(no subject)

Okay, I know I'm way behind the rest of the nation here, but I really liked this exchange in Star Trek: Nemesis (which I just saw for the first time, since my mother bought the DVD):

LaForge: You ever think about getting married again?
Guinan: No, twenty-three was my limit.

I gotta say, though, that overall, Nemesis was only okay, in my opinion. Pretty to look at, but awfully splashy, and like Insurrection, missing the unselfconscious campiness of the early Star Trek movies, and the heart that was in Generations (if tempered with cheesiness) and First Contact. Would have been worth $2 at the Oaks, and maybe $5.50 on an afternoon matinee if they were still that cheap, but fuck paying $9-11 to see that movie. I'm glad I didn't. (See, folks, this is part of the reason why I almost never go to see movies when they come out.)

aaaaarggghhh!!

My co-worker has huge, huge amounts of vacation built up. Most of this came from a time in (I suppose) the 80s when there wasn't a cap on how many vacation hours she could earn. Her supervisor at the time was apparently quite opposed to her taking any of it, and so she had weeks and weeks and weeks of it by the time she came to work for the Library.

By that point a cap had been instated, so to prevent her from losing newly earned vacation hours, she was taking huge chunks of vacation: two months off every summer, the entire time of winter and spring breaks (another month in total), and like that. Apparently she's now nearing the cap again, partly because her seniority means she earns like 20 hours a month. To offset her huge vacation balance, she will be working only half days (7:30-11:30 am) during the entire month of June. ( Here is where I bitch about the ramifications of this. )

cafeteria oddness

Only in California: The De Anza cafeteria now sells, in little plastic tray/boxes like the salads, small cooked artichokes with a little cup of some kind of chipotle dressing.

This is an accomodation... how?: On the table outside where they keep all the forks, spoons, napkins, ketchup, etc., I noticed there had been added a cup or similar container, full of straws, which said "Straws for the disabled."

I was vastly puzzled. Even though I knew that there were other straws, at first it appeared that only the disabled were allowed to have one, such as people who have trouble drinking from a cup or bottle - no one else gets one! The second thought was "Why do they need to have separate straws? Are they different some how?" but as far as I could tell, they were exactly the same as the ones in the normal dispenser.

The only thing I can figure is that they're more accessible in some way... easier for some people to pick up, rather than pushing down on the little tab on the dispenser, perhaps, or less far to reach for someone in a wheelchair. I suppose someone must have asked for it, or it wouldn't be there. But it's a strange thing.

cafeteria oddness

Only in California: The De Anza cafeteria now sells, in little plastic tray/boxes like the salads, small cooked artichokes with a little cup of some kind of chipotle dressing.

This is an accomodation... how?: On the table outside where they keep all the forks, spoons, napkins, ketchup, etc., I noticed there had been added a cup or similar container, full of straws, which said "Straws for the disabled."

I was vastly puzzled. Even though I knew that there were other straws, at first it appeared that only the disabled were allowed to have one, such as people who have trouble drinking from a cup or bottle - no one else gets one! The second thought was "Why do they need to have separate straws? Are they different some how?" but as far as I could tell, they were exactly the same as the ones in the normal dispenser.

The only thing I can figure is that they're more accessible in some way... easier for some people to pick up, rather than pushing down on the little tab on the dispenser, perhaps, or less far to reach for someone in a wheelchair. I suppose someone must have asked for it, or it wouldn't be there. But it's a strange thing.