what a weirdo

I’m sure that I’ve never mentioned how I hate dial up. I’m positive that I’ve never EVER complained about how crazy dial up makes me. It’s certainly not causing me to come completely unglued tonight, even though I’ve long ago lost count of how many times I’ve been kicked off the internet and had to hit "redial" and sit here listening to ZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz over and over and over and over…. And I don’t mind a bit that OD is making me log back in every single time I get kicked off, even though I’m supposedly logged in permanently on my laptop! No, no, it’s fine!! I’m fine, I don’t mind one bit!!!

All this is just to say, I really will catch up on everyone some day. I really will leave some notes at some point. Just, apparently, not tonight. Because I seriously am getting kicked off every ten or so minutes. And since New Boss Who Needs A Nickname has returned from Costa Rica, I have done nothing at work but go to meetings. (Not that I play on the internet at work. Of COURSE not. But sometimes I am able to steal ten or fifteen minutes to at least catch up on OD a bit.)  Today K and I met with her from 2:30 till nearly 5. And it’s stuff we REALLY have to talk about, so it’s not that we’re wasting time. The poor woman is in a state of shock, I think, at what a madhouse our office is. Today she got to discover that we’ve got at least five students who are supposedly going out to student teach in three weeks who have not completed all their requirements. Who are not going to be completing them, unless they are in classes right now that they haven’t ever registered for. Which is always possible. And there could very well be more flunking out of summer school. But we never know this ahead of time – and we usually don’t sit down and figure this out until right before student teaching starts. Because really there’ s no point, when people are still in summer classes. But she’s really shocked at how we wing everything we do. Because that was The Dr. Airhead Way. Never do anything till the VERY last minute, and never have a plan.

I will say, however, that she’s won a big chunk of loyalty from me today by solving my Perpetual Interview Room Crisis in about ten seconds. We were telling her what a nightmare it is to schedule rooms for the supervisors to interview the student teachers in before placing them each semester. I never get enough rooms in our building, and what I get is all broken up so they have to switch rooms all over the place, and lately I can’t get anything in the Student Union either. So she says, "Why don’t you use the rooms at the Broyhill??" Which is the hotel and conference center. Well, because I had no idea I COULD use rooms at the Broyhill for academic meetings. But apparently the Broyhill has a number of small rooms they let anyone use, and she says, "Just get two meeting rooms and they’ll put a bunch of tables in there for you, and they can just ALL do their interviews in there, they’ll each have a table and it will be fine!"

So, instead of spending days trying to find individual classrooms, offices, cubbyholes, closets, etc etc etc for these interviews, and trying to figure out who will go where at what time and playing Perpetual Musical InterviewSpace – I can schedule two rooms, toss them all in, and be done with it. It’s mindboggling! Apparently she loves to solve problems. Apparently she is good at it. Of course I fear we’re coming off looking like bumbling hopeless idiots, but at this point I hardly even care. If she’ll fix this nightmare, she can think anything she wants!

And they are posting the job for our mysterious new person next week. Also New Boss’s doing.  Of course that’s coming with some more issues that I’m not getting into now or I’ll be going on all night, but at least we’ll have some help. FINALLY. I may actually get to dump student teaching into someone else’s lap!!  

But my long lost point was that I’ve been really busy at work. And that I hate dial up. We’ve got to do something about this. I’m not even sure what our options are, but we’ve got to get rid of dial up. I hate that getting online at home is this huge ordeal now. It didn’t used to be this bad. 

And my other point, and the point of my title, is that I’m going to to that Six Weird Things About You thing that I’ve been tagged for by, like, everybody. Tae tagged me, Falling Dog tagged me, Oulin tagged me, a bunch of other people did it and didn’t tag me specifically but did a Tag To Whoever Reads This sort of thing… anyhow, I’m way tagged. I also owe Dragon Lady a survey from long long long ago, but hers requires some actual thought so it has to wait till I’m capable of thinking and it’s not one in the morning.

