Charlotte: my (perhaps flip) assumption as to why the guy wanted to know: he's hypercompetitive and a pre-med. So if he figures someone else who is a pre-med is "out of the running" for the "good" schools, it's to his advantage. (If I were more devious, I could "play" the pre-meds off each other the way Greg House did to his fellows a couple seasons ago. Then again, I'm not psychotic*)

(*I missed last night's episode but apparently that fact was revealed - that he has had a break with reality, or some such. I wonder if the series is going to end either with a child with autism playing with a snowglobe containing a model of Princeton-Plainsboro, or with Hugh Laurie waking up in bed next to Geena Davis and telling her he had the strangest dream...)


****

I've had several increasingly-agitated messages from a student who (I assume) is in danger of failing a class; he is demanding to know why his lab grade is not higher. As I do not teach the lab section of the class, I have no knowledge as to why.

If he calls again, I am going to give him the lab instructor's phone number. He is claiming she told him he had a score 9 points higher than he had; I have no idea if that was an honest mistake, an attempt at sowing miscommunication, or what.

This is someone who's had a difficult attitude all semester so I'm not exactly cheery about working with him at this point. Add to which I have two more exams to give, a textbook evaluation to write, and two candidates for a job to observe and decide upon before Friday, and I'm really in no mood to be the intermediary in this situation.

***

I'll be glad when Friday afternoon gets here and I'm (hopefully) sailing down highway 69 on my way to the train station (or, failing that, driving up the Indian Turnpike to get to 44 and eventually to 55...that's if there's flooding that turns the train into a bus, not unlike how midnight turned Cinderella's coach into a pumpkin.)

***

I did get some work done on the new lace scarf:



The pattern is called "Crest o the Wave," it's an old Shetland lace stitch.

I'm not as far as I might be, because (a) the students got done on the final yesterday faster than I expected and (b) I made a mistake (forgot a yarn over) and had to unknit several rows because I couldn't find a way to "fudge" it that looked good. (So now I'm counting yos as I do them - there are four to a repeat.)

I think the fact that it's dark yarn makes it harder. It's certainly more difficult to see what you're doing.

***

Another reason why I'm not quite on top of things...the reason I am having to be involved with interviewing two candidates? One of my colleagues is retiring. Today is (I think) her last day. This is someone who's been a friend, who was my first grad student, who could be depended upon to fill in for stuff when needed.

We're having a lunch for her today. Because she's someone who watches her diet, it's a "light" lunch (one of the wags in the department said he was bringing "Miller Lite." Not possible, because we're a dry campus, and besides, I think he's the ONLY one who would actually drink beer that early in the day...and it wouldn't be Miller if it were). So I made a salad that I've made a few times already, it is really good and fairly simple, with a homemade dressing:

Good Big Spinach Salad.

2 bags (or 3-4 bunches) of spinach (or a comparable amount of other greens)\
2, 11 ounce cans of mandarin orange segments, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1 cup of slivered almonds, toasted for 10 minutes in a 350* oven

Wash the spinach and combine it with the other things.

Dressing

3 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons sugar
1-2 teaspoons white wine vinegar*
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup salad oil (I use the "light tasting" olive oil)
1 crushed clove of garlic.

(*at first I wrote that "whine." It's been that kind of a week)

Combine the lemon juice, sugar, salt, vinegar, and garlic. Shake them up (you will be removing the garlic after it's "steeped" in there for a while. Add the oil and shake to blend. It's best if you make the dressing a couple hours in advance and keep it in the fridge to let the garlic flavor the dressing.

N.B. This is a VERY mild vinaigrette. I had to add the vinegar (the original recipe didn't call for it) because it wasn't sharp enough for me - and I usually like my salad dressings pretty sweet. If you want something sharper, I'd recommend cutting back on the sugar and maybe adding more vinegar (maybe upping the vinegar to oil proportion).

You can do other things with this - you could use other fruits (strawberries are a classic but I think also small cubes of fresh pear would be good), or other nuts, or add sliced boiled eggs.