So work is going better. I would certainly hope so, now that I’m over halfway done. It got better about two weeks in. I think part of it is adjusting to an office job, which I’ve never had and then there’s being in a new place and away from nearly all my friends. But now that I’ve adjusted, I really love California. It will be weird to go to back to NC. I’m currently in the process of planning my route back. I really want to do it in 5 days, but I want to see some new places, so I just don’t know if that’s going to be possible. Anyway, back to work stuff. My boss is pretty insane. She’s super old and can’t see very well. She’s legally blind, but not completely. So she can get around the office, but uses a machine that projects the words on a page onto a larger screen. It’s taken some getting used to, but it’s really not that big of a deal. What’s worse is that she is so old and forgets things so sometimes she’ll ask me to do the same thing three different times.
Enough with the negative though. The office has been very busy today. There’s only 5 of us that usually work here and several others come in for a few hours a week just to pitch in, but this morning, we had a group of Thai reporters come in to chat w/ the executive director (my boss) and they had a translator, so I listened to a lot of Thai and English. This afternoon, we’ve had several people come by to catch up with my boss and talk about human rights issues. Well, my boss wanted the two of them to get together at some point to talk about some issue and then she walked out to get something from outside. As she was gone, one of the men turned to the other and said. “Well Ann wants us to get together and chat, but let’s celebrate our independence and not deal with this shit right now.” By the way, cursing is rampant here. I’ve heard “goddammit” more times than I can count and a few people have dropped the F bomb. Everything else is just part of the general lingo for the office. We’re a tough group. Grrrr.
Also, I just had a 15 minute long conversation with this guy about BBQ. Apparently he’s been to NC and loves barbeque, so we just yammered on about pulled pork and coleslaw and brisket. He is SUCH a hippie. First of all, he has a ponytail with several different hair ties in it as it gets smaller. Then, he’s wearing khaki colored manpris. He uses the words “sweetheart” and “darling” and says things like, “be well” and “blessings.” And he smelled like patchouli.
Day to day stuff in the office can be pretty humorous, but as far as actual substantive work, I am really enjoying researching public policy issues on everything from Education to Immigration to the War in Iraq. Some of these things I know well, but other policy areas, I’m working from scratch, so it’s more challenging. I’m glad it’s challenging though because if it wasn’t, I’d just be bored.
Weekend plans: hanging out w/ Jon in Mountain View for a couple of days, probably catching San Jose’s fireworks show. We went to the Giants/Cubs game last night and they had fireworks afterwards but there was so much fog (AT&T Park is right on the bay) that it looked more like colored lightening. It was pretty eerie and I liked it, but I think the San Jo fireworks will be better. By the way, I’ve picked up a little NorCal Latin slang. It’s pronounced San Ho. I love it. So yeah, probably just playing it pretty low key and relaxing. I’ll be back up in Berkeley on Saturday and Sunday, maybe I’ll find somewhere to go read or hike or something.
Last weekend I went hiking by myself. It was pretty cool because I’ve never done that before. I just took an Ipod and threw on some tennis shoes and drove out to Tilden Park which is a regional park that’s about 2 miles from me. It’s amazing how I can drive just a few minutes and be out in the middle of nowhere. I’ll post pictures later this weekend. I also did a little shopping in Berkeley and hopefully I can finish that up this weekend. Alright, 25 more minutes left in the work week. Soooo close!
P.S. A while back, I posted about a deer mom and her two babies that I spotted walking up my street in Berkeley. Well last night, a stag crossed the street (IN the crosswalk, I might add) a few houses down from me. The deer come down at midnight.
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