Domestic Help

I worked the unpopular convenience store again tonight. Unbusy = fine with me. I went up to the cafeteria to take my dinner break, and as I'm scooping out some ice cream to take back downstairs, this idiotic athletic trainer stops to tell me, "Hey, you shouldn't be eating ice cream. You're just the help." Who the heck says that? I felt like I was relegated to 19th century domestic servitude. Just the help? It's my freaking dinner break, bucko.

On the positive side, the other attendant and I got to talking, and it turns out after a series of amazing coincidences that his grandmother and my grandmother live on the same floor of the exact same swanky condo building. I cannot even fathom the odds of meeting someone at Penn State whose grandmother shares an address with mine, let alone having it come up in conversation. I called my grandma and she was very excited to hear that. Apparently she knows this lady well, and says that she is "very dignified".

I found out that we can help ourselves to free drinks and stuff, which would be good except for the fact that this was my last Good2Go shift. I wanted to choose wisely, so I picked the weird-looking Diet Pepsi Jazz, which claimed to be a subtle blend of black cherry and vanilla. I wasn't expecting much, but it was a lot better than I had hoped. When I smelled it, I was reminded of the Bazooka Joe gum (which we also sell, for five cents a square). Hmm. Maybe I was just smelling the box of gum. Hmm.

Soft-Server 4 Life

I experienced the sweet, sweet feeling of my last shift at the Carmike 5 on Friday. Such bliss. It wasn't really the best seven hours of my life, but when you're getting paid the big bucks, you have to make sacrifices. I just know later this week I'll start craving movie popcorn and invent excuses to stop by.

Wonderful news - Rob is coming down in twelve hours from his Chatauqua manse, and we can spend an entire . . . 25 hours together before he has to leave. Well, it's better than nothing. I am willing to bet that gin will be played and that my money will be lost.

Per my request, Scheduler Nikki put me on yogurt machine no less than three times in this upcoming week. I'm glad to have the opportunity to demonstrate my soft-serve skillz.

The Death Cab concert is on Wednesday, and I'm kinda bummed since that's Project Runway night and I'll have to miss the new episode where someone gets kicked off! They showed a preview with Tim Gunn looking stern and authoritarian, and I'll be damned if I miss that kind of reality show action. So Erin promised to tape it and we'll watch it Thursday afternoon. Travis knows all about the 'who gets kicked off and why' situation, and I had to make him promise not to tell me. I want it to unravel in glory.

Salad Bar

The other day at work my manager and I were cleaning around the salad bar, and she was complaining about one of the girls that called off with a lame excuse. I asked her what the worst one she ever heard was, and she told me that one guy said that he couldn't work breakfast because he had insomnia. Man, I said, that's such a lame, unbelievable excuse. She looks at me and says "I had insomnia for three years in high school".

Feeling more inquisitive than reproached, I excitedly ask, "Really! Wow! That sucks! Did you have to go to, like, a million doctors?"

Yeah, she said, I had to go to a couple. But what really sucked was getting behind on my schoolwork and stuff.

Why? I asked. Did you forget to do your homework?

Sometimes, she said.

Wow, that's amazing! Three years! Did you, like, forget your family?

She gives me a weird look. "No . . . "

This is about the time that I piece it all together. Insomnia ≠ amnesia. I felt really retarded. I mutter out some lame sentence about how they sound alike and hurried over to wipe down tables.

Shortness

I've been a little worky workerson lately, with a double yesterday at the movies and a double at the Commons today. We had this huge group of campers coming in to see various films, and in the span of two minutes I both burned the back of my hand on the popcorn popper and then slammed my finger in between two sliding cabinet doors. Not the most fun time ever.

Against my better judgement, I saw Clerks 2 on Friday night, and just loved it. I'm all right with crudeness and vulgarity as long as it's hilarious. And it was. Erin and I watched it again last night. As profane as Jay is, he's still my favorite character.

No more for now, apologies. I have stuff to do.

Problems

Frozen yogurt was wonderful! I want to request that personally. I heard a range of compliments, from "Wow! I wish I could take a picture" to "you're a professional" to "you are an ice cream maniac!" That last one was my favorite. It was said by a guy who couldn't believe that I suggested making an ice cream sandwich out of his cookies and vanilla fro-yo. I am a maniac.

Then I had a hellish journey to the Pollock Library to pick up three DVDs (Kinsey, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Man Who Wasn't There) and then I travelled to the White Building since I had left a book in one of the lockers. They told me that they are cleaned out every night, so I checked the lost and found, which was fruitless. I then thought to ask them to check the original locker, and there it was. Amazing.

