Plan B

I was really looking forward to ths weekend.

Roger Mexico called me from New York City last week. He was in town for a seminar on digital recording, and had just returned from a late night on the town. We chatted for a while, and during the conversation he mentioned that he might be able to visit me the following weekend. Hooray!

Of course a few days later I started to worry if this was just wishful (and drunken) thinking on both our parts. And after realizing that the students were reporting back to his university the following Monday, I was pretty certain it was. I emailed him about it, and he still thought there might be a chance he could make it back to Cincinnati for a few days, but wasn't 100% sure. He'd let me know. So I crossed all my fingers and toes, kept my weekend plans open, stocked the freezer with Morningstar Farms products and awaited his response.

On Friday afternoon, he emailed back with the unfortunate news that he had to work Saturday as well as Monday morning, so his trip would have to be postponed. Bummer.

So rather than sit around the house all weekend and mope about not having a houseguest, I filled up my weekend schedule with things to do so I wouldn't get depressed. There was a Zoo happy hour Friday night, and I decided to stop in and make an appearance. (Zappagirl and I had planned to go to karaoke later in the evening.) However, Zappagirl finished work early and joined the Zoo crew at Daniel's. Hey, she worked at the Zoo way back when (back when I worked there the first time around) - she's still family, right? One beer turned into another and another, and before we knew it we'd plunked several dollars into the jukebox and were losing a game of pool to the guy from the Graphics department. So much for karaoke night.

I checked AIM when I got home, and caught Roger Mexico just as he was getting ready to sign off. I felt kind of guilty that he seemed to be having a crappy evening when I'd had a good time with my co-workers and had made other fun plans for the rest of the weekend.

I slept late on Saturday, and decided to watch my latest arrivals from Netflix. (I'd bumped up a few selections that I'd thought he might be interested in watching.) As it turned out, it was probably a good thing he hadn't been there to watch The Laramie Project with me, because I was a big sobbing mess. I would've liked to have had his input for comparison to the stage play, though. (He had been the sound designer for the production at Playhouse in the Park, and I wasn't able to see the show during its brief run.)

As I got up to change the disc to my other selection, I decided to take an antihistamine. Seems all my boo-hooing had kicked my allergies into high gear (stupid mold count), and I was going to run out of Kleenex if I didn't do something about it. I also decided to add a hot bath into the mix, and put off watching Underworld Live - Everything Everything until later.

One hour later, the antihistamine and the bath had knocked me completely for a loop, and I fell asleep on the couch watching This Old House and Antiques Roadshow on PBS. (It was either that or sports. Thems the breaks in a cable-free household.) Yee-hah.

The day wasn't a complete bust, though. I ended up going over to Zappagirl's house, where we decided to visit the new Old Spaghetti Factory location. For those of you Queen City residents who have been sorrowing over the loss of the downtown location, take heart. The spaghetti with browned butter and Mizithra cheese is just as good as you remembered it to be, and there wasn't a panhandler in sight. Regrettably, there didn't seem to be a station 13 either, though.

We returned to her house to watch Best in Show, yet another movie I'd managed to miss when it was in the theaters. I will never again be able to watch the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show without snickering. Or say Shih Tzu without giggling, for that matter.

So here it is, almost 5:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep. We're planning to go to Paramount's Kings Island tomorrow, and I'm just as giddy as I used to be when I was a kid. Too many thoughts of rides that go entirely too fast and too high and rattle your brain around in its skull are keeping me awake, and my insides are already jumping up and down in anticipation. I'm looking forward to the rides (I've not yet had a chance to check out Tomb Raider: The Ride), but am not looking forward to the now infamous queue lines that seem to stretch on for miles. And now I've just discovered that there's a concert at the park tomorrow night as well - Styx and REO Speedwagon. Hee. Wonder if Zappagirl wants to add some bad 80s corporate rock into the mix? Since we missed the chance to have a good laugh and go see Journey at Jammin' on Main this year? Of course, I can't ask her that, since she is a much wiser person than I am and has already gone to sleep. Oh well. I'll let her know in a few hours.

Hmmm. After reading that bit of news, "Come Sail Away" is stuck in my head. And to make matters worse, it's the Eric Cartman version from South Park. I need help, seriously.

Oh well. I suppose I should try to get some sleep, since we'll probably be getting ready to go to the park in a few hours. I doubt that I'll be able to do so; my brain has already strapped itself into Son of Beast and is slowly climbing that gigantic hill, ready to scream cathartically as the train hurtles downward at breakneck speed.

For someone whose weekend plans got cancelled, I think I did OK. I still wish I was spending it with Roger Mexico, though.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I just got back from the All About Kids Expo, and I am so frustrated that I could scream.

I wasn't looking forward to working there this weekend in the first place. The idea of manning a booth in a convention center full of hyperactive kids wasn't my idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. But I accepted my shift assignment, and drove downtown, expecting the worst.

Surprisingly, it wasn't the kids that were the source of my frustration. I colored with a few children, talked to parents about the different programs that the Zoo offers, and even managed to sign up a few teachers for my department's mailing list.

