On airport workers.

The other week the grad student unionization campaign at my school had a pub night to rally people, and I ended up going and talking a lot with the (middle aged) (black) (woman) who I had heard about who was heading up the campaign.

As it turns out, she had been a local organizer for airport workers, and she was saying that emotional involvement with the workers in that campaign was tough.

She said that if you're at the airport every night, you see a rhythm, where a bunch of the same homeless people are allowed to sleep there from like eleven to like four or five, and at like four or five there starts arriving the outsourced but decently paid tarmac workers at the same time that the homeless people are getting kicked out, and then come the well-dressed and well-paid professionals who man the planes and desks, and last of all come the people who work the bookstores and fast food restaurants and whatnot, and that when they come, you can see it in their faces that they're one paycheck or crisis away from being the homeless people who had gotten kicked out of the airport just a few hours earlier.

"It's tough," she was like.

A (Brazilian)'s comparison of international friendliness.

So, the other week I was having drinks with some people including this one visiting (Brazilian) doctoral student, and he was saying that Americans do live up to their reputation for friendliness, and that he had spent some time in Germany, and they were like that a lot there, too, where people he had just met were much friendlier than they would be in Brazil ("Braziw").

"Brazilians are friendly," he said, "But not right away, unless they know that you're a friend of a friend."

He then said that he thought that friendliness to strangers was a factor of a country's economic development; if someone in Brazil you didn't know was friendly to you if you just met them at a bar or randomly, for example, there's always a question right away if they're trying to pull something on you.

Man, am I tired of 12 hour days.

My work schedule this spring has just been insane.

Between two jobs and job search, like 2-3 days a week I honestly work like from 9am until 9pm or even later.

It's funny the reaction we've gotten to unionization.

So many people have this kneejerk reaction of "suck it up and take it or leave," or "choose differently," so my go-to response in certain situations has been, "We *are* choosing, we're choosing to unionize."

LOL.

A story of my mother (2 of 2): Back at her library job.

So, because one of my mom's old coworkers has cancer, they asked her to come back out of retirement and fill in for her while she's doing chemo, in order to keep the job open for her...

As they explained to my mom, they'd hire someone temporary in, but they'd be afraid that the one woman with cancer would think that they were actually setting out to replace her, and they don't want to risk her thinking that at all, so they asked my mom to come back, since it's obvious she's retired and wouldn't be a permanent replacement.

Anyhow, my mom's mostly been doing computer work in the back with interlibrary loans rather than shelving since her hands and arms aren't as good as they used to be, but she has filled in on shelving on occasion, and she said that the shelves are an absolute mess, to the point where you can't even figure out where to put a book, all the books in that area are so rearranged.

In fact, she actually thinks that someone is going through and deliberately rearranging books, they're so messed up.

Back when she used to work, one teenage page was slacking off and just putting books wherever, but it's beyond this, she says.

Just in case, anyhow, she's going to do what she did then, write down a few call numbers from a cart, and then after the page went and shelved that cart, she'll go and check and see if the books got to where they're supposed to go.

But, she said one book was actually way at the top of one shelf on the very highest shelf where you had to reach and stretch to get it, which makes her think that someone is deliberately mixing them up, since if you're a lazy teenager, you wouldn't shelve like that, you'd just reach out and put them right where you are without having to bend down or get up on your tippy-toes.

She thinks it might be local teenagers doing that, and I definitely hope so.

My first thought was an absolutely insane adult, and with that kind of person, who knows what they'd do if you caught them and confronted them.

A story of my mother (1 of 2): Intensity.

Where might my intensity come from?

Now that she's retired, my mother is trying to finish one quilt block a day.

She's even regimented with her recreation in retirement, so she can accomplish things.

Feeling nasty.

By midweek, I usually haven't shaven and my nails need clipping, and I just feel nasty.

A lot of times, then, when I work from home on Wednesday, I take some time mid-morning to do just that, to feel like I'm fresh and clean and can get to work again.

Three sights biking in to school the other morning:

1) A(n older) (Chinese) woman with a pushcart, walking slowly down the alley and stopping to peek into a trashbin, then closing it and going on to the next one.

(Was she trashpicking?).

2) A bit up the alley, a bulldozer at work amidst the wreckage of a garage to my right.

3) Biking in, a semi for a potato chips brand turning left onto my street, and cars backed up waiting for it while it gingerly eases up into the turn without any hitting parked cars...  And then when I move forward into the intersection, the (Mexican-looking) (guy) in the van that had been behind the semi kindly waves me forward, even though he clearly has the right of way by a ton, just because he's being nice to a person on a bike.