~Wednesday~ I just made it to the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus, such that I crossed the street and walked right on it. At the last minute yesterday, my colleague and peer manager to mine, Sarah, asked me to fill in as the back-up presenter for this morning’s student orientation. I got there a little early, and another colleague of mine, Chris, was there taking pictures of the event.
I thought my other colleague Twanda was coming to present and I started getting sick to my stomach as the presentation before ours was winding down and no short, cute, fun black woman was in sight to do our presentation. Even though I’m the back-up person, I’ve never given this presentation, and was not prepared to do so. At the last minute, I asked Chris if he’d ever given it and he said no, which turned my stomach thinking I might actually have to go up there and present. And today was the biggest audience of students I’d seen to date.
Then Chris said, “Sarah’s down there,” and I was so incredibly relieved as I walked down front to be her “lovely assistant.”
Today’s kids were from the College of Engineering, which are—naturally—the most computer-savvy kids to come through orientation. At one point, Sarah presents a slide that has our organization’s Twitter address on it, and on the spot, three kids in the audience did a “Follow” on it. That’s the first time that’s ever happened, and it felt cool. I run that Twitter account, so once I got back to my office, I sent a direct message to each of them welcoming them to NC State from their IT organization, and two of them engaged with comments back. Woohoo.
I spent most of my morning, including through my lunch, working on migrating some charts from Excel into a PowerPoint presentation frantically trying to finish in time for a 1:00 meeting. It’s absolutely ridiculous how convoluted something actually is that should be so simple. And as it turned out, we got through maybe one-third—if not one-fourth—of the agenda at that 1:00 meeting, with the item at which we’d’ve looked at what I’d prepared being last on the agenda. Needless to say, we didn’t get to it.
I took a late lunch, and it was the end of the day before I knew it, as I got totally engrossed in some more data analysis of survey results we’ve received from students who were early adopters of Google Apps @ NC State. Right before I left, I removed a video from our Google Apps @ NC State home page, prompted by a comment in the survey, but also, after investigating, realizing it really had become dated. I sent an e-mail to the rest of the team letting them know what I’d done and why.
Waiting at the as-yet-unmarked city bus stop in front of the credit union, Garrison, Nick, and Jen drove by after playing some Frisbee golf, and Jen yelled out the window, “Hold on and I’ll come around and pick you up to take you home.”
When I got in she told me that, being the geek she is, she’s read her work e-mail and saw mine about updating the Google home page by removing that video, and told me when she read it she thought, “That’s why I love John Martin. He sees something that needs to be done, and just handles it. And then checks to make sure it’s okay.” I’ll take that as a professional affirmation.
I left for dancing a little early and went by Joe’s to water his outdoor plants. Two of them were starting to droop, so I gave them some extra water. I kept glancing over to see if his Gladys Kravitzesque neighbor was peeking out between her blind slats, but I didn’t see her. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t watching from somewhere, though.
I got to Flex at about ten ’til eight, and I was actually the first dancer there. I started working on this week’s Indy crossword puzzle, which for the first time ever, I believe, among all of us, we actually completely finished tonight.
Overall it was a bizarre night, though. There were these two totally shit-faced guys there, neither of whom any of us had ever seen before. One of them was slightly hot and the other, well, wasn’t. The cute one went around to almost everyone at the bar with the age-old lines, “I left my wallet in the car,” or “I lost my wallet,” and “Can you buy me a drink, man?”
Later on, Carl found out that one of them was gay and the other one was straight—the cuter one gay, the other one straight. He also found out that the straight guy wanted his dick sucked for $20. Okay, he didn’t want to pay to have it sucked for $20, he wanted you to pay him $20 to suck it. As my friend Joe said, “That would called be a prostitute.” And what part of wanting to get your dick sucked by a guy makes you straight again? Just askin’…
I really wasn’t feelin’ it there tonight and left at about 10:40. On the ride home my car showed the outside temperature as 93°. Crazy.
At home I made my hotel reservation in Charlotte for my ex-brother-in-law’s memorial service on Saturday. His obituary has been published in both the Charlotte Observer and the News & Observer:
