Frog and Goat

Last night I went to the Adult Development class and sat across the room from a guy with tattooes that read TRUE on his right knuckles and LOVE on his left knuckles. Looks to me like he has plenty of ink after his wrists but due to the long sleeved shirt I couldn’t tell for sure. He teaches GED classes and works in an economic development office. He also talked about being fascinated by his latest read. He’s thinking of joining the same master’s program as I’m in. I hope he gets accepted.

Another person in my class was once a ski bum, lived on a sail boat, built her own house and rides a Harley.

Several people talked about how they are control freaks and one woman, who looked vaguely unhealthy but maybe that was just her skin tone under the florescent lights, said she’s been known to go back and fix other people’s work during group projects. All I could think was I’ll never be in a group project with that freak. One guy is originally from Bosnia and he wouldn’t stop talking about preferences (as in Meyers-Briggs). When this guy got to the part where he had to say what his weakness was all I could think was please say the stick up my butt. But, he didn’t. I don’t remember what he said because I was thinking too much about how much I hate doing that “tell me 10 things about yourself” routine.

The woman to my left wore kickin’ boots and her cell phone had a heavy metal ring tone. The woman to my right is from Montreal and said her favorite tool in the kitchen was a glass of wine. I think I’m sitting in the right spot.

Naturally I was the last one to spill my personal information and I said my strengths included being a smart ass and my weakness was that I hated, hated, hated doing these things. Both were true. I also said some other rambling things and someone asked me if I was a stand-up comic. I replied no, but a good smart ass. I think I said ass three times last night. I’m sure the professor put a mark next to my name on the roll sheet.

So, tonight was the first meeting of the Research class I am forced to take this semester. They held a gun to my head until I signed up for the course. Seriously, I do have to take this class this semester–no question about it. The gun thing is a bit of an exaggeration. But there was no wiggle room.

The guy, excuse me, professor, is a few years younger than I am but in the ballpark and I think he may know one of my friends. He works for the same organization as my friend. Not that it matters in but perhaps I can find out if he’s a hard ass or not. He seems to not be.

I wasn’t sure about the hard-assness when I walked in. He was standing at the front of the room and did not look relaxed at all. All I could think was that I didn’t want to take the class anyway and now Mr. Needlebutt is teaching it. Perhaps he was a little nervous? Anyway, I think the class will be fine since we’re not working so much on the statistics piece but more on the how you read and interpret research/statistics.

I could be completely wrong about the whole thing and was easily swayed into thinking the class was going to be OK because he let us out after an hour. I sort of moseyed out of the room hoping to talk to one of the other Adult Learner program students but she could only give me a “save me” look because she was talking to another AL program student and all I could think was that she needed to move seats next week. Sitting next to me and my snarkety-snark is a much better option.

Tomorrow night fun and thrills await as I attend the first class of the second one I’m taking this semester. This one is going to be fun. It’s all about how adults develop. A perfect class for the armchair psychologist.

The better-half received his new passport yesterday and mine arrived today. We can travel again. We sent in the paperwork to renew our passports back in late November. We wanted to renew before RFID passports become a reality.

I have to admit I think my passport picture is probably the worst one I’ve ever taken and I’ve been teased that I look like DickCheney in my work ID (must be the smirk). So saying my passport picture is lousy is not an exaggeration. I take pride in having horrible ID pictures because the person requesting the ID is always going to be pleasantly surprised that I’m not a crazy, ax-wielding killer in person.

For months I’ve been taking Leigh street to and from work because of the work on Belvedere. It wasn’t until the leaves came off the trees last fall that I noticed a sign up in an oak tree. The sign sits at the corner of Leigh and Harrison very near to Carver Elementary. The sign appears to be hand-painted and old. The oak tree obscures it when in full leaf. The sign has a design and two distinctly visible Hs. I have been trying to figure out what HH stands for. I ran through all the community names I knew and none of them matched. I asked older people who have lived in the city surrounds for more years than they’d care to admit. And no one had a clue. I guess I wasn’t asking the right people.

The other day I had to make a long looping U-turn through the neighborhood with the HH sign and low and behold there are lots of little signs that say Hartshorn Community (and in my defense this isn’t the best of neighborhoods so I don’t veer off the main drag). I used The Google and found out a wealth of information about the Hartshorn community.

