Common Work

Dining Services called me in for an interview today, and when they said 'interview', they meant 'you're hired' since they asked me to bring my driver's license, birth certificate, and routing numbers to directly deposit my paychecks. So really, the thrill and anxiety that normally accompanies an interview was somewhat lessened. I start on Thursday at 10:48 (they are precise at East Halls). So I'm working the cafeteria where they only serve the sport camps, which is kind of a bummer since I hate kids, especially boys ages 11-14 who always end up being rude and dropping things.

They seem cool; the shifts are only three hours and instead of paying $1.25 per meal like during the school year, you can eat for free before your shift. Awesome! I love the commons food. I hope it doesn't turn out to be another Wal-Mart.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, Travis and I went food shopping today and I got the delicious chicken poppers (try them! It was like, $1.68 for an entire large cup) and Travis ambitiously purchased an entired roasted Lemon Pepper chicken for something like three dollars. I've been surprisingly hungry lately.

Work of Art?

If anyone can tell me is going on here, I would greatly appreciate it.

By the way, it was behind the Palmer Museum of Art, so it's probably not just random trash. Hm.

Click to enlarge and see this in all of it's glory.




Here's something from when I sheltered myself in Simmons to avoid the torrential downpour. Ah, renovations.

Pit hair

Lots of things occurred today, but most of them very routine and boring to read about. This one guy sat diagonally from me in my Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System class (good lord, what a name!) that had this bushy tuft of pit hair protruding from outside of his tank top. I just wanted to reach over and trim that bad boy the entire time. Argh, it was like a tumbleweed.

Oh! Happy 18 month anniversary to me! (and Thomas, I suppose. Even though I did most of the work).

This girl I met today asked me for directions to Willard. I remarked something dumb about being a freshman, and she told me that she was actually a senior. What?! Being a senior at Penn State and not knowing the Willard building is like spending your whole life in Vatican City and not knowing where the Pope lives.

Lost Book

On the morning that I left for State College I had Thomas drive by the drop-off slot at the library. I had one stupid book to return that I couldn't even finish because it was so boring. The title was Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello Myth, and it was no better than how it sounds. Anyways, there's this older dude emptying out the box and he's really weird but takes the book and I think no more of it.

Until about a month later, when my library account shows that dumb book as being checked out still. What? So now I had all these theories about the mental competency of this old guy and why he would even want to read something like that. I just do nothing and hope it will turn up, which by the way is not a good course of action.

Fast forward! This morning, I went into the library in desperation to see what they would tell me to do. The girl at the check-out desk says that all I can do is fill out a Claims Form and they'll have someone check the stacks to see if it's there. Oh. Sounds really promising. They are going to devote so much interest to my one lost book. Right. She said that if they don't find it, I can just buy it off of amazon. com and replace it that way. Cool alternative.

So I check out half.com and amazon.com and the price is way more than I expected for one dumb paperpack. It's like, $20 at the cheapest, not to mention shipping and handling. A look at the library's policy on lost book shows that they add another $25.00 in addition to compensate for 'processing'. Dizamn! I refuse to spend over fifty bucks on this one lame book I know I returned. But, alas, what are my options?

Later this afternoon I had already received an email from the library. Wow, I said to myself, they send a lackey up to the call number and gee whiz, it's not there. Surprise.

It was a surprise.

Dear Patron:

I am writing to update you on the status of the book that you recently submitted a claims returned form for with the University Libraries. The item in question: Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello Myth (PN56.3.B55D35 2005) has been found and removed from your account. No fees have been charged to you for this item. Thank you for bringing this oversight to our attention. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have further questions regarding this book, please email me or contact the Circulation Desk at 865-5429.

Thank you for your time and patience in this matter.

Yes! Truth and justice prevail once more! A strike for liberty!

Free Pizza

Travis and I went to the HUB for LateNight since they advertised free pizza, and who could resist that? Well, it turns out, they were really giving away FREE PIZZAS. Like, an entire pizza per person! Amazing! It was Papa John's, and you went up and just took a whole box of pizza. They were like "make sure you share that, wink". So now we have an entire pizza left hanging out in the fridge.

