In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. Heinous. Heinous. Especially heinous. Over and over again. I’ve got roughly 4 billion episodes on the dvr, but every one I cued up was one I’d seen before. Literally took me six tries to find a new one, an episode about a baby abandoned in a taxi cab featuring a cameo appearance by Martin Mull. So irritating. I nearly contacted the major case squad.
October 6, 2009
October 4, 2009
We’ve learned something important here today about cooking with serranos. They are actually pretty hot.
September 18, 2009
Did so many irritating things today, all of them came with just a little flash of extra-annoying. For example, the quarter machine at the laundromat was broken and the guy who normally makes change was nowhere to be found and the guy at the dollar store wouldn’t sell me any quarters and I was so argh. So when I finally got to sit down with a bowl of chili and a new episode of The Office (!) it felt like about time.
December 5, 2008
The butter came in a small ceramic dish like a dollhouse churn, whipped and green with dill, and I dipped and smeared around small chunks of bread and swallowed them off in the RAT-tat-tat-RAT-tat-tat rhythm I lent my lunch after it became too much and I didn’t want multitudes just for a minute, something steady and reliable and unsurprising, my scaffolding, a chunk of bread and a spoonful of chili, a chunk of bread and a spoonful of chili, a chunk of bread and a spoonful of chili.
November 20, 2008
The geometry of my thaw-’n'-serv work week culminated in not quite enough chili filled out by a little too much rice served slightly too-hot from the microwave, and eaten in my cloffice. I read through a magazine and picked out things to buy and then realized that I still don’t really know how to do that here. I also got a return email from M. asking about Thanksgiving weekend, so turned to the schedule at Aqueduct to see if we might snag some racetrack-branded tote bags or water bottles over the holiday. Sadly, nothing but an exceptional Saturday of racing on offer.
November 12, 2008
I was sitting quietly in my cloffice finishing up the last of the (unfrozen) yam chili and paging through my book when my little googleymail tab lit up and I was advised that S. had requested me as a friend on Facebook! Finally! It was so exciting! Not being content to simply communicate with S. via her newfound status update, or waiting to talk on Saturday when we’re stuck in the car all day, I called her on the phone to talk all about it. In the middle of that phone call, my little googleychat tab lit up and I was advised that L. was responding via googleychat to my earlier facebookmail, and for a minute there, I was firing (admittedly distractedly) on all cylinders and felt truly cyborgian until I could no longer keep up and S. hung up to head into his meeting and I was able to concentrate on L. and the last chunk of yam in the bottom of my dish–to be savored!
November 11, 2008
I was just tucking into my dish of yam chili over rice and the Business section (what are those rascals up to today?!) when my phone rang. C.! From last night! She couldn’t find the cloffice–I’m tucked way back here in the corner–and needed help making RefWorks run. Since she could only be here at all due to the holiday, I told her I’d give her a hand as long as she didn’t mind my eating while we worked. I sat on my hands as she struggled with the software, and marveled again at how much patience students with low tech skills bring to higher ed these days. School is so much easier for those of us whose computalators begin where our fingertips end. But C. trucked along, slow and steady, until RefWorks hiccupped, collapsed, and spat out an error message where a citation should have been, and we adjourned until the next time we’re both in the library at the same time.
November 10, 2008
The clock turned over as I found myself at a research dead end, so I split for a lunch that was a return to origins of sorts. I heated up a dish of yam chili over rice and took it back to my cloffice where I was greeted with a message from K.: Skype me! Turning away from my desktop towards my laptop, I clicked the button that chimed that Skypetastic chime and after a few minutes technical difficulty ta-da! there was K.’s face! And her office! She raised and lowered her blinds so I could check out the New Orleans weather while she watched me eat. It was all very Jetsons. Work beckoned us both, so we waved goodbye and logged off and I rinsed out my dish and returned to buckling down.
September 19, 2008
I sat on the couch with a steaming bowl of chili over rice with some cheese and watched an episode of Law & Order. It was an old one, back when Chris Noth was Detective Mike Logan in the original series, my favorite iteration, and the plot–something about a priest and altar boys back in the neighborhood–gave Logan’s trademark flashing temper plenty of screen time. I paused, rewound, and fast forwarded live TV, playing with my new television toy. It’s going to change everything, they say. The books whose reviews are due by the end of the day beat an under-the-floorboards tattoo, but I paid them no mind for an hour while I ate and pet the cat and marveled at the room, feeling cold around me at last.
September 15, 2008
I received an email around 11am informing me that the refrigerator in the tech services office where I had placed my lunch container was broken and flooding and to come retrieve our lunches immediately. I walked briskly (no running in the library) and found my dish warm and covered in threatening condensation and commenced worrying that it would be critically damaged but ate it anyway about an hour later. Snagged from the tiny corner I managed to eke out from the reference desk refrigerator, it was tasty and filling if a little oily, a nice total-realness reminder of the start of the football season. I ate in my office while reading some of yesterday’s paper and answering the phone. My extension is just a digit or two off from the registrar’s extension, an office that is really, really popular right now. But you’ll want to dial 1019 if you want to reach them.
