Land whale

Apparently that's what I (and a lot of other women) are, according to an animal-activism group that shall not be named. (They are the same allegedly-animal-welfare folks who came up with Sea Kittens).

I hate this. I HATE this. The implication of the campaign is that if we all became vegetarians, *poof,* we'd magically become thin (and, apparently, not-disgusting for these types to look at).

Well, the argument is that it's "good" for us - the campaign is called something like "Save the Whales" (That's so cute I just threw up a little).

Here's the crux of my problem with a lot of what these so-called progressive groups do: telling someone they're disgusting (and that's the implication of the ad campaign; I don't care how beautiful REAL whales might be) and that they "need" to change for their own good is not a useful way of promoting your cause.

Because people like me will feel both anger and alienation - not that I ever supported this group that shall not be named to begin with - and some people will feel sad.

Here's a clue, for those of you who have never been overweight:

We know we're fat.
Telling us how much we disgust you does not help.
Terms like, "lardass," "whale," "fatso," "blubber-butt," "fatty fatty 2 by 4" - they DO NOT HELP.

The same people who would be aghast at calling a developmentally disabled child a "retard" (and rightly so) see nothing wrong with using pejoratives towards fat people.

(I use "fat people" as a neutral term. I know some people might see it as a pejorative but I'm not gonna go down the PC road of "people of size" or some other lunacy)

Even if you think it's a moral issue (and I know some people who do. And it makes me crazy, because you hear people spouting crap like, "If you just stopped drinking sugary soda" - well, I don't drink sugary soda NOW. Or "if you just got your butt off the sofa" - I work out an hour a day PLUS I am on my feet a couple other hours teaching) demeaning someone in that way does not help.

Even telling us "It would be good for you to lose some weight" is not that helpful - unless you are my doctor or spouse, you don't have the right to say that to me. YES, DAMMIT, I knot it would be "good" for me to lose some weight. Don't you realize I've been working on that, with limited success, for ten years or more?

Seriously? I wouldn't be at all surprised if a fat person went on a shooting rampage, and in the note they left behind, indicated how very sick they were of being judged by people who didn't even know them, of being told how they're lazy and greedy and lack self-control and on and on.

And even beyond that - this alleged animal-rights group is known for not caring much about people. So why are they even meddling? If they want to save the whales, they should do things like, I don't know, go after the Russian and Japanese trawlers that are actually killing actual whales. But of course that's hard, and it's a lot easier and more fun to be rude to overweight women.

(And of course it's WOMEN. I'm not even going to rant about the insane standards-of-beauty that exist for women in our culture, where it's considered correct in some circles to rip a certain patch of body hair out by its roots, so you're bald as an egg in that area and happen to look like a pre-pubescent girl)

I don't know. I'm bracing for a lot more hatred towards people whose BMIs are greater than 22 (as mine is) as the health-care-insurance reform plan drags on. Because "everyone knows" that all fat people cost so much in medical care.

Well, except for folks like me. Who just made her $500 annual insurance deductible last week, and that only because I need expensive vials of allergy serum made up a couple times a year.

I have to say, I now apologize to any smokers I may have vilified in my younger and stupider days. It's really irritating to be declared An Enemy of the People based on what might otherwise be "neutral" personal choices.

Oh back to school, back to school...

There's a Henry James quotation that goes, "Summer afternoon, summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language."

Well, I think we've established here I'm not particularly a fan of summer.

But I do love back to school. Always have. Even as a kid, when kids were supposed to groan and roll their eyes over the event, I secretly loved it.

I loved everything to do with it - the chance to learn new things, to have a schedule again, to (maybe) make a friend in class this year (and later on: maybe to make a BOYfriend in class).

I loved all the back-to-school planning: buying new shoes (a "good" pair of oxfords and a pair of tennis shoes for gym). Buying new clothes (at least a few). All of the school supplies: folders and crayons and pencils and everything all NEW, all unmarked-on and ready to be used the first time.

I loved going to the school (I don't know if all school districts did this but mine did) a few days early with my parents to find out who my "homeroom" teacher and other teachers were, and to see the list of kids in my class, and to figure out where my classrooms were - the halls still mostly empty and echoey, still kind of smelling of summer, but with that distinct feel of anticipation that back-to-school brought.

I also liked back-to-school because it felt like the beginning of fall. I have always loved fall more than the other seasons.

And so back-to-school felt like all kinds of good things starting up. The world seemed full of hope.

And I still feel that way, even now that I'm on the other side of the desk (and I don't get long summers off because I choose to teach summers). The world seems full of hope again. Two of the textbooks I have are new editions (even though at least one doesn't seem to have changed much, at least I can replace the old broken-spined copy I've been using for a few years).

Last week I cleaned my office over at school - I have a clear desktop to work on again, all of the old papers from the summer are gone. Things feel like a fresh start. (One of the best parts of being a professor, I think, is every four months or so you get a fresh start with new classes.)

Even though the economy still kind of sucks, and even though we've weathered some bad stuff (a big budget cut, a top administrator leaving under a bit of a cloud), the world still feels filled with hope.

9 am today I start my first class.

More on power.

(Not to be confused with "moron power." Heh.)

Dave, you're right. I didn't think about the "takers" on the "public" side of things when I was composing my screed about the "Let them eat cake" sorts in bureaucracies and leadership positions. But it is true. I see it myself a lot of the time.

An example: Two students come in on two different days for advisement.

The first student shows up, hands me copies of his transcripts, hands me a filled-out plan-of-study, says, "I still need to take classes u, v, w, x, y, and z for my major, and I know class z is only offered in the fall, and class v is only offered in the spring." And he suggests a tentative schedule. And maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Maybe there's a conflict of times. Or maybe he's overambitious and doesn't know the little quirks of the departments (like, you shouldn't take Techniques in Wildlife Research and Organic Chemistry the same semester, because the labs in both are super-hard-intensive and it will drive you nuts), so I can give him some pointers and some advice.

And after a few minutes of work and consultation, we hit on a schedule that will work for him, that will get him further down the road he needs to be on. And he thanks me and heads out on his way.

The second student shows up, nothing in hand. No transcripts. No plan-of-study. I ask him if he knows what he wants to take and he shrugs. I ask him what he's already taken and he can't remember. I ask him for his student ID number so I can at least look up his transcript online, and he fumbles in his wallet for several minutes before finding the card with the ID.

So then I have to either go and get a copy of the blank plan-of-study, or if I'm lucky, I have a spare one in my office. So I begin suggesting classes. Well, class a is out because it meets at 8 am, and he "doesn't do mornings." And class b, there's too much math, he doesn't want that right now. And everything I suggest is shot down, complained about, met with a blank look or shrug. After twice as much time (at least) than I took with the first student, I cobble together a schedule for the guy. Guy grabs his schedule and slumps out, no thanks, no recognition of the time put in. And then he comes back at the end of the semester to gripe at me for giving him a "hard" schedule - or he comes back and tells me he's up a creek, because he won't graduate "on time" and it turns out it's because he either dropped a couple of the classes because they were "boring" or he skipped one repeatedly and failed.

And yeah. Which person do you want to help?

I tell myself I'm "in it" for that first guy - that the people who know what they're doing and where they're going and how to get there are the ones that I'm here for, and the sad-sacks who really just want to extend adolescence by four more years before reality hits them upside they head, helping them is what I get paid for.

But I can see cynicism creeping in to the life of a public servant when they have to deal with too many people in that second category.

I once had a MERP (minority-recruitment program; I think that's the acronym the school used for it) student working with me, who had previously worked in a public-aid office as a clerk. He once told me one of the reasons he was going back to college to get a second degree (in biology) was that he never ever wanted to work in public-aid again, it was too depressing. (I think he actually wound up going to Physician Assistant school. So he might still be having to deal with sad-sacks from time to time, but at least a lot of the time he's probably dealing with decent people).

I guess the moral of the story? There's a lot of potential bad in everyone, and each one of us has to guard ourselves to try not to let it come out. I know I've stifled myself many a time when some student came unprepared to my office. Or demanded a make-up exam and then never showed at the scheduled time. Or whatever.

RIP, Les Paul.

I don't know much about guitars, but I know enough to know that Les Paul was a certified genius - that he changed the face of jazz and what eventually became rock and roll because of his invention. And his musical skill. I wonder how many kids became guitarists after hearing Les Paul records? A lot, I bet.

Apparently he also invented (or at least, had a big hand in the development of) multi-track recording, also an important innovation.

From what I've heard of the man, it seems he had a good life. He used his skill and talent to do something that made lots of people very happy. (Apparently he was still performing not that long before the end of his life - he loved performing, I guess.)

Other people with more knowledge of the man than I will probably say it better, but I know that Les Paul was tremendously important to popular music.

Why I will never run for office...

...or buck to be a Dean, or want some kind of high-level, highly-placed position:

Watching what news I watched over break, something crystallized in my mind that had been floating around there for a while:

"They don't care about us."

Oh, I'm not just talking about Congress, though the whole mess with them voting appropriations for new private jets (when I know people who feel right now that they can't scrape together the cost of a coach ticket to go visit grandparents) was the catalyst.

I've seen it time and again. In government, both local and national. In university bureaucracies. In church leadership, even.

There is a subset of people - hell, maybe it could be ALL people, I don't know - who, when they get a little power, LOVE that power. ADORE that power. See that that power entitles them to things the peons below them aren't worthy of.

And so they do two things: first, they do everything they can to hang on to that power. And second, they start believing that they do, in fact, deserve special treatment.

