Wednesday, February 27, 2008

It finally happened

I lost it at work today. I finally had an angry moment. Thi is a hectic week for us and I asked someone for help putting these banners out on campus. Our director said, "Get N to do it." There are some alumninum pieces parts that have to be assembled, and I had the telescoping pole in my hand. When I asked this person for help, she said get the students to do it. Well, that might work, but I wanted her to do it. The student workers were coming and going and we needed them for something else. I threw the pole down and said, "Jeeez!" and went to find a grad student to help.

This person's typical atttitude is having someone else do her work if at all possible. I saw this as another example of her poopy attitude toward work. It turns out she had to go to a workshop in half an hour. I had forgotten that. Keep in mind that this is a workshop that she did not have to teach herself--she got someone outside the university to do it. Anyway, I wound up apologizing to her, even though she wasn't completely blameless. She apologized, but I don't know if this is the end of it or not. Fortunately, she doesn't report to me.

Anyway, I just wanted help, not attitude.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

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.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning...

There was a bit of excitement around the University this week as Chelsea Clinton stopped in to stump for her mom. I went over to check it out and I was glad I did. I remember Chelsea as kind of a funny looking kid, but she is really a quite attractive young lady now. She was only twenty minutes late which was remarkable because these things are notorious for running hours behind schedule. After a mercifully brief introduction by the University president and the son of a local pol, she started right in asking for students’ questions.

There were several hundred people gathered in an atrium that is five stories high, so there were people ringing the balconies as well as sitting on the floor in front of the risers. A real Secret Service nightmare. The first character to ask a question wanted her to compare Hillary and Obama, but she put him in his place by insisting that she had come to talk about her mom, not anyone else. I got some pretty good photos of the event, and after a few minutes I had to get back to the office.

As you all undoubtedly know, we are hosting the next Democratic debate on Feb. 26. We just got word at the end of the day on Friday that classes will be cancelled on that day. It’s not a very good deal for us because we all still have to go to work, which I don’t mind, but more importantly, that day falls smack in the middle of our big deal Spring Career Week. We have several workshops scheduled that day that we hope we can move, but if not, we will have to cancel them. Last year it was a snowstorm that caused classes to be cancelled during Career Week. We can’t seem to catch a break around here.

Max.is.so.tall. He was sitting in his little red plastic chair tonight and his knees were up to his chin. We asked him if he is the tallest in his class. He answered, “No, Miss Barlett is.” (We didn’t ask if he was the tallest kid in his class, so he answered the question we asked.) We started the evening with pierogies, as Max wolfed down three of them. He was especially looking forward to salting them, since he’s ordinarily not allowed to salt his food, probably a good idea. Then we moved to “Gooey Louie”, a particularly disgusting game, appealing to a five year old’s sense of humor. It required pulling boogers out of Louie’s nose until his head explodes. We then played a short round of the Memory Game with “Finding Nemo” characters on the cards. Then Shane and Max started on building a robot. There is no end to the fun around here. I bought eight cases of water for work, and Max immediately saw the possibilities: “Let’s build a water fort!”

On Saturday afternoon Kathy and I drove out to her sister's house to watch a movie on their new 52” big screen TV. The movie was “Across the Universe”, a kind of musical love story written with Beatles’ songs to tell the story. In short, it was wonderful. It tracked the characters through the Sixties, and we had fun picking out symbols and historical artifacts, plays on words and funny scenes and secret messages. The characters were named after characters in Beatles songs. It avoided kitsch when other movies might stumble, and even handled the psychedelic scenes without embarrassing us. Like my brother in law said, it was the best movie no one ever saw. Later he cooked up some great hamburgers and we had a pleasant dinner.

Today is the Social Justice Social up at church. We’ll have about 30 people from our group, counting spouses and such. It’s warm rainy day, so it’s good day to do something like this.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Cannelloni, Catholics and Cold

Hi all
(We welcome one Norah Scanlan to this distinguished mailing list.)
Every year at about this time, Kathy makes cannelloni, using my sister's famous recipe. The papers are stained and tattered, but we have kept the original copy lo these many years. This past Saturday was cooking day. Kathy wisely invited her sisters to come over and help. To get ready, Kathy boiled five boxes of manicotti noodles on Friday night. That took four hours to cook, cut and lay them all out on trays. Saturday Lois and Priscilla arrived and the three sisters set about making the stuffing. My contribution was staying out of the way. I was working on the third edition of my textbook in the next room. I had planned to plug my iPod into my ears so I could concentrate, but it was so much fun listening to the sisters, that I didn’t bother. It was most interesting listening to them decide what to do at each step. They looped around and went this way and that before deciding things.

Kathy is famous for her malapropisms, and she had a doozy yesterday. Discussing Hillary’s chances for the nomination, she said something to the effect that Hillary would do better “without that alabaster around her neck”—referring to Bill. Alabaster, albatross—close enough.

Max was intrigued with the idea of a day being called “Fat Tuesday”. He wound up eating too much and went home sick from school the next day. Shane was at his house this week playing Wii games with him. He said Max can now beat him handily at some of the games, even as Shane honestly tries to win. No need to throw the contests anymore.

I think I was punished for going to Ash Wednesday Mass at work last week. One of the bishops came to celebrate Mass. I ran into a friend in the hallway early Wednesday morning and he reminded me about the Ash Wednesday service. I had never gone to one at work and I was going to pass on this one, but then I remembered that I had told myself I would have a better Lent this year than in years past. Maybe God put that guy in the hallway to remind me of my commitment! Maybe I better go! So I went. We were in an auditorium with no kneelers, of course, so we stood throughout the Mass. Sure enough, I strained my knee standing on the steeply pitched floor. Now I have to rest it for a few more days before I can resume exercising.

During the Mass I looked around and was surprised to see who was there. I felt like I was at a gay/lesbian meeting: “I didn’t know you were Catholic!!”

I am in the midst of planning for the big Spring Career Day on February 29. So far we have 171 employers registered. Looks like it will be another monster day. Now we just have to get the students to come out. We sent 10,000 Career Week calendars in the mail and printed another 10,000 to hand out to classes. Think that will do it?

Should be four degrees tomorrow. Can’t wait!

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Need to clear my head

Lately, I’ve been thinking about old Kodiak, how much I miss the big lug. The weather has been cold, but not unbearable. It was raining on Friday, and I came home from a day of squinting at a computer screen, looking forward to a walk outside to clear my head. Since there was no dog to go with me, and for some reason, no wife wanted to accompany me either, I didn’t go.

Our walks were a time to rest a bit from the world and get off by ourselves. Let thoughts swirl around our heads like flakes in a snow globe, and then settle as our minds cleared. We could share a laugh at a silly squirrel, or some Scooby snack of a canine who dared approach us. Maybe we’d stop and sniff a neighbor…um, speak to a neighbor for a moment and then move on.

We would return home, refreshed and renewed.

Well, a bit of anthropomorphizing there, but you get the idea.
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Good news: my colonoscopy was fine. It was a crappy way to spend 24 hours, but everything came out all right in the end. While I was waiting for the doctor to appear, one of the nurses told me that the doctor had come in on a Saturday and taken care of all the nurses, colonoscopy-wise. I said, “What, did you all have a sleepover?” They thought that was pretty funny. The doctor arrived, shot me full of the good stuff, and as I was slipping away, the nurse said, “There is a student here, would it be OK if he watched?” and I slurred, “That would be wunnerful.”