A Day in the Life: Natural Disasters.

So, I'm pretty sure that most of you reading this blog have no idea what I do. I think that a majority of you know that I work for UC Berkeley, maybe that I work in Student Affairs (maybe?) Some of you would get bonus points for knowing that my job title is "Resident Director" or describing it as either "a grown up RA" (my least favorite description ever) or as "the person who supervises the RAs."

Regardless, I haven't been really great at really describing to others what my job is about - what it is that I actually do. And also, why I do all these things. So, every now and again, I'm going to describe a day in the life - at least the interesting ones. Every day in my job is different - while I have the same core duties, my job is basically to respond to all the stuff that comes up in the  lives of the 500 students and 10 staff members I work with. Yeah. Sometimes it gets hectic.

For example, while I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, one of my buildings (I supervise two residence halls - this one is not the one I live in) caught on fire. ON. FIRE. As in, they are still repairing the fire damage. Luckily, the flames were confined to the basement storage area, but the smoke was thick in the entire building. Let's just say it took a few days for the hallways and rooms to air out. Another, extremely different example would be when a student breaks up with their partner, fails a test and comes home to find their roommate has eaten all their granola bars. This pushes them over the edge into a hysterical crying fit. You know where they end up? My office. I stock tissues.

I also thought it would be handy to keep a record of what's going on for me during the year. I mean, the number of topics I'm trained on is always expanding - because we never know what's going to happen each day. I try not to get freaked out by it.

So, last Wednesday was my third day of professional training for the year. (Sidenote - every year, before we start the two week extravaganza that is RA training, the professional staff also have a couple weeks of training to prepare for the upcoming year). Yesterday started off with a discussion about the newest supplies that we would be adding to our emergency supply inventory. This is an ongoing discussion for us because the threat of earthquake is extremely high in this area - and what are we going to do for our students in the case of a really devastating quake? My unit alone houses 1400 students and Bay Area emergency services tell residents to be prepared to care for themselves for 5-7 days with no assistance in the worst case. So we spend a fair amount of time discussing questions like: Where will we go if a building collapses? What will we eat? How will we care for injured students? What if, what if, what if?

New supplies for our RA staff included matching helmets and bright green vests. We got the same PLUS crowbars (awesome!), first aid supplies AND handheld radios. Without feeling too ridiculous, we learned the protocol for the radios: "Kristin to Laura" "Go ahead Kristin" "Kristin to Laura, your bedroom color palette is aMAzing!" "Copy that Kristin" and so on. (Sidenote: We also have another set of radios that are actually police issue radios, connected directly to our university police department, which is...nerve wracking.) We're always adding to our supplies in an effort to feel like we are as prepared as possible for any given emergency.

Lunch break.

So, for all of our discussion about earthquakes or other disasters where we would be forced to evacuate our buildings - we realized we didn't have as much planning done for events that would require us to stay inside. Active shooters, for example. Chemical or hazardous material spills, for another. We realized we didn't know the difference between lockdown (a police order stating no one can enter or exit) and shelter in place (a safety recommendation where you go inside the nearest building, and shut the windows and doors). So lots of planning ensued - how to let students know about the situation, what to do if a student wants to leave the building anyway, how to know when the restrictions have been lifted. Etcetera. The number of questions that come up for us in these situations is sometimes overwhelming - because everything we discuss is one more thing that we need to mentally prepare for, and also train our staff for.

Even though emergency preparedness isn't what I went to grad school for, it's a huge part of my job here, and part I bet you didn't know about.

Maybe next time I'll talk about the stuff you were expecting, hugs and feelings and stuff.

**I started this post last week, but tonight, no joke, there was another fire. Outside of my building, luckily, and this one much more suspicious, but maybe five more minutes and my other building would have been on fire again. Awesome, right?

