1/24: What I Accomplished Today

1. Strange week; I've been on almost a regular-person "awake in the sunshine sleeping in the nighttime" schedule. I'm not crazy about it.

2. Tuesday and Wednesday were school days, so I prepped and taught classes.

3. I forgot to mention that we caucused last Saturday. Interesting; Nevada apparently hasn't caucused since 1948, so most people didn't know how it would work. It was interesting to get to select our delegates for the county, state, and possibly national conventions, but other aspects of the format are intimidating and infuriating, and it really doesn't lend itself well to a large city.

4. Something happened Puzzle Day that I've been thinking about all week. The Fellas and a friend were talking about a picture they'd seen in the morning's newspaper about a celebrity with her daughter; they said the daughter was a hideous Amazon, too atrocious-looking for words, and all sorts of things that indicated it was a wonder the newspaper hadn't cried for having to hold the picture. And then later that day I read the newspaper and saw the picture--and she's not a classically beautiful girl (neither is her mother), but she looks happy, and healthy, and well-adjusted. She looks like she's living her life and having a good time. And I was a little puzzled and sad: are these people who are very important to us that unfamiliar with what a "happy person" might look like? Or are they so shallow that the fact that she's not classically beautiful means that her other qualities (and she really looked like a fun, fun-loving, intelligent young woman) were utterly meaningless? I don't think I like the answer either way.

I suspect the fact that Kucinich is a running joke in the presidential elections falls into this category as well. His politics are different from what we usually see in the mainstream--and his coverage usually indicates that this is bad. I'm not convinced it is. I think he's a joke not because of his politics but because he's handsome in a president-of-his-high-school-chess-club sort of way.

5. Still working on Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography. She's interesting but dense; sometimes it's "read a paragraph, chew on it for an hour, read the next paragraph." That can be interesting and informative and is a process conducive for retention for many people (sometimes me), but it makes many of her books slow going.

6. Trained the new person who's supposed to help do a lot of the logistical stuff for placement some more. I think she'll be just fine.

7. My Human Paladin is now level 43.