Miss Information is annoyed by an annual summer ritual
A few weeks ago, Miss Information's neighbours had a big loud party. Although there was variation earlier in the evening, between the hours of midnight and 3:30 a.m. when Miss Information inserted ear plugs, they opted to play and sing along drunkenly with only three songs. They were:
Don't Stop Believing by Journey,
I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas and something by Abba that Miss Information has blocked from her memory but let's just say it was
Dancing Queen. It was hell. Even worse whenever the Journey song started (approximately every 15 minutes) everyone acted like they hadn't heard it for years and squealed with delight. It was like a spectacularly annoying episode of
Glee.
So, Miss Information was overjoyed when these particular neighbours took over the planning for the annual block party. Miss Information hates the block party so she sends representatives instead of attending herself.
This year she was represented at the party by her nieces--Ms Information and the Duchess of Information. They had a great time. There was a fire truck and everything. Meanwhile Miss Information busied herself getting dressed up for an evening out. She put on her fancy summer outfit and fabulous shoes. While she was getting herself together one of the hunky firemen had decided it would be fun to open the fire hydrant and flood the street. This made it difficult for someone who was dressed in fabulous shoes to cross the road. Miss Information walked to a dry part of the block and crossed, followed closely by the Duchess of Information who was armed with a water cannon. Miss Information has no power over this child but asked her nicely to quit spraying her with water. It might have worked, too--except that the neighbours, who are such idiots that they can't recognize someone who is dressed for something nicer than a dumbass block party, started cheering her on.
"Get 'er, Duchess! Get 'er good! Good work, Duchess! Atta Girl! Soak 'er good."
Miss Information made it to her car, soggy and terribly upset. Ok it was just water and her clothes dried in an hour but she would like to believe that on a civilized block grown adults do not encourage little kids with water cannons to attack people who are dressed for a party.
Next year, she is taking her nice clothes in a bag and changing in a gas station.
The nice neighbourhood surprises Miss Information again
A few weeks ago, Miss Information reported on an incident where a patron complained that Miss Information was too germ-ridden to touch her precious library card. It turns out that not all of the users are phobic about dirt.
It began, as so many dreadful things do, with a cherubic child approaching the desk. "I have something to tell you," she announced gravely.
"Oh, yes, what would that be, dear?" asked Miss Information hoping that the child would tell her about a book or something. Not likely.
"There's poo! Poo! All over the floor!"
Oh. Ick. Miss Information investigated and sure enough there was poo! Poo! All over the floor!
Piles, in fact, making a trail towards the washroom that went right through the browsing section of the library. Extremely unpleasant. The clerk/caretaker cordoned off the area with crime scene tape, the washroom was locked and the cleaners were called to bring their sanitizing equipment. This was around noon. The cleaners didn't come until after the library was closed. This meant that the library was open for about 8 hours with big piles of poo in the middle of the browsing area.
Miss Information was extremely disturbed by this and avoided the poo region as best she could. The patrons, however continued using the browsing area as though it were not covered in hunks of poo. They relaxed on the couches, used their laptops, read magazines all within a few feet of the cordoned-off poo zone. Miss Information wants to clarify. This was not something that could be overlooked. The amount of poo on the floor could have been used to build a life size replica of Michelangelo's David. It was a large amount of poo. Quite unmistakeably poo! Poo! All over the floor!
Since the people using the browsing section could not possibly have been unaware of the poo, sharing the area with excrement was a price they were willing to pay in order to sit on the comfortable couches.
Miss Information repeats, ick. This behaviour is just beyond baffling.
Miss Information is annoyed ceremonially
For the past 5 deeply traumatic semesters, Miss Information has sworn up and down that she will not attend her graduation/commencement/convocation. Then she learned through the grapevine, that her mother would be heartbroken if she did not witness the whole stupid thing. Miss Information got the message and invited her 9 year old niece, Ms Information, to come as well.
On the day of the event, Miss Information put on her most fabulous shoes because what else is anyone going to see? Stupid academic regalia! Of course, it's summer so the entire campus is basically a construction site and Miss Information had some serious second thoughts about wearing 3 inch stiletto heels pretty quickly.
Nevertheless she made it to the room to pick up her gown. Mm...polyester...sweet. Then she went somewhere else (really? that far, huh?) to sign in. After hours of pointless standing in alphabetical order, the graduates paraded across the quad. Slowly. It had rained the previous night and Miss Information had to keep stopping to yank her shoes out of the grass.
The ceremony was probably long and boring, but Miss Information didn't pay that much attention because she was imagining how embarrassing it would be to trip on her shoes when she climbed onto the stage. She was number 528 out of about 650 graduates and when the university provost asked her what her future plans were, she replied that she was going to change her damn shoes.
But really, she was pleased that she survived and she'd done it all for her mother and her niece. When she met them in the quad, Ms Information asked why she hadn't gone up on the stage. She'd fallen asleep and missed that part. Mrs Information was uncharacteristically silent about the event and Miss Information suspects that she probably nodded off too.
Miss Information is trying to look on the bright side. She now has a really spiffy diploma, she got to see some people and most importantly, she never has to do this again.
