010.

Christmas was magical!

Today has been great, too, but for different reasons. It's one of those pleasantly melancholy days that makes me think of folk music in minor keys, sung very softly.

I'm enjoying it.

My love for Maude and my hatred of creepers.

Today, I learned that I can safely drive over 30 miles in my '94 Buick once my gas light comes on. I sometimes think that she is the true love of my life, because who needs dream boys? She does everything I ask and more, even when she's only supposed to get 25 miles on E, and that would be on a good day.

Those who know me well or who have had to wait for me to find them because I took a road the wrong way and didn't notice, or I got trapped in mazes of one-ways or even found my way to the wrong city can attest to the fact that I honestly lack a sense of direction. It's uncanny. I have gotten lost within two blocks of the house I grew up in, and it took me nearly an hour to find my way home. My first week of school here, I got lost trying to find my way home every day for a week straight. Today, I started looking for a gas station once I'd driven 15 miles on empty, got off the highway at 25, got lost, and drove frantically until I reached 32.

So Maude helped me out considerably, happily burbled down some gasoline once I found a station, and delivered me safely to work, where I got creeped on no less than four times in a half hour, by four different individuals. Another thing you may already know about me is that I attract creepers the way honey attracts flies (and bears.) Something about smiling and eye contact . . . I might just start cleaning my teeth with my knife or something instead.

Three of those individuals creeped (crept? I think it's one of those words where both are correct) over the phone, which might lessen the blow slightly (or would it make them worse?) but the one in-person creeper was worse than most. He stole a line from the Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides, and told me that I was "the most naked person with clothes on" he'd ever seen. I did not call him out on stealing a line that isn't even a pick-up line and would never work to pick a girl up any way, but instead opted to dash away.

It is finals week and creepers have found me again, but at least my car loves me.

I am unprofessional.

I work the front desk at a hotel which, coincidentally, also happens to make reservations for guests at other hotels when we're booked. In the evening and on the weekends, I am the only one here. This particular evening, we are booked and so the evening went insane.

While it was busy the whole time, the real gem of business (busy-ness) occured as all three of the phones behind my desk were ringing off the hook at once, two people were on hold, all wanted lodging for the night but did not know where and therefore needed some talking-through, and in addition I had some in-person reservation-makers patiently waiting their turns and one very impatient family who didn't end up staying long enough for me to find out what they wanted. They did stay long enough to knock over the plant I keep forgetting to nurse back to health.

Our bellperson was attempting in vain to vacuum the lobby before his shift ended, and laughed companionably every so often at my earnest but clumsy attempts to restore any sort of order to my workstation. I had three piles of paperwork and kept putting sheets in the wrong piles and glaring at them with frustration in between dispensing quality guest service. I proceeded to drop a stapler on my foot (on my foot!) and then it went missing altogether, and the coffee upstairs which I am charged to make fresh each hour was fifteen minutes unfresh. The horror!

So with patience, I finally made it through all the people milling about in front of my desk, sent them off to their designated hotels armed with maps, directions, and parking passes, got the plant set back up and chatted with the bellperson as he vacuumed up the dirt from said plant.

Then came the crucial moment. The most persistant and annoying phone began to ring, and as soon as I'd answered with "Med-Inn front desk: how can I help you?" the other two began to ring simultaneously, and a few stragglers came in and sat down on the furniture. I directed the stragglers in turn to the cafeteria and the trauma/burn unit, finished my phone calls, and just as the elevator reached our lobby and dinged itself open, I threw my hands in the air and kind of yelled at my bellperson "I hate the phone!"

Off the elevator strode some guests from Poland just in time to hear my outburst. They will be staying here for the next month or so.

I think that perhaps there are times when I seem unprofessional.

Opinions.

When I talk lately, all I ever seem to voice is my own opinion, a story involving myself or how I feel about something. It makes me feel terribly selfish when I catch myself, but what else do I know well enough to talk about? I don't even know myself very well, but talking about myself kind of helps me sort through it enough to start keeping bits and pieces for good, and maybe notice other parts that need some change. I don't like to assume that I know how another person will take information, and I suspect that acting on this may end up making me seem more flighty than I am.

Selfish feelings aside, what more do we have than our selves? Do we even have those? We, as individuals, are excessively fickle. Our feelings are temporary, we shift friends, jobs, homes and opinions. We lavish our infatuation on people while it lasts, but even love -or maybe what we mistake for it- runs in fits and riddles and is often overlooked and pushed aside. Is it anything we can recognize?

I feel like love itself is simpler than we think it is and what we make it out to be. It may just be that basic thing which connects people, and the prospect of that connection is within everyone.

I haven't quite wrestled away my coffee addiction, especially considering that it's finals week. It has been noted, however, that coffee does not equal sleep.

On that note, I'll get back to actual work.