Birthday Girl

So... it's my birthday. Yippee, and stuff!

So far, it's been a quiet day, though better than not--Alex and I spent a longish morning goofing about before getting around to work--he driving to Richardson, I actually working from home for the first time in awhile. Before he left, Alex gave me the second of my nifty birthday shirts this year--this following the past two years of nifty-shirt tradition that put Last Unicorn, Oscar the Grouch, the Two Towers and the Matrix at the heart of my wardrobe--the first, this year, being the incredibly apt "I'm blogging this" shirt from ThinkGeek. The second shirt reads:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
Are belong to you

Awww... humorous and yet sentimential, in a geeky sort of way (for those unknowing of the "all your base are belong to us" joke: become enlightened). I finished (sort of) my cataloging homework that had been plauging me--trust me, you don't know befuddlement of historic proportions until you've attempted to learn the secret ways of Reserved Cutter Numbers--and proceeded to answer numerous questions from lost students seeking wisdom regarding online courses at UNT. Ah, some days I really like my work.

So far, I've had four birthday calls--my husband, my mother-in-law, my mom, and my dad, in that order (and not forgetting my three-year-old nephew as well). It's been a fairly relaxing day, even though there is a huge work project that I'm not quite sure can be easily finished in the remaining week or so that I have--but it's my birthday, I'm in a positive sort of "what the heck good does it do to worry myself into a frazzle over it, anyway?" mood.

I'm quite looking forward to this evening. We're having the 'gang' over--Amy, Jaime, Kali, and Joel--for some games and some dandy shish-ka-bobs a la Alex. We'd been quite social last week--some frisbee golf, some fishing said frisbees out of creek, some movies--and I have some great pics on my phone, but alas, I have still not found the knack or removing the phone cover to get to the memory card--my fingernails are a little long for detail work--and so, they will have to wait until Alex is home. I also included a few amusing self portraits I took yesterday, while I babysat the CDL booth at a UNT freshman orientation fair.

This is how this event goes: I dress professionally and try not to sweat too much on the way over. Karl and/or Jake is roped into getting all the booth equipment for me. Then I proceed to stand in front of it for two hours while freshmen drag their parents by as fast as possible. See, the thing is that their parents, like most mature adults, don't get the point of the event, which is to stop at as few booths as possible, even those that have giveaways or free food. I think there's some point system, like golf, where the freshman with the least points--i.e., the fewest booths visited--gets some kind of Campus Coolness Award to sit on top of his gaming console of choice.

When the poor kid does fail, as sometimes happens, the parents tend to glance at the booth from afar--just enough so that to greet them cheerfully I'd have to shout, and that's somehow less than inviting--and this is how that goes:

The mom looks back and forth at the signs with the UNTeCampus logo and the old wordy-yet-vague slogan, "Not just teaching students... reaching students." After a few minutes reading the same signs repeatedly, she says over her shoulder to her freshman child--who is looking shamefacedly at the floor--"Oh, that's the website where I check up on how you're doing in all your courses."

Not that there is anything remotely close to this that would indicate such a service to her. In fact, I put up less signs this time and prominently situated the "web-based courses" sign precisely to avoid such conclusion.

Meanwhile the dad--both parents being completely oblivious to each other's interpretation of the booth--reads all of the signs in succession, once, and then either immediately says, "Oh, online courses," or strides up to me and says confidently, "So what is this booth about, anyway?"

...All of which, at the last fair, led me to suggest to my superiors that maybe our current slogan wasn't cutting it in the "communication of ideas" department. We spent a meeting last week coming up with much clearer ones, and our newer slogan is, in my opinion, much catchier, pithier, and doggone it, it makes more sense: "bringing education closer to home." Which will be accompanied by a nifty updated logo and some illustrative graphics.

So, then, that was my two hours of the fair. That, and a mild flirtation from two entering freshmen that caused a near-birthday surrealist not-quite-panic. I realized, as the last kid walked off, that although we looked quite similar in age, and he thought I was maybe a junior at most, I was in fact quite likely a decade older than him (shameful, I've spent a whole decade in college managing to avoid being a contributing member of society). Ack, to realize the day before your birthday that kids that you still reasonably think of as your peers are, in fact, so much younger than you that they were, in fact, born after Back to the Future was released in theaters--and, most likely, on VHS--heaven forbid Beta! Oh my gosh, they weren't even teenagers when Episode I came out--Aaagh, is that a heart seizure I feel coming on? Get my phone, would you dearie; I have Medicare on speed-dial.

Heh, heh, just kidding. I'm not sooo worried about age on my birthday--after all, I did have that Batman birthday cake last week--but the presence of peers with children old enough to talk is getting unsettling. I think I need to go eat some graham crackers, or read a comic, or go to Chuck E. Cheese's or something, to confirm my non-geezer-status.

Man, I am waaay too garrolous lately. I apologize; my birthday resolution--yes, there IS such a thing!--is to make more frequent yet pithier posts. Adieu.