even more current currents

….since for the last entry I was trying to do currents, and thanks to my extended phone rant, only managed two. Currently I am at work, but currently I need a break. Now that the fall semester has started (what in the hell happened to summer?!?), we are back to being extremely busy. And since we moved from the Field House into an actual classroom building, we have astounding amounts of foot traffic. Much of it in the form of lost students who can’t figure out where Room 4 is, because all the rooms are 100s, 200s, or 300s depending on what floor you are on. Except for the ones in The Octagon. Which is, as you might guess, an octagon-shaped attachment with rooms numbered 1A, 1B, 2, 3 and 4. That nobody can find.

Currently I have to say that I do like my new office very much, despite my worries about Aggravation Receptionist driving me stark raving mad since my office is now right behind her desk. Surprisingly I can’t hear her very well, though (there is a lot of traffic noise even with the windows shut, which is better than Aggravation Receptionist noise) and she hasn’t been trying to tell me too many !OMG!DRAMA! stories. I am not completely out of the loop like I was in my old office, way away from everyone else, which is kind of a good thing. Still, it’s weirdly noisy with all the students in the hallways now. It’s just like when I was here in my previous Job From Hell! Except now I have my own office with great big windows and don’t sit in the filing room. 

Current location:

It’s hard to get it all in, despite it being a teeny little office. That’s a small set of drawers on the right, which is up against the wall, so you pretty much get the entire width of it here. I’m standing in the doorway. As you can see, the best thing is THE WINDOWS!!!! I may not be saying this during the winter, but hey, I have my illegal heater at the ready beneath my desk. I need to hang up some pictures – when I do I’ll take some more photos of it that will hopefully actually show what it looks like. Still, you can see what’s important. THE WINDOWS!!!! 

The picture is from my phone, which leads me to….

Current Triumph: I am rid of the TouchPhone From Hell!!!! Yes, I went back to Verizon Saturday and traded. Far from trying to talk me into just taking a replacement LG CosmosTouch, they were perfectly happy letting me trade for an LG Octane. No problem whatsoever, since I was within the seven day return period, it was a piece of cake (although it took forEVER since the Verizon store I got the Cosmos Touch from didn’t have an Octane, so I had to go to the other store (I had no idea that we HAVE two Verizon stores here) and there was only one guy there and several customers with complicated problems, so it took quite some time to make the switch. But it was easy peasy, no problem at all….. because, ummmmmm, the Octane cost me like $50 more. Naturally it was no problem! But I take that to mean it’s a better phone, and so far I am very happy. It is basically an updated LG ENVY. Same look but a little different shape, same features although the calendar is nicer and the screen seems bigger. I am over wanting The Next Big Thing… I am happy with my phone that works. And if I decide to give up and go Smart Phone later on I can pass this one on to Baker B. 

Current Anticipation: Baker B and I are going to Roanoke this weekend, for a Big Celebration Bash. Cousin E’s son is… well, he WAS getting married. The plan was to get married this weekend, then a few months ago he and his betrothed confessed that they were, ummmmm…. already married! They’d gotten married in January without telling anyone! They did actually have a very good reason for getting married sooner than planned – both graduated with the ROTC program at VA Tech, but he’s an officer and she’s an enlisted person, and continuing to see each other would constitute fraternizing. So it was get married or cut out all contact basically. Naturally they just went ahead and got married. I am not sure why they waited so long to tell everyone, but whatever! They’re still doing all the fun getting-married stuff and I’ll see all The Cousins, as will Baker B who is AT LAST taking a Cousin Related trip with me. He is very fond of my family — just not fond of trips to Delaware. Roanoke is much much closer, and is actually an extremely convenient spot. Probably a lot more convenient for us than the rest of the family. Even my brother and his wife are coming, so it should be lots of fun. (Not that they would not be likely to come – but it’s a longer trip for them than us.) My dad is not coming — he is not big on sitting around for two days of Wedding Stuff, and he gets to see everyone on our fairly frequent trips up North. And his sister, Cousin E’s mom, isn’t up to that kind of travel, although she is doing MUCH better. 

