Alien Spouse

Day Trip Back.

It's been snowing today, but Doc C needed to go and get some books from his office - So we went on a day trip.  Eva slept on the way there, and on the way back (impressively I only slept on the way there); whilst we were in town she was a very sociable baby and smiled at everyone she saw.

We grabbed the books (fed and changed the baby), and then had lunch at one of the best sandwich places in town. I'd also called our favourite bakery yesterday to reserve a loaf of their Friday special - The chocolate cherry sourdough.  We also bought coffee and cookies for the road, so today was a total carbs-fest.

All in all, quite a pleasent day.

An Unexpected Perk.

Hurricane Sandy probably won't make it's way up the mountain, so we're safe; however, it has pushed the winter into place, so we've had snow today.  Again it's not bad in Asheville, but Doc's university is likely to be canceling classes tomorrow because there is between 5 and 8 inches of snow predicted.  Which means Doc came home unexpectedly this evening! Yay!

 

Five Days Until Due Date.

Doc C is back after the first day of teaching and he brought me a sticky bun!  That man knows me so well!

Today he made a point to warn his students that he'll likely be cancelling a class either this week or next because of the baby, so they are forewarned.  Usually Doc leaves his phone in his office whilst he's teaching, but for the time being he'll be taking it with him into the classroom; and I have been told I am only to call in the event of waters breaking.  It is obviously extremely tempting to call and just be like "Hi!  I'm bored!  How are you?", because that would be funny.  I'm not going to do that though, because Doc would have a heart attack and then be really really unamused.

To stop myself pulling hilarious prank calls on my poor husband, I have been reading a lot today and I think tomorrow I might even crack open the yarn stash and start making something for Eva.  I'm thinking booties that look like black mary-janes with socks, but I might start her first Halloween costume.  Decisions, decisions.

New Routine.

It's been sort of a weird day, because Doc C had to go back to work and I didn't - So I've just been kicking around the appartment with The Bump and the cats.  There has been much napping, reading, watching of quirky detective dramas that were cancelled after one season on Netflix and eating fake bacon sandwiches.

Doc will be staying at Randy and Laura's house two nights a week this semester, because he's scheduled to teach four days a week and this is the first week of that new routine.  It's going to be weird not having him here, but it's better than him exhausting himself driving; I'm also hoping that this arrangement will mean he'll be able to get at least some sleep once Madam gets here (whenever that is, but let's also hope that she chooses not to be born on a Monday night or a Wednesday night - because, oh for goodness sake, that is going to be a massive headache).

 

Bib/Cape.

Brittany, the very lovely work study student in my office, is graduating this weekend, and so she's leaving us. This is just unbelivably selfish, but what can you do?

As a leaving gift I bought her a set of Philosophy bath things, because they always smell nice but also because they had a gift set which had especially heart-warming things written on the packaging. I'm not a big advocate of sentimentality, but I think when you are leaving University for your first job that having shower gel that tells you every morning that you are great and that you have a terrific future in front of you would be nice.

What I was totally not expecting was for Brittany to buy me a present, but, like I said, she is lovely and very thoughtful.  Isn't this bib adorable?  Look at all the little fishes with their great big teeth!  Nom, nom, nom! I love it!

In the current absence of a dressable baby I did try holding it up to Doc C's face to see what it might look like on Eva - assuming she looks like him, and has the stubble beffiting a Bearded Lady in training. This was fun, but I felt we could go further with it... Hmmmm... Who else lives in our house and is of the perfect size to wear a bib as a cape? Oh yes, Nancy!

Honestly, I thought that she would only put up with this for a second or two, but she was perfectly happy to wander around the living room with it on.  Clearly Nancy has super-hero fantasies that we were previously unaware of.

Admin. Pro. Lunch.

Yesterday was Administrative Professionals Day (Note to British People : I know *rolls eyes*), so today my college had a lunch for all of the admin staff. This was a lovely gesture, and I really do appreciate the thought and the effort that went into planning it.

But... When we walked into the conference room the tables were already set with individual plates of salad, with a big piece of chicken right on top of each salad. And I'm a vegetarian.

So the only thing I could do, and not be the ungrateful pain in the backside, was to ask if anyone wanted my chicken and then just eat the iceberg lettuce that had been underneath it whilst trying not to think about it too much.  That won't kill me right?

