Only Dogs Can Hear

Facebook Friday

Here we are again.  Amazing isn't it?  How time just keeps marching forward?  I feel like I only just moved out here, but I know it's been 6 weeks.  Crazy.  Today was 'flag day', the day all of us newbies graduate from orientation and they tell us our first posting.  When they called my name I had no idea what to expect.  Then they handed me a flag I actually recognized, the flag from Malawi!  We get to go to Malawi for two years!  How great is that?  Of course I'll still be here doing a bunch of other training until next May probably.  But something so great to look forward to...yey!

Here's Facebook Friday.  And thanks to Ellerby for sending in a status update from one of her Facebook friends!

1. Pietra thinks I'll call Social Services in the morning to see if it is legal to shake a teenager. I can't see how it could cause any brain damage - she already knows EVERYTHING!!

2. Sue refuses to believe I sound like most people when I play with a baby. I treat them like individuals, and not the kind that grew up licking lead paint in a house under power lines.
3. Jamie has decided not to play quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings this year, but I'm reserving the right to change my mind.
4. Liz is thinking oh poor NPR caller-inner. FDR served four terms, not two. and the industrial revolution did not happen AFTER his presidency.
5. Hellen is in a Veruca Salt kind of mood. Except I want college football, bring it to me now.
6. Tanya shouldn't have laughed really but her baby looked so surprised that he had peed on his own face.
7. Matt is looking everywhere for a phone booth to change in. 
8. Jay knows that I'm speaking for the entire platoon when I say this run should be postponed until this platoon is better rested.
9. Jessie is passing along this message: Obama would like you to 'talk to neighbors; spread the facts' about health care. And while you're at it remind them that he is not a Nazi Muslim terrorist with the number 666 written in Sharpie on the waistband of his I ♥ Al-Quaeda Boxer Shorts.

Have a great weekend!

It's Friday already!  Orientation has gone by so quickly, it barely feels like one week, let alone four.  It's suddenly only one week until I find out where I'm going for my first posting with this new job of mine.  Pretty exciting.  Also, it's less than two weeks until K gets here.  I cannot wait for that. 

1. Andrea wants you to know you know you've picked a good man when he leaves you 3 dozen freshly baked cookies in the kitchen and a copy of Salinger in the bathroom.
2. Matt is thankful to Mike Duncan for my new favorite word...insouciant. He has caused a complete defenestration of ancillaries in my lexicon.
3. Susan thought I was only getting a latte this morning when I pulled into the drive through at Sexy Coffee...little did I know it was a girl in a sexy little lacey something with stripper shoes selling me my sexy latte...full window...I got called sweetie m...ore times in those 3 min. than I ever have. Oh Seattle!
4. Hank is starting to wonder if Woodstock really happened or if it was just staged in that same Hollywood studio as the moon landing bit. I mean, please, it's out on DVD now and they didn't even have DVDs 40 years ago.
5. Allie wants everyone to remember, "Freedom smells like pot and tastes like a hotdog." 
6. Jeff instinctively believes in augury, but the signs he tries to read almost always could mean one thing or its exact opposite.

Have a great weekend!

Overheard on the train

Still having a rough time finding time and internet access to post.  I finish with orientation on the 21st and I move into my own place in September.  I expect things to get a little less insane at that point.  What with an actual work station and some self direction as far as scheduling as well as a regularly available evening internet connection that will be mine once I move, I should have all the time and access I need. 

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a little story.  A true story.  Something that I tried hard not to overhear on the metro the other day.  I was on the metro on my way back to the place I'm currently inhabiting after watching Julie and Julia.  I really did enjoy it, such fun! 

These two guys boarded the train just a stop after me and sat right behind me.  One of them proceeded to inform the other over and over again, "I'm so fucked.  So very fucked.  You can't believe how fucked I am," and so forth and so on and on and on.  I tried to block him out.  But with all the profanity it wasn't easy.  And the volume with which he was sharing the extent to which his girlfriend was not happy with him.  I can't say that I blame her for any annoyance she may have felt that day or on any other day with him.  Then for a while their volume fell enough for me to refocus on my book. 

