Ginny and I watched The Chipmunk Adventure many, many times as children. My dad had this super-anal-organized thing going on with our VHS tapes, and if I remember correctly, The Chipmunk Adventure was on #17, “Children’s Cartoons.” Though it may have been #11. Hmm.

So yeah anyway, we loved that movie. I mean, seriously, what’s not to love about a movie where a bunch of Chipmunks and Chipettes go on a hot-air balloon race around the world with less than 24 hours’ notice and are obliviously smuggling diamonds and cash in little Chipmunk and Chipette dolls that were also made with less than 24 hours’ notice, not to mention the whole part that there’s a contact in every city where they’re supposed to stop, again, on less than 24 hours’ notice? Plus, the dolls are in weird hidden locations like under the ocean in the wreckage of a pirate ship, and in some kind of a post that you pass by in a gondola, and on some kind of weight-activated temple lever system. That is outstanding. Oooh ooh and remember when the Chipmunks got kidnapped by the island natives who want to sacrifice Theodore on the full moon, and Alvin tries to negotiate his way out of it by giving them all of his A t-shirts and his boombox, but instead of letting him go all the natives are now running around town in A shirts? Oooh and the part where the boy prince wants to add Brittany to his harem? And how awesome are Klaus and Claudia and Sophie the purse Yorkie with their magical 80s style? My favorite Claudia moment is when she’s riding an exercise bike all up in her matching pink 80s workout ensemble, complete with everpresent cigarette. And Klaus? Well crap, Klaus is just awesome. Though kind of a pussy.

And anyway, how in the hell did a bunch of chipmunks magically learn how to pilot hot-air balloons in a day?

BUT WAIT! Don’t forget that in the midst of their diamond-smuggling race around the world, the Chipmunks and Chipettes took some time to stop off in Athens to determine who could out rock-and-roll whom. That’s pretty much the crowning moment of the entire movie. I have probably watched that musical number 5,000 times in my life.

My best friend Holly and I along with either fifth-wheel friend Adalie, Holly’s little sister Michelle, or Ginny would frequently play The Chipmunk Adventure, along with the movie if possible. I always got to be Brittany, because, well, Brittany was the coolest (I mean, seriously, LEGWARMERS!) and I was That Kid. Holly had to be Jeanette because she had dark hair. Adalie/Michelle/Ginny had to be chunky geeky Eleanor because Holly and I had Brittany and Jeanette’s lines down cold, and besides, we weren’t about to be Eleanor. I vividly remember our portrayal of the infamous Athens rock-and-roll-off, where Holly and I found some way to lean off the couches in her basement without tipping them over. That was our equivalent of the Chipmunks and Chipettes standing on the baskets of their hot-air balloons singing at each other as they both departed Athens. Um, also on one of those occasions we threw apricot pits at the wall to represent when the penguins at the South Pole saved the Chipettes by throwing snowballs at the Interpol agents (or were they secret diamond operatives?) hanging off the balloon basket. Holly’s mom found those pits a few days later and was not pleased.

Do the Chipettes even have parents? Or parent-type people? IMDB says their last name is Miller which makes me wonder if they are somehow related to crazy-ass Miss Miller the babysitter. In any case, they did not have to call Dave Seville in the middle of the night in some fancy European boudoir in order to trick him into saying all the words they needed to splice a tape together to dupe Miss Miller into letting them go to Europe on their own. They just magically got to go.

Ginny called me a few months ago from Wal*Mart to freak out about how she’d just found The Chipmunk Adventure on DVD in the cheap bin. I asked her to get me a copy too and because she’s awesome, she did exactly that. I finally watched it this weekend for the first time in years and am happy to say that, in my opinion, it stood up to the test of time.

Exactly how dorky am I if I admit that I kind of want the soundtrack? Those are some kickin’ 80s tunes, y’all. (Hey family – it’s available on Amazon. Christmas idea!)

Okay, guys, I’m about to really go under. And I am not sure that I will be able to emerge again for at least the next three weeks or so.

It’s 9:30. I’m still at work. I was here until 7:30 last night. I am hoping with all my heart that I can take tomorrow afternoon off, but it’s all going to depend on what I can get done in the next 18 hours or so. I’m sitting here making extra copies of sections of training manuals to supplement the old training manuals that don’t have these sections so that people who don’t get the new training manuals don’t get shafted during training next week. I’m praying that the copier doesn’t run out of paper because I am on the last ream and we haven’t had more delivered yet. I have two hours of advance training in the morning for some staff members who will not be here on Monday so that they don’t fall behind and can catch right up on Tuesday when they are back. I am not actually a trainer or anything quite yet, but I know enough that I think I can lead them through.

