First things first.

The big day went well--our five year program review. All the food was delivered, possibly minus one lunch, but that was okay. All the people showed up--or enough of them, anyway. We had great conversations and the great conversations will, we hope, continue. My outfit, in other words, was an unqualified success.

Now, after the circus has come and gone, I would just like to note that:

• all day I was a little dehydrated.
• currently, my hips hurt and the soles of my feet feel dry and consequently a little itchy.
• I am way past tired, so tired that I am fretting about whether people respect me. (p.s., when I am worrying about that, I should always just go take a big fat nap, or, you know, go to bed for the night. Because the next day when I wake up it's easy to see how ridiculous that whole respect thing was.) (...unless people really DON'T respect me--what then? what nap will cure THAT?)

Tomorrow is Friday, and it is a full day, but not a day in which I am in charge of very many things, nor a day when I anticipate being dehydrated or tired past the point of reason. And after Friday? Saturday, the people. 

Now, I intend to

• put on my nightgown
• brush my teeth
• do the crossword and possibly also, and simultaneously,
• watch episodes of some sitcom or other
• fall asleep.

I know, that's not much of an agenda. I like to think of it more as medicine for an ague that I hope will have passed by morning. 

Big day OUT.

On trying to make a screencast.

Dear my OS,

It's no good when the tools don't work.

When every time I open my online screencasting platform, it tells me I got no Java. And when I google how come I got no Java? I find out that you, my OS, you took the Java preferences clean outta there upon the last update.

danger, Will Robinson!

What. The. Hell.

There is a system, my OS provider, a system that I have cobbled together out of Prezi and content and Screenr and usually YouTube. And the Screenr, she needs the Java. And you are telling me I got no Java? And you didn't even tell me so in the first place?

What. The. Hell.

In your defense, there is a bunch of yellling about Java and how it is dangerous, so maybe you're right. Maybe I shouldn't have it. But the screencast! It languishes! It shall perhaps remain uncast!

c'est le java.

Thus flummoxed by tomfoolery, shenanigans, and dilemmas, I had to respond to some student writing by hand. By hand, my OS provider! This is what it's come to.

All that Java-hunting has made my wrist sore.

Harrumph,

htms

It's the end of the semester, so

it must be time for a cold. Christmas lights spectacular and other festivities resume tomorrow, but in the meantime:

Open letter to the word "gift" used as a verb.

Dear the word "gift" used as a verb:

Nope. You are a noun. As in, "My mother gave me a gift on my birthday. It was a fluffy new scarf!"

Or "Here's a gift! It's for your birthday! It's a fluffy new scarf!"

Or even, metaphorically, "My gift is the ability to be catankerous about practically anything."

But not: "I plan to gift him with a fluffy scarf."

Or "He gifted me with a bucket of crawdads."

(Yes) "He is a highly gifted singer." (adjective)

(No) "He gifted me with a song." (verb)

(Yes) "He gave me a song for my birthday." (via iTunes, or else he's a song writer--either way. The verb is give.)

(No! Not remotely!) "Why don't you gift your best friend with a fluffy new song?"

(Yes! By all means) "Why don't you give your best friend a song-y new fluff?"

Don't you even, the word "gift" used as a verb. Just quit it. You make me want to stop giving people fluffy new stuff altogether.

--and that would be unChristmaslike,

htms.

The HEAT.

America,

I would like to complain about the movie we saw tonight, but the thought of complaining about it just makes me too tired. So much stuff  getting blown up. So many car chases. So much shooting. So much/little 'comedy.'

Instead, I am going to praise three things:

1. polka dot Converse sneakers. I bought them. For myself.
2. striped boat neck tee shirts. So colorful (the link is not to the actual shirts I want to praise, because there is, inexplicably, no link to those shirts. I'm blaming the movie.).
3. fattoush. I ate it for lunch.

That is all I've got, America. That is all. I am going to read the second book of The Hunger Games trilogy, which should be more uplifting.

Open letters to my fancy hotel room.

Dear my fancy hotel room,

I enjoy many things about you: the quiet way you wait for me when I am not here. Your wooden hangers.  The bathroom made just for me. How I can double-lock your door for an extra-safe feeling. How your heavy curtain can entirely shut out sunlight, or, in contrast, can be pulled to the side and the city lights can shine through the sheer.

So many charming things: you are right downtown, and are sited among historic buildings, and your lobby is large and gleaming. I like you. I do. Quite a lot, actually.

