A better update later

I've posted SOME pictures here on blog. What I posted has not yet scratched the surface of all the pictures I have. For a while, I pondered over how much I actually cared about putting all my pictures up. I had a variety of options, which would have been:

1. Webshots. The more ads the better.
2. Flickr. But the one where I had to pay would have been the useful one, and after seeing that I would have to pay "A little over $2 a month!" to get a decent amount of pictures up on flickr instead of skimping with the small limit they allow for free, I just decided to give up
3. Photobucket
4. Snapfish

Which I still might utilize, because I've got a lot of pictures.

However, at the moment I'm just sticking pictures up Russell Stadler. But not all the pictures are going to go up there. Most of them will remain blissfully tucked away on my computer, only to emerge on my "My Pictures" screensaver to happily remind me of the great time I had here.

So, for the time being go to the link above. Because if you don't...














We will beat you up.

And ignore the unknown CRW files, which will be the end of me. I will get around to converting them.

A Plethora of Pictures

I WISH I could take credit for this glorious picture, but I can't. This is Alicia's picture of the director of the program, Fernando. I have plenty of other pictures of him, however, which will come. This is a one of a kind creature. A man of many mysteries. He would frequently bombard me with beauty tips like "Adrianna, change your hair! Take off your glasses!" It's very easy to criticize how I look when I have to get up at 5 AM.















Alicia is on the left. Jackie is on the right. This is from last night, our "Happy Face Picture."















This is our "Angry Face Picture." Obviously.

Which is how my missing passport makes me feel.

I don't give up easily

Most of the group during bocadillo time. If you don't happen to recognize me, I am the, ahem, gloriously tanned creature in the back.

I have not been this tanned in years, everyone. I SHALL advertise it openly.

I'll be back later!

So now let's see if some more pictures will work

...nevermind.

How come I'm the only person updating nowadays?

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to appropriately introduce you all to the life of an archaeologist. A greenhorn archaeologist, to be more precise, and several times I don’t think I’m doing archaeology so much as I’m doing some landscaping on a mound of dirt, and the next step will be to pour some gravel and plant some well-placed feng-shui-ish bonsai trees, and presto! we’ll have a Japanese garden on some Spanish island in the Mediterranean!

I’ve been using the pick axe quite a bit. What started out as wee, timid scratches upon the earth has grown into frenetic, wild chopping onto the earth’s crust as I anxiously try to pick axe as much as possible before it reaches an ungodly temperature. This doesn’t mean I’ve gotten much stronger or way more accurate, but at least now I’m not scared of pick axing. The typical “Imagine you’re chopping up someone’s head when you’re out there in the dirt” does seem to work. Lately, I’ve been imagining various administrative department heads from my school buried in the dirt while I mercilessly pound away upon their thick skulls for taking away my passport, but more on that later.

Today I happened to be pickaxing when Regina, the German REAL archaeologist in the program, came over to me and told me to take out the mound of hard dirt she was standing on.

“Take out this mound of hard dirt I am standing on,” barked she. “Not like it’s getting any softer since I’m standing on it.”

Then she jumped on it several times for good measure.

It was a super hard mound of dirt.

I guess that’s just how some archaeologists are. The only word to describe her is INTENSE. All caps plus italics. She has the strictest eating regimen ever, we already wake up at what I consider to be a pretty ungodly hour, yet she goes out every morning before the dig for a run. I’m pretty sure when she’s out on the field working she doesn’t need a pickaxe, because she can crack rocks with one glare of the evil eye, and I’ve seen her crumble boulders with her bare hands to sprinkle over her salad of precisely 3 leaves and ¼ of a tomato. And she is all of 4”9 or something like that.

So after pickaxing, desperately trying to keep my mouth shut tightly to avoid swallowing the flying bits of dirt, I take to using the well little trowel and the big trowel, plus small pickaxe to dislodge stubborn pieces of pottery. This means I have loads of time on my busy hands to utilize for thinking. I dig near my roommate, Alicia, who is working on STE-06-588. We both sit (oops, kneel, archaeologists never sit) there, troweling away, and contemplating the bitter, harsh reality of life. After hours of troweling, we punctuate the silence with such profound, insightful observations and questions such as:

“Boys are weird.”
“Man, this sucks.”
“Outer space must be cool.”
“Which character would you be on LOST if you could be a girl or a guy?”
Or
“Dammit, my underwear is showing again.”

