Category Archives: Rantlet

As I left my apartment this morning, I turned around to lock my door.

That’s when I got paint all over myself.

Effing management painted early in the morning, and didn’t have signs up the night before, so I had no idea that my DOOR would be covered in PAINT.

On the upside, my day got better and better from there. I didn’t fall into a hole, or have a bus splash water up on me.

I am having one of those little freakouts that happens when something involving technology and finances goes wrong.

It’s not that I don’t know my PIN, it’s just that it’s a natural reaction when I see a keypad, to press the correct four digits. Somehow, over this weekend, I tried too hard to remember it, and now I’ve totally screwed everything up in my brain and I can’t remember what it is, and I don’t have any cash, and I’m generally grouchy about it, since it’s my fault. Rar.

Americorps: Six years of waste and fraud
So this dude wrote an essay about how AmeriCorps has been a huge waste of time / money / resources / effort.

I volunteered with AmeriCorps*NCCC, the national volunteer AmeriCorps program. I hate to call the program elite, because volunteering is volunteering, but it’s the national program, and only so many people can do it each year. It’s a 10 month program, during which you log 1,700 hours. Basically, it’s full time work, if not more. Some of the examples the author states in this essay were unsurprising. Part of the difficulty of AmeriCorps is that any nonprofit can request a team. That’s a lot of different groups with different types of work. Then there’s scheduling – ‘spikes’, or off-campus projects (the majority), are usually several months long – so it’s difficult to line up projects that don’t require timing due to weather, immediate need, building schedules, etc. My first ‘spike’ was fixing horse trails in Ohio. These horse trails were going to be completely redone in a year. It was November, it was deer hunting season, and it was rainy. None of us understood why we had to do it, but we did. I guess it’s kind of like the ‘don’t think – just do’ mindset of someone in the military.

So as I read this essay, I realized that there are a lot of flaws with the program that are easily pointed out. The sum of these flaws doesn’t come close to the good that we did.

Not that I saved any lives – oh wait, I did save a turtle during a forest fire, and that’s no shit – but we did spend some quality time with kids who could really use some attention and encouragement. We did clean up after a tornado. We did build Habitat for Humanity homes. None of these things are particularly detrimental. One of the examples is volunteers ‘busying’ themselves with organizing neighborhood parties. My team organized a kids’ day in Congress Park – one of the worst neighborhoods in Anacostia, DC, and the nation. We got donations for a sweet moon bounce, games, face paint, double dutch ropes, and snacks. We brought the community together and hung out, which made tutoring those kids a lot easier later, and we didn’t get suspicious looks when we walked our buds home. We were the only white people there, and it was important.

So that’s my rebuttal to this schmuck’s argument. And then I will punch him in the neck with this:

Any asshole can poke holes in a volunteer program. The point is that a bunch of kids gave up a year of college, or that first crucial year out of college, or a year that might have otherwise landed them in jail. All these kids went to the same place, learned to fucking get along, learned a work ethic, and left much much stronger than when they came.

I’m over being angry. The post is from October of 200, almost exactly a year before I began the program. Still. You have no idea how much that year did for me.

Much like the way Sprite tastes like “staying home from school with the flu”, Saltines are a psychosomatic/really good way to feel better when you’re feeling sick. They make you want to drink water, which is good, and they have an accumulated taste of Mom and feeling better.

Which is to say, I’m not feeling so hot today. I woke up feeling weird. Wait – I slept weird. Jason – will you post what it was I said to you in my sleep last night? I think it’s really funny, but that’s probably because I said it.

I’m calling in sick to the library. I’m going to go home and watch crap tv with my cat on my lap. Yeah. That will be good.

Noooooooooooooooo! It’s happening again! It seems like just yesterday that I was pledging to Chicago NPR. I got in the car yesterday, turned on the radio, and immediately comprehended that it was fund drive time by the chatter and phones in the background, over-enthused announcers spouting the benefits of NPR, and the general lack of normalacy.

This morning, as I always do during fund drives, I found a different station to listen to. Next up the dial was WXRT. I must have been paying attention to the road (ha!) because I didn’t notice that I changed the dial. XRT seems to be lampooning the NPR drive by having their announcers “wittily” recreate the usual banter between hosts during the pledge drive. Once I realized that the telephone ring sound effect was being played exactly every three seconds, I caught on. Why would you parody the pledge drive? Trying to feel snobby? I immediately changed the station, because the irritation a pledge drive really does get under my skin.

If I hated the general format of a pledge drive, why would any of their usual listeners find it amusing? Any novelty is outweighed by constant over-eager reiterations of how neat NPR is. I bet this doesn’t do well for ratings …

Then I realized that the reason I loathe the pledge drive is because it DOES interrupt my usual NPR programming. Just like they say. I’m cranky about it because I like it so much. I heart NPR.

Had I not already “given” to NPR six months ago ($100 and the promise of my firstborn got me a sweet bag and a membership card) I would have immediately, today, in the parking lot. It was a religious experience.

(Best comment overheard this morning: “I was raised in a Catholic orphanage…”)

I’m starting to get really geared up for the summer. This winter crap has gone on too long. I woke up, looked outside, and as a result of the inclimate weather, I put on my most springy, Sarah Jessica Parker/Gap inspired outfit. That didn’t seem to fix my desire for spring, so I put on makeup.

Now I’m full of free dessert from a lunch ‘n learn, and therefore passive and don’t care that I have three different things to do right now, or that Bush is still president, or that the mess in Sudan hasn’t been dealt with properly by the international media.

Mlarg.

Just because someone is due Monday does not mean they can unload their Christ-sized burden on me. I have 15 documents with 5 different sections to proof against 263 source documents – all numbers.

OK, I might be exaggerating a little, but I’m kind of miffed that I can’t spend my usual leisurely afternoon blogging.

I went and made a pot of decaf for the afternoon (psychosomatic effects) and noticed that there was no creamer. I looked around for an alternative to the powdered stuff, and realized that the best option was one of the cans of Similac sitting on the counter.

THAT’S what happens when you work at a diversified health care company. It’s one of our products.

(I went without creamer.)