Frog and Goat

Today we went over to the dining hall and guess what. There isn’t a faculty dining room. That was in the old building. I fell right into the “things were so good back in the day that we keep talking about them now” Richmond trap. As it turns out, the dining facility is quite nice and reminded me of an upscale food court at an upscale mall. All you can eat for $7.20. I have no idea what meal plans cost, but that’s the street price.

There were lots of food stations with people wearing chef’s jackets sautéing up vegetables and entrees. The chairs at each table were quite nice with a faux soft leather seat covering. The floor is wood, the windows tall and the duct work exposed. It reminded me of a huge loft.

We sat fairly close to the salad bar area so we were able to see that left to their own devices students make better food choices than we expected and better than we did. Moms and Dads out there, kids do choose to drink milk and eat vegetables. I ate 2 lemon squares, part of a dried out chocolate cake, a slice of mediocre pepperoni pizza and some fish and chips. I’ll make up for the total lack of nutrition later this weekend.

Today we were finally going to walk over to the dining hall and eat in the faculty dining room. We’ve been talking about doing this for a year. I declined a meeting just so I could finally go over there and see what’s what. Another key factor in changing my schedule was I thought someone I’ve come to loathe had already left to go back to his office. No. Lucky me. He had lunch with us. And, we ended up going to the bar down the street to eat burgers instead of the dining hall. All things considered at least I had a decent burger.

This loathsome person and I used to work together for a brief amount of time. He was actually my supervisor, but that didn’t last long. I thought he was fine. Then, much to my surprise, I found out he’d become a full-time trainer for the organization I work for. In the first couple of months of my employment he said several mean things and, well; I just can’t get over it. When you call into question my ability to do a job I was hired to do, I tend to get a little prickly.

The thing is many people in my building just think he’s the bee’s knees. I feel like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone. I only mention the Twilight Zone because he pseudo-sang the theme song from that show several times during lunch. I should have just stabbed him in the head with my fork.

The only thing that makes me happy in relation to him is that several people he works with find him to be very annoying. I think about those people whenever I’ve had too much of him and I smile to myself.