thoughts, brain full

 All the thoughts, brain full:

* I finished "Gaudy Night" last night. Not to spoil it, but the last bit of dialog ("Placetne, magistra?" "Placet.") between Wimsey and Vane had me crying. (I guessed what the Latin meant and looked it up this morning; it was pretty much as I guessed but I didn't recognize the relation-to-the-Oxford-conferring-of-degrees allusion)

It's a lovely way to end it, but it also makes me sad because I will never have someone who basically offers a last proposal to me in such a way. (Heck: i will never be offered a proposal in my life, I am quite sure). 

I suspect I have a skewed idea of human relationships because most of the ones I observe are in nice novels or nice movies where people love each other and strive to be kind. But I would love to have someone who could at least match me for cleverness (on my good days for cleverness, of which there are fewer now) and who was kind. Really, that's all I would care about: is he kind? can he carry on a conversation with me? 

* Next book? I don't know. I might give up on the Dr. Aira one and take out the Arthurian trilogy I have (The Seeing-Stones is the first, I forget who the author is) and read that. I feel like I want something that has adventure and a little fantasy and isn't a small closed world and doesn't deal too much with tragedy or death. 

* They sent around the information about the memorial service for my friend D. (who died of cancer back in March) and it had a big picture of him, from happier times, when he was in good health and it "looked" like him (he was a *large* man and lost a shocking amount of weight while he was ill) and it made me sad all over again. I miss him even if he wasn't an everyday part of my life.

* One of my colleagues is having to teach from home; her small son (too young to be vaccinated) presented this morning with a high fever and headache, and she later found there was a COVID case in a (unvaccinated) parent at his day care. She somewhat hopefully said - as she was preparing to gather up her stuff, masked, and head back home - "It *could* still be strep throat" and I responded "I hope it is strep throat" and holy crap I hate this timeline, where you wish your colleague's kid had a bacterial disease (which could have been deadly in the times before antibiotics) because it's the least-bad outcome.

* It could also be flu, she said - which reminds me I should just go and get my flu jab today, it's a bit early but the coming weeks are going to be devoted to other things where I NEED to be fully functional on Saturdays so this is probably the last good time to do it. 

I am telling myself I am permitted a treat from Walgreen's (if that is where I go, and it likely will be, provided they have the vaccine in stock). Either a "nice" chocolate bar (I think they sell a few of Green and Black's line) or a new nail polish or something. I find these days I need small treats as a goad to keep going.

* I also HAVE TO digest the evaluation data (for my teaching) from the past year this afternoon, our "productivity" reports are do and I always drag my feet on this because I hate looking at my evals because I never feel like anything I do is quite good enough. I get better than acceptable evals but I still feel sad about them. (I really hope the new online system doesn't have comments; the comments are always hard because if you get one really dissatisfied person they can go on a tear and I find it very hard to deal with, I don't know why. Because it confirms the worst things my inner critic says, maybe)

* I'm still irritated at the universe about the dominoes lining up so I had to spend two hours at a recruitment event where I spoke to three potential students (of the about 200 they trooped through) and probably none of them will even apply. I hate feeling like I'm wasting time and effort.