It Never Rains (Stupidity), But It Pours (Stupidity)!
I just ate ten (10) "Light, Flaky, Buttery…CLUB crackers." It’s getting harder and harder to wait for K. to get here to have lunch, but I guess I should be happy that any one is willing to trek up to Astoria at all…particularly in light of this morning’s freak storm. Did you hear that there was a tornado watch in BROOKLYN, of all places?! Of course, now that I live 5 minutes away from work, it’s both a blessing and a curse…virtually no excuse ever to miss work due to weather or transportation delays.
As a matter of fact, my carpool buddy picked me up right in front of my house, and we got to work earlier than usual.
We were the only ones there.
We sat around wondering what would happen, answering the phone, and wishing we’d brought a DVD. Then, about an hour later, our supervisor Ms. T. showed up. I was pretty sure I’ve mentioned her previously in this blog, and…yep, apparently I christened her "Shelob" at one point. Over the course of the year, my working relationship with her has actually improved/mellowed quite a bit. However, this does not make her any less bizarre, overbearing, or obtuse than she was all along…it’s just funnier now.
For example, let’s discuss our end of the year party for clinicians; she refers to it as a "meeting," supposedly so we can have it during school hours…but really it’s so that she can mandate our attendance…yet I had to pay $10 anyway! She handed out notices/invitations a couple of weeks beforehand, with the name of the event in big letters across a flier that must have taken her hours to create. The name, without any intentional irony, was Afternoon Delight (!)…this of course immediately set my mind racing to THIS, not to mention compelled me to show the flier to pretty much everyone else at work. The party was supposed to be a luau, complete with lei-wearing (no roast pig, though), as well as gift-giving and announcements. Ms. T. referred to me as "the baby of the group…who took our hearts by storm this year!" I felt like I was winning an Oscar. She also thought I was turning 22 on my last birthday…when I pointed out that I would have had to have been a child prodigy of some sort to have received my doctorate at age 21, she told me that she herself was a prodigy. I resisted the urge to verbalize my conjecture that perhaps she meant a savant…although then again, savants have to be especially good at something.
But, as so often happens, I digress.
The point of this story was to tell you what happened when Ms. T. tried to illustrate her point about disliking crossword puzzles. Arbitrarily, she picked a clue which she must have thought would be difficult to solve: "42. Erect…I don’t know what that is!"
"How many letters?" I asked, carefully. She said there were five, and I immediately responded, "Build." She seemed surprised, but my colleague J. agreed with me.
Moments later, when Ms. T’s attention was diverted, I passed J. a note that said the answer might alternately have been "Boner," and WHY of all possible clues did she have to pick that one?!? Needless to say, everyone else will hear this anecdote as well…it’s a small reward after having spent possibly the longest 2.5 hours of my life trying to participate in conversation with Ms. T. this morning.
In other news, I finally finished uploading my photos of Hungary from last summer. This leaves Vienna and Italy, plus the rest of the pictures from my trips to the Netherlands and Phoenix this year. And speaking of trips, I recently visited friends in both DC and Chicago. I keep saying I’m going to post about these things with further elaboration, but my thoughts are not yet coherent. Perhaps it’s sunstroke!
K. just called and I’m starving, despite having eaten at least 4 more of those crunchy sticks of butter that pass for crackers. I’ll post again later and share with you all the gory details of why I need to buy some mint oil…
Ciao for now!
