Illness

Working with so much money, I've learned to despise the paper form of currency. Money is dirty, fragile, easy to loose, and it can spread all sorts of ills (I've been informed that if one handles cocaine, then money, the next people who touch the money may fail a drug test!). One of my coworkers said that the tellers and the first to get all of the sicknesses going around. So naturally something has been going around and the tellers are dropping like flies. The branch has been very un-busy this week-- perhaps to do with the new onslaught of fires are the loads of ash in the air, and possible also because some head cold is going around. I always subconsciously tied sickness to icky, cold weather, however the weather has remained stubbornly beautiful (although now it gets fairly cold at night).

The ash-- how quickly I forgot how awful it is. Since we leave our windows open, our floor quickly turned colors. Charles took it upon himself to clean the floor, and after mopping if three times gave up. So when everyone started sneezing, I figured it had something to do with the ash. But when the sneezing didn't stop and only got worse, I had to succumb to defeat and focus on getting better.

Which means that I missed Halloween weekend (woohoo!). My coworkers warned me about it-- police come in from surrounding counties and the State troupers are called in for crowd control. Over 30,000 come to Isla Vista (IV) to party on Halloween (which is a week long celebration here). Parking becomes a nightmare, and the only way to get a spot is to just not leave. The frat next door was selling parking spots for the evening for $60 a piece. The rodes are closed and the only ones allowed into IV are those whose license states an address in IV. So Charles and I stayed in and tried to sleep through the noise of yelling and parties and loud music. It is strongly my opinion that Halloween is a holiday for children and watching scary movies while handing out candy-- not the drunken spectacle it has become here.

So I will celebrate Halloween in my own way-- were having a costume contest at work and I plan on winning dressed as a pirate. Hopefully I'll be well by Wednesday.