A Post That Makes It Out of My Head, For Once

Sorry for the silence this past week. I have kept thinking of things to write while walking to class or driving home, but nothing has made it this far. I've been sort of preoccupied by illness, preparing for a presentation, and spending my few spare moments playing Fate again. So to compensate for this lack of material, and to scare you with the content of my brain, I present the following recounting of Today, Thursday, 25 October, 2007, in the Life of Sally. (Unlike Samuel Pepys' diary, high on personal revelation and low on Great Events.)

I felt dissatisfied with the light dozing of the hour or so before my alarm went off at 6 o'clock until I actually woke up and realized how good I'd had it up to then. My banana-oat bran muffins were an odd texture, even by my super-health-muffin standard, and I felt strangely overwhelmingly full after eating them.

My car continues to be recalcitrant about moving from Park to Drive in the mornings. (Well, aren't we all.) It took several minutes for me to get it to behave this morning and I am half-dreading, half-looking forward to my 7 A.M. (!) appointment at the dealership tomorrow to have this checked out and, ludicrously, my 60,000 mile check-up done. (Yes, my car is almost 11 years old.) About halfway to school, running late already, I realized that my gas gauge had done a sudden drop from about 1/6 full to almost empty. I did not actually pray, but I hoped really hard that I would make it to the school parking lot, and I did.

I was sort of nervous about my (8 a.m.) math class this morning because I wanted to talk to the TA after class about the grading of the last quiz and basically scrounge for points without seeming like the kind of person who just always scrounges for points. The fact that I actually did want to find out whether my argument for my answer was sound and convincing gave me the confidence that I could talk to him without sounding like a dick and I think I was successful in this (and I did get my points). I also had a very enjoyable conversation with the guy in the process, on topics math related (including my inconsistent ability to remember the rules of exponents) and not (including his years as an undergrad at South Dakota State University, which will be amusingly apropos to those of you who know about my Top Secret Terminal Masters Plan I am not willing to write about much out of paranoia). The professor showed us both a nifty trick about how the digits of various fractions based on 7 repeat (try it on your calculator: 1/7, 2/7, 3/7, ...) that he likes to exploit in class, he says, while pretending that he is doing the calculation in his head. This struck me incredibly like something my dad would do. I assured the professor that the TA and I would "back his play," which momentarily made me feel like some other person, probably a character from Achewood, had suddenly taken over my brain and used this strange terminology. However, I did not subsequently light up a big joint and invite people over to my house for a bathroom party, so I guess I was okay.

I prepped in the library for my presentation for psychology at 12:30, on the topic of workplace nutrition and physical activity programs, which was perhaps infinitely more interesting than you may be thinking at this moment. My research was solid, I had at least one set of researchers to mock for their ridiculously out-of-touch with the reality of the average sedentary office worker hypothesis, I was fairly ebullient with commentary, I made fun of my own unwillingness to unsubscribe from a bunch of health-related e-newsletters I get but delete without reading as though just having this information in my inbox for a limited period of time means I am "doing something" about my health, and I was pleased with being able to incorporate some favorite old anecdotes in ways that made sense in context and seemed to be appreciated. I believe I may have actually mimed doing step aerobics at one point. (Um, I started to type 'paradigmed doing step aerobics' which is a very different thing altogether, best left to tenured professors who are beyond being damaged for life.) I had been longing for the moment this presentation was done because it represented the start of my weekend.

Walking back to my car, I was quite happy to see yet another benefit of our recent cold snap. The unexpectedly sensible students seemed, for the most part, to recognize that when it is cool enough to pull out the jacket or hoodie from the depths of the closet, it is time to put away the flip flops. The girls were wearing a quite nice array of cute shoes; along with the running shoes were ballet flats/skimmers, Chuck Taylors, Vans, the Rocket Dogs that I favor, and quite surprising to me, old-school deck shoes. Once I saw the first pair of Top Siders on someone, they seemed to be everywhere, on men and women. It really is the 80s revisited. And I have to go on record as being proud of my fellow Bobcats for almost universally avoiding the horror that is the Croc [link omitted to save your sanity; the Croc is like the Cthulhu of shoes]. One girl in a pink pair was all I saw all day long.

