They obviously want me to sing

For some reason the university sent overnight a bundle of circulars about exams with the note that if anyone had any comments they wanted to comment about them to please respond to whoever does turn out to be appropriate within a couple of days. That's all fine, but I wonder why they're sending things out on a Saturday to start with; they got out of the half-day of work on Saturday a while ago. I also got an earnest plea from a student pointing out the clash in schedules between the timing of the tutorial for a course and the tutorial for another course, both of which are mandatory for majors in my former department. This is the first time I've ever heard of the tutorial periods being set before the start of classes. If they have been set before the start of classes then I'm annoyed that I was never told what the times were until about two weeks in, since it messes up my natural sense of scheduling and forces me to issue a Syllabus and a Revised Syllabus. Unfortunately, I can't help with this problem since the course I was asked about, I'm not scheduled to teach next term. At least last I heard. I hope the person who is teaching it will be as reasonable.

There's a lemon tree just outside spaceroo's house. It's just growing there, with a bunch of lemons fully-formed, as if that were a normal and proper thing for trees to do. A couple of lemons have even fallen off to the ground. They're right outside my bedroom, and if the screen weren't there and actually the screened window were swapped with one on the left side which currently doesn't open, I could, in theory, reach out and just pick a lemon. I'm no fool. I'm not falling for something like that. Robert Benchley had this problem too.

This was, obviously, my first day out and about and reasonably awake; I got to meet Portia in real life for the first time, and to get into a silly little questioning session over whether it had been eight years or nine years since I last saw findra in real life. The correct answer was, of course, eight and one-half years. The main goals for today were taking care of things which had to be bought ahead of the wedding, and petting a dog.

Trivia: The Old English word `wif', meaning `woman', was neuter in gender. The English Language, C L Wren.

Currently Reading: Gateway, Frederick Pohl.