Those of you who know me know I love puns, particularly complex puns. Here’s a goody:
| A frog hops inside a Chinese bank and reads the name of the teller, Patricia Wak. Strange name, thinks the frog. Strange customer, thinks the teller.
‘Can I help you?’ she asks. ‘Yes, Miss Wak,’ he says. ‘I’d like to apply for a loan.’ ‘OK’, she says. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Kermit Jagger’, replies the frog. ‘Did you say Jagger?’ she asks? ‘Yes. My father is quite famous. You’ve heard of Mick Jagger, surely?” Taken aback, Patricia asks ‘Do you have any collateral?’ ‘Only this’, says the frog, producing a tiny jade elephant. This is too much for the teller, who seeks assistance from the branch manager. ‘There’s a frog outside,’ she tells him, ‘who wants to apply for a loan. His father is Mick Jagger and his only collateral is this tiny jade elephant. What is it, anyway?’ The branch manager rises to his feet. “It’s a knick-knack, Patty Wak, give the frog a loan—his old man’s a Rolling Stone!” |
Well, vacation is over, and reality came back with a good hard bite. I guess that’s where the phrase Reality Bites! comes from.
I received my feedback on my ENG 515 paper, and to put it nicely (as my professor did), I totally “missed the boat” on it. I so appreciated her compassion in purposely not sending my feedback while I was on my trip so as not to put a damper on my celebration in any way.
This afternoon, I read the two readings for tonight’s class that I didn’t get to while I was gone—actually couldn’t get to—as I didn’t have the book with me that they were in, and I devised two postings for the discussion board about them.
Right before leaving for class, already running behind, my doorbell rang, and I contemplated not answering it, because I figured it was my neighbor. I love my neighbor, but I knew I wouldn’t have the time to spend with her that I would have wanted to.
As it turned out, it was the mail lady, and she held out a bin to me and said, “Your mail started back up today. Looks like you have a lot of goodies to go through!”
Class was good tonight, but I was on edge the entire time, having read the assignment, but not feeling like I retained what I’d read very well. Oh well, the Chocolate Koala Bears seemed to be a hit anyway.
At the end of class, Brian asked me if I would edit an article he wrote for the STC newsletter, saying that he respected my editing skills, which I’m counting as an affirmation. I could use one today.
I met with Susan after class to discuss the re-write of my paper, and it was a short, albeit good meeting.
After class, I went to Helios, getting back into my rut routine.
I had a brief instant message conversation, in which I received another affirmation, this one from Robert: “Thank you for the time of my life… and yours. 
I love you, John Martin, all 50 years of you! 
”
On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store for a few essentials, the main item being eggs. As I put my bags in the car, it occurred to me that I’d gotten everything but eggs. I ran back in.
I combed through my mail, which was about 60% junk mail, 20% statements and information about accounts I have with various businesses, and about 20% fun birthday stuff—including two killer t-shirts from cafepress.com (thanks, Brender!), and several birthday cards.
I forgot to mention that last night, as soon as we landed in the U.S., I checked my voice mail, access to which I hadn’t had for 12 days, and I had 7 messages. One was a wrong number, and the rest were birthday wishes. The one that made me laugh the most was from my brother, who said, “Whoever said fifty is nifty wasn’t fifty.” That cracked me up.
Before bed, I got an e-mail from my professor asking me if I’d completed segmenting all the data yet that we’re going to work with, as tomorrow he wants to mark segments for “reuse” or “non-reuse.”
I had done some over my vacation, but not all of it. I pulled an all-nighter to get it done. This is not going to help my body get back into its normal rhythm.
Have I mentioned that I can’t wait for this semester to be over? Speaking of graduating, one of the items in my pile of mail was from NC State about graduation—the “Schedule of Events,” if you will.
I didn’t go to my undergraduate graduation ceremony—”Just mail me my diploma,” I said 27 years ago—so up until now, I thought I’d go to my graduate graduation ceremony. However, with the turn of events in my ENG 515 class, and being so behind in my ENG 636 class, I’m not “feeling it” right now. I decided to put the paper aside, to make a decision when I’m in a better state of mind.