Some random thoughts:

> I’ve been away all week because my computer is in one of its least user-friendly moods, only letting me go online sporadically at best. In fact, I am somewhat amazed that it is giving me this window of opportunity this morning, so I am trying to finish as much online work as possible before it crashes again. My computer guru Alan is on vacation, so I won’t know for awhile if my computer needs repairs or replacement.

> All people fall into two categories: those who eat to live, and those who live to eat. I definitely fall into the latter category. Thus Friday morning I was eager to go to school since the school’s Italian teacher owns an Italian restaurant, and she was treating the entire faculty to a home-cooked Italian lunch. We were each encouraged to bring something along the lines of either dessert, salad, or drink, so I made an Italian macaroni salad Thursday night, and brought it to school with me Friday. I eat lunch very early, 4th period which starts at 10:30, so when I brought my salad to the faculty dining room the Italian food had not arrived yet. In fact, it had not arrived by the end of 4th period either. So I ate a small plate of my own salad, then left the rest of the salad there for the other teachers, planning to return 8th period after I finished teaching, to partake of the delicious Italian luncheon.

Well, you can probably guess the rest: no food remained at all by 8th period, so I got no delicious Italian food, no lunch at all, and basically made a salad for the enjoyment of teachers attending a party to which I was not invited. *sigh*

> C.J. Cherryh was one of my favorite writers from the mid-70s through the mid-90s, but for some reason I never read any of her acclaimed Foreigner series of sociological future history novels. I finally ended that drought last night since while I was browsing at Borders they announced over the intercom that they were celebrating education by giving all teachers a 20% discount this weekend. So I bought the first volume in the series, which I hope to read very shortly.

> Yesterday was my father’s 80th birthday, and today the entire clan of 20+ is celebrating at a buffet luncheon and party. Should be fun, even if it does cut into my Saturday’s school work, forcing me to surrender much of my Sunday as well.