What I do not care for, my fancy hotel room, is your very expensive wireless internet that I pay for, a bonus $12.95 per day, on a day-by-day basis. I do not care for how your expensive wireless internet displays its ever-diminishing duration right under the Chrome toolbar. I do not care, my fancy hotel room, for how you also ask me to consider, moment by moment, upgrading to the extra turbo-charged Executive Business Wireless Internet of the Gods, for $16.95 per day. This seems insulting and, quite frankly, elitist.

And most of all, my fancy hotel room, I do not care for how your internet is so expensive and yet it is also so very slow. Balky. Recalcitrant. Like drying glue, viscous and sticky. Without speed or alacrity or ease.

May I suggest to you, my fancy hotel room, that despite all the things I enjoy about you, the dollars I'm paying for your unsatisfactory internet should be included in the fancy price I'm already paying?

Please consider it,

htms.

***

Dear my fancy hotel room,

I did not appreciate the way your key-card reader, which allows me to enter my room if it so chooses to flash its tiny green light of approbation, signalled me with a hinky little red and yellow ambiguity upon my return after a brief foray to the gift shop for a much-needed ice cream bar purchase.

My fancy hotel room: when I am trying to enter a room that is far away from home, indeed is my home away from home, that is not a good time to be coy. Let me in. I am paying for you to let me in.

I'm in no mood,

htms.

***

On the other hand,

My fancy hotel room, I did enjoy the fact that the guest shop downstairs did have a fancy ice cream bar available for purchase.

Well-played,

htms.

Complaint: a litany.

I feel sweaty and sniffly, and am nonetheless in my office, hiding behind a firmly closed door so that I can get some online grading done, because

the internet at my house is out.

OUT.

I called the helpful folks at my ISP, and they said

"unfortunately Ms. HTMS, the red power light means your modem is broken. It's what we call "a hardware issue," and no amount of phone-based troubleshooting will alleviate what ails you. However, we can send you a new modem, which will be $99. And it will arrive far too late for you to stay home and nurse your cold for one more day, because you will have to go into your office to use the internet there, since you really, really must get on that online teaching you didn't do this weekend because you felt sick, and you wasted your Friday going to a meeting."

Thanks, helpful folks at my ISP. No, seriously.

Sweaty, sniffly, hot-eyed. Internetless. Broken modem'd. Be-Dayquil'd. Vicksed up.

Also, my e-mail box is possibly at its limit of over-fulness.

Uncomfortable chair.

Way, way behind in my work.

Memorandum to my cable television.

TO:         The Downstairs DISH box and DVR

FROM:   Hightouchmegastore

RE:          Your failure to provide me with the television programming and digital video recording that I have paid for and is therefore rightfully mine to expect

DATE:     20 November 2008

It's been six months now since the Great Downstairs Renovation of 2008.  The panelling of death has been removed.  Paint has been applied to the walls.  A new-to-us retro-tastic sectional sofa, cobalt blue, has been purchased, delivered, and attractively arranged for socializing and, yes, let it be said, television watching.  But you, downstairs DISH box and DVR, are not even speaking to the television.  You and the television are not communicating.  The television gives me static.  You make spinning sounds in your self-contained universe.  What are you doing in there?  Working a treadle? Knitting a sweater? Running the dishwasher?

All I know is, they's no shows a-transmittin' on the T.V.  No pictures or banter or dvr'd episodes of Family Guy.  Nothing is what you are delivering.  Nothing.  

More, you act like there's nothing wrong.  I try to reset you, you make your obliging spinning sound. Like you're God, setting the gyroscope of the earth on its axis. Still nothing.  I check your cables and tighten them and still: nothing.   

The worst is calling the DISHOverlord at 1-888-FUT-ILE*.  Here's what the DISHOverlord Robot says to you:  "Did you know that many problems with your DISH television can be solved via your remote?  Are you in front of your television with your remote?  If not, hang up and call back later."  Try talking your way through this problem with the eventual human who shows up on the line:  "Uh, well, let me start about six months ago.  We were doing some work downstairs.  Well, actually, the problem is, well, when we got it going about a month ago, there was a message about a smart card?  But now I can't . . . I can't even get that message back.  It's like.  But. I can't." And so on &c.  It's a nightmare and I'm blaming it on you, downstairs DISH box and DVR.  The Overlord is just gratuitous humiliation.

Please organize yourself and take care of this situation; I'll expect a report when things are back to normal and order is restored.