all along the watchtower...

Some guy at the train station tried to hand me some "literature" this morning, but I rebuffed him. Must be tough to be a Jehovah's Witness in New York, where people will tell a homeless guy with no legs to fuck off.

Slept in a little to take the 7:30 train in. It's amazing the difference in one's mood that results from leaving the house AFTER sunrise. No wonder people get depressed in the winter. I'm tired of the dark already, and it's only the equinox.

Haven't really thought about what I'm doing in class today, but I have until noon. I should really try to do something light and equation-free, as I've pounded them pretty hard with problems for the past two classes. I've actually scrapped a couple of labs, which puts us ahead of schedule. I may be able to get momentum conservation in before midterm, which would make the structure of the semester really fall into place better than it's laid out on the syllabus. Who needs "labs" anyway?

A really attractive woman just sat across from me on the train. Or so I thought at first. Turns out it's just a really average-looking woman with a fashionable suit and trendy glasses and a really expensive haircut. New York is tricky that way. You have to really look closely to tell if people are actually attractive or just well-put-together. In a way, I guess this is good for average-looking people, since it forces you to look far better than you would if you lived and worked in the suburbs. Of course it also means that the competition all look like supermodels. When I leave school at 3:30, I always pass the same supermodel on the sidewalk, wearing clothes that look highly unlikely outside of the pages of a magazine, and walking with that Runway Stomp Walk up 6th avenue. She doesn't even seem human.

In other news, I have tiny papercut-like-cuts on BOTH my thumbs, almost in exactly the same place. I have no idea where they came from. My only guess is that I got them when I was trying to put the new 12 Gb hard drive into Craiggles McFrankentosh. One has to really dig around in there to get the power plug into the back of the drive bay, maybe I cut myself on the edge of something metal in there. But I didn't notice the cuts until 6 hours later, so maybe that WASN'T it. It's all very strange.

The elementary school "open house" was a little pointless last night. I don't really care what time they have recess, y'know? It was good to see the books they are using, I guess, to verify that they aren't too far off from the Girl's reading level. (She's reading "Island of the Blue Dolphins" now, which seems to me like something kids read in middle school.) The funniest thing was the little "surveys" the kids had filled out and put up on the bulletin board... "Favorite Pet, Favorite Book, Favorite TV Show"... and we were told by our daughter to guess which one was hers. Most of the answers are pretty standard, so it was tough until we spotted "Favorite TV Show: Everybody Loves Raymond". Nice. "Hello, we're Mr. and Mrs. DrDave, THE WORST PARENTS EVER!!"

I volunteered once again to come give a guest-scientist talk to the class when they are talking about matter and energy. I'll have to start thinking now about what I would do. Astronomy is one thing, but it's not as easy to make physics stuff interesting and accessible to 3rd graders. Hell, it's not easy to make that stuff interesting and accessible to my college students. I really like the idea of trying to explain conservation principles to 8 year-olds, though.