We also played pool badly and I got a wax hand. I had forgotten to numb my hand in the ice water previously to dipping it, and consequently felt the fire of a thousand suns all up and down my fingers and hand. Oh, god, it burned! For a long time afterwards my hand was this unhealthy mottled red and white color.

We've been watching a marathon worth of Alias lately, and it's very different from Lost. Firstly, more than one thing happens per episode, and secondly, they actually reveal things instead of just cliffhanging you to death. Both are good.

Mmm.

Today I had a malt-o-gasm at Baby's.

That's all I have for now.

Porn Store

It was so freaking hot today. I think it seemed even worse since it was muggy and walking anywhere was like walking in a sauna. But, since I am devoted, I walked the entire way to the damn thrift store which is only opened on Thursdays from 9-3. I didn't really find anything except dishes. And here they are . . .



To start off, this is a simple white teacup. I have an affinity for those. Very swirley, I like to feel it.





Another cup. This one has stripes, obviously. It looked kind of dirty at the store but I figured for a nickel I could just throw it away. The stains came out.




This one was a whole dollar. I know, I couldn't believe it either. The lid feels neat and overall it has a cool look.



I thank god every day that thrift stores aren't allowed to sell things that resemble a phallus. Yes, indeedy. God, it would be horrible if you were innocently looking for some salt and pepper shakers and came across a dildo replica.

Luckily that didn't happen to me. That shiny stuff on top? Just a trick of the light, I swear.



And it even came with an oddly-urethraed buddy! How lucky am I?

Great News

Ohhh oh. Just found out that Death Cab is playing at the Bryce Jordan Center on August 2nd. At first, my heart froze because I thought it was August twenty-something, but it's not. Tickets for students are $17.50. I'm feeling trembly.

Lookee

Check it out. Thomas can breathe rainbows. Neat!

It is cooler if you enlarge it. Hee. Enlarge.

Fun With Pictures

I feel like posting some photos now since Stephanie rekindled my love of uploading.


This remains one of my favorite pictures that I've ever taken, and it was from one of the cheapest cameras ever made. I got it free with my computer.
Ooh, so pretty.





I think I did this one during a particularly boring party at the apartment, just for fun. It was a challenge to do the panal vertically rather than the original, which is horizontal. It takes a lot longer than you'd think.






This was fun. My desk last year in the dorms was like a blank canvas, open and inviting. It was the saddest moment in my life when I had to erase all of them.




I think this was the latest one I did. I meant to give it to Thomas, but oh well. It's pretty much permanently staying on my wall. It didn't take too long. It was taken off of this Penny Arcade.

Classes

I sit with a tangled mess of possible course options before me. There are two or three for each time slot that I am interested in, which is a bad thing since it's hard to choose, but good because some of the classes I'm not going to like. So far it looks like:

9:35 - 10:50
Ancient to Medieval Art
Renaissance to Modern Art
Legal Environment of Business
Western Heritage I
Religious Studies

11:10 - 12:25
Criminology
Intro to Law
German 001
Spanish Composition

12:45 - 2:00
Mass Media in Society
Intro to American Criminal Justice

So there. A pox on all the scheduling gods that decided that classes such as 10:15 - 12:25 should be allowed to exist. That messes up two classes right away.

Oh, Robbie showed up unexpectedly today, and I thank the lord that I was decently dressed. By decent, I mean in a t-shirt and underwear. It could have been so, so bad. He didn't call, or knock, just came in and started doing laundry. I thought that I was going to have to have a showdown with an unknown intruder.

I'm desperate now for another source of pecuniary means, so I've applied as a 'stack-searcher' at the library and plan to apply to tutor athletes (oh, pain) for the summer. Most likely, the tutoring will never come to fruition since I have not taken any classes that they are likely to.

