"Was that a bird?" "Um. Yeah."

Ow.

That's all I have to say about today.

I don't know what I did but when I woke up this morning my back was in a massive amount of pain.

Must have slept wrong or slept walked and injured myself, who knows.

But it hurt.

All day.

Not that I'm whining about it.

Sorry.

Pain.

Just reminds me that I'm getting older, which is not an easy thing to adjust to.

Though my TAB kids remind me of it every day.

While we were building our golf holes yesterday one of the teens was talking about her mom using hip terminology and how it was weird.

"cause she's old, like you."
"ouch, how old do you think i am?"
"like 30?"

Okay, first off, 30 is not old.

And second, why do teens think I'm 30? That's the second one of them at the library that's told me that.

I'm 25, good God.

Ugh.

New topic.

So what the crap is with this weather?

Every day this week we've had massive rain showers, flood warnings, and tornado watches.

Today's included a brief tornado warning, which led my boss, the guard and myself to the basement even though it was after closing.

Though it made closing extremely easy for the like 3 people that were still in the building.

Either come to the basement with us or leave.

They left.

After grocery shopping for the kickoff party today we'd have plenty of sustenance.

I mean, if we wanted to live off of apple juice and nilla wafers.

Although apparently Queen of the Known Universe has a secret stash of cookies somewhere.

Hmmm....

Anyway, doesn't it say something in Revelations about natural disasters taking over right before the end of days?

That was Revelations right?

My 17 years of private Lutheran schools hasn't failed me now has it?

Yes, I am one of those.

Though now I work in a very public library, and am getting my Master's at a public University, so don't give me that look.

I'm a rebel like that.

Those were basically the highlights of the day.

Back pain.

Kickoff shopping - bought 230 boxes of juice, 4 boxes of Nilla wafers, some seeds and ziplock bags and ah, crap. I forgot the napkins.

Oh well, I'm pretty sure I have some of those somewhere.

More training in the afternoon.

During which a bird divebombed the glass door.

Like there are windows galore and he chooses the door with stuff hanging all over it?

You'd think he's notice that one isn't fly-through-able.

I felt bad for laughing.

Especially when he kind of just sat there for like 20 minutes in shock next to the door.

The guard walked by and we flagged him down.

We went to show him and the bird was gone.

So that's a good sign.

The 8 - yes 8 - giant feathers in a big circle next to the door however were not such a good sign.

After the bird came the storm, after the storm I headed home - couldn't see the road in front of me for half of the drive, but I did in fact make it home. In like double the time it usually takes me.

Came home to watch Wipeout and some Iron Chef.

I'm digging this whole tournament of champions thing.

It's very exciting.

I'm watching an old one right now, where current Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli is actually still a sous-chef to Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian.

If you have no idea who I'm talking about this is Alex and this is Zakarian.

I usually root for the challenger, unless they're up against Cat Cora, but this time I think I'm going for the IC's because of the combination of the both of them.

And that was my day.

Exciting, yet not overly.

Song of the day:

Sitting Waiting Wishing - Jack Johnson

sweet video. no idea how they did it.

totally under-rated artist.

yes, i've posted it before, but it was back in like 2011.

good god, have i had this thing for that long?

apparently so.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November.


Got an email about classes starting next week.

Ugh.

I was just getting used to this whole time off thing.

Bought the textbook, it is already en-route.

For one of the classes at least, the other isn't online yet.

But that's the 1 credit class I can finish in a weekend.

Huzzah for that.

The other class may kill me.

I'm trying to down play it and not freak myself out, but it's a lot to do in a month.

Oh well, July and it'll be over.

Then it will be camp season. Then it'll be August for my last semester of classes. Then it'll be December and I'll be done.

And then it'll be times like these when I look back and say yeah no, not gonna go for the Doctorate.

I like having free time.


and i'm out.

here's to hoping tonight's sleep doesn't make my back any worse.

But I'm thinking it over anyway

Yes, I missed yesterday.

Fell asleep watching the game. Then street skateboarding.

I love my DVR.

Not much from today, full day at work but it was pretty slow. Even though there were a surprising amount of people there.

Yesterday was fun, had class in the morning then a camp meeting in the afternoon.

Long day, but worth it. Talked about the upcoming assignments a lot and got out early - we don't have class next week so they gave us time to work on assignments due in the next couple weeks. Only one more class left to actually attend, the rest is just homework posted online.

