I think this, from one of today’s obituaries, is just precious: “Martha Hebbert Wilson recently celebrated her 99th birthday by blowing out all the candles in one breath. She believed in doing things right the first time.”
This description of such a simple act is just packed with the sense of Martha. With a semicolon between the two sentences—instead of a period—it would make a great entry for onesentence.org.
<irreverence>
</irreverence>
The Center for Excellence in Curricular Engagement hosted a little “drop by” from 11:00–3:00 today (in honor of the first day of Fall classes) for the students who work in the office. How thoughtful!
I dropped by toward the tail end of it, at a little after 2:00, where I spent a little bit of time with Mandy, Alissa, Myra, and Patti.
I would have been there earlier had I not been a victim of the caveat emptor embedded in yesterday’s Wolfline announcement that basically said tomorrow being the first day of the Fall schedule, with new buses and new drivers, you should plan on some “snags” and consider taking the bus before the one that would get you on time to where you needed to be.
I take the (renamed) Greek Way route (which is still route # 9, but renamed from the Fraternity Court route), and my schedule said one at 1:38 and the next one at 1:47.
As I was maybe 200 or 300 feet from the stop, at 1:37, I saw the 1:38 bus go by. Drats.
1:47 came—and went. 1:50 came and went. 1:55. 2:00. At about 2:01, a bus came from the opposite direction, which meant it still had to go over to Greek Way, its turnaround point about 3 minutes away, and then come back to get us.
Within the next two minutes, two more Greek Way buses came by on the other side of the road. (They are supposed to be 9 minutes apart.) Evidently the Roto-Rooter of Routes had just made a breakthrough.
Myra took me home, leaving the office around 4:30 or so, so I didn’t have to deal with bus drama on the way back.
I ran to the grocery store to pick up some birthday cupcakes, some Round Bite-sized Tostitos, and some cream cheese with which to make some dip for dancing tonight, as we were celebrating Carl’s birthday, which is actually on Saturday, but he’ll be in Charlotte this weekend.
We had our first ENG 515 class tonight, and it was pretty much just as I had envisioned it would be. There are a couple of interesting characters in there, so it’ll make for an entertaining last semester for me.
Too bad the professor didn’t start off by saying, “Welcome to ENG 515,” because after about 5-10 minutes of storytelling, we started introductions, and one girl said, “Actually, I’m quite sure I’m in the wrong class.”
“This is ENG 515,” the professor said.
“Yep, I’m in the wrong class.”
Click & Clack, The Tappet Brothers (a.k.a. Ray & Tom Magliozzi)
I played two or three podcast episodes of Car Talk to Robert before dancing, as those two nuts, Click & Clack, the Tappet Brothers, had me laughing like a maniac at the bus stop and on the bus today. I know I looked and sounded like a lunatic with my earbuds in and laughing out loud into the silence around me.
OMG, one episode had the brothers “pig snorting” due to based-in-bullshit explanations of why “you can increase the range of your car’s remote keyless entry device by 50% by pointing it at your chin instead of at the car’s door.”
Robert, the discussion board entry for that is here.
Though pretty lightly attended this evening, dancing was fun enough. Light attendance was evidenced in both the number of dancers and the number of bar patrons.
A couple of women, one of whom I’d actually met earlier this week at Flex, came for the lessons. Before the lessons, as with many beginning line-dancers, they too thought it was easy enough that they could learn a dance during the course of the dance one time. Not.
Fortunately, after trying one or two (before the lesson), they got the “not” part.
Carl taught the Boot Scoot Boogie, which is always a good one to teach to people learning their very first line dance, as it’s one of the most basic dances we do. They did fairly well with it—Lindsey catching on better than her friend Deanna. Both well enough, however, to not be playing “pinball” off the other dancers.