optimism, part 2

10-7-99

All night long I woke up and jumped to look at the clock, sure that my alarm had either gone off or was about to. Once I had to put my glasses on because the digital clock face had a 2 and a 3 and a 7 and some kind of colon, what the fuck, is my clock broken? I looked at John's and his said 2:37. When I looked back at mine it had fixed itself. Thank god.

My jumpiness turned out to be a blessing when I started awake and the clock said 6:02. It was supposed to go off at 5:30, but someone forgot to push in the button last night. My brain somehow retained and kept secret from me the knowledge that I'd not pushed that button. Saved me a pretty horrible morning.

One of the bosses brought down a form today so we could order fruit for the holidays. It seemed to me that he was just being nice, or at most he was scoring brownie points with his daughter's marching band or something. I saw no deeper motives than that. The folks in the office did; they waited till he left and then started in.

Ordering fruit from the boss is simply kissing ass. "Eating cheese" is the office term for brown-nosing. LaNelle eats the most cheese, and she ordered the most fruit. She sat and read the list to see who else had ordered lots of fruit. "Linda ordered 23 boxes!" she mumbled contemptuously. "Somebody's eating cheese...."

On a more serious note, my suspicions of rampant racism in the office have been confirmed. Tara told me today that her boyfriend's father named his three sons Ken, Kevin, and Keith—KKK. She seemed to be poking fun at the idea, like, oh, those Klansmen are so silly sometimes. I don't know how much more of this I can handle....

I got another cool e-mail from my mom. Someday I'll have to tell her she's being published online. Oh—by the way—my mom is a high school English teacher.

Hello! Today is homecoming parade day. I am pooped. We went out and watched the band get ready to march. Holly and I took our megaphones and had a ball hassling people. I yelled at people in the band as they marched by (eg. "Justine get those knees up." and "Louder, Matt!") They were laughing so hard that no one could even toot when they went past us. I kept yelling "Sousaphones rule" and stuff about low brass being #1. Mr. Degner wants some of what we have been drinking. Holly was worse than I was. She kept yelling at the "twirly people." All in all, it was a very satisfying experience, but it wore me out to have so much school spirit.

I am worried that every year, we just begin the fall ritual of the harvest and autumnal equinox with the homecoming festivals. However, we don't ever take the ritual to completion by sacrificing the virgin chosen as queen, as the pagans do in the real ritual. I fear that one of these days, we will feel the wrath of whatever. Well, I'm being silly, of course, but I wish some of these people who think Homecoming is such a great idea knew where that idea came from!

I have to go get ready to discuss Virgil and why Dido kills herself when Aeneas abandons her. Bye!

What on earth do I say after that?

John and I are trying to think of a cool place to go away to this weekend. I just feel like driving for a few hours. It's perfect weather for driving, and the scenery around here is gorgeous. That's Today's Extra-Nifty Thing About Georgia. The highways are so damn pretty.