run fast – stand still

As long as I am on the subject of teaching, here is a look back on some highlights from my gig as a professor in New York over the past couple years. (more…)

Last Tuesday I had another one of my teaching moments where I call a student a liar without actually calling the student a liar.  The moment went something like this:

Me:  They have copies of next week’s book in the school library if you still don’t have a copy of it yet.

Her: No, they don’t.

Me:  Oh? [to the class] Has someone already checked out The Hero and the Crown from the library?  [pause] No?  [pause] Then it must be still there.  The library is pretty good about stocking adolescent books.

Her:  No, I checked at the beginning of the sememster, and they do not have The Hero and the Crown.

Me: Yes, they do.  Unless someone stole it from last semester.

Her: No, they don’t.  They don’t have the book.

Me:  Listen, I’m not calling you a liar.  [Cue the faint whistle often heard in Westerns right before the gun fight.]  But I am going to say that I don’t believe you because I know that the library has at least one copy – if not more – of The Hero and the Crown.   So let’s move on with the rest of the class.

Later that night, another student in the class sent me an email to let me know that  he checked out a copy of The Hero and the Crown from the school library after class — one of four copies of the book — and that three copies are still on the shelf.

As for the other student in my class, the one who said the book wasn’t in the library at all?  She is such a liar.

On Saturday night, someone stole my wallet out of my bag at a bar. Yes, I left my bag alone for a moment, piled under my huge winter coat. Yes, I know that I should know better. But still, my wallet is gone.

What pisses me off the most isn’t that I had to cancel and reorder my credit cards. Really, this step just means that I will not be able to spend any more of the money that I don’t actually have for the next seven to ten days. I reordered my driver’s license on-line (another seven to ten days) and am now out the 50$ in cash that was in my wallet, which is not a tragic amount of cash to go without. My guess is that whoever stole my wallet was probably pissed that I only had 50$ on me, a paltry sum in New York City where two movies will set a person back 24$ and that is without the addition of popcorn or drinks.

What really does piss me off though is that I really loved that wallet with its light green leather-like exterior and pretty light pink bird on the flap. When I discovered that my wallet was gone, I was ready to stand up on the bar and demand that everyone turn out their pockets and empty their purses, but Dave talked me out of that. Lucky for everyone around me, I remembered the name of the Portland company that made my wallet: Queen Bee Creations. They have the best wallets — all handmade from vegan materials — and now that I’ve found a web site, I’m probably going to order a bag from them as well in seven to ten days when my access to money returns to me.

In other news that pisses me off: The Cabury Eggs that I’ve seen this holiday season are smaller than they use to be. Smaller! Why would they do that to my favorite once-a-year treat? Sheesh. What is this world coming to when a random person will steal your favorite wallet and Cadbury Eggs shrink? At least someone will benefit from all of this: Queen Bee Creations.

Last night I dreamt that I was dating (and possibly living with ) Justin Timberlake. Now, I admit that I’ve had a crush on him every since he did the Saturday Night Live skit about Omeletville.  Celebrities don’t often show up in my dreams.  (I am not high on their “people to visit” list.) Yet, last night, he surprised me with a gift of some sort that I don’t remember now, and then we slow danced like lovesick high schoolers in my (our?) kitchen. He was very tall, heads above me and growing in a strange Alice in Wonderland sort of way. Clearly we were deeply in love, and clearly I couldn’t tell if we were living together because I knew that I was in my own apartment but I couldn’t figure out if he had let himself in or not. Hopefully he wasn’t allergic to cats.

In other morning news, a cardinal and her mate landed in the weather beaten grape vines outside my window for a quick treat of frozen grapes (raisins at this point?) before fluttering off to a warmer spot. After the snow storm yesterday, the cats (all four of them) are not inclined to go outside, although they do keep checking every once in a while to see if the snow is gone, so the cardinals are quite safe.

After buying and bringing home a half a dozen individually wrapped glasses from Crate and Barrel, we crunch up the paper wrapping and threw it on the floor of our bedroom (which is right off the kitchen) for the cats to play in.

Miss Josephine and Levi played a kitty version of King of the Mountain that they liked to call Owner of the Paper, while Cassius hid downstairs away from all the crunchy noise.