CLEARLY, people, Aristotle and Plato came up with their most brilliant ideas while they were excavating.

And that’s that. After a snack we go to wash pottery, label, and classify them. I won’t go into what an unholy pressure on my patience this was, but I’ve gotten a lot better with retaining my frustration.

I’m quite enjoying myself. It’s kind of fun that bathing regularly is not only not required, but not exactly recommended. What’s good about it is that you spend so much time dirty and ugly that it takes hardly anything at all to become astonishingly beautiful compared to what you were. Why, Nick’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when all the girls shower, BRUSH THEIR HAIR, and *gasp* PUT ON SOME MAKEUP. There were a couple of times when Alicia and I would get dressed and all dolled up, and then sit down for a full 5 minutes to compliment one another in hushed, awed tones, overcome by the other’s miraculous transformation, with such things as:

“Why, Alicia! I never noticed your hair was blonde!”
Or
“Adrianne, I always thought that huge brown smudge right next to your eye on your left cheek that’s been there for over 2 weeks was a birthmark! You look so much better without it!”

Because it’s so foreign to see the other actually trying to look like something other than a mound of dirt.

Tomorrow there is a TV crew coming over to the site to make some sort of a documentary on the site, and we’ll be recorded in all our finery digging diligently in it. We’re not really special, but as someone put it, Menorca is just a huge rock with some trees that just happen to be on it. They have to report about SOMETHING on the island.

One can only hope that I will be civilized enough to wear a shirt for coverage instead of contenting myself with the dirt caked onto my body.

Pictures? Maybe?

Let's try this...





























The girl in the middle, Paula (29), and the girl on the very right, Alicia, are my roommates. Well, Paula did the 2 weeks program, so she's left already, but she is from Madrid and probably the nicest and prettiest person I know. Alicia (26) is absolutely hilarious as well. The guy on the left, Nick (22 on July 27) goes to San Diego University.




























Ok, I have a TON more pictures, but I'm on the roof and the battery is running low. That is the nicest beach I've EVER been to. There are old Talayotic caves there in the cliffside. Off I go! More to come!

Dear friend,

Friends don’t let friends drink and drive. Friends don’t let friends run with scissors. Friends don’t let friends get a stupid-looking tattoo.

And above all, real friends don’t let friends read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

I arrived in Europe this summer armed with about 5 good books. All of which I enjoyed immensely, except for the last 10 pages of Vernon God Little, which I didn’t read because I left it in someone’s car, and I don’t think I’ll ever be seeing this person again unless luck is entirely against me.

Upon coming to Menorca, I needed some new reading material after finishing Neverworld. By the way, this seems to be a thinly-veiled book advertisement. I needed some light reading to keep me company on the beach after a day of digging, turning my joints into poorly oiled hinges, and my skin into ancient Egyptian parchment paper.

(Waaaah, let me complain! No one else here does!)

I went over to the apartment’s well-stocked library, which has several issues of Cosmopolitan and the The DaVinci Code, which I think I’m probably going to read next. Not because it’s particularly interesting, but Audrey Tautou was in Amelie, and I like Amelie, and I like Audrey Tautou, so I would be interested to see what the movie is like. That is what the summer is like. You read books so that you can see the movie. Hurray for motivation!

This particular library also had The Perks of Being a Wallflower. For some reason, I had heard of this book and decided to start it.

I started to wonder why I was laughing by the first 10 pages. Nothing was particularly funny. It was on page 61 when Charlie, the main character, lists the songs he puts on a tape for one of his friends, that I realized why I was laughing and impatiently skipping nearly every-other page.

I was reading a legitimate EMO novel.

It is so bad. I can’t coherently verbalize what a horrendous accident to literature this book is.

I suppose the message is a good one. I skipped about 80 pages of the novel because I just don’t have the patience to deal with the character’s whiny attitude that is something like the don’t- feel- sorry- for- me- even- though- all- this- shit- is- happening- to- me- and- I- won’t- call- attention- to- it- but- I- will- make- you- notice- it- by- mentioning- my- problems- offhandlike- and- win- you- over- with- my- innocence sort of attitude, if you know what I mean. The message is one of “participating” in life instead of just sitting “on the fringes.” However, when I’m reading the book, I can’t get past the picture of a kid from my high school chemistry class adjusting his long bangs to cover his eyes, making sure his thrift store shirt cut up and sewn together with 3 different shirts, and his tight pants are all appropriately folded or stretched on his body for The Maximum EMO Effect. Also, I can't get over the picture that the author was probably weeping while writing this novel, lamenting the poor fate of his created character, Charlie.

