“How can you read this? It has no PICTURES!” Name the quoted source and character - bonus points to whoever recalls the clever comeback...

So yeah, once again I apologize for the lack of pictures (and of my spare time to post them). I was feeling kind of tired and sickish today, although my sore throat feels better now. The weather wasn’t quite as cold, and I took the Metro to work this morning, sparing myself some exposure. Anyway, since I do actually HAVE the pictures, I guess I rationalize postponing them since I know I can always come back to them, whereas my thoughts are flighty things that I’ve got to write down quick before they disappear. And you’ve got to remember that I was introduced to journal-writing in ye olde times, when all journals were written by hand and pictures were put in the ancient dust-covered photograph albums next to the family Bible. Some of my fellow Barlow Centerians have already informed me that my own digital camera is still rather behind in the times, with its inability to focus clearly on distant objects, zoom in and out like a racer car in a commercial, and function without alerting everyone within a 20-foot radius by a loud “ker-chick!” and flash that an old-fashioned, poor-quality photograph has just been taken. But it has kept working so far (bless its heart!), so I will try not to complain too much.

Today was the first day wherein I tackled the phone duty responsibility at work; I had wanted to wait until I could attend a second training session before starting up, but the next training session for all the other interns (who weren’t there last week when I received my own personal stress—um, training—session) was on Monday, and apparently the phone duty shift for today COULD NOT WAIT. So guess who was the ONLY intern who was, um, “trained”? Right. Me. Uh-huh.

So Addie, the Intern coordinator, had told me phone duty would be two hours MWF and one hour TTh, which cheered me up considerably, since, after all, what’s the worst that could happen in an hour? Then I checked in with our receptionist this morning to make sure...and she told me I would be working from noon to 2 pm. Ker-thunk. That was my heart sinking into my shoes.

At noon, I went down, but due to a meeting getting out it was really about 12:15 pm when I got behind the desk and the secretary left. She was answering the phone pretty much constantly every few seconds before she left, so I was terrified. Speaking a mile a minute (honestly, she speaks faster and more aggressively than any other person in the office, and possibly than any other person I know), she gave me a barrage of last-second instructions, all of which I could have followed up with a lot of questions, but didn’t, as I could tell she didn’t want to hear them and wasn’t going to slow down anyway to explain. So I nodded, grinned, sweated, and focused so hard on trying to appear as if I was thoroughly paying attention that I actually failed to really, uh, pay attention.

But then she left. It was me and the phone. How I glared at that phone. I prayed, I pleaded, I promised it cookies if it would not ring for the whole two hours. It was good at first. For the whole first hour, I hardly got any calls. The ones that I did get were fairly easy to handle, and I became a little more comfortable with transferring calls and looking up people on the many confusing information sheets provided at the desk. Not to say that I was perfect. There were a few flubs as I transferred calls to people who weren’t in their offices (but how was I supposed to know that they weren’t in?!), to voicemail, or—in one or two sad cases where I never found out the consequences—accidentally hung up on the party! I was really upset for a while about this, particularly since the callers had seemed nice and friendly, but gave myself a little pep talk shortly thereafter, with the following points of encouragement:

· No matter what happens, it is ONLY a phone call.
· In the worst possible scenario, I could ask the caller to call again later when the real receptionist is in (p.s. There is also some elaborate way to put them on hold and call the receptionist on her cell phone or on an extension and somehow transfer the call to her and yet still be able to talk with her and transfer the call to another person again... Needless to say, I much prefer the former method, and have a feeling that most other people do as well).
· It WAS my first day and I did have a sore throat—it’s okay if I messed up.
· It’s only two hours, and it’s only once a week at the most. Actually, I don’t have to do it at all next week because there are four other interns now, and none of us works on Friday, so we alternate M-Th. Yeah!!!