Plus the thing started at 11:30 - So I feel like I had a salad as my mid-morning snack (there was also a sponge cake with a strawberry sauce and a blob of fake cream) instead of lunch, and didn't get my usual afternoon nap on Doc's sofa.

Other than that, it was very nice.

Atheist Students.

Doc C reported back on the "Ask and Atheist" event, and apparently it went very well.

I was, I'll admit now, slightly concerned that there would be some unpleasantness, but actually it was more a case of students stopping dead in their tracks and saying "Oh! Oh! I'm an atheist too, I had no idea there was a club on campus! There are people I can talk to! Where do I sign up?"

One thing that I'm really impressed by is that the students in the atheist group are very keen on doing service work, so they are doing things like the Walk for Life to raise the group's profile and, of course, raise some money for charity.

Ask An Atheist!

Doc C spent most of this afternoon making this large sign for the (self-explanatory) "Ask an Atheist" event at the university tomorrow. I like the sign a lot, and hope they get asked some good questions!

Nancy's question is when she's likely to be fed, with a follow up question about getting rid of Edith.

A Dozen Six-Sided Dice.

Over the summer Doc C attended a seminar on re-designing classes, and there was a segment on how to restructure a group exercise. He texted me at the coffee break because his mind was a blank, and I texted back "When in doubt, go with a zombie apocalypse!" So, today Doc C's class will be dividing up into teams which are trying to re-structure society following a zombie apocalypse, and they will have to roll dice to add elements of chance to the thing. They get various advantages and penalties depending on the score they roll, and it also determines how much food they gather or hunt.

We purchased a dozen dice yesterday and Doc was very careful that they were easy to distinguish from each other. We then spent some coming up with names for all of them. In his class today the student groups will be writing the name of their dice on the top of their sheets, so Doc C knows where they all are and who to chase up if one of them goes missing. Mostly they are named after sci-fi species (Suliban) or cartoon characters (Invader Zim, Harley Quinn), but we also have Disco, Smokey and Blue Plate Special.

Game night at our house, when we ever get around to hosting such a thing, will be epic!

My Coffee Knife's Former Life.

The reason I have a scalpel-like craft knife on my desk : It was unearthed during the clearing out of a retiring professor's office.

The reason an English professor had a scalpel-like craft knife in his office (along with many other very sharp things) : Unknown.

What I use the scalpel-like craft knife for : It's my Coffee Knife. I use it to enlarge the air hole on the disposable plastic lids of my take-away coffee or tea. In my experience with these lids the size of the sipping hole is uniformly fine, but the air hole (which is necessary to avoid creating a vacuum in the paper cup, thanks rudimentary knowledge of physics!) is often too small to be effective, and then each sip taken is far too much work. I used to use a paper clip for this task, but this is not ideal.

What the English professor used the scalpel-like craft knife for : Unknown, but then he also had half a dozen letter openers; perhaps years of working with paper makes you just want to slice it into little pieces?

My Point: None, other than I use that craft knife fairly often, and I always wonder about it.

Thursday Summary.

It's really annoying when you have news to tell someone, so you e-mail them to say "There is gossip to dish" and then they call you and say "Is it blah?" No hello or anything, just right in there with the correctly guessing your fresh intell. Humph!

Work continues to be very quiet I was pretty much alone all day but David did need to come in so he brought his dog Buster with him and that was a rare treat. I think more people should bring dogs to work with them, preferably those that are hypoallergenic (Not that I'm allergic to dogs myself, but I know that's an issue to be aware of when bringing animals to the office)and like to shake paws. I love shaking paws.

One particularly great thing about being alone at work is sigining into our netflix account and streaming movies that Doc C has no interest in, whilst I also get all sorts of housekeeping tasks done before the spring semester kicks off. Today I sorted the evaluations to be processed whilst watching cheesy 80's horror, it was a productive and entertaining day.

On the First Day of Christmas.

We have enjoyed the first day of our Christmas holiday, celebrating by on Doc's side by finishing his grading and on my part by watching several films of varying quality. Then we went out for lunch to reward Doc C's having submitted the grades by today's deadline. Yay!

Students: Compare and Contrast.

 

Doc C checked Facebook last night and found this video on a friend's wall. I have watched it a couple of times this morning, posted it to my own wall and even listened to students in the hallway outside my office apparently prepping together to have this conversation with their professor en masse.

sigh.

Then a student, whom I know slightly, came into my office carrying a paper sculpture that she had made for an English class project, and was now giving to her professor.

