Received an e-mail that makes me glad I'm not one of those old-time professorial types who keeps a bottle of rum (or whatever) hidden in the bottom file drawer, because I'd be tempted to take it out. (Or maybe I'm confusing old-type professorial types with old-time newsmen.)

I can't tell if it's an e-mail genuinely apologizing for poor performance in my class, or if its subtly designed to shift blame from the student to me (because my tests are "too hard.")

I'm going to have to try and forget it because it's the kind of thing that will make me low-grade crazy if I let it. And because dammit, I am not going to let myself feel guilty just so a student can feel better about themselves.

I also have an upset stomach this morning. I SWEAR there is something in that buffing compound they use on your teeth at the dentist that, even though very miniscule amounts are actually getting into my system, is enough to make me feel ill. (It's probably got some kind of industrial version of sorbitol in it, that's even more powerful than regular sorbitol.)

(Huh. Firefox's spell-checker doesn't know "miniscule." I wonder if, in a few more years, there will be increasingly more words that are real words that spell checkers don't "know," because so few people use them. Maybe we need an endangered species act for words.)