Tuesday morning things

* I had someone complain in class three separate times "I CAN'T READ YOUR WRITING ON THE BOARD!!!!" My sympathy over that is rapidly spiraling down because (a) they are sitting in the backmost row, and there are open seats in the front two rows and (b) I READ OFF what I am writing on the board right after I write it. (I cannot read it AS I am writing it - which is usually a professorial skill. I find I am just close enough to being dyslexic that I wind up writing the wrong letter or reversing letters (When I am tired, especially, sometimes I write a "d" when I mean to write a "b")

I don't know but there seems to be some kind of a life metaphor for someone sitting in the back row when seats are open in the front row, and then complaining they can't see. Or maybe I just deal with too many other people who seem overly interested in complaining about their states without actually doing something that they could do to improve them.

* I finished the actual knitting-requiring-concentration on the first of the Bavarian twisted-stitch sock (Alpenglow) last night. I didn't get to the toe decreases but I think I'm going to modify the pattern to make the toe shorter, because either my row gauge was off, or the socks were designed for someone with longer feet, because the sock's already plenty long, and using the decreases as written will probably make it too long. That irritates me a bit.

* I'm working away on the sweater sleeves but of course they take a while.

* I started reading a book on the flu pandemic of 1918 (Yes, I find that kind of thing interesting, in a strange way). I'm a bit irritated with the author - instead of getting into the history of the pandemic, it looks like he's taking the first half of the book to go OH LOOK AT ME AND LOOK AT HOW MUCH I KNOW ABOUT THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE!!!! and I'm all "Dude, Roy Porter already did a lot of this, and did it in a more interesting way."

That kind of annoys me, when I buy a non-fiction book and instead of being about what it's supposed to be about, it starts off as a LOOK HOW SMART I AM series of less-related-to-the-topic-at-hand chapters. (I grade down student research papers - and I tell them I will - when they go and regurgitate all kinds of marginally-related background information to pad out the page requirement. No. Find the important research, the stuff that's relevant. I don't need to know about the ease with which starlings can be taught to speak in captivity if you are doing research on their tendency to compete with bluebirds for nesting cavities.)

And yeah, I get what he's trying to say - that "paradigms" can slow down innovation, and that's somehow going to fit in with the diagnosis and treatment of the flu pandemic, but it's really slowing down the book for me. 

* I'm counting the days until break. I'm just tired. I'm telling myself this is no different than the last month of any semester, that I always get this tired and this bummed out and spend time in my office surfing Ravelry when I should be working on research instead. It's like my brain gets tired and it resists doing what I know I need to be doing. It's not even been that hot out these past few days (though the research labs almost feel like they turned the heat on in them - I don't know what's up with that).

* I'm weighing the possibility of doing something "fun" (perhaps a McKinney trip, but then again, a friend at church went down there last week and commented on the bad construction) this weekend. I'm done with fieldwork for now - I wound up giving up last Saturday because I couldn't find enough stuff flowering to make it worth while. Until we get some rain, some cooler weather, and some "short days" (some plants don't flower until the longer period of dark in the fall), and some new stuff starts flowering, it's just not worth the time out in the field, staring at the same faded stands of brown-eyed susan and trying to WILL bees to come to it, even though the pollen and probably all the nectar is gone.

I will say I wonder what the bees feed on during drought summers. Honeybees maybe could rely on their stored honey - then again, they might run out for winter if they did that - but most of the solitary bees have few reserves against bad times. I'm supposing that there are some agricultural plants or maybe some better-watered meadows that still have a few things flowering. But I'm not seeing much in the sort of upland sites I've been working on.

* Then again, it's going to be hot and humid again. Wharrgarrrbllll. I think it's been more humid this summer than in recent summers, and that's actually worse than heat.