It's Alice talking to the Caterpillar in Wonderland, and it was made from a maths book (which is genius in itself). There are different types of flower, different sizes of toadstools and a butterfly covered in calculus.

This makes me very happy.

 

Bright Art. Cloudy Sky.

The University has quite a few sculptures on campus, and this is the most recent addition being erected. I particularly like the cozy rug that's been used to cushion the art from the crane's pulley.

Also, I had my camera on the "pin hole" setting when I took this picture yesterday afternoon, so the sky didn't look that dark at the time. It does now though.

4 Dance.

Students are always losing stuff, usually water bottles, books or coats, and this particular note must have fallen out of someone's bag when they were in my office.

I think it must be a comment card for a dance class, but I'd love to think that there is some random person wandering around in nightclubs (not that we have any night clubs here - that's where this daydream really loses touch with reality) and critiquing their fellow clubbers.

Either way I'm keeping this on my desk in case the student who dropped it comes back for it. If it were me I'd want documented evidence of my excellent lip syncing skills.

Flame Coloured Leaves.

This tree is right next to the main entrance to my building and it's easy not to notice for most of the day, because it's not until the sun moves around behind it in the laste afternoon that you really get the effect of the whole tree being aflame. Then you notice.

Baking for Disbelievers.

This evening I'm cooking for the University's fledgling band of heathens - The Atheists and Agnostics will be getting almond mini cupcakes with a raspberry compote, and a deconstructed pumpkin cheesecake (spiced pumpkin creamcheese piped onto a graham cracker (English Translation - A square biscuit that is sort of like a slightly less crisp digestive)).

It's rather convenient that these are two of the items on my Halloween buffet menu, isn't it? But I'm sure the students won't mind being culinary guinea pigs.

Busy Morning.

This morning was pretty much laid out for me - I simply had to make alterations to next semester's schedule; essentially tailoring a skeleton timetable to fit the requirements of the registrar whilst trying to accommodate the preferences of the faculty. This is not as much fun as it sounds.

I was about two hours into the data splurge when one of the professors ran in to my office to tell me a student had fallen on the stairs and might have broken her ankle. The tricky part then was to report the accident to campus police and then the emergency services just based on those few words.

Is the patient conscious? I think so,because she was able to say her ankle felt broken. Is there any bleeding? That wasn't mentioned at all, and I think it would have been if there were any blood, so probably not. How old is the patient? Errrr.... It's a student, so, late teens to early twenties is statistically a good bet. Is the patient male or female? The professor said she, so female. It turned out that I had been right on all of that - The patient was a woman who had her 24th birthday last week, and she was both conscious and not bleeding. I'm like Sherlock Holmes!

I was waiting outside when the paramedics arrived, and I took them to the stairwell to accident site and I stayed to help if I could. They were great, and soon had her splinted and in the back of ambulance. I went back to my office, and pulled up her records for the accident report, and I also e-mailed her so hopefully I'll hear if she's ok. Fingers crossed!

AA/AA.

Should you be wondering how you would get one of Doc C's delicious macaroons, I am delighted to tell you it is now as simple as joining our University's Atheist and Agnostic association.

Doc was asked to be their faculty sponsor (all student organizations are required to have one) and this week he baked for the meeting. I'm planning to contribute various different things over the next few weeks so I can perfect my Halloween party buffet items! Yay for the Atheist and Agnostic Association!

It turns out the wages of sin, or, at least, disbelief are home-baked treats.  

Vote Cranberry.

Brittany, my department's fantastic work study student, adopted a fish today and didn't have time to take him home before she came to work. So we've had a mini fish tank with a beta fish swimming around on my desk this afternoon.

He doesn't have a name yet, but Brittany liked my suggestion of Cranberry. She has joint custody with her room mate though, so there is going to have to be some serious discussion of the matter this evening.

Gathering My Strength.

Wow, the first week of classes is exhausting - And that's just for me, answering questions, scrambling to sort out room mix-ups and giving out permit forms like it's going out of fashion (which it will next week, when the add/drop period ends. Hooray!) If I was actually going to classes as well, I would have been asleep on my feet, which, now I think of it ,might explain a lot about the students this week.

I told Doc C categorically that I would not be leaving the house today. That I needed to sleep late, make toast, watch DVDs, play video games, drink several mugs of tea and take a long nap after lunch; and that is exactly what I did, except for the video games and there is still time for that.