I’ve been asked why I classify people. Or how I can tell what group someone fits into. At the time, I didn’t really know why I did. However, now I think it gives you a pretty sure-fire way to get a step-up on their character. You are what you eat and more recently, you are what you look like. Yes, it is judging a “book by its cover.” However, I think it’s ok to do this nowadays, what with everyone eagerly listening to a certain type of music and eagerly buying stuff from certain people to have the prestige of owning that certain thing from that certain person representing that certain something. People walk around wanting to be identified with a certain type, or they would not look and act the way they do. By my classification, I am not saying anyone is a good or a bad person, but I am saying that he is a certain type of person.

I feel pretty stupid writing about that. Alas, my awesome people classification skills have not helped me in the least in classifying pottery. I suck at classifying pottery. In fact, I frequently mistake rock for pottery, and whenever I clean all the shards and pieces of pottery I found during the day, I inevitably find myself thinking about parsing Egyptian, which seems like it happened about a thousand years ago. It's that bad, everyone. Even though the pottery is all allegedly different, I've looked at little pieces of pottery enough to have them all look the same, although I guess the more I look at them, the easier it should be to differentiate.

In short, I guess I wish pottery and people could switch places. I wish it would be hard to classify a person, to have more people where you sit there wondering "what on earth is this person like?" and I wish I could classify pottery with my eyes practically closed.

Bruce Arthur, the site we are excavating is from 123 BC-50 BC. The Romans were there just long enough to conquer various parts of the mainland.

I desperately want to post pictures, but the internet connection is Very Low at the moment.

Ug.

A veritable Indiana Jones

Before I left California, I went to Target to buy in bulk shirts I wouldn’t care about destroying when August rolled around. That is, if I survived long enough for the shirts to be destroyed. I rather had the idea that I would be gone before the shirts showed any sign of wear at all.

The shirts all had different colors. One of the shirts had the appropriate descriptive color “DIRT.” Which, really, is perfect for what I’m doing now. Because I’ve got dirt on me all. the. blessed. time.

But it doesn’t matter. I was getting pretty excited at the end of the program in Rome because coming here would mean that I would not have to worry about what I looked like most of the time. Not that I did that in Rome, but there’s something exciting about not caring if my jeans have lost all shape and resemble potato sacks more than pants.

I am now happy (kind of) to report that I have not worn my lucky ring consistently in a while, and I no longer slap anything onto my face in the morning when I wake up at 5:15 AM. That’s right. The day starts any time between 5:15 AM and 5:44 AM when I bust out of bed to get to the dig rig at 5:45 AM with 8 other people to be driven to the Roman military base we’re excavating at the northern part of the island.

You have to understand that most of the 9 of us, aside from the coordinator and the director of the program, are beginners hacking away with picks, trowels, and shovels. The minute we’re handed a shovel or a pick, our eyes get as big as saucers and our heads are immediately filled with visions of intricate marble mosaics found complete, lying in the ground with an “X” labeled above it, indicating that this is the final resting spot of the military sergeant’s mosaic that once adorned the room where he signed all those important papers.

Well. That’s what my head used to be filled with. I’m more inclined to think that everyone else’s head is filled with visions involving my thick head, a big dull rock, a sharp pick, and a deep hole with a stone casket inside it.

We dig until 10:30 AM. The first day I found 4 hours of this digging to be near lethal. My rear is still woefully sore from awkwardly wedging myself in between rocks where only Gumby could be expected to hold a position for more than 10 minutes at a time. However, I’m now finding this part of the day to be by far the more enjoyable part. The rest of the day, until 1:45 PM, is lab work. But more of that in a second.

The hole I am currently working on is nothing exceptionally special. STE-06-589. It is located right next to the soldiers’ rooms near the door to one of the rooms. I am digging in a canal where there is a lot of pottery. Normally, you’d think pottery is a big deal, right? You go to all those museums where they have large, complete jars with grand labels next to them proclaiming the importance and historical complexity of each and every inch of the artifact. You realize that yes, someone went through a ton of painstaking labor to put that sucker together, but lo and behold, they completed it, and it is now sitting happily out of context in a museum. What you DON’T realize is that there is a WHOLE lot of stuff that is around it that is simply not as important. For every piece of pottery that is over 8 inches large you find 10,000,0000 pieces of pottery that is 1-2 inches long.

