Busy, busy busy...
but not with writing, unfortunately. However! Much of the busy was quite pleasant. The rest, even more unfortunately, was suck.
So, good news first! Had a wonderful Sunday out with the daughter. Wes started with breakfast at her house, which was a very nice bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich (with a fresh pear on the side for me, the daughter doesn't do fresh pears.) Then we headed off to the early (cheap) movies and saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I found it a very good popcorn movie: not too sappy, not too silly, a nice feel good movie. I've heard a lot of complaints about how it was just another white guy's manpain movie, but in the long run the message behind it (not too terribly profound, but still there and a nice reminder to grab for the brass ring while you can) pertains to everyone. And since it's based on a short story by a well-known humorist, it doesn't bother me that it's all about a man. Is Walter Mitty a Marty Stu? Yes, but it's still a fun movie. It was James Thurber's ultimate self-insertion, self-gratification short story, but it's the fact that it's so outrageous that makes it fun. Go, laugh, enjoy. We topped it all off at the hundred dollar store Target and got out spending only $50 each. So, I guess we ended up spending $100 at the hundred dollar store, but not per person! Win?
Tuesday was a mixed bag. Slipped and fell on the ice three times on the way to work, because some people are too fucking lazy to salt their sidewalks from an ice storm of fucking FRIDAY. Asshats. However! Went to a movie night with six others at a friend's house and had wonderful Ma Po Tofu, along with yummy, yummy (fattening) desserts. Plus, the movie! Django Unchained. Gotta say, I think Tarantino is getting a bit passé. I'm a little tired of all the gore. Still, a wild romp and Jamie Foxx was pretty awesome. Plus, Christoph Waltz is pretty swoony, too. Hell, the whole cast was pretty damn awesome. Samuel Jackson was downright chilling. Just an all around good time. And I gotta say, it was fun to see Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington riding off into the sunset together. :D
And then the really rotten news got passed on to me by my dean on Thursday and Friday. Thursday I found out that the one problem child I have in my front line has a medical reason for being a problem child. He has FTD--frontotemporal degeneration. It mainly is affecting his language processing ability at this time, with a flat affect. He's got a prognosis of four years to live. JFC. And he's only 53 years old. He can't retire until he's 55, so we're going to try to keep him on until then, but there's no telling how much more he's going to deteriorate and it may get to the point we just can't keep him anymore. The boss and I have been brainstorming ways we can work around it, some of them were already put in place when we reconfigured our customer service spaces a few months ago, but it may mean doing even more. Jesus, my ability to can is rapidly dwindling.
Then, today, the bosslady also confided to me that one of our student services coordinators isn't passing probation and will be let go as of March 1st. It doesn't necessarily mean that much for me, except that once we start the search for her replacement, I'll be coordinating all the paperwork processing: keeping track of applications/resumes, sending out e-mails, etc. It's the same time we're gearing up for our scholarship committee work and I'm part of the committee. Last year we got over 100 applicants, so we'll see how many we get this year. It's a lot of personal statements to get through, and we only have 23 scholarships to award. And the cherry on top is the fact that once all the scholarships are decided on, we have a reception to award them in April. Yeah, we gonna be busy.
At least this week is over! I've manned the front desk for three days straight during one of our busiest times of year, because the complement to my problem child (henceforth known as the PC) is on vacation in Miami with her mother. Yeah. At our busiest time. And last semester she was gone at the equivalent time for a family reunion. Let's just say, I put a gentle, but firm, foot down and said she can't do that again; we need everyone on deck the week before classes start. I survived this week, but since we were essentially two people down (we don't let the PC answer the phones anymore) I was picking up ALL the slack. I finally had to tell the fourth CS person to start picking up the advising line, because she was only picking up the internal CS line, which rings much more infrequently. I got almost nothing of what was on my to-do list done and I'm still here at work at 5:45pm. Eh, I've got one small task left to do and then I'm outta here.