First Day of Classes = Earth Shaking.

I always dread the first day of classes, which may sound odd as I'm not actually going to be in a classroom, but it is incredibly busy. For the whole day I know that I'll be answering questions, handing out forms, collecting forms, processing forms and keeping track of all of the class rooms, faculty, offices etc. This usually comes in waves, so during class there will be a lull and in the 15 minute windows between the end of one class and the start of the next I will be deluged.

We've only had one squabble over who is teaching a class, so we're doing well.

At lunch time I went to Doc C's office for lunch, and a well earned nap. I was slightly annoyed to feel the sofa shake whilst I was dozing, and I thought the agitation was caused by the ride on mower cutting the grass outside the window. It was not a lawn mower. It was an EARTH QUAKE.

A freaking EARTH QUAKE, so today was kind of interesting all around.

The Miniest of Breaks.

At about lunch time yesterday I spontaneously decided to take the afternoon off, because there was really nothing happening in the office and Doc C has had a paper provisionally accepted by a journal that is, like, a really big deal in his field of philosophy so I wanted to celebrate that with him.  It was a lovely day, not too hot but with beautiful blue skies; so we went for a walk around a lake, had some from frozen custard and then went home for a cup of tea and a nap. It was very pleasant indeed!

What with one thing and another it's not been a particularly great summer (Note to Self: A great summer involves me having at least a week off from work for starters), so I am very pleased that I decided to take three hours of my holiday time on the spur of the moment to actually do something nice.

Of course I still wish I'd had days and days and days of walking around lakes whilst chatting with my husband and eating delicious food before having a nap in the afternoon, but one takes what one can get and tries to preserve that nice afternoon in mental amber to be enjoyed again later.

Door-to-Door Letter Opener.

I love this! It's another gem from the retiring professor's office, and it's a plastic letter opener with a molded decoration on both sides of the handle. One side is a travelling saleswoman and the other is a travelling salesman, and just underneath both is the logo for Fuller's Brush Co. I adore the "Mad Men" vibe on this, but I especially love the travelling saleswoman and her fabulous outfit. I want that dress, and those gloves. Gorgeous.

Naturally I did a little google research, and I discovered that these letter openers were promotional freebies from Fuller's, which is just delightful. These letter openers aren't terribly collectible and they are easy to buy cheaply on ebay, so I'm thinking I might turn it into a piece of jewellery somehow. I think it's too big for a necklace, but maybe a brooch or a bracelet.

A Bouquet of Pipecleaners.

One of our longest serving faculty is retiring, so he is clearing out his office and gifting the treasures he finds to his friends and colleagues.

Yesterday I was given this bunch of pipecleaners, which I'm sure have a future as skelatal structures of amigurumi, but for now are impersonating impressionistic flowers on my desk.

I also got several different types of card index, a beer mat and an elephant trunk mask; whilst Doc has scored a giant pair of chalk compasses for drawing accurate circles on blackboard. 

Chaotic Cacophany.

When I woke up this morning I had a headache, but I got ready for work and dragged myself to campus (well, Doc C drove me most of the way really).

When I arrived my heart sank because outside the front door to my building were a number of huge and serious-looking machines, one of which was clearly a wood chipper. My actual office is about ten feet away from the main entrance, so it sounded like trees were being chainsawed and then chipped just over my right shoulder. It did smell lovely, so that was something.

Over the summer there is a new dorm building going up, so I have had a building site right outside the window for a couple of months now. I swear that they have been stepping things up so that the site not only has the usual mixers, forklifts, trucks, beeping reversing alerts, cranes, sledgehammers,power-saws, power-sanders and workmen with preternaturally loud voices, but also what sounds like a bass drum, a lonely wolf and a small rave from 1993. This is directly behind me.

But that's not all - My building is also playing host to the summer school for a local middle school, and so there are young teenagers screeching through the hallways every hour or so. It's odd to hear "GIRL POWER!" being bellowed by what is quite clearly an adolescent male but teenage boys away from the nurturing influence of their parental units are very loud; they also smell, especially when they get caught in the rain. Ooh, as a special treat for today the kids have been getting into the lift in large groups and then jumping in unison, so I can hear the high pitched whine of the lift-doors opening and closing in distress.