I can't wait for Napster to come back for summer session 2. More accurately, I can't wait to steal Travis' Napster account during summer session 2.

Argghghhgh

All right. Wal-Mart can go union itself. God, that was the worst nine hours of my life. Six of those were spent bagging, which is really only half of the cashiering duties. Then, I was supervised by a trained cashier for all of, like, fifteen minutes and then sent into the wolves to fend for myself. The weirdest shit happened, of course, when I was by myself and the snarky manager wasn't around to help. There was a lotion bottle with a barcode without numbers. It wouldn't scan. I got the rest of the items, and asked the manager. She informs me that she has never seen a barcode like that, and proceeds to take ten minutes to hunt down the lotion aisle, and come back and say the rest of them are the same and why don't we ring it up at $4.90?

Then, as it pains me to write, the next folk were WIC customers. But they had to make it complicated. The first half of their stuff was non-WIC. First of all, I didn't know how to WIC. Then, they proceeded to show me three different WIC checks, for three different sets of WIC items.

I can't even think about this right now. Suffice it to say, I was hot and flushed and embarassed that I couldn't figure this stupid register out. I know that I'm going to be remembered as that stupid cashier trainer that couldn't figure out anything.

P.S. They didn't tell me how to: void anything, print out a receipt, take checks, scan in multiple items, or what to do about items without barcodes. Poor, poor training.

Oh, I was in the office looking at the binders while waiting for someone and I saw a multi-colored one titled "Personne". I was like "hmm. . . in French 'personne' means 'no one'." I meditated on that for awhile and felt very existential when I realized that the final 'L' just blended in to the yellow part and really said "personnel". Then I just felt dumb.

It wasn't a good day for the old self-esteem.

And all of them were pregnant and had children which they would talk about on their lunch break, with me visibly and painfully not involved in the conversation.

Why Propaganda Doesn't Work For Me

My first 'real' shift begins today, and I realized that they didn't really train us yesterday. Sure, we got to tour Layaway and the meat department, but there was no explanation as to our jobs. We were forced to watch this crappy movie called "Why Unions Don't Work for Wal-Mart", a blatent propaganda piece if I ever saw it. But their welcome packet intrigued me. Apparently, if I die while working at Wal-Mart (like, not even while working there, just employed in general) they will pay my beneficiaries an entire year's salary. Nice! We also got a booklet about stock options, and how Wal-Mart matched 15% of what you put in. Neat-o.

Did I mention already that I start my Carmike shift today at 10:45? Yeah, it'll be difficult to hurry and get over to W-M by 6:30. That shift goes until midnight. I don't think anyone should contact me tomorrow - I'll be dead.

Nappy

I had almost forgotten the mind-dulling effects of Carmike during the day. Despite the arrival of such classics as Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift and Nacho Libre, the theatre remained very, very empty all day. Another bad feature was that the first set of movies ranged from 11:45 AM to 1:30 PM, which meant that I had to be there at 10:45 to get everything ready, and couldn't really just sit back and chill until two o'clock. It's a hard life I lead.

Tomorrow is the orientation for Wal-Mart and oops! I don't have my birth certificate. I had my mother fax me a copy so hopefully I can stall for another few days. If they say "sorry, you'll have to wait until next Saturday to have orientation" I will be enraged.

When I came home at around 6:30 I watched a little Family Guy and had some chips and salsa, and eventually just succumbed and took a nap, which was the worst idea but so alluring at the time I threw common sense to the winds. I just woke up an hour ago, which will make an interesting night ahead as I desperately try to sleep but am as wide-eyed as Travis after finishing off a bag of jumbo M+M's.

I need more reading material. I'm reading Self-Made Man about the woman who went undercover as a guy for like, a whole year. I can believe that most people didn't realize it, but I wish she would lay the whole "this was a life-changing experience thing for me as a lesbian woman. I'm a lesbian. This is how I react to things as a lesbian" way of writing. She's almost as repetative as Malcolm Gladwell.

