dither and blather

To Do For Today

- Gather together clothing and etc for trip and put it on bed. (ETA 10:45 - Can't find one bra (the one I like for wearing with my pyjamas) nor the green laundry bag. Eor, have you seen that? I even called the laundrymat to see if they have it - nope. PS - I also had shaved my legs by this time.)
- Choose an alternate book (The Amber Spyglass is too big to carry.) (ETA 40:50 Yeah, I'm going with the two Jasper Fford books.) (ETA again - I meant 10:50, of course. ;))
- Get out cash moneys (done as of 9:55AM - also, eating breakfast. Don't know why I forgot to put that on my list, it's not as though the normal things I have to do will change just because I have other things.)
- Pick up antacid at pharmacy (ETA 9:14AM Ouch, expensive - $90.)
- Do Dishes (Well... did some. Didn't finish - I did a strainerfull, but there were more than I thought.)
- Take my shower! Good Gods, I should be going out the door right now and I'm hopping in the shower - eep! And someone's ringing the doorbells.

Other things to consider:
- Our plane leaves at 7:25.  We should be there by 6:25.  Consider getting up at 5AM and going out to eat?  (I say yes!)
- Try to get out of work early tonight?
- Consider what to make for dinner which will be very quick and not too many dishes.  (Tacos?  Or leave that steak and cheese for Eor and buy something for lunch?)

I'm too excited, I can't remember what else I was going to write about.  I hope they have a plan at work for who's going to mentor my manatee1 next week. 

Oh!  I found out yesterday I'm going to have to cut the end of my vacation a little short (not that it matters because other things have conspired to cut it short, anyhow) because I'm going to be in a class to teach me to be a classroom trainer!  For a specific subject, not for all things, but it's still a step toward being a general Trainer rather than just a mentor, which is cool. :)  I might turn out to hate it, having to stand up in front of a classroom and talk, but for the moment I see it as different experience which A) gets me away from the checkpoint, B) helps me not be so bored and C) gives me something else to put on a resume. 

Completely unrelatedly - I spent all yesterday evening reformatting my Ivan/Byerly story to take out all the italics tags I'd typed in there, because one of my betas wrote back and said she was having a horrendous time trying to read it.  WordPad doesn't seem to have any trouble opening it and ignoring the tags, but maybe she let her computer decide what to open it with and it got confused.  So I put in / to separate thinking and * to denote emphasis on words in sentences, both of which I have always hated when I'm reading stories, but now I know why people do it. 

I guess I can't expect to get that back before I leave. 

I got back to poking at my Pseudo Victorian Boys ("Swept Away!") last night, but I don't expect anything real is going to get done on that until I get back.  This month is...  well.  A loss as far as working on that story is concerned.  I'm afraid I'm going to run out of backlog.  I wasn't worried for a while.  I'm such a slacker.  Who knows, though - maybe a little pressure will be good for me.

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1) Someone said "mentee" the other day and I could have sworn he said "manatee."  In fact usually I refer to trainees as "minions." ;)

it's going to feel so good when I stop

When I was at lunch with some of my co-workers(1) the other day the waiter(2) mentioned this clip from Saturday Night Live, so I had to go look it up on YouTube: if it doesn't come up search for 'tsa security' *chortles*  It really is pretty much like the real thing. :)  The management treats us like we're idiots, we sit there and stare at them in awe that they can be so incredibly rude and rotten and then we start asking questions(3) just to see them squirm. 

They print out some of the questions and answers and put them in our SOP so we can refer back to them for clarification, and I ran across a particularly good one the other day.  Someone went to the trouble to look up chapter and verse on a policy of ours and one that the FAA (I think) has for the airlines and pointed out that they directly conflict with each other.  The answer?  (Printed, mind you, in our SOP.)  "There is no conflict."  Er.  Simple contradiction is not an argument.  They say they want our opinions, but when we offer it the response is just complete denial of any problem.

Is it any wonder I'm ready to go away for a while?  It's like beating my head against a brick wall.  And then the passengers, who seem to think it's okay for them to stand and curse at us when we've been perfectly polite to them.  I actually raised my finger and scowled at a guy, yesterday. 

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1) Mainertoo, CeeJay, Li'lSis, Donatello and another who has no name but occasionally reads this LJ.  Would you like to choose a name, sir?

2) A gay guy who's an actor and went out on a few dates with one of my co-workers.  The airport really is like a little village.

3) One of my favorites was something Jaylow came out with:  We can't ask people to take their hats off, so when we started talking about how to screen monkeys - "What if the monkey has a hat?"

see you in a few days

My intention right now is to go to bed so that I can get up at 4:30AM and go out for breakfast.  I don't think I'll be logging in to this computer again until late on Tuesday, the 15th.  (Perhaps I'll be able to do that first lines meme then, daegaer.)

I'll miss you all!