Random updates

So, it's been awhile, and recently the blog has kind of seemed broken on occasion? As in, you come to the URL and there is nothing there? This has happened to me a few times, not sure if that's why no one has been leaving us any comment love, but I will push on! Writing about things no one cares about! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm completely ripping this format from Amalah's last post. Seriously. Click on the link and you will see how unoriginal I am. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots has happened in the few weeks since I last posted cute pictures of Jean's puppy. That same day we visited, Dan and I went to the Jelly Belly factory which was fun because you have to wear a paper hat in the factory even though you get NOWHERE near the jellybeans in the process of being made. Also, the day we were there they were making cotton candy and raspberry flavors and wow, headache. But, you get to try a lot of flavors you don't see a lot of places (jalapeno anyone?) and new flavors (pomegranate is yummy) and be around too many kids on a sugar high. Exciting. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the factory, but outside where they have jelly belly motorcycles, a jelly belly car, a jelly belly RV and a huge blow up jelly bean, you feel free to take pictures to your heart's content! But, it was a factory tour, which completely fascinate me, and free, so hooray! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan is in Austin again for South by Southwest working really long days, and I'm still in Berkeley, sleeping in too late. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Um, this won't be exciting to anyone else, but I'm going to see Dave Matthews in September. This is exciting because I requested my tickets through their fan club system (of course I'm in the fan club) for a venue that I've never been to before but have always wanted to go to where they always do amazing multi-night performances. The trick is, the venue is the Gorge, about 2 hours east of Seattle. So this year, they're spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend there, and I requested tickets for all three nights to hedge my bets and I got ALL of them! Honestly, when I found out I danced around the apartment ala Dana's dance of joy from Sportsnight. No words. Too excited. Yes, I will be making the pilgrimage for a weekend o' dave. Dan is, well, not as excited. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I also have no words to describe how excited I am about this summer (before the concerts). Dana and Larry are coming out to visit in June, and she already has quite the itinerary planned out :) July means Houston craziness with the CC, followed less than a month later by CC craziness is New York. These are good times my friends :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finished my second RAD class today! We had 12 students which is a new record for us - woot! Seriously, teaching this is basically the highlight of my job. It's awesome seeing women who don't think they have any strength go through simulation at the end. *smile* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Friday, I went to the campus production of the Vagina Monologues and it was SO good. The cast did an AMAZING job, I laughed and cried, and cried some more. They also include monologues here that Cal women have written, and the original pieces were really powerful. What was NOT as amazing was the guy who came with his girlfriend sitting next to me who, no lie, brought a bottle of Jack in his jacket and, throughout the show, pulled it out to pour into his Coke and drink. And dropped it on the floor a couple of times. And smelled like I was in a bar, at last call. Then, he would pull his girlfriend over to him at completely inappropriate times and make out. NOT OK. All I could think about was that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry makes out with his girlfriend at Schindler's List. I mean, women are on stage talking about being raped, and you're getting drunk and sloppy. You, my friend, are pure class. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will be on the East Coast in 9 days! We're going to be doing a bit of a whirlwind visit - up to Johnstown, over the bridge to Maryland, back to DC for a conference, down to Richmond for a night and back to DC. Whew! Dan will be flying directly from Austin to meet me in DC, and he isn't coming back to Berkeley until we fly back together on April 6th. He'll be away from home for about 3.5 weeks, which is sad, because I think Lily misses him already. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Spring Break starts in 5 days! THANK HEAVENS. Time for a break. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fin.

Recent goings on...

Well, just to catch everyone up (which apparently is necessary my mom complained today that the blog needs updating)... **My grandmother is doing...OK. She was in the hospital a few days ago for some serious nausea and pain after her first round of chemo - bad news. She had an MRI a couple of days ago and everything looks normal - good news. So, we're kind of all over the place. Obviously, I want her to be feeling as good as possible, which doesn't work out 100% of the time. I try to send positive thoughts her way rather than worrying about her, but who knows if that helps. Thanks to anyone who has been doing the same or praying or whatever have you. So, everything else is going to sound trivial after that. But, life goes on even while serious things are happening, I guess? Last Friday, Dan and I took a day trip to Marin - it was kind of a pre-Vegas birthday/save Kristin's sanity trip - to visit the creamery where our favorite cheese is made. Yummmmmmm. We got a "tour" where they tell us how their cheese is made, got to watch said cheese making and then got to taste all 8 of the different kinds they make. It's nice to find out that our favorite cheese is made from the same local milk we buy our milk from, and use alternative energy to power their factory. Yay. I would totally go back and even survive the long windy drive to hang out in the TINY town they make it in, because the tiny town is super hippy sustainable-tastic. EVERYTHING was organic, compostable, local and whatnot. It blew my mind. I thought Berkeley was intense about it - we have nothing on these folks. The coffee shop we went in, there was a container with a sign that said "Please put used stir sticks here to recycle. They make great kindling!" um, wow. Killing two birds with one stone, our favorite cheese is made closeby to where some of the best oysters in SF are actually (sustainably!) harvested. So, we went to get Dan some fresh-right-out-of-the-bay oysters (I am not a fan). The folks who work there clearly have no patience for the folks who come in from the city to eat oysters, so they don't shuck them and give you about a 3 second lesson on how to open them yourself. Ha, it was fun to watch. But, as you can see below, Dan did OK. Took probably longer than it needed to for him to shuck 6 oysters but hey, he said they were delicious. Cheese=perfect food. Favorite. Dan's (open!) oysters Clearly, they know what they're doing. Cow. There were quite a few. We were out in the country. I took the Friday off to take this trip because the creamery only does tours on Fridays, but also because work has been craaaaaaaaaazy the past couple of weeks. We're right in the middle of choosing the RAs for next year, and the Wed/Thurs AND Sat/Sun of the same week we went to Marin, I was interviewing RA candidates for big chunks of time, as well as doing, you know, my regular job. I was also slammed because I have been teaching my first RAD class in the evenings. So, I was certified to teach a women's self defense program back in October, and this is the first class I have taught (with two other instructors). We had 5 students, and they did SO AMAZING. They started feeling scared and quiet and finished up loud, empowered and confident. This is something I will now totally be doing all the time, that makes me feel like I'm doing something right and good and helpful. It's a nice feeling. To come: Many fun filled kitty photos, to hold you over until Dan and I get back from Vegas this weekend! It's Dan's birthday trip, just a little late. Hooray.

