A week and two days...

This is old news for anyone who's been paying attention to both our journals, but I haven't updated in a while: Mom cashed in her return ticket back to the U.S. - she likes Korea and is planning to stay there for the foreseeable future.

I've been keeping myself good and busy. My birthday was on the 11th, a Sunday. That morning I went out to breakfast with Caw (also referred to as C. or Mary Casey - I can't recall which names I've used for her here, before). We were talking about going out to see the meteor showers, later that evening, but she stood me up because she ran into another friend and _forgot_all_about_me_ - can you imagine!? Someone forgetting about me!? Well, I guess you know I have been giving her a hard time about this, since.;) But, I guess I've about forgiven her, because she explained she'd thought at the time that she was laying groundwork for a romance with this other friend.;) Only now it's looking like she's out of luck in that department, so I'm beginning to feel a little bad about harassing her.

Monday the 12th, Eor and I went to Cambridge to visit a friend ... Now, I really want to draw a charcter sketch of our friend, and as she reads my journal, perhaps she'd be willing to post and let me know if I can, and what nickname she'd like if I do so? How about "Dr. Dance"? I always hesitate to talk about friends too much, in case they don't want their names out there on the Net. I will say that now she's done school and moving to Paris we wanted to spend some time with her before she goes. I hope that's a bare enough outline for now.

Tuesday the 13th we went to Southport, Maine, which is the middle of nowhere, to visit a friend of Eor's, who helped him work on our car. In return, I painted half of one of the eves of their house. Later they took us for a motorboat tour of the Boothbay area, and we picked up their kids at camp with the boat. So pretty - lots of rich people's 'cottages' (some of them quite large houses, actually) on the little islands and shore. There's a hotel there on the shore where I think we were told President Kennedy stayed.

I don't remember what I did on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday besides work. Sunday night our friend from Cambridge came up to spend the night, and we went to a strip club. Lots of fun! :) We urged her to get a lap-dance, and the first girl she picked apparently didn't want to do a lap-dance for another woman and just never came over to us, but she found another who was quite friendly and chatty. As we were driving home, busy critiquing the way they've changed this club since the last time we were there (and I must remember to update my webpage reviews), Eor managed to run a red flashing traffic-light, and of course the only other car on the road was a cop.:P $95 fine.:P Still, I suppose it could have been worse. I almost thought I was going to see Eor's face get smushed up against the hood of the car at one point.

Cop [holding up a black gloved finger in the dark night, backlit by headlights and flashers]: "Can you see this finger?"
Eor [always complete and truthful]: "I can see the edge which is lit."

He said he got a look at the hood while he was signing the ticket thingy, and they had face-prints all over it in the road dust. Our friend said they probably made those just to scare people.:)

August 19th, Monday morning, we took our friend to breakfast at Becky's and gave her the quicky tour of the Old Port, which is really unsatisfying. Really one should have plenty of money and all day, or even two days, so you can pop into all the stores, have snacks at the coffee shops, eat lunch and dinner, and go bar-hopping. *shrug* Maybe some other time - she just got news she will be back in the states in November.:) And Monday afternoon she had to get on the bus back to Boston.

The last 2 days

Tuesday needs to be set aside from the rest of my last week, I think. What a long, tiring day. I had got myself scheduled to go through a cattle-call screening process for Security Screeners at the airport. This is to create a pool from which the Transportation Security Authority can hire people, but the screening of applicants is being conducted by private security companies. Of course they ask that one not talk about the details of the process, but I don't think it was much different than what I expected, aside from the fact that all the people were much nicer and more pleasant than I thought they would be. But here's the outline of my day...