So then I go to CVS to get six passport-sized pictures, and it's hot and gross so of course I forget my recently-discovered book there and am at the freaking post office before I realize it. And of course, just now I remember that I didn't even put the pictures into the envelope. Wonderful.

Placement

I have to work again today, which is so exciting. It's my first day at the Yogurt Machine, and I seriously hope that I don't screw up the Yogurt Goodness for the campers. I'm really not making that many friends there, which is okay. Ironically, the one guy that talks to me all the time is this guy who received a scholarship from Penn State to study Animal Science. He used to live in the actual ghetto of Philly, and now his mom works at a Uni-Mart.

Oh, I saw my friend Wondor yesterday, the one whose dad is the Minister of Education for Liberia. I definitely need her to set me up some sweet government sinecure.

Received my housing assignment! Woo! It's a sweet deal, since it's a single mother with two kids, aged 14 and 19. Hopefully they'll be boys, but at this point I know I am going to be desperate for companionship. They also have - get this- two cats, a dog, and a ferret! My dad wittily emailed me and said that if I don't learn to speak French then at least I'll speak Ferret. I've heard nothing but negative things about ferrets from the people I've spoken to thus far; ranging from "they stink" to "they bite". I'll not be influenced - I still see them as cute rodents that like to play dead.

Swimming

It was really liberating to wake up this morning, since this is the first day in forever that I haven't had work at some job or another. I felt horribly lazy after awhile, so I took the bus down to the White building on a whim and went to a fitness class. Oh, lord! It was torturous. Not being a masochist, I left early and put on a bathing suit so I could swim awhile. I seriously forgot how to swim. It's been years. To prove that, the first time that I got water up my nose accidentally I was flooded (oh, pun) with memories of the learn-to-swim classes I took at the high school pool when I was, I don't know, 6 or 7 years old. That's a long time, folks.

However, both the jacuzzi and the sauna were out of order. Come on, Penn State fitness! But it was like, 95 degrees today so maybe it's not really that much of a hardship.

I went to Citizen's Bank and asked about opening a new account for next year, since my father told me that he was never charged a fee at the ATMs when he was in France. Awesome! Turns out, you need a Circle account with $5000 to start, which I obviously don't have. But, the clerk leaned in slyly, if I get direct deposits from Penn State the balance requirement is waived. I do get direct deposits! From work! I told her sadly that they would stop coming after I left the commons, but she just grinned and said all I needed was one deposit and they never check again. Oh, deception! So I have to go back tomorrow since I was without valid ID and open that up.

Arts Fest

So Arts Fest is coming to a close, and it'll be back to Travis and I in the old lonely apartment. Right now, somebody is warbling a Western tune in the living room and there's crap all over the place. We did have one nice scene last night, involving four people in my shower and a lot of video. That should be posted all over the internet any second now.

I am officially addicted to the Nintendo DS lite. Oh god, the Mario! The fun! I brought it to work with me on Friday, and the hours just flew by. It's been a constant companion for the past two days, and since I'm working tomorrow, is not likely to leave me in the future. Too bad it belongs to Travis. Maybe he won't realize it's missing.

We all went to Red Lobster and god, I won't be able to eat for some time. The cheesy biscuits! Oh! The cheesy biscuits! We had something like five baskets brought to the table of four. Then we dissolved into peals of laughter when I commented on how I would just expel the biscuits whole because I was eating them so fast. It was a good time.

Week Review

I've been kind of slacky about posting lately, but Thomas is up for the week and when it comes to being able to go on the computer or to just take a nap, the sleep wins every time. Not much has been going on, though.

We saw A Prarie Home Companion. It wasn't what I expected - not too bad, but more glorified country music video and less actual story. This farm family came in late and sat right in our row, and they apparently were tickled pink. I heard the farm daddy humming to himself, and at one point he started slapping his beer belly to keep the rhythm. Weird.

We took a day trip to Bellefonte yesterday, which was much nicer and more Victorian than I had been led to believe. There's this antique barn (like, literally a barn, but bigger) and I spent two hours there. Check it out, lots of dishware:



This was an awesome find. Apparently it's hand painted, and it's an orange. I couldn't ask for much better.




Not too exciting, it's a bowl shaped like a helmet. It is, however, very convenient for ice cream or cherry pits.








This picture isn't very good, but the dog is unsettlingly eerie.









Just a plate, boring boring.






Another plate, yes. but this one was much prettier.







I bought more things, of course, but then my camera batteries died and I had to put the photos on hiatus.

It's 100 Cat Foundation Day at Petco, woo! As we have nothing else to do today, finally, we're going around 2:00 for some cat love.