Super blog, to the rescue!

Oh you have no idea how long I've been waiting to do this. No. Freakin. Idea. I've been itching to blog for weeks. A lot of stuff has been going on and I just haven't had time to write about it. I kept thinking, I'll blog at the end of the week when my workload has gone down a little. But then I'd get beguiled by Paper Mario. Or then I'd have an opportunity to hang out with someone I hadn't seen in a while. Or then I'd need to sleep forever to recover from the sleepless nights in the beginning of the week.

Tough times. Tough times.

Even now, I have an urge to watch Lost and play Paper Mario and do all the other fun things I have to repress during the first half of the week. Not that blogging isn't also fun. I enjoy it. I'd better enjoy it to write for as long as I do. But it does take a little more effort than, say, Paper Mario, and although the urge to just beat the game is strong (I'm so close!), it'll have to wait (possibly even until next week). Boo.

Oh well. I'd better make the best of the blogging time I have now and write to my heart's content. And it can be low pressure writing instead of the paper I had to turn in Tuesday that got turned in Wednesday and looked like crap. Honestly I've written better papers in high school. Fucking flowery verse and unsubstantiated claims. The tragedy is that now I'm good enough at writing to be disappointed in it. Just not disappointed enough to do it over again I guess. Well... I'd mostly just have to work on that atrocious conclusion. Really, could I have made more overarching, bland, unfounded generalizations? Could I???

Ah well. I'm sure many people are feeling the stress and turning in sub-par papers, especially among the masters students. Not all of us are that bad, but I definitely notice a lower level of achievement than with the PhDs. It's to be expected, of course, but it still is a bit weird to hold half the class to a lower standard. And then I fear, what if we are not held to a lower standard at all? I hope we are, because I don't think I measure up to some people. They work a lot harder and it shows in the quality of their final products. I could stand to do more of the reading. I could stand to add more in class. I could stand to do a lot of things. I'm certainly not below average, but I also recognize how much more I could do to really contribute. I'll try to turn things around a little bit with the next paper. It was going to be due this Tuesday, but it's been pushed back a week since enough stressed out people complained. It is nice to see that everyone else is as stressed out as I was when that paper was first assigned. But I spent the last few days steeling myself for a grueling weekend of hard work writing. I don't work that much right now, so if the workload increases significantly (as it did this past week), I can just buckle down and work harder. I was all ready to do that, and simply because we got an extension doesn't mean I'm going to let all that mental preparation go to waste.

However I also have lots of other stuff to keep me busy. Namely, workshift managering. Yup. I'm workshift manager again. It's generally not so bad though. Most tasks take about 5 minutes to complete and they're always so satisfying to get done too. Especially after the neglectful days of Evan, everyone's always so grateful when their emails get replied to and stuff gets done. And I have to say I like having a larger say in the house. It has a lot of benefits of flexibility and so forth. Except I'm still doing my old cooking shift, so I guess it's not that much more flexible. In fact, since i have work, it's much less so. The only really awkward thing is that I feel some pressure to get things done on Monday when the new week starts. However Monday is my busiest day for classes since Tuesday's when everything's due in Norma's class. Of course I don't really need to have things updated on Monday. It's just so satisfying to get it done. Really, the whole job's been more or less calm (with the occasional spike in stress) since the first few days. Those days were pretty stressful because everyone at once wanted me to fix their problems. There was a great flood of emails. Never before have I had such a flood that wasn't just mailing list spam. It was all directed at me and all required some action on my part. Quite harrowing. But once I got through it, things were very calm and it's kinda nice to be appreciated (which I certainly am after all that nonsense). I also like that I'm able to lay the smackdown on those who deserve it. I'm being as cautious as possible not to be biased. Well that's not true. I'm really quite biased, but I'm trying very hard to be aware of it and not let it affect my actions too strongly. I was going to say "affect my judgment," but I know it affects my judgment quite a bit. But in my actions I am going to be as fair as I can possibly be. Zoe has blown off 4 or 5 of the 6 or 7 snack shifts she's had to do this semester. I want her off that shift now. It's a cushy shift and she doesn't even do that. It's a shift that people would kill for and it's very desirable. She doesn't deserve it. But I can't just move around her shifts. I would be as bad as Matt if I did that. I've already warned her not to blow off the shift again. If she does, then I will be justified in taking her off the shift. Well her snack shift happens tonight. I have to say, for once I'm really hoping that snack gets blown off.

There are so many people with bad workshift tendencies who had those tendencies nourished this past semester. There's a lot of people who wouldn't have been so bad at workshift if there had actually been consequences for being so crappy. I mean, sure, none of them were treasures. The people who didn't need an external force to tell them to do 5 hours a week did just fine under Evan's neglectful regime. But the slackers are giving me nothing but headaches. The most problematic ones will be moving out soon I think. Of course they're leaving their messes behind for me to clean up, so that's still a big pain.

