Friday, November 13, 2015

Week 45 - Friends and Drama

The highlight of the week was getting to spend time with Cindy, my quilter/knitter friend from several of my Jean Moss trips. Cindy was going to be in Nebraska for a quilting retreat and was coming to Lincoln to see the International Quilt Study Center so I was meeting her for dinner on Wednesday. I ducked out of work early when she called at 4:00 and Anne, who has been on the receiving end of Cindy’s yarn boxes and so wanted to meet her, and I met Cindy for a lovely dinner at the original location of Misty’s

Misty’s is an old Lincoln staple – the kind of restaurant that’s like stepping back in time 50 years, complete with round leather booths and 50’s décor. I’d only ever eaten sandwiches at lunch at the downtown location and it was a 900 calorie day so I was going for the filet mignon. OMG! It tasted absolutely amazing, as did the green beans I got in an attempt to eat healthier than a potato. The liberal amount of bacon the beans were cooked with may have killed that but at least I was trying. I could have been eating saltines and would have enjoyed it just because I was with Cindy. It was all too short a visit as she had an hour’s drive to get to her conference so wanted to get on the road.

I was happy to get an email later in the week that Cindy had decided to get a hotel room near the airport on Saturday night because she had a very early flight on Sunday. I gladly offered to pick her up and play. We went to Penzey’s and World Market (my first time since they reopened in Omaha after being gone for a few years) then lingered over dinner at Noodles. The game was on so we had the place to ourselves and chatted for a long time. It was lovely.

On a not so lovely note, we had some drama brewing over water aerobics. I’ve been going religiously for almost ten years and cannot imagine life without swimming with my friends in the pool. But a new Aquatics person had been hired at campus rec and it had been clear for awhile that the focus was shifting from us to the kids who were paying $60 each for four weeks of swimming lessons. We’d had them in the pool since it reopened but we were usually in the deep end while they were being taught in the shallow but this year we were all crammed in, fighting for real estate in the shallow end and competing for showers in the locker room. Rather than do a better job of scheduling, the powers that be decided they should just cut the number of classes to 2 per week down from 4. And one of the nights they picked was Monday, when I have a conflict. Unacceptable!

After the announcement via email and our responses being ignored for more than a week, we requested a meeting to discuss it. The brand new aquatics person and her boss (the instigator of all this) met us before class on Thursday in the locker room. It did not go well. The boss was downright rude and snippy plus told us the water aerobics instructors were under qualified RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR FAVORITE INSTRUCTOR! I was shocked at the lack of professionalism and the politician like double speak. We also got zero consideration. It was clear she’d already made up her mind to cut the classes. We were all frustrated and vowed to attend the Campus Rec Advisory Committee meeting the next week to plead our case but there seemed to be little hope.

Otherwise the week was uneventful. I started Monday with Power Pump again, helped by the time change so getting up at 4:45 wasn’t so brutal. I finished the offboarding training with my twelfth session on Tuesday morning, did my monthly reports and got a flu shot. I didn’t sleep through until my alarm went off until Friday so was more tired with each passing day. A relaxing weekend helped me regain my energy.

The best part of the weekend was doing some leg work to plan my next knitting trip, which included calling Paul and Joanne in New Mexico (friends from our Jean Moss trips) to pick their brains on their recent trip to the Shetland Islands for Wool week. Emailing were flying all day Sunday and by the end of the day, I’d committed to this trip along with Gail and Eileen (2 of my Canadian knitter friends), Cindy and her friend Erica, who was a total hoot on the France trip, and Lori from the Wahoo knitters, who will be my roomie. Unfortunately Sue can’t go but it’s hard to feel sorry for her when it’s because she’ll be just coming back from a trip to Switzerland with her husband. But alas, we do feel bad and will miss her a ton. But nonetheless I’m very excited to go. Now to make it to June without my head bursting from excitement. : )

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