1. Mr. Watts passed away earlier this month. He was an indelible part of my childhood and he will be missed. May his memory be a blessing.
2. His was not the only passing this month, unfortunately. More on that later.
3. In other news we’re all ready for Spring Break down at Home Campus, except for those of us who teach for more than one campus and therefore have had random spring breaks all month, which in practice means never quite having a spring break because no matter what campus is currently on break there’s always another one that isn’t. I don’t think this plan was very well thought out.
4. My job has had its ups and downs of late, which I suppose is how jobs go really. So far the ups are winning, at least.
5. I’ve read two different books since I completed the Bull Cook journey and I’m still not sure if my brain has recovered fully. Ol’ George packs quite the literary punch, he does.
6. If you’re not furious at the increasingly overt slide into Fascism that the American right wing is dragging the rest of the country along with them right now you’re not paying attention. This is a perilous time to be an American, and I don’t know where it will end up.
7. On the other hand Kyiv still stands, so not all of the lamps in the world have gone out.
8. Somehow I managed to turn my tongue into hamburger while eating lunch yesterday and you really don’t notice how much you use that particular organ in everyday life – even if everything you do is entirely G-rated – until that happens. Fortunately I’m not much of a drinking man, as I can’t imagine what a good whiskey would do to me right now.
9. I am making slow progress on getting my financial house in order, mostly by trying to find other people to do that for me. If all goes well I will soon be able to subcontract out that entire portion of my life and live off the interest of my vast wealth as a historian, which can be accomplished as long as I live in a shoebox down by the river and learn how to digest grass.
10. The Flyers continue to be an entertaining if not very successful team to watch, which is fine. It’s shared time with family.
11. Our brackets continue to be busted, but we’re hanging tough. Going into the second round Kim was winning on points with 45 to Oliver’s 41 and my 38, but Oliver had 10 teams still standing to Kim’s 7 and my 6. I’m pretty much guaranteed not to win this, but I’m going to have fun watching it all go down in flames.
12. I am hoping that this summer will have few if any demands on me, as I could use some down time. This is, of course, nonsense, as I will no doubt fill it with some assortment of the four large projects and several hoped-for activities that I have lined up, so really who am I fooling. There will be much busyness and it will be exhausting and memorable and that’s just how it is.
9. Editor’s Note: You do not digest grass. You smoke it.
ReplyDelete6. See Above.
12. Ditto. Frozen Burritos can temporarily cure anything with the proper hot sauce applied in liberal quantities. Life continues unabated. Unfortunately. See Above. Other than that, I got nuthin.
Lucy
9. You know, I never have. I don't object to others doing so, but I live in my head and I don't like things messing with it. Who knows - I might have been better off if I'd tried it.
ReplyDelete12. Burritos with hot sauce are indeed a bright spot in this darkening world. I live in a town that has all of the finest chain restaurants in America plus really, really good Mexican food so I don't eat frozen burritos very often since I can get fresh ones for about the same price, but the liberal application of hot sauce remains a proven mood lifter.
I'm almost out of my favorite hot sauce, though, and they haven't restocked! I will have to buy two cases this year when they do. Or just go back to any of the other four varieties I happen to have on hand. :)
Is your comment regarding life about new crises or continuing crises?
9. I haven't smoked it since (WOW! Has it been that long? Yes. It has ...) However, my wife has a Medical Marijuana Card, so you could say that I'm constantly exposed to temptation. But that's not how I know that you smoke it - not eat it. It does occur to me, in hindsight, that you could have been referring to that other type of grass - lawn - in which case, you may ignore the old fart in the corner. 😳
ReplyDelete12. The fast food chains out here serve burros, not burritos. We have three decent franchise restaurants. Make that two decent and one that should be burned to the ground. So, unless you're up for a sit-down restaurant experience, frozen burritos are our best choice for a quick fix, so we keep a well-stocked freezer.
Well, I guess, Life - Which IS (after all is said and done) nothing but a continuing crisis, which is (of course) nothing new.
Wait. Phil can fix that: https://youtu.be/Cq1l5-DLUJ0
213 days.
Lucy
Well, the original post referred to lawn grass since it's far more readily available for chewing on, particularly in Wisconsin where our thoroughly gerrymandered legislature is still convinced it's 1950 and think Reefer Madness is a documentary.
ReplyDeleteWe actually have real Mexican restaurants - the kind that immigrants open up when they want to settle down in a new place (a running constant in American history for almost every immigrant group) - and their food is generally cheap and good. Take out, dine in, great stuff. We take it for granted, but it's really wonderful.
Phil can fix most things.
Hang in there.
Your point 6 could have been - and heck, maybe was - cut-and-paste from the past several years of such updates. That's not a good thing.
ReplyDeletePlease, please, friends: don't smoke anything. Edible THC, gummies, whatever, fine; the psychoactive effects are generally mild, addictability relatively low, benefits sometimes significant. But don't kill your lungs to do so, ok? This concludes the PSA from your friendly local neuroscientist.
Yeah, it's getting repetitive. But the reason history repeats itself is that people don't listen, so historians have to keep repeating as long as we can. It ends with me either not needing to repeat it or no longer able to repeat it, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteWarning taken - thanks! I'm old enough to remember when cigarette smoking was A Thing - my grandmother lived with us for over a decade and was a pack-a-day smoker for more than 60 years. The whole idea of taking dried leaves, sticking them in your mouth, setting them on fire in order to breathe in the smoke, and paying for the privilege the whole while never did make sense to me.