Even though these three weeks of training and deployment have literally been scheduled since June, I am having staff members show up left and right who have no idea what’s going on and, in fact, may not even realize we’re undergoing a data conversion. So I’ve been trying to get everyone straight and make accommodations for those people who need them when it’s appropriate. One of my two consultants got reassigned to another project and so now I have a new consultant on the project whom I’ve never met or spoken to and she’s in LA where the last guy was coming from Texas. So I need to make new hotel reservations for her that will include a weekend and our sales rep at the hotel hasn’t gotten back to me and I fear there will be no room at the inn and I will have to scramble to get something else set up. At least my main consultant, who’s awesome and has been working with us since May, is still with us and has his hotel stuff all straight.

I’ve been checking with IT constantly to make sure that the data submission is going smoothly and to remind them to turn off the current systems for at least the duration of the data freeze. I have been asking them 8,000,000 questions about things. I’ve been answering questions and providing supplemental auxiliary tables and conversion instructions for the programmer in South Carolina when necessary. I had to have our IT people reinstall the software on all 25 training computers earlier this week and right now I am afraid they aren’t working properly so in a few minutes I have to go over to the lab and start checking the workstations to make sure things are good, and put in an emergency support call if they aren’t good.

I am sending emails and phone calls like mad to remind people not to add or change anything in the current systems, and to tell them about the training agenda next week, and when it starts and ends and where to go and what to wear and what to bring. I’ve been reminding them about the deployment agenda and helping people figure out exactly what applies to them and helping other people decide if they can be out of the office on X day or schedule a meeting at Y time. I need to take care of things like these workbooks, and antibacterial wipes for the computer lab, and coffee service for Monday, and a billion other things. I’ve had to shuffle things around several times for the upper level administrators because they’re super busy and don’t have a lot of control over their schedules. We have more flexibility but it’s still tough sometimes to make sure I’m not scheduling things against each other. I’m trying to help everyone else avoid getting stressed out so that this goes as smoothly as possible.

They’ve been saying for months that it’s my job to worry, and let me tell you, I am doing a bang-up job of it. I kind of feel like I’m planning a wedding. Actually, I think that planning a wedding might be pretty easy compared to this. Oh man, I’m tired already.

Wish me luck. I think I am going to need a lot of it.

It is really, really weird to see my high school on the national news.

MRSA has been a topic of conversation in my family lately after a volleyball player in Jamie’s district was diagnosed. On Monday afternoon my mom called me to tell me that one of Jay’s classmates had died from complications from the infection. Jamie called me herself a few times that night, feeling sad about the whole thing and scared about the health issues. She was not very close with Ashton, but one of her best friends was very close with him and took the news hard. I asked what other kids at school were saying and she said there were bulletins flying around MySpace saying that the school was trying to kill them and that they were going to have a protest at the flagpole at 8 the next morning. I thought, sure, that’ll happen, and went to bed.

Late on Tuesday morning, Jamie sent an email from school to me, Mom, and Dad, telling us that she was out at the flagpole to pray and to support her friends, but that she was not involved with the protest in any way. She called me later to tell me that they’d been held in first period all morning; the school claimed it was so students signing out were easy to locate, but I’m pretty sure they wanted to keep the kids in a controlled environment to avoid a riot. She said there was a rumor school would be closed on Wednesday, but she wasn’t sure if it was true or not.

If you’ve watched any national news since Tuesday evening, you know what happened next. The superintendent closed all of the schools in the county on Wednesday. They hired outside services to clean and disinfect the schools with confirmed MRSA cases and brought in county janitors to clean the rest of the schools. And AP picked up the story and I saw my high school on national television.

I went to a fairly small high school out in the country, one that until this week was mostly in the news because lots of its students are killed in car accidents every year. In my senior yearbook picture of some group I was in (maybe yearbook staff?), I’m sitting on top of that brick sign. I walked under those weird white overhang thingies every day for four years. Ginny and Sammi graduated from there. It is supremely weird to see Katie Couric talking about my dinky unremarkable high school.

I’m sure it’s even weirder for Jamie, who’s still a student there. She lost a classmate. Between friends, sports, and strength & conditioning classes, she’s around athletes all day long, and people keep saying that athletes are at higher risk. She stayed home yesterday while people in hazmat suits fogged her classrooms. There have been news crews all over campus.

It’s been just one strange and sad thing in what has been for me a week full of strange, sad, and kind of sucky things.

I would like to make an Out of Office auto response for Outlook that says:

I am not able to respond to email because I do not care about your needs.

I hate it when I can’t sleep. It makes everything seem worse somehow.