Yulecon and some Speculating

Here is a delightful photo of me at an Anime Convention. I'm so glad we could get the butt-crack in the frame. Look to the left of me.

I thought it was interesting that the American Airlines Convention Center that we stayed in was built in 1957 as a stewardess training center. It was a nice place, but the room was so small that I was embarrassed to later see the guy who checked us in because he knew I was a sucker.

We were somewhere near Irving in Tarrant County.

All of that was fact, now on to speculation. Recently, the Goodwill in Sweetwater changed staff, in a "They cleaned house" sort of way, you know what I mean? I figured something must have gone down, because the two main people who had been there for years and years were suddenly gone and the whole store was drastically reconfigured. Soon after this happened, I asked one of the new clerks if the other two still worked there and she politely told me the store had changed management. This was maybe three months or so ago.

Yesterday, I was in there looking for a bed frame and I was waiting for the customer in front of me to check out so I could ask a question (Do you have any bed frames?). A harried looking man resembling Ed Begley, Jr. came from the back, or really the north room, where I've noticed a mountain of clothing-stuffed trash bags rising nearly to the ceiling. His name tag said he was some kind of manager and I didn't recognize him as a regular employee. He told the pretty, older clerk, "I'm going to save that upstairs room for Mr. So-and-so to see on Friday when he comes here to inspect. It's unbelievable." And he didn't mean in a good way. He conveyed in his demeanor that it was such a God-awful mess that a book could be written on it. The clerk said, "Oh, I could give him a personal tour", expressing that if he thought that was bad, she could show him some other areas that would make his skin peel off and remove all hope from mankind. That was my take, anyway. It would be interesting to know the whole story, but then I would have to ask people questions and write on a pad, so you could see how that would just be inconvenient. For me.

I heard last month that the Hobbs School will be closing after this academic year. I was told that Ricky Williams announced it at homecoming. I have not confirmed this with the school. The school office window has 1897 - 2011 written on it in paint, though, and that would only be appropriate if the school were closing. They've been decorating the front nicely, doing some gardening and putting messages in the fence with colorful cups. I don't know if that's done by the school or a local alumni committee. Perhaps I might call the school or the Sweetwater ISD to see what's going on. I theorize that the schools who used to send students to Hobbs decided that they could do the program on their own campus or within their own district and hold on to the funding. There is not a bit of fact to that statement, it came straight from my head.