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Tuesday, Jun. 03, 2003 / 4:01 p.m. ~But the Rains Already Came~ I�ve just returned from lunch, and being in the cubicle, in �real� air conditioning, actually feels pretty good. When I left the apartment there were two pickup trucks and two cars belonging to the neighbors in question, all parked. No one sprawled about, as I�ve recently written they have the proclivity to do, in the common areas. In fact, since I wrote about it, about them, they�ve not been sprawled about in the common areas. Do they read this? But really, two trucks and two cars are a lot for one two bedroom apartment. And when I think of it, a possible two children and five adults are also a lot for a two bedroom apartment, Section 8 Assistance or not. And I considered at least commenting to apartment Management about the variety of autos they have taking up space in the parking lot (which is quite small), these neighbors in question, but I noticed a CLOSED sign at the office, and some pink piece of paper taped to the glass. Without stopping to read it, just noticing that the sign read CLOSED, not Out to Lunch, nor Out On the Property, I got worried, as I am wont to do, all deducing the worst and everything. As in: The Assistant Manager was killed in a grisly murder suicide, the lovely assistant to the assistant, Amanda, raped and left for dead, but alive and in hospital. Or maybe they�ve been fired, let go, laid off, no one is running the asylum. And who signs for all those UPS and US Mail parcels now? Should I stop shopping by mail? Will I have to go to the Post Office for all my parcels in the future? Is it a Holiday and I don�t know about it? Is everything OKAY?!?!?!? I love to speculate. I have an inquiring mind. And I am worried because this was the case last week too when I tried to get my CDs from Amazon, and my chicken salad cookbook, no one minding the shop. (maybe after work I�ll stop by and just read the pink paper) So, the weather forecasters predicted intense storms this afternoon, rain this morning, but whoo boy bad this afternoon. Um, I guess someone miscalculated. I�d think the way to do it is gauge wind speed and distance, then multiply, or divide, or something, surely there�s a formula, and surely they have computers that are all programmed to do it so no calculators are even necessary in this New Millennium, but there was an error. Storms hit late last night, thunder, wind, heavy rain, the whole thing. Woke me up. Then this morning too, first thing, like brushing teeth, groggily drinking coffee first thing this morning. Early, at least for me. And pity the poor schmucks who were in rush hour on the ExpressLyGettingYouNowhereWay. Oy! No, I just sort of looked out and said, �Hey, wow, a thunderstorm and it�s not even 8:00 yet. Huh.� And now? The sky is a mixture of clearing and incoming storm clouds. Hard to say really. It�s really humid though, sort of thick and wet. Oh, I thought of another overheard comment from the Zoo, something else that was really annoying � the woman who kept telling her kids, �Look at the monkeys!� at the Lowland Gorilla habitat, also pointed out one gorilla who was scratching. �Look, what�s he (a female, actually, SHE) doing? He�s itching, look, he�s itching, isn�t he?� First of all, nearly all the gorillas at our Zoo are female. There are signs everywhere listing their names, their birth dates, their parentage, etc. And secondly, an itch precipitates a SCRATCH. SCRATCHING, not itching. This is why I liked the character of Jessica Stein so much, in the film �Kissing Jessica Stein�. Language is important to her as well. What a great movie. Even more so in retrospect. Coming back to work has been a real mixed bag. On one hand, I�m digging the challenge of the phone. It�s ringing a lot with so few of us here, well, it doesn�t ring for a long time, then it�s one call after the other, and we never know how it�s going to go, but every time we answer we have no idea what it�s going to be. There is no way to know if it will be an employee or an outside party, what question they will have, what service we�ll provide, and I�m enjoying the challenge, for now. I�m also practicing being more firm, sounding more officious, telling people NO when the answer is no. Not being mean, or obnoxious, though someone was miffed earlier today until I explained I was doing what I could, and that was all I could do, but being firm, being authoritative, like, �Hey, don�t give me shit, I know my job, I know what we do here, and what we don�t, and keep in mind we are outsourcing, we�re not the big company, our wages are meager, we�re the peons doing the crap work and that is all, thank you.� On the other hand, I�m experiencing culture/social shock. I spent nine days with a couple cats, my TV, my computer, my apartment, and went out only occasionally, to dinner, to movies, to the Zoo, the Park, to shop, etc. Now I�m surrounded by four women I know fairly well, two of whom I�ve known for five years, but they and I are so very different. There is so little common ground between us. It�s a lonely experience. They�re right there, but we can�t really communicate beyond work. I�ve tried, a bit, but we�re of different cultures entirely. Our desires, our goals and dreams, our backgrounds, our frames of reference, hell, our vocabularies, our languages could hardly be more different. And they are of the same ilk, I am the outsider. So, as when I first started this job, and I told my friend Brent that I was the only white person, and he said, "Good. Now you know what it�s like.", guess what? I still know what it�s like, Brent. Mostly, it�s just extremely evident. Cost of the War in Iraq
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