Princesses Require Air Conditioning. And Low-Fat Ice Cream.

So I am back from Tucson. If you ever have the chance to go... don't bother. Unless you feel the need to run from over-conditioned hotels to air-conditioned cars trying to beat your sweat glands before they realize that HOLY FUCK it's 99 degrees out, and it's only May!

Also, go if you want to deal with lots of old people driving like REALLY old people.

Get off the damn road and let us youngin's drive. You don't get two lanes just because you're old enough to have babysat my grandmother.

The training was fine, although the woman who was training me was more into showing off 5 foot high piles of spreadsheets that she has compiled for my boss in the past, than she was into showing me how to actually retrieve the reports I would need. When I asked what time I should get there in the morning, she was like, “Oh, whenever....” so I asked what time she normally started to work, and she said, “Oh, about quarter to five.”

....

“A.M.?” I finally squeaked.

“Yes! But you can show up whenever. I'm something of a workaholic,” she added, kindly. Which was the biggest, fattest understatement of THE YEAR, as I came to understand, seeing as how she's on the computer all night and all weekend, just doing reports and triple-checking everyone else's work. Given that we are doing basically the same job, I am a little nervous that she has set the bar rather high for the amount of work that can be expected out of a supposed 35 hour work week. We'll see. I am debating setting up a cot in my new office, just in case.

And possibly importing a case of Jamo to keep me company as I sludge my way through an endless amount of sales reports.

The hotel, I must give props to, however, because they use halogen bulbs in their lamps, instead of 60 watts. Go conservation! Unfortunately, they only had two lamps in the whole room, neither of which gave off as much light as a 60 watt bulb (or so it felt) so from about 7:00 P.M. on, I was in darkness.

But I did manage to make it through most of PopCo, despite the lack of light, and it is really good, so far. Much better than I expected. If you are all about deep, illegal-substance-induced conversations about conspiracy theories, big brother, and mathematical theorems, this book is for you!

This weekend was going to be fun. Saturday I went to try on my... dum dum dum, wedding dress, which just arrived! Hooray! I was a pretty pretty princess, in a pretty pretty gown... except apparently there's been a few too many crème soufles (or trips to Cold Stone) in the kingdom, and the pretty pretty princess has turned into quite a plump princess, and while this does wonders for my boobs (they grew! For the first time EVER! SCORE!), I was barely able to squeeze into the most important dress I will ever wear in my whole life. I came smooshing out at all the wrong points.

Ew.

“Can you let it out?” asked my mother, carefully.

“Erm,” said the saleswoman, looking at the intricate French lace on the bodice.

“Ha ha,” I said, wishing to die, right there on the pedestal, in front of all of the other stupidly perfect and skinny brides walking through the salon, JUDGING. Because that is what they do. That is how it works. You do your hair and makeup extra prettily, and then go in and look at dresses, supposedly focusing on the ones on the rack, but really just scoping out the women in the 3-way mirrors, taking copious mental notes of exactly what You Will Certainly Not Do, once you are on the pedestal, yourself.

So that wasn't IDEAL, but I suppose I get to spend the summer losing extra poundage. Perhaps that will happen naturally from hauling 10 metric tons of Excel spreadsheets to the recycling bin in the new office, every day.

I can hope.