[Lent: day 28/40]

Slicing Potatoes

It helps,
putting my hands on a pot, on a broom,
in a wash
pail.

I
tried painting,
but it was easier to fly slicing
potatoes.

by Rabia; in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, ed. Daniel Ladinsky, p. 10

still not king -- er...

(the_red_shoes thought "Still not king" was a reference to Hamlet.  Heart.)


This morning, Andy looked at my desk and then at me and said, "Your artwork?"
"No, my friend Allie."
"Very talented."
"Well on her behalf, Thank you."

I was talking with Barbara and said that this is part of that sliver in time in which I and everyone else can agree that we like the weather, though for me it is tainted by knowledge of what's to come.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love obsessiveicons?  I've been hunting icons for that enveloped by warmth happy feeling and have found a number of lovely icons (some of which definitely don't fit the criteria but which I'm hanging on to for the moment 'cause I like them).  ( posted here: more for my own reference than anything else )

While searching ... oh, The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry).  *shivers*  (in a good way)

Also: lizards!  That reminds me that as well as potatoes and blood I need a lizard icon.  I'm not super taken with my options in the linked post, though.

Today I was wearing my black Limited shirt with the white pinstripes, with my bluegreen camisole under it.  Mary Alice said, "I love that shirt on you... with that neckline and then the bit under it... very flattering."

During lunch we watched the first few minutes of "It's Only a Paper Moon" (DS9 7.10) and I teared up because I am a huge sap, and I was thinking how this remains true even though I hate people, and how my hatred of people has been way more prevalent recently than usual.  I've been saying it often for a few years (and Cat has latched onto it like whoa) but I feel like it didn't use to be as true as it is now, like things didn't grate as much.
     I was thinking on the train home how it's interesting that I am so Libertarian (i.e. committed to "do what you want so long as you don't hurt anyone else") since I have such a low opinion of just about everyone.  Of course, I am forever pointing out that if you give the government lots of power eventually people you don't like will be in power and you will be in trouble; and since there are very few people I would want in power, well . . . .

[Edit: rhipowered used to have an icon that said, "Ravenclaw: It's not that we're smarter than you -- except we totally are." I may need to track down one of those.]

Back to the story of my full work day:

This morning/afternoon I actually had insufficient deskspace (I have huge amounts of space -- Eric is jealous/bitter -- but I currently have boxes and boxes of review materials) and I also kept losing papers -- oh that "losing my mind" kind of a day.

I realized that come tomorrow afternoon sanity will return, because Prof.B. isn't teaching Thursday or Friday -- this week he's teaching 2 classes Monday, 1 Tuesday, and 2 Wednesday.  So since he and his RA were both out of the country for the past week plus, it's been intense.  RA is consistently ever so grateful for what I do, and I still maintain that she does way more than I do.

Minimally stressful tasks today included photocopying chapter 16 of Dave Barry for the NOM faculty's enjoyment.

RA brought chocolate coconut rum balls from Puerto Rico.  Mmm, yum.
We are also attempting to make plans to go out for Happy Hour the end of this week (i.e., Friday) 'cause we definitely deserve it.

thistlerose sent me "gravel"!

Why do I not know when Senior Banquet is?  My guess is the weekend of April 22, but I honestly do not know.

One problem with having a social life is it makes it difficult to go shopping or apt. hunting since I only have enough free time to do either/or.  Life is pain, princess :)


I'm reading Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, and while I'm not sure anything will ever fully redeem Brueggemann for "Maintaining Thick Narrative Against Thin Ideology" and I still haven't been able to get through The Prophetic Imagination, I do find myself really liking a lot of the prayers in this book (and just as importantly, there has been little that has upset me).  Recently I was struck by "the sounds of justice and judgment; / the images of Sodom and Gomorrah; / the imperatives of widows and orphans."  [In "Even on such a day," 2001, p. 37.]  Given Emma and I and the Horsepersons of the Apocalypse, I was so pleased to see Sodom and Gomorra implicitly in the context of poor hospitality (which is what just about everyone inside the Bible itself is talking about when they reference it).

Full text of that section: "We are bewildered, undone, frightened, / and then intrude the cadences of these old poets: / the cadences of fidelity and righteousness; / the sounds of justice and judgment; / the images of Sodom and Gomorrah; / the imperatives of widows and orphans."