Deja Vu w/Chinese food and politics.

So, I meet my one lawyer friend from Missouri at a Chinese restaurant on a Sunday afternoon for lunch, and she gets some spicy beef dish at its spiciest (which is something that she does), and then when we're talking politics, she says that the one GOP Senator from my state "has to go" and in the middle of this conversation starts wheezing from the heat to the point where someone has to go get her some water.

Then, afterwards, I head down to a local state rep's campaign office, and there one of the other phonebankers is this (late) (middle-aged) (African-American) gentleman who hadn't had lunch, and he says he doesn't mind heat, so I share the leftovers from my other friend's meal with him, since she had sent them home with me.

Then, when we're talking politics, he says that the one GOP Senator from my state "has to go" and in the middle of this conversation starts wheezing from the heat to the point where someone has to go get him some water.

It was total deja vu, all in the same afternoon!

My eyes got wide, and I just wondered.

Got a haircut the other week: Greying hair, Salon's going to be sold.

So, I got a haircut the other week.

Because I had been so busy at work, it honestly had been at least 2 months since my last haircut, if I had to guess.

So, I left it to my (Latin@) (transgender) stylist to choose a haircut, and (s?)he did a longer cut, because (s?)he likes the way my hair towards the back of my head falls, at that longer length.

I noted, too, after the haircut, that my hair seems to be getting lighter again, after several years of getting ashier.

"That's because it's starting to go grey," (s?)he was like.

I found that interesting, and noted that I had a few white hairs appearing in my sideburns, which (s?)he then said (s?)he had noticed too.

Also, since the last time I had come in, the (Japanese) woman who owns the salon had decided to sell the place, I found out, and there's a local guy looking into buying it.

"He said he's seen me here and at the gym and he likes what I do," said my stylist.

"I guess that's nice," I was like, "But it's also a little creepy, like he's stalking you."

"Yeah," (s?)he was like.

I then asked about who the guy was, and it turns out that he lives in the neighborhood, and his name is "Milo".

"Oh," I was like, "Is he Greek?".

"He's something," my (Latin@) (transgender) stylist was like.

Sliding Chair.

Somehow, one of my 1950s black vinyl and chrome chairs had a leg get bent with the metal, and as I sat in it the other week - it's the one chair at my table that I regularly sit in - the leg gradually started bending and sliding outwards, and I noticed the chair would do that, unless I positioned my weight properly so that it was borne by the other three legs.

After a while, I accidentally put too much weight on that leg, which made the leg slide out even more, even when I tried balancing my weight like before.

So, I swapped that chair out with another one at the table.

I'd almost throw it out, but I very rarely have guests, and having only 3 chairs at a 4-sided table would look funny, and all the chairs match my 1950s decor so nicely.

The next time I do have guests over, though, I'll have to make sure that no-one sits in that one chair...

Fortunately, I tend to keep papers on the chair in the position where I had swapped the bad chair into, so that will militate against a chance bad accident.

...anyhow, look at me, I'm getting (more) eccentric...

Shocking experience with art school internal policy:

After getting railroaded into internal policy decisions after I suffered an apparent legal violation, I kicked stuff up through different internal levels at the art school, to see what would happen.

At the point of filing a Grievance, I had to go back through extensive documentation (30+ email exchanges), and at that point I noticed 2 slip-ups I had made, which didn't affect core concerns, but complicated the case enough to where it made filing a Grievance not worth it.

That really was a "wake up" call for me.

I've done investigative reporting, and I thought that I had all of my "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed, but I didn't.

I can't even imagine being someone with even less power and less knowledge and having gone through something even more traumatic - e.g. being a sexually assaulted student - and then undergoing the same sort of experience with institution-internal policy.

It really is like you're violated twice, and my issues were very, very mild, in comparison.

Library tidbits: Another significant number, challenge areas shelving.

The other week I was at my library shelving job again for a few hours, and a few cool things happened.

First, I found (another) barcode ending in "...666".

Second, I had to re-shelve and then pull some books, and three sections in a row were the biggest call number challenge I've faced yet.

All of the 3 sections were these endless multi-volume series of English document collections, and sometimes the call numbers were organized by different titles and years but no volume numbers, and at other times by volume numbers that didn't match up to the number of the internally bound material that was still somehow noted on the spine, and at still other times within multiple series.

Because of that, then, a lot of times previous shelvers (or people consulting the books?) had put stuff back in the wrong places, which added to the confusion.

On top of all of that, too, two sections were also placed "spine down", since the books were too tall to stand normally on the shelf, so not only were they confusing and misordered, but I couldn't necessarily see everything at once and had to lift a lot individually before I could figure out what was going on.

It was a huge challenge, but I sorted it out before I left, and I felt a huge sense of completion.

I really do like that library job.

Blunt observations on the U.S. from a British person.

The other week when I was downtown I went out for drinks with the one (half British) (half Sudanese) sister of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, who I'm now also friends with.

Anyhow, she's embittered by her debt from law school here, and also from how she's in full time legal work in some job that pays $14 but no benefits, somehow, from categorization.

She was also a bit despondent, too, because she recently had a birthday and she's now in her early 30s and has to start to think about whether she wants to try to have kids.

"I should really just move back to England," she was like.

Then, she was like, "This country is horrible.  The education system's a mess, and you can't afford healthcare.  Why would I want to raise children here?".

All I could think was, OUCH.

But, her perspective doesn't seem off, from what I can tell of her situation and her possibilities.

Freshman vocabulary trends.

Three years ago and then again this year, I noticed that the freshpersons at the school I go to latch onto certain vocabulary words and use them a lot, specifically the word "duality".

They called me out for using the word "cognizant", though - one person didn't understand it and then someone gave me the synonym "aware" to use instead - so I guess that that latching onto certain words and making a habit of it is something that happens to everyone.