Durham: A Self-Portrait, homework, book club, and a show…

I was up at 8:30, and I made coffee, cheddar scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast for Robert and me.

I read the first of three articles for Rhetoric of Science and Technology, and then spent over an hour devising a response to the message board questions about this reading. Too long—both the time spent writing it and the length of the final product.


Robert and I went to the 2:00 screening, which actually didn’t start until 2:20 (GRRRR!), of a free documentary called Durham: A Self-Portrait.

It was a very interesting look at the picture of a city that was painted not as “The City of Medicine,” but more as “The City of Tobacco Roots” and “The City of Tolerance.” Very interesting.

Of course, several people thought free meant: please do feel free to bring your crying children with you rather than having any consideration at all for the other people attending by getting a babysitter.


After the movie, and up until leaving for my book club meeting with the Mostly Social Book Club at 7:00 at the Barnes & Noble at The Streets of Southpoint, I hung out in my IBM office where I updated my “accommodation description” that goes with that paper I edited to death yesterday, and then I read the second of the three readings for tomorrow night’s class and devised my posting for the associated message board questions.


Book club was good. Everyone showed up, and although we didn’t discuss the book, we all got caught up with each others’ lives.

We almost tied our record number of books in a year, but alas, since we won’t discuss this one until our January meeting, we can’t count it in this year’s total. So, for the record, it looks like this:


We’ve been meeting for over 10 years, but didn’t start really keeping track of dates until 2003. The rest of our history is here. I think this chart speaks for itself in terms of why we named ourselves the mostly social book club.


At home, in my e-mail, I found a “Thanksgiving Gift” note from the professor of our Rhetoric of Science and Technology class, in which she notified us that she has changed the due date for our final papers from 12/5 to 12/10. This is great news, with the best part being that it adds another weekend in there to get it done.

I completed the third reading of the homework for tomorrow’s class and posted a response to the discussion question about it on the message board at just before midnight.

I met Kevin (av8rdude) and Kurt at Legends for the show, which was okay, but not great. Jackie O’Knight, Stephanie Scott, and Coti Collins performed, along with that black, guest drag queen who does Tina so well. I thought of Joe when she started on Private Dancer…

I left at about 1:15, before it was over.

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