I think I need to find a good series of books away from the traditional science-fiction path. Carmike is really hard to keep focused for long periods of time, too. Every shadow that passes outside catches my attention and I automatically look up.

Glass Heads United

I've had a pretty good day so far, and it was recently made a lot better by finding out that Erin and I are gigantic glass-head buddies! It's true! She has one too! What are the odds?

So Mindy from Wal-Mart gives me a ring and tells me that orientation is on Saturday, and that I need to bring my birth certificate. My mother mailed it up to me on Tuesday, so I figure I'll be fine, but then I remembered that my mail is being forwarded home until today. Hopefully the post office shows mercy and didn't send the envelope back to Pittsburgh. I don't think I could wait another week before work.

Emrys was over last night and we were both unsettled by not being able to remember a simile to "succinct". I finally came up with "concise" last night, but that isn't it. I seem to think that it was in one of Ben Franklin's proverbs, but that could be wishful thinking.

Hmm. It's not in the thesaurus, so I'm probably just making up imaginary words again.

Pee Times

I got to the drug test nice and early, and remembered that I had forgotten to drink a ton of fluids beforehand like I had meant to. Oh, well, I'm good at urination, if nothing else. So this young, hip, doctor-looking guy escorts me to the building's bathroom (no private stalls for these guys) and stands literally next to the stall while I'm in it. He helpfully turns on the faucet, but even that encouragement wasn't enough - I was a centimeter short. Crap! I gulp down some water at the fountain but too much fountain water makes you queasy. I wait a half hour, really bored, since there was absolutely nothing in the way of entertainment there. They had some Equal Rights Act required postings on their bulletin board, and that was it. Don't they foresee this?

So after a half hour I feel confident again. A different secretary (?!) takes me this time and it's pitiful. I was seriously embarrassed. The meniscus was not even close to the Minimum Amount line. Shamefully I asked to run to McDonalds and grab a pop, since that always does the trick. Permission was granted, even though they really weren't supposed to let me out of their sight. Perhaps I would smuggle pee back in the cup. Who knows.

I down the Sprite and refill it with the gross water, and finish that off soon. I refill it again, and am feeling kind of nauseous at this point. There is nothing to read, unless you count the Ronald McDonald FunFacts Activity page. Which I don't. I am feeling some urges around 11:45 but I am terrified to try again, worried that if I don't hit the mark I'll be stuck there all day. I hold it in until 12:15 and then hesitantly take a cup and follow first-hip-doctor-guy down the hall. Thankfully, he waited outside for me.

My cup overfloweth. Literally. I peed like crazy. It was like I extracted all the liquid from my body just to make sure that I had enough. I had superfluous amounts. I had to dump about half the cup out to get below the Maximum Amount line. It was, aha aha, relieving.

Enough about my bodily functions!

But seriously, that took up the better part of my day. I came home and napped. Oh, Spider Solitaire update, I am rocking that game. I have two suits mastered. I can only look tentatively at the four-suit option, still not brave enough.

The maintenance guy came today to fix my stuck blinds and wonky electrical outlets. Turns out both things were fixed in like, ten seconds and I was embarassed.

Wal-Mart

So yesterday morning I finish all of my things by like, 9:30 or so and decide to break down and call Wal-Mart about that interview. For all I know, they've hired thirty people by now and don't need me. But luck was on my side (dubious, dubious luck) and they seemed very pleased to hear from me. In an excited voice the Personnel woman asked,

"So! When would you be available to come in for an interview".
Well . . . this week I have exactly zero plans.
"Would today be good for you?!"
Uh. . . okay.
"When's the earliest you can get here?!"
11:00?
"No problem! We'll be waiting for you!"

So I hurry home and change (feeling that a tank top would be inappropriate for an interview) and get to Wal-Mart early, browsing the magazines, remembering how stupid I was for not bringing socks up here even though I knew that I'd be working all the time. It's finally time, and a Layaway girl leads me through this maze of boxes and stock that is the underbelly of the Mart. It finally leads to a dingy room with computers and a big table in the middle that is this huge impediment to anyone walking around.