And I don't want to risk becoming that person.

I've even seen it, as I said, in the power-structure of some churches. Perhaps some people are more immune to developing that mindset - being steeped as they are in the "Servant Leadership" idea that Jesus espoused. But I have seen people who, upon getting some power, wanted MORE. And they wanted to be the only ones WITH power - no compromise.

I think in part the church split my congregation weathered some five years ago was a result of a few individuals getting some power, looking around them, and going, "Why are these old farts still getting their way at all? Why can't we remake the services to be exactly what we want? Why don't we get to spend the church's money on exactly what we want?" And so they left, to start a new church. And there's still bitterness. And people at my church are still asking themselves, "What did we do as a congregation to deserve this?" (And my answer is: nothing. It is the nature of people to behave that way; we were just unfortunate bystanders).

I've also seen it in city government, where ridiculous things happened because a small cabal of people got together and convinced themselves that this thing would be a good idea, that it would build a "lasting name" for them, that people generations down the road would thankfully remember those farsighted councilpeople for doing what they did. And then the thing they want turns out to be a giant boondoggle, a waste of tax dollars, and something the tax base of the community remembers the councilpeople's names for - but mainly so they can NOT vote for them next go-round.

And at universities. I will hasten to say that where I am now is better than most. But I do remember at another school, trying to help an undergrad (I was a grad student at the time) who was reduced to tears because she had a problem, and the different office workers kept sending her to different offices; no one seemed to want to actually HELP. (And I learned from that: if you can't immediately help someone, but think another office can, CALL that office to (a) verify that they can help and (b) alert them that they will NEED to help. [and now, as a faculty member, I may carry a bit more clout than some student walking into the office asking them to help them]).

I've also had the experience of some petty bureaucrat, who really hasn't much power, using what power he or she has to make the person that it is their job to serve miserable. The whole "jump through the hoops, monkey, and then we'll see if I help you" phenomenon.

And it all disgusts me. We were put here to help one another. Yes, it is sometimes inconvenient. (And I probably need to set better boundaries for myself; it is really not unreasonable for me to expect to finish my lunch before dropping everything else to help a student). But it seems to me to be a part of human nature: that power makes people do unsavory things. It makes them think they're better than others. And that's why I'm getting so fed up with Congress. And why I'm still hurting about the church split. And why I have simply refused to do anything other than the "grassroots" type of stuff - like picking up trash or working in the food bank - rather than fundraising or trying to work stuff out with the town council or trying to get laws changed, because dealing with people who have a little power and like to wield it frustrates me too much. I will happily clean up the same stretch of road every quarter, but trying to get the litter ordinances changed - forget it.

Because "they" don't care about "us." As much as I hate "us" and "them" terminology, I think there's nugget of truth to it here.

Oh, you know you were thinking it....

....about the beer summit: XKCD's take.

I laughed out loud for about five minutes about that.

And it makes me sad that a few of my Internet haunts, if I were to post a link to that, I'd be immediately SHUNNED as an "unbeliever" in the Greatness...that I would even dare to laugh at a crude stickman-depiction of him.

(My main thought on the whole issue? While my complexion is different from that of Prof. Gates, and therefore my experience may be different, I do think it is a reminder to all of us academic types that arrogance is certainly unbecoming, and that we should remember that in the Grand Scheme of Things, we are actually several (or more than several) rungs below the cops in terms of People Who Make the Community Work Smoothly.

Oh, and it's really ill-advised to make a "yo' mama" joke to a cop. I'm still shaking my head over that.)

Break time!

This one sneaked up on me. Summer semester is done, I have a couple of weeks before fall semester starts. Back at the beginning of the summer I bought tickets (I'm glad I did now, they would have cost more even if I could get them) to go see my folks for about 10 days.

So I won't be here for a while, won't be able to join in on next week's FFOT (and may there only be the minorest of minor things for people to tell to FO).

Tomorrow I leave. Like I said, this break kind of sneaked up on me - I was working like a crazy person and then, bam, Thursday afternoon it was all done. I spent yesterday doing necessary stuff to get ready to go, today I have to prepare a Sunday school lesson and I had vague plans to go over and do some cleaning/reorganization in my office, but I'm really done for two weeks.

And I need this time off. I had one very demanding person in my summer class. They were a decent student but still - it gets old having someone show up at your office every 30 minutes during the day. And I had to stay on my toes because I had a blind student, I had to have everything ready a day or two in advance so I could e-mail it over to Disability Concerns so they could convert it to Braille for him.

Ripped from the headlines...

Two things overheard on Stupid Local News this morning:

1. "The Health-Care Reform bill is back from the dead, they may vote on it before their recess"

Back from the dead? Zombie bills are the worst kind. They lurch around and moan "taaaaaaax dooooooolllllllars, taaaaaaaaax doooooooolllllllars." And you can't kill them; you have to dismember them.


2. More talk about how tanning beds are dangerous and can give you Teh Cancer.

Okay, how long before we see the class-action suit television ads:

"Have you or a loved one been killed, injured, damaged in some way, or had your self-esteem dinged by a TANNING BED? You should know that TANNING BEDS are dangerous and can be known to cause skin cancer, wrinkles, leathery-skin, and other disorders. If you believe you or a loved one have been injured, call Cheatem, Screwem, and Howe, attorneys at law, to join a SPECIAL CLASS-ACTION SUIT!!! Time may be running out!"

(Incidentally, I also expect a class-action suit about Tylenol to be coming sometime soon.)

Oh crikey

Apparently the newest "holier than thou" fad is eschewing air conditioning, because it is "more natural", and it's better for the environment, and it saves you money.

But mainly it allows you to look down your nose at the fools who still do use it. Or that's the tone I get.

Look, if you hate air conditioning (and I know people even here in the sticky South who do), if you don't want to use it, fine, whatever. If you feel it's more natural, fine. Just don't imply that I'm UNNATURAL because I love my A/C.

And don't tell me I'm a bad person because I choose to use it. Don't act like you're partial to some secret Gnostic revelation because you rely on open windows and a fan.

(I would never sleep with open windows and a fan. Reason #1: my neighbors are now fostering a dog that was apparently beaten by its previous owners as it whines most of the night. Reason #2: my bedroom is on the ground floor and every sound I heard, I would imagine was a rapist or burglar cutting the screen on my window to get in and do harm to me).

Don't blame me for destroying the earth. Don't (and this is another one I've heard, though not from this article) tell me I'd "lose weight" if I were subjected to sleeping in an 85 degree room at night, because I'd "eat less" because my body would be "in tune with the seasons."

I got your body being "in tune" right here, buddy.

From the article:

"“In our social circle, use of the air-conditioner is extremely limited,” said Martin Focazio, who lives in Upper Black Eddy, Pa., and commutes into Manhattan four days a week to his job as a digital media strategist. “It’s not like we’re health-nut crazies or a bunch of dirty hippies dancing naked around the fire. We’re all white-collar geeks living an exurban lifestyle. We just all share the philosophy of rolling with the seasons if you can.”

Look, Mr. Focazio, I CAN'T roll with the feckin' season, OK? I spend the summer in a dysphoric haze, hiding out in my dim house (keeping the blinds drawn reduces the amount of heat creeping in). Doing anything wipes me out. I have to work in the summer, have to be productive, so I need to have A/C

And I know, he's probably just sharing it as a point of conversation. But I've seen enough "social circles" where failure to conform in whatever way the conformity goes will get you shunned and proselytized at.

I suspect some of these folks are the same people who respond with arched brow and vaguely condescending tone when I admit to buying my veggies at the grocery store, rather than taking part in a CSA or driving many miles to the nearest farmer's market.

I suspect the folks who go without air conditioning are, by and large, people who don't have to work that hard in the summers. I'm teaching, and teaching at a rate twice as fast as the regular year. I need my sleep, and without air conditioning in the summer, I don't sleep.

And I know that for a fact: a couple years ago my AC system went out and it was a week before I could get it seen to. A week of trying to sleep with sweat running off my body and a big huge box fan blowing next to my bed, making me dream of being attacked by flocks of birds and living in a construction zone. I was miserable and dysphoric and unable to function. I honestly considered, one night, going over to my office and sacking out on the floor - because there was at least air conditioning there.

It would be great if we could all do the "Fermeture Annuelle" thing like they do in France: lock up the doors, stop working, go to the woods or the beach. (After all, Congress does it - probably a throwback to the days when Washington really was swamplike in the summer. I mean in terms of climate, not morals).

But for the vast majority of us, that is not realistic. We can't go off to the Hamptons or the Adirondacks or wherever the privileged people go.

(I do think a lot of this craziness - this making-of-odd-rules and judging people based on choices that SHOULD be seen as morally neutral - comes from the privileged group. If you're a construction worker, you're gonna welcome coming home to AC. If you're teaching summer school like me, being able to come home and sprawl out in a chair with cool air blowing on you after being on your feet for multiple hours is a very welcome thing)

I will say the later part of the article is a bit more balanced: they observe that going ac-free is not for everyone: guests tend to avoid non-air-conditioned houses, and one woman had to take her cat to the vet because it got sick from the excessive heat.

So it's not always smart to shun air conditioning. (What if people were shunning indoor plumbing...)

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do some groups of us choose to avoid modern conveniences and then try to make the rest of us feel like pikers, or slobs, or greed-heads for wanting to take advantage of stuff?

What Sandy said...

If you're not reading "Junkfood Science" (link is in the sidebar over there), Sandy Swarcz has had a great run-down of the whole health-care-change debacle (which, thanks to the CBO, may be dead for now - thank goodness).