Am in a Funk

...because I didn't get enough sleep last night. Mainly because I had to wake up at 5:30 to take Dan to the airport this morning so he could take a business trip to St. Louis. That was fine, until I got back, tried to go back to sleep and my cats...pretty much refused to let that happen. So, today in an effort to remind myself not to be in said funk, here are five things I'm happy about/enjoying/love. 1. The Tina Fey/Amy Poehler skit on SNL. I know it was literally almost a week ago, but I've been watching it once a day. These two ladies are so funny and smart. Big fan. 2. I went to see a play at a local Berkeley theater last night with some of my staff, and the two other RDs in my unit, which was a great time. I'm lucky I get to work with awesome people. 3. I have really non-exciting but yet very exciting plans for the weekend (Target, Costco, etc.) which kind of makes me feel like I'm in "Old School" (Maybe Bed Bath and Beyond...but I don't know. I don't know if we'll have enough time!) But I'm going to just be excited about them none the less. 4. Pandora. Gets me through the work day. 5. My staff and residents this year. Last year by this time, I had probably already met with 30 students about policy violations. This year, I haven't met with ANY although I am meeting with all of two next week. The community my staff has built is pretty amazing. I'm really proud of them. Now you go.

Weekend in Review

Well, this was my last full weekend before my job completely takes over my life for the next few months. I know I sound pretty melodramatic, but no. Literally, beginning next Sunday the 10th, I will be training my RA staff to do their job from about 9 AM to 9 PM every day. Our last day of training is the 22nd. Just in time for two days of students moving in on the 23rd and 24th. I do dread training starting because it's SO much. But I really do love my job, it's just that knowing I will be sleep deprived for most of the month of August is hard to get excited about. (Here's the rub: I'm the boss, so if I'm not excited, my staff isn't excited. Sooo WOOHOO about training!) Anyway. To enjoy my last weekend, Dan and I went into the city to go to the latest exhibit at SFMOMA, which is of Frida Kahlo's work. Now. Let me just say that I like art. Dan loves art. He can wander around galleries and museums for hours while I get bored about 45 minutes in and go outside to have some ice cream. But, not knowing much about Frida walking into the exhibit (actually, walking into the long line outside the exhibit) I really enjoyed it. I appreciate her painting literally, putting all her pain and other crap out there for people to deal with. I mean wow, she did some serious painting when she was pissed. Of course after the exhibit, we went out to dinner - and then the plan was to go see The Dark Knight on IMAX but it had been sold out all week. So, we still haven't seen it, but we have high hopes for this week sometime. We made grand plans for Sunday - brunch out at a new place, a city walk and then trying again for Batman. Looking back, I really appreciate our ambition. We did a grand total of none of that. We did make brunch here, and then we started watching Six Feet Under (on loan from a wonderful co-worker of mine). It's a great series so far (all of four episodes in) but if I am to love it as I love the West Wing, it hasn't happened yet. But, lots of potential, including Peter Krause being hottttt. Anyway, we also did a lot of cleaning our apartment, and giving our cats baths (mental note to take pictures next time). Yeah, we're crazy kids living the city life let me tell ya. We did also already book our travel for Thanksgiving-time. Ugh. I don't feel like flying places used to be this expensive. Has it always been this expensive?? (Did we offend someone with the Pride parade pictures? No one commented and I think some of my captions were quite witty...)

No seriously...

