What is a “day off”?

I arranged my schedule this semester to have no classes on Friday — I knew it was going to be a rough term, and having that extra free day to get caught up was going to be useful. Except…having no scheduled commitments meant that Fridays were going to be a magnet for all the other little events that turned up. So, today, my “free day”, is booked up with student appointments all morning and into the early afternoon. Calendars abhor blank white days, I guess.

However, I will be free at 1:30, and then I’m off to the lab to attempt some controlled matings of young spiders. I might be disappointed (they really are on the small young side), but the fun is in the trying. I’ll be recording the whole show, so later tonight or tomorrow I might be able to treat you to some spider porn. Hopefully, not vore porn. Or not some angsty teen drama where the protagonists all pointedly ignore each other at the dance.

Need rhinestones?

This is a plug for family. My niece-in-law, Audriauna, is doing quite well at turning a hobby into money — she blings stuff. You can see her work on TikTok (kids these days & their weird social media!), Instagram, and, of course, on Etsy. If you are a member of the cult of Starbucks, why are you drinking out of cardboard?

For better or worse, I live in a Starbucks desert. This is Caribou Coffee country! She doesn’t seem to have cups for my kind, but as she lives out there in the Seattle/Tacoma area I guess that’s to be expected.

How far will Milo go?

Failed scandal-mongerer and outrage-generator Milo Yiannopoulos (remember him? He used to be in the news all the time) is in the midst of a major rebranding effort, but it’s really just more of the same: embracing the worst possible takes on everything, following along behind any fleeting trend and straining to amplify it even more. So what is he up to now?

Professional right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos has declared himself no longer homosexual. In an interview with the right-wing LifeSite, Yiannopoulos claims he is “ex-gay” and will direct his future endeavors to St. Joseph: “I treat it like an addiction. You never stop being an alcoholic… I hope people will support and pray for me, if for no other reason than they share my delight at the prospect of Milo Yiannopoulos furiously and indignantly railing against homosexuals for sins of the flesh.” He announced a new vocation as well, a dedication to the discredited and widely banned practice of forcibly subduing homosexuality: “Over the next decade, I would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls ‘conversion therapy.’” It is unclear whether Yiannopoulos remains legally married: “The guy I live with has been demoted to housemate.” And he took some time during the interview to indulge in transphobia as well, claiming “trannies are demonic.”

The key phrase in that statement is the hope that people will “support” him…he’s always on the grift, this is just his newest angle.

Man, he is desperate to recover some relevance, yet all he knows how to do is this clown-like capering for the most hateful audience he can find. What a sad pathetic wreck of a life he has — I guess if he really wants attention, he is going to get some pity out of this latest maneuver.

My birthday haul

There were presents. Mary got me some ultrabright portable work lights that will come in handy when spider-hunting season finally gets here. But mainly what she did was spend a big chunk of yesterday calling all over the state trying to get me scheduled for a vaccination. There is an utterly insane website under our freaking insane American health care system that lists all the pharmacies/clinics that have a few slots open, and like some kind of goddamn video game you have to click on to book the appointment, and if you aren’t quick enough someone else might click on it before you. Then, if you do succeed in being the first to click, you better be prepared, because you will be confronted with a complicated form demanding all kinds of information about your insurance. PCN? Bin? Group? What the hell?

Anyway, Mary spent most of yesterday evening locked to her phone, punching the screen in the worst and most stupid video game ever. End result: I have a vacccination appointment for Monday evening at a site 3 hours away, to which I must arrive within a 17 minute window to get my injection.

Those of you living outside the US may now begin laughing at the idiocy of our healthcare and the havoc the insurance system wreaks on our lives. I remember as a young man that a staple of American news was propaganda mocking the Soviet bureaucracy — ha ha, they have to stand in line for groceries, and they don’t have 50 brands of toothpaste to choose from! — and I wish people here would have the self-awareness to recognize how foolish our system is, and fix it.

In case you were wondering how I would celebrate my birthday…

I regret to report that I did not complete my grading yesterday. I was up late slogging through it all, but it was a long exam and a lot of students and a couple of the questions involved careful calculations that I had to trace through, and so I only got halfway through the stack. Today, I try to finish it.

Unfortunately, on Tuesdays I have a long morning class starting shortly, and I have a lab most of the afternoon, and I have to attend two senior seminars, so I’m going to be working late again.

