job at RHA to go there, and I would genuinely hate to do that.

My accounting teacher - the rather frumpy one that reminds me of Dolores Umbridge - is not a very good teacher. She uses the powerpoint slides provided by the textbook's publisher in her lectures, which is fine, but she doesn't really use them. Sometimes she'll speed through the slides so fast you can't write any of the definitions down - but she quizzes you on the same definitions later. Other times she'll being doing a demonstration problem on the whiteboard when she'll veer off and do all these extra calculations to determine things not required in the problem. For example, the problem might ask what the variable costs per unit is for a certain sales number, but she'll also work the numbers to see what would happen if we increased sales ten percent, or if we started manufacturing a second line of sweaters, or all these other funny details not called for in the original problem. It gets really confusing.

She also seems to have a set number of questions we need to ask her - if we aren't asking questions, we weren't paying enough attention. A few days ago she went off on a little rant that we should be paying attention because she's the "interpreter" of the book. We could just read the textbook, she conceded, but we couldn't understand it without her help so we ought to pay attention to her. But when you do ask a question, she doesn't answer it very well, either pointing at where she's done math on the board and telling you to look there, or referring you to the textbook anyway!

Also, if you're ever late she gives you the stink eye, and continues to glare at you for the rest of the quarter. Seriously. Whenever she looks into my back corner, she looks so angry, like she can't believe I have the audacity to come to class...and that's when I'm on time.

I'm really stumped on one of the chapters - Process Cost Accountings makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm hoping to ask accounting teacher from the summer for help, but I don't know if I'll be able to find him before the next accounting midterm. :-/ At this rate, though, I'm seriously thinking that my best helper will be Dr. Wikipedia. Again.

Sooo behind in school. Not good.
Three midterms next week. Also not good.
I'm tellin' ya, by Friday I'm gonna keel over and die.

--

Crazy resident today: She takes her dog out for a walk. Near a pond in the common area, she stumbles into a swarm of wasps and gets stung. Her dog gets stung. They're both traumatized. In the process of escaping she drops her sunglasses and her cell phone, as well as the doggie-doo bags she carried with her. Her dog's poo, which I guess she was in the middle of cleaning up, is left on the ground. She and the dog go home and puff up like balloons.

She calls the office. She wants one of the Maintenance guys to go up and check the wasps because those things were aggressive and nasty. Fine. That's kinda in their job description, right? If there's a nest right next to the path, they should know about. BUT this resident also wants someone (of course she doesn't specify who, other than not her) to go up to the wasp-infested path and get her cell phone and her sunglasses for her.

Give. Me. A. Break. Get your own fuckin' stuff that YOU dropped. If the wasps are such a terror, you're a horrible person for expecting someone else to go brave that. If the wasps have left and you're just too chicken to go up there yourself...well, too bad.

The leader of the Maintenance Crew happened to be in the office and we were chatting before she called, so I told him about the call and he said he'd take a look, but he was having a busy day so it wasn't exactly high priority.

Lady called back an hour or two later when I got back from my lunch break (she may have tried to call sooner, but I wasn't there) to see if her cell phone was at the office yet. I told her no, it wasn't, and I hadn't seen anyone from the Maintenance team so I didn't know if they'd even had a chance to go up yet. She repeated that there was no way she was walking up there to get her stuff. She had been stung and it was horrible and she was pissed. I said nothing, because really, there was nothing to say. I wasn't going to apologize for the wasps being there, because that's an act of God and the office had nothing to do with it. I wasn't going to volunteer to go retrieve her stuff, because that's totally outside my job description. I wasn't going to say "Get the fuck OVER it" because that is a quick way to lose a job. So I said nothing other than non-commital "Hmm-hmm." She said she would call back in a while to see if her cell phone had been brought into the office. I said "OK" and she hung up.

