February 12, 2000

Had a hell of a day today. We put one of our books out, which meant that all day I was editing and formatting without a break. It's now 7 pm and I just sent it off to the printer, yay for me. Keith called me from the mall (he said he was doing some shopping but he wouldn't tell me what for -- woo-hoo!) and I told him I want to go out for steak tonight. He said, OK.

So apart from the steak and the potential Valentine's Day gift, the other good part about my day was that the radio played one of my requests again. I know this sounds silly, but I always get all excited whenever the radio plays my request. It feels like they're playing it especially for me. I'm really batting 1.000 this week, too, because I called in yesterday to request "Hit the Road, Jack" for the Ken Griffey theme, and then today I called in to request Supertramp, and they played that too. Go me.

Probably nobody else in my age bracket in the entire world is a big Supertramp fan, but I really love their "Breakfast in America" album. Mom had it and she always played it when I was a kid, which may have something to do with it. I also love Paul McCartney's "Tug of War" for pretty much the same reason. Good thing Mom wasn't a Yanni fan.

Payroll woes. I called Northwestern yesterday to find out where the hell my W-2 form is, since by law they were supposed to send it out by January 31. The first time I called, last week or so, they told me that they sent all W-2s for graduated students to their "home address." OK, for me that's back in Ohio, so I called Mom and told her to be on the lookout for it. On Monday she called me and told me it hadn't showed up yet, and I should call Northwestern back and harass them about it (after having dealt with their financial offices for four years, we're used to this sort of thing).

So, I called them back.

FINANCIAL AID LADY
(sounds irritated at having had to pick up the phone) Yeah. This is Financial Aid. What do you want?

ME
Uh, hi. I graduated in June and I don't know where my W-2 form is. Is this the right office to call?

LADY
Yeah.

ME
Uh, OK. Can you tell me where it went? My name is Jan Bednarczuk, and my social is--

LADY
Hold on. I gotta bring up the....

ME
...

LADY
Yeah. The other screen. Yep. Hate computers. There we go.

MY BRAIN
I went to this school?

LADY
What's your social again?

ME
Uh, that would be My Social Security Number, that's with a 9.

LADY
Uh-huh. There you are. You livin' on Pratt Court in Evanston?

ME
Uh. No. I lived there two years ago.

LADY
Uh-huh. Yeah. Your W-2 went there.

ME
...

LADY
...

ME
Did it come back?

LADY
I dunno.

ME
Uh. Do you want my new address so you can send it to me here?

LADY
Oh, I guess we could do that. Sure. Lemme pull up the, you know, other screen.

ME
That's great.

(five minutes later)

LADY
Sorry about that, it crashed.

ME
It's OK.

MY BRAIN
It will never be OK again.

LADY
OK, what's your address?

ME
My Address, that's with an A, Seattle Washington.

LADY
S-E-A-T-L-E?

ME
No, you want two T's in there.

LADY
Seattle with two T's, OK. Is that in.... uh....

ME
Washington?

LADY
Yeah. That's it.

ME
...

LADY
We'll send it out in a couple days. Bye.

So maybe I can do my taxes sometime soon. Oh, boy.

THE FORUM: Where do you like to eat dinner?

THE FORUM: Interesting commentary on voting

MORE FORUM: It's Leo-bashin' time!

EVEN MORE FORUM: Apparently everybody knows some really gross jokes.

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