Essentially I've been sitting in a surround sound hell for my entire working day, and I already had a headache before any of that started. Is it really any wonder that when people ask me how my summer is going I'm just growling at them?

One Two, One Two, This is Just A Test.

This morning I was testing out a new microphone in the office, and I had just started recording when a group of students walked past. Much like the Brian De Palma film "Blow Out" (1981) I inadvertently recorded a conversation. Unlike "Blow Out" it wasn't evidence of a murder, but a more mundane student discussion about their intention to skip class tomorrow.

The microphone worked just as it should and I got a crystal clear recording, which I think would make a particularly excellent ring tone for disillusioned academics.

Mystery Book.

When we got home this evening there was a package sitting on the chair next to the front door, and it had Doc's name on it. This was mysterious as he never uses our home address for deliveries; we both get stuff sent to our PO box or our offices.

It was quite clearly a book, and when he opened the padded envelope it turned out to be a new book on Hume that had been sent by the publishers. That isn't unusual in itself, publishers send free copies of books to academics in the hopes they will add them to a class reading list, but you do usually have to request them. And, again, that is exactly the sort of thing that would normally be sent to Doc's office. There was a dispatch receipt in the envelope too, and I noticed that had our PO box address on it, not our home address.

So now we are very confused, and still no closer to working out who sent this to Doc or, rather, suggested the publishers should. Would anyone care to take credit? We'd be most interested!

I was toying with the idea of telling him there was a magical creature, like the Easter Bunny, who brought nice new books to good little Doctors of Philosophy, but something tells me he probably won't fall for that one.

Everyday Drama.

I am really bad at office politics, and always have been; but they are apparently just part of any workplace and a University department is really no different in that respect. One thing you can say for locking a bunch of intelligent and impassioned academics in a small space (figuratively) is that it does lead to some fascinating debates.

And, whilst it would be highly unprofessional of me to say anything more specific than that, I will say that over the past few weeks I have often thought that an English department would be the basis of an amazing "Mad Men"-esque drama series. Not necessarily set in the sixties, but full of intelligent people being witty and erudite with a lot of complicated motives and machinations.

En Français : Travail de Mon Dernier Nerf

"Working my last nerve" is an American turn of phrase which is very similar to the British expression "getting on my nerves", but which to my mind expresses that paranoid impression that not only is this person (or situation, or object) annoying you, but that it is intentional.

This entire week is apparently intent on working my last nerve.

Monday was just one problem after the other, not all of these effected me directly and some were a lot more serious than others, but it was the relentlessness which really wiped me out. Yesterday lulled me into a false sense of security, so it really did catch me off guard to arrive and find that the red alarm light on top of the emergency defibrillator was smashed. So the first thing I had to do this morning was call campus police, because I do not think that the light spontaneously broke itself.

What the hell is going on?

Is there a full moon, or is this just because it's the middle of the semester and everyone is tired and fractious (I include myself in that, I'm trying very hard to quash some unusually waspish tendancies this week)? 

A Box Full of Murder

Today was the leaving do for Kay, the office manager of Doc C's department. I worked part-time in that office when we first got here, so I went to say goodbye as well.  Whilst we were chatting she mentioned that there was a box of books under her desk that I was welcome to take.  Not just books though, murder mysteries! Kay loves a good thriller even more than I do, which is saying something, so there are bound to be some absolute corkers in here.

I must admit to leaving a few behind though, and that was mainly based on cover design or a really off-putting plot synopsis. I did keep the one that promised me a hijacked airplane (and I quote "...complete with a beautiful English hijackeress." Hijackeress?!?!?), and then a murder with the only witness being a chimp that can communicate with plastic symbols (please, please let these be fridge magnets). Oh yeah, I can already tell that one is going to be amazing.

The Chief Suspects are Shawn and Gus.

There are several sculptures on campus, and some of them are just begging to be messed with. 

This group of statues is representative of the university's roots as a teacher training college.  Apparently there used to be a fountain in the center, but that proved to be far too tempting for the students so it was removed.  However the teacher still has an open outstretched hand that is just begging for things to be put in it, especially as the students are staring at that hand so very intently. Today was a fairly tame, just a pineapple carved with a happy face.  I rather liked that.

Snow Wednesday.

The University was closed today because of the snow, so I read a lot and Doc did a lot of work; whilst the cats mainly found new and exciting ways to sit on me and sleep.  This morning I woke up with both felines snuggled up to me, and whilst Edith has been following me around all day, Nancy was quite content to make herself a nest out of my pajamas and just stay there for the past 9 hours.