Her latest post. I have to say, as one of those supposedly-fat-Americans that this is supposedly being sold to, I have been afraid - very afraid.

I trust my doctor FAR FAR FAR more than I trust some politician to know what's right for me. True, there are bad doctors out there (I quit going to a particular internist after I realized that EVERY STINKING TIME I went in she was pushing weight-loss drugs at me - even when I went in for a flu shot, even after I had told her I was not excessively troubled by my weight, that it didn't seem to handicap me, and that I was exercising and eating healthfully). But I think there are a lot more politicians who don't have the patients' interests at heart - because they don't KNOW the patients the way the doctors do.

The problem with politicians, is that they tend to do one-size-fits-all solutions. If you love Zero Tolerance, you'll love politician-run health care. (Which would probably work out to: Zero Tolerance for people over 75 with cancer. Zero Tolerance for fat people. Zero tolerance for people with Type II diabetes, COPD, heart disease, and other arguably "lifestyle caused" diseases)

I tend to feel that most any time a politician gets his or her nose in something, there are going to be two things that happen: it's going to get more expensive, and it's going to get more restrictive.

So I'm glad and relieved to see that this looks like it's not going to be a reality, at least right now. (As a commentator I heard somewhere said: "The President took six months to pick out a puppy for his family, but he's insisting on health-care reform in 4 weeks or less?!?!")

"It's people!!!!"

Watched "Soylent Green" this afternoon.

Really, really wishing that I had not, now.

Those kind of "modern grubby city dystopia" movies always make me feel bad - twitchy and unhappy and wondering if our future will be something like that. (Why do they always set them in CITIES? If civilization was dying out, I'd be making a break for the countryside, where I might at least have a chance of being able to grow or gather food.)

The saddest part was Sol (oh, has anyone NOT seen this? where this is going to be a spoiler?)


Anyway, he decides he needs to "go home" at the end, after learning the big secret of the movie.

And in this dystopia, there are "death centers" where people can go, lie down, drink some wine (hemlock? I don't know), listen to music, and watch a movie of (now-vanished) nature. And then at the end of the "ceremony," they expire.

And you know? I'm not at all sure that that (well, without the "recycling" at the end) isn't too far off in our own society.

I have really mixed feelings about physician-assisted suicide. On the one hand, I can see people who are in great pain and great suffering not wanting heroic measures done to save their lives - and that's fine; that's what I'd want myself. On the other hand, the idea of deliberately making someone die because they are old, or very sick, or are tired of life...I think that's somewhere we don't want to go as a society. I know if I were a physician, I would not do it. I would talk about DNR orders, and "no heroic measures" and all that, but I would not make the offer of, say, giving an overdose of morphine.

Because I fear that brings on a slippery slope. The option to die could become an obligation to die, and I worry about that. (Especially with the idea of "health care" being seen as a scarce resource)

And no matter how pretty or restful they make it - with colored lights and music and restful movies and all - it's still something that is wrong to me, and something I hope we never go to as a society.

So now I need to go watch something funny and light - maybe pull out my Animaniacs dvds or the Wallace and Gromit videos - so I have something nicer in my head before I go to sleep.

Oh, and it's going to be a while before I can listen to Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony without bad associations. Thanks a lot, "Soylent Green."

Three things...

I received a piece of spam (at my work e-mail address, boo!) that said:

THREE THINGS NEVER TO DO IN BED.

Oh please, I can list those without even thinking very hard. So you won't need to click on any link if you get this spam.

They are:

Cleaning your aquarium
Setting up your potter's wheel and throwing pots
Taking apart and cleaning your lawnmower engine.

You're welcome.

Who knew...

Cookie Monster was a metalhead?



But you know, it kind of fits.

Argh

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

You know it's not going to be a bang-up wonderful day if, within the first half-hour of it, someone shows up at your office, claims that it is NOT their goal in life to make your life difficult, and then proceeds to take up your time until you have to go to your first scheduled task of the day.

I mean, I'm really sorry people have problems and I try to sympathize, but I have work I need to get done, too.

I love this stuff...

To counteract some of my bile of recent days, here is a happy post.

One of the things I love is that there are people out there interested in keeping alive/recreating past musical traditions. I happened - via a chain of YouTube searching - to stumble across the Bratislava (!) Hot Serenaders, doing a song most of us know better from Tiny Tim (or, perhaps, SpongeBob SquarePants):



Hah! I love the monocle on the singer. (I have to admit, though I still love Tiny Tim's version, I like this one better. I could never quite get used to the falsetto).

I LIKE that semi-corny old dance band stuff. It sounds kind of Jeeves-and-Wooster to me, or perhaps like something that Albert Campion would listen to. (From the "classical" world - I love Shostakovich's Jazz Suites, which are somewhat in the same style, but more complex)

Here's more (an unknown, 1920s ("pre Nazi" as they are clear to point out) German tune):



And from a bit later in time (or in "recreated time"), there are the awesome Puppini Sisters, which Ken posted about a while back:



They also do Mr. Sandman:



(If I have any quibbles, it is that they sing just a bit too fast. But otherwise: that kind of close harmony stuff blows me away, partly because I cannot do it.)

Hah - they even do "I Will Survive":



(I don't like this version as well, but that might be partly because it's a live version and the audio is not so good, and they're obviously hamming for the audience).

Thrift and profligacy

I know I've snarked here before about the breathless "Did you know you can save $425 a year by asking your friends to drive you around instead of driving your own car" type thrift-stories.

But it's actually kind of interesting to read about and think about what some people think are good ways to save money. And about what they're willing to spend on (Though there seem to be far fewer stories about how people treat themselves in a civilized manner during this recession).

I get "Real Simple" magazine. (You may laugh at me if you want; I am really not part of the DINK or alpha-mom crowd which seem to be the main demographic base of the magazine. Still, there is something about it that I like).

They featured a story this month featuring ways to "Do It Yourself and Save Big!"

So, here are their ideas, plus my comments:

1. "repair" (actually, unjam) a garbage disposal. They claim a savings of $100 for doing it yourself (it involves pushing the reset button, unplugging it and trying to pull whatever is jammed out with tongs if possible).

I've done this very thing myself. But it is not to save money: it is to save time. Where I live, getting a workman out can be a several-days-long ordeal, even for something as simple as this. So I do it myself, not because of the money issue, but because I'd rather not take a day off, or cancel office hours, or something, to wait on some guy to show up.

2. Groom your dog yourself.

Not applicable; I don't own a dog. Though if I did, I think I'd go for one of the lower-maintenance (all around) mixed breeds, or something like a black lab, that you can pretty easily bathe yourself and that doesn't really need trimming or frou-frou cuts. (And I'd let the vet deal with its nails. Too much chance of hurting the dog if you don't know how to do it right yourself). Besides, black labs, all the ones I've ever known, have been pretty cool dogs.

I don't think I'd want to have a dog that had to go to the hairdresser more often than I do. (Just as I'd never date a man who was prettier than I was.)

3. Rescue jewelry that has fallen down the drain.

Again, done this myself. And again, done it to avoid the agonizing wait on a plumber.

(I have also changed the wax seal on a toilet, and replaced the entire interior "flapper and handle" mechanism myself for the same reasons).

4. Repair a small crack in drywall. Actually, I've repaired a larger-than-small crack. It just takes different supplies: drywall mud and that fiberglass stuff that looks like gauze and provides a sort of base for the mud. It's not that hard.

5. Replace a dead spot on the lawn. Never had to, but I'd rather do it myself. And I'd be more likely to do it by cutting a patch of turf from somewhere inconspicuous and replacing it that way. (I have a St. Augustine grass lawn, which is actually pretty much self-healing. Which makes it awesome. I've never had bare patches in this lawn.)

6. Fix a faucet that spits. Actually, I've used an even easier fix than what they recommend: if you live in hard-water country, you can tie a baggie full of full-strength vinegar over the faucet (or take it apart and soak the aerator in it) and let it dissolve the scale for you. This also works very well on showerheads that don't seem to be giving as much water flow as they should.

7. Replace a doorknob. Never had to do this but if it were an exterior (i.e., security) door, I'd hire someone. I suppose it's not hard but I think I'd rather have a locksmith do that.

8. Secure a window that slides down. Never had to do this, though I'd probably go for an even lower-tech, cheaper solution: get a block of wood the right size to prop the window open to the extent I want it propped open.

9. Brighten stained tile grout (they warn that you will have to do the whole dang room): This is something I'd hire someone for if I wanted it done. I lack the patience necessary to crawl along the floor of my 15' x 10' kitchen scrubbing grout with a toothbrush full of bleach. Or, more likely, I'd just leave the stains be. (I have tan-ish grout in the kitchen; it doesn't show stains too badly).

10. Replace a torn window screen: Done it, don't enjoy it, but would probably do it myself again if I had to.

11. Change a burned-out headlight bulb: Done it, burned my hand badly doing it. From now on, I will let the nice man at my mechanic's do it and pay him.

12. Install new windshield wipers: This is not that hard. I do it myself. Don't most people?

13. Replace a worn-down heel tip: It shows a pair of spike heels the like which I have never owned. I have had "heel taps" replaced on oxfords but as it costs $15 or less to have it done, I take my shoes to the shoe repair shop for that.

14. Repair a broken necklace or bracelet clasp: Yes, but only on costume jewelry. Jewelry with actual value (I own only a few pieces) I would take to a jewelry shop and pay a pro to do it. And if my string of pearls broke, I'd take it to a pro for re-stringing (they are the traditional "knot between each pearl" so restringing would be a major pain)

15. Style your hair in an updo: I don't generally "style" my hair. If I had somewhere REAL fancy to go, that needed a good style, I'd probably pay someone to do an updo for me. Because I'm kind of cack-handed at it.

