I hate to say I've been busy, and that's why I haven't posted anything for a while. But it's true.
Last week was my office's biennial meeting of worldwide IT staff, held here in New York. That meant I attended several half-day meetings and after-work receptions and dinners, and didn't have much time to do my actual work, let alone goof off by posting entries here. By the time Friday came around, I was exhausted.
On Sunday, I rode my bike down to the West Side cruise ships piers to see just how big the Queen Mary 2 actually was. It's big. The Queen Elizabeth 2, parked next to it, looked like a "pile of puke" by comparison. I actually think the Explorer of the Seas, which I saw here in 2000, is a more gargantuan ship than the QM2. The QM2 looks like an old Titanic-style ship, while the newer ones look more like the floating hotels they all really are. But they're all just damn big boats. Even the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, which was also here in 2000, didn't look as big as the QM2.
This week our apartment's kitchen and bathroom are undergoing some unplanned renovations. We woke up on Monday morning to a power problem in the kitchen. The circuit breaker for the kitchen and bathroom wouldn't stay on, and kept tripping despite a lack of visible power drains in either room. By Monday night, the refrigerator was on its own new power circuit, but the other breaker for the lights and appliances still wouldn't stay on. Tonight I came home from work to find our floors, countertops, and tables covered in a thin grit of powder and plaster, and many holes in the ceilings and walls from where the electrician ran new wires and conduits. According to Liz, we're in for a few more days of work as the electrician and building superintendent continue the rewiring. Apparently there was some old wiring and new wiring in the walls, and the old wiring wasn't rated for all the appliances and might have eventually caused a fire! Great! As long as they fix everything, I don't really mind the mess, but it is a nuisance.
Also tonight was my firm's college fair for students at Washington Irving High School. My office has a longstanding tutoring, mentoring, and otherwise educational relationship with WIHS, and one of the annual events is a college fair where students can meet alumni and counselors from many different schools. They hold this fair in a conference room at my office, so I don't have far to go to represent Georgetown. I had more copies of the school's prospectus and financial aid booklets to give out than I did last year, but I still ran out of materials about an hour into the two-hour event. Most of the students asked me about the business school or pre-law programs, but there were a few that wanted to know about music and art studies, and one passionate young man who wants to be mayor of New York eventually and asked about government and community leadership programs. Nearly everyone asked me about Georgetown's SAT score requirements, and that was one thing I didn't know about. According to the university's web site, they don't have a minimum required score, but that didn't stop people from quizzing me about what it would take to get in. Part of me enjoyed coming up with BS answers to their questions, but the rest of me felt guilty about it and thinks that next year, I should try to get an actual representative from the Admissions office to attend the fair. While the college fair is manned in part by firm employees who attended the schools they represent, many other schools just send admissions counselors. Or I could just read up on Georgetown's current list of majors and admissions requirements, so I can seem less like a bumbling fool in front of these kids.
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