...I am cursed and so are those around me. Dan's flight home from NYC last night (he was there for work - the NYC marathon!) was cancelled and he flew home early this morning instead. They said it was because of "weather" but really it's because "Kristin is cursed." I'm sorry in advance LB if you have trouble getting home from London. **We did go whale watching a couple of weeks ago in Monterrey, which was lovely and COLD. We saw anywhere from 3-5 whales (no way of telling if they're the same or different ones) and while we didn't get too up close and personal, we definitely could see them breach the surface, and heard them, and got some great shots of them diving deep and their flukes coming out of the water (yeah, flukes. I know the lingo). However, on the way back in we came across probably 40-50 dolphins who were jumping and frolicking about right up next to the boat. There were 3 different species and they played around for probably about 10 minutes - it was awesome! The people on the boat said it was some of the best dolphin sighting they hadd had all season. Of course, they probably say that to all the people who don't get to see a lot of whales, but I'm going to choose to believe them. It is pretty crazy to me that we can drive less than two hours south of here and go whale watching. Anyway, we plan to try again - maybe next summer. Maybe we'll get actual usable pictures then! **As I said, Dan was on travel for work and he went to the play ("Boeing, Boeing") that Bradley Whitford is in and got to meet him and take a picture with him. No really, it's fine that both Missy and Dan have met him and I haven't. Seriously, I'm fine with it. **Work - ack! I started training for this coming school year last week, and we kicked it off by going on overnight retreat. All of a sudden my to do list is insanely, crazy long. I'm trying not to get stressed out before I really need to but it feels like a lot already! August is such a crazy month. Two weeks of training my staff for about 10 hours a day, followed by two days of move in (1400 students in two days!), followed by two weeks full of activities put on by my staff, followed by the CC coming into town! You all will very much be my relaxation after a very stressful time. **Usually, I'm reporting on a ton of books I've read, but recently I've seen a whole bunch of movies. Dan and I went to see Wall-E, which was pretty adorable. I think I do prefer Pixar adventure movies to Pixar love stories though. We also went to see Iron Man in a really cute second-run movie theather/bar which Dan really enjoyed (it's the geek in him). I was really impressed with Robert Downey Jr. Who would have thought he could have been sober enough to pull that off?? And I finally saw Batman Begins so I could go see The Dark Knight this weekend on IMAX. Has anyone else seen it? People here who have said it was really, really good and that Heath Ledger is really, really disturbing. Considering the last action movie I saw was "Wanted" I feel pretty confident that this will be an improvement. **My aunt Janis was just in town! Her boyfriend is out in SF for about a month, working on...many different things, so she came out for the weekend to visit. We all got to go out to dinner, which was lovely. I was surprised at how nice it was to see some family, in between what seems like will be the regular twice-yearly visit home. **In other family news, my mom and I are going to Vegas in October to see Bette Midler!!! You can make fun all you want, I'm excited.

More late night thoughts

*So believe it or not, Dan and I have lived here for a year. Our moving anniversary passed last week on July 8th. Crazy I tell you. I think I missed it because I've blocked the memory of our incredibly stressful moving process.

*Public transportation pet peeves: Missing a bus by mere inches. People who talk REALLY LOUDLY on their cell phones continuing a conversation on a crowded bus.

*I have passed my airline curse onto my loved ones. My mom got stuck in Texas for 10 hours while trying to get to California (for work) and then they lost her luggage for three days.

*My new favorite song is "After Tonight" by Justin Nozuka, who I thought was some unknown guy who was playing on my Pandora station. Then I found out he's all over VH1, but whatever, you can give me the credit when you fall in love with the song too. Go download it! But be warned the chorus gets stuck in your head like a beeyotch. Also, Ro, he's half Japanese.

*Blog posts with photos to look forward to: 12 on the 12th - A Day in the life of Dan, the SF Pride Parade and a city walk.

*The AFSCME (no, I do not know what it stands for) union is on strike here all week long because they quite simply don't get paid enough. This union encompasses our custodians, maintenance staff, groundskeepers, and food service workers. Good thing it's not during the school year because this place would be a hot mess. So, many of the RDs and I aren't eating in the dining halls this week to support the strikers, many of whom we know and work with and interact with every day. So, we're alternating people making dinner for everyone. Tonight Dan and I made breakfast for dinner for about 10 people. Good times. Dan makes killer raspberry chocolate chip pancakes.

*I have read 30 books this year so far. Currently reading: "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston and am about to start "Ship of Fools" by Katharine Anne Porter, and "The Color Purple."

*This blogpost is also the latest edition of the "I am SO EXCITED to see everyone" newsletter. Clearly, there are good times to be had. See exhibit A below.

All work and Play

I avoid talking shop here because, frankly, I don't think it's really interesting news to share. But I realize nobody will know what I'm up to day-to-day unless I actually talk about it. I've been working with a nice marketing agency as their senior account executive. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that actually means! Thus far it means managing non-traditional marketing agendas for Jamba Juice, Nike, YouTube, Google, Peet's Coffee, and a couple others snuck in there as well. I went to Jamba's headquarters the other day... if you haven't heard of Jamba Juice, they make fresh fruit smoothies. Anyway, they have the workings of a store basically setup in their lobby and I got to make my own smoothie. At this point, I should emphasize my deep love of slushies and smoothies, so this was extremely exciting to me! Considering I was there for a really important business meeting, you can imagine the internal struggle not to jump up and down like a little kid in a candy store... scratch that... fruit smoothie store. I made a delicious mix of fresh Pomegranate Juice, Peaches, Mangos, Strawberries, and Blueberries... Yummmmm In actual fun, we went to see R.E.M. in concert last night. And by "went to see" I mean we went to our friend's apartment right next to the concert, could hear everything, and could actually see the stage. If only all concerts came equipped with leather couches and chocolate covered strawberries! Tonight we head to the opera. Happy June people.

