Garbage Can Louise

When I think back to the lack of things going on during my first month, I miss my lunch break naps that now I would not even dream of having time to take. While the office can still be pretty slow at times, we are still getting busier than I could have imagined. Trying to plan a health fair, teach and schedule classes, and be in Hamlet eliminates free time, but I wasn’t doing much with it besides staging my own Angel marathons and reading.


Wednesday night Maggie, William, Casey, and I had a pretty successful evening as Adventures in Babysitting at trivia. They asked a Novak Djokovic question, so my trivia life was made. Even if we haven’t been placing, we consistently have one of the best names. I think trivia is all about style points anyway.


Thursday, we had our chili cook off run off at the office. I, unfortunately, was too broke and too busy to participate in the making of chili, but I definitely participated in the consuming of chili. They were all so good and consisted of both my lunch and dinner. Red Cross is participating in a fundraising chili cook off this Saturday. Our team name is “Chili Chili Bang Bang.” It was the only name suggested that didn’t involve the negative effects of chili on the digestive system. I did say that if a detailed damage assessment was done after eating that chili my digestive system would be classified as destroyed. #redcrossjoke

Friday, Natalie and I went to the Alabama Gymnastics meet against Florida. The Crimson Tide pulled out an excellent victory over the Gators, who all do that dumb chomp thing during their floor routines. I love gymnastics meets because you can easily talk to the person next to you, and there is always something to watch. It may only be small children in handstand contests or two old women accidentally put on the kiss cam, but it’s something.

Saturday, I took a day long volunteer training course in the stat office in Hoover about disaster services technology. They took the five classes one would take separately and put them all together in a day long affair. While the information is useful, it was nothing mind blowing. I will definitely never put it as my primary group for a disaster relief operation. Our instructor did get in trouble for showing inappropriate yet semi funny videos during a break. A national employee should know that SNL is not apropos for a training course, especially when pointing out the ability to make Middle Eastern names sound perverse.

After that beautiful start to a Saturday, I went to my parents’ house in Hoover to work on my lines, which I should have done multiple times, and went to dinner at Barrio with Jeremy. This restaurant was excellent. They had great cheese dip, and their tortillas were definitely traditionally made. The meat was also seasoned really well, especially the Barbacoa on my taco mixed with Gorgonzola. Sadly, it was really busy, so to shorten the wait we sat in the lounge area. The table was below knee height, so it made eating a little difficult for anyone regardless of height. I would definitely recommend it. Just know that there is limited seating and avoid it during busy meal times.

Sunday was our Hamlet rehearsal at 8 in the morning. This sounds like it would be a terrible idea, but it was actually one of the funniest rehearsals I have had. It was the first off book rehearsal, meaning that everyone was shaky on lines. I thought I had mine down pretty well, but I had been working on a new voice to try for the player queen. Also JJ had me wearing my hat for the scene to get used to it. If you don’t come to the show, you’ll miss out on the great things I get to wear. Anyway, the hat combined with the voice made the majority of people start laughing immediately, which caused me in turn to lose focus and forget what my lines were. I think using all of that energy is what caused me to sleep from noon until 5 that night. I am so excited for this production. I just HAVE to work on my lines some more or my copious amount of smiling won’t be the only thing for which JJ kills me.

After rehearsal and before my lengthy nap, I met up with my old camp coworker Anna Beth at Chuy’s, a Mexican restaurant in the Summit. This continued my branching out in an epicurious nature over the weekend. Even though it was a gloomy day, the décor and atmosphere of this restaurant were contagious. It is filled with bright colors and interesting art work that make it differ from “traditional” American Mexican restaurants. They also give you a jalapeño ranch salsa with your free chips at the beginning. It was so good that I didn’t even attempt to order cheese dip. We both got “big as yo face” burritos. They come with a variety of protein fillings and your choice of sauce on top. I can’t wait to go back and try out more combinations and their cheese dip (as long as I’m not paying).

After my beautiful afternoon nap, I met up with my friends Abby and Alyce to have dinner at Nothing But Noodles. I had only been once before, so I was looking forward to going back. The basic concept is that there are several base pasta dishes in the categories of Asian, American, and Italian. They’re around $7 each, but that is without any meat or extra vegetables, so once you add those things It can be around $10 or $12. I got the Southwest Pasta with chicken and mushrooms. It was wonderful. If you like pasta, I would definitely recommend going, but only if you’re good at making choices because the three of us definitely took 20ish minutes just to decide what to get.

Because I took the selfless act of attending that Saturday class, I was able to take the day off Monday to attempt to memorize my lines for Act V. It must be nerves or something, but I just suck it up in rehearsal. I at least got to wear another fun hat and cape. I’ve got some stuff to work on before rehearsals next week, but I think JJ has some great ideas to make my characters more interesting and memorable. Otherwise, you might not notice I was even in the play. My outfit is even better than this guy's.

Tuesday was pretty slow, thankfully, because I had a class to teach in Belk, Alabama, that night. Belk is about an hour away in far west Fayette County. You spend time in four of our counties just to get there. The class I was leading was a Shelter Simulation, which is by far the most fun class to be a part of. It’s a game in which the participants are broken into teams, and they have to work as a shelter team to solve problems after being given different scenarios during a multifamily apartment fire. The people in Belk had a great time. They were so funny, and I can tell they’ll be great volunteers. If you live in Tuscaloosa, you should take the class from me next month!

That’s all for now. I’m full of Spaghettios and Tagalongs. It looks like I’ll be able to fill out my Player Queen dress in ways I never even dreamed of before now. As is now custom, we’ll end with some James Quotes of the Week. If you don’t know, James is a daily volunteer from a group home that makes office time more bearable by being hilarious. I may have shared this picture before, but here we are playing that game where you try to slap the other person's hands.

James Quotes

“Did you get a new head?”

“Bend over and let me kick you out the door.”

“You’re garbage can Louise.”

“Gonna have to put a cowbell on her.”

“What I gonna do? Get a whoopin?”