16. Trim your bangs. I do this, but I prefer to pay someone to, because a few times the result of my doing it myself has been "six-year-old playing with the scissors"

17. Get a reflexology treatment: If I wanted one, I'd have to do it myself. No practitioners in town.

18. Do your own pedicure: More or less, yes. I don't always put polish on, though. But I do it myself not to save the bucks, but because I've heard scary stories of people contracting foot-fungus from poorly cleaned tools. And I don't like strange people touching me.

A couple things they don't list:

changing your own oil - I know how to do this, but I'd rather pay the nice man at my mechanic's the $25 or so to do it for me. Because they can easily safely dispose of the oil. And because the nice man at my mechanic's also checks the other fluids for me while he's at it, and lets me know whether everything looks OK or not.

cooking at home - I do this most all the time. But not because it's cheaper; because I like home cooked food better, and you know that the food you're eating hasn't been spit in, or cooked up by someone with Hep A, or made with some kind of cheap-trust-us mystery oil from China.

cleaning house - lots of my friends hire cleaning people. It is not something I can do. I don't think less of them for it; it's that I personally have privacy issues and the thought of someone else touching and arranging my stuff makes me twitch

yardwork: I could see hiring someone, except I have a super tiny yard, and it just seems easier to take the half-hour or so each week and do it myself.

And then there are the things I choose to spend money on:

1. Fresh fruit and vegetables: If there is something I like, I will buy it. Even if it's expensive. This week sweet cherries are in at the store. I've eaten a pound and a half of them in less than 2 days. I figure, the food is good for me, and I enjoy it, and frankly, it's a treat to have fresh fruits and veggies after having often to depend on stuff in cans or frozen (when things are out of season and either aren't available or are not very good).

2. Packaged salad greens: So I don't have the unpleasant experience of biting down on spinach that I washed and realizing I didn't get every last bit of sand out of it. I wash the supposedly "pre washed" greens but I don't have to do sand and grit patrol on them.

3. Good chocolate. Well, I don't buy Valhrona or Scharffen Berger, partly because I can't find them for sale here in town. But I do buy good dark chocolate and enjoy it.

4. Good tea: I mostly mail order this, but tea is one of the pleasurable things in my life, so I'm willing to spend the money on it. (I'd rather mow my own lawn and be able to afford good tea.)

5. Good soap: I often buy the "artisanal" soaps that some of the frou frou gift shops sell. Because they smell nice. And because they feel nicer than plain old Ivory from the drugstore.

6. Craft supplies: Truly, making stuff is one of the great joys of my life. I think if I didn't do crafts I would be a much less happy and content person. So purchasing quilting fabric when I want to, or buying yarn for a new project - I let myself do it. I have a (slightly flexible) budget I don't go above, but I do buy supplies when I need something or see something I want.

7. Books: Yeah, I know: the library is free. But I have sometimes-somewhat-esoteric taste in books (want to read all of Marjorie Allingham's mysteries? Good luck at finding them in a typical strapped-for-space small town library; most of them probably went out in a book sale 15 years ago). And I sometimes can take a couple months to read a longer book, and the whole "yeah, I'm not done yet, I need to renew" process is a drag.

daily moment of anger

Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's hot, and I'm tired, and I have some very demanding people in my life right now.

This morning's "WTF" came from the news: they were talking about how the Congresscritters wanted to ram home the new healthcare plan before the August recess, so they could go on vacation and not be delayed.

Seeing as there have been times I've delayed vacations - or even a time when a family vacation was CANCELED because my dad was needed to do something at work - this irritates me. Or at least the wording of it and the assumption.

Look, I'm not in favor of any kind of government tinkering with health care, but it looks like we're gonna get it. So I would like AT LEAST for the frickin' Congresscritters to spend ENOUGH FRICKIN' TIME studying the damn thing (which they have apparently exempted themselves from being covered by: lovely) and not just phone it in because the DAMN BEACH IS CALLING.

NO NO NO NO. This is not what you idiots were elected for.

2010 can't come soon enough for me, and 2012 can't come soon enough for me.

What ARROGANCE: "We need to go on vacation so we're just going to push whatever the hell it is through as fast as we can. No matter that it's going to majorly affect the lives of our constituents, our voters, and the people who pay our salaries. Someone break out the Cuervo! It's party time!"

Ugh.

Seriously, I bet most working people out here have stories of vacations delayed or denied because of some project or emergency. Shouldn't we expect the same of our elected officials.

I know this makes......

...me a bad person, but I am really really effing sick and tired of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

sad and angry news

You've probably heard about the creeps (the most g-rated word I can come up with, and it's not strong enough) arrested in Florida for killing a couple that adopted special-needs kids.

Emily said it once before about another situation, but I think it applies here:

The wrong people died.

Seriously. These creeps went into the house of this couple, and in front of several of the kids, murdered the parents in cold blood. A couple of the creeps had apparently worked for the couple. The couple was known to be wealthy, which I suppose ignited the greed and sense of entitlement in the creeps: "Hey, why don't we have that? We want that. Hell, we deserve it, let's go get it."

This just makes me splutter with rage - this couple, from everything I've heard, was doing something to help. To make a positive difference in this world. They were doing the kind of thing I only wish I had the resources, the stamina, and the personal fortitude to do.

And now they're gone. And their 16 kids will have to find new caretakers.

I effin' hate the human race some days.

Mark Steyn

Sums up some of the attitudes that are making me sad, twitchy, and borderline hopeless:

"Now get back to being peasants, peasants, and leave the electricity for your betters".

I admit it. I have a lurking fear that in a few years, there will be new Sumptuary Laws affecting how often ordinary folks can eat meat, drive, have children, turn on the heating or air conditioning, buy new clothes, and on, and on - that our freedom to be the owners of our own lives will be slowly drained away, in the name of Saving The Planet.

While our "betters" still get to have mansions and use all the electricity they want and travel to exotic places and tell the natives there living in poverty how much better off they are living in poverty.

I don't know. What's happening to my country? Some days I wonder if I will recognize it in a few years.

I suppose I could think of an underground movement - of a group of people devoted to still trying to have SOME comfort, driven to barter what skills and goods they have. I suppose in that kind of economy, I'd do pretty well, seeing as I know how to make bread from scratch (I can even make my own starter culture of wild yeast if I had to), and I can sew and knit and crochet and kind-of spin yarn. And I know what wild plants are edible and what ones are poisonous. And I can play music, if we were living high enough on Maslow's hierarchy for music to even matter.

And I theoretically know how to make yogurt (never have done it but know the basic process). And I can make quilts given the supplies. And I know how to make candles. And in theory, soap. (Soap would be one thing that would be very important to me in a post-apocalyptic world: If I can't wash, I don't want to live).

So I don't know. On the one hand, I realize intellectually that I'm doing the same stuff the Bush Fear people were doing a few years ago. On the other hand, I look at Cap and Trade and wonder and worry: how many old folks are going to die because they feel they can't afford to put the heat on in the winter? How many poor families will have to decide between feeding their kids and keeping the house cool in the summer (no, wait: they will probably both be eligible for relief programs, whereas I will not).

I don't know. Maybe I need to learn to make yogurt (and cheese) for real. And learn more useful skills. And get my CPR registration renewed. And just kind of be prepared.

I don't know. I need someone to kind of talk me down from this but I really do have this vision that in a few summers, I won't be able to afford to air condition my house, or I won't be able to afford food at the new cap-and-trade-prices, or that things are just going to go very bad.

Oh ho ho ho

It's been a sad few days - just the heat, and being tired from it, and thinking about stuff, and the stuff in the news.

But this literally made me LOL..

And I don't even like jello shots. (Standard disclaimer: I do not drink, it gives me the migraine. And even if I did, jello shots seem like one of the more unappealing ways to imbibe. But whatever. It's still funny.)

I wonder if he'll do one out of pudding pops next. Mmmm, pudding pops.

Dammit.

I was reading a friend's description of the end of her cat's life...it happened over the weekend.

And now I'm crying again, because of my parents' cat who died last year.

DAMMIT. It has been a year. This should not still upset me. And I should not still be getting sad, some days in church, when I feel that empty spot next to me where my friend Dorothy used to sit.

I think it's partly because I'm distressed from the heat - I get something very like SAD, only in the summers - and because I'm not sleeping well because even running the A/C as cold as I feel I possibly can afford to isn't cool enough for me - that I'm weepy and susceptible to being made sad.

Hot weather sucks. Being alone most of the day (as I am because very few of my colleagues are on campus this summer) sucks. I get inside my head and it's hard to come back out.

Quiet

Yeah, I know, I sometimes get quiet in the summer. There are a couple reasons for that.

First of all, it's hot. It's actually been a bit hotter this summer than some recent summers. And the heat kind of saps my energy - when I come home I just want to do my self-mandated hour of piano practice and then read until it's time for bed.

And second, the summer classes take a lot of my energy. But in a good way. The students are a lot better and more involved (by and large) than they are in the regular semester (especially the Gen Bio non-majors students), and they ask a lot of tough questions and kind of require me to stay on my toes a little more. And it takes a little more energy teaching. But as I said, in a good way. I'd rather have students who ask questions and challenge me and want to know more about stuff and want to know the "why" of stuff instead of people who sit there like passive receivers.