This canal I’m working on right now looks like someone projectile vomited pottery into it. Pottery is EVERYWHERE. You can’t dig 3 seconds without hitting pottery. And the best part is that none if it really matters in the grand scheme of things, because there is pottery EVERYWHERE else on the site.

So for the moment, that's all you're getting. I'll tell you alllater about the gold jewelry and the skeleton I revealed by kicking a couple of pebbles over the other day, but I have to get going because we were rewarded for finding something important today, and we start work at 7 AM tomorrow. You know what that means? BOOGIE TONIGHT!

"Indiana Jones, this is one night you'll never forget. This is the night I slipped right through your fingers. Sleep tight and pleasant dreams. I could've been your greatest adventure." ~Willie

I like to go travelin'

This morning I left my apartment so early to get to the airport it would have brought a tear to any paranoid freak’s eye who likes to get to the airport 2 whole hours early. My flight leaves at 2:55 PM. I left at10 AM everyone!

AND, I had matching suitcases. I’ve always wanted matching suitcases. I’m not talking about the Louis Vuitton or matching Burberry suitcases. I’m just talking about some bright, any old colored set of suitcases that obviously belong together, and that you can travel with while looking utterly cool and utterly unsweated.

Everything went smoothly.

I mean, I didn’t REALLY panic when I found out at 9:30 that the housing office might not be open for me to turn in my key. I was still pretty awesomely unphased when I couldn’t find anyone to give my key to so they could turn it in for me.

I remained sane when after a bit of running around, I realized that the school was INDEED open, and that I could turn in everything as planned. Then I headed out of my apartment. With my matching suitcases.

The bigger of which refused to have a functioning pully-out thing, allowing it to be gracefully and chic-ly dragged across thousands of cobblestones, as matching suitcases should allow to be done. Consequently, by the time I reached the first set of staircases I had to climb, I was dripping sweat from every pore. In Rome, you start sweating when you move your pinky finger 0.5 inches 0.000000000000023 mph. Pulling suitcases awkwardly across a stone road constructed to give a massage to a rider’s rear while simultaneously putting his brain through the “puree” mode of a blender left me in a nearly unrecognizable state. So unrecognizable, in fact, that 2 YOUNG men asked if I needed help. I determined that either I started to look like a movie star, or I had forgotten to put on pants. Discovering that neither was the case, I declined and moved on. On to two bus stops, that is, since the first one was out of order.

I still did not fall into pieces when my train was half an hour late, nor when I had to stand for the duration of the trip awkwardly wedged between two large, smelly men with about a thousand bags and a woman who complained loudly.

Then I arrived in Menorca after flying through Barcelona.

My arms hurt a LOT from trying to get the pully-out arm by this time.

When I was waiting in line for a taxi in Menorca, I decided to give it one more try. For kicks.

The arm pulled out.

The magic of Spain is real, everyone.

My sore arms were very, very angry.

But at least I had matching suitcases.

Drumroll...

The inevitable has occurred.

Everyone: let us welcome the newest reader of my blog. Mine own mother.

Since coming to Rome, my blog has been an area of contention with my mom. I expect she found it because when I told her I was going to start trafficking drugs here, she did a frantic search on google for what pharmaceutical company I was going to enlist in my little project. And that is when she came across here.

So sorry to everyone who ordered all that heroin. I’m afraid we’ve been found out.

For a while, I seriously considered discontinuing this small endeavor altogether. “This small endeavor” being my blog. However, I see no reason to do this. What I write in school goes something like:


Creative opening sentences. Thesis. Creative opening topic sentence. Supporting evidence. Tie together. Creative opening topic sentence. Supporting evidence…and so on and so forth.

In other words:

Boring. Boring thesis. Boring. Boring boring boring boring. I really think Adam Smith was pretty naive to think that humans will only do what’s good for them. Boring boring boring. Boring. Boring.

Besides, telephone conversations have been EVER SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING. They usually go something like:

Mom: Hello, how are you?
Self: Fine, how are you?
Mom: Good. About your blog…

I think it’s really brought us together. It’s a win-win situation all around. My mother is exposed to fine, substantial literature, and I get the free services of the harshest critic that exists on the face of this earth.

