I am grading today. I hate grading. Every semester I tell myself, “This will be the semester that I put all grading online, and refuse to accept late assignments, and fail everyone who misses class more than five times.” Sigh.

Date: today

Subject: Miss Chick-fil-A Pickle Picker

Dear Miss Chick-fil-A:

The last three times that I have ordered a Chick-fil-A sandwich without a pickle, you went to the back and removed the pickle from an existing sandwich. How do I know this? Because, upon biting into the sandwich I could discern the distinct taste of what I like to call “pickle urine.”

It’s people like you that create customers like me.

WebCT Login Page: “This server has been locked for maintenance by the WebCT administrator.

The server will be available at 10:00 pm on 12/07/03. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”

It is now 12/8, 11:45pm. This is not unusual.

List of things increasing the level of my stomach acid:

1. End of semester grading

2. department politics

3. college politics

4. dissertation

5. committee politics

6. a general, low-level of smoldering anger about so many things that can’t be fixed.

7. Control plays masked as benign paternalism.

I have found my cell phone (old coat pocket) and bought another grinder attachment to sharpen the shovel, then found the original.

Current favorite form of relaxation: shooting the pellet pistol in the basement at 10m targets. I’ve been reading pellet gun web pages, and there is a really weird, interesting little subculture out there. I swap match scores with some guy I’ve never met in England. I find this pellet pistol thing to contain a weird confluence of Southern white guys on fixed incomes discussing zen-like strategies for keeping the pistol still. Followed by spirited defenses of killing squirrels.