you shot off your mouth and look where it got you

I've got... probably too much to write here.

HITS story of the week:
Iain is a busy guy, busy enough to need a secretary, which is probably a good thing as the position creates an "Iain buffer" so we don't have to deal with him ALL the time. Heather does a fine job of keeping Iain together, us happy, and the trains on time, but as a design major she tends to do all that plus some quirky, quirky shit. Earlier this week she was hanging out in the microlab (our cave-like common office) taking an Iain break (her desk is right outside his) and shooting the breeze with the rest of us. During a lull in the conversation she spits out to no one in particular, "you're the one that likes Asians, right?' The entire lab's confused response prompted her to specify: "Jon, didn't you say that once?"
After scooping my jaw from the floor I attempted to recover from this stunning non sequitur by stammering out "I... don't think I'm going to answer that question. Why on earth did you ask it?" She went on to explain that her (asian) roomate Emily had "found herself" in the last few months and wanted to go on dates with non-scary dudes just to get comfortable around guys again, or something. Being that I was the only single guy in the office (and hopefully a non-scary dude) I guess she figured why not me. I told her I was "intrigued," and haven't heard about it since.

Second-best HITS story of the week:
Yesterday I got an email forwarded to me that was about 6 levels of replies deep. It was a conversation between some bigshots in Dining Services and Assignments about adding a dining jobs information link to assignments' offer packet webpage. Now, if you look at the page you'll probably notice that said link is already there. It's been there since the page went live. In front of me was nearly two days of discussion between people who are pretty familiar with what's on that page about adding a link that is already there. I hit my head on the desk for a bit and told them as much. Their embarassed email responses were worth it.

Except for stuff like that, I've been really bored and annoyed with work this week. Iain is managing me extremely poorly, he can't seem to find a balance between letting me do tasks independently and checking up on my every action. I'm doing pretty boring work, really, and Dining has this new marketing intern that's stirring shit up all over their section. Which I wouldn't mind so much (she has some good ideas) except I have much higher-priority big jobs to finish before I go redesigning navigation for Dining. If they want their menu to ever look decent, they're going to have to leave me alone.

And while work can be annoying it feels like Eden after going to that horrid algorithms class every morning. My word does that class suck. We've got a test on Wednesday, the first day back from a four-day weekend! Brilliant! We'll be stunningly prepared after four days off! Then a final on the 30th! Smashing! I'm sure, given that it took me four weeks to learn the basic information I needed to pass the first test, I'm sure I can soak up enough to pass the final in a week or so!

The moldy frosting on this bitter cake is that I have to drive to Portland today for a family reunion that I really couldn't care less about. Five hours in my noisy, non-air-conditioned car is about four hours and 50 minutes more than I want to spend traveling today. And while my mom's side of the family is all pretty cool, there's NOBODY my age, and I really don't want to face a bunch of adults and children right now. Granted I'm not quite sure who I would like to put up with, maybe I just want to be happy alone. That's something I don't feel as much as I used to.

I want this month to be over.

cost: counted

Well, that was bar none the worst drive I've ever had. It took me 6 hours to get from Lynnwood to Oregon City, and nearly 4 of that was in stop-and-go traffic. My only saving grace was that my parents took pity on me and let me drive the Subaru, which has an automatic transmission and air conditioning. Taking my car on that drive would've killed me (and its clutch). By the time I arrived I was irritable and hungry and just wanted to ignore people and go to bed. Certainly not a good condition to be greeting long-lost relatives in. Fortunately everyone was understanding - many of them had fought the same traffic - so they gave me food and let me space out for a bit. I didn't hang aroud long before we went back to the hotel and I got some sweet, sweet sleep.

So yeah, I'm feeling a lot better now. It's interesting to look back on my mental states over the course of the drive. For the first hour and a half I was feeling very stressed. I hate traffic and dealing with it on a trip I don't really want didn't help. But there was a lot of other things my mind was working through that I guess it needed the time for - surprising what will surface when faced with 4 hours of nothing to do but think and listen to music. But an album and a half later, I felt much better and I don't know why. Maybe I had just come to accept the traffic situation as inevitable. It wasn't like I had decided anything or made a big discovery.