Today's predicted high: 80*
Tomorrow's predicted high: 40*

I expect somewhere between those two there will be a migraine. I HATE continental weather.

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The kids were nuts last night. I think part of it was "substitute teacher syndrome" - my coleader (the enforcer) had a family emergency and couldn't be there, and even though I was there, and another mother who helps out regularly was there, it was like herding cats to get the kids to come in, settle down, etc., etc.

Also, they're probably keyed up because the accused murderer still has not been caught. Local schools have been "locked down," there's a general aura of being ill-at-ease. I tried to keep the kids indoors (with all the exterior doors locked) as much as possible, but it's hard.

At one point I actually threatened cancelling the mini-golf trip for later this spring. It worked for a while.

I suspect the accused murderer is probably actually out of the country by now but there's no clear evidence to support that, so everyone's acting like he could jump out of the bushes at you any moment.

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Like Lydia, I'm really glad I didn't sign up for the knitting olympics now. My life is too crazy busy. (Still, I feel sad sometimes that I don't live a life that gives me the opportunity to go to Stitches West, or go on a quilting cruise, or be a consultant on a tv show, or any of those wonderful exciting things.)

I will also say that I'm not good at committing to one project, and one project only, for any length of time. As much as I enjoyed working on Hiawatha Tuesday night, yesterday afternoon (in the few moments I was actually home), I could only bring myself to work on the Simple Stripes sock.

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My new biggest pet peeve is cell phones. I had to go to the grocery yesterday and I wound up walking behind someone with one of those "hands free" headsets - so, if you're in a mood to be amused, it looks like they're talking to their Imaginary Friend. Or if you're not in the mood to be amused, you find yourself thinking, "if you really have so little of a life that you have to rehash the Grammies with your friend while you're shopping, GET OUT OF THE WAY and let those of us with lives
buy what we need and get the heck on our ways."

And one of the kids' cell phones rang during the lesson last night. I just stopped (I was on my last nerve by that point) and sat there and LOOKED at him while he said, "Um...this isn't a good time for me to talk right now. Bye." I almost got up and walked out of the room after that.

I guess part of it is I don't "get" the telephone thing. I was never one to spend hours on a telephone with anyone. Nowadays, if I need to ask a colleague something, I'll walk down to their office, or if I know they're not in, send them an e-mail. For friends, I either write letters or send e-mails. I guess it's because a lot of the time when I'm at home, I sort of regard phone calls - at least, having the phone ring and interrupt what I'm doing - as sort of an intrusion. And I'm always afraid that if I call someone, I'll be intruding on something important they're doing. With e-mail, it's more neutral; people can get it when they're ready and respond when they want to.

I just can't understand needing to be that umbilically connected to a friend, that you can't walk through the stinking wal-mart without having to discuss televised (fake) awards shows a week after they happened.

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Oh, and the "20 items or less" lanes at the grocery? A total joke. I wound up in one behind a woman yesterday who had 20 candy bars alone in her basket. Her final bill was $96 and the most expensive single item she had was pre-made pie crust. (Okay, here's a question: is 20 items 20 ITEMS, regardless of if it's 20 cans of cat food or 20 different items? Or does each different category count as an "item" so you could conceivably go through the line with 100 cans of cat food, and 40 frozen pizzas and eight loaves of bread, and still claim you only had 3 items? I will add that I had 12 items in my cart and DIDN'T go to the '10 items or less' lane (I really should have) because I had more than 10 items.)

Frankly, if the Mart of Wal isn't going to police their "20 items or less" lanes they should take the signs down and stop fooling those of us who actually play by the rules. (I also had the experience once of having a woman rush to get ahead of me in line - I had a gallon of milk. ONE GALLON OF MILK. She had 32 items in her cart (I counted). She shot me a syrupy smile before I could say anything and said, "Don't worry, honey, I know how to count. I'm just really in a hurry." Yes. And I suppose it is inconceivable that I might be in a hurry.

There are some areas of my life where I realize I tend to be a bit "Rain Man." Grocery store checkout lines are one. I seriously do count the items in my cart and if I have a couple too many for the express line, I forgo it, even if it means a much longer wait in another line. But I'd appreciate the same courtesy from the other shoppers.

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One of my colleagues called me a "control freak" the other day because I opined that it would be nice if the campus clocks we had were the kind that could pick up signals from the Atomic Clock in Boulder, CO, and set themselves accordingly. (WWV, for you shortwave fans).

I don't know. I don't think it's excessive to wish that all the clocks on campus - or even all the clocks in a single building - showed the same time.

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