Monday afternoon I had to finish the forms they wanted, and that was like the application from hell. I had to scramble to get the addresses (and permission to use their names) of people who would know that I lived at each residence for the past 5 years, people who could verify that I attended school, and people who could just vouch for me in general. I didn't want to include my friend who's moving to Paris because I didn't think they'd be able to get ahold of her, and a couple of other people for various reasons, so this cut down my available pool of references quite a lot. It made me realize how much I suck at keeping in touch with people.:(

Tuesday morning I was up by 4AM, left at 4:45, and drove north, arriving at Fairfield about 6AM. I drove around the campus of the technical college where they told me the screening was to take place, then went to find a hearty breakfast to carry me through this ordeal, and got back there at 7AM, as I'd been told that if I was 15 minutes late they would not reschedule me for 6 months. I saw some other people getting out of their cars, so I followed them and asked if they were there for the screening process. They said they'd never heard of it. So, I began wandering this deserted campus looking for someone who would know. Following some noises, I found my way into a storage room and found a young guy, who kindly took me to the building where they had been holding the screenings, and found me some people who worked in that building, a man and a woman. These people told me that the location of the screenings had been changed, and gave me the new address, in Augusta - south by probably a half hour. Naturally, I was livid, and the woman agreed with me that they were happy enough to have these people off their campus, as they were 'like that' (scattered, I guess). And then she addressed me by the name I used when I was a kid, before I went to college. I stood there and stared at her. I couldn't imagine who the heck she could _be_. I sort of stalked around her desk and just looked at her ID badge.

It was my stepsister.

Yes, I lived with her for the 4 years of high school, and I did not recognize her at all. Granted, that was ... a long time ago, but I also saw her at my brother's wedding only 4 or 5 years ago and recognized her at that point. Now she's lost a ton of weight, and she said many people don't recognize her, so I don't feel quite so bad. She assured me that the security people would still let me do the screening that day, and I almost felt like saying "phone them up, big sister, and make them do so!"

So, shaking my head over that, I went south to Augusta.

The first person I saw who looked as though he might be associated with this screening thing (I'll admit I made that assumption at a distance because he was wearing an American flag tie), told me I might as well go back to my car and leave off any nail-clippers or anything that might be construed as a weapon, just to save me the trouble before I went upstairs and they asked me to do so. So I went back and dropped off my Swiss Army knife (I don't think of it as a weapon - it would be pretty frikkin useless in a fight - it's a tool, but I'm not going to act willfully ignorant of their intention). Then I went upstairs and they asked me to empty my pockets, and I found a metal fork in one of my pockets. I was mystified for a moment, then remembered I had found that at our friend's store on Saturday and recognized it as belonging with the set which is in our camper. So, since they said they couldn't keep it for me, I ran back down and threw the fork in my car, and came back all breathless, and had to tell the same guy at the front door as I went by him again what had happened.

He said "did they make you fork it over?" Okay, it's kind of a lame joke, but you can't know how much that helped relieve my tension, that he not only said that, but then went upstairs and repeated the joke to the guys who had asked me to take the stuff out of my pockets. Somehow that made me feel more like a human, right at the start of the whole process. They laughed, and I laughed, and I knew they had some idea who I was. Someone who's attatched to my cutlery, apparently. It belongs with a set, I didn't want to lose it.

Anyway, the rest of the day was filling out forms, and waiting, and doing tests of various sorts, and waiting. Lots of waiting. I finished the book my friend gave me for my birthday. It was somewhat reassuring to find out that my left ear has almost perfect hearing. Eor said this just proves that I am really ignoring him when he talks, and I said that what it proves is that he mumbles.;) Caw thought this was hysterical - she was at our place hanging with Eor when I got home at like 6:30pm, and she stayed to dinner. I made veggie curry for her, and she says she likes mine better than at the Indian restaurant she goes to downtown.;)

And after that, I slept for like 10 hours straight. I spent yesterday morning walking with Caw - it was perfect weather, we walked about 4 miles and talked (about how annoyed she is over one of her jobs, and the potential romance which seems to be going sour before it got properly started) and had breakfast and lots of tea, and then split a piece of carrot cake. That's the definition of a good day for me.;)