Obsessing?-- I'm not obsessing

It only took me 16 hours this weekend to assign table locations to all 200 and some employers coming on Friday! Actually, I don’t remember it taking so long in the past, but maybe it did. You have to make sure that everyone who wants an electrical hookup gets it, and only certain rows have electricity available. You can’t put FedEx and UPS next to each other. You have to watch out for the Civil Engineering firms because they can’t be next to each other either, since there is such a dearth of civil engineering grads, they get frantic looking for them. The banks and insurance companies cannot be put together either, because of their competition, and never put the Army, Navy or Marines together. They don’t play well with others.

If you want to see what I did, go to http://www.csucareerfair.com/ and click on “Table Map”.

Max stopped over here briefly on Thursday, after a rollicking good time at McDonald’s Playland. Shane said Max was showing off how tall he was to a girl in the first grade. She asked him if he had been left back. He doesn’t know what that means, but I’m afraid that’s a sign of things to come. People will always think he’s older than he is because of his height. When you pick him now (if you can pick him up now) his legs dangle down past your knees. He’s still a kindergartener, but we think he has a good enough self concept that he won’t be hurt by such comments. There was some change laying on the living room coffee table and I asked Max how much was there. Darned if he didn’t add and multiply and get the right answer: 86 cents. (“Let’s see… four dimes, so four times four is….”) and he could do it.

Each day last week was consumed with Spring Career Fair. Every night this past week I’ve come home and gone right back to work on the computer, doing the rest of my job that I couldn’t get to during the day: answering the office email, answering my own email, checking student resumes for the database, approving new employers and jobs for the system—that sort of thing.

On Friday, the secretary I was depending upon to help me with the Fair did not come to work. (The regular secretary was in Las Vegas—this is the last time we ever let anyone go on vacation at this time of year!) Anyway, the secretary’s son’s girlfriend was having a baby Friday morning, and she was very excited about becoming a grandmother (the secretary, not the girlfriend). She had done something for me the day before and I needed it, so I went to the computer where she had stored it and found that the files were not there, and the ones I could find were wrong. So all that has to be done all over again on Monday.

Kathy has been sick all week with something that Shane had. Of course she soldiers on and keeps going to work. Her sister Lois reminded her that barley is a good thing, so I went to the store today to get some, and it took me forty-five minutes to find it. Usually they have these guys blocking the aisles as they stock shelves, annoying everyone by cutting off the flow of cart traffic. Do you think I could find anyone today? Of course not. The guy I did ask at the laughably named “Customer Service” counter sent me to the wrong place. After circling likely looking aisles for a while, I stumbled upon my quarry and made it safely home.

It’s spectacularly sunny here today—foreshadowing another winter storm, no doubt. Should be good and miserable on the Career Fair day, Friday February 29. Mark your calendars.