Beyond Follow-Up

The summer before my junior year I didn't find a job, but I'd made so much at union wages the summer before, so I was able to afford college & the dorm. The following summer KOMO chose to hire an affirmative action applicant instead of me, and there were no jobs. Dad got a friend at the synagogue's men's club to hire me as a bingo runner for the parlor which the temple ran on skid row.

All the bingo players were black and/or poor. Dad's synagogue was chock full of millionaires. It struck me as WRONG for them to be making money from people they should have been giving it to. So I told the floor manager, who was a friend from high school, that I couldn't do this, and he sent me to the general manager, who understood, and gave me an alternate job, cold calling congregation members who had donated to last year's synagogue yearbook, asking if they would like to renew their ad. I made $100 in 4 hours, but did not like cold calling, so at the end of the day I said no thanks. More than the cold calling, I didn't like working from a fire trap on skid row.

I have to say one memory stayed with me. There are few sounds more relaxing than an otherwise silent ballroom while 1500 light wooden bingo cards are being flipped.

The summer before my senior year was a different story. At the end of my junior year I told my major (Communications) councilor that I would probably have to drop out for a year to earn enough to finish college. Weeks later, a telegram arrived telling me I had not been awarded a Scrips journalism scholarship. Turns out I had been a finalist. Councilor had applied for me, and when I showed him the telegram he gave me a copy of the letter of recommendation he had sent. I still have it, it's something I'm very proud of. With that funding chance gone, the department gave me a scholarship which paid for tuition for my senior year.

That summer I landed a good job at the NOAA warehouse on Lake Union, at government wages, and one of the perks was a government driver's license. My boss was a certified instructor, and he taught me and tested me on every vehicle on the base, from electric forklift to 1.5 ton truck. In addition to warehouse work I drove the jeep to bring mail from the ships to the PO up the hill, and vice versa. NOAA research vessels would be out at sea for months at a time, there was a lot of mail.

I still have two souvenirs which boss let me have because they were being thrown away. One is a full sized Coast & Geodetic Survey flag, and the other is a brass place marker from the national geographic survey.

Thanks to that job, I was able to transfer to another NOAA-related part time job in the fall. Cleaning the tanks and feeding the fish at the National Marine Fisheries Lab on the other side of Montlake Bridge from UW stadium. Also helped log the salmon spawning. Very convenient to get to after band practice. I'd joined the marching band for football season (having been in concert band the three previous years). I still have a framed Purina Trout Chow bag label. They don't make that anymore, it's called something bland now, Game Fish Chow.

In addition, I also had my $8/day Daily editing job at night and the publisher also hired me as a proofreader, proofing all the classified ads. After a while, the word "the" looked like it was spelled wrong.

So I was able to move off-campus. First I got a small room in a house where a bunch of my friends from folkdancing lived. That was great for my love life, especially since there was a house full of nursing students nearby. The drama got to be too much, though, and privacy went out the window when they rented the attic, which could only be accessed via my bedroom.

So I moved again, this time to a cute 1-BR apartment above a head shop on The Ave. Prime location. The bed folded into the wall. The bathroom was two steps up. The apartment is still there, colorful as ever. My $63/month apartment now rents for $900. The head shop is now a pho place. What had been an odds and ends store is now a Subway. Click here for google street view

It was an easy bike ride to school until someone stole my bike. Someone I knew, I later found out. Lots of girlfriends that year, including one I kept in touch with through my Peace Corps tour, but lost track of after she moved to TN to get a doctorate. No amount of web searching has turned her up, though I know both her parents' names. Her dad was a big name in PNW & Canadian TV. There was a girl from Brazil living upstairs who introduced me to Portuguese and Brazilian music. One of a pair of twins I knew from Hebrew school lived down the hall. I never knew whether I was with her or her sister - they both came over from time to time, and would never tell me.

I graduated and moved back home.

Quickly? Maybe

It was a bad sign that at 7:30 am it was muggy & 76°. Up and at 'em before 8:30, at work 20 minutes early. And that was with bad timing on lane choices.

Grabbed breakfast - for a change there were full-sized bananas.

