Birthday loot (finally)
I took my Old Navy giftcard shopping today before I went to the office (I continue to be bitter that on Veteran's Day, every single person in government has the day off except me, so dammit I'm going shopping!). I had intended to get cute fleece gloves that match my new, crazily apple-green coat. Alas! The gloves were apparently made for people with fingers that are only two inches long. Are my hands really so freakishly huge that I can't wear even large-sized gloves? Apparently, because I also tried on some large-sized leather gloves at Carson's and couldn't even get my fingers into them. Maybe I should reconsider that basketball career after all.

Some random undergrad just came in and asked me for a kleenex. That was odd. (Yes, it was an actual Kleenex(tm) brand kleenex - this university has a strong policy against genericizing of brand names, as you know!)

One of my students told me that I'm the first TA she ever had who actually cared about the students. That was very sweet of her to say. I think I've been fortunate so far; the kids in my class are a good bunch with one exception (I'm looking at YOU, Mr. or Miss Cheaty McCheat-a-Lot), and when people ask me content-based questions I dare to hope that they actually care about the topic and find it interesting. Yes, I realize that amorphous Pre-Cambrian blobs and 1,001 marine creatures that all look like shaving brushes are not that interesting, but they're part of a much larger picture that is so remarkable that mere lectures can't describe it properly. And now we're doing the section that may be subtitled "Animals You've Heard Of (and some plants, too)", so levels of interest should go up.
- posted by Diane @ 1:53 PM