Cancelled!

Class was. For tonight, anyway. And I find myself just a tad bummed. I have to admit, not only do I adore math classes, I also really dig taking notes. I’ve always been a great note-taker. I sometimes wish I’d saved all my notes from jr. high and high school. They were a glory unto their own. With college it got even better because then I could write in my textbooks and highlight and use Post-It flags and cross-reference from my notes to the textbooks and back again. I’d even created footnotes and indices. Oh, do I have a sickness…

Which is funny because I’m not naturally an organized person. I am very much a left-handed, right-brained, creative type and with that comes great responsibility to be free-spirited and mildly disheveled at all times. My house and specifically my bedroom are testament to that. Ask anyone who’s set foot in my domain…you ought to come prepared to wade. Oh I’m not filthy…I’m just…loose with my rules.

But for some reason, I have this serious type-A streak in me. My dad attributes it to my IQ (I don’t dish numbers because frankly I think the test score is wrong, but suffice it to say I qualify for Mensa), in that people with higher IQ’s tend to be attracted to the concept of things having an order about them. I guess. It would certainly explain my bizarre need at the age of eight to put my personal library on the Dewey Decimal system complete with a card catalogue searchable by title, author, and subject. It would also explain why I felt compelled to waste two whole years of my life chasing down an accounting degree because it was fun to do taxes and balance account ledgers and calculate amortization on all my office furniture.

Throw in my compulsive listmaking and my love for alphabetizing, and you have one weird fucking person. A person who is lamenting the fact that she can’t take notes in stats class tonight. Tell me now, is that not completely fucking WEIRD?! Go ahead. Defy me. I dare you.

Kevin asked me the other night to help him plan a trip down to La Jolla at the end of October to surprise his girlfriend Morgan for her birthday. Some days I can’t even believe he’s an adult. He will always be my little brother, and I can’t shake this image I have of this little punkass kid with a thick mop of curls on his head and a mouthful of sarcastic remarks like “Yo mama” and “eat a dick.” While we were checking out hotel room prices, he informed me that he didn’t care what the room was like because he’d only be using it to sleep, shit, and shower. He then paused and said “Oh, and one more thing…” and grinned wryly. GAH. Overshare!

I realized today that he turns twenty-one in February. Twenty-one! I can get legally wasted with one of my siblings now! Cutter needs to catch up so the three of us can go barhopping. OK, how lame would that be? There’s thirty-five year old Manda with her two young twenty-something brothers, hanging out at the local pub. Yeesh. Shoot me if I get to that point. At thirty-five, I don’t want to have to resort to taking my own brothers out for drinks. I really hope to be dating at least somebody by then. Man, woman, robot, holographic image…at that age it will all be the same to me. And by forty, I’ll even open up the floor to large farm animals, tall trees, and inanimate household objects.

I know, I know…”age ain’t nothing but a number” and all. You go ahead and see how fancy you feel the year you have one brother reaching legal age and the other graduating high school, both while you’re in your thirties (!!!). Go on. I’ll wait. Report back to me. I’m interested.

Next week starts a month-long foray into the deepest pits of hell. Coworker Sean is a reservist and he’s being sent on a twenty-eight-day mission to somewhere in the Middle East. No, he’s not like shooting insurgents or sweeping for mines or anything. He’s mostly out of the way of danger. So never fear! There will still be a free-flowing source of Coworker Sean stories and references!

However, in his absence I will be backfilling for him, as usually happens when he’s out of the office. But this time I will also be juggling our team’s big audit (already spoke to our auditor today…a pleasant gentleman named Charlie with the most insane southern accent I’ve ever had the privilege of hearing) as well as backfilling for Coworker Tom who is headed to Italy for the second half of the month, not to mention doing my own job duties AND providing a little extra time to a big project on which I was somehow placed as a subject-matter expert for our team. God help us all.

I have to say, I’m thanking my lucky fucking stars right now that I didn’t take the original class load I’d intended to this semester. Because I’d be so far up shit creek with nothing even close to a paddle in sight right now, I think I’d just end up letting the current sweep me under and away. As it is, I will probably not have a spare moment to give. So your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not I’ll be blogging regularly. Not that I’ve been that great at regularity anyhow (in blogging or anywhere else for that matter).

Oh you knew I couldn’t resist referencing either poo or my ass. It’s a gift. And a sickness. I make my parents proud.