Which brings me around to my next point. Obviously, a critic’s job is to critique, and the biggest issue that’s been going on is my use of swear words on this blog. Namely, that I even know what they mean, because good people’s brains are supposed to automatically bleep them out when they hear it in every day conversation and substitute the word “beautiful,” “golden,” or "fabulous and perfumed" instead of it.

So. I have decided to limit my use of all those four letter words. Or three letter words. Or 8 letter words. Because really, she has a point: it’s ever so much fun to call someone a “cursed, rotting, good for nothing, large-eared, wide hipped moon-faced donkey” than simply an “ass.”

(I guess it's pretty sad that one of the only people interested in this is my mom, but whatever)

There we go! On to the usual program.

Today I bought new shampoo and conditioner. For everyone, this might seem like a pretty normal purchase, but for me, it still brings about a sort of cheap thrill that I am buying new shampoo and after one single use, my hair will be brilliantly shiny and ever so strong. Instead of tying one mere not in my hair like in all those Pantene Pro-V commercials, I will be able to tie 3! Maybe 4!

(Nevermind that my hair is all of 5 inches long…)

This, I think, started in elementary school when every time I got new shoes and wore them to school for the first time, I thought I was going to be the most popular person in school.

Guess what. That quick-fix method DOES NOT WORK. I never became the cat’s pajamas among the kids, and I continued asking for teacher’s addresses over the summer so I could send them postcards.

Upon coming here, we had about 8 handbooks thrown at us. I don’t remember in which one it was, but one of them had a section about how to be a young woman in Rome. It had something about walking with your head up and paying attention to what other Roman women wear. In addition to encouraging a ginormous shopping spree, I think this was also supposed to encourage an entire change in your outlook on life as well.

On the street I live, walking “unconfidently,” namely, with your head down, focusing on your feet, would pretty much confidently guarantee you falling into a foot high pile of dog…excrement. So I get by looking confident while EVERYONE knows I am anything but confident. I am a brunette. I am Hungarian. I am many things, but confident I am not.

So it could seem that this confidence one allegedly has when she’s walking with her head up and the knowledge that something bad is up the road is one and the same. Right? It’s got to have some sort of affect on your attitude knowing there is a pile of poo 3 feet ahead that’s the size of a St. Bernard. However, as I have discovered, there is a significant difference.

What I’m trying to say is that there’s been quite a bit going on that I’ve got to sort out. I’ve always known there is no shampoo that will automatically make my hair awesome, and I’ve always also known that the next issue of Glamour will not have the key to make myself unconditionally satisfied with me, but there’s always be a tiny bit of hope that maybe, just MAYBE it will be different this time around. But I can’t get out of my utter lack of confidence easily by looking ahead for all the trouble I know I’m going to run into. This time I’m speaking figuratively.

What these summer programs are good for are that you meet more people. And everyone has something you can learn from them, good or bad, so that means that the more people you meet, the more learning you do. Last summer, my roommate Katie showed me that first impressions are incredibly wrong. That is basic. They’ve been telling us since kindergarten not to judge a book by its cover, but last summer was when I found out that was so true.

This summer’s theme was all about confidence. I was with two great roommates who, although they are not entirely satisfied with who they are, are still not going to let that affect the way they’ll behave when choosing what toilet paper to buy or prevent them from doing something. Yup. That’s pretty basic. And I can’t say I’ve mastered this skill. By no means have I mastered this skill, in fact. I still suck at life.

But about a month ago I was in a pretty blue place. Marisel had the pleasure witnessing what an Adrianne is like in meltdown mode. Although I still don’t know how I’m going to better whatever it is that I need to, at least I know what sort of outcome I should have. That’s what this month here has done.

And if nothing else, it’s also brought about the return of the purr. Coming here I definitely was not in the purring program. Today, Libby informed me that I have been purring quite regularly over the past few days.

So in addition to welcoming my mother, let us welcome the return of the good old purr.

I hear if you play enough games of freecell, it actually does the work for you

I have played more freecell games than is scientifically proven to be healthy for man. I have also probably eaten enough to feed a small nation, and I’ve listened to some songs about 75 times. However, that’s not showing up on itunes because I restarted every single one before it actually reached the end. I started to initiate this method of listening since Andries actually organized my itunes library once by the “play count,” and I nearly died of mortification when an exceptionally drippy and romantic song graced the top of the list.

Me?! Drippy and Romantic!? Julie must have gotten into my music library again, gosh darnit.

