And she's back.

Okay, okay, so the post below is from January 8. I thought I was going to revise it, make it punchy, fun to read. Seeing as it's January 24th and I haven't changed a word, I'm throwing it out there as is. It was an exciting first week of work. On Friday of that week we all cheered because there wasn't a single incident all day long. Well, at least not one we had to call security for.

However, the best was yet to come. It was Tuesday of last week. I hopped on the 729 bus at Western and Olympic and met the happiest city employee that ever existed. The bus driver sang songs over the loud speaker, pausing each block to shout out the name of the next stop (though, for once the recorded voice announcing the stops was loud and crystal clear). He greeted each and every person that got on, asked them how they were, and expected a reply. I was even singled out and serenaded. I wasn't in a position to film him since I was about half way down the isle shoved up against someone's arm, but I did manage to capture the sound:



This, however entertaining, came in second place for that Tuesday. The librarians I work with (who are far my cynical and disgruntled than the happiest bus driver on earth) forever won my respect later that same morning.

I was in a meeting in the community room at my library branch with three other new children's librarians from other branches and the person who was training us. The community room looks out over the parking lot and we had the door open. However, it was getting a bit noisy, so I went to shut it. As I neared the door, I noticed that is was actually QUITE noisy, and stepped outside to see what was going on. Two men were yelling at each other. About what, I couldn't tell. I thought of telling them to be quiet except that it suddenly looked like it was coming to blows. So I decided instead to tell my supervisor to tell them to be quiet. Which she did. Hannah marched right out there and told them this was the library and would they please whisper. She had asked Gil, another librarian, to come out after her. You know, just in case. He's a big guy and though anyone in their right mind would be much more scared of the harmless Hannah than the very very very harmless Gil, she thought perhaps he might at least look more intimidating than, say, me. Gil came out all right. With a hot pink bunny puppet on his hand. Well, it turned out the two men were fighting about a cat. And they felt, upon being told to whisper by Hannah and by the pink bunny, that they could agree to disagree. Or something like that. Anyway, they left. I went home that day with a far more sophisticated understanding of working with mentally ill people than I could have learned in years of medical school.

The rest of my non-blogging time, I've been working. At the library. At the bookstore. At the cooking school. At the other library. And snowboarding. Ali and I drove up to Tahoe and met up with Chris and Michelle. I was all decked out in the hippest snow gear ever, thanks to Linsey. A brown pinstriped jacket with faux fur around the hood and Kelly-green pants. Ali tried to help me out on the slopes, but I still spent a good portion of the time alternating between ass and face plants. I can't wait to go again. Tahoe was gorgeous. So much snow and not a lick of wind. Every tree had inches of snow piled up on every branch. The slopes were velvety soft (luckily for my two ends that spent so much time in it), and the light shining down on the lake was incredible. It was my first time in a gondola.

My flight home was late and ended up getting in around 1am. Still, I was up and at it to work the next morning. Luckily, I had a meeting at the central library which is 8 minutes away on the metro. Unluckily, it was raining when I left the library that evening at 5:30 wearing white pants, red shoes, and a wool coat. I believe I walked about 20 yards from the door of the library to the bus stop across the street. A man who had ridden in the elevator mentioned that since we already shared an elevator, we may as well share an umbrella. I was grateful (since he, not I, was the one with the umbrella). In spite of his efforts, bt the time we crossed the road I looked as if an entire bucket of water had been dumped on me. And wool, let me tell you, does not smell so pretty when it's been doused in water. And white pants, let me tell you, do not look so pretty when they've been doused in water. And red shoes, let me tell you, do not feel so pretty when they've been doused in water. By the time I got off the bus, walked through shin-deep water in certain places for the four blocks home, my red shoes were black, my white pants were hot pink up to the knees and see-through up to my, well...the rest of the way up. And I smelled like a sheep fresh off the farm.

I assumed that, in typical LA style, that was our one day of "weather" for the year and we'd be back to sunshine today. Again, I left my umbrella at home. I didn't get as wet as yesterday. But that's only because it hailed.