So. Six Weird Things About Me. Which is actually kind of hard. Not to find weird things about me – that’s not at ALL hard, I’m sorry to say – but to find things that I haven’t already written about ad nauseam is kind of hard. I mean, I’ve written about the bizarro church I grew up in, I’ve written about my strange habit as a child of drawing complicated stories involving horses and cowboys in my coloringbooks, I’ve written about my toy horses – and posted pictures! – I’ve written about the troll who talked to me… what haven’t I written about already??

!. I’ve got some space issues. Personal space issues. I don’t like being too physically close to people I don’t feel comfortable with, and I really really REALLY don’t like being hugged by people I don’t feel quite close to. I’m SO not a hugger. I’m kind of freaked out by people I don’t know touching me, too. Or people I DO know, if I don’t feel close to them. I don’t know why I’m like that, either, although I do come from a very non-demonstrative family, and they aren’t, on the whole, huggers.  Kim had a friend in college who was way worse than me – she didn’t want anyone at all touching her, ever, for any reason. Kim actually had to watch herself around this friend, because she’s very touchy – she’ll touch people’s arms when talking to them, and she’s a big hugger herself – but this friend couldn’t stand that. So I’ve always thought, at least I’m not THAT bad. I don’t mind Kim’s touchy-feelieness at all, for example. Because I feel close to her and trust her, I guess. I suppose it’s a trust/closeness thing. I am, however,  fascinated by people who are touchers.  

2. I don’t like anyone seeing my face when I’m asleep. How weird is that??? I’ll go to great lengths to make sure my face is under the covers if there’s any chance I’ll be seen when asleep. I don’t even like the idea of Baker B seeing me asleep. Why? Who knows!! Kim and I had another friend in college who was the same way, and said she was afraid she’d look weird or be drooling or something. I guess that’s what I think too.

3. I love hot weather. I am never ever too hot. I have an extraordinarily high tolerance for heat. And an extraordinarily low tolerance for being cold. It’s so unusual for me to be too hot that on the rare occasions when I am, I think there’s something bizarre and scary wrong with me until I figure out that what’s actually wrong is that I’m hot and I’m not used to it.

4. I have never had a manicure. I’m not sure how weird that is, but it seems kind of weird to me. I WANT to have one – in fact, I recently was on the verge of getting one because my fingernails had actually grown out to reasonable lengths so they’d have something to work with – but I didn’t do it. I think I’m waiting for a reason. And when I have a reason, I won’t have any fingernails to work with. I have awful fingernails. They’re weak and very prone to breaking and splitting. I bit my fingernails to the quicks until I was 16 or 17, and finally broke the habit with the help of that nasty-tasting stuff you can buy to polish your nails with and discourage yourself from gnawing them. But I think that’s always kept them from being very impressive fingernails. I have really ugly hands too, though, so probably shouldn’t be drawing attention to them anyhow.

5. I’m a terrible packrat. I can’t throw ANYTHING away. I save everything. I even want to save notes people have written me, although I do try to exercise some common sense with things like that. I really can’t get rid of photos or cards or letters or  books or anything even remotely creative or personal. I often wish I’d gone into some kind of museum related field. For example, I have a photo of a cow in a field that somebody gave my parents – I can’t even remember who gave it to them, or why, or what it had to do with anything – but can I just toss that picture of a cow in a field away? Of course not! It meant something to somebody at some point, so I have to keep it forever!! And you see who ended up with it – not my parents, who did USED to get rid of stuff. 

6. I hate to go to bed, and I hate to get up. That’s probably not a very new and surprising weird thing about me, but it’s now one thirty in the morning, and I want to watch Deadwood still so I can send it back to Netflix. I’ve gotten kind of hooked on Deadwood – apparently I’m very hooked on it, as I recently saw that they’re on the third season now, and I was quite thrilled. I thought there were only two seasons, for some reason. It’s very harsh and brutal and probably is a pretty realistic depiction of a remote goldrush town in the late 1800s, but for some reason I like it.

SO – I tag everyone who hasn’t already done this!