The May edition of 12 on the 12th

Two months in a row that I've remembered. I should totally get an award. Or a sticker on some sort of chart somewhere. (I prefer scratch-n-sniff, just fyi.)

Anyway, here's my day in photos. There are multiple cat photos, I apologize.

10:41 AM - I'm just leaving the house for work (I work until almost 8 PM on Mondays, don't judge me!) And the cats are wrestling. This is quite the action shot.





12:42 PM - On my way out of the office for a meeting. This is my office. Note the ridiculous volume of stuff on my desk.




12:42 PM - I thought you would get a kick out of the fact that I get paid to make charts and such out of things like Carebears.




6:19 PM - This is some of my Hall Association giving away root beer floats to the residents to celebrate their last day of classes (which was today)




7:03 PM - And here are some of the fantastically wonderful staff mentors I've been working with in my class. Today was our last day, just time for students to turn in their papers. Koko (the other instructor) and I would never have gotten through class without them.




7:14 PM - And here is said stack of papers. Guess what I'm doing this weekend!




About 7:45 PM - View from one of my buildings on the 8th floor fire escape. Why yes, that is the view of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. And yes, we are ridiculously lucky.




About 7:46 PM -Dan and I thinking we're clever taking pictures of our shadows.





Shortly after the shadow picture - This is what my unit looks like. 6 buildings, courtyard, etc. You may remember a very similar view from my summer blog when I was an intern out here.



About 9:15 PM - The stuffed mushrooms Dan made to go with dinner. They're baby portabellas (local, from the farmers market), stuffed with feta and tomatoes. Yum. I know, they kind of look like little creatures with big red eyes. But you know what? They're TASTY little creatures with red eyes.





10:35 PM - Lily independently decides to climb into the office trashcan. Adorable.



11:15 PM - Andddddddd they're out.

Quick updates to the work complaints

Apparently, I like to update late at night. Something to check off the to do list before bed you know. **When I mentioned physical threats in my last post about work, I just want to clarify that I was not receiving threats, but a student in my building was and I have to mediate the situation. Lucky me. Anyway, my mom was concerned. **Yes, Laura we will be updating the food blog soon. I got a little discouraged there for awhile, but I'm starting to get reinspired. **Tonight was my last late night of work for the year! No more staff meetings, hall association meetings or classes! Woot. **Guess what? Kevin is alive and doing well. I don't know if other people have talked to him recently, but I hadn't and yeah, he's A-OK. [This bit about not hearing from him in awhile is ironic coming from me, no?] **Good news from New Jersey: A MATCH HAS BEEN FOUND IN MARLTON! In February of 2007 we [my family from New Jersey - my aunt, uncle and cousin] formed a group of family and friends that wanted to make a difference in someone's life. We called our group and our mission "MARROW for MICHAEL". The goal was to register people in the National Marrow Donor Program in the hope that we could find a donor match for Michael or for someone like him needing a marrow transplant to perhaps save their life. The odds of matching someone needing a transplant are incredibly high, but on April 19, 2007 the more than 500 people who turned out at Cherokee High School and volunteered to be tested and add their names to the registry lowered those odds to something attainable. And finally, a success story! Dan Schules, a 24 year old police officer and former classmate of Michael's, was found to be a perfect match for a 16 year old boy from New York who has been waiting for a transplant. Dan completed the final part of the donation procedure on May 5, 2008 and now a desperate 16 year old and his family have a new lease on life.

Work complaints.

Commence complaining.

I'm in charge of three buildings. Two are traditional style (long hallways, two or three people to a room, shared bathrooms on the floor) much like many of us lived in during college. The other, which I live in, is apartment style, so 4-6 students to an apartment with a full bathroom and kitchen and everything. It houses transfer students and upper division students (In UVA speak, that's third and fourth years and in VT "we're not as snooty" speak, that's juniors and seniors). Anyway, you can probably imagine that I see a lot more students who get in trouble from the traditional buildings - alcohol, noise, other stupid things that happen when students stay up until 4 AM with time on their hands and not wanting to study. All year, the apartment building (named Wada...for Yoritada Wada. I like to say his name a lot) has been quiet. But apparently, too quiet. In the past month I've had harassment over match.com, physical threats, apartment conflicts over noise and trash, huge parties, and a lovely physical "altercation" between two men in a fantastic love triangle. *sigh* Three weeks left. End complaining.