The second hour got a little crazier, both in the number and type of calls. I got calls about random things that I vaguely remembered being warned about in the crash training session course a week ago. For example, our number is one digit away from the number for the Peter Pan Peanut Butter company, and YES! I got a call about that very organization!!!! It was an old-sounding lady wanting to know if her Peter Pan peanut butter jar was being recalled for salmonella. Ummmmm..... Fortunately, I remembered that the secretary had the PPPB company’s number written down in the phone notebook, so I went searching for it madly (WHY can you never find anything when you desperately urgently NEED it!!?!?), flipping through the book several times while trying to explain the mix-up to the lady. At LAST I found the number, gave it to her, and tranquility was restored!

Another funny one was a guy calling SPECIFICALLY to get the number for the National Gallery of Art. Like the National Museum of Women in the Arts was a perfectly logical and reasonable place to go for such a thing. Fortunately again, this apparently happens all the time, and the receptionist had the number written on a Post-it note by the computer. Cha-ching!

By the end of the second hour, I was attempting to cast spells on the telephone to make it shut up, and on myself as well to make it possible for me to concentrate on my reading, my homework, my work, ANYTHING but the fact that I just KNEW that telephone was going to ring in the next second.... It was really quite nerve-wracking.

And then 2 pm came. And NO receptionist. 2:15 came. Nothing (by way of the receptionist, that is. I was getting (and loathing) plenty of calls). 2:25? Nada. Jane, the assistant to the director, a friendly but quiet lady who never fails to smile or say “Hi” to me in the mornings, walked by and asked me if the receptionist was coming back. I said, “I hope so!” 2:30. Then, at LAST, the phone rang and it was SHE! Hallelujah! She said she was coming up, and then hung up. And then it was like another 6/7 minutes before she appeared. She was smiling and cheerful, and congratulated me on surviving my first day, and then she told me that she had not even left the museum for lunch, just in case I needed to call her. As I look back on it, this was actually her way of doing me a favor and trying to be nice, but at the time I was rather upset at knowing that she COULD have come up to relieve me at 2 pm and chose for some reason or other not to, as well as at my having to work an extra hour-and-a-half past the time limit Addie had given me. But I was also SO RELIEVED to see her that I ignored my frustrations, and thanked her very much for coming back to take over. I have been praying that she and I would get along better and she would be in a good mood, so I feel blessed that Heavenly Father seems to be answering my prayers. Now all I need to do is strive to keep my part of the bargain by being cheerful, prompt, and as knowledgeable as I can. Without stressing myself out about it too much, cause after all, it’s JUST A PHONE CALL.

A few other things I experienced while on phone duty:

1. Most people calling in are either informed about what they want (meaning I don’t have to be the smart one—they tell me where to transfer the calls or who they want to speak with), or uninformed but nice and pleasant, and—this is important—slow talkers. I like this a lot, as it gives me a chance to evaluate the situation, double-check my number sheets, and take my time in transferring or looking up something or doing what needs to be done.

2. As a receptionist, people expect you to know EVERYTHING about the museum. Half of the questions were about stuff that anyone could go and look up on the website (Web site...if you’re Michelle), but of course, if you’re the receptionist, people assume you already know.

3. The 4th floor seems pretty remote and shabby, and the back part of it where my office and our junky tiny lunch room and cranky printer (which is named “Poundc@ke,” oddly enough) actually fits this description well, but there’s also a display room with art and a Library with books and stuff on display. Which is kind of neat—I’ll have to take a look in there sometime! Particularly when there are all these people coming up to look at it and ask ME questions about it!

Before I finish up, I wanted to say thanks especially to M.A. and the Ultimate Banana for commenting on my last two posts. For a few agonizing hours, I was afraid you had all abandoned me after the three-day crisis wherein there was no wireless!!! The comments, even the short ones, do buoy my spirits considerably, and you’d be surprised how inordinately proud I am of the fact that at least one loving person has commented on each and every post I have here. Also, I was quite excited to see this morning that Daniel has become a follower; yeah for my family and how much they love me!!!! Now if only I could convince Mom and Joseph that my ramblings are worth subscribing to... But until that day, I suppose Hoosier and Kirstiloo can be counted on to provide truthful reports of my proceedings :)

I love you all. Have a great Friday! (Sigh, yes, it IS Friday now. Shall the post-midnight postings never end!?)