Monday Randoms

• when you need to cook the beans from scratch and you don't skip out from school early, you end up having quite the late dinner.
• I did get a decent amount of stuff done today, but of course I am also still terribly behind.
• And should really be working right now instead of posting things because I don't have everything done for tomorrow morning's class.
• My cat managed to pop off his collar again. I don't know how he did it; I was looking towards the stove at the time.
• I am the worst researcher ever, and I will never get this stupid article finished, and it will all suck and that will be the reason I don't get an academic job ever ever ever. You'd think it'd be because of the economy, but that would be wrong.
• In other news, I have a thing I have to get ready very soon and it is not written. (Whose brilliant idea was it to present something in the middle of job season, idiot? WTF were you thinking?) It is very tempting to my procrastinatory self to just jump over the article thingy which is late and bury my head in the sand of a new project.
• Washington State has the coolest place names in the world, Seriously, Mukilteo? Walla Walla? Awesomeness! And when I just googled for how to spell "Mukilteo" I found even more, including Hoquiam, Enumclaw, Cathlamet, and Cosmopolis. Cool!
• In sadder news, the friend whose family members live in Mukilteo, thus alerting me to this wonderful word instance, was saying that those family members have hit a very very rough patch financially and things are bad. Like have to come back out of retirement bad. Sending sympathetic thoughts and hoping that repeating Washington place names over and over to myself will fix your retirement accounts, people!
• Sour cream, even the fat free kind, abolultely makes this black bean, rice, and tomato dish with chipotle sauce. Yum! But it was not enough to save me from burning my tongue.
  
• If I keep incredibly busy, like go to visit family and run all around my hometown during thanksgiving break, I might be able to withstand the wiki without going crazy and obsesssive. But if I don't start hearing things other than those stupid affirmative action cards from some search committees once I get back, it's not going to be pretty around here.
• I have not been observed for the weird class; however, I ran into the principal today and he had been at a money-raising benefit thingy at which there were students. He passed on the word that they liked my class and had said nice things. !!!! I'm kind of surprised that they like it; they complain so much and the entire structure of that place is so alien to me. (I've got posts percolating about why we assign essays; stay tuned.) Now if only they had the money and the students to let me teach two classes next term. Alas, it is a small place and the permanent staff can cover all but this one period. Perhaps it will start raining money instead and solve all my problems.
• I haven't seen Dissertation Buddy in like a zillion years. We're both so crazy busy and overwhelmed by the market. But I went to her place and she cooked amazing Ethiopian lamb stew and a whole bunch of other Ethiopian dishes and we ate them and drank beer and unwound on Sunday. It was good. And really, the applications are almost done. The problem is more that there is no slack period for either of us because of all the other academic commitments we've got going on. It never ends!
  
• It has finally gotten cool enough to sit in the evening with a cat on one's lap and a mug of hot tea. Of course, they are not cooperating at the moment, but what else is new?
  
• No, seriously, you tell me.