Odds & Ends #16
The other day, I got volun-told by the Booster Club that, as a soccer mom of a player on the team, I would be working the concession stand one evening in February during a Tuesday night game. And, oh by the way, here’s the link to a 2-hour video course for my food-handling permit so I can pass out packets of Peanut M&Ms. No skipping ahead of the content either; they’ve got that thing locked down to where you have to go through all the content and take a test to complete it. I sighed, Melina snickered, and I got down to it. Now I know the three ways to thaw chicken safely.
But when Melina had to pull out her laptop on the weekend and do 90 minutes of soccer game review for a homework assignment, you better believe I snickered in return.
In Things I Learned from My French Exchange Student: people, it’s not “chocolate croissant,” so stop calling it that. It’s “panh au shockolah,” or something that doesn’t trip off the tongue easily. Turns out the word for bread in French is “pain.” In other words. I can’t wait to experience French pain when I visit Paris next year. Doesn’t sound right when I put it like that.
We also went to a hibachi last night with our friend Nigel, something Melina had never experienced. The girl is a girl after my own heart: she examined the menu online ahead of time up one side and down the other — ended up with a giant bowl of noodles she could have dived into and swam around in. And she and Nigel just loved telling the restaurant it was my birthday so I got a nice little flashing birthday tiara and a free slice of cheesecake. Nigel, who is from Malaysia, gave her a professional soccer jersey from his home state of Penang, which she absolutely loved. I have such good friends who have treated Melina so well.
Sunday afternoon found us wrestling my treadmill out the front door to my neighbor’s house. I’d been looking for a way to get the space back in my spare bedroom, given that I hadn’t run on the thing in three years and had no immediate or long-term plans to start that behavior back up. Turns out Misty was in the market, as it were, and so her husband, kids and she trekked across the street to collect it. It took dismantling and five people to get that bitch out of the house, but as of 30 minutes ago, I have my room back, and I didn’t need to deal with online weirdos. Just the weirdos next door, ha ha. I kid—they are lovely people.
I have a very stressful eight months coming up with work. My lead admin is going on mat leave in February, so I’m taking over her boss, who reports to the guy who reports to the CEO of Capital One. It’s going to be a huge stretch for me, and I’m already tweaking. But good exposure too — both to the business and the people. A couple of months after she goes on mat leave, my direct leader goes on mat leave too! So just a lot of churn and sturm und drang in my job for most of the year. In the middle of that, Melina returns to France.
But first: the Grand Canyon. It’s about six weeks until Melina and I sky out to Phoenix, rent a car and head north to that amazing wonder of the world. I catch Melina smiling every now and then.
sk: What’s going on? Why are you smiling?
M: I’m just excited about the Grand Canyon.
