The Magic Office Mate Lady Giveth, and the Magic Office Mate Lady Taketh Away

For reasons I won't go into here, I had occasion to be in my office around 6 this morning. It was still dark out, and when I looked out my office window, there were 5 deer, one a baby, grazing in the strip of grass between the building and the road. (The large, heavily-trafficked-during-daylight-hours road.) I watched them walk carefully around and bend their necks at the shoulders to eat the grass.

I had to leave, though, so when I got downstairs, instead of heading for my car in the opposite direction, I snuck around the corner of the building to see if they were still there. I saw one, still grazing to my right. Then, about to leave, I looked up behind a big cluster of bushes, and there three were, heads held high and silhouetted against the lights from the stadium next door. They were looking at me. I looked at them. I told them to be careful.

Look, if you're susceptible to being tricked by a scarf, then you clearly have bigger problems than a cold neck.

Salon awhile ago gave up the "sex" section of the magazine, and now "life" appears to be gone as well. Which, when you think about it, is a logical progression...

Chihuahua !!!

Have you ever been so conscious of packing a suitcase in the tightest way possible that when you were finished packing you had, like, 15 cubic feet left over? Well, I just condensed an entire thesis chapter (a looong thesis chapter) into a 20 minute presentation that, all told, times out at about 10 minutes. DAMN IT. I can't just toss some extra socks in and strap things down with those little strappy things.

They're very serious about this 20 minute time limit thing - they make you sign something saying that you understand it and will comply. If you go over, they cut your tongue out, or at least glare at you, or at least curse you inside their heads. I wonder what they would do if I wrapped it up 10 minutes early.

Hour 13 of a 12 hour fast

I am hungry. I have to get blood drawn for a lipid panel because I have high total cholesterol. As I am a 24-year-old vegetarian, we're thinking it must be genetic. So I have to give them some blood so they can figure out if it's actually bad, and if so, exactly how bad it is.

But I can't really leave to go get the blood drawn because


Eau de Scared Dog (chien fou?)

I started making a new 90-minute mixed tape, because NPR is great and all, but being in the car a minumum of 4 1/2 hours/week is requiring some music, and the stuff they play in between segments just isn't cutting it. I would go into more here, but the dogs and I are freaking out (them more than me) because

We're getting a new roof. And the house is shaking and it sounds like a giant is cutting through the roof with a gigantic pair of garden shears and I'm pretty sure a burly guy with a masculine nickname is going to crash through my ceiling any second now. Oh, and roof parts are falling past the window. And there's some sporadic hammering sounds. And barking. And I definitely detect a saw. Right above my head.

Over and out.

I always find myself rooting for the hackers.

Sorry it's been a while since I rapped at ya.

Recently people (students) have been coming up to me and stating their problems. And then a magical thing happens: it becomes my problem. I get at least 3 new class-related problems per day (and not excluding evenings or weekends; problem at 11:30 at night? please! call my home!). Death, wicked computers, wicked printers, wicked alarm clocks, wicked roomates, wicked cars, chemistry exams, wicked fraternity brothers, and busy schedules have suddenly all become my problem. Every time I check my e-mail, I have a new problem.

My response to this has been "problem judo," a complicated, tricky maneuver that involves me blocking and parrying with my own problems. Had to e-mail me your paper instead of handing me a hard copy? Sorry, I don't have a printer, better get me a hard copy tomorrow. (I really don't, at least not one that works.) Had to miss class and want to make up the work? Sorry, I'm too busy and unorganized to conduct a private class for you and let you do whatever activity you missed. (Also true.) Want to revise that paper? Sorry, I would rather throw myself out a window than read it again. (Probably when it comes down to it, not exactly true, but it feels so very true right now.)

This is all very tiring.

Did it suddenly get harder to show up for class? Or bring your fucking book with you? Do cell phones have off buttons? Am I missing something?

This morning when I got to work at the pharmacy, I learned that a maniac (sorry, customer) was threatening to "harm" the people at the pharmacy (i.e. us) if he didn't get his pills. Pharmacies are interesting places to work, because so much responsibility for what happens in the pharmacy lies outside, with doctors and with insurance companies. Doctors decide what, how much, when, and insurance companies decide when, and how much it costs. While this can be a nice way out of sticky situations for the pharmacy ("sorry, your insurance company says you can't get this refilled until Monday," or "sorry, your doctor has to see you before she'll refill this") it can also be dangerous. For some of the heavily medicated maniacs lack the nuanced thought required for these explanations and JUST WANT THEIR GODDAMNED PILLS RIGHT NOW and when a petite female pharmacist tells them no, not until she talks to your doctor, this is apparently difficult to understand.

Why does my "Wireless Internet Connection" icon look like an IUD?

Last year I was sacrificed to the picture-taker by a person whom I had considered my friend. The picture-taker had one shot left, and my damn picture is STILL up in the hallway o' graduate students along with about 50 people, 25 of whom are long gone. (O, to be long gone...) Every once in a while, the department gets some stirrings and things like picture-taking happen, only to languish until another stirring comes down exactly the same path and replaces the first one, which so rarely happens that I would bet money that by the time I finally do get to be long gone, the picture will still be up there.

So when I got an e-mail last night saying that the Department website is going to be rockin and 2005 and awesome, once I answer a bunch of questions and answer a separate bunch of questions about the website itself, and let someone take a picture of me to place on said Department website, I promply responded by answering the first set of questions. It is fair, I believe, to post my office hours somewhere on the Department website. Should have happened a long time ago, more power to you, moving on.

But no, apparently we are not moving on. I am apparently not in charge of whether or not we move on.

For some reason this fills me with indignant rage.

They didn't even ask. They didn't say, say, if you don't mind, could we possibly have a picture of you for our website? Pretty please? No, they're going to need to set up a time so we can meet so they can take my picture for the fucking Department website.

There is too much photographic evidence of me to pull a complete Salinger on the world (thanks, Mom) unless I want to fake my own death, and frankly it's not worth the effort to me now. But I am, for some reason, fundamentally and violently opposed to letting the department post a picture of me on the internet. First, I don't plan on teaching anymore, and GOD KNOWS how long my stupid photo will languish on their website. Nobody in this stinktown will need to know what I look like after May. Nobody in this stinktown who doesn't know what I look like already needs to know what I look like.

But are there people outside this stinktown who want to know what I look like? And do I want them to be able to find a picture of me with a two-word image search on google?

Not without an art director and air brush I don't.

That's right. It's vanity. Or, the inverse of vanity, which is something like terror at the idea of people looking at me - or my image. I already have 72 freakin students looking at me for thousands of man-hours per week, I don't need any more people looking at me.

I have recent digital pictures of myself on my hard drive currently that I currently wish I could banish from earthly existence. Looking at them, to be honest, kind of fills me with self-loathing.

So how do I express this to them without giving the impression that I am a maniac or a bitch, and without giving them the impression that I can be persuaded or strongarmed or tricked into letting them post a photo?