I don't really have any "foolish student stories" either for the summer - aside from that one lazy instance of people thinking they could get away with plagiarized reports (and two of the three came and apologized to me for it later), I don't really have a lot of problems. Which is good. (knocking wood right now, thinking of last summer's debacle with the guy who wanted to claim that he deserved a better grade because "other people" cheated).

So I go in every morning and kind of pour myself out, then go home in the evenings and try to renew for the next day. It's good, just very tiring.

Hopefulness

And so we begin year 234 in this great experiment.

I admit I felt (and still feel from time to time) some pessimism about the path our country is on; it seems that in government, more and more, people are more interested in what perks they can get for themselves than they are in doing what is really and truly right for the nation (or even their own constituents, sometimes).

But then, I look at the people around me, and my optimism is restored. We are a good people. We may have our faults and our downfallings, but we by and large want to do what is right.

I live in a fairly small town. When a family without insurance gets burned out of their house, word goes around - the churches, in particular, mobilize. Lodgings are found for them. People search in their closets for "gently used" clothes in the sizes that the family need. Toys are provided to occupy the children. It is almost like the old story of the Stone Soup - no one initially seems to have much, but they come together and in the end, the family finds themselves with what they need, provided by their neighbors.

Or when someone has massive medical bills, someone will organize a taco sale, or a benefit concert, or an auction of donated items...to try to raise money to help the person.

From time to time, our little local paper will have a grateful letter from someone who had been passing through and whose car broke down. Or who left their wallet at the Chili's. Or who had some medical emergency - and people stepped forward to help. Someone turns in the wallet, a waiter remembers the people commenting on where they were going, hotels are called, the man is reunited with his wallet. Or good Samaritans come to the aid of the person with the broken-down car. Or something.

I think part of it is that in my town at least, people still have somewhat of what I call the "frontier attitude" - the understanding that the government either can't help or can't help soon enough, so people better pull together and help each other out. The whole "grassroots" thing is alive and well here.

There also seems to be an attitude of increasing understanding of the need to take personal responsibility among people. A lot of my friends have been talking about it. A lot of my colleagues - even those that self-identify pretty far to the left end of the political spectrum - they all understand that you should not count on the government for what you can do yourself. (And by the same token: a pretty hearty distaste for excessive government interference in people's lives.)

And there's a certain amount of pride among a couple of my friends, people who fought their way out of welfare and other forms of dependence on the government. There's a pride in being able to support oneself, and a gratitude - a lot of the folks I know who came "from not much" are also big supporters of their churches and other charities - because, as they said, "They were the ones who really stood by me when I was down and out" - there's the idea of paying it back, paying it forward, paying it however - but doing something to help others out.

And so I look around at the people in my town - the people I work with, the people I go to church with, the people in my AAUW group or the beautification council or other groups - and I don't see the sort of clamoring for more supervision, more assistance from the government, that is sometimes claimed of the American people. I also don't see the supposed slack-jawed blankness, the willingness to accept whatever they're told by the media or the politicians or the pundits: even people I know who don't have very advanced "traditional" educations are pretty much critical-thinkers when it comes to stuff like that. ("You have to ask yourself: 'what are they wanting us to believe here?' when you see stuff on the news," as one of the women in my Sunday School class put it one day).

So while I may not have a lot of hope about our current crop of politicians (or CEOs, for that matter), I have enormous hope about the American people - that there will be a groundswell of wanting to get back to work, of avoiding undue interference, of wanting to help on their own terms, without requiring the government to get involved. And may that come to pass. May we have good people, with the best interests of democracy and the nation at heart, who are less interested in being served than in serving, step forward and help us to course-correct.

Happy birthday, America. May we never forget why you were founded and the great freedoms we enjoy because we live here.

No, no, please, no.

I always wind up being some kind of de facto moderator in lots of situations. I think that's because I tend to like most people, and I tend to be a problem solver, and I don't tend to get angry and yell.

Well, I may be getting sucked into another one. I want to resist it but I can't, seeing as one of the parties involved is someone I share a workspace with.

This individual - let's call him X - isn't sharing the workspace totally equally. Some of his stuff is on "my" side, but I've never said anything, because I probably don't use that workspace to the degree he does.

However, he's now decided - since, he is Mr. Important Wrote-Two-Books - that he "deserves" space in one of the other faculty's workspaces as well.

And he moved stuff over there, without asking the faculty member. And talked about "throwing away" stuff that isn't being used - which is stuff that is actually University property, and therefore is illegal to throw away.

Well, when my other colleague - let's call him Y - found out, he got very angry. He called me and a third person (Z) in for a meeting (X is on vacation this week, that's why X wasn't in on the meeting.)

The phrase, "pissy little bitch" may or may not have been used to apply to X. Which makes me both cringe and giggle. Because yeah, some of X's behavior of late could perhaps, at the outside, be described in those terms.

Well, anyway, Y sent an e-mail to X about it. One thing he said? "IF you have issues about how ricki is sharing the space with you, take it up with her."

Sorry, WTF? That wasn't something that came out in our previous meeting. In fact, I had told Y that I had 1/3 of the workspace and X had 2/3 - AND I HAD SHOWN HIM.

So now I'm going to have to deal with X wanting even more of my space. And I'm going to have to deal with the fallout of X being irritated - X can be kind of passive aggressive and take stuff out on people who do NOT deserve it - because he's pissed off at Y, so instead of going and talking to Y he's going to bitch and scream to ME, because that means that he won't have to confront Y.

And you know? I'm done. I'm done with being his "trouble tree." I'm done with listening to all the crap that goes wrong in his life. I'm done with listening to him whine about how he should be entitled to something more than the rest of the faculty get, or to release time from teaching, or some other frakkin' thing because he believes he is more important than us.

(He actually said something along those lines to our secretary - who he has really rubbed the wrong way, as well. I hope she doesn't get fed up and ask for a transfer, or decide she's got enough years in to retire, because I doubt we'd ever get anyone as good as her again).

So if X gets all pissy when he comes back, and starts venting to me about something that does not DIRECTLY concern me, I am going to simply say, "I am busy. You need to go take it up with Y (or Z or whomever)." I am done with this. I am done with having my good moods destroyed, my time sucked away. I am done with being a free therapist for this guy.

Now I just need to stand strong and have the guts to say to him, "I don't want to hear this, this does not concern me, please do not drag me into it" when he starts.

X DID send a rather contrite e-mail in reply, but I'm fearful - because it was so short - that it was him barely controlling anger that will then come out - and be directed at me - when he comes back.

What is the best way to deflect the anger of someone who is angry because they feel they are entitled to something and aren't getting it, and they are taking it out on a person because they are just ANGRY?

I am not good at dealing with that kind of anger - when I get really angry over something, it is usually some injustice, and I try to use that anger as, "This is something that needs to be fixed and you can be the person to try to fix it" and then I calm myself down and call whatever office is screwing over the student (often times I get angry at Financial Aid) and try to discuss it with them and work something out.

When I just get the "free floating" anger - like when someone cuts me off on the road - I tell myself to calm down. I don't go to someone unrelated to the situation and "kick the dog" by screaming at them.

So I don't know how to deal with someone who feels thwarted and is yelling at me to deal with it - do I just sit there and listen and nod and in my head imagine myself walking through a huge sunny quilt shop full of fabric I want to buy, or do I say, "Stop. This is not my fault, do not take it out on me." or do I say, "I'm sorry, I have to be somewhere now" and leave the room (doesn't work if I'm working on research) or do I yell back or do I try to talk soothingly like you would to a snarling dog or do I burst into tears and say, "What do you WANT me to do about this? I have so many things going on in my life right now I can't keep track of all them" or what?

I hate human interaction some times.

It's a day early....

...but Cancer can FOAD.

My mom called last night. One of her best friends has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. My mom's friend is in her early to mid 80s and has had other health issues (she had heart surgery about 10 years ago), and the cancer's started to spread, so she's decided not to have surgery, but rather to use chemo and radiation to try to prolong quality of life for however long it may last.

I respect her decision - I probably would have done the same thing in her place - but it still makes me sad and angry at Cancer.

She did say her doctor was pretty hopeful that some of the newer treatments could help her have good quality of life for a couple more years. And she has a daughter in Houston who is going to set up appointments for her at M.D. Anderson, to see if they have any different advice.

But still, it sucks. I know far too many people who've had cancer, who died of cancer, or who are fighting it now.

GraphJam

It speaks the truth, sometimes:



This happens to me. Or, worse, when I approach a line something will happen to make it suddenly go 10x slower than it was before.

please, people, please

This is one of those issues that I don't know if it's just me and I'm a Bad Person for feeling unhappy/put out by it, or if on the other hand I'm too nice for not saying something about it.

I have an acquaintance. I won't quite call her a friend. She and I have to work together in a volunteer capacity.

Earlier this week, I was involved in a volunteer-group meeting where she was present. I was told, "plan on the meeting being no longer than an hour" which was fine with me, seeing as it was coming at the end of a long day of teaching and research work.

Except. My acquaintance (Let's call her MA just to make it easy) decided at the end of the meeting she needed to "share." She brought up an issue that was IN NO WAY related to the topic of the meeting. (It was about a rather horrifying medical procedure she'd been through, and the aftermath).

Hand to God, it took her 45 minutes to spin out her story.

All the while I was sitting there, thinking:

"shutupshutup please finish up let me go home I'm tired I have to do my piano practice for today I need to wash my hair I'M TIRED I really don't want to be hearing this it's icky and sad and it's making me sad and please please please shutupshutup"

No one else was saying/doing anything, so I just sat there, feeling stricken, occasionally nodding and making little neutral sounds while my mind frantically tried to find one of its happy places to go to.

