Bonus!

For the first time (in 2 days of actual work), I got a daily bonus. This is good because it raises my hourly take by a few bucks. I have yet to check my hourly rate, but my goal in this whole thing is to make close to the 20/hour I get paid to teach. I think this is fair, yes?

Sorry, no highly interesting stories from last night. People were fairly docile or hung up quickly enough. I was actually having a terrible time of it for the first 1.5 hours. I finally just took an early break and that helped me stop stressing and move on. It got better because I decided to experiment and change up my intonation a little bit. It certainly worked! Or I just got better callers.

DC Mollie is here! We went to B'Ak D'Or last night and it rocked! The guy made me a martini and made too much so he effectively gave me the equivalent of 3 martinis--it was like with a milkshake at a restaurant where they give you the extra! I had this highball of martini waiting to pour into my little martini glass. And he made it with Sapphire! And it only cost 6 dollars! So, on a 16 dollar bill I tipped him 9 bucks.

We are going on a boat ride today.

Oh. and I broke my glasses dammit. During my frustrated break last night, I was cleaning them and snapped the lens casing. Crap! Superglue to the rescue. Except I don't have any.

New Job

Many of you know that I have taken on a part-time job in the evenings to accelerate my credit card payoff plan. Basically, for this job I answer phones and tell people about a service. I can't get anymore specific than that here because I don't want to be fired for a blog, you know? I'd rather be fired for something I actually did.

I've just started and there is a somewhat extensive training period. Last night was my first time being on the phones the whole time. It was actually less tiring than training, for some reason.

The best part was when this one guy totally yelled at me and I just kept on going seeing if he would ever hang up. He got really pissed and continued to raise his voice and I still kept going because it was like this bizarro kind of game and I was testing him. I finally let him go when he threatened to curse me out. The funny thing is? I still got the sale.

Back in the saddle again...

You know, I always felt that song had such a crazy sexual connotation to it. In this case, I am actually using it to refer to the fact that I'm back to "normal" life. The months leading up to my conference presentation were difficult, but they allowed me to not think or worry about certain aspects of my life because I didn't have the time. As soon as I came home, it all rained down upon me and I had a sense of paralysis. But, the students turned in their papers and that made me get off my butt.

On the first leg out to wonderful (she says sarcastically) South Bend, IN, I sat next to this guy:
He's actually pretty cute in person, this Andrew Firestone guy. I really didn't know it was him until I was about to get off the plane, to be quite honest. It actually kind of sucked sitting next to him because he totally invaded my personal space. I mean seriously. His balls CANNOT BE THAT BIG. I had the aisle and he had the window, so he was totally doing that "guy spreading his legs thing" into my legroom. At first, I tried to shrink myself down as small as can be (and I'm not a huge person, by any means). But after a while, I got pissed and decided that our legs would just plain have to be touching because that was less uncomfortable for me than trying to not be in his way. This is a big thing, because I am not a stranger-touchy person. I HATE touching people I don't know. Big time. I mean, I'll give up my 3-foot stranger-danger boundary when I'm on a plane. I get that. Hell, when I travel with my husband, I'm the person sitting in the middle because he's bigger than me, and then I really have to just deal with my personal space issues.

The weird part is that when he finally fell asleep, he actually moved over. His balls apparently don't need as much space or air when he is sleeping. I still don't get it. Why, when you are awake do you take up my room? Why, when you fall asleep are you far more cognizant of other people's space? Whatever. I don't care if your family owns wineries and stuff. I don't go to your winery tasting room because it's too damned touristy. And, you know what happens in overly touristy tasting rooms? NO FUCKING PERSONAL SPACE because there's too damned many drunk-ass partiers there. (I also don't like smelling other people or their cologne/perfume while I'm tasting wine either.)

When I told M about sitting next to the Firestone Bachelor guy, he just said, "well, at least you got to sit next to a cute guy!" I had to explain to him that it was not a plus in my book because Cute Guy was being some weird kind of jerk.

Otherwise, my plane rides were mostly uneventful. Got to sit next to my advisor on the way back and apparently annoy people because we were talking. But no one had the cojones to say anything to us about it, so poo on them. At least I didn't have any claustrophobia episodes on the plane, which is something I've become increasingly concerned about, as I get mild panic attacks every now and then.

And on to more important things:
May I just say that it is currently 9:45 in the morning and it's already 75 degrees? This past weekend has been absolutely beautiful--one of those weekends where I ate the most awesome strawberries ever and don't want to move from my seaside SoCal location. Even though most of my friends are now gone. I guess I have to take comfort in something, yes?

I'm here

and in grading hell, but there it is. I have yet to read a paper about Christina Aguilera, so that's good.

I shall have to give more specifics of my trip and how I sat next to a Bachelor on the plane (which was nowhere near as interesting as it sounds), but I must get back to ruining my students' lives.

My paper presentation went fine. I was so utterly relieved when it was over. The way I think about it now was so eloquently stated by Bill Murray (paraphrasing Caesar) in the best movie ever, "Ghostbusters": We came, we saw, we KICKED ITS ASS!

I also got to see a good friend who just happens to be 8 months pregnant and I kept her up until all hours of the night while tempting her with glasses of wine. :) All-in-all, it was a nice interlude from normal life.

Now, I'm back to grading rubrics and assigning points for MLA usage. Woo hoo.

Oh, and watch this video about the Great Revolution of the British Cuckoos:
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=445180&cache=1