I estimate that maybe I can spare a half hour around noon. So, lunch. Which because of my advanced age and feeble condition will probably consist of a lump of fiber.

Yay. Birthday. They just get better every year.

Prophecy…validated

This story is numerically accurate, at least.

Paul McCartney wrote this song in 1956, a year before I was born, and before Mary Gjerness was born. He was 14.

It was released to the public on the album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in the spring of 1967. I was 10. Mary was 9. We had met the year before. McCartney was 25. We had not and have never met him.

I heard the song, and the whole album, often that summer. It was the Summer of Love.

Mary and I might have fled to Haight-Ashbury together, except our parents would have disapproved, and, well, we didn’t know each other that well. Also, we were kids.

The song may have implanted ideas in my head, though, because 7 years later, in the fall of 1974, I worked up the courage to ask her on a date.

It did not go well.

Shortly afterwards, Mary departed for Southeast Asia, where she studied martial arts and eventually returned to the United States to right great wrongs as the Batwoman.

I fled the opposite way, to languish in exile in exotic Indiana. I returned having learned no lessons, to repeat the same mistakes yet again. In the summer of 1976, when the song was 9 years old, I asked Mary out on a second date.

It went a little better.

I was 19. Mary was 18. Paul McCartney was 34 years old. He had nothing to do with us, but we all kind of wish we were that young again.

It was about this time that I began to wonder whether she would still be interested in needing me and feeding me when I turned 64.

She said the word. We filled in a form. We got married in 1980, when I was 23 and she was 22. Tentatively, the answer was “yes”, but I still needed empirical confirmation of the robustness of the agreement.

Suddenly! Unexpectedly! To everyone’s surprise! Forty one years flew by. Finally, I can answer the questions in the song.

When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three,
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four? Ooh
You’ll be older too.
Ah, and if you say the word,
I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside,
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four?
Ev’ry summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight if it’s not too dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee;
Vera, Chuck and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
yours sincerely, wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine forevermore.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty four? Ho!

Yes, she still sends me valentines and birthday greetings. No, she doesn’t drink…wine.

Yes, she will lock the door if I’m out very late. But I have a key!

She probably needs me less than I need her, but she will still feed me.

Mary, unfortunately, must wait until September to find out if I reciprocate.

Wait, the song is over! What happens now? What about when we’re 65? 74? 103? I guess I better find out. My new mission: to determine the accuracy of the lyrics in the song, “In the Year 2525”.

One in-box is empty!

It is glorious. I am completely caught up on grading in my introductory biology course, and the website shows no pending items awaiting my perusal. That feels so good, even if I know it is fleeting.

I’ve already started pounding on my genetics backlog. I have once again given myself a goal of getting it completely done today. I will persist and overcome. I will taste the heady joy of a brief freedom from obligation late tonight, no matter what. I might even have a few days this week with a little time for the spider work.

Although I do have the students launching a new fly cross this week, so lab will be busy. It’s weird how I find working in the lab relaxing and not at all stressful, but sitting at home in front of my familiar computer just reading and judging student writing is agonizing. I’m already getting a headache contemplating the rest of today.

No spiders today 😢

The sun is shining! It’s warm outside! My lab spiders are busily constructing new webs! But I have vowed that I shall get completely caught up on grading my introductory biology class, Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development. Yes, I shall clear that nagging notification in Canvas that I have this one long assignment to complete grading.

Then, tomorrow, by Grabthar’s Hammer, I shall get totally caught up on Genetics grading! Indeed, it shall be done. I want to have one day with no pending grading left to do. On that day I shall wallow in spiders all day long.

And then I will assign more homework. It never ends.

But for now, yeesh but it looks nice out there, like I ought to strip down to shorts and a camera bag and dive into some tick-infested brush, or something fun like that.

Nope nope nope nope nope

I tried to walk in to open up the genetics lab this morning, and it ain’t happening. The roads and sidewalks are sheets of glassy ice — I got as far as the corner of my house before I went flying. I’ll be OK, I landed on my head.

Unfortunately, I can now feel every muscle and bone in my spine from thorax to cervical vertebrae aching and complaining. I’m going to be feeling this for several days.

Every year, godfuckingdamnit, I have take at least one serious fall. This is it. This better be the last one.