FIVE MINUTES LATER (ten minutes max) she came to the office door and asked for her cell phone. I told her it wasn't there, and as far as I knew no one had a chance to go up to the pond and get it - just like I told her on the phone. She wanted someone to go and get it RIGHT NOW - but I told her that no one was there. The Maintenance manager was somewhere else on the property or gone for the day; the one crew member on duty was hanging party lights for an evening event, a job planned for him for days. I wasn't going to pull him from it. She gave me a A Dirty Look, but I sure wasn't going to go trotting up the path for her sunglasses. Finally she muttered something about going back to the hospital and left.

She's a very vocal resident, so I'm sure she'll call Monday and leave my bosses nasty messages about my lack of customer service and the insufficient speed with which we reacted. And all I have to say is this:
YOU'RE THE IDIOT WHO PANICKED AND DROPPED YOUR STUFF. GO GET IT YOURSELF.
YES, I REALIZE YOU ARE IN PAIN BECAUSE YOU WERE STUNG BY WASPS, BUT IT'S STILL YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO RETRIEVE YOUR OWN BELONGINGS.
Yeesh.

--

So it was already a bad day when I got to Lush, and right before we closed I got another *delightful* customer. Lush has a promotion going right now where if you spend $40, you can pick out a free BUBBLE BATH. It's a pretty rockin' deal, since it includes any bath bomb, including the $8.95 Comforter and the $11.95 Blue Skies. So this lady comes in with her posse of fresh import Asians. They don't really interact with the staff, other than to establish that they know the promotion and know the Lush products. After she shops for 15-20 minutes, she comes up to the register. She wants to spend exactly $40 to get her free item, and hands me her items very carefully. The item she wants for free she keeps separate, balled up in her hand where I can't see it. I figure it must be one of the expensive bubble baths, and she wants to make sure I don't charge her for it. Whatever.

Her first total was $32, so she picks out another item, which brings her up to $39. Then she takes something out and replaces it with something slightly more expensive to bring herself up to $40. Finally she hands over the free item she's been hoarding away from me, and when I open it up I see it's a Floating Island Bath Melt. Bath melts are cocoa butter confections that make the bath water moisturizing and luxurious. They're also, unfortunately, not part of the promotion. When I point this out gently, her face immediately darkens like a spoiled child's.
Her: "But I was here before and she said it was OK."
Me: " I'm sorry, but the bath melt is not included in the promotion as a free item."
Her: "They let me do it last time!"
Me: "They may have been able to make an exception then, but I'm not a manager and I do not have the ability to override the promotion. I can only give you bubble baths for free."
Her: **seriously, she looks like a child about to cry because Mommy won't buy her ice cream**
Her: "Give me this one free or I won't buy any!"
Me: *shrug* "I can't. Sorry."

She turns and storms out with her crew, and I start un-bagging the items in her basket and my co-workers help me put them away. As the exchange had progressed I started to recognize her - she's a semi-regular pain in the ass who ALWAYS come in and tries to twist the promotions to get better deals or asks for excessive samples or special services, like cutting bath bombs in half (which we aren't supposed to do because it's dangerous). You'd think by now she'd be so horrified by our customer service she'd stop showing up, but no luck. Oh well. I'm sure I'll see her again during the Christmas season.

Poll #1474049
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Would you bring your kids to someone else's house, unannounced?

My mom is a member of a bluegrass group, and they have meetings at our house once or twice a month. Today, one of the members of this group (whom I've never seen before, so she's either new or someone's wife/sister/whatever) and she brought her two-year old with her. I don't like kids, and I especially don't like surprise kids. Mom had no idea this child was coming until she heard it talking to itself as it entered the house.

Even worse, the owner of the child didn't bring anything to amuse it. No books, no crayons, no toys. Nothing. So first my mom looked to see if we had anything suitable, but we haven't had a kid that young in this house for twenty years. Naturally, we have nothing. So they give the kid a permanent marker - a sharpie! - and a piece of paper and she starts scribbling on it. You just KNOW that the two-year old is going to eventually miss the paper and permanently ruin our table.

