Today I had to work on campus again, and as I walked from the Killer Building along Observatory Hill, I saw a pair of sandhill cranes who looked just as startled to see me as I was to see them. Truly, campus is emptier than usual if the modern-day dinosaurs have decided to move in! Hardingfele had said last week that we should have lunch again, but I know she flakes so I brought a lunch, and sure enough, she flaked. But then my colleague called and said, "Are you here? I'm here!" so we got lunch at the building with the Mesozoic Garden. She said I looked ready for a tropical vacation, and I told her that I was wearing the sundress with hibiscus blossoms and pineapples on it to cover up my ratty shorts, and then I was wearing the shell necklaces to cover up a stain on the dress. "So I'm really a mess," I said, "but I look fashionable." She thought that was pretty funny, but she laughed even harder last week when I told her about all the times I ate bugs accidentally. She grew up in Shanghai but could never make herself eat all the weird bugs and things that some people would eat, and then in this country she was happy that nobody ate them. I said you might as well avoid them, because every time I've eaten them by accident, I wondered why the food I was eating tasted so bad. But then, shrimp are basically big bugs that live in the ocean, and I LOVE them, so maybe a really big bug, prepared right, would be delicious. I'm not saying I'm dying to try such a thing, but I'm not saying I would be totally opposed to it either. When I was telling her about eating the bugs by accident, she was laughing so hard that she was crying. I often suspect there are people out there who have never uttered the phrase, "Oh man, I ate bugs AGAIN!" They are probably the same sorts of people who have never heard themselves saying, "A really serious ukulele player simply must have a kazoo." Because who else would have the words "serious" and "kazoo" in one sentence?
This evening Travalon and I played tennis. There isn't really much to say about that, because nobody watched us, not even the dinosaurs. And that is a good thing, because I was truly terrible. Mostly my forehand is acceptable, but my backhand is a mystery: where will it go? Where DID it go? Oh, it popped up above my head? Then maybe I can hit it again, this time with my forehand so it actually goes in the direction I intended. If it's any consolation (to you? to me?), my serve is usually dead on, but then sometimes it goes straight into the net. Nobody is going to mistake me for a tennis pro anytime soon! Certainly not my FitBit, which was so unimpressed by our tennis-playing that, rather than calling it half an hour of "sport," it said we took a half-hour walk.
Famous Hat
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