Catching up

To begin, Seth returned from the US last week! Also I want to congratulate him on his second big job offer—this one, for Brandeis University, is even more exciting than the first! Not only is it in a great location, just outside Boston (where it is academically stimulating and also full of friends and family), but the job itself is tenure-track (which is pretty exceptional for a new graduate in the field) and the university’s music department is among the strongest in the nation. This would be one of the highest appointing jobs for a recent graduate of UNC’s music department in recent memory. Wooo!

After this, everything else that has happened seems rather dull, but here goes:

Yesterday a friend from BoZo, Warren, invited me and another girl, Suzie, for a flight around Canberra, piloted by a friend who wanted to keep his flight hours up. The plane was a tiny Cessna, which was barely able to seat the four of us (the interior was smaller than that of most cars), but it was actually really smooth and not too scary. We just did a few loops around town, getting a surprisingly close glimpse of the Inner North, the Telstra Tower, Parliament House, Woden, and many other of those dazzling Canberran icons. I will post pictures asap!

I have also finally started to purchase flights for our trip at the end of the month. It is an exhausting and extremely time-consuming search, but when planning for a big trip and dealing with that amount of money, it really needs to be thorough. However, it felt GREAT to have a few dates and tickets set in stone, and I feel more excited than ever about traveling and going home! I should, with luck, be back in Raleigh by July 7^th, less than two months away :o)

An additional, yet unnecessary, distraction keeping me from writing my concluding chapter has been major computer problems, such as having to re-install Windows, plus all my programs (many of which I won’t bother with because my computer is probably on its last leg anyways). Thankfully, however, I didn’t lose any work!

But besides this, a major consumer of time has been working at Dash a few nights a week—however, tonight was my last shift! I helped myself to a few Dash keepsakes, and as the icing on the cake, tonight we had a crazier-than-normal guy come in to the Jolimont. Even though it is located in sleepy old Canberra, the Jolimont is still a bus station, which naturally attracts some really nutty people. We get TONNES of junkies, ‘agros’, and general loose screws, and tonight was no exception—a guy mumbling and yelling to himself rather aggressively. At one point he yelled at Conor that he was “going to jump over the counter and rip [our] ***ing heads off”. A bus driver thankfully called the cops and they took him away. Not all crazy people episodes end with cops, but I wish more had.

In honour of my last day at work, here is a list of the top 5 most memorable crazy people who have come to Dash:

1) Guy who recently got out of jail who kept trying to sneak in the back door (which does not lock from the inside) and would whisper things to Conor every time Conor would have to go outside. I don’t know what he said to Conor, but he was freaked out and tried blocking the door with milk crates. We were tempted to call the cops ourselves before leaving work.

2) Pair of jail birds who hung around the station for about three weeks and would try to get free food from us every night after closing. One spent a lot of time looking for his pet mouse.

3) This guy we had tonight *see above**

4) Man who tried buying a hamburger with chocolates. When asked if he had cash, his answer was, “It is in the bathroom, let me get it.” He went to the bathroom and when he returned, he had cash.

5) Woman who totally flipped out when she bought a veggie sandwich and discovered the eggplant inside was marinated and not fresh. After a long bout of yelling back and forth with Conor, she shouted, “I want to see your supervisor!” He shouted back, “I am the supervisor!”