I have to tell you, I cannot wait for this evil freakin’ semester to end. Let’s just hope that today was the apex of evil because — quite honestly — if I have many more days like today, I am seriously going to need a prescription for Valium. I should have known that today was going to be a bad day when I came downstairs in my pretty pink socks — the ones that matched the sweater I was wearing — and promptly stepped in puppy poo. This probably speaks to my state of mind when I tell you that I actually considered scraping the poop off my sock when I felt the squishy carpet beneath my foot. Oh yeah. The Tenure Puppy left me a two-fer: pee and poo.

Let’s just say that potty training has been difficult.

I had hopes that the day would be okay after I managed to miss the train on my commute to work. And for a while, it was. After all, I did manage to prep my study session. I also got a good chunk of grading done. But, I also made a student cry today (I *hate* that) and had to put out several fires. At least I got my search committee duties done before I dashed for the exit. But, I still have to put on my game face and go to an administrative Christmas Party.

Thank the god(dess) that there will be booze at that.

The Monkey, Not on my Back
I’ve always wanted one of these, so I got one as my reward
for navigating the hoardes of Christmas shoppers last Saturday.

To steal an old school phrase from my dearly departed father: “Damn, but it’s colder than a witch’s tit out there!” It’s not too warm in this house either. Right now, I’m sitting in my office, waiting for the phone repair guy and successfully avoiding anything related to grading. There’s a stiff breeze seeping through the office window. It’s chilly enough that even my super-duper Under Armour ColdGear(c) shirt isn’t keeping me warm. I added a sweater, but I’m thinking about moving into the spare room to grade my papers because it’s the warmest room in our house. Even the dogs are freezing their butts off! Brrr!

Pix: Breath of Death models the new sweater that one of my grad students gave me because it didn’t fit her dog. He fought against putting it on, but hey, he’s stopped shivering and shaking.

I hate:

• Students who plagarize word for word from a website and think I am too stupid to catch it.
• Unreasonable demands by our Human Resources folks that make the search process more complicated than it needs to be.
• The UPS guy who thinks it is all right to leave packages on my porch in the wind and rain.

That is all.

Waiting on my porch last night …
Sumo Laptop Sleeve
Now, if only my new Mini 10v would get here!

A few weeks ago, the lovely state of Somewhat Midwestern decided that it would be a good idea to shut down my access to the on ramp for the local crosstown expressway. I understand why they did it — there’s a huge construction project at this particular exit — but the two alternative routes are not so good. Both of them require you to drive over railroad tracks and every morning I get stuck waiting for a freight train to pass. I’ve tried staggering my times — sometimes I go to work at 7:15 a.m., other times 8:15 a.m. — but every day I seem to get stuck waiting for the train to pass.

The commuting gods are against me.

To add insult to injury, there’s a new construction project on a building along my southern alternative route. Because of this project, one lane of traffic is closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Now, I have never, ever seen anyone working on site before 8 a.m. so it seems to me that our small town fathers could tell ye ol’ company that they cannot close the lanes during the heavy morning commute. Of course, it would also help if the people driving through the area wouldn’t pull into the middle of the damned intersection when traffic is backed up. This morning, for example, I had to wait through three red/green light cycles to make a right turn at that corner. Grrr.

The commuting gods are trying to drive me insane.

The northern alternative route is equally bad. Not only does it take me 5 miles out of the way, but the railroad tracks are continually under repair. And since the train people close down the entire street when they are working on the tracks, the drivers have to backtrack to the southern route. Since these shut downs are never announced (and seem to be completely random), I don’t even bother going that way.

I curse you, commuting gods!

To make it even worse, the University is undergoing numerous construction projects. I’ve already damaged the stone guard on my car getting in and out of a parking lot. {sigh} But now, the construction crews are going to close off one of the lanes coming onto the campus. Since the majority of students drive worse than I do, this will only make my commute even worse. I am not looking forward to that.

