Our Dumb Blog

Sun, 30 May 1999 22:59:45

> Evidently a good 300 bucks worth of stuff was wrong with my car, since
> that’s what they charged. Actually, the air conditioning wasn’t working,
> and it didn’t like the rain, so they replaced the distributor cap. Among
> other things.
>
> Well, we really missed you. Mark and I went to the Denny’s right across
> the street from the hotel and stayed there till three thirty a.m. or so,
> when they seated a couple who seemed to be only interested in macking on
> each other in the other half of our corner booth. So we left. It was
> really good to see Mark again. He and I and Spirit shared a pitcher of
> beer and some Jagermeister that night, then Mark and Emily and I shared
> another pitcher the next night. The wedding was neat, the reception was a
> BLAST… I danced nearly the whole time… my feet are SORE now.
>
> Andrew and Heather had me read a selection from the song of songs… it
> turns out that the other reader was a chick I know from UD! She’s known
> Heather since they were little, and I’ve known Andrew since I was little.
> Small world.
>
> Tomorrow’s one of the biggest travel days of the year, so I’m gonna wait
> to head home till Tuesday. I’ve gotta pack up my stuff to be ready to
> move into my new place on Saturday.

So… My dad sent me a new computer, only it never came. Fortunately, it was insured. Unfortunately, it was insured by our U.S. Postal Service. I call up my local post office today, “Where do I take this, uh… claim forms thing?” Huh? Oh, you need to take that to the main post office over in the something something shopping center. “And… where is that?” Oh, that’s on Irving Blvd. Irving Blvd. goes all the way to Dallas. That’s okay, I’ll go from Loop 12 and see if I can find number 2701.

Nothing doing. I find a shopping center with promising numbers, but no shopfronts look governmental. I drive around, hopping speedbumps, dodging pedestrians, cross the street to the Krogers. I need to get some chips, and they probably know inside where this so-called main post office is.

But Coke is two twelve-packs for a fiver, and I really ought to get some cheese, the milk’s gone sour though it’s cheaper at Wal-mart, and we’re out of eggs, I mixed the last frozen orange juice this morning, Minute Maid’s on sale, and next thing I know, my buggy is too full to go through the express aisle. And the other lanes are full of full buggies. I pick one of the half of half a dozen of one, six of the other behind a particuliarly full woman and her buggy and settle myself in for a wait, wondering if the next lane would be faster and why this is happening to me when I lead a charmed life and all I really wanted to do is find out how to get to the post office. Dang these chips.

“I forgot to get something,” the particularly full woman ahead of me turns around and says, “you’ll have to let me out, if you would.” Heh. And I move up a space. Right then, a cashier appears at the vacant adjacent lane, beckoning me to join her. I smugly shove aside the Camels “This Lane Closed” sign sitting in my buggy’s path and ask the girl behind the register where the post office is. Oh, it’s over there where I already had been. Right. Thanks.

A little guy with a little mustache packs up my frozen juice selections in paper bags and even loads them into my car trunk. I head off across the street again, looking carefully for anything that resembles a post office.

Ah ha! There it is around the corner of the shopping center, POW flag flying beneath the stars and stripes and everything. I walk in and get in line. Fortunately, the clerks look like they’re working efficiently and the line’s moving. I hope that the not- so-younger woman behind the counter who looks like she knows what she’s doing will wait on me. Sure enough, she’s the one who gestures me forward as her current customer completes his business.

“I was told to bring this here,” I start, showing her the claim form for the missing computer. Oh, you need to take that through that door there. Right. Thanks.

“…but where is my mail? Where can I find it?” I open the door to find a distraught sounding woman arguing with a heavy-set woman behind the counter. “Ma’am, we don’t have your mail. Is this your current address?” Yada yada yada. Looks like this may take a while. I take a seat, wondering why it is that customer service personel are always so surly. I’d probably make a good one.

Heavy-set reaches across her desk toward me in an effort to give Distraught a clue that she’s through talking to her. I hand her my claim form and papers. “You need to take this to the clerks out front,” she hands it back to me.

“But where is my mail? Does all returned mail go back to Dallas?” Distraught isn’t about to give up.

“Uh, they just told me to come in here,” I say.

“What? Who told you that?” Heavy-set demands. Heck if I know. “What did the clerk look like?”

“Uh… older… brown hair maybe?”

“Male or female?”

“Oh, female…”

Heavy-set sighs heavily and gets up to charge toward the door, past Distraught and the blue collar worker who has come in behind me, “Which one?” she demands, opening the door. That first one there. “Hey! HEY! You clerks are supposed to deal with claim forms!” she yells. “Go talk to Barbara Lyons. She deals with that.” Uh, and that one is…?

The first clerk I dealt with gestures me past herself, and I figure Barbara Lyons must be one of the last two clerks in the row. But they’re both busy, so I wait by them, far beyond the WAIT HERE sign where everyone else is standing orderly in line. The second clerk finishes first and draws me forward. “Are you Barbara Lyons?” I inquire.

“I don’t have to be,” she answers, looking at my claim forms and accompanying papers. “We have a guy in the back who deals with amounts over 50 dollars, but you don’t have the original insurance receipt here or a bill of sale…” Well, my dad bought it from a friend, so he wouldn’t have one… “Besides, he’s the one who gets the money, why are you bringing this in when you didn’t receive the package?” Because it says here that I have to fill it out to say I didn’t receive it… etc… Argh.

