Spaghetter Dinni

Today began about 3 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Realizing that it wasn’t worth it to lie there for 3 minutes, I opted to get up.
I took a look outside to check the weather. On Monday it had been beautiful out, reaching a high temperature of 70 degrees.
Today it was rainy and looked cold.
I took a shower, got dressed, and took another look outside.
Suddenly it was snowing.
The forecast had listed snow as a possibility, but it just seemed like such a random change in such a short period of time.
For a while it was coming down pretty heavily, and there was a very strong wind blowing.
I have to say that I was almost impressed, as it honestly had the potential to be a real storm.
Of course, people on the road behaved as if it were a real storm, though, and the drive to headquarters, which, even accounting for the typically heavy morning traffic, at most should have taken ten minutes, which would have still made us early for our class, took long enough to make us five minutes late.
We weren’t the only late ones, though, as the weather caused lots of delays.
As I mentioned earlier, the purpose of the class was to teach us effective communication skills. There was some focus on writing, but in general it was intended to improve our speaking abilities.
While there’s no denying that the only reasons I took the class were, in order, for the overtime, and because attending some sort of training each quarter is expected of us as part of our jobs, I will admit that the class was a little less irritating than I expected it to be.
Was it actually useful? I’d have to say “probably not,” but that’s not really an indictment of the class itself. It really has more to do with my general resistance to…well, not to learning, obviously, but to adapting my behavior, maybe? I tend to think that most of the sort of lessons that people need to learn for self-improvement of this kind can’t actually be taught.
Besides, I know myself well enough to realize that I’m not really going to (consciously, at least) begin using the techniques outlined in the class in my daily life.
But that’s just me.
Still, as I said, the class wasn’t quite so tedious as I’d expected.
It did, however, have a horrific element that, while not unexpected, was…well, horrific, like I said.
At two points we each had to speak to the class, making sure to make eye contact with people, and be videotaped while doing so.
Eye contact is bad enough, but the videotaping added that extra bit of discomfort.
The real discomfort, though, came in actually watching the tape.
They say the camera adds ten pounds. That being the case, I apparently weigh 990 pounds.
I swear to God, I looked like Jabba the Hut on that tape.
Over the years I’ve come to accept the fact that, yes, my voice really does sound like that, but I’ll never get over how enormous I look on videotape.
That aside, apparently I acquitted myself quite well, receiving compliments from my classmates and the instructor on my speaking abilities, stating in particular that I did a very good of hiding my discomfort.
Admittedly, one of those compliments, which came when we were preparing to leave the class, was rather left-handed (“I thought you were going to be really boring, but you weren’t”), but hey, you take them where, and how, you can get them.
For the first videotaped exercise we had to talk about an interesting experience we’ve had. After providing the background, I talked about how Threshold has been visited by more than one woman who has appeared in public as Red Sonja.
For my second exercise I spoke about Sin City, and why I’m so excited about it and think everyone should see it.
I neglected to point out, as Kathleen pointed out to me after I’d finished, that I’ve even gone so far as to schedule the day of its release off so that I can see it right away.
During one of her presentations Kathleen talked about the spaghetti dinner fundraiser that her volunteer fire company is having, or, as she put it, “spaghetter dinni.”
I thought that little transposition was classic Kathleen, who is, after all, so smucking fart…
After the class was over Kathleen and I had some time to kill before our cooking class, so we stopped at Costco for her to gas up her car and to pick up some fruit.
I’d never been to a Costco before, and I have to say that I haven’t been missing anything.
Being on my own, I have very little need to buy anything in bulk (though they did have a good deal going on Mach 3 cartridges which I may have to take advantage of at some point), so the savings associated with doing so aren’t that appealing.
One thing that I did find confusing was the fact that the parking lot was full of BMWs, Jaguars, and various other extremely expensive vehicles.
I mean, if you can afford to drop 80 grand on a Hummer, do you really need to save that extra fifty cents by buying your toilet paper in bulk?
But whatever.
As for the weather, by the way, by the time we broke for lunch it had stopped snowing and was sunny out, though still pretty cold, and very windy.
Anyway, that was my day.
I don’t have anything going on tomorrow, and most of the TV shows that hold me hostage on Wednesday nights will be reruns, so it’s pretty likely that I may finally write the entry that Wendy has been waiting for. Hopefully she won’t be disappointed, and neither will any of you.
Until then…