Carrying On

I did get a servicable pedometer at Sports Authority yesterday (in exchange for a top I got last week that didn't fit me), and I was able to calibrate it this morning once I got to work because the carpeting in the library is made up of pieces that are each a square yard, so no measuring, just counting and calculating, a bit. It seems accurate enough.

The empress commented that a balance scale, the kind they use in a doctor's office, is really the best way to weigh yourself, and this is, of course, true. When my sister moved into her current house, I got her one of those as a house-warming gift. (And they are incredibly heavy, which stands to reason, but duh, we carried it upstairs ourselves anyway. It's probably how we both damaged or spines, etc.) Sadly, I have no room for such a device anywhere in my house, and I'm reluctant to get to school each morning and go to the nurse's office and strip down just to use their scale. Mine was a little wonky again today, but I need to work with it a little, and then it'll be fine. I have checked its accuracy over the years against balance scales, so I know it's reasonably good.

 

School is, as always, odd, but at least it's Friday and I can sleep in a little bitty bit tomorrow. We have heat in the library today, which is nice, for a change. Oh, here's something: it's lunchtime now, and the library is open, nice for a change, and I looked up and a boy is sitting at a computer with his chair tilted back -- as kids do -- but so severely tilted that disaster was certainly imminent. I called over to him and asked him not to lean his chair back, and he said, not in a nasty way, "Why?"

 

Why? Is today this kid's first day of school ever? Has he never been told not to tilt a chair back -- impossible -- or never heard anyone else told that? Don't kids still start hearing in first grade "Don't tilt your chair back; it's dangerous." And did I tell you about the kid a couple of weeks ago who asked me to help her find information on Duke Ellington? I took her to the music books and showed her jazz and swing, then we went to the biography books in Reference and I said she could look him up as a musician, or as a prominent African-American, or as a famous person from the twentieth century, and of course, just as an American. And she said to me, totally mystified, "How do you even know who he son is?" (She had been assigned to research him for a project on the 1920's.) How do I know who he is? For one thing, I'm way older than the kid is, but come on. This guy is part of the official design for the Washington, D.C. quarter. It's not like he's a nobody nobody ever heard of.

 

As today marches on, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I want to go home, lie down, and eat boxes and boxes of cookies, and very many pies. I really like pie.