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Oh hai! Here I am. Does anybody notice when I don’t post for four days in a row? Anyway, I’m done with school for the semester!! Only two of my grades are in, but they are both A’s - Deaf Studies, and Sex & Gender. 
kawaiibishounen
Not a whole lot has been going on. I’m hoping to organize my workdays so that I’ll be working 10-1 and 2-5, though I’m not sure they’ll go for that…it’s basically because a 30-minute lunch break isn’t enough for me, emotionally or physically. We only get an hour paid lunch if we work 8+ hours, and I don’t work more than a 6-hr day, so I shouldn’t be getting an hour lunch…but I’m giving up my 30-min paid lunch in order to have a 60-min unpaid lunch, so they ought to go for it, I would think…we’ll see. The scheduler approved it for this coming Monday, but I think he’s going to talk it over with the boss because he didn’t say it was approved for the whole week as I had requested.
I’m finally playing The Sims again! My Sims blog is called My Sims Stories, and it’s just fun to keep a log of what’s happened. I started a new character using the romance aspiration to see if I could play it, but then I just used the InSIMinator cheats so I’m not sure it really counts. Oh look, this person instantly loves me! Now I can woo-hoo with them! Yeah, not very challenging.
I really want to travel this summer, it seems like everybody I know is traveling in some way or another. I want $1500 to burn on travel, I could have such a fabulous time with that, but I spent $5700 on hearing aids so that’s not very likely. I get to go to New Orleans in July anyway…I just have to be patient and wait for that to come around rather than lusting over trips for June or August. Anyway, I can’t afford to take so much time off, I need to work the whole summer!
The final word of wisdom I would like to impart right now is: Ben & Jerry’s Cheesecake Brownie ice cream is simply astonishingly wonderful. NOM NOM NOM.
I have no idea if I’m forgetting stuff, I really should get out the syllabus for all my classes and double-check everything. But it’s getting late now and I have to go to bed.
- Family history paper for HIS 112H
- Read Coming of Age in Mississippi for HIS 112H
- Time research project for LIN 263
- Compounding homework for LIN 263
- Another test coming up for LIN 263
- Reaction paper (ASL Poetry) for DST 101
- Research paper for DST 101
- Powerpoint for DST 101
- Position paper for GSR 150
I didn’t sleep well on Friday night, but I had to get up early for the PCRID conference in Annapolis. I ended up getting there at 8:00, about half an hour before the keynote was scheduled to begin, so I socialized with the co-workers who were manning my company’s booth - and I also chatted with people who used to work for my company but transferred to a rival company. It was good to see them again, at least.
The opening meeting was fun. Janet Bailey did a slide show about the history of RID - nobody has really recorded in pictures just how the profession of interpreting came to be, so she gathered some old photographs she managed to find and showed them off. She also asked those present to dig through their archives and contribute whatever they could find, as she’s hoping to create a book detailing the history of RID and the interpreting profession. She pointed out that even though RID was founded in 1964, nobody really put down “interpreter” on their tax forms until the late 1970’s - prior to that they would always have other duties that were their “real” jobs, and they’d interpret in addition to that. After Janet’s presentation, Lauren Potempa, the current PCRID president (who I co-interpreted with for a meeting some years back), gave a State of the Association speech which wasn’t really memorable enough for me to tell you about it. I earned 0.1 CEU’s each for the slideshow presentation and the speech - in RID, an hour is equal to 0.1 CEU’s, and we have to earn 8 CEU’s in a 4-year period.
The next item on the agenda was the business meeting, which I figured would be fabulously boring. So I went back out to my company’s booth, which had a pretty good location, and chatted with the people there. It turned out one of the people who was supposed to work the booth hadn’t turned up, so instead of milling about and relaxing I got behind the table and actually did work. I was there for a couple of hours at least, which I’m not sure I’ll be compensated for…I know the people who were scheduled to be there got paid for their time, but I think the compliments from the president and HR director (who were there) is all the appreciation I’m going to get. It was fun though, we had a bunch of prizes to raffle off so I had a lot of people coming by to sign up for things.
In the afternoon, I went to a workshop given by Betty Colonomos called “CDI and HI: Who Does What?” (That’s Certified Deaf Interpreter and Hearing Interpreter.) I’ve never worked with a deaf interpreter, so I was hoping to find out about the mechanics, protocol, etc. Instead the workshop seemed to be geared directly to CDI’s (there were several present), and I felt like the hearing attendees were only there so we could tell the CDI’s about our perspective - not to do any actual learning ourselves. Betty was great to watch though, I’d have thought she was Deaf if she hadn’t mentioned early on that she’s a CODA. Unfortunately somebody in the back of the room wasn’t fluent in sign and was using an FM system, and the voice interpreters were seated just a little bit in front of me so for part of the time I had my fingers in my ears so I wouldn’t be distracted by them whispering into the FM system’s microphone. It was an interesting workshop, and I earned 0.3 CEU’s for it, but I did note on the evaluation that I wished there could have been more information for the hearing interpreters who were there.
Afterward I went back to my company’s table to say goodbye, and since one of the people there was supposed to be at the DC Eagle that night I said I’d see him later. I was sleepy from not having slept well but I went straight to the bar, which was very easy - Route 50, where Annapolis is, turns into New York Ave, where the bar is, so I just had a straight shot all the way there.
I went to my company’s main office for my annual review today; it’s pretty much the only time I get over there anymore. I’m basically entirely cut off from them, I knew the office had moved up a floor but I didn’t realize so many of the major admin people had left. I said hi to a few people and then told the president of my plans for going to Gallaudet; he suggested I could stay with the company and work part-time VRS around my class schedule, so I may do that.
My annual review went pretty well. I don’t know exactly how big my raise is, probably between 3.5-5% - they use a mathematical formula to calculate it but I wasn’t there for the math part. I was invited to join a few of the supervisors (including my own) who were going to a workshop at Gallaudet - 0.15 CEU’s for free! Since it would end at 12 and I was taking leave starting at 1:00, my supervisor said I didn’t have to go back to the office. The workshop was about the structure of personal narrative in ASL, and I learned a bit. Next I went to the bookstore and bought a jacket (to replace my ratty old WMC jacket that A’s been bugging me to get rid of) and a license plate frame (to replace the one that broke when I took it off the Saturn). After that I had lunch with my friend :R:, who I hadn’t really gotten to chat with in a long time. I used to see him every single day for lunch because we worked a block apart, but then I started interpreting and he switched jobs and we never saw each other. He got a job at Gallaudet, so we had lunch in his office.
Afterward I went to Fort Belvoir to pick up my DTG food. It only took about 20 minutes to get there, and I was home within about an hour of leaving Gallaudet. I watched the woot-off some more, and ended up buying a Navman iCN 330 in-car navigation device for $200. I’ve been wanting one for a while anyway, and after my adventures in Philadelphia I really wanted one, so I got it. It’s usually about $230-250 elsewhere, so $200 was good. It’s “remanufactured” whatever that means - I don’t know the difference between that and refurbished - but hopefully it’ll work!