UNC is sloppy

I think you all should know Rohrbach changed his tune quite quickly via the gchat with "babe"s and "i love you"s after his outburst last week. I told him we were definitely fighting for one more day and then I was out of town on the day the fighting was over and now it's the weekend and I think he's gotten what he deserves with his terrible sass.

"Out of town?" you say? Yes. Out of town again- to UNC for recruiting. I've never been to UNC and I was really excited to go, even if I'd only been back in Dallas for 2 days. Work was crazy busy on Monday and Tuesday- which is beginning to be the story of my life- and I hadn't packed my men's polo yet- (the women's polo didn't fit so I had to call a woman with the first name of Queen and request she send me a men's medium so I could tuck it in. I then became very self conscious about switching into men's sizes and awkwardly told her I was TALL and that's all. Queen was not so very amused.)

Anyway, I get this call at the end of the day from none other than Estrada (which, I know his name is Steve but for Halloween he was the Estrada sunglass man and pretty much was unable to say or do anything but point to the Estrada sunglasses and say "Estrada".) So, Stevtrada called me and he was in Dallas and did I want to catch a drink? Of course I did! He's pretty much as great as McCowan. And they are roommates. We met for beers and apps and just chatted away- I really don't know that I've ever had a one on one sober conversation with Stevetrada so we started at the beginning and just chat chat chatted. Also, the bar we were at had all kinds of games so we picked Jenga and played 1.5 rounds. I lost the first one and then we go distracted with the conversation on his recent trip to the Bama game and then it was time to go. I'm certain I would have won the second game if we finished it.

I went home and half packed my suitcase and then went to bed. When I woke up I have to do all the things I do to prepare for the flight crashing which includes making my bed, running the dishwaher and just a general, overall quick tidy. Things that were not tidy- the piles of laundry I guess I left for myself before going to Pittsburgh and then the extra pile of laundry I brought home from Pittsburgh. Thankfully, the plane did not go down and no one had to clean out my mostly clean apartment.

Since I was traveling on a Wednesday and the thing I want the most when traveling is to sit next to a normal person - well, I travel in business clothes AND shoes. I had on that great green dress I told you about because I wasn't going to see anyone I'd already seen in the dress and I really do love it and want to get all the wear out of it I can before it's too cold here to wear it.

I take all my extras off and out, go through security, put everything back on and in and then stop in the little mini market to grab a DC. Well, no DC ONLY Pepsi products. I turn right around and head down the terminal a bit more and into another store. No DC, ONLY Pepsi! Weird. I continue walking to ANOTHER shop- NO DC!! So I say, "Hi, excuse me, is this airport a Pepsi only airport?" Dun dun dun. Yes- Pepsi only BUT if I walk down 15 more terminals to the McDonalds I can get a DC there. What do I do? I walk 15 more terminals to McDonalds and get a medium DC for $2.03. Then I had to walk all the way back to my terminal to get on my direct flight to RDU. My entire walk I'm smiling smiling smiling for 3 reasons- 1) the DC 2) the green dress is meant for walking and flows so great 3) my new Nine West shoes are really holding up quite well and NO blisters or any pain!!

Then it's time to board and as with all flights anymore everyone has a rollerboard and there is never enough room for luggage and I was very fortunate to find a space in front of my seat to store my bag. But, man across the aisle could not find a space for his luggage and became very angry. But he never said any words. He just did this huffing and puffing and rolling of his eyes and in general was a total embarrassment to his wife who apologized up and down and thanked the 6 aisles that were involved in finding this man space for his luggage so that we could keep the peace. I mean, how does the sweetest woman in aisle 18 seat A end up with the biggest D ever? And it's my guess they've been together for a while since neither of them where spring chickens. Man of aisle 18 seat B was terrible. But I just sat back and enjoyed the show while it lasted.

Land at RDU- beautiful weather, beautiful scenery. Stupid Ford Focus was my rental car- we had a "Foc" in Connecticut for training- they still have no leg room. Worst. Car. Situation. Ever. Also- no great radio stations to be found!! The! Worst! Also terrible? Couldn't log in to work at the hotel which totally sucked and made me stressed out because I knew I would have 100 emails to deal with on Friday on top of 5 interviews and all the other crap that was on my calendar. So- stressful situation. The reason I was at UNC was because we were recruiting for our program. Wednesday was a Diversity Fair and Thursday was the Career Fair. Now, seriously, me? At a Diversity Fair? I don't know that I'm exactly "diverse" but whatever I went...

I could not believe how SLOPPY the student population of UNC is. I mean- seriously, I guess "kids these days" don't wear suits anymore? Ok- I can deal with that. Business casual at an 8pm fair seems respectable to me... except.. they didn't even do that!! Tube tops on girls. Exposed bra straps. Boys in jhorts. Tennis shoes. I mean- a terribly unprofessional student population- That would NEVER happen at Penn State. (Woop woop WSJ and recruiters!!!)