So, looking forward to that.

Current annoyance: Well, all the clueless students, of course! And the fact that every time there’s a class change, suddenly our office becomes Bedlam Central. Right now it’s very quiet—-I’m predicting in ten minutes the deluge will start. On the plus side, it means Aggravation Receptionist is actually having to do some work – she’s the one who gets the brunt of it. So I’m taking some admittedly evil delight in her current inability to spend ALL her time heaving sighs and languishing and playing online. Our office is set up kind of oddly — she’s in the main room when you walk in the first door from the hallway, then there’s another big area right beside hers with a hallway door that opens onto it.  Miss Artsy sits in a similar position in that area, with Mr. Organized’s office and another office we’ve turned into a kitchen behind her. (Our boss and I have offices right behind AR). So when AR goes to lunch or whatever, she shuts her door and Miss Artsy opens hers. Naturally students keep coming in AR’s door, even though it’s shut and the one right beside it is open, and then they come wandering back to find me in my office when I don’t hear them out there.  That’s annoying. But very typical. Even when we put the movable sign that says RECEPTIONIST and has an arrow pointing down the hall towards the next door right in front of our door, they will squeeze around the movable sign and come on in our door anyhow. I guess we could lock our door, but that’s too much trouble. Then we’d have to go around the world to get in and out. 

Well, that’s not too much of an annoyance, in the scheme of things. Just wait until the next You Aren’t Graduating!!!! letters go out.

Current TV: We still haven’t started the sixth season of Doctor Who, even though the first part is actually already out on DVD. We’re currently working our way through Ballykissangel. If you’ve never seen Ballykissangel, you need to go get it right this minute. Netflix has it (oddly they apparently JUST got the sixth, and last, season… and the show ended like ten years ago.) I got hooked on it during that very last season, way back in 2001. Oddly, I got hooked on it because my parents loved it, and for awhile PBS was showing two episodes back to back every Saturday night during a period where, for some reason, I was finding myself visiting my parents on a lot of Saturday nights. It’s a great show — it’s a BBC show (of course), about a little town in Ireland and all its odd, quirky inhabitants. It starts off being mostly about a young priest from England who gets sent to the local church, but expands into being about, oh, everybody. So there are all kinds of story lines going on in each episode. The writing is fantastic, the actors are amazing, the story lines are very interesting, the scenery is gorgeous, and it is hysterically funny. As well as being heartbreakingly sad. And as a plus, you can watch it with your elderly parents and everyone will love it! We think Baker B’s mom would like it too, except she disapproves of drinking and there is a whole lot of drinking going on, especially since it revolves around Fitzgerald’s Pub – and early on the landlady of Fitzgeralds, and her relationship with Father Clifford, the new young priest. We watched it all ages ago – I think we’ve been through it a couple of times over the years, but it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten about a lot of what happens. I believe it was a big hit in England, but of course nobody here has ever heard of it. Like M*A*S*H, it even survives some major cast changes — especially at the end of Season Three, which is where we are. Very important characters are now gone, but it continues and is just as great as ever. 

OH, and it includes one actor I KNOW everyone has heard of — 

Oh, look, it’s Colin Farrel as a baby! He was 19 at the time, and I think it was his first big break. Amusingly, out of the ten gazillion actors on Ballykissangel, he’s the only one I didn’t like. Maybe it was the sulky, sullen, monotone-speaking, flickering-wattage character he played, but I thought he was the worst actor EVER. All he did was mope around and mutter and stare moodily into the distance. You can’t imagine how shocked I was when he started becoming famous. Can he act now?? I have no idea — he’s only in car-chase, thriller, gunplay, whatever movies and I’ve never actually seen him in anything else, I don’t think. 

Wait, I see he was in Minority Report. I don’t remember him at all in that. Oh, well. And apparently he was only in seven episodes of Ballykissangel, but it sure seemed like more. Probably because I was impatient for his storylines to move along to someone interesting. 

Well, this has taken so long that it’s now late at night and I need to post it and get ready for tomorrow. I never do seem to get very far with these things.