Last meeting, we decided on a new way to do officer reports: email.

But people objected to getting eight email messages every other week. (An average of 0.57 messages per day, tending toward the last couple days before the meeting. OMG, so much email!) Sign up for the digest version of the mailing list, maybe? No, instead officers will all send their reports to the Trustee who will manually combine them into a single report (which, of course, will be as long as all individual reports combined anyway). Result: more work for Trustee, less up-to-date reports (they have to be sent to the Trustee nearly four days before the meeting to which they apply), the inability to mark individual reports as read/starred/flagged/etc., and one more important point I just stumbled over:
Our Labour Czar's report had something I wanted to reply to. I had three options:
* Not use email. Presumably this is what the technophobes who wanted the manual digestation method would have used, but that's much less efficient: our Labour Czar isn't here right now and what I have to say IS, whereas the precise details of it may flee from my mind at any moment. I may not see him all day, or only when one of us is busy.
* Hit reply, sending my reply to the Trustee who could then manually forward it to the Labour Czar eventually--possibly in time.
* Look up the Labour Czar's email address on the UT website, c/p his school address to my email client (hoping it's the address he uses, and that it's the right him), c/p the relevant portion of the original email to my reply, turn it into quoted text, and then type and send my reply.

Technophobia has costs. If you're a senior honours student at a somewhat prestigious university, I think I'm justified in expecting better.

[For non-Senecans: The Hobart LX-18 is our sanitizer. You wash your dishes, put them in the Hobart tray, and put it into the Hobart when full. We have two Hobart trays so we can have one go through (which is very fast) while one is being loaded.]

Dear Senecans,
You have just washed your dishes (Thank you! You are my hero!) and now are faced with a choice. The Hobart tray by the sink is full. The other one is probably in the Hobart, full of sanitized dishes in need of unloading. Do you:
1. Remove the clean tray from the Hobart and put the new one in.
2. Pile the dishes between the sink and the Hobart tray to be loaded into the next available tray.
3. Pile your dishes precariously atop the already full Hobart tray, making it impossible to move, so that when some responsible person decides to run it through the Hobart, they must first partially unload the tray, undoing all your careful balancing.

Choosing option 1 makes you wonderful. It does lead to another choice--put the tray currently in the Hobart on the island to be unloaded by the community as time allows and needs require (leaving your dishes the same as in option 2), or be highly ambitious and unload the clean one yourself, then use it for your dishes. This makes you doubly wonderful.

Choosing option 2 is the correct choice if you lack the few seconds required for option 1 or if numerous people before you have already chosen option 3, making the tray immobile until partially unloaded (unless you have the time and inclination to be our kitchen fairy).

If you chose option 3, congratulations: you are an American! Why do more than is absolutely required for you, right?

Love,
A Kitchen Fairy

Our Kitchen Manager has ordered 80 pounds of pasta. A gallon vanilla extract. I don't know what else.

When I bring pasta for lunch, I usually have about 0.44 pounds (precooked weight), so 80 pounds is enough to feed me for 180 workdays. The vanilla extract a good deal longer.

(Pasta from Sysco is about a third the cost of HEB [which I guess is cheaper than Costco].)

Oct 31: ICC General Membership Meeting. Hey ya’ll, the meeting is scheduled for Sat Nov. 15th. Be there, or be tagged “uncooperative.” --Jenn from the office

Great! I'll be there. What time? And where?

Nov 12: Get hyped for some ICC charades at the General Membership meeting on November 16th on the deck of Hillel from 2:30-4:30. -- ICC Ed. Coordinator

Great! Where's Hillel? (Google gives the address of a 'Texas Hillel' as 'The Drag', which covers about ten square blocks) And, wait...November 16?

The three things that should always be known about a meeting:
* Who - This has been explained. everyone in ICC. That includes me. Shiny.
* Where - This has been vaguely established.
* When - This is unclear.

My education feels uncoordinated.

UPDATE (before I even posted this): I went to the ICC office for other matters (open on a weekend? Amazing!) and asked the person working there when the meeting was. She told me Sunday, and showed me the flyer posted on the office door. She, however, had no clue at all what or where 'Hillel' was. I told her what I had determined using the magic that is Google, so now at least one member of the ICC staff(-like people) knows where the meeting is.

