I'm just a bill, yes I'm only a bill...

Jun 21, 2006 08:26


One thing about this job is that it really messes up your days of the week.  The kids arrive every Saturday, effectively starting a new week, so Saturday feels like Sunday, Sunday becomes Monday and so on.  In other words, it feels like it should be much later in the week than just Wednesday by now, but here we are.

The first week of program was pretty good, especially looking back halfway into week two.  The group was relatively small (130 some-odd kids), the instructors were really great people, and everything for the most part went smoothly.  This week, meanwhile, the number of kids has doubled, as has the number of instructors, and better yet, its science and tech week, so all of them are the type who are absolutely brilliant, but lack any sort of common sense or ability to take direction-it’s been interesting to say the least.

The Sordid Tale of a Lost Bunny Rabbit

The mishaps that came out of week one were actually kind of funny.  For example, I come into work last week and receive the notes from the last desk shift.  Among them is a note to call maintenance to see if they’ve tracked down a stuffed bunny rabbit that got picked up with the sheets the other day.  It makes mention of the fact that the young lady that owns said bunny (who is in fact a junior in high school) is quite concerned about it, a fact that is confirmed by said girl coming into the office claiming that the bunny is being held hostage by housekeeping (they apparently found it in the washroom, but never delivered it down to the maintenance).  Thinking she can’t possibly be serious about the whole kidnapping thing, I tell her I’ll pull some Jack Bauer shit and this taken care of.
True to my word, I call housekeeping and talk to the guy down there.  He confirms that the bunny was found and then lost again, and tells me he’s looked but hasn’t had any luck.  I ask him to keep looking, as it’s a stuffed animal this girl has had since she was an infant and its very important to her (all the while ignoring the question of why you’d bring an irreplaceable childhood artifact such as this halfway across the country).

Needless to say, when our friend gets back from her day on Capitol Hill, she is not happy.  Flanked by about five of her girlfriends, she demands to know what the hell is wrong with the hotel staff.  I told her we’d done everything we could, we’d call her if we heard anything, and to please clear out of the office as we had a million other people to attend to and really didn’t need her entire posse breathing down our necks.  A few minutes later, the hotel phone rings.  It’s the front desk telling us there’s a student of ours outside at loss prevention (run by a private security firm unassociated with the hotel) screaming at the guard-something about a bunny rabbit.  One of my fellow program assistants goes down to find the girl in tears standing before a very intimidating looking guy  with one of her friends, still screaming.  Removing them from the situation, she tells the other girl that she needs to go back to her group meeting, as she’s being no help whatsoever and only adding to the drama, a point which she readily proves with her response:

“NO! I can’t leave her here.  Would you like to be left alone if someone you loved just died?!?”

Naturally, this leads the girl to start wailing all over again that her bunny is “dead”, and she’ll never see it again.  Way to go, other girl… that’s friendship for you right there.  We finally shake off the friend and send the girl off to the infirmary to cool down.

The next morning, we found the damn bunny.  At this point, I almost didn’t want to give it back.

“Drop a needle on it and let it revolve…”

Outside of work, life in DC has been everything I expected and then some.  Meeting up with old page friends (I know people to do lunch on The Hill with… how cool is that?), hitting all the tourist sites (at long last, I have a new journal from the Natural History museum gift shop), and revisiting all the little known corners I discovered while I lived here (Pete’s Diner hasn’t changed a bit, thank God).

My day off last week coincided with Elvis Costello’s appearance at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, VA, which I took as a sign from on high that I must go.  Despite going by myself and it taking almost an hour to get there (going via shuttle bus, metro rail, and shuttle bus again), it was an amazing show.  The Artist Formerly Known as Declan McManus has teamed with New Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint and a mind blowing Louisiana horn section, and its totally given him new life.  He had harsh words for the crew in Washington about hurricane relief (the best line being “as fortune would have it, a calamitous woman named Katrina came into town, and aided by a team of numbskulls and jackasses, decided to redecorate”), but was mostly there to celebrate some amazing music and have fun.  All his classic songs had new horn lines courtesy of Toussaint, quoting the Blues Brothers standard “Can’t Turn You Loose” at one point and sounding almost symphonic in the new intro to “Allison,” which ended with Costello breaking into “Tracks of My Tears” and causing me to scream in approval at the top of my lungs.  All in all, a phenomenal show by a living legend of rock music.

This weekend, Rob came to visit from New York, which was also a ton of fun despite my having to work.  In the course of three days, we managed to explore Georgetown, Downtown DC, Adams Morgan (a part of town I’d never made it to before but always meant to and now am wondering what took me so long), Capitol Hill, Eastern Market, and the Smithsonian.  I can’t remember ever doing so much walking in the course of a weekend, even in DC, but it went by quickly between my impromptu tour guiding and Rob’s various stories about working for Nick News and trying to see the Daily Show.  Overall, it was a good time, and I hope to see more of you making your way down here if you’ve got the time (I should also mention that Rob said the couch in my apartment was very comfortable to crash on, so sleeping accommodations are all set should you stop by).

Well, this is quite possibly the longest LJ entry I’ve ever written-actually doing something with my life tends to do that, I suppose.  Stay tuned for next week’s adventures in Law and Justice week coordinating, as well as my upcoming stint on the graveyard shift… something tells me there will be a lot of semi-coherent entries coming out of that one.

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