Last staff meeting...check.

Also, I haven't really had the occasion to document the haircut as of yet, but maybe this weekend. In return, I expect a picture of Meghan's haircut.

Fun story of the day: Berkeley's police chief, a couple of years ago, retired and was given a 2.1 million dollar retirement package. Shortly after, she was rehired. And given a raise. I shit you not.

We like long coats.

I feel like a whole new person.

Not really, but this weekend I did get a haircut AND a new cell phone. My hair is back to being really short, like most of you saw it over winter break when Dan and I were home. My cell phone actually has functions beyond that of a phone, and Dan is a little jealous of it. I realized I hadn't bought a new phone since Jan. 2006 so I decided it was high time to upgrade. Now I have a relatively expensive phone to never talk on. Not really an exciting weekend here although we're hoping next weekend will be more so. No, we don't know what we're doing yet. But I think hoping is the important part to focus on. Also, not that everyone needs to know this, but Laura, my deodorant smells like...freshness? No seriously, it doesn't list a scent, but I think it smells like spring, sort of fresh and crisp. And just to keep everyone updated - there were no bad incidents with the "natural" deodorants. No horrible BO or pit stains or anything. We're both actually pretty happy, seems like it's all gone ok. And, Dan has not overly smelled like a pine forest. Dan had a productive second week of work, which he apparently wants to talk about later (he's reading over my shoulder), and work for me was ridiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiculous this week, so I'm hoping this coming week will be slower and more calm. This week starts the "lasts" of the year - last class, last hall association meeting, last staff meeting, etc. so I know the end must be in sight. More later?

12 on the 12th!

WOOT I remembered this month! Let's jump right in, shall we?

So, today was actually Cal Day, which is like the huge fair type deal for students who have been admitted to UCB to come visit, get a tour, etc. So, my staff and I get to organize and give tours of the residence halls all day. Yeah, it's not our favorite day. And yet, here is (some of) my staff at 9:55 AM looking relatively cheerful.



So we were swamped all morning during my shift, which was from 9 AM - 12:30 PM. Of course, here's how busy we were at 12:19 PM, right before my co-RD came to take over:



2:30 PM - Brunch




3:15 PM - Taking a lovely walk in the 85 degree weather. And here is what it costs to have a car in the Bay Area:




3:30 PM - Someone is clearly kind of a big deal:

4:30 PM - Leaving a super cheap used book store, found some plaques! This one was in a series of events that happened in Berkeley through the years...with Dan's feet.

4:45 PM - Gelato! Mine was panna cotta flavored heavenly goodness. Enjoying the downtown Berkeley scene, sitting across from the second picture, an enormous tuning fork. Whatev, it's Berkeley.

5:30 PM - Back from walk and afternoon adventure, stopped to take a picture of the pretty church right next to my Unit. The tall building in the background is one of my buildings. Attractive, no?







8:30 PM - James and the book I bought this afternoon that I already finished reading. Don't freak out, it was only about 130 pages.





About 10 PM - Durant Food Court, a lovely place for college students that is a bunch of ethnic restaurants that are cheap and open late. We went for Italian tonight, with bubble tea for drinks.





Time for bed:

Important things for you to know today

**I cancelled my MySpace account today. I don't why I'm feeling so accomplished about that, but I really am.

**Our cats need a bath for SERIOUS. Wow.

**Nothing that exciting has been happening since Dan has been home. He's been home since Sunday night, and he was all stuffed up on the plane, so then when the plane was landing, all the pressure built up and when I went to pick him up, he had lost a lot of his hearing capability. Yes, it all came back, but it was slightly alarming.

**I've started teaching a class, which is the class that all students who are going to be RAs take, on Monday nights. Then Tuesday nights, I have meetings from about 7-11 PM. So, by and large, until the semester is over, I probably won't be here blogging my heart out until Wednesday at least. You can tell that right now I'm hard at work over here.

**Dan has a third meeting with a company he's been interviewing with today - he had an interview in person before he went to Texas, then did a phone interview while he was in Texas, and now has another meeting with them. I can only take this as a good sign, so send warm thoughts.

**Was everyone thrown off on the last post because I posted something political? Is this like the time I said the word vagina and everyone didn't comment because vaginas are scary? Are politics scary? Did I commit a faux pas? Just let me know, I didn't mean to freak you out loyal readers (primarily Laura, Meghan and Rosa)

**I'm excited that next week I will be going on my own adventure - I'm going to Savannah to visit Ben and Jess, then going to Atlanta for a national student affairs conference, and then I'm going down to Florida with my dad to visit my grandmother. Huzzah! It's a lot of flights, but whatever.

Lily loves burritos.