At the hole, HVAC guys were conspicuously missing, and all the panels were still off the unit. They never did show up.

First thing there was email to test a feature, but the app I needed said it was incompatible with the tester phone I've been given. And it wasn't in the browser version of the app at all. And the box they wanted a double-check on I don't have a power supply for.

Tried to run some automation tests, but all three machines failed early. One was expected, because it's way pre-release, but not the other two.

Lunch was artichoke hearts, turkey tetrazini and rice pudding.

Rushed back to the hole to see Boss changing our sync to 3:30. But it was good I was there, because 2 pm visit from MFG tech arrived early. He had the connectors I didn't have and was able to un-brick one TV and took the other two for more work. What I thought was the issue turned out to be a good guess. I need to update the one he fixed, but didn't have a big enough USB drive. I'll bring one tomorrow.

Boss never showed up. At about 4 she messaged that stuff came up. She asked:
How's the aircon?
Me: What aircon?
Boss: Bugger. If it gets too hot go home.

It didn't get too hot, but came within 1 degree. And I am glad I stayed because at about 5:15 there was a massive thunderstorm which started with distant thunder, then flashes of lightning, then closer thunder. And rain. Big droplets but not dense. Then big & dense. And a BOOMCRASH almost simultaneous with the FLASH. Rocked the building. No sirens, though, odd since we're only a few blocks from a fire station.

I stuck around an extra 45 minutes, until the thunder was far away and no visible flashes. The car's automatic wipers needed a nudge at first, and never kept up with the speed they needed. But I'm from Seattle so I didn't take them off intermittent. I think that's a law.

UPS store had a line, a hazard of only being open till 7. I dropped off the shoes, and as for the Xfinity envelope, the clerk pointed out that Comcast includes a return label (which I had not seen because I only opened the package enough to see it was the missing cable card). So we slapped that on and she will tape up the envelope and send it back.

Home the long way, California Ave through downtown MV to Evelyn, then Fair Oaks to the 'hood. Completely forgot I was going to stop in at Walmart near UPS and grab some USB drives.** Blame the rain and people driving like they had never seen water before, and were afraid it was Ice-9.

Home, delivered was a box from NFLShop. The packing list said there were two calendars, but there was only one thing in there, and though technically it was a calendar, it was really a heavy booklet filled with cheerleaders posing in swimsuits, which is nice, but the thing was not made to be hung on a wall, which is what I thought I was buying. So with two strikes, I went online to email them, but they only have two ways to contact them - online chat, which closes at 5 ET, and 7x24 phone. So I called, and got a message which basically said "We are in Florida, but right now we're probably stuck in traffic somewhere in Tennessee or maybe Canada, or heading for Atlanta in a kayak, so don't hold your breath." Click.

So I fired up Monday Night Football, which I was surprised to see at 7:30 was only in the first quarter. Later they explained it was a double header. The game went down to the wire, and I am royally pissed because the Denver coach called time out so late that the kicker kicked the ball and it was good. Second time around he missed, and Denver won by 3 points. I would like that rule changed. And once again stupid announcers made me mentally list my peeves. Today's is "play-action". It tells nothing. The correct term is "fake hand-off".

Dinner was shrimp egg rolls & orange sauce, cole slaw and cola + orange soda. Cake a la mode for dessert.

Spook brought me her fuzzy baseball-sized ball to play catch. She went completely bananas with it, knocked it into the office, and then hid under the hall runner, stalking it. And then she got bored, ran the length of the house into the bedroom and back, and curled up a foot from my feet. After a bit we played some more, until she needed to groom herself.

Also delivered was a box of dino poop I bought on eBay. A little disappointing, I thought some of the pieces would have been polished, but none were. This is a gift for my contract rep, but I don't think it's good enough quality to make jewelry out of. I'll give her the box next time we get together, and she can dispose of it as she likes.

Bought a ticket for the play at Pear Ave Thursday night. Not sure if I'll have my nails done before, or tomorrow.

**Shit for brains just logged in to Amazon where he was reminded that he had four USB drives somewhere he bought for the trip to Helsinki but never used. I think I put them in my laptop bag.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Manicure?