It's interesting how correlated bad workshift is with moving out. Of the three people who have/will move out, two are down ludicrous numbers of hours and one was down 19.5. Gah. That 19.5 one irks me a lot. In fact, I'm going to deal with that right now. If Trevor is in. He'd better be. He gave a crappy cook a cooking position and didn't see fit to tell anyone else that there were issues and then made her a boarder behind people's backs and then STILL gave her a cooking shift! Way to communicate! Gah. Ok. I'll be back. I'm going to go deal with that now.

Ok not dealt with, but I had a delicious dinner while I was gone.

But enough of workshift manager stuff. I do enough of that to also go on at length about it in my blog. Oh wait, that's not true. I'm going to continue. I wanted to go into more of the backstory. That part is simple enough. Actually, I think I blogged about it previously. So we can skip that. So anyway, I was made interim manager two weeks ago. There was a lot of debate about whether or not someone running for the position should be allowed to be appointed. They all decided that they needed someone who wouldn't have to be trained (since everything needed to be fixed immediately), and although it was a little fascist, I probably would have won anyway. As it turned out, I did win, and I don't think it was because of being appointed. I was a little sketched out by it too honestly, but I wasn't *that* sketched out. Clearly, I still ran.

Bleh. I'm tired of talking about this. My rambling thoughts lead me elsewhere, but I feel like I ought to have some finality and finish this up. Well I'm not gonna. I'm going to move on to a realization I've had about myself. It's not exactly a recent revelation, but I've been constantly reminded of it over the past few days as I've been reading a webcomic based upon Dungeons and Dragons. I am exceedingly happy to say I get most of the jokes. I didn't think I knew as much about D&D as all that. A few of the jokes come a little slower to me than others, but I've understood just about everything. Anyway, all the focus on alignment has made me look at my own alignment, specifically the lawful-chaotic axis. For the uninitiated, there are nine different categories of beliefs in D&D. You get two adjectives to describe your "alignment." You can be good, neutral, or evil. You can also be lawful, neutral, or chaotic. So you can be lawful good or chaotic evil or chaotic neutral or neutral good. Yes, neutral's in there twice. Perhaps a bit confusing, but you can tell which neutral it is by the other adjective and what order they come in. Lawful people are characters like lawyers or policemen (honest, by the book policemen) and chaotic characters are more like vigilantes or aimless wanderers who change their minds and beliefs frequently. However, I think Batman, a vigilante, might be lawful. He acts outside the law of the land, but he has his own very precise laws that he adheres to. You don't have to follow just any set of rules to be lawful, as long as you choose one code and stick to it. To give more personal examples, the CZars were chaotic (probably chaotic good) and Andrew Braver is lawful (I feel forced to say lawful neutral, even though I generally get along best with good people). This is probably why they didn't get along so well. And also why I don't get along so well with the CZars. I think they're good, but they're so chaotic. I, on the other hand, am lawful in the extreme. I didn't realize how lawful I was until I started reading this webcomic. Oh who am I kidding. I knew. But it just reminds me how lawful I am. There's all these lawful good characters in this one city (kept purposely vague to prevent plot spoiling for Steven) and I find myself associating with them quite a bit. Not all of them of course, and not perhaps to the extent that they are lawful (they can barely conceptualize someone not being lawful), but I really do like the lawful lifestyle and live it myself to a very great extent. I mean really, what's more lawful than the workshift manager? What's more lawful than our bylaws, which I know extensively? I like enforcing the law and making sure stuff gets done so that the law is adhered to.
Oh and before I forget, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
Here's that webcomic. The plot is incredible and the humor quite good. It might be over the head of some people unfamiliar with D&D, but I'm only vaguely acquainted with it and I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on. Also the plot gets really good. I mean really. I can't wait to see what happens next. There have been amazing battles and interesting plot twists and I like the characters too. I've read all 499 of the presently available strips. It consumed me for the past week, but it was so engaging. I just couldn't stop. I kept saying, I'll stop at this next strip, but it would end on such a tantalizing note. Not necessarily a cliffhanger, but always so tantalizing. It made me want to just keep clicking. And whenever I'd be about to do work, bspace would load so slowly, that I'd say, oh I have time for just one more strip before it loads. And one strip would turn in to several. And work went very slow this week. I couldn't help it!

Sigh. Sometimes I worry about my addictive personality. Luckily I'm too cheap for gambling. The only thing I will ever really squander is probably just my time.

Well... this is awkward. I honestly said the previous sentence in good faith, but now I fear I am off to play poker. For money of course. Well, I can be a little hypocritical and still be lawful, right?

Oh, but before I go, I wanted to say that I do like some chaotic people. Trevor's being a bit pissy right now, but I like him in general and he's pretty chaotic. Zach (Julie's ex) is very chaotic and I like him. I'd like Evan a little more if he wasn't insane. I liked him the way he used to be...

Oh well. Off to poke. I would have written for longer, so feel lucky I had other things to do. Otherwise this really would have been a ridiculously long blog.