The weather was beautiful again today, and I walked with Hardingfele. (My colleague is back in the country, after her flight was canceled and she had to take an arduous three-stop flight back, but she worked from home today.) It's fun to have someone to commiserate (or, to use a technical term, bitch) with about politics, bandmates, and the stupid new systems they are always coming up with at work. She is a grant administrator, so she has to use the new system for that, while I was told that with the three grants I was doing a year I'd never learn the new system so pre-award was taken off my plate. (Can't say I'm sorry about that.) Also, we have no federal grants while she deals with plenty of them. I am frustrated that the "training" for the new financial system we will go to in July consists of videos and absolutely no hands-on training in a test environment. My current boss and I have already identified ways this new system is set up for failure, and who knows how many more will come to light once I can actually use it?
After work I had to miss a free lesson in Irish dancing at the Monona Terrace for our Union meeting, because we were going to have elections at this meeting... only we were one person short of quorum. D'oh! So it wouldn't have mattered if I had skipped the meeting - what difference does it make if you're one or two people short of quorum?
At least I was well-caffeinated today: I had my usual cup of coffee in the morning before heading to work, then late morning our chair made a strong cup of coffee for me, and then a grad student bought me a latte midafternoon. I was also well pizza'd because I had leftover pizza for lunch... and then I went to grab my falafel and hummus sandwich for dinner before the Union meeting, but there was leftover pizza in the fridge from the grad student recruitment lunch, so I had that instead. That's okay, the sandwich will be perfect for lunch tomorrow - no meat on Fridays in Lent!
The craziest thing is that this morning I felt extra witty chatting with my shuttle buddy, and then I thought, "If you only take my side of the conversation, it could almost be a standup comedy routine." So I tried it out on Travalon, and he laughed. Here it is, more or less (I'm not quoting myself exactly - my memory is no longer good enough for that):
I've been getting these emails lately saying, "Take this quiz to find out when you will die." Who wants to know that? Who would actually take that quiz? I just deleted it the first time, but they keep sending it! If they send it to me one more time, I can tell them exactly when they're going to die! It makes me long for the good, old days when annoying mail meant credit card offers that actually came in the snail mail. Did you used to get those? Most of them were boring, "Sign up now and get 3.5% introductory interest," but I remember I got one for baseball fans, where you could use your points for baseball-related stuff, and then I got one for extreme sports, where you could use your points to buy extreme sport equipment. Extreme sports? Have they seen me?? I'm terrified of heights! What if your parachute didn't open? You'd have all that time to think about it before hitting the ground! If they sent me that email quiz to find out when I was going to die, I'd be like, "Yeah, in 5.3 seconds!" I did think about hang-gliding once, but I talked to a hang-gliding instructor, and he said, "You never die the first time. There's what we call the Coffin Stage when you think you know what you're doing, and you forget a step. That's when it happens." Oh, and the weirdest credit card offer I got was for the Astro-Card, where you could get your sign of the zodiac on your credit card, and your monthly statement would come with a horoscope. So what mailing list was I on that they thought I was interested in baseball, extreme sports, and astrology? Does this person exist? I'd love to meet them. Maybe they sent them to me because of that time I went hang-gliding into Wrigley Stadium, hollering, "I'm a Capricorn!" Thank you so much, I'm here all week.
Famous Hat
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