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Miscellaneous things

Thing the first:

This morning when I was taking out the recycling, one of the guys working on remodeling the house on the corner came over to me. He introduced himself and held up a piece of wood, saying, "I'm doing some measuring, but I don't have a pencil. I don't think I even own a pencil. Could I please borrow a pencil?"

"Sure." I went into the house and grabbed a mechanical pencil from my desk. Borrow, ha! I gave it to him.

"But that one looks really nice…" He was probably thinking, hey, lady, that is overkill, I only need to make one little mark on this board here.

I explained that this was one of the big, fat mechanical pencils that I never use, so he was welcome to it. And, really, do all the people designing mechanical pencils these days have huge stumpy fingers? Because lately I haven't been able to find the nice slender pencils that I like.

Thing the second:

Items that broke in the past week include the following: the battery in Oz's car which had to be replaced, the metal distractor in Oz's foot came apart and the doctor had to put it back together, the leg on the shower chair that Oz has been using cracked, the transformer on the light pole outside my house leaked mineral oil all over the cars and I had to call the power company to come and mess with it, and the neck on the soap dispenser by my kitchen sink broke off this morning.

Thing the third:

I got my golden doodad this week. I can now wear the badge of my smartypants engineer-hood on a chain around my neck. One of the neat things that my academic achievement got for me was membership in an honor society for engineers. I never was an honor society person before, but I always had the feeling that I ought to be—I just never worked quite hard enough, or took the right classes. One reason why this was a big deal for me was that Phi Beta Kappa was a big deal for my father. His parents set out three goals for him: get a medical degree, run in the Olympics, and make Phi Beta Kappa. Just a little pressure there, eh? He made two out of three. No one ever put that kind of pressure on me, but me. And up until this straight-A business of the last several years, I was pretty reasonable when it came to pushing myself. So that would make the golden doodad an indication of unreasonable pressure if I don't stop overthinking this.

Thing the fourth:

What is it with the stairs in the university library? I go up and down stairs all day long here at home, and up the Church Hill staircases regularly, but one trip up to the fourth floor of the university library leaves my legs aching for days.

492 words | July 28, 2005 09:22 PM | Real true story