Back from a weekend with the small Edwins… Melissa, Michael, and Madeleine.

Back from an evening with Lynn Santiago, an old friend from my days in Banff… we live in the same city, you would think we’d see each other more often! We met up at 7 o’clock at The Reef, and I’ve only just gotten home. We reminisced, her girlfriend Terri (Terry?) came by, and we had a great big ol’ chat… we covered years in hours, and talked about places to travel, people I’ve run into, and of course the “Whatever happened to so-and-so??”

Oh my goodness, I got the shock of my life this evening. We were all handed back a Philosophy paper that we submitted last week, and on mine was, “This is an odd topic. Why did you write about it?” What??????

Luckily, I implemented the CYA application I learned long ago… yes kids, you gotta Cover Your Ass at all times. I whipped out the e-mail I thankfully printed out and put into my binder, a communiqué between myself and the professor last week. This is how it went:

—– Original Message —–
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2002 11:04 AM
Subject: Re: PHIL 231

At 11:03 AM 9/16/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Dr. Hahn,
>
>I’m in your PHIL 231 class and had to leave at 9:00 last
>Wednesday, missing whatever you had to say about the paper which
>is due this Wednesday (18th, although it says 17th in the
>syllabus?).
>
>I understand the paper is a maximum of 750 words, based on the
>readings for weeks 1-3: Chapters 1-4, plus the handout “The
>Allegory of the Cave”, but in Week 2 in the syllabus you mention
>’Readings: selection in Life and Death’. Are there additional
>readings that you gave which I missed??
>
>I’m also uncertain what you are looking for in the paper, if we
>are to take a topic and give our opinion, or how a topic pertains
>to daily life… ? I’m sorry to make you repeat this information,
>you probably went over it in great detail after 9pm. This is only
>my second Philosophy class (I also took Moral Philosophy one year
>ago), so I am still feeling very green.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Gail Edwin

… So, wasn’t it obvious that he didn’t read my e-mail at all??? Of course, I approached him afterwards, and showed him the e-mail, and he said, “Didn’t you get the handout?” I said, “What handout??” So he apologized and said he would mark my paper.

Jeez Louise. All I can say is, COVER YOUR ASS.

I used a word today that I haven’t used in YEARS: aggro. Such an Australian word, but so apropos.

So I’m trying to slog through St. Thomas Aquinas today. I started to last night, but the words were swimming in front of my eyes and doing backflips. I laughed out loud when I read the intro to the reading: “St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the author of the Summa Theologica, was the greatest of the medieval philosophers and theologians. He has been since 1879 the official philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Official philosopher? I can just imagine this man dressed in ‘medieval theologian’ garb, on a marquee for the Roman Catholic Church, the way you see the McDonald’s arches on everything for the Olympic Games. Or at Times Square, NYC, at New Year’s: “Kodak, official sponsor of the year 2002.” So here we go: “Christianity — brought to you in part by God, Jesus, and St. Thomas Aquinas.” Too funny…

Tonight’s LING class was full of people trying to stay awake. Poor Cliff. It wasn’t his fault, it was just one of those nights. It’s pretty dry material, and it takes a herculean effort to make it more interesting. I passed an article over to him about a so-called dialect expert who says he can tell people from Vancouver because of the “valley-girl” tendencies. I can see that… people here say “like” ALL THE TIME.

Here’s a random thought: yesterday, as I was driving to lunch at my dad’s, I was thinking “You know what the best thing that came out of the 80’s was? Breakdancing.”

So, I’m at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, and I’ve just put the kids to bed. Surprisingly, it didn’t quite resemble the mother-of-all-tantrums I was expecting it to be, what with Melissa and Michael deciding early on being put to bed = medieval torture. Post-bath — and it was not easy getting them out of the bath in the first place — Melissa was throwing a wobbly about her Pull-ups being on backwards. And she was blubbering on about fish….?? I said, “How could they be backwards?? Minnie Mouse is waving goodbye on the back! That’s the way it’s supposed to go!” That, of course, was a mistake, since ANYTHING I said was up for argument. (Plus, I didn’t really want to argue with her since I’ve got this major bias against the Disney Corporation. Minnie Mouse shouldn’t be on Pull-ups, or anything, for that matter.) For example, if I had said it was night-time, Melissa would immediately say, “No, it’s not night-time!!” See, it’s all about language at age 3. They’ve suddenly turned into prosecuting attorneys, and everything is turned into a question. I should be SO PROUD that Melissa knows how to argue with linguistic acumen at such a tender age, but when you’re tired and you’re putting a screaming child to bed, their budding linguistic skills are the last thing on your mind.

This is what a tantrum looks like. 

I had a bit of a nap this afternoon, but it was broken up into 5 minute increments between times when someone passed by and told the kids to stop jumping on me. Overall, I was fairly oblivious, but REM state was elusive. Nonetheless, I did play a whole lot of hide-and-go-seek, but the kids always hid in the same places, so I used it as an excuse to reinforce counting. And count they did…. I counted, I made them count, we counted together… both kids can count to 10 no problem! I took photos of the relatives and showed them on Dad’s TV, showed them my photos of San Francisco, ate copious amounts of food all day long… it was a typical Filipino gathering.

Edwin boys 

I am so screwed up! I feel like I shouldn’t even be living in this time zone. It’s after 2am, and I have been sleeping on and off all day. What’s the matter with me?!? I managed to get going around 6pm, and decided to skip Guru at the Commodore, to give stopping by Milk (Lotus) — to see Lynn — a miss, to opt for a very cheap evening of Thai Away Home and “Insomnia” at Denman. I even read part of my LING textbook at Bread Garden afterwards. Not everything I needed to read but at least I made an attempt to not be a professional procrastinator.

Went to the office yesterday, so when I got home last night, I wanted to do absolutely nothing… which I did!

And tonight, my plans changed a zillion times, but I ended up downloading a ton of songs off the Internet. I’m glad to be changing the mp3 list on my hard drive — I haven’t downloaded songs for ages, so I’ve been listening to the same stuff over and over. I’m using both computers to download, so I’ll have bags of new music.