OMG, I am delighted by how things just went down with the Hobart LX18H, Seneca's dish sanitiser. It's because I'm crazy. You don't care. So here's a related rant to keep you entertained. Or not.

When loading silverware into the dishwasher or sanitiser, always put the pointy ends down. Because people trip and fall and gore themselves on pointed-up utensils and get blood all over the nice clean dishes. Sad. They also cough (covering their mouth) and pick their noses and have colds while/right before taking the clean dishes out. You want them touching the handle of the silverware you're going to use, not the part that goes in your mouth. (Note: if you just picked your nose, wash your hands, and if you have a cold, shunt this job off to someone else, even if the silverware is properly loaded.)

Anyhoo, in addition to this, the small silverware container we use is shaped thusly:

 _______
| |__|__|
|_|__|__|

So I like to sort things. Easier unloading. The big section is for miscellany--sharp knives, spatulas, etc. Then knives go in one of the middle sections, and either forks or spoons in the other middle one, reserving the last two for whichever is more plentiful: forks or spoons.

Usually spoons win after breakfast and forks after lunch. For dinner during interim, it's probably forks, but when meals are prepared it can go either way.

On Friday at lunch, I was a bit insane. We had lots of spoons and a paltry three forks. Things fit properly, but I was saddened by how empty the fork section was. We needed to use some forks! Luckily, Michael used one, which helped slightly.

Today, though! Just now! We had lots and lots of spoons and ZERO forks. All three of those things are filled with spoons spoons and more spoons.

But the tray wasn't full. We had all the silverware we needed, but not enough plates/bowls/cups, a very unusual situation. Usually there are half a dozen to be found.

Anyway, I grabbed some dirty cups and ate a bowl of cereal. Result: an essentially full Hobart tray with three sections of silverware and zero forks

This is big.

Okay, it's not that big.

Okay, so it's totally lame. But I totally own that kitchen, and the Hobart. I make my own excitement on the weekend.

Last interim, every night before bed I would think to myself, 'Oh! We have a mouse!' So I would dash downstairs and put away all the loose food on the island counter. Then I'd wipe it off. Then I'd sweep.

Then I'd go to bed.

Unhappily, all this occurred around 9pm, long before the rest of the house slept, so every morning when I awoke, I'd find chips on the floor. Plates of crumbs on the counter. Perhaps an open loaf of bread. And every morning I'd spot a mouse fleeing the scene up, the exhaust vent or dashing away behind the microwave. 'Curses! Foiled once again!' I'd exclaim, being sure to use plenty of exclamation marks.

You see, I had a dream, last interim. I had a dream that one morning I would come downstairs to hear our little mousekins bemoaning the state of our kitchen. 'Oy vey!' he'd grouse. 'There's never any food around that I can get my furry little paws on. I guess I'll just move next door.' Then the following evening I'd come home to find Michael on the orange couch complaining that mice have mysteriously appeared in New Guild's kitchen.

Alas, this dream never came true, because I go to bed at a ridiculously early hour, leaving plenty of time for messiness to abound.

Rumours have it that another interim is nigh, and I've resumed my futile nocturnal cleaning ritual, but it will merely be another dismal failure should food magically appear after I head off to bed. This morning I had, among other things, half a bagel for breakfast, as it was sitting out on the counter. For my plate I used one I found also on the counter, covered in crumbs. (The other plate I found, filled with veggies, was allowed to stay out for our rodent friend. I'm not entirely heartless, after all.)

Forget to wash your dishes--it happens; no matter. Eat all the yoghurt leaving me with naught but half a stale bagel for breakfast. But please, starve this cute little mouse. Why should he eat like a king whilst my ribs still show.

I just finished clean up for dinner at Seneca Falls.

I'd been sceptical about the claim that dinner clean up is a four hour job (two people for two hours), and usually it wouldn't be--yesterday's I think would have been about one hour total. But today they made a mess. I've helped do dinner clean up for groups of 70+ people, and this meal for ~20 impressed me. There just kept being more stuff.

Two pots still have burnt stuff on the bottom. One is mostly clean, and the other Michael suggests leaving for the person who burnt whatever it was.