Where have all the weekends gone?

Today was the Pacific Festival of the Book. I was supposed to be volunteering from 8:30—6:00, but I managed to duck out a little after 3:00. I need to stop being so flexible. "Sure, I can start volunteering any time that day, and I can stay as long as you need me!"

There were a few very interesting things at the festival. My favourite part was when Herman Melville (a.k.a. Roderick) was roving around the Lobby and came and entertained us at the Registration Table for a while. He also told us about I Spy Craigdarroch Castle, March 17—April 1. That's where you get to go sneak around Craigdarroch pretending you're a spy, possibly accompanied by a chimney sweep (though the webpage would indicate that there is in fact only one chimney sweep). I'm not too sure how that differs from what you regularly do at Craigdarroch (excepting the chimney sweep, of course, but I doubt it will be an authentic one anyway; probably won't be a speck of coal dust in sight).

I didn't get a chance to go to any of the workshops, which is too bad because there were some self-publishing workshops that I would have found highly interesting and potentially useful. I caught the end of a book-making demo, though, so now I'll be able to make some awesome chapbooks. Not like those crappy chapbooks that I can't even get rid of for free. I'm thinking that all my new chapbooks will be originals (like, each book is different in both architecture and content). Details at eleven. Wolves are making a comeback.

The most hilarious part of the festival was when some crazy lady took the open stage (she was one of the roving performers, I think) and yelled vowels into the microphone. Many of the exhibitors chose to take cigarette breaks at that time, and one lady came out of the room exaggeratedly plugging her ears. An Irish-accented guy kept having to come back to check if the vowel lady was gone before he returned to his exhibit ("She's not married, that's for sure. Otherwise she'd be dead.") That was during my 2-hour vigil in the empty hallway, guarding the door. I should have just gone to the festival as a civilian.

I hate closing shifts; they're a whole hour of manual labour, plus it seems to take me five times longer than everyone else to sweep or mop the place. I know why, too: I sweep it as though it's a granary. Far too meticulous. It's just a cafe, it's not like we're storing grain on the floor or anything. (I haven't taken that mandatory food safety course yet, by the way. It's probably an optional mandatory course.) I've discovered that pretty much nobody at the new store has a work ethic on par with me, which makes me secretly seethe a little whenever I see something that obviously needs to be done and the newbies just say "ho hum, I think I'll have a cup of coffee." (Back in my trainee days, we didn't dream of helping ourselves to free coffee.) There's really only one trainee who would last more than five minutes at the old store. As it is, the guy who trained with me almost got fired from the old store (he now has a raise ):< ). I think everybody should be trained there, because that's where weeding out and pruning seems to get done, if you know what I mean. I have one untrainable trainee right now, and I don't quite know what to do about it. She's untrainable in the sense that she ignores what I tell her, and even decided that she could grill a panino (fun fact: panini is a plural; panino is the singular) well enough on her second day on the job to train someone how to do it. I ended up getting to tell her, "Oh, by the way, whenever you ruin food like that, you need to put it in the kitchen with a note saying how it happened, with your name and the date." She also butchered the brand new grill that the owner was so adamant that we treat well. And, she touched the new espresso bar, the one that was handmade in Italy, the one that nobody but baristas are allowed near. The barista had to come stop the burst of steam that she set going. I have plenty of other complaints, but it's probably bad form to blog about work in the first place. We'll just pretend I've been talking about school, that's perfectly permissible.

Tomorrow I agreed (again, too readily) to pick up a shift someone canceled at the old store, so it's two solid weeks of early mornings and not enough downtime. Plus, I don't have Analysis this week, so not having a weekend today and tomorrow pretty much makes this a 12-day workweek for me.

I've decided that weekends will henceforth be Megan times. No more of this non-weekend, non-sleeping-in nonsense. After all, I'm pretty sure that two of my top three biggest regrets in life will end up being 1) not spending as much time as humanly possible with the people who matter most, and 2) not sleeping in nearly enough.