boredom and cinnamon

Remind me to never work on the Thursday of finals week. In a 4 hour shift at the desk I have had 4 questions. I sent my student employee home so she could escape the torture. Unfortunately, I'm not so flexible.

On the optimistic side of things, this extra time has given me sufficient time to carefully consider the new brand of gum I am trying. It is a very nice cinnamon that has a slightly musky scent to it when removed from the wrapper. Long after most of the flavor is done the gum continues to provide a warming sensation in your mouth. I'm not sure if this is legal, but I kind of enjoy it. Now that you're all chomping at the bit to run to your nearest 7-11 and buy yourself a pack, the gum is called 5 and is made by the folks at Wrigley's. How presumptuous can you get? 5. They just got their website up and running, check it out, it promises to delight the senses. When you first see the package you have a moment of "are these cigarettes?" or maybe "über manly sexy condoms?" or possibly even "trashy trendy chocolate bar for yuppies." Nope. Gum.

I have to give it to them. It's sugarfree, the flavor is nice, the warming sensation is pleasant, and you get 15 sticks in a pack. It costs no more than Orbitz or any of the others and has a much higher cool factor.

good day, having a

I don't specifically have anything to write about today, but I just woke up feeling really really good. This hasn't happened in just about forever so is definitely cause for jubilation.

A quirky thought for the day. I just got out of a meeting with some librarians regarding a project we're collaborating on. A few of them are very much "theory" thinkers and put together this gigantic mind map to be the architecture of our project. When I received it in e-mail I couldn't even figure out how to read the darned thing. What turned out to be an excel document of 12 printed pages would have taken me all of 8 lines to write down. God I love librarians. :-)

strange, things that are

Between yesterday and today I happened to see two very unusual and unrelated things. Sometimes this kind of randomness really sticks me in a philosophical sort of mood...

1) Yesterday, I was driving around, trying to find a place to park near the library where I work. There is a metered parking lot just across the street, it's quite close and I usually try and find a space there (free after 5 pm). As I'm looping around, what do I see on the ground between two parked cars? A wooden pepper mill. Yes, the really tall kind, roughly 18-20 inches. Strange? yep.

2) Today, I was walking in to work and was passing several people on their way out of the library building. Walking toward me was a younger man, somewhere between 18-22 I would guess. He was wearing a long black coat. So far, so good. Then I noticed something strange about his right hand. He had a rubber dinosaur puppet on his right hand. He wasn't doing anything at all with the puppet, he was just walking along, swinging his arms a bit like most people do when they walk. Really, why? Strange? yes!

days, really long

I've had many very long days over the last few weeks. Preparation for my NY trip made things crazy for a few days before my departure, the trip in NY made for long days since I needed to utilize all available time. Now that I'm back it's pretty nuts. I did 5 hours of grading yesterday (technically, my last day of vacation) and about 8 hours of grading today, plus taught 2 classes, created curriculum for the classes from scratch, and prepared a comprehensive cheat-sheet-handout for each of those classes. Right now I'm at work hour 12 for today and I have 2 more to go. Yippie!

In a few days when I have more time, I'll post a real NYC posting with some pictures and a link to an online gallery (which I have to upload still..). I have class this weekend, and next weekend too, so free time will be at a bit of a premium. Maybe while I'm at the hotel after class on Friday...which depends on if I go out with Thomas. Or, during class, if it turns out to be really boring. ;-)

Sick sick sick

Apparently my dutiful storage of karma has backfired on me. Let's review:

Cons:
Last week I had one tooth extracted
Last Thursday my last wisdom tooth decided to make its debut
I've been on vicodin since Thursday because of that wisdom tooth
Yesterday I started getting a really bad sore throat
Today I called in sick to work because I'm completely miserable
There is practically a torrential storm raging outside my apartment

The pros?

I did get to stay home from work, Gus is much happier with me home, I am catching up on sleep, as well as STNG. Now I'm hungry and nothing in my apartment looks good.....