The only thing that I had to do as I was waiting for this mystery Tabitha was listen to a young retarded man being chastised for stealing money from the Children's Miracle Network box and giving it away to people. His response was that the money was for children, so he gave it to any that passed by.

Anyway, I had to go through three freaking rounds of interviews. I had no idea they were so thorough. Staff associate Tabitha asked me 'situational' questions. Associate manager Debbie asked me 'hypothetical' questions. Manager-manager Howie didn't really seem to care and was more concerned with how the quarterback was faring.

So he was punching things into a complicated computer system regarding me being hired, and it comes up to the salary page. Awesome. He tells me that the base pay at Wal-Mart is something like $6.40 an hour. Not great, but almost a dollar more than Carmike, at least. Then he says that since I'm working in a 'skilled' position (meaning that cashiers have skillz) that I receive an extra 40 cents an hour. Woo! THEN he tells me that since I've worked at the same company for three years, I am entitled to an additional $1.30. So, working at Wal-Mart gets me $8.10 an hour. That's like, time and a half what I make at Carmike. I wonder how crappy this job is that they need to pay people that much just to beep and boop merchandise. We'll have to find out.

I'm scheduled for my pee drug test in half an hour. Wish me luck!

Women's Studies

I've been perusing the Schedule of Courses online for some interesting summer classes that I may consider taking, and found this oddity:

WMNST 497A FEMINISM, ART & GLOBAL ACTIVISM ( 3) This course will consider a variety of critical, interdisciplinary, international feminist approaches to social change through art. The course will conclude with two-weeks in Arusha, Tanzania.

What the hell? This is a six-week class. Who in their right mind would take this class with the requirement that you would have to fly to Tanzania? If you wanted to vacation there, fine, but two weeks? That doesn't even sound worth it, especially if you have classes to go to. Apparently there's some kind of redeeming quality, since 14 people have already signed up. That's baffling.

Up Up Up

I finally conceded and realized that staying up until mid-morning and then sleeping the day away isn't going to be so effective when I have an actual job with actual hours. So I NyQuilled up major last night and found myself wide awake at 5:30 this morning, which is normally when I would be about to go to bed. I fear that I am in danger of being sucked into the addicting world of sleep aids. I could leisurely stroll around the apartment, made myself some blueberry pancakes which were awesome, and was on the bus by 7:19. Only to come to the Pollock Laptop library, but that's okay.

I do also have to stop down at the PNC bank to demand answers as to why my card was deemed 'disactivated' yesterday as I tried to deposit money. The weird thing was that I could put my card in and cash checks, but not put any money into my account. Strange, huh? Oh shit, I just realized that I forgot to endorse the check that I did cash. Stupid me. I wonder if they'll do anything about that. I'll ask about that too when I go down there. They don't open for another hour, which is a consequence of being up too early.

I really need my internet back.

Spidery

Last night I found myself completely lost. I had insomnia without the benefit of the internet. I just wandered around my apartment looking at different things. What did sleepless people do before computers? It must have been maddening. So I desperately try to find anything on the computer that would be entertaining, and Solitaire is sadly the best I can do. But even if you win Solitaire, the only reward is those cards dancing. Then you have to do it all over again.

But later, much much later, I found . . . Spider Solitaire. Oooooh. This was a new, exciting version of Solitaire. At first, I was so bad at it. I felt really retarded. Then, I gained skill, and I mastered Spider Solitaire. It felt goooood. I was so confident I upped the level to '2 suited'. Oh, I failed again. I quickly changed it back to regular one-suit and regained confidence.

I went down to take the bus into campus, and realized that the irritating folk at 'Lion's Crossing' didn't put the summer schedule into the holder thing, so I had no idea how long of a wait was ahead. I marched up to this dumb lab, only to find that the bus would have been coming in the next three minutes or so and I had missed it. Arrrrrgh. So I have to grab a copy of the Ride Guide on the bus and paste it into something.

