2001-05-24 - 11:08 a.m.

I ran out of conditioner the other day and had to do without last night. This morning, my hair seemed really cute and bouncy, so no worries, right?

Well, of course, all it took was the 5 minute walk through SLIGHTLY humid air to turn my cute 'do into an outrageous pompom atop my head. (Think Michelle Pheiffer in "Married to the Mob," only actually Italian-looking.) It probably doesn't help that I'm wearing loud pink floral capri pants, a tight purple wrap-around shirt, and pink shoes. So if this entry is a little more over the top than usual, it's because I know I look obnoxious, and I'm just gonna go with it.

Interesting turn of events yesterday (or maybe not so much a turn as a thing that happened, since it probably won't have much of an impact on anything): A relatively quiet day at the office became even quieter when my boss, Barbara, and a few others form the surrounding offices shut themselves into the conference room for a meeting around lunchtime. Nancy, who runs the Graduate Programs Office here, asked me to go with her to a staff appreciation picnic they were having under the big commencement tent. Ahh, the commencement tent. It typically goes up just in time for commencement, and then seems to remain forever - or at least, for as long as it takes to kill the grass underneath. Same goes for the freshman orientation tent, except it's up for a much, much longer period of time.

But anyway, I told Nancy I was supposed to be guarding Barbara's office. Nancy told me not to be retarded, and that mild insult, along with the promise of free food and getting to see the president of the university play the drums with a jazz trio, was all the convincing I needed to leave my post in pursuit of some chow.

As we stepped into the depressing gray corridor that makes up the cold heart of Warner Hall and made our way to the elevator, we were stopped by the assistant to the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs. [(Now, how's that for a title? Of course, when I say assistant, what I really mean is secretary, which I'm sure you all know. I'm just trying to be PC, mainly because my title "Staff Assistant," which was given to me more or less haphazardly by Barbara, who felt that, when I sent memos to various folks around campus, I shouldn't automatically have to pretend to be her because of my lack of title. Not that it isn't easiet to pretend to be Barbara; now, when I try to schedule meetings or whathaveyou between B and people on the various committes she chairs, someone invariably freaks out, and sends an email, usually to the entire d-list, "What is this about? Why was there no agenda included with this message? Who authorized this meeting, Barbara?" And then Da Boss-Lady has to send a message to everyone: "B wants to have a meeting for ________ reason, Jenn is a workstudy helping me schedule _________," and so on. Which is really sad, in a way. Why can't employees at one of the top research universities in the world receive an email from a student without automatically and publicly assuming that said student is an idiot, or a depraved psycho who gets her kicks by scheduling unauthorized meetings? Fuckin' A. But as I was saying, "Staff Assistant" isn't a bad title. It beats "Secretary's Assistant" any day.) And now I am hoping fervently that you don't have to scroll back up to before the parenthesis started to re- read what happened to Nancy and me.] To recap: Nancy and I were going to take the elevator, but there was this woman, (I think her name is Fran. I'm bad with these things - there only seem to be so many names to go around for middle-aged administrative assitant-types. It can be a challenge to remember who the Frans are, and not to mix them up withj the Nancys, the Janets, and so on) putting up a sign on the elevator who told us not to use it, because there was some kind of liquid running down the sides of the elevator walls - presumably freon. Jesus! So we took the stairs, trying to remember exactly how dangerous freon was. What happened when you inhaled it? You couldn't touch it, could you? I wanted to see what color it was. I am convinced it had to be glowing green. I mean, my God, when something starts to spontaneously pour down the elevator shaft and rapidly leak into the elevator itself, it HAS to be glowing green, if only to prove that the poetic justice of the mid-twentieth century horror film isn't dead; or, if it is, that it hasn't been completely buried yet.

So after a fairly enjoyable meal, albeit the infuriatingly sub-par haluski, and the fact that we decided to leave before the president made like Gene Krupa because the scruffy Robotics Institute guys sharing our table were annoying as hell in that "I've been 10 years old for 15 years, and I'm damn proud of it because it means that, instead of dating, I can, with good conscience, contribute to the meaninglessness of modern life by accepting way more grant money than I need to build robots that are good at video games. RAWK!" kind of way, we decided to head back to the office.

Once there, it was apparent that things had gotten much, much worse. First of all, it smelled horrific. To top it off, one of the two stairwells had to be closed, because the diabolical liquid had attacked the stairs as well, and they were to slippery for use. Which was kind of cool, in a way - the B-movie quality of the afternoon was increasing all the time. Now, if only a couple of Blue Meanies could have shown up, my dreams would come true: 1950s scream queens and character from "Yellow Submarine" in the same day. IN THE SAME OFFICE BUILDING! The APAA could become Pepperland for a day. It occured to me that YS really could have used a bullet-bra-ed damsel in distress. Or maybe that's what Jeremy was for.

Well, at any rate, the situation wasn't fun for long, because, on top of the smell, which was still slightly present even after all the windows had been opened, the river of nastiness was still flowing, and starting to flood some of the floors, which could mean only one thing: the network had to be shut down. Yes, the plug was pulled on our beloved ethernet for a full 3 hours and 15 minutes - a substantial portion of my 8-hour work day. And seeing as how Da Boss-Lady is still on vacation and B left right after her meeting on a two-day trip to DC, yesterday was prime time-killing time, promising freedom like I might never have in this office again, and there I was with no email, no AIM, no diary, no Keenspot comics, no West Wing transcripts, or the million other things I could leave open on my desktop, with no ominous footsteps warning me to minimize, minimize, minimize.

Never fear, though. I am nothing if not a resourceful slacker, and so I hunted down a pair of headphones and the free DVD that had been included with the iMac our office had purchased last year: "A Bug's Life." As anything with 90 minutes of Dave Foley is a pretty sweet way to kill time, I had a very enjoyable, summer-vacation-esque afternoon. My pleasure was heigtened by the fact that I had brought along some patchwork that will eventually be a tea cozy for Gus' mom.

So perhaps there is an upside to not being so completely wired as we all seem to need to be nowadays. It can get you out of working, and provides an opportunity to do things you couldn't get away with ordinarily.

I love you, glowing green freon.

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