(This was a very horrifying and graphic description of a botched surgery and its aftermath).

And after I got home, I was sad and twitchy the rest of the day, thinking about the stuff that person had been through. Felt kind of depressed all evening (though that could just be because it is OH MY GOODNESS HOT here right now, and because I'm watching some of the new legislation ram its way through Congress and I'm fearing that next summer, I won't be able to even cool my house to the really-too-toasty-for-me 76* I currently keep it at.) And I had bad dreams - like really bad dreams, like the kind where you call up the people you love next morning just to convince yourself that it really was just a dream and they are in fact still alive, kind of bad dreams.

And I blame my unhappiness partly on this person's frantic need to SHARE.

Look, I don't want to know those kinds of stories. I will ask if I want to know. I feel somewhat offended and taken advantage of that this person used what was supposed to be technically a business meeting to seek attention from others. And to bring the whole room down.

And I never know how to respond to these things.

And I never know if I'm over-reacting to the oversharing. Oh, I never SAY anything, but I sit there feeling overwhelmed and sad and not wanting to listen and wishing I could run far, far away.

And so, here is my question: Am I too selfish with my time, to feel imposed upon because MA needed to tell everyone in the room intimate medical details? Am I being insensitive or unsympathetic? (I wonder at times - and I say this with some trepidation because I know there are people who read this blog from time to time who have relatives who have actually been diagnosed with this - if I could maybe be a wee bit farther along the Asperger's Syndrome spectrum than normal people, because I can't seem to feel content to sit there and nod and smile and tell myself, "Bless her heart, she just needs to share" when someone pulls this. No. I want to stand up, say, "This is making me sad and I don't want to hear it" and walk out and go home instead. But I don't, because I'm a big wussy in some ways.)

Is it normal for people to want to share sad gory details of their life?
Is it normal for other people to willingly be an audience to that?
Am I weird or messed up in the head for being unhappy over that, for feeling like those 45 minutes of my life were stolen from me, for feeling like I have lots of tough stuff that goes on in my life that I NEVER tell ANYONE because I think if I told someone I'd feel like I couldn't handle my own stuff.

Is it wrong for me to feel a little envious of the attention the chronic sharers get? I'd love to have people listening that raptly to me, but....I just can't do that. I can't share all the deep dark stuff in my life.

Oh noes...

Billy Mays is dead.

I know he annoyed the heck out of a lot of people, but there was something (I think) oddly endearing about his crazy, over-the-top sort of pitchman behavior.

The world will be a little less weird (in the good way) without Billy Mays in it.

And here's a comic memorializing him.

(Gale Storm is also dead today. What is going on? If I were a famous person I would be VERY AFRAID right now.)

I can has!

...new storm door.

Yeah, the installers showed up early this morning (45 minutes earlier than they originally told me; luckily I was already up and dressed but had not eaten brekky yet). It was the same couple that installed an appliance for me last winter so I knew they were good. They took great care to do it right, leveling the door in the poor old settled-foundation doorway.

There were a few loud moments - they had to drill out for the lock set (apparently these things come with a couple options. I took the standard key-lock. There is a newer, push-button thing, but it calls for batteries, and I can just see the batteries expiring while I'm gone on vacation and then I can't get back into my house).

I sat and graded this week's papers (and NO PLAGIARIZED LABS, yay) while they worked.

When they got done and had me sign the paperwork, the woman gave me a list of the other things they do.

WINDOWS! They install new windows! So there are people I trust - that would not freak me out to have inside my house (that's a big issue with me) could come and do windows. She said it might take as much as 2 days once everything was ordered.

(It's kind of a pity I made my travel plans already; I might decide to change my train tickets so I come back a little earlier, if I can - and then try to schedule new windows for those couple days before classes start. Or failing that, I have a brief "fall break" in October when it would actually be cooler and would probably be nicer for them to be working).

But anyway. It makes me happy because I had kind of given up on getting new windows, having visions of creepy guys with straggly hair telling my I have pretty teeth or something while they worked. (We have some very odd workmen around here.)

Banish 'em all...

..that's my reaction to Jon Minus Kate Plus Eight Sad Children, the South Carolina Governor, and everyone else who has a position of power, who makes a lot of money, or who gets a lot of respect, who then screws up and melts down on TV and is all "I want everyone to feel SO SORRY for me because I really have such a crap life."

I know, as a Christian, I'm supposed to be forgiving and all, but this kind of crap is starting to make me ill.

My parents have been married 50 years. In that time, neither one ever strayed. Are they that unusual? Are they saints? No. They just figured - I expect - that they each had a good thing and didn't want to screw it up.

I'm not married and I have to admit every new "straying" story makes me sad - makes me wonder if maybe my parents ARE freaks or saints or something else, and it makes me wonder, if I had married M., or D., or any of the other gents in my past, would I be sitting in the shadows crying as he explained how he just "needed something new?"

What is it, people? I realize I have very little experience in this thing called romance, but I don't quite understand how, when you have someone who loves you, that you can hurt that person so badly. Because it seems to me that having an affair behind the person's back is about one of the worst things you can do in a relationship.

I don't know. Once again, I do not understand people and I am probably better off alone.

Something happy

...though in a twisted way, the post right before this one could be classed as happy.

I missed posting this on Father's Day, but that's OK; part of it was that I was on the phone with my own dad. But I do want to share this story; it's one of my favorite memories from that time of my life and, I think, proof of Why My Dad Is Awesome:

I attended one of the "Public Ivy" universities. My dad taught at a much smaller school - it was kind of one step above a community college. I could have gone there for free but he encouraged me to go to the (expensive) "Public Ivy" because they had a much better biology department.

But to try to save some money - and also get done faster - I took a lot of the distribution courses and cognate courses over the summers from his school. They were free, and also they allowed me to get things out of the way.

One big one was Physics. Everyone who knew anything about majoring in science told me "Do not take physics and organic chemistry at the same time; it will make you crazy because of the workload."

So I decided to take Physics in the summer at my dad's school. Physics I one summer; Physics II the next.

Physics I went really well. The teacher was older - I think just a few semesters from retirement. He was a good teacher, and he was easygoing and had a good sense of humor. Also, the topics - vectors and electricity being two I remember - made sense to me and I did well in the class.

Physics II was the next year. This was the year my dad took early retirement, and he had hired me (once my class was out for the day) to help him for a couple hours each day to pack up his office, to pack up the stuff he had bought on grants that was his "personal" lab equipment he could take with him, and also to clean up/clear out the research labs so the new guy would have an easier time setting up. So every day after Physics I went over there, we worked for a while, ate lunch together, and then when he went home, I rode with him.

Well, the first day of Physics II, the prof walked in the room. He gave us all (it was a pretty big class, in one of those big auditorium like halls) the stink eye, and said:

"I know why you're here. You're here because you can't pass Physics during the regular semester, and you think it will be easier in the summer. It. Will. Not. Be. Easier."

Now, first off, that statement is full of fail in at least three ways:

1. My experience with summer students is generally the opposite. Students take summer classes because they want to graduate early. Or because they are working and know that a lighter class load in the fall makes life easier. Or because they can go for free at their dad's school and get the distribution courses out of the way.

2. Even if you believe that your students are slacker idiots, you don't SAY that to them. Because it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

3. Even if 1 and 2 don't matter, saying something like that to your students will make them hate you. I know I disliked the guy after he said that.

So anyway. He started in.

It was Optics. I am not so good at Optics. Optics confused me.

I tried my best, but when the first test rolled around, I knew I didn't really have it. (Also, the test was different from what I expected).

The next day in class, he handed the tests back. I earned a D. That was really hard, especially considering that I was a (mostly) A student. I guess lots of other people did, too, he proceeded to berate the class for being 'stupid' and for not studying and similar things.

He finally said, in frustration: "Okay. You need to go and get tutoring. The tutor for this class will be my wife. Tutoring sessions are $8 a half-hour."

That was twice the going rate for the graduate student tutors in other classes. And more than twice what I asked for when I tutored one of the neighbor kids in French.

And it irked me that he was hiring his WIFE - first, he makes a test that might just be a wee bit TOO hard, then he yells at us, then he tells us, "Pay my wife and she'll help you get a better grade.

(Later on, a couple of the other students went and complained to the dean. And he agreed that it was a conflict of interest and told the guy to stop and to hire a grad student instead. And the prof yelled at us for that).

Anyway. The class went on, but I didn't hear much of it. I was upset about the D, and also upset about the way he was treating us.

Walking across campus to my dad's building, I kept thinking about it. I couldn't drop the course, and I couldn't fail it. Doing either would mean I'd either have to take Physics II with organic in the fall, or I'd have to delay my graduation by another semester - neither of which seemed desirable. And I kept thinking about it, and worked myself up into a state. (I am good at doing that, even still).

By the time I walked into my dad's office, I was in tears. He asked me what was wrong. I think I got it out in one of those long, don't-take-a-breath-in-the-middle sentences that you sometimes do when you're crying and are afraid you're going to sob in the middle.

He looked at me for a moment.

Then he hugged me. Now, in my family we have never been real big huggers. We are kind of standoffish and shy, physically speaking. We love each other but we express it in different ways. So it wasn't like some of my friends where everyone was always grabbing everyone else and hugging them.

And then, he whispered in my ear (very quietly because there were other people in the office and I don't think he wanted them to hear):

"I'm sorry you got the asshole professor."

