When the Cat's Away...

The mice will smoke cigars.

I've had a pretty busy week this week, planning a large dinner (the largest my work unit puts on, with around 280 guests) for scholarship recipients and scholarship donors on Thursday. I was at work from basically 8 to 6 or 7 every day this week, and last night I was at the Ritz-Carlton until around 9:00 pm, for the dinner.

All day each day until thursday was spent assigning tables, assigning seats, covering my ass, covering my secretary's ass (it was her first time doing the dinner, and I didn't anticipate her having such a steep learning curve), convincing another department secretary who doesn't work for me to help my secretary, making phone calls, sending mass emails, calling students who I knew couldn't come to the dinner but whose donor was in town anyway, calling donors who I knew always came but hadn't sent in an RSVP yet (more on that later), and all along wishing I had a good stiff drink.

Oddly enough, when I mentioned to one of the waiters at the Ritz last night that I could use a bit of sauce, I found a fresh gin martini at my nametag table the next time I looked. Good service there - representing the brand well and all that.

I didn't manage to get last night off without a hitch, even: I screwed up the table placecards and had to have the entire department staff help me re-write the ones that were wrong and place them at tables. Then we had to start moving donors around because my boss had been placed with someone who he absolutely detests (I'd never seen my boss angry before, but man was he on fire). Then we had donors start showing up, saying they'd RSVPd, when I was sure they hadn't. As it turns out, we had a lot of problems with the local post office branch losing our mail, because i know at least two of the donors who came were the kind of people who would never show up unannounced - it's not their style. Nice old people, and all that.

Then the kicker - three people from the Chancellor's wife's table didn't show, two of them students. The Chancellor wasn't there, thank God, but his wife of course loves to hang out with the kids at the school, especially because they have two scholarships themselves.

Crap.

Luckily, my boss's boss snagged two kids from other tables and offered them the chance to sit with the Chancellor's wife - luckily for me, they thought that was great fun. I'm told she started telling all sorts of great stories about the guy which in the end are really humanizing (because in the end they're all embarrasing). And I was told by all the higher-ups that the event went well.

I won't believe it until I see it in print, but good to know.

Then this morning we had our National Council meetings - big-time donors and volunteers (not necessarily the same) who came in from out of town to meet with the dean and help offer strategy. You know how big-time donors get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom sometimes? Same deal.

Just less kinky stuff, I assume.

Anyway, I was on campus this morning at 7, and rode the metrolink between the main part of campus and my office (about a mile away) twice before lunch. Part of that task involved moving umbrellas from the alumni offices to the meeting room.

Let's stop for a minute. I had never really thought about what umbrellas weigh before. I mean, sure, I've carried one around, and it gets a bit tiring, but it's bntter than being wet. And if you think about them from a purely objective standpoint, there's a lot of stainless steel and fabric there, right?

Thirty of them all at once weigh a LOT.

I ran into a donor I know from out of town, and didn't really have time to stop - he was there with his son (he's a first-year parent and a nice fellow) but because of all my running around, I had no chance to say hello and see how things were, meet the kid, any of that. Just lifting umbrellas and walking from the DUC to Seigle in a constant fog of worry and haste.

So I finally got to leave tonight at 6. A one-hour bus ride later, and I'm home.

And in just a few minutes I'm going to go outside with a glass of brandy and a cigar from a place called Hill Cigars (on Vandeventer in the Hill), light a stogey, and just lay back and do nothing for the next hour.

End rant. Begin mellow.

English Lesson of the Day

I used to keep a "word of the day" list and fill out a word every day on the whiteboard on my office door - back in the good old days of not having any real responsibility.

Alas, those days are long gone (as I write this, I'm supposed to be doing table assignments for a big dinner). But I still like to keep tabs, as it were, on the English language.

For instance, only a few words use the vowels (a,e,i,o,u, and occasionally y) in order. "Facetiously" is one such word, and another is "abstemiously." One, of course, means "sarcastic or jokingly," and the other means "sparingly."

Another interesting factoid is that an usher does not "ush." You have never been "ushed" to your seats at the theatre, for example.

And, finally, while the word root "structive" means "building upon," it is not by itself a word. Neither, for the record, is "gruntled."

Global Credit Crunch, Now with Less Fat!

One of the downsides to switching to public transit as my method for getting to work has been that I no longer have the lunching options I used to - where I could once trek to Olive Garden, or Jack in the Box, I'm now slightly more restricted. Today, my options tend to be along the lines of Subway, Crazy Bowls, or Imo's "pizza."

And, honestly, all of this dining out, I've realized, is quite expensive. If you figure on spending 6 dollars per day for lunch while at work, that comes out to 30 bucks a week. Assuming 22 work days per month, that's 132 dollars that I won't get back.

And with the global financial markets in top form (and by top form I mean incredible meltdown and worldwide panic), I'd like to spend as little money as possible. After all, I have to start saving up for canned hams and bullets and some sort of home laser defense system.

The end result is that I took a run to Dierbergs last monday. After spending maybe 20 dollars, I now have an office stocked with bread, Easy Mac, Pringles, captain's wafers (you know, those little cheese-filled crackers?) and several cans of fruit. Down the hall in the office fridge one could find, were one so inclined, lunchmeat and cheese.

It's just like when Mom used to make lunch for me as a kid. The only difference is that now I have a place to put my lunch where Nick Harmon, who used to steal my food, can't get it.