Faithful readers of my blog will have picked up on the clues. Freecell games…compulsive snacking….

Either Adrianne is recovering from a recent heartbreak, or she is writing an essay. More precisely, 3 two page responses for a take-home final. And working on a presentation for art history on a church that apparently has no information about it. Oh, and a powerpoint for Italian. Let me tell you, this is all some superior therapy when you’re looking to recuperate from an extremely interesting and exciting lifestyle you never had. Because I don’t have a single health problem and GOD, what kind of a life CAN you have when your biography would be entitled Adrianna: The Healthiest Person on Earth?

However, I am not freaking out yet. I have “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” sung by Dean Martin stuck in my head. It’s impossible to freak out over anything when you’ve got a Christmas song stuck in your head. For one, even if you re-write the song to reflect the utter despair reigning in your life at the moment, it doesn’t quite succeed in sending you to the proper level of anguish.

Case in Point #1 (sung to Jingle Bells):

Shit shit shiiiiiit
Shit shit shiiiiiit
Shit shit all the way

See? Or a more sophisticated song:

Case in Point #2 (sung to I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm)
The work is crushing
And the snow is slushing
I do not want to see you
I really do think that I will die
I think I might commit suicide

Not very dreary or bleak, are they?

(Ah, Adrianna Gyorfi…freecell player and song writer extraordinaire)

Strategically placed picture so Jimmy Salvatore will want to read my blog

And two, Christmas is the time of good-will and joy. Oh, and of Christmas break, which I hate.

So today’s blog topic might take a serious turn. A very serious turn indeed, since I have less than a week left in this place. I should do a very serious reflection of what I learned here from people, places, and things while habiting Rome.

Well. What a learned from the people merits a separate entry. On to inanimate and impersonal things!

1. The Pyromaniac Tendency

Before I came here, I had an inordinate fear seated deep in my heart of cigarette lighters. Don’t ask my why. I had visions of them burning off assorted appendages when they were within 15 feet of me.

However. We have one of those gas stoves where you have to manually light it. No problem, except we never had matches. Only had the cigarette lighter. This proposed a problem in making coffee. Either I had to eat the coffee grinds raw, or I had to suck it up and take the heat. Literally. And let me tell you, not that I’m tooting my own horn or anything, but I am so good with cigarette lighters by now that I could light anything within 5 inches of me. I light up that stove like it is NOTHING.

2. The Desperado Lifestyle

I learned to live the life of an outlaw. Since I never got my Permit to Stay, I was never technically legally residing in Rome. I can outrun any group of carabinieri you put on my tail.

Also, by traveling on the bus a grand total of 3 times without paying any time, I learned how to dodge ticket control. Marisel had the misfortune of being fined 50 European big ones the other day. Libby and I have perfected the runners pose poised right in front of the door, plus the shifty eyes scanning the bus doors.

With this, I also learned to fear woman authorities. Generally women are portrayed as being the gentler sex, right? They’re the ones who get all big for 9 months and they want to take their kids to the playground and play house with them because they’re all maternal and stuff? HA! What I learned is that they are the scarier ones.

Look at Anna Lucia on Lost. I would rather have Sawyer angry with me than Anna Lucia.

Why are women scarier? It has to do with attitude. With men ticket controllers, they’re just jerks. They’re doing their job, they catch a tourist, they say “tough luck, buddy, you’re giving us 50 euro,” they take the 50 euro, and then they move on. Sure, they’re jerks in the process, but you can brush off their arrogance pretty easily because guys smell worse than girls. (I might just be saying this because I don’t have any really vivid recollection of being reprimanded by a man)

But women are an entirely different manner. They don that uniform and board that bus like it is their blessed vocation. A woman ticket control has enough bite in her to put the fear of God in a very bored slug. They perform any job with the slightest modicum of power as if they were doing this for The Good of Humanity, and not only to show that they’re better than you. Woman teachers are the same way, I think. Nevermind my high school freshman teacher who would jump on top of his desk and wave a chair threateningly around you if you asked a “dumb” question. I’ve got the memory of having to put my head down for 5 minutes at the round table in kindergarten branded into my mind with Mrs. Anderson menacingly staring me down while wondering if I would taste better salted or sweetened, and that moment is re-enacted every time I’m dragged into the police station by a woman officer.

Because that uh…happens so frequently, Adrianne.

I've also perfected ways to waste time. Back to work!