The expo wasn't as busy as I'd expected it to be, so my co-worker and I took turns walking around to the other booths, checking out the rest of the displays and organizations around us. A lot of the groups left me perplexed; it was my understanding that the participating companies were supposed to be resources for parents and teachers. Why there was a window company in a booth near the entrance is still a mystery to me.

Our booth was near one of the stages, so inbetween talking to folks, we watched the shows. After sitting through a marionette show, a girl who sang patriotic tunes and contemporary Christian songs with no emotion in her voice whatsoever, and a guy with a guitar that featured characters from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (including the real Mr. McFeely - speedy delivery!), a man in a field vest with an oversized fake king snake got on stage. He was lugging several animal carriers and coolers with him. (Coolers are generally used for transporting endothermic animals like reptiles and amphibians.)

"I think he's got animals with him," my co-worker noted.

Indeed, he did have animals. And with every animal he brought out, I winced a little more. After completing animal handling training classes for my job, I've become highly critical of other animal demonstration programs. At the Zoo, we try to lessen the stress on our program animals by handling them with the utmost respect. There are specific procedures that are followed when preparing the animal for travel, when holding the animal during the program, when letting the audience touch the animal.

This guy broke almost every rule I'd been taught in my training. He brought out a blue-tongued skink and proceeded to talk about it while gesturing with his hands. I'm sure the poor little lizard's brains were scrambled from being whipped around. He brought out a ring-necked dove and let it just sit on his hand while he talked. Well, until he grasped the animal over its upper body and "hopped" it across the children's outstretched hands.

At this point, my curiousity got the best of me, and I nonchalantly strolled over to find out who this guy was representing. Apparently it was a group called Silly Safaris from Indianapolis, and they were stationed opposite the stage area. I walked over to their booth to see what I could learn about their program, and spent a brief time talking with one of the "funologists" from the company.

After watching the show, talking to the "funologist," and watching him interact with the children in their area, I don't think I recall hearing a single educational fact about any of the animals they'd brought with them. (I do recall him mentioning something about the AZA frowning upon hands-on outreach programs, which is news to me. The Frisch's Discovery Center and related school outreach program is celebrating its 25th successful year at the Cincinnati Zoo, and I haven't heard the AZA breathing down our necks.)

Don't get me wrong; I'm sure these guys mean well. I'm sure that conservation is important to them and that they love animals. It's just their methods that worry me. Watching their program onstage gave me that same awkward discomfort I felt when parents are neglectful of where their children have wandered off to in a shopping mall. (This used to happen a lot when I worked at Warner Brothers. The mothers would turn their kids loose, and when one of the display cookie jars was broken by a curious four-year-old, the mother would glare at me for letting her child play with it.)

I know it's natural to accept the way you were taught to do things as the "right" way. It's natural to be critical of the way others react in similar circumstancs, especially when it's related to your career. Back when my sister worked in retail, she used to window shop the competing location of the store for which she worked, mentally grading them on how long it took for a clerk to greet her. Zappagirl breaks out her internal grade card whenever we enter another Best Buy. Roger Mexico is more apt to notice bad acoustics or a muddy sound mix than I am. I still find myself critically watching other bartenders and tsking when tables aren't properly bussed in restaurants.

I guess the main reason why this is sticking in my craw so badly is that it's not just a badly mixed show or a tableful of dirty dishes. These are living animals. They should be treated with care and respect. It is the belief of my department that program animals are used as ambassadors for the animal kingdom. They bear a responsibily to not only entertain, but also to educate. It's not a position to be taken lightly, and the utmost care should be taken by the human educator to ensure that the animal isn't mistreated or stressed out.

Over the past few months, the Zoo has been hosting Summer Camp programs, and my office was used as storage for the program animals in between programs. Often I'd have four or five carriers of varying shapes and sizes behind me, and sometimes people would wander into my office and peer through the holes in the crates. "Oooh! What's that?"

"An African grey hornbill (or a skunk or ball python or whatever was in the carrier)," I would answer.

"Can you get him out? Can I see him?"

"I'm sorry, but no."

"Aw, c'mon. Why not?"

"Because that animal is not signed out to me today, and just completed his program for the day. He's done with work, and is just waiting to be taken back to his home." Actually it's more like this animal just did three programs for a bunch of fidgety four and five year olds; wouldn't you want to be left alone after that too?

Some people haven't gotten past the "animals are neat" stage, and it's frustrating. Every day I take phone calls from people who bought exotic animals as pets without thinking, only to realize that they don't know how to take care of them. This is usually the point where they call the Zoo for advice (or worse yet, to make a "donation"). I cheerfully try to re-direct their calls to organizations that can help them, but in the back of my head I wonder who would buy a Burmese python not realizing it may eventually grow to 22 feet and live for up to 25 years.

Still, I suppose people are getting better. I remember back when keeping an animal in a barren small barred cage was the norm at most zoos, and people thought of lions and monkeys as novel pets.

I'm sure there was a point I was trying to make here, but I'm so irritated that I can't sum it all up in a neat little package. I guess that working in the field I do makes me a little more critical about the way other people treat their animals when using them to convey a message of conservation. It's the same way I feel about Jack Hanna when he appears on The Late Show with David Letterman. While I applaud his reasons for making the appearance, I wonder how much of his message is strewn to the wayside while the animals are running rampant across the stage, and how much credibility is being blown for other conservation groups that use animals as a teaching tool.