12 on the 12th

I love that Ro is posting 12 pictures on the 12th of every month. It's fun to get a glimpse into someone's life that is so different from the one that you experience every day. For the past two months especially, I have been promising myself that I would post 12 pictures from my day...except for the past two months, Dan has been out of town and had the camera. Last time he came back with approximately 4 pictures from the entire trip, so...maybe he'll take 6 this time? I decided to make do with reliving 13 things that happened to me on the 13th (today) and having you (that means YOU loyal reader) respond in kind. Next month, I will make an effort to do the picture thing. So, now I have to tap into my memory and remember what actually happened today. 1 - Woke up because Lily was scratching on the mattress again. She must know by now that this invariably wakes me up in a shitty mood. So, this was at 7:50, my alarm was set for 9. Kicked the cats out. 2 - Woke up again at 8:30 when James started meowing for food. Seriously, I'm ready for Dan to come back so we can go back to alternating mornings of "It's YOUR turn to feed them" 3 - Helped out with two interviews for a student staff position next year. The candidates were polar opposites. The first woman was a walking sorority girl stereotype, complete with breathy speech, lots of "um" and "like," too much makeup and blond hairflipping. *sigh* The second one was great though - at least he dressed up for it! 4 - HA. Just thinking about this frustrates me. So, I had to take a bunch of stuff to a meeting in another building. Additionally, I had to make a lot of copies for said meeting. So, I loaded up a cart (it was heavy crap) and went early to make the copies before the meeting. The copier and I fought a perilous battle, and basically, the copier kicked my sorry ass. So, by the time the copier was done, I was 25 minutes late AND found out that the meeting was actually in MY building the whole time. GAH. 5 - Went shopping for a program with my two Program Assistants (also student staff positions) who are pretty much fantastic. We went to a discount fabric store and tried to pretend that we were in Mood and on Project Runway. There was also Starbucks. It was nice after the hellish copier/meeting debacle. 6 - Had to make sure to get my Program Assistant to change the settings on the department van we'd been using back to English rather than French. It is hard to understand what a vehicle is telling you when it is speaking French. 7 - Dropped them off, ran inside, had a 10 minute meeting with my Hall Association treasurer, picked up another staff member (an RA) and went to Costco to multitask - have a one on one while shopping for some (other) programs 8 - Marveled at how much candy you can buy at Costco for $200 9 - Roped a resident into helping us unload said stash of candy from the van 10 - Went to a program on GRE/Grad school admissions that some of my other RAs put on, laughed at the presenter guy because he wasn't...good. 11 - Went to another program! Helped residents make mini AIDS quilt panels for a Berkeley quilt. Also, felt very un-creative. 12 - Ate cheerios while Lily curled up on my lap 13 - Finished my non fiction book for the month! Woot. It was a busy day.

You Tube Videocracy

I've been terrible about blogging and updating people on my life. Frankly, I realize the last thing I want to do is talk about work in my down time. But here it goes since it's new... So I worked on this project for this company called You Tube. They're owned by this other company called Google. I was hired as a contractor by a production company (same person I did some Levi's work with). I was half event producer, half VIP Talent manager. What does that mean? I dunno, but I worked my ass off, met the founders of You Tube, executives at Google that Ben would literally kill me for their phone numbers, and made sure our celebrities felt well taken care of. Other interesting people I met included Anderson Cooper, SouljaBoy, Esmee Denters, The Will It Blend Guy, The Flute BeatBox guy, the artist Jason Baalman who did a portrait of Angelina Jolie entirely from lipstick, PaintJam artist Dan Dunn who did a roughly 6ft x 6ft portrait of Johnny Cash in about 4minutes while this crazy kid Vince Mira sang (he sounds just like Johnny Cash), singer Lisa Lavie, and other You Tubey popular people. The event was essentially to bring YouTube to life for a night, and present to about 500 top-tier chief marketing officers, CEO, and execs how they can harness the YouTube community, since apparently they're scared of it or something. We took a 3 story club on the west side of NYC, installed so much audio and video equipment that it took us a whole week to get it all in. We had a few of the Panasonic 103 in HDTVs, but that was nothing rivaling the giant stage monitor we built. There was roughly 6 stage areas, so basically 6 things going on at once at all times. It as a lot to manage and apparently it has taken 2 weeks recovery for me to even talk about it. There's coverage out there if you google "Videocracy."This one has pictures: http://blog.nextnewnetworks.com/index.php/2008/02/15/on-videocracy/This one has a video: http://www.tilzy.tv/news/2008/2/YouTube-Google-Videocracy-Party.htmThis one has words: http://valleyvirgin.blogspot.com/2008/02/night In more new news, I'll be heading down to Austin for this little thing called SXSW (South By Southwest) to coordinate Ray-Ban's involvement. So look forward to more crazy work stories to follow, this time with music, film, and interactive media people. ...wait, sounds similar to people I met during Videocracy.

yuck.