For the record, there have been a couple of times that my commute (which never took more than 15 minutes, 10 on a good day) has hit 45 minutes. On top of that, I’ve had to take into consideration the bad, bad parking problems on campus (admit 500+ more students while taking away 200+ parking spaces and see what you get). There have been a couple of times that I’ve nearly been late to a morning meeting, even with all of my anal retentive planning.

Now normally, the commute home isn’t bad because the off ramp is still open. Tonight, however, there was a massive wreck that shut down Second Street, so I had to go about 5 blocks out of the way (One way streets are evil!) to get home. That was just the icing on the cake, the straw that broke the camel’s back, the thing that almost drove me to drink.

I’ve thought about giving up and just taking the bus to work. However, I would have to transfer two times to go 10 miles and the bus ride is even longer than my construction impacted drive time.

Maybe I should just keep a flask in my car?

Just kidding, MADD folks. I would not keep a flask in my car so please do not post nasty hateful messages on my blog.

Danger Kitty in the Home Office
No wonder I can’t get any work done at home.

It’s the most (un)wonderful time of the year, the time of year where you have to haul your ass to the post office to mail packages — and you have to do it during business hours because, God(dess) forbid, you might be some kind of terrorist who is trying to ship explosives through the mail. Now, I’m not ready to ship Grandma’s present yet — and, quite frankly, I still need to look up TQE’s mailing address for the hysterical card I bought — but I did have to make a post office run on Saturday. You see, I’m selling off some of my old DVDs to help defray the cost of my new Dell Mini 10v and I managed to unload two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy thanks to that lovely online yard sale known as half.com.

Anyway, Saturday morning, I paid some bills, played with my puppy, took some funny pictures of the cats — and then I realized that if I didn’t get my butt in gear I wouldn’t make it to the post office before it closed at noon. Plus, I use the downtown post office (i.e., the one closest to my house) and it is always woefully understaffed. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the place when I didn’t have to stand in line for at least 20 minutes. Saturday was no exception. I packed up the DVDs and made my way downtown, dodging all of the evil construction that seems to be going on around Sorta’ Cosmopolitan (but that’s a story for another blog entry). Walked inside. One worker. Five people ahead of me in line.

Now, normally I use the post office during the week. And, during the week, the post office clientele is composed of business professionals from the city-county building or the various law offices in the area. Saturday, however, was a completely different story. You see, one of the women standing in line was shooting off at the mouth about how unions closed the brewery in town (decades ago, mind you). The two people she was yakking at looked pretty uncomfortable, especially when she started make some rather interesting cultural slurs. Me? I looked everywhere except at the crazy lady because I didn’t want her to start talking to me. After a while, the crazy lady got out of line, picked up two mailing boxes (not priority or overnight boxes, mind you, but the ones that you have to pay for) and tried to walk out the door.

That’s right. This woman tried shoplifting at the post office.

She didn’t get away with it, probably because the mail clerk had been watching her nutty interaction with the other people in line. After the clerk shouted at her, the crazy lady stopped, put the boxes back, made a few more inappropriate remarks and wandered out the door.

Sadly, this woman wasn’t the only crazy person in the joint. Some guy behind me started asking me and another woman about the cost of a first class stamp — and wanted to argue that they were 42 cents, not 44 cents. After we convinced him that he was wrong (I mean, there were stamps in the display case!), the guy walked out. WTF? Do you mean to tell me that he didn’t have two extra cents?

Then another woman, after finally getting served at the counter, stopped at the door, turned around, and faced the growing crowd. She wished us a Merry Christmas, which was nice until she started spouting off about how Jesus is the reason for the season. Well, at least her heart was in the right place.

I think I’ll go to the suburban post office next time.

The Evil Kitten, Hiding in the Dirty Laundry
I guess I should cart this downstairs, eh?

To people who are way above my pay grade:

It is probably not the best idea to send out an email telling your faculty and staff to expect financial woes the hour before you host the Christmas reception. Expect a run on the bar, some angry drunks, and a negative attitude to be shared by all.

Oh, and happy f*cking holidays to you as well,
Dr. Disenchanted