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2006-05-16 - 6:40 p.m.

computer games..weekend report..I feel lucky...

Last week was my last lecture; tomorrow is my last class. The difference is that tomorrow's class will be packed with class presentations. So, the stress is not gone yet. Today I sit with another mountain of essays to grade. Next week I will be faced with yet another - but in this instance, the very last one (hurrah!).

Last week I was hit by one of the most spectacular incidences of lackluster. I played online computer games for an eternity. The one with six rows of cats that stand up and sit down randomly (as cats are known to do). Your mission as the gamer is to make all of the cats follow what the designated alpha cat is doing (sitting or walking). The trouble is that the cats don't always agree to do what you ask - and so the goal of the game is to coax all cats into walking or sitting, ironically, by swiping your mouse over them. played this one for about an hour and a half. But at least I didn't get the online high score like K did (what a wasted youth he must have had).

Then I switched to a game where I was a little boy hopping up and down the beach with a yo-yo and my job was to bonk all of the crabs on the head with the yo-yo while masterfully dodging beachballs and coconuts that came rolling at me. If I ate the power-yo-yo then I could get the crabs in one bonk. This was hours of fun (and I never approached the high score). The one thing that bothered me (apart from whacking crabs over the head) was that the crabs were all bright red. In other words, they had all been BOILED (live crabs as you might know, are closer to green in color...). This disturbed the hidden biologist in me, or perhaps I could have used it to assuage my guilt for whonking crabs in the head with a yo-yo, because they were already DEAD. I am clearly not meant for the mass market computer game industry. I think about this way too much.

On a similar note, did anyone else ever notice that the Maine state license plate has a bright red DEAD lobster?

Okay enough about crustaceans for the moment. Mizzy is howling in the other room - which in this case means that she has done something that she is not allowed to do. My cat has a self-installed Misbehaving-Cat alarm that forces her to meowll everytime she leaps illegally onto a countertop. It's rather convenient (although I still think it's strange).

Anyway, I really had a funpacked weekend that was surprisingly full for the weekend that K and I had planned to do nothing. Friday night was my last concert with choir - I bought oogabs of wine and cheese for them and we had a lovely little celebration afterwards. More than that we had quite a bit of fun singing for a very tiny audience. At last I felt confident on the Barber, and could enjoy the nuances and feel the meaning of the text as I sang it. Given that this was a second performance, it was a lovely concert and we all felt rather confident.

Saturday involved cleaning and grading (ugh), until the evening when we went to dinner at a colleagues. It was a rather full day, but at least I had the opportunity to lie in until about 11, reading my first Aaron Elkins novel. Dinner was also lovely, and afterwards K and I walked about 4 miles from Flushing to Forest Hills (no buses came). Turns out that midnight is a lovely time for walking in Queens...

Sunday also turned rapidly from a quiet day into one full of activity. My friend Katherine called because she was staying in the neighborhood. She had returned from an all-night Indian music concert where her guru - visiting from Calcutta - had performed. She had just spent 24 hours 'guru sitting.' Apparently the gurus of the musicians caste are not expected to raise a finger to take care of themselves, and so she had spent the day carrying his keys, fixing him meals, pulling out his clothing, chauffeuring him around.. Anyway, after not sleeping for 24 hours, she popped by our place for a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon, and regaled us with tales of music and guru-sitting.

After that we cleaned some more, and then prepared for our next visitor, Lucia - the best friend of my mother, and a beloved fixture from my early childhood. Lucia took Klaus and me to dinner at a very lovely, fancy restaurant. It was fantastic.

And once again, another person told me how lucky I am to have K. In fact I have heard this about 5-6 times in the past week. Hmmmm. I couldn't place why I found the concept of being "lucky" slightly disturbing, and then I realized that it also seems to imply "undeserving." I guess there is a special way that one has to say that you are "lucky." I certainly feel very lucky to have K in my life. But I'd like to think more that we are both lucky to have each other....

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...they are just words, Suzi... - 2011-08-29
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