Today, my friends, was a bad day at work. These are the days that I wish I lived near many of you so that I could call you and we could get a drink after work (or a few) and I could vent for awhile and you'd make me laugh and then I would feel better. *le sigh* But, today was also the last day of training that I really had to plan and organize and make sure that things got done. So, project over, but the memory of outrageous ridiculousness remains. We did service projects today - working with various sites around Berkeley who could use groups of volunteers for a few hours. My group helped clean a city park, which happened to be right across from the local high school. So, not only did we get to clean up and feel good about ourselves, we got to reminisce about high school AND we got to watch as a student almost got arrested after school let out because he smelled like pot. Which is kind of hilarious because I'm going to wager that every third person in Berkeley smells like pot. Also, one request - can those with photos from the CC dinner and New Years put them online or send them to me or something? I would love to see them! Dan is snoring and drooling. Might be time to encourage him to get to bed.

Much apprehension.

So we are in the precarious place of "I havent updated in so long, that I don't even know where to start, so I think I'll put it off until tomorrow." Clearly, I have been there for a quite awhile. But, instead of starting this post with an apology of why I haven't posted in so long (like many other posts) I'm jumping right in. No apology. You all have been coddled too long. You need some tough love. Or...something. Anyway, at some point, I might write a long extended memoir of our time with family over the holidays. But we spent extensive time with the approximately 4.78 people who read this blog, so that might have to wait for a later day. There are some fantastic pictures of the sheep farm that I don't think anyone got to see - get excited. I will say that being on the East Coast for a couple of weeks was pretty fantastic, although Dan and I went through some serious cat separation anxiety. Christmas on the sheep farm with family = good. Holiday dinner at Maggianos = good. New Year's Eve with the CC = goooooooooooood times. I'm feeling pretty lucky to have you all in my life. I might start getting some support services from B. Drake though about how to be away from you all so much! As for us right now, things are going well. Dan has recently (last week) started working on a 6-7 week project with the same company that he worked with for the Levi's project in DC. They are working on a premiere type event for YouTube, which sounds pretty exciting, and then also on an event for Warner Brothers (something about the Speedracer movie??). But, it's really great experience, he's trying not to grumble about it too much. The best part about it is that outside of getting paid, part of his compensation is that he gets a rental car for the length of the project! The office he works in is about 30 minutes away. SO, basically "Cool stuff over the weekends" is totally back on! Only now we can do things that weren't as accessible with the mileage limitations of Zipcar. This past Saturday, we drove to Sonoma for, what else, wine tasting. Sonoma is further away from Berkeley, and closer to the coast of California than Napa. It took us about 2 hours to get to the first place we wanted to go (I'm still adjusting to the fact that in California, 2 hours of driving barely puts you in another county, much less a different state.) We ended up going to three different wineries that afternoon and actually joined our first wine club. Yes, we have become THOSE people. But honestly, we ended up buying quite a few bottles of wine there, and thought it would just make sense for them to, you know, just send it to us every couple of months instead of us having to trek up there all the friggin time. We're still working through it - joining a wine club has made us feel snooty and old all at the same time. Sunday we didn't really do anything fun except for welcome my staff back and start training! Spring Training is another really busy crazy week for me because not only am I responsible for getting my staff trained in a multitude of areas, and preparing them for the upcoming semester, and making sure that I'm prepared for all the sessions, planning all of spring training for all the staff on campus was my big committee project for the year. Yes indeed, it's a bit of a stressful time. But, all has been going well so far, hopefully it remains that way. So, I'm sure by this weekend, I will be eager to get out and do something exciting and fun. Some possibilities include Santa Cruz, Carmel, Half Moon Bay and Vegas (not really, but I wish!). Any opinions on these? How is everyone doing with those pesky New Years resolutions? I decided to not have resolutions as such, but more long term goals. Resolutions=setting self up to fail. But I would like to remember to take time to exercise, get out and enjoy the Bay Area, and read more. I found online the supposed list of the 100 greatest novels ever written and then with some more looking, I found the list of the 100 greatest fiction works by female authors. Now. Can I just say that I consider myself to be a decently well read person? I thought I would have a fair number of these books knocked off the list and that reading all 100 would feel doable. Yeah, I've read 3. THREE. So, welcome to my long term goal of reading the other 97 books in the next 5 years. (I wasn't kidding around with the concept of long term). But yeah. If you look at the list (and you can here: http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/booklists/feminista.html) and have any recommendations of where to start, let me know! The first one I'm reading is "The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields because....I already owned it. :) But for real, if you've read any...I'd love to hear about it (LB - ask your mom! I bet shes read basically all of them with her book club).