After lunch Doc remembered he had an appointment for a check-up, so we did venture in to town and made a run to the supermarket to buy more staple foods for the larder.  I never want to be in the position where we are even close to being stranded with no tea in the house.

I also took this opportunity to post my Mum's birthday present!  Which means it's only going to be a month or so late!  I am TERRIBLE at getting to the post office when I have a parcel to be sent out.  This one came to Boston with us, had one or two things added to it, and then came all the way back home to sit on our coffee table.  It is a well traveled gift already, and it's still got an ocean to cross.

Friday Night - Before the Predicted Snow Storm.

We're going to my Department's Christmas Party this evening, which should be quite fun actually.  It's a very good thing that it's this evening, because this weekend we have been promised a blizzard.  In fact the University has already re-scheduled the exams that were supposed to take place on Monday to Wednesday, I'm assured that this is completely without precedent so this is clearly going to be some serious snow.

I'm already planning the supplies we'll need to buy tomorrow morning to survive the predicted long snow-pocalypse weekend - Mostly this involves having all the ingredients required to bake mince-pies and gingerbread houses, but I also have my eye on some draught excluding caulking cord for the window frames.  I am determined to stay warm this year, and I've been reading this blog post about things you can do to keep heat in when you live in a rented home with an eye to making that a reality.  Of course my top tips to staying warm over the winter is plenty of tea and a cat or two scattered about the place.

A Real Live Person.

I often joke that the students believe that the faculty sleep in their offices, because they seem to be so put out when the professor they need to speak to isn't there at the very moment the student needs to speak to them.  Well, maybe sleep is the wrong concept, it's more like power down really as all students secretly believe that their teachers are some sort of artificially intelligent android with no real human attributes like emotions or familial attachments.

In a similar way some of Doc C's students have apparently become fascinated by me, as an abstract concept rather than an actual person as most of them haven't met me.  Doc sometimes mentions me in lectures, and when I cropped up in one of his classes yesterday he was asked where I worked.  Upon hearing I was actually only in the next building over, a couple of them immediately started planning to come and look at me in my enclosure.  Another student is an English major, so he was able to tell the exciting story of having actually spoken to me.  He was even able to repeat a witticism I'd made, although I don't know if he tried to do a British accent.

I am so very exotic. 

Gorilla and Leaves.

Today has just been damn weird.

For example I was updating some contracts when I saw in my peripheral vision that someone walking out of the building had stopped in my office doorway.  I looked up to see a person dressed in a gorilla suit, with a red baseball cap and a shoulder bag.  The gorilla huffed at me, and then walked off.

Which was odd.

Anyway...

Aren't these leaves pretty?  The photo doesn't really give you the full impact of the bright red foliage and black branches against the blue sky.

Tuesday Night Me Time.

Doc C has stuff to do on campus this evening, so I'm making lentil curry for dinner and watching "Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express".  I am also going to convert a knitting pattern for toe socks into a pair of trousers for the Yoda I'm making.  I'll probably read a couple of chapters of the Dorothy L. Sayers whodunnit, possibly whilst drinking a glass of red wine.

It's a non-stop 24 hour party around here!

Games, Detectives, Soup and Crochet.

Yesterday and today have both been a bit hectic in the office, and probably will be for the rest of this week too.  So I'm pretty much brain dead by the time I get home in the evening, yesterday I played video games and watched "Sherlock" and tonight I'm making lentil soup and watching "Castle".  I am also crocheting a soft toy Yoda which is very engrossing.

None of this is a particularly good photo opportunity, or white hot blogging material.

So... Hi!  I'm making soup!  How are you?

Countdown to Halloween: Four Days

All of the faculty in my department have cubbyholes for their messages and books.  

This week it has also been the delivery method for several glittery skulls.

Chalk on Bricks.

At the moment there are lots of chalk drawings and messages drawn on the pavements around campus. The ways of the British University Student Body are different to the American University Student Body; so I don't really know what's going on, but I'm assuming it has to do with fraternities and sororities or something because I am told it is Rush Week (whatever that is).

Anyway, no matter what the intended purpose, the colours are pretty.

And Then The Toner EXPLODED.