Today they were also doing early voting on campus and there was a guy, maybe 40 years old, standing outside the student center attempting to persuade people to vote. His method was to drone, in a voice eerily reminiscent of the science teacher on "Wonder Years" that I do not rule out as an intentional mimicry, things like (and I quote): "Today is the last day for early voting. Vote today. It will make you smarter. You will get better grades. Guaranteed." Given that the majority of students were probably in diapers when Ben Stein was doing this shtick on TV, I may have been one of a thousand listeners to get this vibe.

Earlier in the day I had noticed that people on campus never approach me with flyers, requests to sign petitions or vote for them or buy raffle tickets, and all that crap. It must be my naturally opening, welcoming bearing. How can you too reliably convince potentially annoying others that talking to you is more than their life is worth? Robert can always fall back on his ability to remove his glasses and give the full out sunken, dark-circled eye "my middle name is Wayne" possible serial killer glare, but not everyone has the face for this. For those of you needing to purposely cultivate a formidable demeanor, I recommend the following role models:

If you are interested in a kind of contemptuous disapproval that does not entirely undermine your adorable qualities that the person considering greeting you will acknowledge as existent but not at all intended for them, study of the Disapproving Rabbits on this web site will give you a good range of expressions to practice. (Even if you don't usually follow the links, this one is too important to miss.) Cinnamon (brown) often appears to almost feel sorry for what a moron you are to even be considering an approach, Hazel (black) has a grumpy old person quality any sane individual would make effort to avoid, while Latte (white) has more of the "you will die" look which, holy shit, is no doubt effected at least in part by the dark circles around the eyes.

To take this to an entirely more hard-core level, can you really do better than First Spear Centurion Lucius Vorenus from the excellent HBO series "Rome" that you should be watching on DVD anyway because it just generally rocks? (There aren't a ton of episodes and knowledge of Roman history is not necessary. The first episode is a little bit like, "Wait, who's the short one again? Some famous person" but all becomes clear enough, soon enough. Really. Try it.) I mean, the guy's disapproval exudes a promise of entirely professional violence in all situations and he makes clear that he is not a man whose attention you want to draw. In the photo I linked to, Vorenus has been told by the barista at Starbucks that they are temporarily out of espresso macchiato and wearying as it all is, honor requires that he kill her on the spot. He doesn't necessarily like this, because Vorenus dislikes pretty much everything, but this is not relevant and any attempt to persuade him to take another action will only slightly prolong the time she has to endure the fierce face of escalating disapproval before her death.

Anyway.

After school, embarking on the start of my weekend, my car made it without difficulty to the gas station and as I was feeling extremely celebratory about the small victories of my day (including feeling thankful that I can afford to fill up my tank), KSAL radio served up a new song, starting with lyrics that pretty well summed it up:

I feel so extraordinary
Something's got a hold on me
I get this feeling I'm in motion
A sudden sense of liberty

Of course, being not entirely trusting of the universe's good intentions (* see below), I had this momentary feeling as I walked in my door that I would be greeted with a dead rabbit or some other monstrously awful thing. But Leo is in fine form. I call Robert at work, half expecting some bad news from him, but he has nothing to report. Very soon after this, the phone rings and though it says my dad's name, it is a phone number that I do not recognize until I realize it's my mom's cell phone, which she never uses to call me; I'm worried about what terrible thing she has to tell me but no, she is calling from the library, where she is helping them get ready for a book sale, and because she is a nicer person than I probably even deserve to know, she is curious whether I am interested in a couple of books she has found, and I am.

I have not entirely ruled out the possibility that I will choke to death eating my turkey and wild rice soup (which is actually totally delicious, by the way, if you can withstand the taste of tarragon) for dinner tonight, but otherwise, it was a good day.

* It is no accident that I fell so hard for Stephen Crane's poetry in high school, including the one that reads in its entirety:

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

Of course, I'm a sucker for short poems of all kinds. (Well, I should qualify that as "good" poems of all kinds.) The brief, poignant poems of W. S. Merwin always get to me too. Perhaps it is the koan quality that makes them so powerful. Or maybe I just have a short attention span. I hope you don't, or you won't make it this far through my "I Sing the Body Electric" length blog post.