1) I have somehow acquired a cat. It's a long-haired, smush-faced spotted thing I have been calling "Beast." I consider it below both my and his/her/its dignity to go routing around in all that fur to find sex "markers," and so Beast will live without all the irritating socially determined expectations of gender that are so hard on a cat. When Beast first began sleeping on my porch a few weeks ago, I was very excited about the implications of a volunteer cat. Alas, no magical powers have emerged in either of us. Therefore, I must conclude that this cat could somehow sense the presence of a spinster in my college-kid infused microburg (i.e., town that thinks it's a city), and knew s/he must go live with said spinster to fulfill both of our stereotypes.
2) The local news that usually isn't is predicting snow for Tuesday. This Tuesday. The one before Halloween. W.T.F.? Seriously? A white Halloween? Those originally from this area tell me that I should expect a "wicked-harsh winter." I blame the GOP. In related news: I have discovered that L.L. Bean sells some delightfully colorful parkas.
3) People keep volunteering gossip about my professors' personal lives. Knowledge that this information freaks me out has, in fact, speeded up the flow of gossip. Some of it coming from the professors themselves. (Does this count as gossip, or just creepy perv talk?) Now, I know this is a childish philosophy, and will present a few problems in the next 5 years, but I really don't want to know about the sexual perversions of people with advanced degrees. Especially not when I trust those people to teach me stuff. And, not coincidentally, especially not when those advanced-degree holding people-who-teach-me-stuff types are an average of 112 years old. (Obviously hyperbolic, but the faculty here at Microburg U. is elderly by any standard.) Just ...ew! Stupid Viagra! I want my sweet, avuncular old men back, dammit!
4) The professor for whom I work has turned the female population of the class against him, and is approximately 12 hours and one idiotic aside away from full-scale riot. He's a tried and true member of the old-boys network, and doesn't understand that the jokes that were funny to his all-male cohort at Old Ivy when he was a student MANY MANY MOONS AGO are not so funny in a mixed classroom in the 21st century. If I were a good employee, I would have told him that on Friday. However, I suck. And, frankly, I'm enjoying watching the girls take up their battle-formations.
