Off to Georgia, California - be back in a couple weeks

I have not blogged in quite some time, I know. I’ve been surprisingly busy these past few weeks. I had to make a couple of long drives and Ferdinand’s has been busy as well. My sister spent this past week visiting with me, and I didn’t want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in the newsroom.

I am blogging now only to say that I will not be blogging for another two weeks. I am driving home tomorrow and at 6 a.m. Sunday morning I am flying to Georgia for a week-long newspaper editors conference. As soon as I return from that trip, I will be in California with my family for a week on vacation.

When I return to Pullman in two weeks, I do plan to start blogging again and more regularly. Until then, that is all.

Exclamation unnecessary

I hate exclamation points. I refuse to use them. I think they seem juvenile and false. As I was surfing the internets, waiting for the last pages to come in so I could go home and pack, I came across this quotation.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

It is attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald. I knew I always liked him, even if he did create Daisy. The quotation has made my night.

Happy Fourth

I am driving home after work tomorrow for my family’s yearly 4th of July celebration. It has become quite the annual shindig, what with all my Samoan relatives and even more explosives. This year there will also be 9 gallons of ice cream. My mission tomorrow is to take the ice cream from a freezer in Pullman and get it into a freezer in my home before it melts in my trunk. I purchased dry ice today, so wish me luck.

I would blog some more now, but I have to go to the apartment and pack.

I’m sure I will have at a least a couple Independence Day adventures to share when I return to Pullman.

Another item on my dislike list*

There are few things I dislike as much as doorways. Off the top of my head, only opening tuna cans and saran wrap come immediately to mind. But now I can add shorts to the list.

I haven’t worn shorts for at least a year, maybe two. I stopped wearing them because I didn’t like them, but I made that decision so long ago, I thought perhaps I had changed my mind. So I wore shorts today. I discovered that I still don’t like them.

They’re uncomfortable and unflattering. Skirts are better. Now that I have reestablished this, I can put all my shorts back in a box in my closet. Maybe they will see the light of day in another two years, but not this summer.

*Yes, I actually keep a list of things I dislike. Unfortunately, I left that particular notebook at home. That’s why I had to come up with things off the top of my head. I think there are one or two other things I also dislike as much as doors, but I’m not positive. I’ll check and get back to you.

Maybe I am overreacting

My mind is a crazy place. Though I do my best to appear sane on the outside, inside my mind rambles on and on about unimportant things and is often beyond my control. I can’t turn it off when I want to go to sleep. I can’t make it be reasonable when I know it is being unreasonable, and most of all I can’t stop it worrying – about everything.

It exhausts me sometimes. I’ve always been able to get lost in my thoughts, for a long time if I have the time, which unfortunately this summer I do. My grandmother thought something was wrong with me as a kid because I would stare off into space, not realizing I was staring at a wall.

I think the same thoughts again and again and because many of my thoughts are worries, I find myself a bit tense most of the time.

I worry about all kinds of things. A few are actually important: next fall, my family, my future, the paper. But most are useless things to worry about: is that old man at the gym staring at me and judging me, are the sirens I hear when I fall asleep at night real or imagined, is the sunburn on my shoulders going to lead to skin cancer later in my life, since I try to make most of my posts fairly upbeat is this going to come across as too serious.

It’s easy to laugh at these thoughts and I do. I can laugh at my crazy mind. But that doesn’t make it any more sane. I imagine this is probably why I like to stay busy all the time. It saves me from myself and gives my incessant thoughts a purpose.

Too bad it’s summer in Pullman.

Windex in the face face

I accidentally sprayed my supervisor in the face with Windex today. How could such a thing happen? If you read my blog, you’ve seen the photos. I work in an interesting environment. We all kid around with each other a lot and there are a lot of dirty jokes. I’ve picked up new habits* too.

Anyway, I was almost done with my closing job, finishing up by wiping down the sink with Windex. My supervisor asked how come I wasn’t done yet. I turned to face him, pointed the bottle of cleaner in his direction, and shook it threateningly, daring him to comment again on the speed of my cleaning. Shaking the bottle was a bad idea. Windex sprayed out, directly into his face.

To make it worse, rather than being extremely apologetic, I started laughing so hard I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t a bad way to end the week I suppose, but I can’t be sure until Monday rolls around.

*The “face face” in the post title was intentional. Much like hanging around Victor caused me to start pluralizing everything, at Ferd’s it’s all about the repetition of words. I’ve picked that up now too.

My own Alive! day

I haven’t posted as much this week because with the return of warmer weather Ferdinand’s has gotten busier. This means I am more tired at the end of the day and don’t feel like coming into the newsroom. Friday was particularly busy because it was another Alive! day.

All the kids and their parents got me thinking about the Alive! session I came to the summer before my freshman year. You can read about it below.

A couple photos from this week

Ferdinand’s was evacuated early in the week because a child pulled the fire alarm. Even though we saw the kid do it, we still had to leave the building. It was a very annoying alarm, but it was nice to get an extra 20 minute break.

I came across this little guy when I was walking home from work at the end of the week. Its parents flew off as I came down the sidewalk. This baby tried frantically to climb up the little dirt path into the brush, but it kept falling back down. It was sad. If I had come across the same situation ten years ago or so, I would have taken it home with me. Instead, I took a picture and went on my way.

My working environment

We had a bit of a lull Thursday morning at Ferdinand’s. My co-workers thought it would be fun to shrink-wrap our mascot. Then we posted him on our message board. If you’re curious, the spider stuff is referring to this. Apparently it is old, but I had never seen it before and was forced to watch it at work. I thought the first half minute or so was real. I can be that gullible.

After we had this fun, all hell broke loose when the first set of Alive! kids arrived. They also spilled over into Friday, the same day we released our stuffed mascot, who in fact is not named Ferdinand but who is called Moo Cow. He recovered from his shrink wrap experience just fine.

 

Three fortunes

On Brian’s last night working at the Evergreen, a group of us went to New Garden for dinner. I got three fortune cookies in my bag, instead of the usual two.

Two of them were pretty generic fortunes: your difficult path with be rewarding and keep your eyes open for a special opportunity.

The third fortune was actually the first I opened. I don’t remember a fortune ever being so far away from possibly coming true.

Participation in sports may lead you to a lucrative career.

I do like playing sports, at least some of them, but I am in no way talented in such endeavors. A lucrative career may be a bit out of my reach.