Morris weather:
-23°C (-8°F), -36°C (-32°F) with windchill
It’s been this way all weekend. I lost all feeling in my fingers in the few minutes walking from the garage to my front door when I took off my gloves and was fumbling with my keys. Those dang metal keys are dangerous in this weather.
It’s hard to explain this to the people who actively avoid thinking, but the problem is global warming.
Stupid wiggily jet stream, letting all that cold air freeze me.
I know it’s MLK day, and that this is a day off for my university, and it’s also the day of the meaningless Republican caucuses in Iowa (bugger Iowa, I don’t care what that state does,) but it’s also the day before classes resume. That means I must now stop slacking. I have to focus, get my act together, and go in to work and get prepared for another long semester. How do I feel about that?
Can I do both, screaming and staring?
This semester is also going to be a huge change. I’m not teaching any labs at all, which feels a bit strange, and I also have only one hour of classroom time every day, at precisely 1:00. That’s it! You might be thinking that sounds pretty slack, too, except that two of my classes are writing classes, which entail a massive amount of grading, and the third, my eco-devo class, is going to involve a heck of a lot of reading. I promise, I won’t be sleeping in until noon and closing up shop and going home mid-afternoon. I’ve got the first 3 weeks queued up and ready to fire into the brains of the students, while I try to get ready for the next few weeks.
I’m thinking I should get both models. I can spend the first half of the term staring into the void, but I’m sure I’ll be screaming in the last half.
Apparently, all the students, faculty, and staff were warned to stay away from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus this morning. I didn’t hear about it until all the danger had passed. Some fool named Joseph Rongstad threatened to go on a rampage and start killing students.
The notice did not offer any specifics about the threat or how it was communicated, but Olson told the Star Tribune that the suspect went on an hours long threat-filled rant on his landscape company’s Facebook page. Some of the postings included a specific family as an intended target.
“Here we go AMERICA,” the last of his many postings read. “I am heading out … to the U of M Minneapolis mn to start killing kids. … if I can’t get the USA military to [come] talk to me face to face then I’m going for it to try defend your freedom America. … I may have been played … on this brain reading technology but today I find out for sure.”
The posting then warned, “IM COMING FOR YA KIDS AND ITS GOING TO GET BLOODY.”
A previous posting from the man also made a threat against Iranian students, saying, “If this government don’t have the total lock down of ALL university’s of Minnesota by this morning sun up watch out PARENTS … Kids will die for real amongst them u of m students.”
Other postings from the man made explicit threats to Sheriff Olson, and Chippewa County judges Thomas Van Hon and Keith Helgeson. In 2016, Van Hon ordered the man civilly committed for six months as mentally ill and chemically dependent.
What I find a bit irritating about this is that the was in Watson, MN which is about an hour away from Morris, while the Twin Cities campus is almost 3 hours away, and we didn’t get an email notification until after Rongstad was confined and we were all out of danger. He did specifically mention the Minneapolis branch, but also threatened “ALL university’s of Minnesota” and we were the closest potential target. We got notified well after the SWAT teams had shut down the town of Watson for this ranting kook.
I’m just saying it would be nice if we all got the warning, not just the big city campus.
This is a watch I inherited from my late grandfather. I believe it was from the 1940s or thereabouts — he served in the Army Corps of Engineers in WWII, and then worked as a highway engineer in Washington state.
The watchglass is missing, and a couple of hands have broken off. The mechanism is still kind of functional, in that when I wind it up it ticks away.
I post this on the off chance that anyone might know anything about it. It has sentimental meaning (I wore it when I got married!), and I’d also be interested in knowing where to take it for repair.
Also, it’s pretty and shiny.
After our brown Xmas and New Year’s Day, we’re finally getting a good slosh of snow, with a prediction of 5 more inches today. Right on time, the administration has sent out an email telling us to “develop a plan” to deal with inclement weather when classes start next week. We get no resources to implement this plan, of course, we’re just on our own on that. Good thing I’ve been dealing with this stuff for 24 years!
It needs a few more eyes, though.
I was at SeaTac with Knut and Connlann and an unnamed muppet before Xmas. I’ll let you guess who’s who.
Three of them were on the way to Korea, I was going to Minnesota. Knut is still in Korea, dining on kimchee and all sorts of delicious food. He needs it to keep up his rate of growth.
I don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve. I won’t be staying up until midnight, I won’t be drinking champagne with my sweetie, there will be no party. I will acknowledge a few common New Year’s Eve practices, though.
Predictions! It’s traditional on New Year’s Eve to look forward and predict what the coming year will bring. Here’s my prediction:
Everything will get much, much worse. Chaos will reign. Everything will fall apart. Expect the Republic to fall, genocide will rage all around the world, crops will fail, plague will sweep across the planet.
Prove me wrong.
Resolutions! Nothing really matters, but I will be making one change. I’ve refrained from going full arachnophile on this blog, and that means I’ve neglected the founding ethos of Pharyngula: I write for me, not you. So no more restraint, I’ll post spiders when I want to.
Some of you may argue that my resolution is contributing to my prediction, but hey, when the world burns, snuggle up to a spider.