I think it's horribly tacky to bring a child to someone's house without asking - especially when the person is, at best, a very casual acquaintance and at worse a complete stranger. But if you do have to bring a child with you due to some sort of emergency, give it a way to amuse itself! I mean, how hard is it to keep a coloring book or a toy doll or WHATEVER in the car?

I had some painting to do tonight, but I don't really want to play with toxic chemicals while some munchkin is wandering around looking for stuff to stick in its mouth.

My family went to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs on Sunday evening and I gotta say, I was expecting supreme mediocrity. Instead, CWACOM was hilarious. I think I was leaning over ever five minutes and elbowing Seanie. "HE'S JUST LIKE YOU!!" I'd whisper, "YOU'RE JUST LIKE THE SCIENTIST GUY BUT WITHOUT THE SCIENCE!" Or, "HA HA HE DID SOMETHING AWKWARD AND LAME THAT'S WHAT YOU DO PUMPKIN!!!"

But seriously, that was such a silly and fun movie. I don't know why they don't make more like that.

The Christmas products are in at Lush. I helped set everything out on Tuesday night, after the store closed. We don't have all the Christmas gifts in, and we were missing the Fairy Tails body scrub, but I *think* everything else was there.



In other barely-Lush-related news, I visited Melissa at the hospital yesterday. (She's one of my coworkers at Lush, who went in for back surgery on Monday.) She seems to be healing up OK, all things considered. She's nearly mastered the use of her walker and was wheeling laps around the recovery center yesterday. That was pretty cool. She might be home by now; her doctor had to sign her off this morning but she said she'd be able to go home today.

I saw two performances over the weekend - Coppelia on Thursday (I start the weekend early) and Rent on Sunday night - and finally got around to writing 'em up. Feel free to read if you're interested. They were both shows worth seeing.

OK, I know that those of you who live in snowier climes are probably rolling your eyes as I say this, but school was canceled today due to the rain.
I'm very excited. I had a Statistics midterm today, and now I have a whole extra day to Not Study for it!!!

It's utterly wussy not to have class because of rain. I freely admit it. But the power's out and everything in our classrooms now revolves around technology, so if I went out to campus I'd just be sitting on my bum, in the dark, staring at the teacher struggling to demonstrate problems without the aid of powerpoint and projectors. It'd be tragic, so I will kindly spare my teachers the trauma.

So do I buckle down and get caught up on my studies, or spend a restful day off vegging? Decisions, decisions...

Rent is one of my favorite musicals. I was so excited when they did that movie a few years back, because I figured that would be the only chance I'd ever get to see the original cast perform the roles they originated on Broadway back in 1996. However, a few months back I heard that a touring Rent production would be coming to San Francisco in October, and Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal would be returning as Mark and Roger, and I was like OH YES I'M GONNA SEE THAT WOOOHOOOOO!

So my brother and I left San Jose an hour and a half before the show started, which should have been plenty of time to get to the Curran Theatre, but there were two strikes against us:
1/ We got caught in bridge traffic and didn't know the San Francisco streets well enough to try to navigate without our precious Google directions
2/ We got lost anyway and spent waaaaaaaay too long trying to figure out how to get where we were going.

I was so bummed; we missed all of my favorite songs because we were So. Embarrassingly. Late. Rent, One Song Glory, and Out Tonight were all over by the time we arrived. Such a bummer. :( But what can you do? I screwed up in our timing and then it took us forever to find the theatre. It happens. (Totally sucked, though; those tickets were for the cheap seats but it was still a lot of money for someone working part-time at Lush! If I had more money, I'd buy another set of tickets and go with Seanie so I could see the whole thing, but I haven't got the change to waste.)