Camp meeting was basically just t-shirt stuff, worked on some songbook stuff, and finally have copies of it run off to send to people - liz finished what i've been putting off for months cause she's awesome like that - so I'll send those out this week, gotta get their addresses first.

And the usual joking around was included as well, t-shirt designs for our golf team included though homey-g-wigger was absent. She'll be around for our next meeting in a couple weeks when make final decisions, though I just got an email from Pastor with some design options.

What else from yesterday? Oh yeah, so how does one break into a safe?

That sounds bad.

I have this safe from college which I haven't opened since.

And I lost the keys so I want to get whatever it is out of the safe but can't get into without keys. So I'm thinking of taking it to the farm and having dad saw it open. That'll be an interesting adventure.

But as I'm not a criminal and don't know how to pick locks I'm thinking that is my only option.

Will photograph that adventure I'm sure.

Speaking of photographs, Superwoman included that freakin' bird photo in her weekly email to the staff and I got this email from my boss's boss's boss saying when she read "carrie's bird" she thought it was me flipping someone off.

I told her I appreciate her faith in my customer service, haha. But that Superwoman would most likely take points away for something like that.

And right now I'm at 145.5 and I'm kinda diggin' that score, even though I'm still being beaten by both Space Cadet and my mother, but those are longer stories which if you searched on here long enough you could probably find.

So that was yesterday, today was a full day at work, thought a lot about food drive logistics - more on that later - then came home to watch some CWS I had taped, so sad Stony Brook is toast. They were cool, got us on ESPN and everything with our shirts.

I like Stony Brook, they were the underdogs and their pitcher is highly amusing.



But they made it to Omaha and that's huge for an unknown, especially since they had the best record of the bunch. I think the jitters took them down, especially at the game we went to. Lots of errors.

Oh well, I'm all for SC now, they're gonna dominate, 3-PEAT!

Anyway, I'm off to bed. Exhausted and have to work all day tomorrow. Yeehaw?

Song of the night:

Song You Know But Forgot You Knew It

"Barely Breathing" Duncan Sheik



out

Freakin' Birds.

What a weirdass day.

No, seriously, what a weirdass day.

Where do I begin?

Woke up with still no air-conditioning so I got to call that in. Luckily our maintenance people are fantastic and it was fixed by the time I got home, needed a new fan or something.

Go to work, first thing was the staff meeting. Got to explain the prizes for the teen's summer reading program. They get a free betta fish. How cool is that? And ice cream and Saltdogs tickets and Amigos coupon, etc.

So that was fine.

Everything at work was fine up until like 10. Which is when the staff meeting ended and we opened.

After that I was toast.

Dropped an entire stack of DVDs, discs flying everywhere. That was smooth.

I screwed up telling patrons due dates twice. And I only helped two patrons at the desk that hour.

Though I did get it right immediately after I screwed it over.

But still, obnoxious. I just figured it was cause I was caffeine-less. So I went for a Mountain Dew assuming all will be healed.

...
...
...

All was not healed.

Okay.

So here's the kicker.

Off-desk hour, usually I spend stocking supplies. Which was my intended goal, so I walk into the backroom and it was just like any other time I walk in the backroom you know daily - actually like 8 times daily - except this time I look over and there's a bird sitting on one of the bookdrop carts.

Me, thinking this is a prank because there's a fake bird somewhere in the building and I know that cause it scared the crap out of me the first time, decide to go check it out.


And I'm walking and I get closer and then... it moved.

I freaked.

Ran to the safety of Queen of the Known Universe and Info-Man at the front desk.

They proceeded to make fun of me.

And told me to call animal control/Superwoman as she was the supervisor on duty that hour.



But she was at lunch, and it was just a bird, so I went with the guard instead.

This guard is a big tall guy, fought in wars, knows lots about weapons and all that so I figured I was safe.

We go to the backroom and devise a plan. Clear a path to the outside door - which was propped open cause the delivery man was there - and scare him towards it.

Sounds like a fine plan, right?

Problem is that birds are uncooperative.

The guard walked towards it making loud noises and waving his arms and the freakin' thing flies STRAIGHT AT ME! Who was standing NOWHERE NEAR THE DOOR WE WERE ATTEMPTING TO LEAD IT TO.

So I'm like crouched in a corner screaming bloody murder, the guard starts chasing the bird around the backroom, it flies all over the place except the direction we want it, and leaving messes wherever it goes - disgusting and I'll get there I promise - finally it flies into the back hallway. Which is good cause that's halfway to the door.

