In, grading the lab books that arrived after about 10:30 am yesterday (a few people handed then in very early, and I graded them before the migraine hit).
It's incredibly sticky (84F and dewpoint of 70F) out there. Looks like OKC and environs got some scary weather last night/early this morning. We've had nothing - no rain, no relief from the humidity. It's supposed to rain but it's not clear just WHEN.....we were supposed to get it already. I don't know if the cold front slowed down or (I hope not) it stalled out and we're just going to be stuck with Early Summer.
I am also concerned about all the flooding throughout the whole Mississippi/Ohio River valley - I know a few people who live scattered around there, including some who will probably have to evacuate if it gets bad. And in just about 2 weeks, I'm supposed to take Amtrak to visit family - and already there's gonna be trackwork so I'm going to be riding a bus from St. Louis to Bloomington but I really DO NOT WANT a bus trip the whole way, like in 2010. (If it comes to that? I'll just cancel and do the travel later in my non-teaching summer. Oooh, maybe escape here late July when it's been 110 for a month and I can't deal any more)
My sense of time is all screwed up from the migraine yesterday....I slept for about two hours midday when it was so bad (the pain in my sinuses and neck was bad enough that moving was undesirable). I normally can't nap during the day EXCEPT when incapacitated in some way (migraine or getting over a bad virus). It was harder to fall asleep last night and my meal-timing is off (I am not hungry for lunch yet, for example).
If it's still not storming when I finish these last couple lab books, I MIGHT run to Lulu and Hazel's and at least see if they have a price list for longarming....failing that, I might take Monday afternoon as a "hurray you survived the semester" day and go there and maybe even run to Sherman afterward.
I do need to finish these books because I want to get home and do some relaxing this weekend. I'm still tired and a little sinus/headachy, and I'm hoping that's just the weather or allergies now. (I'm also hived up unbelievably, worse than it's been for a while, and often I can correlate other pain to having the hives....)
(I probably need to come up with a "slice of life" tag for my increasingly-frequent boreblogging on "what's going on in my life" so people can mostly avoid it. And maybe a "pony obsession" tag so people can avoid THAT).
***
This morning's MLP episode was fairly cute. I liked it much better than the "babysitting" one of last week, which, on rewatching, makes me twitch, because if the MLP writers wanted to take a VERY dark turn, they could go all "Midwich Cuckoo" with Flurry Heart - she is obviously powerful, and being a baby - well, my general thought on babies and small children is that they often think the universe revolves around them, and the point of child-rearing is to teach that small person that in fact, other people matter as well. So I could see her zapping a pony who upsets her (she very nearly did, in this episode) or similar. Of course, they WON'T go there, because of the outrage (and because Equestria is supposed to be nicer than the human world).
Also if they wanted to go semi-dark, they could have had Cadence mutter "but really for babysitting" after she assured Twilight "next Tuesday" was "just for dinner, not babysitting"
(I have known parents desperate to pawn their kids off on any relative they can entice into watching them.)
Yeah. I....am not that comfortable around babies or small children. Not even really my niece, I confess.
Anyway. This week's episode was about Maud getting her Rocktorate! Apparently she is in a class by herself (literally). And Pinkie - bless her heart, but she doesn't know how to behave at a graduation. (If any of the writers had actually been in academia in the US, I don't doubt they would have had Pinkie pull out the Ponyville version of an air horn and start blowing it. And yes, our graduation is next week....)
Maud is moving on - she's done all she can in re: rock studies at the rock farm, so she needs somewhere new to go. (Apparently she has some kind of very generous grant to....just study rocks? Is there some version of the NSF in Equestria? Or maybe her family is a LOT richer than they let on, and they are happily funding their oldest's obsession? - or is Maud even the oldest?)
There's a chance she might move to Ponyville, which of course makes Pinkie vibrate with anticipation and plot and scheme to get Maud to LOVE Ponyville so she will stay there.
Attempt #1: Amazing rocks.
Doesn't work. Turns out the gems in Ponyville are "very common." (I can imagine Rarity now sobbing in her boudoir - "But I thought I was doing something spe-heh-heh-hesial!!!!")
Attempt #2: Make Maud an amazing friend (sisters don't count).
As it turns out, they run into (literally) Starlight Glimmer. And she and Maud have a past. (I said to the tv: "Oh, no, Maud, you were an accessory in what she did!" Unwitting, but still - I think a more-typical pony would ask, "Why do you want to know that?" I probably would.)
But Pinkie is Queen Shipper in this episode, and she wants Maud and GlimGlam to fall into friendship with one another....and long story short, she tries WAY too hard.
There's a bit with the gem cave, and Maud finding this amazing cavern area, but then Pinkie trying to trap them in the cave so they HAVE to "bond" and....
And at one point, GlimGlam comments that Maud is "weird, but in a good way" (not to her face, though I doubt Maud's expression would change one iota.) Makes me wonder (and hope not) that Maud is set up as the "Formal Representative of Some Non-Neurotypical Group." (We don't need "very special episodes" of this, I think). I'm okay if people with Asperger's or who have extremely narrow focus of interest or are slow-talkers or whatever want to see themselves in Maud; I just don't want to see it formalized and made A Big Thing because then instead of "This is my sister Maud" it's "This is my 'special' sister Maud" and....to me it seems to work against exclusion when you try too hard to show how "tolerant" you are by emphasizing the person's "specialness."
But anyway. Both GlimGlam and Maud are made uncomfortable by Pinkie's pressure to friend-ship them.
And so Maud decides she has to move on to Ghastly Gorge (and, nice: this is a callback to an earlier season, remember, this is where Rainbow Dash had her "potential pet" race?)
Maud winds up in danger because she's way too focused on rocks, but there's a Pinkie Ex Machina to save her...and ultimately, Maud decides to move to "Ponyville-adjacent" and live in the cavern she discovered. (Convenient, because she can be around if needed in future episodes, but the fact that she's not living WITH Pinkie means there are no questions about "hey, where's Maud" in later episodes).
And yeah, she and Starlight Glimmer wind up as friends. (GlimGlam has a thing for kites. Who knew?) Makes me wonder where Trixie is in this whole thing, and if we're going to see another jealousy-centered episode a la the Grand Galloping Gala one with Discord. Because I could see Trixie going there. (Maybe she needs to make friends with Discord....)
As I said on Twitter: I think I would be more inclined, to be honest, to have Maud as a Pie-sister friend than Pinkie; Pinkie is lovely in her own way but when she goes over the top, she goes scarily over the top....I would find that exhausting.
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