reveal 43 random and inconsequential things about myself

at a computer screen, and since my teaching often involves computers, I get the request a lot. No. If you are having trouble printing, saving, or whatever, I will lead you through the steps verbally. If you still can’t do it, give me your seat and you can look over my shoulder while I show you how. If you want me to look at a draft of your paper, print it out and bring it to me.

what’s done is done, and I do not want to revisit it.

Just a minor example: At work, I wrote up a course proposal for a grammar course that our division wanted to offer as what we call a “perspectives” course that gives a broad overview. The Board of Regents turned thumbs down, thinking it was too skills-oriented and not broad enough in scope. I revised it and we sent it through the next year. Thumbs down again.

I swear, my boss would not let it go. A couple of years later, he wanted to dredge it up revisit it again. When I said I thought it was pretty much dead, he asked me to work with someone else on it, so I did. Thumbs down again from the Regents. And in a couple of years, I was asked to once again work on it. I was sorry I had ever seen the darn thing. My motto in such matters is Let. It. Go.

plaid.

I don’t keep track of numbers too well. :)

And although that is a legitimate random, inconsequential thing about myself, what I was really going to say was that no matter how hard I try, as in E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Contact, and on and on, I never can fully suspend disbelief and enjoy movies with aliens in them.

Not that I don’t believe life exists elsewhere in the universe. I just don’t think it’s necessarily wise, gentle, allknowing life, and I very much doubt it’s interested in us.

I was thinking about this today when a lady I had never seen before asked me to watch her shop for a minute while she ran to the post office down the street.

I have had strangers ask me to back their vehicles out of parking spaces, to watch their bags of stuff for a minute, and so on.

But they are exactly right to trust me . . . middle-aged women carrying a few too many pounds just can’t run fast enough to be good crooks! ;)

leave things unfin

but I sing a lot.

I peruse not the forclosures, not the divorces, but the name changes.

For some reason, they fascinate me.

Most name changes fall into two categories: changing children’s names to a stepdad’s name, or taking back a surname after a divorce. Then there are name changes for religious reasons (taking a Muslim name, for instance.)

Those don’t fascinate me. The ones that do are the people who totally change their names, or change them just a little. Why change from Tracey Leigh to Tracee Lee or from Eduardo to Eduard? Why change from Karen Ann to Astra Zeneca? I always wonder about the stories behind the changes.

I push the button multiple times, especially if I am alone.

Pine-Sol.