You have a class of 35 students. You give them an essay exam consisting of 5 questions. On average, each student writes 2 pages to answer each question.
How many times should you punch yourself in the face?
It’s been 14 months since I had a haircut. Today it’s been two weeks since I got my second Pfizer shot, so to celebrate, I visited Shear Designs in Morris and had Solange shear me.
Yes, I’m wearing a mask, and so did she, the whole time she was lopping off all that shagginess. As our local paper reported this week:
In the past week, Stevens County more than doubled its number of COVID-19 cases for April from 22 April 11 to 48 as of the Minnesota Department of Health’s report Sunday. [Whew, that’s an inelegant sentence.]
Those quickly rising numbers reflect what is happening in much of western Minnesota this early spring as people begin to let down their guard. They are gathering again in crowded bars and restaurants, and other places, with few wearing masks.
…
[Health Commissioner Jan] Malcolm said new COVID-19 infections are up 60 percent in just the last two weeks and are hitting levels not seen in Minnesota since late last year.
It’s not over yet. I at least got my haircut, but now I’m retreating back into the hermitage and won’t be coming out again for a while.
Yikes. Speaking of the continuing pandemic, our local buffet/pizza joint is closed.
We have been notified today of a positive case in one of our employees. While this employee has not been around our full staff while working, we are going to be Closing today , and going through this Friday to clean and sanitize the store and equipment. We will re-evaluate our staffing situation as we get test results in. We plan to re-open on Saturday, but will make that decision more towards Friday when we know more from our staff.
We thank you all for your business and understanding! Each day I am finding more truth to the meme…
When Covid ends is sounding more and more like, “When the Vikings win the Super Bowl.”
I had no idea it was open! The thought of going in that place at any time in the past year gives me the heebie-jeebies.
On top of everything else, today I have to make a trek to the hardware store to pick up some mouse traps. “Why?” you might ask, “Don’t you have a vicious evil cat?” Yes, I do, one with a temper and long needle-sharp claws and fangs she will bite me with if I have the temerity to pet her too familiarly. But we currently have a little mouse problem, and she’s not doing the job. We had a cold snap after a week of warm weather, and whenever that happens the outdoor mice scurry into the nice warm house for a while, and then decide they like it and want to stay a while.
So last night I found the cat posed sphinx-like on the floor, it’s paws before it, and between them…a very fat roly-poly little mouse. “Well, stop torturing it and end its misery,” I said, “so I can clean it up.” But then I noticed that the cat was purring, and the mouse was softly ch-ch-chittering, and the cat was nuzzling it with her nose. They were having a conversation. And the cat had her claws fully retracted.
That’s what rankled. She doesn’t even grant me that little favor.
So now…mouse traps. I don’t think the cat has ever killed a mouse in her life, and now I understand why: they’re her little friends, and she likes them better than me. Well, I’ll take care of that.
Once again, local old coot Ted Storck has a letter published in the local paper. He needs a friend to take him a side and explain to him that he’s looking a bit obsessive, obnoxious even, or maybe to just say, “Shut up, Ted.” He’s still upset that the neighborhood got tired of his loud, repetitive chimes, so he feels the need to explain himself, and he’s reading articles in the National Catholic Register to explain how it’s Satan that led to the removal of his noisy electronic gadget.
Awww. The article also states the devil hates the electronic recording used by some churches, or the electronic carillon bells that used to resonate across Summit and Calvary Cemeteries, and now is heard at St. Clare Church in Surprise, Arizona, after they were forced to be moved from the Morris cemeteries.
If I were to read that aloud, I’d be sure to break into melodramatic sobbing as I got near the end of the sentence.
Clearly, the problem was that the devil moved into the corner house a block south of the cemetery, and has triumphed.
Shut up, Ted.
Yesterday dawned bright and beautiful; skies were clear, the sun was shining, it was warm, it felt like the start of a fine spring day. Then Mary drove away to help take care of our little granddaughter for a few weeks to a few months, and immediately the gray skies rolled in, the temperature dropped, the winds were howling, and the rain drizzled in. It got cold again. The mice have moved back into the house (the cat is a totally useless mouser, I’m afraid.) And now it’s Monday.
I think I’m going to have to be really mad at Iliana. It’s all her fault.
Oh no! The cuteness defense! I am helpless!
I was talking to a student from the Middle East yesterday — we are eyeballs deep in academic advising, I’m already booked up solid today with more student meetings — and she said she was very excited to be moving to the Midwest in the fall, and getting to experience seasons. Yeah, she’ll get that here. She’ll also get to experience that “oh my god will it never end” feeling.
Now to crawl back into my zoom-hole, from which I will not emerge until 6pm this evening.
“oh my god will it never end,” again.
A police officer fatally shot a Black man, identified as Daunte Wright, after he was pulled over in a Minneapolis suburb Sunday, leading to clashes between protesters and law enforcement. On Monday, the police chief for the city of Brooklyn Center said the unidentified officer intended to use her Taser but instead grabbed her gun and shot Wright.
During a press conference, police released bodycam video of the shooting. In the video, the officer who shot Wright shouted “Taser” multiple times before firing her gun at Wright at close range while Wright was in the driver’s seat.
“I just shot him,” the officer said as the car drove away.
This officer should not have been armed. She should not have been on the street. She just murdered a man “by accident”, only it’s not an accident if you are so badly trained that you blast away with a firearm when you “intended” to use a taser.
Why do the police need guns to make traffic stops? Why did she even need to use a taser against him?
I do not have any tattoos. I’ve admired many, and have thought of some it would be nice to have, but I always overthink them. The classic “Mary + PZ” on a heart-shaped background appealed to me, once upon a time, but it was a little trite, and I feared that once I put it in indelible words on my skin, that’s when she would leave me. And now, after 40+ years, it’s both trite and redundant.
I also love the art of the Coast Salish peoples, and have a particular salmon design in mind that I wouldn’t mind making permanent, but…I’m white as they come, belonging to the ethnic group that displaced and killed those people. It would be appropriation in the truest sense, so no, I have held off.
So I don’t think it’s going to happen now.
I can console myself with the thought that at least I’m not one of those people who gets stupid drunk and has something ridiculous inked on. Or worse, someone who puts deep thought into a tattoo that is supremely idiotic, like this one.
(Warning: below the fold in case you’re a sensitive classics teacher who cries at abuse of your discipline.)
Facebook is probably worse than YouTube, since that’s where people gather to overthrow the government and tell each other racist things, but at least it does have the Red Skull Core. That’s a Facebook group where they make memes by putting Jordan Peterson’s actual words into word balloons coming out of the mouth of that Nazi arch-villain, the Red Skull. It’s amazing how well they work when put into that context. Those guys are always complaining about being taken out of context, right?
I got my second Pfizer shot yesterday, and I had had a mild reaction (lethargy, general weakness) to the first shot, so I was a little worried about this one. And so far, it’s a little worse! Just a little, though.
I woke up at 3am feeling mildly achey, but managed to fall back asleep. And then I slept in until 7am! I never sleep that late. I’m still feeling a few more aches, and my arm is definitely feeling much more sore, but it’s not bad. I have no excuse to shirk going through that massive pile of lab reports that came in last night.
I do have that strange urge to reformat the hard drive on my Linux machine and install Windows, and also upgrade my phone to 5G. I hope I get over those soon.
I was wrong. I got cocky and went for a walk, and my joints caught fire on the other side of town. Meanwhile, Mary is lying flat, whimpering.