For the most part the Diversity Fair was a bust. For the fair it was me and this kid Erik who laughed like a ventriloquist dummy. I don't know how else to explain it... he laughed pretty much only with the bottom half of his mouth. We chatted the whole time and were both generally unimpressed with the sloppy students. For the Career Fair the next day which had lots more booths at it we had a sales woman join us. I forget her name because I was so distracted with her blinking disability. She had rapid blinking which I imagine would be very disruptive to general life. Try it right now- blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink. It's hard to focus on anything, right? What an awful tick. The tick was really agitated when she was talking to people which probably creeped out the students, but even when she was not talking she had another blinking tick where they weren't so much rapid as they were forceful blinks. It was very distracting to me all day trying to figure out this unusual behavior.

There were a few nicely dressed people (ladies) that were intelligent and I encouraged to apply and one nice junior guy who was reapplying for an internship he didn't get last year. Tommy. I hope he gets it this year- he was so excited and couldn't wait to apply again. Aww. Sweet.

The Fair ended at 2 but my flight wasn't until 7. I tried to rush to the airport to get bumped to an earlier flight, but I was early enough and instead had to hang out at gate C17 and read my book- The Poisonwood Bible. This book was recommended to me by both LFS and McCowan separately and I figured that these two probably wouldn't have tons of book overlap so it would be worth me remembering and getting. The book for me was very slow to start and a heavy read, but really good. I've got just a few chapters left and despite the heavy read, as you get to know the characters they are actually quite funny. If you're looking for a read, I highly recommend it- but, it is long at almost 600 pages. I'm a quick reader and don't usually need more than a week to finish a book- but this one is taking some time. Catch 22 was a book I read in high school that I didn't expect to be funny (hello, summer reading is never funny) but actually made me laugh out loud. Maybe I will reread that book since I am now at least 8 years smarter and funnier.

Let's see... what else?? I'm really happy to have my feet back on the ground for a while. No major travel until Thanksgiving- thank god!! And that will be to go home for the holiday. Work has been CRAZY busy. I am used to having sporadic busy times, and a long day each week or two but literally for 4 or 5 weeks I've been working at least 10 hour days and just barely catching up and never getting ahead. It's a little dreary to write- but I do like my job and can't wait for 10/11 to be done since that's our next major deliverable. Yesterday I even logged in for 2 hours to just clean up my inbox-- I had 469 emails that were "read" but I never really read them I just skimmed them and determined if at the time I was reading it was really important or later important.... Which puts me in email jail where I get the high priority emails that I'm at capacity and can't send emails with large attachments. I mean- just opening Outlook with over 400 emails gives me a stomach ulcer so I had to clear things out. I filed, responded, deleted, etc and got my inbox to 68 emails. SO. AMAZING! Then I found another folder that I didn't know I had of 299 emails and cleared that down to 18!! It was very productive. And then I moved on to actual work for another hour or two and then it was 10:30 on a Saturday and I wanted to read more of The Poisonwood Bible and I logged off and read and went to sleep.

I've had such an exciting weekend.

I don't know if this will surprise any of you- but I guess I have an active imagination. I don't generally think I do because I'm a pretty realistic person (no fluff) but lately I've been very actively imagining the high possibility that a bug will get me. In the bathroom. In Chattanooga whenever I would go to the bathroom I was always afraid I would find one particular employee dead on the toilet. I have no idea why. Honestly. But, I always thought "Please don't let me find Sheila in here". She was in good health, and really a very great project manager, and I have no idea why I was always fearful of finding her passed out body in the bathroom, but for whatever reason, I was. And, as expected, I never found her near death in the bathroom. Now that I'm in Texas and Sheila isn't here and the bugs are here I'm always afraid to see a bug in the bathroom and to be caught, literally, with my pants down. I'm afraid of bugs in the bathroom for good reason- obviously. So now my biggest fear is when I get toilet paper a giant cockroach, cricket or spider is going to fall out of the dispenser and I'm going to scream and cause a scene in the bathroom. This makes going to the ladies room stressful because I'm always looking for bugs. And, when you're looking for things, you'll usually find them. Now I'm afraid a bug is going to crawl out from behind my bed while I'm sleeping. I have not had any insect problems in my apartment since the Ants of April, but, I'm still really worried.

Great news for this week is this: FALL TV IS BACK ON!!!! Since I woke up before 8 this morning, I watched CBS Sunday Morning Show and set my DVR for all television shows I love that are coming up this week across 4 networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox). I can't pick what I'm most excited for... I mean, Dancing with the Stars with The Situation?! Glee!? The Office? Grey's Anatomy!? Modern Family!? How do you pick? You don't- You get DVR and watch them all.