“Okay,” she says, “We’ll send this back to your dad. Do you want to write him a note?” She hands me a pad and pen. “Do you want to send anything else to your dad?” I smile. No, that’s all. She seals the postage paid envelope and sticks it in a bin. “That’s all!”

So I pull back out on Irving Blvd. and head the direction I was going, since that’s the quickest way to 183, only I miss my turn and get on the west bound ramp. Heck, I needed to go to Wal-mart anyway. I park in the shade because of my frozen juice in the trunk, grab some batteries for the smoke detectors that all went out in our apartment all at the same time, gallon of milk, find a cashier who’s just itching to check people out, and I’m on my way home, just in time to head over to school to pick up my registration packet for next semester. Only they don’t have mine in the box there in the graduate office, and the coordinator assistant is missing. The dean can’t find my packet either but gives me Paul’s, and I bring it home for him. I check the mail on the way in. Nothing for me.

I open a bag of chips, pop a Coke, and sit down to read the assigned chapter in my presidency book about bureaucracy.

I’ve got a quiz on it tomorrow.

So I walk into Plato and Aristotle (the class, not the two guys walking out of the Academy of Athens) this afternoon and notice a new guy sitting in the back. I take my seat, chit chat with the lady who sits in front of me, and wait for Dr. Wood to come in. He enters through the door at the front of the classroom, goes over to the board, and starts writing numbers on it. He’s always writing all over the board, drawing diagrams and pictures and writing Greek words in a mixture of Greek and Roman letters, which annoys the heck out of me. Usually we furiously copy down everything he puts up there, but I had a feeling I’d be better off waiting this time. So I sat and watched.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24

“What I have,” he said, “are two tickets to an opera thing…” he read what they had printed on them. “I’ll give them away using this lottery. Is there anyone who can’t make it?” He read off the dates. Several people raised their hands, and he erased numbers from the chalkboard accordingly. I thought about raising mine, since I’m not really into opera, but didn’t, figuring I’d just pick an unlikely number.

Paul was first on the way around the room. Numbers 1 through 17 were left up there. “Nine,” he said, picking the one in the middle. On we went around the room, each person selecting one number left on the board, as Dr. Wood crossed them out. The lady next to me picked “one,” which is what I wanted to choose. So I picked the next best, the last one. “Seventeen.” There were only a few left to pick from. Only two other people chose after me.

Dr. Wood looked at the paper he had written a number down. “Seventeen,” he read.

Class went well, at least the first part. Aristotle isn’t terribly hard to talk about, especially once I’m used to Dr. Wood’s vocabulary.

At the break, I went straight back to where the new guy was sitting. I’d heard him whisper to Dr. Wood right before class that he was a perspective student and asked to sit in. “So you’re a perspective IPS student?” I asked. Kathleen and Jay and Paul all came over to talk to him as well. His name is Jonathan, he said, and he was working on a teaching certificate at Montevallo near Birmingham, Alabama, though he’s originally from Seattle and went to college at Wheaten (however you spell it).

“I don’t think I could pass a test on this today,” he said, indicating the chalkboard with wide eyes.

“Oh, neither could we,” Kathleen assured him.

Then break was over, and class started back up. Dr. Wood started drawing furiously on the board, so I didn’t even bother to try to copy it all down, especially when I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. He handed out our journals at the end of class. I turned immediately to the back for his comments overall.

“Honest, intelligent, sustained. A”

Jay, Kathleen, Paul, and I went to CiCi’s Pizza with Jonathan and tried to talk over the big screen TV. That makes three meals in a row that have been pizza, since I made one last night for Paul and Berck. Jonathan asked if we were familiar with the writings of some neo-luddite, so I had to explain what a luddite was to Kathleen. I tried to get Jay to explain the last bit of class to me, but he just said, “You don’t know what Act and Potency are?” then sucked in his breath and shook his head. Jonathan ran off a curb in his VW Jetta, narrowly missing a sign in the CiCi’s parking lot, so we all had to get out and lift the car back over the curb. He took us home, and Paul and I showed him our apartment, so he could see what Tower Village is like. He’s gonna come to Father David’s class tomorrow, even though Jay and Kathleen tried to talk him out of it. They’re afraid the class will give a bad impression of the school because of how boring it is.

Father David may not even still be alive by the time Jonathan comes to UD, if ever. He said it probably won’t be before fall of 2000.

Hey..I guess I got it right…I couldn’t remember if it was Berckums or Berck!
Did you know I’m playing sax? Actually tenor, it pretty cool. I’m playing it
in jazz band and we’re really good. I suck at tenor but I just started. I
wanted to play alto but the school didn’t have one. You woulda liked jazz
band…its pretty fun. Lauren’s in it too..she also plays tenor. I’m
praciticing right now…the only problemis it cuts up my lips with my braces.
Well, I just felt so I good I needed SOMEONE to tell. (I’ve had a very good
two days) Oh yeah, we’re going on a field trip to that los colanes movie
studio place in a few weeks! Isn’t that right by your school? Mom might come
too and see you…I dunno yet. Well, I’ll talk to ya later.
Love ya,
Syd
PS there’s this really cool place in Virginia that wants me to apply where
you go in 9th grade and when you graduate you have a college undergrad and a
high school degree! Wouldn’t that be so ausome?