What I did see was awesome for the most part. Anthony Rapp sounds the same, and still looks youthful enough for the role of Mark...except for the fact that he's totally thinning on top. It's one of those things you don't notice if you're sitting down in the nice seats, but if you're up in the balcony, looking down at the action...well, you notice. But he's so much fun on the stage. This is the second time I've seen him live (I saw him a few years ago with Seanie in Little Shop of Horrors. He makes an excellent Seymour.)

Adam Pascal, on the other hand...well, to be honest it seemed like he was phoning in the performance half the time. I dunno, he just didn't bring the same energy that the rest of the cast seemed to be crackling with. Maybe he was having an off-night.

The rest of the cast were great. The actress playing Maureen, Nicolette Hart, sounded just like Idina Menzel when she was speaking; it was almost freaky. When she was singing, though, she had her own unique voice, and she just did a fantastic job. Really stood out in my memory.

It makes me really want to see the show again. I love it. I wonder if it'd be worth the time to go wait in line for the $20 front row tickets...

Side grumble to self: I always misspell 'Coppelia' as 'Copellia' and it drives me nuts.


Like Swan Lake, Giselle and La Sylphide, Coppelia is one of the great classics that is a standard in every ballet troupe's repertoire. Ballet San Jose has trotted it out several times in my lifetime, most recently in 2004, I think, and it has become one of my favorites.

In a small peasant village, Doctor Coppelius works day and night on creating automaton dolls, striving to create a perfect human replica. His latest creation, a doll called Coppelia,is so beautiful and lifelike that when he puts her out on the balcony to 'read' in the bright sun, the town's most eligible bachelor, Franz Schmeterlink, tries to flirt with the lovely maiden. Naturally, his current love Swanhilda is less than pleased and the entire first act has the two of them fighting in the middle of the village square, right in the middle of a harvest festival. As the day draws to a close, and Swanhilda catches Franz looking at Coppelia one final time, she and her friends decide to sneak into Doctor Coppelius' workshop so Swanhilda can tell her rival to leave her man alone.

The workshop is dark, but the girls soon discover Coppelia's secret, and burst into giggles. They wind up the other dolls, and soon knights, clowns, and exotic foreigners are jumping and dancing around the room. But as the girls are exploring, the Doctor returns and kicks everyone out except Swanhilda, who hides in Coppelia's room. While she's hiding, Franz appears and begs the Doctor to allow him to marry Coppelia. He agrees, but tells Franz they must drink and celebrate. The 'wine' Franz drinks is laced with a sleeping potion, and soon Franz is unconscious, allowing Coppelius to draw out the boy's life essence and feed it into his doll. It seems to work, because Coppelia's movements become more and more lifelike as Doctor Coppelius 'feeds' her Franz's essence. She dances for him, but it's not Coppelia – it's Swanhilda in the doll's clothing. She helps Franz escape and makes a mess of the Doctor's lab, setting off all of his dolls and revealing the real Coppelia in a lifeless heap on the floor.

The final act is the wedding of Franz and Swanhilda, which has a ton of traditional folk dances and lovely dancing, but since I'm a very story-driven person I tend to space out a lot during this act.

The dancing in this ballet is beautiful, and often quite whimsical since this is a comic ballet. In this production, there were a couple of moments in which Franz would lean in toward Swanhilda, as if to lead her in a pas de deux, and she lifts up her leg and kicks him in the face! Pretty fun, especially since physical comedy is not at all what you usually think of as part of ballet. Ever since I was a kid, my favorite scene was always when the dolls are brought to life in Act II, and I still think that the magic of the moment is the most memorable part of the ballet.

It's really a good ballet for kids, come to think of it. I didn't see too many children in the audience, but I'm sure on the weekends there are a lot more of them running around.

So President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said their choice could be seen as an early vote of confidence in Obama intended to build global support for his policies."

