So while we were on lunch break, Laser Mom proposed that the present ladies who were 21 and over do something in concert after work. This evolved into a full-fledged Plan for clarinetkid4eve, Laser Mom, and me to hit a casino after work.

We all piled into Laser Mom's truck, more or less. The thing is an ancient-feeling pickup clarinetkid4eve is six months pregnant and looks seven. I got the back, naturally. It was some fun gymnastics to try and get in, since the usual accesses are built for skinny people, or for foot room on the part of the back seat area. As there's a lot of random stuff back there, this does not exist...

We wound up stopping by Laser Grandpa's place: Laser Mom's father was hit by a car -- again -- and occasionally needs looking in on. I learned that I'd been wiser than I'd known to bring along cold water, as Laser Mom's truck has no air conditioning, and I was feeling rather delicate. Fortunately, Laser Grandpa's apartment complex/elder semi-independent facility had a water fountain in the lobby. Yay water.

There was lots of happy gossip. Yay finding Friends in odd places! I've come to realize that whether it's intentional on the part of my subconscious or not, I'm dressing in almost a manner befitting of a somewhat more traditionally inclined modern Quaker woman. Though I suppose my Circle ring, my pager ring, and my medallion are all adornments of one sort or another. Never mind the glitter on that skirt...

Casino Arizona was big, noisy, smoky, with a lot of busy people and very indifferent computers. It is very glitzy. I think that Constance wants to go there to people-watch and dance and drink. Before she discovered it, she was mostly sticking to tiny hole-in-the-wall clubs where she wasn't a regular, the sorts of places that are too fly-by-night to have regulars.

Laser Mom had a bad encounter with a machine, and had to stay there while an attendant came up to unstick things. clarinetkid4eve and I wandered off and did assorted stuff. I won $0.15 on a nickel slot machine. We wandered around, got separated, got together again, got lost, searched for Laser Mom, and finally wound up finding her and heading off for dinner.

Dinner featured very good food at their buffet, Laser Mom ignoring her doctor's orders, and a lot of general gossip. Hooray, fun.

After dinner, we wandered off when Laser Mom wanted to show us something or other. The band was partying like it was 1999. This somehow morphed into dancing. clarinetkid4eve turned pale and grabbed a chair; Baby decided to join in the dancing. I boogied righteously, and at one point attracted the attention of someone who tapped my shoulder and indicated that she wanted to dance with me. So non-contact dancing happened. I was mostly using my standard fencing dance moves, which are awesome fun but hell on the thighs if you haven't been keeping your plié certification current (which I haven't). I danced the whole song, but wound up not dancing as vigorously nearing the end.

The seat situation became critical as clarinetkid4eve and I both needed to sit down somewhere, her because of her aspiring dance fiend, and me because I was a perspiring dance fiend about to become an expiring dance fiend. We wound up back in the piano lounge while Laser Mom sought the facilities. More gossiping ensued, and photos happened as well. On our way in, one of the maintenance staff gave me the smile and said that she'd seen me dancing over there. (Dancing with enthusiasm is evidently looked upon with favor.)

There was fun, there were games, the engine of the good ol' truck flooded when the valet service tried to retrieve it. Home didn't actually happen until well after midnight.

We're going to repeat Girls' Night Out in the future.

Laser Mom is resigning. Her dad got hit by a car. Again. (This is the second time he's managed that.)

She announced this on Friday. She's going to stick out a suitable resignation time, though, so she can come back again once things chill the fuck down.

• Take one shaky Lunatic, and add dodgy paperwork. See Lunatic stress. Ask Lunatic to do something with the dodgy paperwork. See Lunatic melt down and start crying, becoming incapable of any sort of coherent thought.


• Add an 11-5 shift, and several people who weren't seated due to some oversight on the part of the office. Have a last-minute swap of personnel called in by a grandboss. Have one of the personnel in question and another interested party grumble about it.


• Tech fun -- setting up my elder clone's e-mail on a computer resulted in things not looking right with her inbox. Argh? Grr.


• People coming in hostile, late, and reeking of marijuana.


• People coming in chronically late and out of dress code.


• Payday weekend means I get to hand out paychecks too.


• Phone ringing off the hook.


• Frosted Christ-Cakes Kid quit for school, but came in to get his last paycheck. It was fortunate that he did, because right about then his ex-girlfriend (who works there) started having a bad asthma attack. Her inhaler did not seem to dent it. Between her call to someone to come pick her up and waiting for them to call back, it got bad enough she wanted us to call emergency. So I did. Frosted Christ-Cakes Kid got her wheeled out of the area on one of the office chairs to an office by the entrance to wait for the paramedics.


• The interim, of course, is studded with joyful happenings such as more paperwork and the like.


• A woman had a wheel bust on her chair. Yay incident reports. Stressy College Chick had to write one up over that.


• Turned out that the girl with the asthma attack had an asthma attack first, then a panic attack on top of it. Ow.


• Chaos on the hours chart; I either had the right number of people coming in at the wrong times, and no clue where it came from, or too many people, but the right times. Not happiness for anyone, anywhere. All attempts to track it down failed. I eventually went with a reality check and fudged it, which is the appropriate thing to do when it burns more supervisor-hours than the discrepancy.


• Didn't get done with my hours until after break. Postponed my break for this.


• By the time I took my break, almost all the phone goons had left.


• Good Figments should not ever sneak up behind their Lunatics and tap them on the shoulder. No matter how plaid they are. For they will come within yea much of a punch in the nose, and if the Lunatic rolls sanity check in time, she'll be left dealing with the hormone spike.

After all that cleared up, the day improved. But I was dreadfully behind on the paperwork. I usually get out of there about an hour and a half after the last phone goons are out, or sooner if it's an early shift and I have most of my evening tasks out of the way. The Rules Lawyer Monitor has resigned her monitor post; she's a mere phone goon at the moment. The blessed woman stayed and did the ENTIRE cleanup list. I was ready to hug her.

As I told figment0, this was a day that cake could not make better. He nearly earned frosting up the nose for annoying me (by speaking, essentially); this wasn't because he's inherently annoying, but because he's safe enough to drop the professional front in front of, but not a bondmate, and so not attuned to the chaos that is me.

It got better, after everyone left. Stressy College Chick Supervisor chills me out, and I think I help her chill out too. I've always wanted to send an intra-office e-mail with "Alarums and Excursions" in the subject line, and now I have. (Well, not always, but if I'd thought about it, yeah.)

Monitoring this morning. Laser Mom gave me a lift halfway to work. That was fun. If I followed the rules about never getting into a vehicle with a strange person, I would never be able to get into a vehicle with any of my friends, because we are all strange. Except for figment0. He is very, very strange.

Limiting an interaction with someone to face-to-face in public and commenting back and forth on a public LJ post somewhere -- those are actually two very similar ways of doing it. Both ways, it's in public, possibly with witnesses. Just, online witnesses, not meatspace ones.

It has already been a nutty morning. There were issues with things, where by "things" I mean "people", and by "issues" I mean "I want to whack them over the head with a Nerf bat."

I think break is going to require rather a lot of coffee.