At some point though, their conversation picked up a few decibels and I was unhappily aware of it again.  The offending boyfriend was telling the other that he'd be in a better position with his (unlucky) girlfriend if they just had a kid and she could see what a great dad he'd be.  There was some chatter on this point.  I think it's because the other guy seemed to have kids and they were really positive for his relationship.  Then the bad boyfriend said, "I should switch her birth control pills out.  Then once she's pregnant she'll have to stay with me.  Yes, that's what I'll do, switch out her pills.  That's a brilliant idea!"  Much laughter ensued from both men.  I felt myself get up, as though it were an instinct, to move to the other end of the car.

I was horrified by the exchange.  They didn't even seem like they were joking.  And the volume and disrespect of the whole thing was terrible.  I don't often react so strongly.  I knew though, that I didn't want to be anywhere near those two.  Not for another second.  Now why would you get on the train, sit directly behind a woman on her own and have that kind of a conversation? 

Facebook Friday

Is this what orientation at this new job of mine has reduced me to?  Posting only Facebook Friday updates to this little blog of mine?  Not a very good showing by me this week.  I know.  Shocking really. 

I've begun to feel more and more like this job is a stroke of incredible luck.  I get the rare opportunity at this age to really learn on the job (in theory and it sounds like in practice too).  I get language training.  Then two years in an overseas post to learn as much as I want really about the agency I now call my work home.  I don't have to be thrust back into being someone's boss, or the only one who can take the lead on a million things that take way more than one person to complete with any level of quality. 

In other news, I'm getting to do lots of yummy yoga.  Last night I went to an evening class that was totally groove-a-licious.  There's just no other word for it.  We did rhythmic vinyasa and were encouraged to go with the pulsations in our bodies and the music.  Huge fun.  I also played Settlers of Catan for the first time in my life tonight.  Also huge fun. 

Alrighty then.  Right before I finished up this post the internet went out last night.  It just came back on.  In the mean time, I went hiking in West Virginia.  Lovely.  I'm bonding with my new colleagues.  We've been told over and over since we started last month that the others in our orientation class are the best friends we'll ever have.  We're getting that started.

Enjoy Facebook Friday!

1. Tina is so f*ing zen she makes the power of now look like the power of then.
2. Ben saw that the stage was set. Steak cooked to perfection (kind of) and the South African wine flowed freely. At the banquet table next to us, US military commanders dined with Hunt Oil Company and Philip Morris Tobacco. The live band sang Dylan's Blowin' in the wind…until they were interrupted, for the oil company to thank the US armed forces for opening new markets…jaws dropped open. 
   
3. Sue had Freedom Toast for breakfast. (Are we still calling it that? I hadn't gotten a memo one way or the other).I was going to say its way too hot to be dressed up sweating my ass off in a church, but I'd probably be sweating in a church in the middle of winter (I've done some things I'm not proud of...Peace be with you).
4. Sara doesn't have distinct enough features to make a good Mad Men avatar.
5. Amanda wants somebody to remind Paula Abdul that she is JUST Paula Abdul...I realize she occasionally acts like an even more batshit Liza Minelli or close to a fully senile Liz Taylor, but she is just Paula Abdul.

Have a great weekend!

Facebook Friday

I move tomorrow to my friend Tracy's house.  I get to stay there for a whole month.  She'll be out of town.  I'll begin to have more of a 'normal' schedule then.  I'm really looking forward to it.  Right now I've felt like a permanent guest.  Not the easiest way to live.  But at the same time, how great is it to have enough people around to stay with for so long?  I'm pretty lucky.  Here's a good serving of Facebook status updates.  Enjoy!

1. Jeff would like to wish Brett Favre happy retirement, and in case I forget next week, I'd also like to wish him happy unretirement.
2. Gary spent the evening hobnobbing with the neighbors for really the first time in three-plus years living here. First we overthrew the homeowners association president in a nonviolent (but unanimous) coup. Then we all dined together. Isn't democracy great?
3. Sara thinks that the best thing about drinking terrible work coffee is that it's just as good when it's cold.
4. Andy now understands that when the Republicans say "cut spending" they only mean it for schools, universities, poor children, the sick, the infirm, and the elderly, not for prisons.
5. Mandy thinks that if I eliminated 'Are you fucking kidding me?' from my brain I would have a lot less to say about life.
6. John is covering a truck race at Kentucky Speedway. In honor of NASCAR, I'd like to request that when you refer to my car, you call it the Capri Sun Long John Silver I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Charmin Extra Comfort Number 3 Mazda.

Have a great weekend!