the price of vanity: $25 per year

Well, I was all set to be in a foul mood.

Although by and large, things went okay for me at work this week, there were a number of small incidents that sucked – for instance, a woman not calling me when she said she would; for instance, spending 7.5 hours on reviewing hideous emails between feuding spouses; for instance, having nothing to do for most of Friday and then having three emergency calls after all the lawyers had gone to the county bar association’s crab feast. Etc.

I was looking forward to teaching tonight. The summer’s almost over, so I guessed that a lot of my ladies would come back tonight and be ready to relax. There was a concert scheduled in the studio for 7:00, and since my class ended at 6:30, I think whoever planned this assumed that the space would be equally available for class and concert. When I arrived at 5:00, all the people performing in the concert were already there, practicing (well, mostly gossiping, some practicing, you know theater people) (I’m allowed to say that because I was one once) in the studio. I rolled out my mat and started to get set up.

The front desk person came in and said that she hadn’t realized the performers would need to warm up and practice before the concert, and after much hemming and hawing, asked if it would be okay with me if class was just called off. It pretty much wasn’t okay with me. If they had given me (and my potential students) some notice – this concert has been promoted by the studio for well over a month now - I couldn’t have cared less if they’d cancelled, but doing so 25 minutes before class was pretty crappy. I didn’t have a choice, of course, so I rolled up my mat and left.

This arose from poor planning. Someone didn’t ask the performers somewhere along the line what they needed of the space before the concert, i.e. whether they could come prepared or if they needed to be in the room for, oh, I don’t know, two full hours before the concert began.

As I drove home, I was not only annoyed about this particular instance, but very worried about something else coming up. A local teacher has, via some flyers I found in the studio, partnered with the studio to do her one-woman teacher training program one weekend a month there. I like this teacher and think it’s great that she’s working with the studio, but all three of my weekly classes take place during her time slots for her training. I asked the front desk person how they had planned to work this out, if perhaps training was going to take place in the aesthetics room behind the counter (some smaller programs have been there in the past), and the front desk person didn’t know. I had presumed that the owner had thought about this problem already and found a solution, and I put it out of my mind. Until now. If similar lack of arrangements were made for the space, I will be really pissed off, because that’s all of my classes once a month that will just be booted.

So all that sucked, and it’s Friday and my shoulders are still up around my ears, and I got home and thought I would probably just have a Klondike bar for dinner and drink white zin until I pass out. And then I checked the mail, and my entire bad mood fell away.

My vanity plates came!

I’ve wanted vanity plates probably since I could read, and at least since I was 8 or 9 years old. I even considered, as a child, moving to California for vanity plate reasons only, because their license plates have 8 characters to play with instead of most of the other states’ 7. I’ve had a clear idea of the plate that I want for two or three years now, and when my renewal came up this year I was finally able to plan ahead enough to order them. I still got them on the STUPID 1812 plate that’s replacing all the regular Maryland plates for the next several years, but I don’t care, I got them and put them on my car and I’m so happy!

(I apologize, but I decided that actually putting a picture of my license plate on this blog would be too much of an anonymity breach. Just trust that I’m really pleased about the plates and that they are totally awesome.)

Although I still think I might have that Klondike bar. Before dinner. Mmm.