What the Puck?

I can't even begin to describe the number of levels on which this is wrong, nor the amount of wrongness those levels contain.

They're damn tasty, though.

Brief Update

There were finals, and then there was a weekend wedding in Harrisburg followed by a trip to Pittsburgh and the most grueling half-marathon I have ever run (it was cold, it was wet, we ran up every hill in Pittsburgh, then I drank a beer. The end.) Then, on returning home, there were more finals, and a photo exhibit to dissassemble, crate, and and ship, and then a flight to Spokane and a marathon. In which I PRed, thank you very much.

And then I came home, bought groceries, went through six days' worth of mail, and dug a hole in my backyard big enough to contain a friend's hundred-pound shepherd mix when she couldn't afford to cremate him. Just in case you've been wondering where the hell I went lately.

I'm looking very much forward to having to go back to work soon.

Overheard Whilst in My Bathrobe

Early this AM, I met my dad on the stairwell as I stumped grouchily tea-wards and he trundled up in search of, from the looks of it, his hairbrush. We grunted at each other and shot a little half-wave, half-salute out from hip level, our customary pre-caffeine greeting.

Then, as I hit the downstairs hallway, his voice echoed back at me thoughtfully: "We are just two snips, passing in the flight."

And Now, a Poem. Sort of.

I spent a lot of my weekend visiting a good friend of mine, and her utter snob of a cat. The cat in question (who, I should point out in defence of my friend's taste, arrived in our lives with her name already firmly intact) spent much of the weekend whining at us in typical theatrical cat fashion. I'm inside. I'm hot. Feed me. My fur is touching me. Pet me. Stop petting me. Why are you staring at me? Etc. Late yesterday evening, after just enough gins and tonic (gin and tonics just sounds wrong), I composed a song in her cranky honour, to be sung to the tune of Don McLean's "Vincent".

"Xena (Furry, Furry Night)"

Furry, furry night
Paint your kitty blue and grey
Take her on a holiday
Go through the garden underneath the fence

Furry, furry night
Patterns in her stripey fur
Listening to hear her purr
As she sheds her coat upon your couch

Now I understand
Why you sit there hating me
How you suffer the stupidity
Of humans who won't set you free

We cannot not listen
We do not know how
While you stare and say, "Meow!"

Furry, furry night
Paint your kitty blue and green
Put her in a soup tureen
And set it on the sunny window sill

Now I understand
Why you sit there hating me
How you suffere the stupidity
Of humans who won't set you free

We could not listen
We did not know how
We thought you said, "Meow!"

One Man

One of my students invited me to photograph her final project for her Communications class. She and several other students traveled to Center City Philadelphia (an area with which I am only moderately familiar, mostly as home to the Reading Terminal Market and packet pick-up for the Philadelphia Marathon) for an experimental project in nonverbal communication: free hugs. Technically speaking, there was both verbal and nonverbal communication here, as they were both speaking and holding up signs with words written on them, but that wasn't the subject of their experiment. What they were interested in was how ordinary people would react to being offered a hug by a total stranger. Coincidentally, they chose to carry out this experiment on Good Friday.

The title of this post is a homonym for the man who began this campaign in Sydney, Australia--Juan Mann. That is not, to the best of my knowledge, a pseudonym. That is his actual name.

Scenes from the City of Brotherly Love

The free hugs crew sets up outside City Hall.

Bethann bends down for a little stroller action.

Heather gets a surprise!

John from Texas.

Something that doesn't happen nearly enough.

Lennon makes some new friends....

...who borrow our signs....

...and make friends of their own.

Diane and friend.

Bethann and Lennon.

A Delightful Combination of Earnestness and Stupidity

The text of a recent email from a student, who seems somewhat befuddled about the way things work around here:

Is the class(8:30-11 mon) still in room 204? I went last week and ems
people were in there. I can't get into my school email at all so I was
wondering.

My carefully phrased response:

Last week was spring break.

Maybe The Matron is right. Maybe we do need to evaluate whether everyone belongs in college.

Faces of Freedom

(a traveling phot exhibit by U Roberto "Robin" Romano. Now I know why he didn't return my emails for two years. Seems he was a little busy.)