Fragments From Floyd

Perfect Symmetry ** The week started with a disappeared blog. Wednesday, smack in the middle, I got out of my truck in the Radford U parking lot and a foul-smelling cloud of steam rose from under the hood--a $300 (water pump) problem thankfully fixed by the time I was ready to go home. Woulda been a long walk home. And now, it's Friday, and I have finally incubated Ann's hospital germs to the point where the histamines have taken the castle. But alas, cometh the cavalry: Sir Sudafed to the rescue. I need to at least win a battle; Traveler Trish is heading this way later today for a brief visit to Goose Creek.

Salad Days ** In spite of the prolonged drought (that threatens to bring us a colorless fall) we had nurtured a few dozen heads of Buttercrunch and Valentines lettuce to the point where they were ready for dinner salads. Some of the slips I pulled from tomato plants in July were bearing tommytoes as well, so I went with tupperware bowl in hand to bring in the harvest. Not. More deep deer prints pierced the dust; there were no lettuce plants. Thankfully, deer don't care for tomatoes without Italian dressing and a little coarse-ground pepper.

Why 2k ** We're preparing for a week + of hardship and depravation at our house. At least I am. And, unlike most emergencies, this one is totally predictable in timing and duration. We've begun squirreling away leftovers from meals purposefully larger than they need to be. There are lists tacked on the refrigerator enumerating the drills of various essential tasks that must happen during the impending crisis: where is this, what to do for that, when such-and-such must happen and why. These are times that try men's souls. Or at least one man's: Ann is leaving me and Tsuga here for more than a week soon to fend for ourselves. It won't be pretty. More, as it happens.

Eye of Newt ** When a man reaches 'that certain age' of antiquity, he is graced in his countenance with a patina of character, adorned about his visage anew with epidermis excresences and gibbosities, spots and specks that arise unbidden like barnacles on the hull of a venerable freighter too long in port. The point is, I had a wart. While to others, perhaps, it was barely noticable, to me it sat at my right temple in three-dimensional hideousness, rough and horrid, a 'turreted mound' of ugliness. Often, it lured me to touch it with my fingertip, like a frozen pump handle calls to tongues in winter, and be disgusted and ashamed. I cursed the viral spawn that hid protected in its dermal lair there at my (retreating) hairline. Finally, I had had enough. One evening last week, I willed it away. The next morning, it was gone. I kid you not. Anyone who could explain this at the cellular level would certainly win the Nobel Prize. I encourage you to see what the quintessential Biology-Watcher Lewis Thomas had to say about this psychophysical phenomenon of disappearing warts. This is really worth reading.)

WikiWikiWoo ** Realitive to last year, the semester is experiencing navigable seas and favorable winds. Truth is, I can't tell a great deal of difference between this year's 120 and last year's 70 students. On a typical day now, only about 90 make it to class, the percentage of regular absenses pretty much equating as I had predicted with the number of D's and F's. Average on the first test was 70, versus last year's 56. I have, let us say, lowered my expectations based on last year's experience, and correspondingly have done a better job of leading my young horses to water. "This WILL be on the test" I say repeatedly in a typical lecture, and some of them drink. But as I started on in this bullet to say, the BioWiki I created for the class is working wonderfully well. I made the right choice there. Can something this useful be FREE?

Under (Re)Construction ** The resurrected blog here is still in need of a few final touches, most of which I am incompetent to figure how to do and will rely on my most gracious and beneficent server host DT to tweak in due time. Comments seem to have disappeared just yesterday. I can't make changes to my MT preferences or stylesheet. Bear with me. I've called in FEMA to assist, so not to worry. Just find a piece of floating flotsam to hold on to, don't breathe through your nose or mouth, avoid contact with any surfaces whatsoever, eat your hat if you're hungry, and enjoy communing with raw nature. Help is on the way.