Thursday, September 24, 2015

Recapped

I was super, super early for my lecture this morning, as is my way, so I went into the classroom and turned on the lights and sat down to review my notes. About five minutes later, someone else came in and said, "Oh, another early bird," to me. We exchanged a few words about being early and then took opposite sides of the classroom and ignored each other. It was a friendly kind of ignoring though.

At 7:30 (when class starts) the instructor called roll and about seven people walked in during that. Another five or so came in over the next ten minutes or so and each time, the instructor stopped the lecture to ask the person their name and write it down. I find that to be almost as annoying as people walking in ten or fifteen (in one case twenty) minutes late for class. I mean, I get that the instructor was trying to give them a hard time by calling them out, but people like that tend to have little or no shame so his method doesn't really work in the end. (And besides, it just irks all of us who can manage to show up to class on time only to have our concentration interrupted by the attention paid to late comers.)

Oh, and here's an example of that kind of shamelessness in action: After the break, Miss Twenty-Minutes-Late had to leave the class and return mid-lecture and rather than quietly walking at the periphery of the class so as to not disturb anyone, she walked right down the center aisle, past the instructor and the students in the front row. She returned to her seat the same way.

My feeling is, if you treat something as a joke, then it becomes a joke. And while I think most things should be treated as a joke, rudeness is not one of those things. I'm not saying that anyone needs to be a hardass about anything, but if attendance is counted, it should be the late student's responsibility to see the instructor during the break or at the end of class to make sure they've been counted. 

So that's my daily school-related complaint out of the way.

Last night I was watching the very last (sadly, the very worst) episode of Northern Exposure and came across a Yiddish saying that I liked very much:

"If you don't know where you're going, every road will take you there."

I've been kind of feeling that way recently. So I guess I should just take any road and see where it leads, right?

Today's spider sightings:

One small wolf spider who has taken up residency on the kitchen table and who is really adept at hiding among the household detritus that perpetually clutters the table. Dave tried to catch it this morning and failed. I tried to catch it this afternoon and failed. So it remains at large.

I also had the pleasure of meeting a small gray jumping spider as it rode on the top of the recycling bin that I moved from the curb up the driveway. It was a bumpy ride, I'm sure, but probably a fun one for a little spider. She waited until I had put the recycling bin back into its customary place, then jumped from the lid to the wall and ran off.

What else happened today?

I just got back from the gym. We did a kettle ball workout today. I'm not sure how my arm (the one with the tennis elbow) is going to feel tomorrow, but I just took some ibuprofen and am icing it as I write this. 

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