Mostly Popcorn and Movies

Well October 3rd was my first solo popcorn shift, and it didn't do too well. Basically, in the hour and a half that I was alone up there on the cart, the only things that didn't go wrong were that the kegs didn't blow, and the butter didn't run out. That was about it. It was not a fun day. Rachel invited me along to go see Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D, and even though I'm not a huge Toy Story fan, I decided it was necessary in order to have a better ending to the day. So I traipsed off to Downtown Disney alone (because everybody else was still working, or, in DeAnna's case, has a phone that my phone hates and refuses to call....), looked around, spent a ton of time in the Christmas store, and bought myself a peanut butter hot fudge sundae at Ghirardelli's (I found out we get cast discount there; yay!). Then I headed over to the theatre, where DeAnna was already waiting because she'd been there for hours already, too (which I would have known and we could've hung out if my phone wasn't being a snob about her phone). We watched the movies, which I can appreciate more now than I did back then, even though I'm still not gung-ho about them (but I never realized before that Buzz does the Star Trek hand thing when he leaves), and headed home.

The next day was my popcorn stocker shift, and that was an even worse day than the previous one. It was nothing major, just a lot of little things that built up for a very frustrating day. Patrick made it a bit better, though. I'd given him a copy of the Evil Dead: The Musical soundtrack, and we geek about things in the GT office a lot. Anyway, so I'm cleaning out the popcorn kettle, silently cursing my life (because I was onstage, and therefore can't loudly curse my life, which I might've done otherwise), not paying attention to my surroundings. All of a sudden from behind me comes a creepy voice that says, "Join us." Clearly, since this is one of the major phrases from Evil Dead, this is Patrick. However, since my mind doesn't quite work that fast, I shriek like a small child and whip around, nearly falling off the milk crate I need to stand on to clean in the process. I think he found it amusing. Anyway, so that made my night slightly better, and then I was late to movie night when it was supposed to be my pick, so I ended up running in partway through Anchorman, and we're watching my pick this week. Whatever.

PM cash went a lot more smoothly. I got out on time, nothing weird happened, and Craig was training a couple of the new girls on stocking, so not only did I never run out of anything, but I was never really alone, either. And they're both really nice girls, too, so it's not like we stand up there and don't talk to each other. At games night, we played Pictionary. Any of my family members will recall that Tiff and I are quite fantastic at Pictionary, and can leave others sitting choking on our proverbial dust. Well, apparently that ONLY applies to Tiff and I, because my team had only made it a quarter of the way around the board on pity points by the time one of the other teams won (and the other team wasn't far behind them). So it can be deduced that I'm incapable of playing Pictionary well with someone I don't share a freaky mind connection with, and that two years of expensive drawing lessons mean nothing when you have to try to get a group of Canadians to say 'North Dakota.'

I had Tuesday off, so I dragged Rob around Future World in EPCOT so that he could get an internal map going to be able to give guests directions when they're lost at our pavilion because they missed the turn for The Land or Imagination. We probably spent about 3 or 4 hours doing that, and then met up with Rachel and DeAnna when they got off work. We grabbed a quick snack from the bakery in France, and then wandered a little bit. Rob had never done the Maelstrom in Norway or the boat ride in Mexico, so we did both of those. By the way, the refurbishing of the Mexico ride is fantastic. It now features Donald, Jose, and Panchito instead of the Creepy Disembodied Voice. Then it was time to head over to Patterson (housing complex) for the Dragon Swing, a diversity celebration focused on China. It involved free food, so we were totally all for it. Characters were there, and Rachel had her camera, so there are pictures of us with Mulan and Chip and Dale somewhere on her SD card. There were Chinese acrobats there, too, who admittedly weren't so impressive with their tumbling after having seen as many acro routines as I have. So yeah, that was fun. Then, everyone had been talking for a while about a movie night at the apartment of the Heather who works in attractions. She was inviting people over for Rent. Most of you are aware that I'm none too fond of Rent (especially given my opinions on Adam Pascal), so I wasn't planning on going. But we were already at Patterson, and I didn't feel like going home, so I tagged along anyway. I think I might've regretted it for the rest of my life if I hadn't gone. It was SO much fun. First of all, I love Heather! She's so fantastic and sweet, and she loves musicals. Second, when other people arrived, it was declared that if you knew the words, you were expected to sing. Man, I haven't sung like that in a long time. It felt so awesome. And we had an absolute blast, though I think we might've scared Heather's boyfriend, Bryce, a little bit, and I think Rhonda managed to fall asleep for a few minutes somehow... This week we're doing Hairspray. Should be awesome.

Wednesday was Blizzard Beach day with Rob and Rachel. It was SO hot out, and we burnt our feet quite a few times on areas where the walkways weren't wet. We had a lot of fun on the racing slides, especially the toboggan-type ones. I think Rob won every race... I got a bit more sun, which made me very happy even if I do still feel like I glow in the dark compared to everyone else here. And it wasn't too crowded, either, which was really great.

Thursday I was back in the restaurant as a seater. Nothing too fascinating there. Yesterday kind of shocked me, though. I was restaurant stocker, and everyone on podium knows that this is the Worst Shift Ever. You'll remember my description from the last time, with the constant cutlery runs and bread stocks and everything. Well, nothing went wrong with this shift, and I was never really flying by the seat of my pants. In fact, that was slightly annoying, because I could accomplish everything I needed to in 15 minutes, even though it felt like it should've taken 40. Patrick attempted to scare me in the restaurant, but it totally didn't work because I'm a lot more aware there than I am at popcorn, in the dark, when no one else is supposed to be around. I barely had to do bread before the end of the night, the dining room never fully ran out of silverware, I always had time to do plates, there were lots of stacks of folded napkins, and the red wine room stayed fairly clean. I got out pretty much exactly on time! And Sean told me I was pretty much the best stocker ever (which I hope the managers didn't hear, because I want as few of those shifts as possible). The only thing that sucked was that the first bus was so crowded that I sat an extra 20 minutes at the bus stop so that I could potentially get a seat (which I only did because Nykki somehow got on before me and saved me a seat). Getting on the bus can be rather violent. It's like a slightly tamer version of a Black Friday at Wal-Mart, I think. I stepped on at least five people because I couldn't help it since I was being shoved into these people from all other sides. I barely even have to walk up to the bus itself because the crowd will just carry me up there by brute force. It's unpleasant, yes, but I'll get used to it after a while.

And that's about it for now. Popcorn this afternoon, and then next week I start training on Assigning, which is the job where you decide which parties get sat where and at exactly what time. I'm excited.