Semester ending soon, medical things to do, irritating Amanda, etc.

Well, as I said before, the semester is ending soon. Just this week, then my final and graduation. Also, my mom's graduation from grad school is this weekend, so I'm trying to get the day off from work for that.

I have a stack of prints on my desk I still need to go through to figure out which ones to mat. I have to finish printing my lily picture (which will turn out to not be a deepbite after all -- there's not time to sit for hours waiting for it to sit in the acid -- and instead will be a line etching with aquatint) and bring home my pieces that are currently on display. I have to print 3 more prints of the lily etching as it is before I will have satisfied Richards-sensei and be able to do an aquatint treatment on my plate. He likes editions of 5 for some reason. I am going to go do those prints tomorrow (since I have tomorrow off) so that they are done before class, and maybe I will even start with the aquatint, if the teacher is there to show me what he recommends (since I'm not very good with aquatint). If not, I will work on it on Tuesday. At any rate, I will bring the prints I put on display on Thursday home so I have them to add to my collection of prints to choose from. I will leave the new prints so they can dry; I don't know how long that takes. It depends on how dry the paper is when you do the print. And of course the ink has to dry. But I think it dries fast.

The only prints I have up right now are 2 prints of my lily and the two prints I did of my Plexiglas/collage piece. Oh, speaking of which, my collage turned out splendidly...yay! I was afraid it would not work to do that sort of thing on Plexiglas (Mr. Flores did it on a metal plate), but it did work, although on the first one Misaki did not stick on the paper and I had to reglue her into place. Also after each print I had to go in with a little glue and glue down edges that didn't get enough glue. Because I had the glue on a mat board squegee, I was able to simply walk up to the print on the display board to make these corrections. Nice and easy. I was also concerned cause print #1 looked like it had lots of glue stains, but one of my classmates (who also looked at my print) said you can't even see them from far away. So that's good to know.

I have to go buy my own mat board, unfortunately. I am going to pick my prints first so I know what colors will be good and if I need a certain size. It doesn't look like it's too hard to mat - it's mostly measuring and cutting.

I have figured out I have some medical things to do in the near future. I need to get my mystery underarm bump checked out by the doctor. Mum thinks it's a clogged pore, but I'm not so sure, especially since it has developed a purplish bruise-like color, and my shirt seams (on shirts like my work shirts) still rub it even though it has gotten smaller in size since the time it first began to really bother me. I have been careful not to put deodorant on it (if it is a clogged pore, deodorant would be what is clogging it in the first place) and to shave around it. But it has not gone away.

Mum says I also need to have a physical, including some "female" stuff (like a Pap smear, maybe a mammogram). Fortunately, my new insurance covers physicals 100%.

I also haven't had an eye exam in awhile, so I probably need one of those too. And I may need to go to the dentist too, since I haven't been there in a while either.

The main problem is that, since I have new insurance, I have to make sure my various doctors take my new insurance.

From medical problems to coworkers...I am fed up somewhat with my coworker Amanda. I have worked with her sometimes cause she only works nights and I have been working till 7 the last couple weekends. She gets stressed out about the amount of work she has to do and goes on and on about it, and a couple of times has asked me to help her by doing part of breakout (she is usually assigned breakout duties). Now if I have no other duties of my own then I will help her with breakout, and I have done so at least once. But if, like tonight, I have my own work to do, I have to tell her that I can't help her with breakout cause I have to finish my own work, which is the truth. Then she gets mad, and I have to try to reason with her to get her to shut up so I can concentrate on my own work (usually packaging), or try to ignore her, if that is even possible. Tonight when she arrived (at 4:45), I was packaging a rack of drizzled gourmet cookies and still had to package the newly baked French bread, label the cookies and other stuff on the counter to get it out of the way, AND make garlic bread. I told her I couldn't help her with her work. She got mad, and went on about all of her work and how messy the department was (her other usual perpetually discussed topic) and asked me to make sure to clean up the front before I left, which I would've done anyway (and did), since making garlic bread leaves the counters messy, and in the process of cookie packaging a lot of drizzle pieces had ended up on the floor and needed to be swept up, along with the usual dirt and crumbs that end up on the floor of our front area.