HAH hahahahahahaha.

That wasn't a word he commonly used - at least not around me. And it had two effects: first, it startled me a little and I stopped crying (as I said, not a word he commonly used). And second - and I realized this as the semester ground on - that was really the only appropriate descriptor for the guy.

My dad did know the professor - he hadn't said anything about him to me so as not to prejudice me - but later on I learned that he had served on committees with the guy and had a low opinion of him (seems the guy was the kind of person who needed to air every grievance he ever had, whether it was the right forum or not).

The biggest thing was that it made me feel validated. Like I wasn't just being a whiny baby complaining about the guy. Or that I wasn't "that student" who does poorly on an exam and cries, "But I get As in all my other classes, honest."

That it wasn't me, it was him.

And then, after that, my dad took me out to lunch. And we figured out a plan. One of his friends had a son who was an engineer with the Navy, and Art was on leave that summer. So we hired him to help me with optics (figuring if anyone could do it, a Navy engineer could). So Art helped me, I figured out what I needed to know, I worked hard, I did better on the tests.

I ultimately earned an A in the class. And I felt like I won. And I realize that the "asshole professor" probably never even cared that I earned an A. But it was important to me. And I like to think that it made my dad a little proud, too, that I fought my way back from that initial D.

So, a belated happy father's day to all the "good dads" out there.

Bustin' makes me feel good.

So I walk into class this morning, with the graded labs. Before handing them out, I start talking to the class - I started off with how I "knew" none of the other profs in the department allowed people to hand in identical labs, so I knew they knew it wasn't OK, I talk about how I expect that each person will do their own lab write-up, that's why I give a week's time to do it. That I expect the data will be similar/the same within a group, but that I want to see each person figure out the interpretation and answer the questions on their own.

I explained that my SOP when I got labs that were identical, was to give each member of the collective a fraction of the points corresponding to how many people colluded.

As I'm saying this, I'm keeping the Gang of Three (which is now how I think of them) in my peripheral vision. At first they looked a bit surprised. Then they looked guilty - the whole sh*t-eating grins, dropping their eyes so I wouldn't inadvertently meet them, all of that.

They were busted. They KNEW they were busted. And I could tell from their expressions that they KNEW they weren't supposed to hand in lab reports that were identical clones of each other, but they had gone and done it anyway.

The thing is? This is a class of like 12 people. Did they really think I'd miss it when 1/4 of the reports were exact copies?

So I handed the reports back - no howls of outrage, no demands for why they got a 3/10.

It was pretty sweet.

Oh, I know, I'm evil for saying that, but it WAS.

I had sweated about this for several days, not knowing what to do - mainly because I HATE conflict and I HATE people claiming I done them wrong - and here it came out the best possible way. I had won.

After class, the one girl who had handed in a lab with the other girl's name on the top asked me why she didn't get a lab back. "But I didn't get a lab from you" I protested, "I got 2 with [redacted] name at the top, but none from you for that lab."

"But I handed it in!" she said.

"Yes, you handed in two labs: one with your name, and you got a grade for that one. But lab 2, you handed in a lab with [redacted] name on it."

She asked me: "Can I go print out another copy right now?"


Um, and put your name at the top? No, I don't think so.

Later, as I was starting my next class (and grr, I hate that. WAIT for me to be in office hours before confronting me, please) the "spokesman" of the group came to me and asked me: "So, can we redo the labs?"

Well, let's see.

Number 1: you blatantly did something you knew you weren't supposed to do.
Number 2: you are asking me to make more work for myself during the already-busy summer semester.
Number 3: you are trying to beg me for something when I am TRYING to talk with my next class.

I looked at him, and said simply: "No. Sorry."

I'm thinking I should probably buttonhole my department chair as soon as she comes in and apprise her of the situation, seeing as these guys are all pre-meds and they are likely to come to her with the "she ruined our lives, wah, we won't get into med school now!" cry. And while my chair is a very fair person, I want her to know my side of things first.

some better

It's Saturday.

I went out and did grocery shopping and this time planned/forced myself to buy food that will actually bring some variety to my eating life. One thing I'm going to try is a tomato egg-drop soup I saw in one of my cookbooks. It's pretty simple -you can guess what it is from the name. Chicken broth, mashed up stewed tomatoes, thickened with cornstarch slurry, and then with eggs added. And at the end you chop up a few scallions on top. (I also bought a few mushrooms to add - thank goodness now the Wal-Mart has "bulk" mushrooms so I can buy the five I want to use as a garnish without having to buy a whole giant package and try to figure out what to do with the rest of them).

I think part of the problem is when I'm doing the "grab and go" (either salad, or yogurt, or crackers and cheese), I get bored and feel like I'm not taking care of myself - like I somehow don't merit cooking for.

I also mowed the lawn last night. Even though it was hot. This time I didn't feel like OH NOES I'M GONNA DIE HEAT EXHAUSTION afterward, I think perhaps it was either less humid last night or I'm slowly acclimating to the heat.

And I decided - after arguing about it with a colleague (and really, arguing with myself) that I'm gonna give the "it might be plagiarism, it might be an honest assumption that it's OK to collaborate even though they got all the same answers down to the word" people partial credit (1/3 each) because, after all, some of the other students in the class worked together to get data but then wrote their own lab reports with their own insights in them - and they shouldn't be penalized, I think, for doing their own work.

The other thing is, I just need to refocus. As I've said before: I need to concentrate on the 10% who give a damn. And luckily, in one class, I have that. One is an older student (call her B) who is returning to complete a degree after raising kids. She's super-interested in conservation and asks all kinds of good questions (some which I have to say, "Let me look that up and get back to you" on) and has good things to add to the discussion.

The other one (call him H) is returning to school after a few years in the workforce. (He is currently working at a bank but confided one day that his "boss lady" was crazy and that he was thinking of quitting, now that he had some money saved up he thought he could swing going to school without having to work). What I like about H. is that he is just NICE. He is a genuinely nice guy - he is friendly and helpful to the other students in the class, he's polite to me, he's just affable and good-natured. And that makes a giant difference in my world. I would much rather have a classroom filled with people like H. - who are not really super-star students (though he does do OK and if he doesn't get too hamstrung by crazy boss-lady, he could probably earn a B) but who are just decent people who treat those around them well, than a classroom full of brilliant folks who are either distant or who are unpleasant (and I have known some very brilliant students who were just bears to be around).

H. said to me, leaving class the end of this week, "Have a good weekend!" And I could tell from his tone and manner that he meant it - it wasn't just someone sucking up to the prof, it wasn't just someone saying an empty nicety.

And that makes a difference. It makes my week better and I am grateful to him for it. (Same old truth stands: you never know what "little" thing you say to someone may make a huge difference in their life.)

I don't know if H. is former military or not - he hasn't said anything about it but something from his bearing and his respectful manner almost make me wonder if he is. (I've had a number of former military students over the years, and the vast majority of them have been really good people - in some cases, people who "pulled up" a class that was otherwise slack-y and not so good - that their discipline somehow got the rest of the class to act better. I always like to get folks who are former Army or Navy (the most common veterans I get), or whatever service.)

I also had a good piano lesson yesterday and that makes a difference. My natural perfectionism works both in my favor and against me with this. It works in my favor in that I work hard on each piece until it is as good as I can play it, but it works against me because I find myself apologizing to my teacher for every little mistake, or feeling like I need to start over when I make one.

Though I guess I'm doing OK. She commented that because her other career (she also works in one of the university offices) is going to be more involved this fall, she's going to have to limit herself to a dozen students - she was going to rank people based on how regularly they showed up, how well prepared they were, etc.

I made some comment along the lines of "I hope you'll have room in your schedule for me" and she kind of chuckled and said, "Oh, you're one of the ones I plan to keep."

Still, it does blow my mind a little - you are (or your parents are) paying for lessons - not showing up UNLESS you are sick or something seems kind of foolish. As does continuing the lessons if you're not going to practice. I suppose it's different from an adult perspective. (When you've made and gone to your own dental appointments, when you've done your own taxes by hand, when you've worked for a living, practicing piano does not seem like such a chore).

But I always do take a little pride in being able to show up and play well and have her tell me I did a good job. Because that's something I crave, and something I don't hear often enough - the simple fact that I did a good job at something.

And now I'm home. I'm trying to write a Sunday school lesson (there is surprisingly little out there in the way of commentary on Exodus 5). This is an adult Sunday school so it requires a level of scholarliness beyond what I'd do for, say, a group of 6 year olds.

And then, I'm going to stay home. Not go over to the office, not sit and sift through the research material that I have to work on that will still be waiting for me on Monday. I can do it then.

I do have a bunch of scientific journals stacked up, plus some articles ordered through "official" interlibrary loan (as well as "unofficial" - that is, ask my mom, "Hey, if you're running by the University library up there, would you find this article for me?" - their library is much better stocked than mine and if I really need something, she can usually get it faster for me than the ILL). So I'm going to make my bed (I've already cleaned the bedroom) and sit on it and read with my nice big ceiling fan going over me. And it's going to be quiet and nice and I won't have to DEAL with anyone else.

things this week

...off that can fornicate. (to keep to both my rule of not using the "big one" on this blog, and also not ending a sentence with a preposition.)