Thank heavens for three day weekends! I might just go take in the new Chris Pine flick. Love the pretteh.
So, good news first! Had a wonderful Sunday out with the daughter. Wes started with breakfast at her house, which was a very nice bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich (with a fresh pear on the side for me, the daughter doesn't do fresh pears.) Then we headed off to the early (cheap) movies and saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I found it a very good popcorn movie: not too sappy, not too silly, a nice feel good movie. I've heard a lot of complaints about how it was just another white guy's manpain movie, but in the long run the message behind it (not too terribly profound, but still there and a nice reminder to grab for the brass ring while you can) pertains to everyone. And since it's based on a short story by a well-known humorist, it doesn't bother me that it's all about a man. Is Walter Mitty a Marty Stu? Yes, but it's still a fun movie. It was James Thurber's ultimate self-insertion, self-gratification short story, but it's the fact that it's so outrageous that makes it fun. Go, laugh, enjoy. We topped it all off at the hundred dollar store Target and got out spending only $50 each. So, I guess we ended up spending $100 at the hundred dollar store, but not per person! Win?
Tuesday was a mixed bag. Slipped and fell on the ice three times on the way to work, because some people are too fucking lazy to salt their sidewalks from an ice storm of fucking FRIDAY. Asshats. However! Went to a movie night with six others at a friend's house and had wonderful Ma Po Tofu, along with yummy, yummy (fattening) desserts. Plus, the movie! Django Unchained. Gotta say, I think Tarantino is getting a bit passé. I'm a little tired of all the gore. Still, a wild romp and Jamie Foxx was pretty awesome. Plus, Christoph Waltz is pretty swoony, too. Hell, the whole cast was pretty damn awesome. Samuel Jackson was downright chilling. Just an all around good time. And I gotta say, it was fun to see Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington riding off into the sunset together. :D
And then the really rotten news got passed on to me by my dean on Thursday and Friday. Thursday I found out that the one problem child I have in my front line has a medical reason for being a problem child. He has FTD--frontotemporal degeneration. It mainly is affecting his language processing ability at this time, with a flat affect. He's got a prognosis of four years to live. JFC. And he's only 53 years old. He can't retire until he's 55, so we're going to try to keep him on until then, but there's no telling how much more he's going to deteriorate and it may get to the point we just can't keep him anymore. The boss and I have been brainstorming ways we can work around it, some of them were already put in place when we reconfigured our customer service spaces a few months ago, but it may mean doing even more. Jesus, my ability to can is rapidly dwindling.
Then, today, the bosslady also confided to me that one of our student services coordinators isn't passing probation and will be let go as of March 1st. It doesn't necessarily mean that much for me, except that once we start the search for her replacement, I'll be coordinating all the paperwork processing: keeping track of applications/resumes, sending out e-mails, etc. It's the same time we're gearing up for our scholarship committee work and I'm part of the committee. Last year we got over 100 applicants, so we'll see how many we get this year. It's a lot of personal statements to get through, and we only have 23 scholarships to award. And the cherry on top is the fact that once all the scholarships are decided on, we have a reception to award them in April. Yeah, we gonna be busy.
At least this week is over! I've manned the front desk for three days straight during one of our busiest times of year, because the complement to my problem child (henceforth known as the PC) is on vacation in Miami with her mother. Yeah. At our busiest time. And last semester she was gone at the equivalent time for a family reunion. Let's just say, I put a gentle, but firm, foot down and said she can't do that again; we need everyone on deck the week before classes start. I survived this week, but since we were essentially two people down (we don't let the PC answer the phones anymore) I was picking up ALL the slack. I finally had to tell the fourth CS person to start picking up the advising line, because she was only picking up the internal CS line, which rings much more infrequently. I got almost nothing of what was on my to-do list done and I'm still here at work at 5:45pm. Eh, I've got one small task left to do and then I'm outta here.
Thank heavens for three day weekends! I might just go take in the new Chris Pine flick. Love the pretteh.