Have I mentioned that I love Prudie? Oh? Only a hundred times? Okay.
Here’s the ending of a letter from a guy who is concerned about the way he’s aging…
| I only want to know how one adjusts (if there is adjustment to be made) as one gets closer to check-out time. How do I cope with all the changes? Intellectually, I know that it’s all a natural part of living. Emotionally, I’m a little in the dark.
—Trying to age in style |
And here’s the beginning of Prudie’s response. She can take a metaphor and run with it. Love it.
| Dear Trying,
Your check-out might be 30 years from now, so you don’t want to spend all that time in the lobby waiting to settle your bill. |
If you’re having a Paul Harvey moment, the rest of the story can be read by following the link below. It’s the fourth letter, but you can stop by the first one to read Prudie’s advice to the 16-year-old who has been “scarred,” because she has found out, that while she wasn’t home, her parents had sex on her bed.
“I haven’t even had sex on my bed!” she exclaims with exasperation.
Click here to read this week’s Dear Prudence: Advice on manners and morals.
I worked from home today. Yay!
Today is my mother’s 75th birthday, but we’re not celebrating it until Sunday. She called mid-afternoon to finalize the guest count, so I wished her a Happy Birthday, and was thankful to be able to check something off my list that took no effort on my part.
I completed our reading assignment for tonight’s ENG 675 class, which was chapter two, Teaching Artistry Through Reflection-in-Action, from Donald Schön’s book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner.
A section of this reading made me think of a topic for our upcoming STC Student-Faculty Roundtable, which I had committed to help facilitate, but now am going to be unable to.
| “I’ll give you a topic: Is Technical Communication a Profession it its Own Right?”
Discuss! |
To that end, I wrote up a discussion handout to offer to Kim and Sarah when I break the news to them that I won’t be able to attend. Guilt money.
I met Sarah tonight at her office at 6:30 to discuss my prototype web site solution to support our STC community’s award application process, where we worked out a few design and content points. It’s always a pleasure meeting and working with Sarah. She’s good people.
Class was interesting tonight. We discussed the Schön article, and talked about the creation of the slides we’ll be using during our oral defense at the end of the semester.
In talking about the part in the presentation where we can address how we’ve put into use, in our semester-long project, things that we’ve learned throughout the program, Jason asked us to think about the different courses we’ve taken and what we’ve learned in them.
Coincidently, I had started just such an exercise before class, which I stated, and he asked me to read one or two of them. Others chimed in with what they remember being the salient lessons of those classes. Cool.
I asked Jason if he had a few minutes after class for a brief, further discussion of the Schön article (some “mental masturbation,” if you will), and I asked him if he thought Schön might differentiate between “knowing something, but not being able to articulate it” (his concept of knowing-in-action), and “innate ability.” Interesting stuff. If you go for that sort of thing.
I met Joe at Flex for Trailer Park Prize Night, and shortly after my arrival, Kevin (av8rdude) and Kurt arrived along with Kurt’s friend Mason, who was just a hoot. I had met her once before, very briefly at Legends one time when I ran into just Kurt and her while Kevin was away on business.
Jackie O’Knight was the emcee, and she just cracked me up, as usual. As I’ve said numerous times here, she’s just so irreverent.
At about 1:30, the show was winding down and the five of us headed over to The Borough, where we just laughed and laughed and laughed, while each having another cocktail and enjoying two huge hushpuppies, each of which had a hard-boiled egg and a few pieces of bacon in the middle of them, and two orders of cheese fries, one order with ranch dressing, the other one with barbecue sauce. Yum!
Poor Liz. I had to tell her, “Honey, you know I don’t like to complain, and I’m so glad you got the apostrophe added to the word ’employees’ in the men’s room, but, honey, now ‘thoroughly’ is spelled wrong.”
| Each employee’s hands must be thouroughly washed before… |