...the neighbor's dog which WILL NOT STOP BARKING
...the heat
...the humidity
...the high pressure and lack of wind which traps every stink close to the ground. I live about four blocks from a Dairy Queen/Brazier and I can smell their grill. And it's not good.
...plagiarists
...people who think that carrying on a 24/7 conversation with their Significant Other is more important than everything else
...people who are just rude to other people.
...the fact that none of the people I normally use as sounding boards, who normally act as cheering sections/balance-restorers for me are around this week. Summer is very lonely on a college campus.
...knowing information but not being able to share it with other people because you're afraid it might somehow come back to hurt you. So you have to sit and listen to people repeat unfounded rumors and all you can say is, "Well, it's not QUITE like that" but not being able to say any more.
...all the things the Administration is talking about doing
...the Press Secretary for commenting last night, "We won the election. So if you disagree with what we're doing, STFU. WE. WON."
...all the people in the news media who fawn over the president, to the point where they're moving from news-reporting into editorializing.
...all the paranoia I am holding about the future, and about how I may find my paycheck being sucked away even more by taxes and my freedoms being abridged even more.
...the fact that there are people out there who hate me simply because I'm larger than they are and don't share their disordered view of eating.
...spinach salad. It's the only thing I feel like eating these days but I'm also sick of it.
...the wasps that have invaded my classroom building
...people who drive loud diesel duallies and then gun the engine while they're waiting at a stop street late at night.
...people who have apparently selected the "a-hole option" when they bought their cars.
...people who kill their own kids. (There's a story a few cities over about a couple of s***stains who apparently got tired of having to care for a baby, so they killed it.)
...the Al Qaeda members who are thinking about strapping explosives to horses and using them as suicide bombers. It's bad enough they're seeking to kill innocent people with their bombs, now they're going to make horses do it for them. Talk about cowardly.

So, pretty much the whole entire world can FTFO at the end of this week. I think what I need to do this weekend is not watch any news, perhaps not even watch any television, and work on projects.

I saw the last part of "Citizen Kane" the other night, and was struck by this line: "He was disappointed in the world, so he made his own."

Sometimes I wish I had enough money and was arrogant enough to do that. I'd love to tell the rest of the world to go hang and go do whatever I wanted. And it's definitely because of disappointment, though perhaps not the same sort of disappointment Kane felt; my disappointment is more along the lines of "people COULD be better than they are; why aren't they?"

Argh.

In one of my summer classes, I have a "mating pair."

I HATE this. I HATE it when a boyfriend/girlfriend (or, I suppose, boyfriend/boyfriend or girlfriend/girlfriend, but I've not had either of those yet) take my classes together:

they sit, heads together, and coo and giggle during class. I stop talking, look annoyed at them, they shut up. I start working the equation again. They start talking again. I remind them that one of the class policies is "please do not talk when someone else is speaking." They shut up for a while longer.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, now I got lab reports from them. Three people - the couple and a third friend - worked together. While I did not EXPLICITLY say "write your own damn answers to the questions," I do also have a "do your own damn work" policy in my syllabus.

So I get three identical labs. My suspicion is one person - probably the odd girl out, based on another bit of evidence I have (one person forgot to change her name at the top of the lab) wrote the lab writeup, typed it up, then either e-mailed it or made copies for everyone else. They are word-for-word identical.

So what do I do? My gut feeling is to give each one 1/3 the credit: three people, one lab, ergo 1/3 the credit.

But then again: the few I've been able to solicit advice from say, "But labs are a GRAY AREA." Meaning, because I didn't TELL them "write your own damn answers," they are probably somehow justified in their belief that they can be three people with one brain.

I hate this. I hate judgment calls. On the one hand, if I give them the 1/3 credit, I will probably have griping to deal with. And very likely the "Tsch-ah" response of the scorned female student here (at least from the two females). On the other hand, even if I tell them NEXT TIME WRITE YOUR OWN DAMN LAB YOURSELF, giving them full credit just rewards them.

I don't know. I'm at such a point where I cannot decide - where I am so dragged out from this week that I really can't see a good course of action either way. Either way I'm going to have crap to deal with, and my MO for surviving this summer is going to have to be "minimize the crap."

I don't know.

I do know I will become a screaming witchbeast if I have to keep stopping Jack and Jill every class day to break them up and make them stop talking and giggling. Dammit, they are like 20 years old! This is NOT freaking 5th grade where kids are just starting to find out that the opposite sex isn't icky (well, 90 to 98 percent of the kids, depending on whose statistics you believe).

I feel disrespected. Yes, I do. It may not be valid to, it may just be the price of being a professor, but I DO feel disrespected when I am trying to teach a class and I am having to compete with "A Summer Place" going on in the third row.

something that did make me laugh

There are a few bright spots.

On the test I gave today, I had asked students for an example of a species choosing unsuitable habitat. I had talked about how roads often acted as barriers or "sinks" (because lots of animals get killed crossing them) and how sometimes ectotherms will "sun" on blacktop roads in the spring and get hit by cars.

So for the answer to the question, one student put, "Snakes on a highway"

Coming soon to a multiplex near you? Starring Samuel L. Jackson's less-famous cousin?

(Sorry. I have to take the laughs where I can get them these days. And at any rate, the student got credit - it is a correct answer)

holding on to that knot

You know how they say when you're at the end of your rope, you're supposed to tie a knot and hold on?

Damn, I hope the knot holds.

It's just been a mix of things this week. The heat is only one of them (though now I think I realize how "Southern Gothic" came to be "Southern Gothic" - in the era before air conditioning, or even before people really having much in the way of electric fans, people probably went kind of crazy in the heat. I know I am, and I spend much of the day in an air conditioned building. Sadly, my "crazy" is not the romantic sort - I do not try to develop inappropriate relationships with young men, nor do I communicate from my bedroom by rolling red tennis balls down the hall. It's more the weepy/irritable sort. So I have to make what feels to me like a Herculean effort to be nice and to be agreeable in public, and only melt down when I'm alone. This morning I cursed extensively - and almost cried - because I wanted toast for breakfast and found that the bread had gone moldy. $%*&$# climate. It's hot and it never rains but it's still humid enough that non-refrigerated bread will mold almost overnight)

I think it's also that most of the people I interact with on a daily basis - the ones who keep me grounded - are off doing other things: at conferences, on vacation, out doing fieldwork. So most days I only speak with students, which is fine (my summer classes are going OK) but it's not the same as someone you know well, someone whose judgment you know you can trust.

I think it's also that I have this horrible feeling of waiting for shoes - many shoes - to drop. I have a feeling of something like dread, and I can't tell if it's my reaction to the heat and my allergies or if it's something real that I can trust. I dread what's happening in North Korea. I dread what's happening in Iran - now, granted, a revolution there could improve things, but I can't be optimistic about it. I remember 1979.

On the home front, I'm really concerned about the coming new health-care plan. And in my bleaker moods, I wonder: will I, as a "fat person," be told I MUST lose weight if I want health care? Or will I be sent to "fat camp" to be made to lose the weight? I realize that's being very apocalyptic but it doesn't help when you hear people like MeMe Roth spouting what THEY would do to fat people if THEY ran the circus.

It doesn't help that the whole time/distance/calories burned readout on my new cross-country ski simulator is apparently lying to me. The old one, on the old machine, claimed I was burning 600 calories in an hour of working out. Which I'm sure was inaccurate. But this new one says that after an hour's hard workout (I've been pushing myself), when I am aching and have sweat running over my body from every pore, that I have burned a grand total of 125 calories.

Thanks. Thanks so much. So now I am entitled to eat a slice and a half of bread over and above the baseline number of calories I "should" eat in a day. Hardly seems worth it.

I know both of them lied to me, but I was happier when the old one was lying to me.

(Seriously? 125 calories? Don't some people burn that in an hour just sitting still?)

So if there is some kind of horrible dystopian plan comes in, where BMIs must be below a certain value to qualify as a person for health care, I will have to either starve myself or have a limb amputated. (And don't, for God's sake, suggest the weight-loss surgery. I'd rather have a limb amputated, based on what I've read can be the after effects of it. Even in "good" outcomes it looks like people are at greatly increased risk of osteoporosis: something I have a family history of anyway)

And there are other areas where I see our freedoms being taken away, or increasing restrictions placed on what we can do. And it just makes me sad and scared and wonder what joy will be left in this life.

So I don't know. I come to school and I teach and I work on my research and all of it. And I'm fairly happy while teaching...but I think I'm alone too much right now, and my brain kind of becomes an echo chamber of everything that worries me and bugs me. And I don't know how to fix that, this community really is in some ways pretty closed - outside of church and work I don't have that many contacts.

I'm sure a big part of this is that I feel like every day is the same: it's hot, it's humid, I even see the same damn truck carrying squashed cars from a junkyard pass me as I drive to work. It's like frickin' Groundhog Day, where I'm stuck in some kind of a loop I can't break free from.

Aw crap

I'm having a low-interaction day. Or whatever you want to call it: a day when all the stuff you say seems to be misunderstood (which I assume is my own fault. Maybe it's a Communication Challenged day for me). I'm just not doing well.

It's because it's so damn hot. I didn't sleep hardly at all last night. I can't turn the AC any lower; it's an old system and I'm praying it will make it through the summer as it is (yeah, yeah, Spider, I know: I should have bought a new one over the winter. Though when the guys came and checked it out, they said it was all good, but it seems like it was running an awful lot all weekend).

So I'm tired, in that weird insomnia-mode where time seems to drag by, kind of weepy, and my appetite has gone AWOL. I ate almost nothing yesterday because I was not hungry at all, and nothing appealed to me.

I really freaking hope nothing goes bad today, no one tries to argue with me in class about something, whatever. Because I am THIS close to tears and I do not want to be pushed over the edge.

F***ing hot weather - I hate it SO much.