Frog and Goat

Last night in class the professor handed out our take-home midterm exams and then we went over the questions. We have seven questions to answer and the maximum number of pages should be 8-10. The questions start off easy and the last couple are going to take some serious thought. A typical exam. Thank the lord it is essay and not multiple choice because I despise multiple choice exams.

Just when I think the people in class are pretty smart, the school administrator in the back of the room, the same person who is in a PhD program, raises her hand. There is something wrong with her because she insists on clarifying every single assignment as if she were as dumb as a box of rocks. Her question may as well have been, “Do we need to form complete sentences?” because what she asked was about as stupid.

This is no one’s first class because of the prerequisite requirement so there should be no excuse for graduate students asking questions like the ones I heard last night. I’m pretty sure the bottom line of all this is to find out if we’ve picked up concepts and if we are able to synthesize the information. Then we must show that we know how to apply the knowledge to whatever it is we’re doing. And, we need to be able to clearly communicate how we know what we know. It’s not that hard.

At some point during the line-by-line clarification of questions, I realized the expression on my face was one of “what the fuck is wrong with you people” and I quickly turned my face towards the wall and then examined my shoes.

Know how when someone leaves an office you are supposed to “steal” all the left behind supplies? It took me until today to realize that I didn’t have to sit in a squeaky-mcsqueak chair. It has been a non-stop squeak-fest at my desk for years with the floor boards that are haunted house creaky and the chair from squeak hell. I’m now sitting in a different chair and I don’t know why I didn’t think to switch chairs when the previous owner left in August.

There are two of us holding down the fort this week and if I have to smack the UPS man, I will because he rings the bell and then slams the mail slot until someone answers the door. This is the UPS man that delivers here on a nearly daily basis and is perfectly aware that nearly everyone in the building was laid off. So, it takes a minute to get to the front door to let him in. There’s no cause for slapping the mail slot and repeated bell ringing.

Speaking of declaring war (smooth segue). Yesterday I was cutting the grass that runs along the road and I realized the jack-off who lives next door (we’ve never met–we can’t even see his house or driveway) dumped his lawn mower grass bin thingy on our side of the line. He’s done this before and I let it slide. Yesterday it pissed me off so I stopped the lawn mower and then scooped that crap back over the line into his side and called him an asshole. Not that he or anyone else was around to hear my fury, but I figured from my mouth to his ear in a karma kind of way.

This morning we joined the family in witnessing Lil’ Elvis getting baptized. She did really well and then slept a bit through the after-party. She woke up, ate and then entertained us with her walking. Man that kid can walk.

Her sister spent Friday night with us and then we went to the fair Saturday morning. We spent the majority of our time in the Kidworld area riding rides. We did venture out a little to look at a woman warming up her horse. I think she realized The Niece was very interested because the rider and horse started going through their paces. I don’t know diddly about horsemanship but that rider and her horse worked well together. We also checked out some of the young animals. The women working the “identify the seed” booth–actually I don’t know what it was called–did a really great job of explaining to The Niece all the seeds and what the seeds grew into. I thought it was brilliant when talking about barley they came up with a couple of foods that The Niece would have recognized. I, of course, would have just said beer. Clearly, I would have been a bad choice for that booth.

The Niece also took a pony ride and as I was leading the pony around the ring, The Niece asked me to let the pony run a little bit and for me to let go of the rope. I didn’t because I really didn’t want to finish our trip to the fair explaining to my sister about the hospital visit. Also, I don’t think that pony would have run if I had lit off a firecracker next to her.