The Return

Back up in State College, finally! The only bad part of today was that stupid Bartley forgot to pay the stupid Adelphia bill for something like three months, so it both cable and internet were disconnected. We received a bill warning of service termination dating from May 9th, so this has been a long time coming.

I didn't realize how much food I'd socked away during the year, so it ended up that I bought repeats of things like applesauce, cereal, syrup, oatmeal, etc. My mother and I had a glorious trip to Wegmans today that was almost transcendent.

My nerves of steel paid off yesterday when I won $20 at poker. It ended up with Travis and I in a face-off, and Rob eventually kicking us out at 12:10 (after four "last hands").

Surprisingly enough, Robbie (different from abovementioned Rob) left the apartment in remarkably clean order. I was half expecting shotglasses all over the place and a hooker passed out on the couch, but it appears that he even vacuumed the floor. I tried to clean even more in places like the bathroom but I don't know how long that's going to last.

I'm kind of procrastinating since I know if I go back to the apartment (I'm in the lame 'computer lab' right now) that I'll see all the crap laying around everywhere and be forced to either ignore it or do something about it, like pick it up and move it somewhere else.

Travis (who ought to know) tells me that season 3 of Project Runway is beginning in July. Oh, awesome!

I had the worst insomnia last night and was up until 5 AM just puttering around, stashing random things in random bags to bring here, and reading The Encyclopedia of Murder, which is turning out much better than I had hoped for. My mother had said that we'd leave around nine-tennish, so I figured a little amount of sleep would be better than nothing. I think little is an understatement here - my mother woke me up at 7:50 and said "you know, it's early but I'd like to get going so we can get up there faster". Amazingly enough I managed to get things together and function until about 3:30 when we came back to the apartment after a big Chili's lunch, and my eyelids were heavy and things were starting to lose their sense. It was time for a nap, and I slept until 7-something. It felt so wonderful.

Where's Waldo

Can you spot the evil, demonic squirrel in this picture?






Here, he's a little more exposed. Still evil, though.

Malltime

I was quite popular today. Laura and I went Century-Three shopping, under the pretext of looking for Prom shoes and accessories but really all I bought were several shirts and underwear. We were looking around the As Seen on TV! store when the Indian guy at the counter started gesturing. We walked over and saw he was holding this fake-looking deck of cards in his hand, telling us to pull out the bottom one. I hesitantly touched the card and was immediately shocked. Wow. That's such a great trick. Really impressive. He then offered up this ideal of joke perfection to Laura, who had just seen what happened, but had to touch it anyway. Oh. She got shocked as well. How surprising. I guess, though, working in a ASoTV store at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon could lower anyone's standards of entertainment.


Oh! As we were walking past the kiosks parked in the middle of the mall, one of the vendors started asking us if we ever got fake nails put on.

Um, do we look like cheap trailer trash? Was my ill-fitting tube top hiked up above my protruding stomach? Was my overdue-dyejob-hair pulled back into a sloppy bun? Were my flip-flops thrip-thropping behind me? Was I trailing a flock of whining children of various ages and paternity? Hmm, no. We replied in the negative, and he kept badgering us over to try some sort of . . . hand cream? Nail polish? No idea? We kept walking, clearly not interested in the wares he was hacking, and he continued to heckle us over to try his product. Sheesh!


Oh, again. Coming out of the underwear store (which was pretty fantastic), there was a priest, a really fat friar (in brown robes and everything!) and a regular guy walking past. It looked like the beginning of a really bad joke. I wonder what they were doing just crusing the mall.


While at Rob's, we caught the last half-hour or so of the Junior Spelling Bee that was on. Good lord! These kids were all under 15 and none of the words were English! I couldn't believe the letters that were spilling out of their mouths. They had Hawaiian words, a lot of German, Sanskrit! One of the words was a French verb! I thought that the Spelling Bee, while having some obscurities, was composed of the English language only. Apparently that isn't challenging enough anymore.