First day follies

* Came in this morning to a parking lot full (Well, FSVO "Full") of trash - a full six-pack of beer cans, a couple beer bottles, an empty cigarillo packet, some fast-food trash, and there were a few more beer cans thrown WAY down on the sloping lawn.

This bothers me A LOT. Our faculty and students would not litter in that way. (The students we have, if they eat on campus, they put stuff in the obviously-situated trash cans).

I looked at it in annoyance. And thought about how it wasn't my job to pick it up. But dangit, it's also not really the grounds' crew's job - their job is to trim dead branches and stuff like that. And it's not the custodian's job to pick up someone else's trash.

So I got my trash can from my office and picked it up. And it was GROSS. Some of the beer cans still had liquid in them (I dearly hope it was beer). I tipped all the stuff into the big outdoor trashcan that is handily placed near the front door but I didn't want my office stinking of stale beer so I had to take the plastic liner out of my trash can, too - so now I can't use my own trash can until the custodian makes his rounds again. (I guess I take my little bit of lunch trash - an empty coconut-water pack and an empty applesauce cup - and toss it in the restroom trash bin)

This kind of thing makes me angry. I assume the reason people had their little party in our lot is either (a) they were underage and didn't want their parents to know or (b) were people up here leeching on the free wifi and drinking while they streamed Netflix

Some of the cans were Keystone, which I guess is the cheap cruddy beer that cheap cruddy beer drinkers choose, some were Rolling Rock. I don't know if that means anything. (I also wonder if the cigarillos were "enhanced" with another, not-legal-in-this-state, plant that some people choose to smoke).

At any rate: if you're using our lot, clean up your darn trash. And you shouldn't be using our lot for your parties. And this also tells me I want to try to avoid being up here alone at night or on weekends - we've already been warned that the apartment complex a couple stones' throws from us doesn't exactly harbor Sunday school teachers and honest tillers of the soil.

Yes, my chair knows about it. The campus security force is supposed to be checking our building and lot but I think they need to do it more often. (We're also probably going to get security cameras).

I didn't pick up the cans down on the lawn because it's steep, I was in dress shoes, and I didn't fancy snagging my hose on one of the many sandburs in our lawn.

One of my grad-school professors used to refer to people doing stuff like picking up trash as, "You'll just get another gold star in your crown" (implying: in Heaven) but I dunno, I'd much rather have the trash not be there in the first place than be awarded any number of gold stars in the Great Beyond. (Or I'd rather have someone here and now say a thank-you. I'm not good at being patient for any "reward," if any)

And the other thing: My picking it up, if the people come back and see their trash gone, just reinforces to them, "It's okay to throw trash around, look, there are 'little people' whose job it is to pick it up." So you either live in a nasty trashed world, or you let the trashers get away with it and do their work for them.

I'm thinkin': put devices on the faculty parking badges that could remotely turn off a spike strip, and then just put spike strips at the entrance of the parking lot every Friday night and take 'em up every Monday morning (We'd have to have a way to turn them off because some of us like to work in here on the weekends). After the first or second time someone gets their tires blown out, they'll learn.

* I have received MULTIPLE video-e-mails (This is a thing, now, apparently) advertising the fitness challenge.

I don't like video e-mails. Write the stuff out, I can read faster than I can listen. I'm going to largely ignore e-mails in video form. But I bet with the increased dominance of cell phone video cameras, we're going to have to put up with this more and more: sitting for five minutes watching something we could read in 30 seconds.

* Also, the latest one was about how the Administration building has been declared a "donut-free zone" (Somewhere, Homer J. Simpson is crying). I get that this is tongue-in-cheek but this kind of thing bothers me a lot because it borders on food-shaming and I've already declared that if any measure is taken to "monitor the healthfulness" of faculty lunches, I will just start not bringing a lunch and will skip lunch. And if that makes me cranky or makes me pass out in lab, fine. Those kinds of things are illogical policies and they need to be responded to with illogic.

How about "Moderation Mondays" instead of "Let's outright ban a food." OR: how about "Healthful Treat Monday" where someone brings in fruit or, I don't know, small squares of some kind of good cheese. (And yes, cheese is a healthful food, in moderation. Shut up.)

I'm especially annoyed given that the required meetings we had provided (a) donuts in the morning and (b) lunchmeat sandwiches and chips at lunch. I had to go home for lunch because lunchmeat contains far more sodium than I care to eat. (I will allow the occasional high-sodium meal, but it has to be something GOOD, not indifferent food-service ham)

I fear this could get really out of hand really fast. And if I get nagged at and nannied at too much, I start showing disordered behaviors in re: eating. I just finally figured out how to live on a low sodium diet without making myself nuts; I don't need to spiral back down into that pit.

EDITED TO ADD: It occurs to me that an enterprising student group needs to set up somewhere, perhaps just slightly OFF campus, and advertise a "Free Donut Zone" where they would give away donuts but accept donations for their group. I'm not a big fan of the "bread" type of donuts that are the standard office donut, but if a group did that, I'd seek them out to donate.

* A student who was a thorn in my side in a previous semester is in another one of my classes. And the whole "No cell phones in class, turn 'em off unless you're a volunteer firefighter or an EMT or Batman or someone else who HAS to be on call for the good of society" spiel had barely left my mouth when the guy's ringtone went off. I just stood there and glared but this is someone who is glare-proof, because they are far too Honey Badger to mind their professor's disapproval.



* The air conditioning in one classroom where I teach is beyond broken. I was informed: It's about twice as hot as it should be in there" which made me want to say, "Oh, so it's 150 degrees in there, then?" It wasn't, but it was pretty nasty. Luckily another room was open so I moved for now but really? Broken a/c on the first day of class?