Here in Oregon, we prefer our gas-station attendants to be highly educated...

Another day, another interesting tidbit learned about the CTG. Apparently he has a bachelor's degree. In production. (Whatever that means.) And he's working at a gas station for minimum wage. I felt kinda bad for him... I've only got an associate's, and I'm making more than him. Also I'm doing it indoors without the "sideways rain and angry customers". Yet he's always so darned cheerful when I talk to him. The eternal optimist, despite the fact that I already know he was unemployed for a year to the day before getting his gas station job. Yet not so cheerful that it makes me want to vomit. I know someone who's like that too. We'll call him Smiley Dick. (Yes, this is a new alias. He might crop up again occasionally.) Smiley also works at a gas station and is perennially optimistic, but he's like sunshine and rainbows and hearts and flowers until it makes you want to puke. The CTG is optimistic, but without being a hazard to the blood-sugar levels of diabetics. Much more tolerable.

Once again I say, send me one like that but less married.

Anyhow, I got to spend six lovely hours in meetings today. The first hour was a guy talking about something about development of children. I'm not sure exactly what, because the printout of the powerpoint was lousy and also we couldn't hear him in the back. The next 2 hours were about sensory development, which was actually kind of interesting. Then we had one hour of a mandatory class about harassment in the workplace and the company's harassment policy (summed up as: don't do it) and then the last two hour class was about positive discipline and basically learning how to make anything you say sound positive even if what you mean is "knock that off right now, young lady!"

I hate meetings...

Had a long and reasonably productive discussion (read: not entirely about muffins or American/British superiority) with Wong this evening. I love that guy to bits, and I do wish he'd get his punk-ass to America already. I do respect his thought that he ought to spend his first Christmas in a decade or so with his mother, but still... sigh. Four freaking years and what for? Reaching the point of desperation/exasperation on this one.

A nice old guy came knocking on my door tonight to invite me to church at Grand View. He asked me if he could ask me a question and I said sure. He said, "If you were to die right now, are you sure that you'd go to heaven?" I said, "Yes, absolutely." He looked surprised and said, "Not many people say yes so definitely. So you believe that we are sinners and Jesus died for us and we're saved by grace alone?" I said, "Yes indeed. That's exactly what I believe." And he wished me a good evening and left.

If only the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses went away so easily...