"That's nasty!"
The title of this entry is a quote from Sophy, a former student of mine who uttered it when I told her about the Korean habit of combining self-serve onions at Costco with ketchup and mustard to make a quick snack (and accompanied it with a facial expression of utter disgust). Whatever one may think about it, it's a very efficient use of low-value hot dog condiments. Besides, if we were going to talk about strange and unusual dietary habits, I would mention the Korean love of tomatoes as snack foods long before I mentioned their condiment medleys.
It seems my fears that missing the new employee orientation would make me look like a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad employee in my supervisors' eyes were unfounded. I fought traffic to make it downtown for the make-up session on Monday morning, found a spot in the parking garage, traversed the skyway, and arrived shortly after the meeting started, only to have the same HR representative who told me last week that it was imperative for me to attend the meeting arrive 10 minutes later and tell me that I didn't need to be there. I would have loved to throttle her for causing me undue stress and making me waste gas, but I settled for snatching a muffin on my way out the door.
Of course, my trip wasn't completely free of complications: I didn't get my parking permit validated before I left, and was warned by the attendant that I would need to do so in the future (or else pay a whopping $5 fee) as I pulled out of the garage. I'm pretty sure that parking anywhere within a 1-mile radius of HCC's business office puts one's car at a risk of being ticketed and/or towed, so the next time I need to go there, I'm just going to park on the rail line. It'll ensure that I have an interesting story to tell when I make it home.
It was only 8:30 in the morning at this point, and had I been a more devious employee, I could have pretended to be at the meeting for the rest of the day. Since I am far more diligent than I am devious, however, I called my program manager and drove to the Gulfton campus to pick up the flash drive I'd need for the new student orientation, which was supposed to take place at the Northline campus at 10:00. Upon procuring the flash drive, I was told that there would not be a 10 a.m. orientation at Northline, though there would be one at Gulfton at 3 p.m., and I would need to be around for it after I finished helping the office assistant at Northline.
There's a very appropriate term for this situation, and it rhymes with "blusterschmuck" (which would be a fine nickname for Donald Trump). Also, if my car were a woman, it would have wanted to kick me square in the privates.
Monday aside, the week hasn't been bad. I had a chance to talk with the program director and became more able to empathize what she's been going through for the past few months (and confirm that she doesn't think I'm an incompetent boob, since she was apparently more upset with HR about the orientation debacle than she was with me), but I've been spending most of my time doing clerical work, administering placement tests, and leading orientations to help the program and its students prepare for the upcoming semester, which begins next Tuesday. The Level 3 and Level 4 classes have begun already, and a few of my former students have come by to say hello. One even gave me a coupon for a free frito pie when they were being served downstairs for a promotional event - I had previously tried to get an ice cream sundae, but faculty and staff weren't eligible to receive coupons. This, dear readers, is the lot of a full-time instructor at HCC.
I haven't had much of a desire to play video games lately (probably due to the fact that I don't trust my computer to run Fallout 4 and have yet to pick up No Man's Sky), and with Civilization VI coming out in October, I've been doing a lot of wiki editing and some socializing in addition to the occasional spurt of creative writing. I have ideas; I just need to set aside some time each day to put fingers to keyboard until the story is finished.
I also need to get some rest so I can be up in time for the two meetings tomorrow. Priorities, priorities.
It seems my fears that missing the new employee orientation would make me look like a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad employee in my supervisors' eyes were unfounded. I fought traffic to make it downtown for the make-up session on Monday morning, found a spot in the parking garage, traversed the skyway, and arrived shortly after the meeting started, only to have the same HR representative who told me last week that it was imperative for me to attend the meeting arrive 10 minutes later and tell me that I didn't need to be there. I would have loved to throttle her for causing me undue stress and making me waste gas, but I settled for snatching a muffin on my way out the door.
Of course, my trip wasn't completely free of complications: I didn't get my parking permit validated before I left, and was warned by the attendant that I would need to do so in the future (or else pay a whopping $5 fee) as I pulled out of the garage. I'm pretty sure that parking anywhere within a 1-mile radius of HCC's business office puts one's car at a risk of being ticketed and/or towed, so the next time I need to go there, I'm just going to park on the rail line. It'll ensure that I have an interesting story to tell when I make it home.
It was only 8:30 in the morning at this point, and had I been a more devious employee, I could have pretended to be at the meeting for the rest of the day. Since I am far more diligent than I am devious, however, I called my program manager and drove to the Gulfton campus to pick up the flash drive I'd need for the new student orientation, which was supposed to take place at the Northline campus at 10:00. Upon procuring the flash drive, I was told that there would not be a 10 a.m. orientation at Northline, though there would be one at Gulfton at 3 p.m., and I would need to be around for it after I finished helping the office assistant at Northline.
There's a very appropriate term for this situation, and it rhymes with "blusterschmuck" (which would be a fine nickname for Donald Trump). Also, if my car were a woman, it would have wanted to kick me square in the privates.
Monday aside, the week hasn't been bad. I had a chance to talk with the program director and became more able to empathize what she's been going through for the past few months (and confirm that she doesn't think I'm an incompetent boob, since she was apparently more upset with HR about the orientation debacle than she was with me), but I've been spending most of my time doing clerical work, administering placement tests, and leading orientations to help the program and its students prepare for the upcoming semester, which begins next Tuesday. The Level 3 and Level 4 classes have begun already, and a few of my former students have come by to say hello. One even gave me a coupon for a free frito pie when they were being served downstairs for a promotional event - I had previously tried to get an ice cream sundae, but faculty and staff weren't eligible to receive coupons. This, dear readers, is the lot of a full-time instructor at HCC.
I haven't had much of a desire to play video games lately (probably due to the fact that I don't trust my computer to run Fallout 4 and have yet to pick up No Man's Sky), and with Civilization VI coming out in October, I've been doing a lot of wiki editing and some socializing in addition to the occasional spurt of creative writing. I have ideas; I just need to set aside some time each day to put fingers to keyboard until the story is finished.
I also need to get some rest so I can be up in time for the two meetings tomorrow. Priorities, priorities.