I gotta say this.

The purpose of a college education should never ever be about the money.

The purpose of a college education should not be so I don’t have to get my hands dirty.

The purpose of a college education should never be to prove that I am better than the person who scrubs the toilets in my office building.

The purpose of a college education should be to say that I walked into this room every day for four months, and I practiced taking problems apart and putting them back together again.

The purpose of a college education should be to enable a person to say I walked into a room every day for four months and took something apart and put it back together. Now I am stronger than I was. I can take your problems apart, and put them back together, correctly.

If we do not accept this as the true meaning of a college education, we will start setting the standards lower and lower, till we end up with some people considered Delta class people, who never get past kindergarten. And we will have all lost untold treasure.

“Don’t hand me your line, and keep your hands to yourself.”

List.

A. I am a cereal addict.
B. I am also apparently reacting to wheat, which makes A problematic.
C. It takes an effort for me to figure out what day of the week it is, let alone the date. I think this means I am not fully alert and oriented.
D. I gambled that school would be called off tomorrow, and came home yesterday. I already had bowed out of today.
E. The reason I had off for today? Didn’t happen.
F. I forgot my power cord at school. I think that falls under C.
G. My little brother, after enduring three COUNT THEM THREE hip replacement surgeries in just over two months, now has c. Difficil. Or C. difficil. Whichever.
H. I was supposed to pick him up from the hospital yesterday and bring him here, because he has been in a hospital, another hospital, and then a nursing home since the beginning of February. Now I suspect they will send him to a nursing home, or maybe that other hospital.
I. It is frustrating to have something as shapeless as Fate doing all this crap to my brother, because I cannot hunt It down and beat It way past senseless.
J. The thing with school being called off? Means I will probably have 6 inches of snow to shovel out of my driveway before work Saturday morning. I think anger will be handy then.

Boston.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak.

from Patton Oswalt, whoever he is.

Okay, World. What’s going on?

Everybody I met today was nice. And when I say nice, I mean, genuinely warm and happy and joie de vivre-ish.

People started conversations with me. Complete, total strangers. Which is weird, because it’s usually me talking to anybody I run into and having them look at me like, maybe she’s crazy and maybe if we act nice we can get away.

And here’s how I knew it was a global thing, or at least a Highway 2 thing; A guy in a big-ass Cadillac Escalade came up behind me at a stop light, and stopped feet – like maybe eight feet – behind the bumper of my teeny-tiny car. He pulled into the grocery store parking lot behind me, so when he got out of his big-ass Escalade, I walked over to him and thanked him for not pulling up so close behind me.

Maybe it’s because you didn’t have to bundle up quite so tight today. Or maybe because the tips of the trees were full of the smoky look of swelling buds. But Whatever it is, I want to thank it.

Drift.

First time I’ve been out with the camera for a while.

The sharp edges left by two days of wind have melted off.

First time in a while.

I woke up today not dreading the world. And when I looked out the window, there was a trace of snow, not the 8 – 12 inches we were predicted to get – it’s all gone east of here, and I don’t have to go there. And my back doesn’t hurt, for the first time in five months. That won’t last, but still.

So, song.

“White flags of winter chimneys waving truce against the moon…”

And yes, you love me.

Da Vinci’s Arundel notebook, digitized and online.

And Gregorian chant radio.

Just when I think I’m safe.

I have a plan, and it is heading in this direction, and I’ll do this and this and this, and then, if it’s okay, I’ll do that.

And then I find things like this;

And I remember all the reliquaries and boxes I haven’t made.

I found the image here. More of my people.

I always thought Time was not real.

But apparently neutrinos are.

Mercury in retrograde.

This is – oh, I give. When Mercury goes retrograde, I am a believer. Which is a good thing, because if all the shit that rained on me this week was just random, I doubt I could leave the house ever again.

No, my brother is not coming to live with me, at least not right now. I don’t know where that came from, but that is the one that put me over the edge, what with him not being able to walk and his doctor being 5 hours away and me being over an hour away from my house thank you where did this idea come from and why am I so stupid as to fall for it every time, this being the THIRD time this has fallen on me in 6 weeks. Anyway. He’s in a nursing home, he can wear clothes, he can take showers, and he’s 20 minutes away from his doctor, and his surgery has been moved up, so he should be mobile by May.

Wow. If maintenance people put their mind to it, and the person with the handicap sticker complains that she can no longer get to her car safely because the sidewalks are all crap and are we really just waiting for somebody to fall AGAIN!!!, the sidewalks can suddenly be cleared. It is like a miracle, except that no it’s really just get off your asses and do your jobs thank you.

And! All of a sudden our magic online workbooks for our French class are telling us which answers are wrong, rather than just saying “oh, four out of ten are wrong and we won’t tell you which one so ha ha ha ha ha.” After I just lost it in class in frustration and walked out. I’m sure the 50 decibel fan is still whirring over the teacher’s desk, however. I might just pull myself out of the class and study with the tutor. I actually want to learn the language, so I don’t care how much the grade gets knocked down because I’m not there. If I show up for tests and do well, I don’t think anybody gets to complain.

I guess I really can’t believe that all these things were just waiting for me to push on them. I hate being shoved back into a corner, like I’ve been feeling for weeks. I hate having to get to the point where there is nothing left except for me to blow stuff up. I wish people would respond much, much sooner. I wish I wasn’t getting this positive feedback for my actions.

I wish I didn’t feel like a total bitch for just standing up for myself. Go go gadget feminism, I guess.

But. The world is a tiny bit better, and I did it. Yeah, whatever.