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I'm starting my new job at the Capitol at the end of the month, so I had to go in to our Costume Design Center to have my current clothes re-issued and get fitted for new clothes. Why, you might ask, would my old clothes have to be taken back and issued again? Because every job at CW has a different costume allotment, and not every item from an Orientation Interpreter allotment necessarily fits a Site Interpreter allotment. Also, they use a computerized system to track everything that goes in for cleaning, and making you bring all your items back in allows them to see if you've actually been bringing them in to be cleaned on a regular basis.

This is where I always run into trouble. I'm lazy, I'm neglectful, and I tend to wear the same outfit for an entire week. I'd also gotten edgy about actually bringing my clothes to the laundry because of a couple of prior run-ins with Costume (it's best if I don't describe the details). I've tried to do a better job of regularly turning in my laundry in the past few months, but I still lapse from time to time. The end result was that the supervisor who examined my allotment was not very happy with what she saw. She was so unhappy, in fact, that she decided the entire batch needed to be sent to the laundry, and if any of the items came back as worn out I'd have to pay for them. This is not good, considering a single shirt can cost as much as $120. I won't know the results of the cleaning until Thursday morning; I'm praying it doesn't result in too large a dent in my wallet.

Fortunately, once the tension of that situation dissipated (at one point, the supervisor stated she was sick to her stomach and had to go sit down and recover), I moved on to the more enjoyable part of the appointment: getting fitted for new clothes. As badly as I've treated my past outfits, you'd think they'd be reluctant to issue me anything else; maybe they've decided giving me nicer stuff will provide me with more incentive to be careful. xp Anyway, the same supervisor who previously expressed disgust with my wardrobe also did the fitting, and she seemed to be in a much better mood by then. I tried on two very nice long coats, and also a couple of new pairs of breeches that are much better than anything I've got right now. I also got a new pair of shoes and some new stockings, and got back three of my older items that were in decent enough shape to be worn in public. By the time I finally got out of there, after a little more than an hour and a half, I felt better than when I arrived; but I'm still kind of worried about the rest of my wardrobe.