Sigh. Most of the time my job is very rewarding, but sometimes it's very frustrating. Guess I'll go unwind and play with the kitties for a while. I've been ignoring them while I've ben typing this this out, and since Zappagirl pointed out in her last entry where the human race stands in relation to the felines, I'm being neglectful at the moment....

So much for my big talk about respecting animals. I suppose the extra catnip won't completely atone for my sins, but it'll be a good start, right?

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Last night after work, I headed out to Zappagirl's house to get some dinner and pick up my copy of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on DVD like a good geek girl. I figured the biggest of my worries for the evening was going to be assembling the storage unit that Zappagirl had, in an effort to boost her accessories sales, conned me into buying. (It didn't take much convincing. I needed a new storage rack. Actually, I need another room in my apartment for storage, but that's a whole 'nother blog.)

I was in the process of taking the shrink wrap off my new purchases when Zappagirl's phone rang. She answered, then handed the receiver to me. "It's Rosencrantz," she explained.

Rosencrantz was calling with bad news. It seems Dino, my former boss at The Warehouse, was in a serious motorcycle accident and was in the hospital. She promised to send me his room number and visiting hours via email.

An hour later, Zappagirl's phone rang again. It was Mike Dangers, calling for exactly the same reason. He had already been to see Dino, and gave me a laundry list of fractures and injuries. The hospital staff had even let him stay while they were running mobility tests on Dino; they had thought that Mike Dangers was family.

"But we are family," I replied.

And as odd as it sounds, my former co-workers from the Warehouse were, and continue to be, very much a family to me. (Nothing against my actual family, of course. I feel priveleged to have been born into such a supportive and loving clan.) Like any family, we've had our squabbles. Sure, I grumbled when my bartending partner would shirk his duties to flirt with customers and leave the dishes for me. I rolled my eyes when the owner would hold staff meetings and spend ten minutes lecturing us on how many ice cubes to put in a glass. But the good times far outweighed the petty differences.

I remember attending many softball games over the summer, sneaking coolers of beer into Eden Park and grilling hot dogs and metts. I was often in charge of the grilling, since my athletic abilities leave something to be desired. I was pretty stingy with my duties, and earned the nickname "Weiner Nazi" (after the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld.

I remember the yearly camping trips, held between the Anniversary party and Memorial Day. They had started as houseboat trips at Lake Cumberland, but we switched to cabins after an unfortunate incident involving a barback, a JetSki, and the side of a boat. The employees at the State Dock were always good enough to look the other way as we discreetly lugged coolers full of alcoholic beverages (Russell County is a dry county) into our rental boats. They probably didn't mind, since we usually spent a small fortune in the gift shop buying bigger and better Super Soakers as a means of protection from our manager Tomm. (I own two full sized ones, and a pistol sized one. Tomm had the model with the backpack tank.) We ate like kings, drank like fishes, and played poker until the sun came up. For several years, it was the only vacation I took. We eventually moved the excursions to Hueston Woods, where we took over the lounge at the Lodge to watch the season finale of The X Files and, one evening, video of Dave destroying the front axle of his Yukon while off-roading.

On more than one occasion, the employees stayed at the bar after we'd closed, telling stories of the night's occurences, plunking quarters into the Area 51 machine in the corner, and watching surveillance tapes of funny things that happened at the door. (Note to people who make a scene as they're being thrown out: yes, we watch those tapes. And we laugh. A lot. We especially liked the night that our duty officers made underage drinkers do push-ups on the sidewalk outside the bar at 1:00 am.)

There was one night when the bar hadn't been very busy due to snow and ice, and Dino and I sat at the bar chit-chatting until 7:00 am. We headed over to First Watch for breakfast, then did donuts in the empty parking lot in Dino's CRX.

Dino organized football outings at Tickets Sports Café every Sunday in the fall, and tried desperately to convert everyone into Green Bay Packers fans. (And he succeeded with at least one of us, although I threaten to burn my Favre jersey in effigy every year.)

We were there for each other in times of crisis. When Tomm had an appendectomy, we descended upon the hospital en masse to visit him and held benefit nights to help him cover his medical bills. When our dear friend Eric passed away suddenly, late night phone calls went out like lightning, making sure that everyone was aware. Many of us spent the entire week assisting with funeral arrangements, planning nights where the cover charges would be donated to his scholarship fund, and supporting each other in our time of grieving.

And now, with one of our fearless leaders ailing in the hospital, the calls are once more going out, seeking out the prodigal members of the family. I haven't been a bartender at the Warehouse for a few years, and Zappagirl and I haven't made an appearance in over a month, but I still know that if I dropped in at the bar tonight there would be hugs all around and concerned words about Dino's status. It would be like a big family reunion, with cheap drinks and better music.

And all I can do is worry about my bar brother, pray for his recovery, and try to figure out where to find a Packers trinket in Cincinnati in the middle of August before I go to the hospital tonight.