Then it decides to hide in a corner.

At that point I stayed the heck away from the back hallway. Now I just hear the guard yelling, bird wings flapping, and the delivery guy laughing his ass off. I round the corner, still freaking out, and see the door slam with the bird on the other side of it.

Goal.

But oh my god.

Seriously.

So, I go out to the desk still a bit freaked, actually I was basically freaked for the rest of the day but for various other reasons, and Info-Man hits me with "now we know what you're afraid of" implying there will be pranks.

Which I'm prepared for, I had a prank war going with Glee-Loving Boss until I moved to the work branch full time.

But the thing is I'm not scared of birds.

I'm just not a fan of them flying in my direction.

Which I explained to BossLady when she returned from lunch - not Superwoman, BossLady aka my immediate supervisor. I give her a tour of the backroom and all the places the bird went and she resolved to cleaning it up....after she chased me with it. Long story.

I refused to touch it cause I was still in that freak-out mindstate so I followed her around the room and handed her sanitizing wipes. Meanwhile the intern was laughing.

There was a lot of laughing about the incident.

I can now.

I told Mentor "it scared the crap out of me."
and she came back with "it scared the crap out of him too."

Anyway, the rest of the day like every time I opened a door or my locker I paused expecting stuff to fly out at me.

And sadly, that's not the end to the weirdness of today.

So I was in charge of the teen summer reading program today aka "Monster 'Dos" where the College of Hair Design people came and gave a bunch of kids colored hair and scary hairdos that they'll go home, scare their parents with and the parents will probably come back next time and be like, what the heck were you thinking?

Anyway, so I introduced a couple of my TAB kids who talked about TAB and joining and all the stuff we do.

I've seriously had 5 new members within the past two weeks.

And of course we don't meet again until September so there's gonna be a lot of reminder emails and phone calls after the summer.

The event went off without a hitch, and as there was time at the end the kids talked me into getting my hair colored.

Now I have orange lightning bolts with green stars.

They rock and I'm keeping them for the game tomorrow. Gonna rock it out at the stadium.

And since I had to do it we talked Mentor and another one of my youth services supervisors who I joke around a lot with - she's the one I always show my torn up leg to after I play softball cause she screams and tells me to wear pants - into doing it. She got pink hair and Mentor got a green star.

A lot of the little kids got some pretty crazy big hair but I'm not so big on that. Sticking with the lightning bolts and stars for now.

Which reminds me I gotta get my hair dyed before camp. They won't recognize me without it.

And my sideway hat.

Okay, so after work there's rain and hail and major wind, lots of lightning and thunder, actually still doing it. Hope I get this posted before the power goes out or something.

But I managed to get all my homework done and posted and I'm good until class on Saturday.

Will sleep well tonight with my air-conditioner fixed, though I'm guessing I'll have nightmares about birds or something.

Feel like my aunt.

One of the "favorite aunties" is deathly afraid of birds.

Probably partially my father's fault. He used to talk the other "favorite auntie" into chasing her with chickens when they were little.

Speaking of fun aunties, get to jam tomorrow with the Cool Aunt and my two cousins as we're going to the OPENING GAME for the COLLEGE WORLD SERIES! Woohoo!

It'll probably rain, it always does. First year we went and there was a 2 hour rain delay, but last year it only rained a little in the morning and then it was great all day.

Game starts at 4 but we like to go early, hit all the booths, walk around and take pictures. Oh yeah, gotta charge my camera.

So I'm working for two hours tomorrow then taking off to change, grab the camera, and meet up with them.

Stoked.

I need some new shirts.

Oh, irony of the day?

Was wearing a Batman shirt today.

Was tragically scared of winged creatures and totally not a superhero.

Will do better tomorrow.

I know, this post was super long compared to most recent ones. And, if you didn't read the above madness I'll sum it up for you now:

Bird in the Backroom
Not cool - Bird flies at you.
Cool - Guard comes to rescue.
Not cool - Bird poop all over.
Cool - Supervisor cleans up poop so I don't have to.
Not cool - Supervisor proceeds to chase me with said poop.
Cool - Anecdote to tell at work.
Not cool - Coworkers threaten bird pranks.

And then some stuff about lightning bolts and stars and storms and the college world series opener tomorrow.

There you go.

Video of the Day:


"The Birds" in 1 minute and 40 seconds

words cannot express how much i love that this is paired with kill bill music.


Freakin' birds.