Things finally quieted down, thanks to the arrival of Liz, who usually works mornings but was apparently working a night shift tonight. She started helping Amanda with breakout, and all was well. I covered the front, working on my stuff and helping customers. Right around the time I was supposed to leave, I had two customers, and after I finished the first, I went to the back to ask Liz and Amanda if one of them could help the other customer, since I had to leave because I was like 2 minutes overtime. Amanda's response to my question was a comment telling me to leave so I wouldn't be late, which sounded less benign than it ought to sound. I wondered if she was still mad at me.

I must admit, I was stressed. I wanted Amanda to shut up, I was trying to do my own work, and I hadn't had a chance for my last break because I was going to take it, but I was afraid Amanda would make a fuss like last time we were both together by ourselves and I said I was going to take my break. Also, I was worried that I would be in trouble cause I accidentally put chocolate buttercream on some of the brownies instead of fudge (I asked Neomi, a new decorator, who was the only other person there, if she'd seen the fudge, she handed me a bucket, and I realized only after I had spread the stuff on the brownies that it might not be fudge). I don't know why I got stuck putting chocolate drizzle on the cookies and icing the brownies, neither of which I have done before and both of which should have been done already (especially with the brownies, which were from yesterday). And then she handed me the wrong bucket -- but of course, she's new...she wouldn't know. This would never have happened if Katie or Patricia was there; they know what the fudge looks like. Even Dina (a former decorator, now manager of the deli, who was helping us today) would've known, but I didn't ask her; she probably would've made me look for it myself anyways. I tried to look for it, but Dina and somebody else were working at the cake decorating counters and so I couldn't get in to look through the buckets. It's been so long since I've seen the fudge bucket I forgot what it looked like. It does sort of look like the Ready Ice Chocolate Frosting (aka chocolate buttercream) bucket though. So maybe that's why I didn't think of it; the chocolate buttercream is also thick like the fudge so the frosting looks similar, though it is lighter than the fudge.

Hopefully, it won't matter, but you know me; I am paranoid and think every little mistake could be job-ending. I was all paranoid about the cream cheese icing on the brownies not looking nice. I said I didn't want the customers saying "oh what ugly brownies" and not buying them. This is similar to how I wanted to get defensive when Liz said my a's on cakes looked like upside-down e's. They do, since I tend to forget to put a tail on my a's. I know this. On the other hand, she did think the writing was nice. While I didn't get defensive, I did point out that I usually don't have time to devote to practicing my cake writing so that it looks nice every time. She told me that if I asked the manager for time to do that, she would probably say yes. But I'm not a decorator. Why should I need extra time to practice my writing? The only reason I write on cakes at all is because often I am the only person there in the afternoon (and evening) and so I have to help customers, and this includes writing on cakes. When I worked at Sycamore, I always called someone else over to write on cakes, someone with experience, because that was what I was told to do.

If only preparing and decorating cakes was as easy as it is on my Cake Mania game...they have automatic frosters and stuff.

I got some new reading material, having grown bored with A Great Improvisation (a non-fiction book about Benjamin Franklin and his diplomatic efforts to secure French aid for the American Revolution). For just over $40 with tax at Barnes and Noble, I bought two Boxcar Children books, two volumes of Tsubasa: ReserVOIR Chronicle, and a Newbery Award-winning book called Kira-kira. The volumes of Tsubasa were numbers 13 and 14, which cover adventures in the world of Recort and (at the end of 14) another yet unidentified world. There is also a part where Syaoran opens this book and sees Kurogane's memories, and those take place in the past of the Country of Nihon, the country Kurogane is from (also called the Country of Japan). I also was pleased with myself somewhat for recognizing the crossover in Recort's Central Library of Sai and Kaede from Angelic Layer, although I had never seen them in a manga (only in the AL anime, which I recently finished watching -- see the previous post).

I should mention that Fei Wong Reed (one of the bad guys) has a female assistant, Xing Huo, who somewhat resembles Arisu from Angelic Layer. I do not know if that is an intentional crossover or just a coincidence.

Ack! It is really late...I started to look at some other stuff and didn't realize time went by. I want to get up early to go work at school, cause I think I'd like to see a movie afterwards. The movie theater by the mall is still showing this one movie I want to see. But it only has two matinee showings. I just checked.

Ok I'm gonna go and start getting ready for bed. Goodnight.