Monday evening things

 * After last week mostly having my out-of-class time eaten up with the scholarship stuff (and writing exams), today I got in an hour of research reading, which really should be a daily goal (well, except for Thursdays, when I'm pretty much in class from 8 to 3).

* And that was even WITH a half-hour or so's annoyance - one of my credit cards was "blocked" (in fact, the same one that was blocked last week) and so I called the company. Turns out there were "suspicious transactions" that really WERE - a florist in the UK (????) and a couple of small eBay transactions, and something that sounded like maybe either a crypto seller (but for a v. small amount) or maybe online gambling? The person I talked to was very helpful at least and it SOUNDS like all the bad transactions happened AFTER I charged my groceries at the Wal-Mart Saturday morning.

I have heard of skimmers being placed on the self-check-out terminals, and I know Wal-Mart doesn't monitor those well BUT ALSO they have reduced the "manned" checkstands at the local one to just one or two and I don't have time to wait on line for 20 minutes.

And I'd rather NOT carry enough cash to buy my groceries with, but maybe...I have to now? I hate having to modify my life to be more difficult and less convenient because of jerkface criminals, but here we are. (If I were really salty and wanted to just "lash out" and had all the time in the world? I'd do the manned check out lanes and WRITE A CHECK every time even though that takes longer)

Like I said on Twitter: I hope the people who stole my credit card number get crotch-lice - the kind that are resistant to the usual treatments.

Anyway, the card's been cancelled and a new one is on its way BUT this is also the one I had the small automatic monthly donations I make to places like Mercy Corps so I will have to re-do those. It's super annoying. 

* I used the phrase "were you born in a barn?" jokingly today in class (context: we had to take some of the samples down to another building, a metal outbuilding where the high-temperature furnace for burning off carbon compounds to get a loss-on-ignition measure of carbon and the students left the back door to the classroom standing open). The few students hanging around after class (when I mentioned it) had never heard the phrase - so I asked around on Twitter and people (mostly in my age group or a bit older) from ALL OVER THE COUNTRY (and one said his wife from Australia knew it) recognized it. So I don't know if cultural transmission is being lost a little, or if I'm just Old now. But that was a common, common thing people said when I was growing up when someone ran out without closing a door (or sometimes when they slammed a door). 

I also remember a time a student didn't recognize "spigot" as the term for an outside water tap (like, where you would fill watering cans to water a garden from). And how my Youth Group - who'd be about these students' ages now, or a few years older - had never heard the story of The Little Red Hen.

I admit that yes, my cultural knowledge maybe slants a little "older" than some - my maternal grandmother (the grandparent I was closest to) was born in 1897 or 98, and my parents were born in the late 1930s.....but it always surprises me the stuff I know that people even a bit younger don't. Though I guess now my students are a solid 25 to even 30 years younger than I am.....

* Pulled out "A Sweater for John" with hopes of finishing the body (up to where I do the sleeves) so I could start the first sleeve while invigilating tomorrow (I still could) but I didn't quite get there. I'm beginning to want this one done so I can either finish Incunabula or start something totally new.

* I need to think of something to do this weekend. The last couple of ones have been taken up with church stuff (funerals and all) and I feel like I need to get out and do something different - go to Hagerman, maybe, or go antiquing, I don't know. We're still not seeing an uptick in cases (though in my state, data is.....untrustworthy....but it seems like maybe people's vaccines/immunity from having been sick is holding strong at this point, or the "new Omicron" isn't here quite yet, so I think I have one more weekend to go do something?

Or maybe I just do a Target run? It's been a while since I did that, and there are some things they have that I could use more of.

* *really* enjoying "Dear and Glorious Physician," it's very vividly written and a good escape - it's a different time, a different place, and different people. (Roman occupied - I guess Antioch? Around the time of Christ, and of course Luke - Lucanus - is a boy because it's early in the story). I enjoy novels like this - there's description, but it's not pages and pages of description, and it helps move the story along, and the characters are interesting. The language isn't too archaic, and the author doesn't really try to make them "speak old-timey" which at times borders on bad dialect writing (another thing that annoys me in books). I think this was the book I needed right now.