4 Jun 07

Time:

?

Money:

$4, cereal and oatmeal, Delion.
$2, D.P., usual place.
$8, usual lunch, usual place.
$40, my dinner and Rebecca's (I owed her), Apple.
$5, coffee and cookie, DT/UT.

More interesting things:

Planned for the first meeting of our summer class with Marisa. This involved a remarkable brain trick that was far beyond things I normally manage - I couldn't remember the name of the phenomenon I faked writing about for my tenth-grade science project, and no one should be surprised that Googling "German AND water AND problem AND cognition" didn't help... but my brain came up with: Einstellung. Hot damn. And then I looked it up on ERIC and PsycINFO and found articles by people with my third name who used references by people with my last name. Wicked. (And a good class activity, as it turned out.)

Ran across Professor Number Three and Professor Fluffy Hair, one right after the other, and remembered, consequently, how much it's gonna suck when the old guard has the left the building: A LOT. Who volunteers to talk to people who don't seem to like them? Ooh, ooh - ME! Since I'm HERE with them for at least the next year of courses, it seems prudent to keep trying, although it's starting to feel like something in the realm of "a waste of time." Number Three acts like - and I realize she does this with pretty much everybody - there is no possible way she can divert 47 seconds from her immediate, scholarly, non-student-related activity, while Fluffy Hair looks right past me with the kind of smile the duke gave Terri Doolittle when she came dancing up to him dressed like Diana Ross in Jumping Jack Flash: barely tolerant, and meant only to ease him past an irritant. Not a fan, ladies and gentlemen, not a fan.

Realized that summer classes are summer classes, whether I'm teaching them or taking them. There's something about it being light out when you leave, something about the scent of a warm night, maybe, that's the same in either a Gainesville, lifeguard, Dr.B.-and-Norman-Hall kind of June or a Washington Square, adjunct, Professor-Alpha-and-25 one. It is interesting, though, to be the instructor in this case. It very much made me want to call Dr. B. and Allan, and, this morning at least, it reminded of being a high school kid working for the Colonel: walking into the orientation with Alpha, chatting, joking, drinking coffee, and just generally looking like a not-scared, not-brand-new sort of person who's getting ready to bring in some new ones is very much an Army game too - but in this case, I wasn't in charge of the schedule (or getting yelled at if someone took too long to get to the podium!)

Sat drinking coffee with Rebecca at Think, and watched a big guy who worked there, apparently, stride across the middle of the room (where my view of anything from his hips down was obstructed by the counter), swoop down to pick up what I would have guessed was a paper or something he'd dropped, and straighten up with a big ol' brown tabby arranged across his forearm. He kept booking towards a staff-only door as though he'd never even paused (he hadn't, really; it was definitely a swoop) and disappeared with cat in hand. Maybe he thought to leave a cat in the middle of the room would have been to imply a mouse problem, but it would have been fine with me if he'd stayed... I would have shared my coffee.