From Wikipedia:

Virginia Union University is an historically black university located in Richmond, Virginia. It was founded in 1865 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. From 1867 to 1870, Union, then known as Clover Institute, was housed in a former “slave jail” owned by Mrs. Mary Ann Lumpkin, the African-American widow of the deceased white owner. In 1899, the Richmond Theological Institute (formerly Clover Institute) joined with Wayland Seminary of Washington, D.C. to form Virginia Union University. In 1932, Hartshorn Memorial College for Women, established in Richmond, Virginia in 1883, became a part of Virginia Union University.

Hartshorn Memorial College was a college created to educate African-American women. The plan was to set the college up in the same manner as Wellesley College. The first classes met in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church. The church is still there and I drive past it frequently.

And from a VCU document about the history of the Carver area:

In 1962, the final phase of the Carver plan was implemented with additional clearance of deteriorated properties north of Leigh Street by the RRHA and then construction of the ninety-eight unit Hartshorn Home community by private developers. This ranch style housing
development offered affordable housing and also a community room and swimming pool. The homes, located north of West Leigh Street between Harrison and Bowe streets, were also close to both the G.W. Carver and Maggie Walker schools. The Hartshorn community had the distinction of being the first of its kind to be insured by the Federal Home Administration.

footnote: Richmond Times Dispatch, 6 January 1963. The Viking Development Corporation of Norfolk, Virginia and the Reynolds Aluminum Service Corporation of Richmond built Hartshorn homes. Homes initially sold for $11,500. Also Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, “The Carver Conservation and Redevelopment Area,” Staff Report, (Richmond, February 1999).

It’s fascinating to me because I’ve lived in the Richmond area my whole life and I never knew about this piece of information. It brings the whole issue of race that plagues this town into stark relief.

Do you have someone you work with that you like in general but drives you absolutely batty so much so that you wish you didn’t have to work with them? And, by not working with them doesn’t then mean you can go on to be great friends? I mean they drive you so crazy that you just want to stop the contact?

I work with someone like that. I was on the phone with my “special project” person (the person I’m helping learn how to provide content for electronic courses) telling her that I think we’re on track and how well things I think are going. You know, giving her some kudos and encouragement. My other line rings and it is the driving-me-batty person. I ignore the call because that is why God created voice mail. To take calls. As the other line stopped ringing my special project said driving-you-batty is trying to call me. I said yeah, she just tried here. We kept talking.

After I hung up driving-me-batty called me back and she sure loves to stir the pot. You know the pot–the pot of no-good-can-come-of-this-behavior. She wants to go around my special project and talk directly to the client and cut special project out of the loop. Which is just bad doo-dad. I have until tomorrow to tell driving-me-batty this is a bad idea. I have until tomorrow because driving-me-batty thinks she’s my supervisor and gives me deadlines/assignments like this all the time.

I hung up the phone and sighed. Luckily it was almost time to leave and I had to look for pictures of Monchichis on The Google. Yes, it is a strange world.

I just looked at the 10-day forecast and the lowest high was 54 and the lowest low was 30. Um? It’s January, could we get with the cold temperatures already?

Today I wore all black as did several other people. Actually there were at least 10 of us in black or mostly black. The reason? A co-worker turns 40 tomorrow and she’s having a hard time with the whole age-milestone thing (and she’s not going to be at work tomorrow). I handed out a sympathy card and a birthday card. She also received a cane. I don’t turn 40 until 2008 but I really don’t see what the big deal is.

On other news, I received a belated Christmas card from my friend who lives in Germany. She moved a year or so ago and I didn’t know what her new address was so I’ve been unable to send her letters or cards. Her card to me was funny as usual and now I’m so excited to send one back to her. I’ve decided I’ll write one draft in English and then translate a draft into German. There was once a time in my life that I could do that with some help from my German-English dictionary, now I’ll just use an online translator.

And, in the I can’t believe I just heard this news (two items today):
Item 1: A co-worker told me her adult step-children told her and their father they didn’t want to go out to eat around the holidays because someone might put something in the food. I said, “what ingredients?” I’m still unable to fathom what a lame excuse that was for preferring to eat a family holiday meal at a family member’s house because the alternative is that these people believe that someone is out to poison them.

Item 2: I mentioned this morning to a co-worker that we’ll be watching Good Will Hunting in one of the classes I’m taking this semester. This co-worker told me briefly of her conspiracy theory that Ben and Matt didn’t write that script because there’s no way at their age they could have written something so well about therapy and the character of Will. I was happy she was telling me this from her side of the wall because I couldn’t help but make the crazy face.