For my final few weeks in the Midwest, I've been really busy, not only getting things on course to be moved/donated/trashed, but also the mental check of leaving friends, saying goodbye to co-workers, training job replacements, and talking talking talking. It's been a whirlwind at times and excruciatingly slow at others. Between going to dinners, meeting folks for lunches, planning picnics, doing trivia nights, game nights, answering e-mails from long-lost buddies, plus the regular run-of-the-mill annoyances like changing insurance policies, trying to sub-let my apartment, packing things up, and just living life ---well, it's been awesome and bittersweet. I think I'll have many more encounters with the sort of extremely contradictory feelings that I've been dealing with lately.
I'm part of a semi-regular trivia team. I say semi-regular, because we have about 10-12 people who like to do trivia and, when the schedules work out, we just say "I'm in" and the first 8 that say it, are in for that event. We've never won. Ever. But we have fun doing it. Last night we did one to support a local animal rescue organization to raise money to put on a new roof to their adoption center. The old roof came off in a bad windstorm last month (and terrified about a dozen cats who were there when the roof blew off). All the animals are in foster care now, while the building is under re-construction, but it's a pretty big spontaneous undertaking. It's not unusual for this charity to have a trivia night, and its usually the biggest one I ever go to, with around 100 tables. But, this was a quickly planned event, so there were about 30 tables. It was nicer to have a smaller event, really. Our table was tied for second for several rounds, but managed to lose it in the end, slipping several spots to end up 4th or 5th, I think. I think the top 3 last night got prizes. If our team has a specialty, it's coming in just outside of the final places that win prizes. I will miss this team.
I worked my final Saturday and was really excited because, in beginning to clear out my desk, I found my security alarm code and instructions on how to un-alarm the building. I was given these when I started, but in over two years, really never needed to use it. Or, when I needed it, could never find it and ended up mostly being useless in "alarming" situations. But, I was really excited because I thought, "Yes! I will be able to do this once!" I don't know what happened, but I set off the alarm instead of disarming it. Saturdays are often two people working who never have need to alarm or disarm the building, so it's nerve-wracking. I think I was trying to disarm the system and my co-worker/friend was also trying to disarm it, but at two different entrances. Once we got the alarm to stop shrieking, we both showed up in the main hallway, wide-eyed, clutching our codes and instructions and asking each other why this system has to be so complicated as to require three pages of instructions, all needing to be completed in a short amount of time? As it turned out, the security folks didn't even register that the alarm was going off, because we were able to disarm it quickly enough. No harm done, except to our nerves. I'm not sure asking people to disarm a complicated security system before 8 am on a Saturday is really a fair thing to do. It seems sort of cruel and unusual punishment, really. I'm glad I was able to use my security code, but also glad to hopefully not have to use it again.
I've bought these tortilla chips before. I can't stop laughing:
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