I'm sorry. Accomplishments are what we should be honoring with the Nobel Peace Prize, not intentions.* Obama has done a great many things, some of them good and some of them bad, but I honestly can't think of anything he's done that warrants the Nobel. He's improved our standing in the Muslim world, but that was not a particular merit of his Presidential policies, but the result of:
A/ He has a Muslim background, so he's more likely to understand their background
B/ He's a man of color
C/ Obama burps sparkling bubbles, farts rainbows and rides unicorns. People just love him. (EDIT TO ADD: ALSO HE POOPS GOLD.)

and perhaps the biggest contributing factor is simply
D/ HE'S NOT BUSH.

I say this as a huge Obama fan. I love the guy. But he's been in office for less than a year. When he was nominated, he was in office for like two weeks. I feel like people around the world are doing their darnest to turn Obama into a symbol for everything good and proper, but he's not the Messiah. He's not a savior or a superhero. He's just a man like any other, and at some point we're all going to have to realize that he's human and can't live up to all the expectations and desires and wishes and hopes we've piled on his shoulders.

* Although according to this article, intentions are just fine for a Peace Prize.

Today was Club Day at DeAnza. All the little student organizations and associations get a table at the center of campus and try to recruit members to their group for Christians, Atheists, Chinese, Rock Climbers, etc. Seeing the tables always bums me out a little. I'd love to join one of the groups and be able to play board games during my breaks (yes, there's an International Board Game club) or go on weekend excursions to Yosemite with the Outdoor Club, but where's my time to do this stuff? When I'm not in class, I'm eitehr studying my books or working at one of my jobs. I don't have time to see the friends I already have; is there any point to fostering new relationships I'll never be able to maintain?

Oh well. What else did I do today besides spend ten minutes wallowing in self-pity because I am antisocial? I had a midterm in Archaeology. I think I did very well. I was in and out like lightning, bam bam! 40 questions. Completed in ten minutes. That's what, fifteen seconds a question? It was an open-note exam, but I didn't even need the notebook. I cracked it open once or twice just to double-check an answer, but it was just confirmation. It was a ridiculously easy exam. Heck, I even spotted an error the teacher had made when he set up one of the questions. I rock.

My Accounting midterm from last Tuesday? That one didn't go so well. I got a 74%, which given I had missed at least four class sessions in two weeks is not bad. I mean, not awesome, but passing, which was all I expected. But the teacher grades on a curve, and our class performed so poorly she decided to add ten extra points to every exam. My score went shooting upwards 20% to a comfortable 94%. What's that, an A? Sweet! Of course, the bitch of getting an A is that you have to maintain it, but I'm happy, of course.

Next Tuesday is my next midterm, this time in Statistics. Fun!

Man, I thought I was unprepared for my Archaeology midterm. I have only read the chapters once, and hadn't really gone over my notes or made my "cheat sheets" for the exam, which is on Thursday.

The guy sitting next to me today? Hasn't even looked at the textbook yet. He had the terms from the class written in his notebook, but he didn't even know what paleoarchaeology was. Oi. You can figure that out just from the name! Yeesh.

TO-DO List (no particular order)
accounting
- read ch. 20
- practice problems ch. 19, 20
- computer probs ch. 20 - 1:08 pm

art history
- locate textbook
- read ch. 3

archaeology
- get notebook
- take notes ch. 1, 2, 3

statistics
- read ch. 1 2:52 pm
- read through 2.5

design & color
- paint color swatches for color wheel, warm colors
- paint color swatches for color wheel, cool colors

- package up bookmooch books, to be mailed

- package up aromacreme for azuki

- clear gmail account of emails pending response

- update book blog, 10/4

- fold laundry

...well, that's do for a start.

Dear Internet,
When I decided to continue working at both RHA and Lush while taking twenty academic units, I may not have been thinking clearly. I may have overbooked myself just a smidge. Just sayin'.

~Me

School's going pretty well, right now, but we're only two weeks in. I've got my first two midterms next week; I guess my grades on those will reveal how fast my ship is sinking.

