Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Not All Who Wander Are Found, Either

Hmm. I'm really, really sick. My brain feels swollen. I can't make coherent sense. Nothing formal, then.

Ah. A collection of random recent thoughts which never made it to the blog. Kind of like when a singer dies and they release all his left-over studio cuts. Hey, it worked for Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Dark And Cold

The power was out yesterday when I got home. No lights, no stereo, no telephone. Slowly, it got dark. Really dark. Dinner in the dining hall heated by sterno cans and lit dimly by candlelight. No more streetlights on the way home; no more brightly lit dorm entrances. Beautiful.

Then, right before the mustered schoolbus fleet left to take 500 potentially heat-less students to the gym on the other campus, the lights went on. Isn't it ironic? I loved the power outage like I love all chaos, and I the students really seemed to appreciate my attitude. I think it would have been fun to just sit in the dark all night with them, huddled to keep warm. But it's probably for the best: the baby wasn't thrilled about the darkness.

There's Something About Mary

Okay, I admit it. We have a cleaning lady. She comes in once a week for a couple of hours, cleans porcelain and linoleum, vacuums and straightens, wipes and scrubs. Sometimes she brings her miniature toy poodle puppy and I get to hold the little toupee...uh, darling.

Sometimes I feel guilty/foolish about paying someone else to come and sterilize a three-room apartment, but the truth is, it's a lot of work to have a cleaning lady, and its worth it. I mean, if you want someone else to vacuum your floor, you have to clean it first. The night before Mary comes each week is a cleaning frenzy. Cleaning up for the cleaning lady is a lot like washing the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher; you know it's necessary, but it seems redundant.

Pink Slips Sink Ships

Today the axe fell at work. 30 positions (of about 500) were cut, many of them entirely unexpected: Systems Librarians, Asset Managers, Custodians. All were people I know.

For weeks most of the staff and faculty here have been walking around worried about their jobs. A few were publically confident about it, a few withdrawn and worried. Most of us fell somewhere between, watchful but reasonably confident in the odds and in our own institutional relevance. I'm glad it's over.

It's Been Done To Death

There was a time, I think it was around Christmas of this past year, when every blog you read had an entry about being sick. It was as if some weird infection was out there in the bloggiverse, and you could catch it from sharing blog. Now it's my turn, and it seems so empty to describe it all over again when others did the job so well.

But I'm sick nonetheless. Sick, sick, sick.

Talking of Sick...

I've always wanted to do a really detailed blog entry which recounted, exquisitely, everything I have eaten in a 24-hour period. Including the bugs, as described here:

...the Food and Drug Administration allows a certain amount of insects in your food...Pasta is allowed to have 225 insect parts per 225 grams. A jar of peanut butter is allowed to have rodent hairs. In a can of corn, two or more larvae are allowed. And in orange juice, five fly eggs or one maggot per 250 milliliters is OK.

Oh, and Miss Bumptious reminds us that as much as 20% of the weight of the average pillow is made up of dead skin, dust mites, and dust mite droppings. Try not think about it. Sleep tight.