I bailed on my volunteer obligation tonight and I think I'm going to bail on the thing tomorrow.

I feel very stupid about not doing the tomorrow one; basically I would be saying, no, I don't want to go see the first production of this (apparently glorious) 300-year-old opera, I want to stay home and watch my (new! shiny!) Firefly DVDs. But that really is how I feel as of right now. Well, I'll make up my mind tomorrow. Bleh.

So, this crotchety guy at the BEMF was complaining about cellphones (because a friend of his was having an obnoxious, loud, TMI conversation right in the entry to the exhibition space), which, whatever, everyone does it (although I would guess that this particular cell-phone abusing person would have found some stupid way to create drama around herself even if she were restricted to the use of pay phones, telegrams, or smoke signals; she just seemed like that sort of person).

Anyhow, then he started ripping on the internet, and I Could Not Let That Stand. I said something along the lines of "I think the internet's done me more good than harm and I've made lots of great friends because of it." And he said (and of course you could hear it coming) "They don't count -- they're just virtual friends." And I went off, or rather I would have done if I were the type to go off, but since I'm not I just politely but very firmly corrected him and said that I was hurt that he would speak of my friends that way. Which actually seemed to make a huge impression on him and he apologized profusely, which made me realize I'd gotten a little too serious over this and laugh it all off, and then we had a brief discussion about what kind of friends I had through the internet and who I knew in real life and who I didn't know if real life and why. Anyhow, it was an odd little interaction, but I'm kind of glad it happened.

Also, I went bra shopping, and I have reached the disheartening conclusion that there is no bra made to fit me. No bra, anywhere! I think it's the barrel-chestedness. I need a bra with longer sides.

1. Someone tried to rob my bank!

2. I really don't want to go to the Early Music Festival tomorrow. I am halfway tempted to just not show up. But I want to go to the opera Saturday night, so I will suck it up.

3. I am continuing to watch The 4400, although in some ways it is super-cheese deluxe. I hate, hate, HATE the female lead. With everyone else I think, maybe it's the terrible dialogue (and god, some of the dialogue is terrible -- who introduces herself as "the family black sheep?") that makes him/her sound like a complete idiot, but with her I'm pretty sure it's just atrocious acting. I like the plots, though, and some of the characters have potential, and there is a supercute Evil Baby.

4. Still cold at work. And today I'm wearing a sweater. It's 52 outside and raining. It's JUNE 16th! Tomorrow's high is supposed to be 62, which is 15 degrees off average. Gah.

5. Got my farmshare, which contains a beautiful lettuce, more lettuce, spinach, lettuce, and radishes. Damn you, winter! Where are my strawberries?! (On the plus side, the newsletter says that our obscenely cold spring means a fabulous sugar snap pea harvest. Mmmmm.)

6. After picking up the farmshare, I tried to walk from the pickup spot to the bus to work, and got hopelessly lost all over Roxbury and JP. Oops. Probably should have, you know, looked at a map (now that I have looked I know my bus was like a five-ten minute walk from the farmshare place). Still, I saw parts of the city I do not usually see.

7. Just finished reading Diana Wynne Jones' Dalemark Quartet. I love these books, and I think the ending of the last one is just fantastic, although perhaps too crowded for some. A lot happens in the last 20 pages or so, and a lot of loose ends are wrapped up, but it still winds up feeling like the story's just beginning, and it's terribly exciting.

8. OK, time to leave work now. Soon I will be home with warm pajamas and duvets and things, hurrah!

So, I had misgivings about working with the BEMF after the volunteer meeting and my mysteriously-gained volunteer-team captaincy, and my first volunteer shift has only intensified those misgivings. My shift was at First Lutheran Church, maybe half to three quarters of a mile from the main nerve center of the festival (in the Radisson). I stopped at the Radisson to see if there was anything I needed to pick up; they gave me a nametag and said Barney should have everything else. "Do you know Barney?" the guy behind the counter asked. I did not know Barney.

Anyhow, I headed over to the church where the master class I was going to be working was taking place. I was supposed to get there at 10:30, half an hour before the class started. I got there a little early; the church was locked. I ran into another lost-looking person (reasonably good-looking guy about my age) in the courtyard. Our conversation:

He: So, are you here for the master class?
Me: I'm supposed to be volunteering for it, but I have no idea what's going on.
He: I've been hired to accompany, and they just mailed the music to me last Friday. When I was at Eastman [peripherally related anecdote]....

Yeah, buddy, I'm impressed that you went to Eastman; I'm less impressed that you can't go three sentences without mentioning it. Anyhow, we got into the church, and Barney showed up, and I said I was there to help, and he said he needed me to pick up some boxes of books (the humongous festival program) from the Radisson. I was, understandably, annoyed that I had to walk all the way back over to the Radisson and then back with a box full of books. When I got over there, though, they actually gave me two boxes of books and a dolly to carry them on. I then had to wheel said dolly all the way back to the church. So that sucked.

When I got back to the church I walked into the entryway (narthex?) where Barney had set up some tables to sell the passes and books, and there were his cell phone and all the cash he had collected just lying out on the table, and Barney was nowhere to be seen. Great. I debated borrowing a few bucks from the cash pile, but decided to be honest. Oh, also we were not keeping any kind of track of the number of passes or books we sold, so we could totally have been pocketing that money as well.

Then the master class was incredibly boring besides. I had originally signed up to work an entirely different master class with people I'd seen do master classes before, but that got moved or something and the one I ended up working was not so great.

Also, almost no one is dressing according to the dress code. I am pretty sure they never told the people who did not come to the volunteer meeting (i.e. at least half of the volunteers) that there even was a dress code. Tomorrow, I will not be following the dress code.

So. Not an auspicious beginning. I can't imagine I'll ever do this again, and I may end up writing a letter complaining about it.

Now I'm really tired from dragging those farking books over a half-mile of brick sidewalks. And I have to pick up my farm share and I have to unpack a bunch of journals at work. Gah.