Work — the lighter side

Seen on a whiteboard as I was going in to work today: "Confidence is like a forest fire—you can smell it burning long before you can see it."

Um...what? *scratches head*

Yesterday, as I was eating my lunch, I ended up sitting at a table near an older fellow, slightly balding, not too prepossessing-looking. But as I sat down, he was talking about how many times he had been reincarnated, and how he had originally been a dragon, and more recently an elf and a witch-hunter during the time of the Inquisition. Only, he was a good witch-hunter, assigned by Rome to hunt down all the bad witch-hunters who were using their powers for evil. Apparently he first got the idea that this might be true when he started playing D&D when he was younger. So I sat there eating, somewhere between uncomfortable and suppressing an urge to laugh out loud.

I guess you get all sorts at MCI.

Moving Desires

Lunchbreak.

I just called my landlord and confirmed that I want to move into that $300 2-BR apartment I mentioned a few days ago. Since it's the same landlord, I can transfer my security deposit over; he'll even let me keep my one cat (Gumdrop) as long as I don't parade her around too much because if the neighbors know, they'll all want one. Which is fine with me; from what I've read, indoor-only cats are happier and live longer anyway; the only thing that's keeping Gumdrop from being a full-time indoors cat right now is that I don't think there's any good place in my apartment to put a litterbox without it being potentially tippable.

( On my landlord, possessional triage, and other moving notions. )

What I really want is for my new apartment to look like the magazine photos of a nice, uncluttered place to live. I want it to be clean, I want it to be easy to keep clean. I don't want to let myself fall into the old habits of letting clutter pile up where it will. I need to buy storage space for things. I need to buy a laundry hamper. I need to buy a kitty litterbox and some litter, and maybe some books on how to care for an indoor cat. I want to turn over a new leaf here, and be much happier in my new surroundings.

I just hope I can.

Tired thoughts

Not much to say. I'm home. I'm tired.

One of the more weird moments of the day: someone called up to play loud rave music through the phone lines at me.

One of the other things that happened: one of our number up and quit. He was the oldest member of the original class we'd taken, in his fifties. No idea why, especially since he had worked for an MCI call center in the past. Apparently he just said, "I can't do this," then got up and walked out. Too bad...I kind of liked him.

The middle of the day was interrupted by this lengthy Mandatory Training session on "Standard Operating Procedures," which came with a thick manual describing Procedure This and Procedure That. Without going into too much detail, the procedure and our Abay trainer disagreed on one point that confused me substantially. I'm going to ask one of the instructors of the original training class about it tomorrow, if I can find him.

On the advice of the parents, I've dashed off an email to the landlord asking if I could move some boxes into the empty apartment over the next few days, so there would be less to move when it comes time to put everything in. It seems like a good idea to me, if I can do it...as moving those things out would also clean up my room to a substantial degree and make it seem less like a hopeless task.

And now to shower and bed.