Something about Lit'rature

Summer is here and I want to finally read all of those books that I've been putting off in the name of lack-of-time. Yesterday, I read The Miracle at Speedy Motors which is the latest in The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series. It was fabulous, as usual. I think that Alexander is starting to wax more and more philosophical in these later ones actually. He skirted the topic of religion several times.

One of my favorite parts was right at the beginning when Mma Ramotswe is thinking about how the address of her Detective Agency is c/o the adjoined auto shop. While her assistant believes that such an address belittles the agency's importance, Mma Ramotswe notes that there is security in being "care of" another. In fact, she says that we should all be "care of" one another. And I thought it was a great idea.

(P.S. If any of you have ideas for me to add to my summer reading list, I'm up for suggestions.)

Problems

I think that a great majority of the world's problems could be solved with basic human kindness. The rest can be solved by good and able economists. :)

(and maybe an occasional doctor.)

Won't somebody think of the children

I think that it is vulgar to have finals at 7:00 AM. I also think it's awful to have finals on Saturdays. This morning my Econ 110 students had both. At the same time.

Luckily, the other TA is married, so he goes to bed at around 10:00 every night, so he volunteered to proctor the first half of the exam while I did the second. It still amounted to me arriving on campus at 8:30, but that is an hour and a half better than 7:00.

Perhaps I'll take a nap this afternoon. I'll do it between washing my car, going shopping, depositing checks, and studying for the other 3 finals that I still have ahead of me. Hmm. . . .

Fame

This is just about the most amazing thing I've ever seen:

MLH's blog

Gregory Mankiw's blog

She's famous!!!

I can do it on my own

Please note:

b n b n b n

Do you see how they work? It because I fixed it.

For the last few days, my spacebar, b, and n have been tempermental, only working about 20% of the time. I tried to be patient with them, hoping that they might repent of their ways and return; I learned the alt-codes for b, n, B, and N, which make typing a little tedious but I was working with it. Thursday I gave up and replaced them. (I'm going to be a great church leader someday.)

I chatted with Kiran from Dell who didn't get any of my jokes, but did send me a replacement keyboard.

Last night, I got to gut my laptop in order to replace the keyboard myself. I was very brave. It's a little intimidating to peel back sections of one of the most expensive things that you own when the pieces that are supposed to snap out of place feel like they are probably just going to snap in general.

Now it's all better though and I can write about all sorts of things that are more than one word long.

The cat is out

So I've officially submitted the hatred post below to the campus newspaper and it's been printed today. I'm also currently typing this from the BYU Democrats booth. I usually try to hide my political leanings from strangers (I make more friends this way), but I seem to be pulling out all the stops these days. The next thing you know, I might buy one of these Democrat t-shirts and wear it around campus or participate in an eco-terrorism rally.

You know that feeling when you buy new clothes and wear them to school for the first time and you are a little self-conscious about it. It's a little like that.

So far, no one has disowned me.

But the day is still young.

Hatred Awareness

I just noticed a "Radical Islamic Terrorist Awareness Week" poster in one of the buildings on campus that is in part sponsored by the BYU Republicans. I think that it is great of them to occasionally remind us of the people that we are supposed to hate and fear. Otherwise I may have forgotten and, as a result, been kind to the Muslim people that I know.

While we are at it, I thought that it would be a great idea to start other sorts of similar weeks:
Columbian Drug-dealer Awareness Week
Thieving Mexican Awareness Week
Violent African Awareness Week
Lazy Poor-people Awareness Week
Communist Unpatriotic Democrat Awareness Week

Where's McCarthy when you need him?