Generally when there is a problem with the department's main copier it will turn out to be a paper jam in the part that gets really super hot.  Normally this would be too mundane to note, but this was the only photo I took today and it did make multiple colleagues gasp and/or giggle, not to mention demand to know who had done such a thing.

This morning, as I arrived in the office, the department chair was on his way into the copy room because a faculty member had mentioned there was "something wrong" with the copier.  That really is a beautifully turned understatement.  As you can see what happened was when the machine was being topped up with toner, more of it ended up on the floor and in the delicate innards of the machine than actually in the toner reservoir.

I'm pleased to say that there was a happy ending though; copier services came to do triage and then sent in a specialist paramedic, so the patient lived and will copy another day.

Dragon Con : Sunday

Things started poorly in the morning because the bed in our hotel room is not compatible with Doc C's temperamental back and he woke up in some pain.  We got him pain killers and I scoured the internet for somewhere to have brunch.  

I eventually settled on Cafe 458, mainly because it sounded like it had some decent food and I thought was fairly close to the hotel.  Until I realised it was really at least a half hour's walk away.  So I bundled Doc C into a taxi and got my sweetie to his much needed omelet and juice.  Cafe 458 is actually only open to the general public on Sundays, and it's entirely staffed with volunteers so that 100% of the proceeds, including the tips, go back to the cafe's charitable weekday work.  During the week reservations can only be made by homeless people who have been referred to the cafe by another social service, and the idea is that it's like a fine dining experience with maitre d' greeting the guests at the door and waiters serving a menu prepared by corden bleu chefs.  if you are in Atlanta over a weekend I highly recommend going, it's a nice little restaurant and you can get a stack of delicious buckwheat pancakes that just happen to also be tax deductible.

After breakfast we headed over to the hotel where Doc C would be giving his talk, but we went to see what was on sale in the market places.  It was like a sea of fabulous geekery, we could have purchased entirely new wardrobes of cool t-shirts along with an exciting selection of steam-punk jewelry and disturbingly accurate weaponry.  Doc C bought a cuddly Darth Vader and I think I may have to go back tomorrow to pick up the gem encrusted Star Trek communicator broach. It was magnificent in it's campy over-the-topness.

The browsing took far longer than we had anticipated, and afterwards I needed the peace and quiet of our hotel room.  Not to mention the elixir that is tea.  Doc had a meeting to go to, so I stayed for a lovely nap and we arranged to meet before his talk.

The talk went really very well, and Doc's observations on how super power's are assigned along gender roles for the most part prompted a lot of discussion with the audience.  He had several people stay behind after the Q&A to discuss things in greater detail, including a student who happens to attend our university who asked if he could help with further research.

Then we went for a ridiculously delicious dinner at the Ritz-Carlton's Atlantic Grill, before heading back to the hotel again.

I am freaking exhausted now, but this weekend has been a welcome jolt of geektastic fun.  Tomorrow we are determined to see the Battlestar Galactica panel, because if Edward James Olmos is in the same town as us we are going to hear him talk or know the reason why.

On Ice. In Paperback.

For various working-in-a-university reasons, that I probably shouldn't go into for professional ethics reasons, by the time I got home what I really needed a stiff drink and a nice trashy true crime.

All that I had to hand was a G&T with vermouth, and a second-hand copy of "Party Monster".

Ahhhhhhhh!

Perfect!

Where Sunday Went.

How did it get to be 9:40pm on a Sunday?  I haven't baked the cookies for our office's student worker birthday or done any laundry or played any video games at all!

Well, today we visited the humane society with David and Cameron to visit the cats I've been trying to persuade David into adopting.  Then we all went to the cinema (well, we didn't bring the cats) to see "The Expendables" which was just awe inspiringly terrible, as I had fully expected and hoped.  I mean if you get 10 action movie stars together in one film, then the audience should not expect Ibsen.  They should expect 'splosions and bone snapping, and those things "The Expendable" richly delivers.

Fortunately David also reminded us that Doc C had a department party to go to this afternoon, so we swung home to get changed and then headed over to that where we ate some great food before coming home for a nap.

That was our Sunday.  Damn it!  I want a three day weekend to be standard issue.  Is that really so much to ask?

Smart Women Desk Set.

The second day of classes was still pretty damn hectic, but I surfed the wave of questions and it was invigorating.

The best part of the day was a present from one of the professors!  It was to thank me for scanning the hard copies of her notes for the semester after her computer's hard drive became corrupted and ate them all.

