A student came up to the GA at the front desk and said, “I think there’s something wrong with the printer. People keep coming up to it and swearing at it!”

This is a great story. Mostly because of this quote:

I went to unpack and saw some of the clothes and saw it wasn’t my suitcase,” he said. “I was going to close it, and a kitten jumped out and ran under the bed. I screamed like a little girl.

Cute cat too.

(via Hillbilly Sophisticate)

You have got to be (deleted) kidding me.

How the (deleted) are we supposed to do our (deleted) jobs if we keep getting (deleted) blindsided by (deleted) from (deleted) (deleted) outside our department?

Grrrr….

ADDENDUM the First:
You have got to be (deleted) me. Now it’s (deleted) (deleted) pulling this (deleted) as well?

I apparently need to (deleted) go the (deleted) home and got back to (deleted) bed, because this day is just getting (deleted) better and better.

Holy crap.

We just finished watching the episode “Distractions” from the first season of Heroes. Somehow, my grandmother (who loves this show and was upset we didn’t watch an episode last night) managed to sleep through the entire episode, including me and Michael continually yelling, “WHAT?!” and “YOU’RE KIDDING!” and “HOLY SHIT HE JUST THREW HIM OFF A BUILDING AND HE’S NOT FLYING!”
Now that is an amazing ability to sleep.

Unfortunately, she’s going to be really sorry tomorrow when she has NO idea what is going on.

And I can’t believe we only have 9 episodes left to watch. Don’t know what we’re going to watch after this… Though if Grandmom is going to start sleeping through shows again, maybe we can watch Battlestar Galactica and just hope she sleeps through all the boinking.

Don’t forget! Today is National Pie (not pi, that’s March 14th) day!

Eat pie!

Is there a word for something like writer’s block when you know what you need to write but don’t want to?

Got up this morning to write (last week I’d strained a muscle in my back, and so skipped sitting in the cold basement, and yesterday I slept through the alarm) knowing what I had to write, but was simply unable to do so, because as an outside observer, I don’t want the scene that follows to happen, even though it pretty much has to. It takes the story in what I (finally) realized is the correct direction–but I don’t want to do what needs to be done!

Of course I could be blocked simply because 30 minutes in the morning isn’t enough time to write a difficult scene.

Tomorrow is National Pie Day!

I’m off to make a sweet potato pie!

ADDENDUM the First:
Sweet potato pie is in the oven!

Bonus Conversation:

Grandmom: (Pointing to tablespoon of maple syrup) Are you drinking that?
Me: Nope. It’s going in the pie.
Grandmom: (pointing to bottle of Wild Turkey) You put that in the pie?
Me: Yup. (pointing to two tablespoons of bourbon) That’s the bourbon that’s going on. (pointing back at the tablespoon of maple syrup) That’s maple syrup.
Grandmom: Have you always done that?
Me: Yup. I put boubon in the sweet potato pie and the apple pie.
Grandmom: Really? No wonder I feel drunk all the time.

It’s snowing! Lots of snow!

(happy dance)

I love snow.

ADDENDUM the First:
Bah. Now it looks like rain.

What is it about long weekends that make coming back to work harder than usual.

No, I didn’t spend the long weekend partying, we spent it curled up reading, or watching episodes of “Heroes” (we’re more than three quarters through Season One now! GAH!)

So really, there’s no excuse for me to be tired.

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

— Martin Luther King
“Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence“

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I Have a Dream”

The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project

It’s 17.8 degrees outside. It’s Sunday, but secretly Saturday (I don’t have to work tomorrow) and even with the wood stove cranking out lots of heat, there’s just a chill in the air.

So what’s someone to do in a situation like this?

(more…)

I love words. You may or may not have noticed this about me, but really, I think language is fascinating.

Because of that fascination, I always get a word-of-the-day desk calendar, not so I know what day it is, but so I can learn new words. Last years WOTD calendar was a failure, because it had the word, the meanings, and the etymology, which meant that if I didn’t sit at my desk for a couple days, I was looking a several minutes of reading to catch up. So that was a waste.

This year, for something different, I got a Latin phrases calendar, and so far it’s quite interesting. I wish it gave more literal translations in addition to what the phrase means, but, you can’t have everything.

Here are a few recent phrases that I’d like to make note of electronically, so I don’t have to save the calendar squares for anything more than scrap paper.

Of course the phrases that interest me may also tell you something about me.

Alea iacta est.
The die is cast. – Caesar

Possunt quia posse videntur.
They can because they think they can. – Virgil

Nil homini certum est.
Nothing is certain to man. – Ovid

Spes sibi quisque.
Rely on yourself.

Michael would be the only one who could guess the geek reason why I wanted to know alea iacta est but the rest of them interesting in and of themselves. Virgil and Ovid certainly had (or else collected) a lot of wisdom.

Here’s an excerpt of a conversation I have last night with Michael.

Guvf cbfg jnf erzbirq orpnhfr, yvxr vg be abg, zl jro fvgr vf n choyvp sbehz, naq nf zhpu nf fbzr guvatf znl or gehr, naq znl znxr zr srry orggre, gurl qba’g arrq gb or fnvq.

Rira va ebg 13.

Explains a lot, that does.

But I will admit that it did amuse me to post in rot 13. So I may do so in the future, for fun rather than to be cranky.

Cuz nobody wants cranky.

My grandmother has been trying various kinds of lotions for various parts of her body, and after reading a magazine article, asked me to pick up some Udder Cream, which is supposed to be very helpful for chapped and dry skin.

When we got back from shopping today, I gave her the udder cream, and told her to make sure to follow the directions, and then read aloud, “Wash udder and teat parts thoroughly with clean water and soap before each milking…”

“Of course,” she said, ” they all say that.”

I think we’ll have to regularly ask her if she’s washing her udder and teat parts before milking.