5/2: What I Accomplished Today

1. Didn't hear anything about the Arthur paperwork, so I assume all's well. If I haven't heard anything about it tomorrow, I'll send an e-mail.

(I may have been wrong about a department policy about using the generic literature course outcomes; they may actually be the English A.A. outcomes. Whatever they were, it was my understanding we were to use them for all lit courses; I have been doing that since then.)

2. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.

3. Got 20% done on the new Pogo badges.

4. Watched the new Biography about the guys who founded Google. It wasn't really a biography of these two guys; they're not 30 years old yet. It was more a show about the history and some of the technologies behind Google. We really enjoyed that more than we expected to.

I also watched the end of an episode of Big Love, the episode with Roberta's funeral; I think that was the only one I hadn't seen. This show drives my Co-Vivant nuts ("I wouldn't really be interested in a show about circus freaks, either"), but I'm fascinated by people whose lives seem perfectly average and ordinary except for one extraordinary thing; in that regard, it's rather similar to The Sopranos. (Freudians in the crowd are thinking, "Well, isn't that because your life seems perfectly average and ordinary except for one extraordinary thing?" To that, I reply, "As far as I'm concerned, there are half a million extraordinary things about me; to which one were you referring?")

5. Reading the Paul book has been slow, but I've actually been taking the opportunity to read big chunks of it out loud. It's just delicious to read prose out loud sometimes. I do that while my World of Warcraft character is flying or riding the Tram or doing something time-consuming that doesn't require my interaction at all.

6. Got my World of Warcraft Human Mage to level 22 (yes, she dinged twice today).

7. The BigFishGame was a puzzle inlay thing; they're sometimes fun if I'm in the right mood, but I'm not in the right mood, so I didn't download that.

Playfirst, however, has released Chocolatier. I got to play this in the FirstPeek program six or eight weeks ago, and it was fun. I've downloaded it to buy it; I'll probably do that tomorrow, mebbe. Similar to a Tradewinds sort of game, but with a resource-allocation factory component and an arcade component added (the length of time you play the arcade game determines your factory's productivity, which I think is a fun twist).

8. I don't think I did anything useful around the house tonight.

9. About half an hour ago, I was sitting here quietly performing my various tasks, and there was a loud crash on the front patio. A few months ago, a drunk guy stumbled to the porch at 2 am one night and kept yelling for someone named "Patty"; we left the door open and said he had the wrong door. He started making some vaguely threatening gestures, and we finally said, "Nobody named Patty lives here, as you'll see to your embarrassment tomorrow when you wake up and realize you've been knocking on the door, and if you're still on that patio in two minutes, we're calling the police." We never heard again, so we figured he must have realized what he'd done (acting under the huge assumption that he could remember it).

Anyway, when this loud crash went off, I thought maybe it was the drunk guy or maybe a basher of some sort. I started to get up to check out the noise, but then I realized that that probably is not the thing to do. I went back and woke my Co-Vivant (this is difficult), saying I didn't think this was a one-person job. She got a flashlight, and I got the phone, and she edged open the door. It turned out that it's gusty tonight and the wind had taken out a trash can. Now this was dreadfully embarrassing; I had awakened her quite late and gone into Lockdown Mode, and a trash can blew over. Oh, well.