SJSU applications opened up yesterday; my application is *mostly* done but I need to check in with a counseler to confirm I am providing the correct information. Once that is done, I should be able to submit my application and rest easy for a few months, until I hear from SJSU next spring. I scheduled an appointment with one of the counselers, but the earliest date is October 20th - I don't want to wait that long! On Tuesday afternoon I'm going to try to do a walk-in appointment, but whenever I do that I end up waiting around for a couple of hours so we'll see if I have the patience for it.

Sorry if I owe you an e-mail. My Internet response time is down to a crawl right now.

Man, it has been a long weekend.

Friday was a fourteen hour workday.
Saturday was the same.
Today, at only eight and a half hours, seems like a virtual vacation.

Of course, the REALLY exciting day will be Thursday. After 2 pm I have the whole evening off!

But it is only Sunday right now. Gotta truck through the rest of my shift here at RHA and then four days of school before Thursday afternoon arrives.

So I got to work at RHA this morning and in my mailbox was an envelope from the Board of Directors. I was late (aaargh!) so I didn't have a chance to look at it; I was too busy running around making coffee and answering phones and all the rest. Finally, I settled in and got to work, and then the General Manager came out and reminded me to open the envelope. It was a Thank You note/Announcement that I had been selected as the Employee of the Year, and a one hundred dollar bill. I was so surprised by the money that I almost started crying. It was so nice of the Board to nominate me, let alone give me money. So that was an awesome way to star the day. I'll get my name on a plaque and everything - way exciting.

Fast forward a few hours. The General Manager was in and out; he had a doctor's appointment and errands to run. My Boss, who doesn't work Fridays (the whole reason I work Fridays is because she needed the day for family matters) came in to check her e-mail, and while she was here my co-worker Maria called. (You may remember her for some drama back in August.) She basically told me she wanted to quit, because her job at Rinconada was reducing the amount of money she got from unemployment when she was laid off from her other job. I was trying to figure that out - if she quits Rinconada, wouldn't that endanger the unemployment payments because she's deciding not to work? - but I was also trying not to say anything 'incriminating' out loud because the Boss was there and I wasn't sure how firm Maria's idea was. But it seemed like she was definite about it, because she wanted to speak to the General Manager, so I asked if she wanted to speak to the Boss since she was sitting just a few feet away, talking to one of RHA's Directors. (Quick background note: The General Manager is the top of the food chain, under the Board of Directors. The Boss is my direct boss, but her official title is Office Manager.) Maria did, so I handed the conversation over to the Boss, who was Not Pleased.

The Boss went into the General Manager's office to talk to Maria, and I went off to the kitchen so that
A/ I wouldn't be eavesdropping
B/ I would appear busy
and commenced washing dirty dishes.
After I heard the Boss go back into our office, I went back in. She asked me if Maria had talked to me about covering her weekend shifts. I said no, because I didn't remember having any sort of conversation like that over the previous week. She said Maria would probably not be coming in for her shifts. Right then the General Manager came in, and they talked about the situation for a few minutes. In the end the General Manager decided to fire Maria, because apparently she hadn't shown up to her shift on Wednesday, either. So when Maria called him on his cell phone number (which I had given her) that's what he said, but to be honest I don't know who officially ended it. Was she was terminated or if she quit. Bottom line, she doesn't work for RHA anymore.

I was pretty bummed. Maria was a great coworker, and she's always fun to talk to. She works hard so it's really sad that her job ended on such a negative note. (Plus, I had kinda been hoping she could cover one of my shifts next weekend so I could escape with Daddy for a quick Yosemite trip.) Several members of the Board of the Directors popped by throughout the afternoon to sign Maria's last check or to pick up paperwork. They would congratulate me on being Employee of the Year and I'd thank them for the opportunity, but at the same time my mind was constantly worrying how Maria was going to pay for her kids' education while she's out of work, hoping her gambit to increase unemployment works for her, wondering what she'd do if she doesn't find another job soon, etc.