I actually was really interested in her class, so I very much enjoyed doing the scanning, but a beautifully wrapped gift was the quite literal ribbon on top.

It was a Smart Women stationary desk set, with just the most fabulous retro artwork on it.  I love how it looks almost authentically fifties, until you notice little details like the blue anchor tattoo on the leg of the lady sitting at her writing desk.

I particularly love the eraser:

Look at the hair and the specs!  Both of those women could have walked right out of the Sterling Cooper Draper Price typing pool!  SO fabulous!

Fall Semester 2010.

First day of classes.  Really hectic in the office.  So many questions!

Home now, so I'll just be on the sofa vegging out.

With a glass of something probably.

Cover Art: The Strangled Queen.

The book table in my office hallway, where people leave books they wish to release back into the wild, hasn't had anything new in a few of weeks.  However there was one particularly splendid piece of cover art that I spotted a while back which I finally remembered to take a photo of this morning.

As I say it's been there for a while, so I thought that I would be able to come back later and note down some of the plot points from the back cover blurb - But, when I did, the book had gone.

I could probably look up the synopsis on-line, but in the meantime, and purely based on the cover art, don't you think the title should have been "The Dead Mardy Queen"? She looks like a right madam, mind you Prince Valiant doesn't look like a ray of sunshine either; so they are probably perfect for each other, but refuse to admit that until around page 117.

Saturday Afternoons Alright for Platform Video Games.

It's a rainy Saturday and, because the semester starts on Tuesday, the whole town is swarming with students and their families.  We ventured out for breakfast (well, I'd already had some yogurt and muesli so it was second breakfast for me really) and the diner was packed.  Then we were going to go shopping, but soon changed our minds when we realised the roads and car parks were just bumper-to-bumper with out of towners who had no idea where they were going.

So we came home and I fully intended to tidy the house and do some laundry.  Instead I played Little Big Planet for 5 hours.  Time very well spent because I cracked a couple of levels and collected a shed load of new swag.

We Just Need a Title To Create Some Buzz.

Over the summer the University campus plays host to a number of different associations and camps.

This week we have both Cheerleader Camp and the Eastern Apicultural Society Conference (a helpful e-mail explained that this would involve beekeepers, and several swarms of their charges, congregating on a lawn close to my office).  This means we have both overly excitable teenage girls and hives of bees within fairly close proximity to each other.

I don't know who is in charge of scheduling these things, but clearly they have never seen a low budget horror movie.

Amy Sedaris Has Great Legs.

Amy Sedaris was appearing in town this evening as part of the University's Summer Arts Program, and I have been really looking forward to it since May.

Amy Sedaris was great; she was funny, gracious and incredibly patient.  This may seem like an odd thing to say after seeing a comedienne, but there was a Q&A session with the audience at the end and the host who had been chatting with Amy Sedaris earlier was choosing who got to ask questions.  The majority of the people who were invited to "ask a question" were just hogging the microphone to promote a local business.  At one point Amy Sedaris invited an audience member to make a craft project with her.  One enthusiastic young man was selected first, he literally vaulted onto the stage and really seemed into the whole thing.  There were really only enough materials for one craft project, but the host then pulled a woman out of the audience as well.  She turned out to be the owner of a large local shop, and getting her up on the stage seemed to be purely a way for the host to mention the name of it.  It was just so transparent.

Amy Sedaris is staying at a local spa, and, during the Q&A, the owner was given the mic.  She asked if Amy Sedaris liked eggs, Amy Sedaris seemed a little non-plussed by the question, but said no, not really.  Don't like eggs?  Umm, no?  This seemed to go on forever, until the spa owner eventually said that she had been planning to make Amy Sedaris breakfast.  It was like when a small child tries to tell a knock-knock joke to someone who doesn't know they are supposed to say "Who's there?" and the child just keeps trying to tell the joke anyway.  But obviously the owner of the spa is an adult, so it was more uncomfortable then that even! 

Amy Sedaris has a book, "Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People", coming out in November, that I think I might buy because she was just such a sweetheart this evening to put up with all the nonsense so politely.  And I wished I had a copy of her last book, "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence" to get signed after the show, and I might just buy a copy anyway because she was so nice and funny.  We should all get copies!

p.s.  Amy Sedaris changed out of an ankle length gingham dress into a second-hand dress that a friend had altered for her and made extremely short.  This is how I know Amy Sedaris has great legs.