I'm liking my classes as the first week draws to a close. The fact that Stats and Accounting have Friday sessions is a bit of a problem, but class attendence isn't tracked by either teacher so *hopefully* they'll avoid schedule tests on Fridays and I'll be just fine.

Setting Archaeology as my first class of the day was a brilliant masterstroke of scheduling. I love the topic, and my teacher has so many awesome filed stories that I don't want to miss a single lecture. Not only do I go to school every day with no reluctance, I arrive on campus early to ensure I get a good seat.

Managerial Accounting is more of a problem. My mind wanders because the topic is dull. Really, there's not much you can do to make accounting exciting, and my teacher doesn't seem to be trying to do so anyway. Her teaching style is so nondescript that when I attempt to describe her, I can only think of physical attributes. Middle-aged. Rather dumpy. Hair's thinning and obviously dyed. Dresses in 'career' clothes, but she's also dressed for comfort so they're loose and unexciting. I feel bad that I've taken note only of rather unflattering observations, but as a teacher she hasn't done a thing to stand out.

I have an hour break after these two classes, and it's become my coffee/tea time. I find a shady spot on campus and read for an hour.

Stats sucks, topically, but it's a class EVERYONE was trying to get into. On the second day, our teacher had brought in extra desks and they were still overflowing. There were 45 students in the class, so he told everyone not enrolled to leave because he wouldn't be able to do any more adds. One or two people leave, so he does a head count and there are still over 50 people in the classroom. So he repeats himself, and when no one leaves he says again that he is not adding anyone so GET OUT. A couple of people who had been the top of the waitlist, originally told they could stay, are told to leave as well - and of course, these are the 'good' students who do leave. But there are still five or six extra students in the classroom, unenrolled, that our teacher's got to get rid of but they're refusing to leave, and the class is big enough that he can't tell which students they are.
Finally, one chola in the back row yells, "Do you people NOT UNDERSTAND ENGLISH? He told you to GET OUT!" and some terrified people went scrambling out. OK, that was kinda funny, but not really.

Art's good. Giles is hilarious!

Design and Color is awesome! I had so much fun chattering away on Wednesday. When we actually start painting next week, I'm a little nervous about that, because I'm horrible with acrylic paint but the class is so fun I hope it'll be OK.

San Jose Rep is currently performing As You Like It, and since this seems to be the Year of Shakespeare for me Seanie and I decided to get tickets. (It helps that the Rep had a buy one, get one free promotion running.) It's been a year or two since I last saw a show by the Rep, but they usually have good entertainment.

So As You Like It was placed in an ambiguous setting, at an amorphous time. Sometimes it looked modern, like at the beginning of the play when Orlando and Charles wrestle in a WWF-styled arena, but when Rosalind and Celia flee to the forest of Arden the costumes and possessions of the characters slip into something more likely found at the turn of 20th century:



Very pretty, though.

The director made an interesting choice - I don't know if this is a common occurance in performances of this play - in having Jacques and Adam played by the same actor. As Jacques is giving the famous 'All the world's a stage' monologue, he strips down out of his finer clothes and becomes older and hunched as he speaks, until at the end of the monologue as he says 'sans teeth, sans taste' etc Jacques has disappeared and the actor has become the shriveled husk of Adam, the aged servant of Orlando. It's pretty cool; the two characters don't look at all similar so if you weren't paying close attention to the faces, it wouldn't be noticeable until that moment that the actor had been playing Adam before. It was just beautifully done. The rest of the cast was quite good, too, but that one scene really stuck with me.

I hate digital sets. Just gotta say it. I think it's boring when everything is just tossed up a screen behind the actors without three-dimensional props. But they did pretty well with them in this production; the screens complimented the props instead of replacing them. Tables and chairs (and a rusted out car) were still on the stage, and actual snow fell instead of a digital projection in the background, so it looked very cool. Gold star for actually using technology effectively!