Since my post yesterday I received a really snarky email from the history department. Not about my website or anything (whew!), just regarding my attempts to see if I could petition their decision. I cannot even tell you how upset I was, especially since the seemed way more severe than it needed to be given the situation. So after feeling totally devastated for half the day, I was lucky enough to speak with one of the greatest professors in the world.* Anyway, she might not be able to change anything, but at least she’s honest enought to say that there seems to be something funny about the whole situation. And she’s willing to ask questions and try and find out some answers for me. Which is more than I can say for Bob, you big, bureaucracy-defending goober, :-(

*I would say her name, since she so deserves recognition for being the wonderfully supportive person that she is, but then it might give away which history department was pissing me off, which might not be such a good idea given the circumstances. DISCLAIMER: I’m not trying to slander the history department, but I think I have a right to let off some steam.

Well, things are looking up a bit. The history department is finally willing to compromise. Thanks again to the aforementioned Greatest-Professor-Ever for kicking some ass. Actually, I have no idea if there was any ass-kicking involved. Probably not. Still, it makes me feel just a little bit better to imagine that someone got chewed out for having been a completely unreasonable twerp. I guess I’m just vindictive like that.

And even better news, I got to see Cemetery Man at the university movie theater for free tonight. Yay for ossuaries!!!

Well, now that I have a reprieve from my seminar paper, I need to get cracking on my other papers. One is going well. I know what I’m doing and I know what needs to be done. But I don’t even have a topic for the other paper. I’ve tossed around a couple of different ideas, but a lot of the stuff I’m interested in is pretty hard to research. That is, I tend to go for rather obscure stuff, and surely there are some manageable topics (ie appropriate to a 12-15 page research paper) in Victorian science. I just can’t think of any. So help me out folks, any burning questions about science in 19th century Britain? Something? Anything?

Well, thanks to the science nerds for totally letting me down. You’d think asking for a single paper topic wouldn’t be asking too much. Anyway, I’ve got one paper to write and about 30 to grade this weekend, so expect site updates as I procrastinate. I think my next project will be to tackle the rat section since rat queries seem to comprise half of my search engine hits. I feel your pain, fellow rat owners!

two more papers to go. Bleh. As much as I’m glad to have the one done, it seems a bit anticlimactic with so much other work that still needs to be done. And now I can’t even celebrate my one finished paper by chowing down at my favorite pub. Why? Glad you asked. It goes something like this:

First, it’s not really my favorite pub, but it’s the one closest to our school and you can get the tastiest chicken wings ever there. So, I’ve been there many times this term. And they have root beer on tap most of the time too, which is super-cool. Anyway my friend and I went to go get some of those tasty wings they other day and they were out of them. No tasty chicken wing goodness!! And they’re a bar–how is that possible?! Well, we were still hungry so despite our dissappointment, we got some burgers instead. It wasn’t quite the same, but we weren’t complaining…. until the big old cockroach scuttled across the floor. And really, scuttled isn’t even the right word. Saundered across the floor is more like it. Right out in the open, no fear at all. And just our luck, he was heading straight toward our booth. Now, I’ve I hadn’t been so tired and if I hadn’t been so stunned to see the nasty thing, I would have done the sensible thing and make a big ass deal out of stomping on the nasty bugger, party so I wouldn’t worry about him crawlin gu pmy leg and so people could see that there were cockroaches all over the place. But no, I just sat there. Both of us did. Watched him till we couldn’t see him anymore (because he was under out table!), then came to our senses and left our booth and left the pub.

Now, however, I’m torn about the whole thing. I want to go back to this place. It’s convenient, cheap, and did I mention they have root beer on tap? But there was a damn cockroach in the middle of the place! And where there is one, you know there are others. Besides, the place is run by the university (I think) and it just seems so typical of the cheap bastards to not bother keeping the place clean since it’s just students who go there. Makes me want to not go back on principle. That having been said, our university doesn’t really sustain a very lively food/commercial culture around it, so it’s not like there’s anywhere else I can go for super tasty chicken wings. Then again, maybe the secret ingredient is roach crap.

Well, since there’s been some lively (heh, lively for my site, that is) discussion of the roach incident, I shall make a few follow-up remarks.

In response to David’s comment, I know that bugs end up in our food (espeically harvested grains or hot dogs) all the time and I don’t really have a problem with that. As long as they get ground up and cooked so they don’t stick out, I’m fine. And I’ve purposely eated bugs before too, so I have no biases against them as a source of protein. But I don’t like the idea of them crawling on/crapping on my food just before it’s served to me. And, like Cecelia, I really don’t like cockroaches–they give me the willies!

As Kim says, yes, its nearly impossible to keep every bug out all the time, but I don’t know if this was an isolated incident or not. Maybe it was just one bug, but maybe there’s a million that come out after the place shuts down. It’s bad enough that the place is in the dirty old basement of one of the older buildings on campus, I want to be sure that they’ve at least spend some money to seal up any holes in the walls and keep our food from being infested with who knows what. I mean, you can’t even see where the kitchen area is. It’s all hidden in the dark somewhere. So maybe it’s nothing, but maybe the place is a crap hole and ought to be shut down.

Finally, if the place were in Arizona, I’d have honestly been less freaked out. We do have big old cockroaches all over the place there. I remember seeing some nasty ones in my house from time to time, in part because I prowled the kitchen at night just like they did. But Chicago *is* different. This is the first time since I moved here three, no four (OMG, fours years?!?!) years ago that I have seen a cockroach like our big old Arizona ones. So it makes me worry that they are breeding some big, sheltered mothers down there and that it’s been going on for a while.

In conclusion, I do want to still eat crackwings and not worry that a roach is going to crawl up my back when I do. So I did the thing any sensible crackwing fan would do: I filed a complaint with the city. If it was an isolated incident and the place is clean, no harm done. On the other hand, if they find roaches all over the place and shut it down, well then they’ll just have to clean it up ASAP so we can get our wings and (root)beer in peace. I certainly don’t want them to shut the place down, but I don’t want to find a cockroach in my food one of these days.

My bad. I haven’t posted much in a while. I guess there just isn’t much to say. Or rather, I think better of some of the things I’m tempted to say.

I started working again at the university library. I thought it might feel weird to start working there again after a few months off, but really, little has changed. Sure, there’s some new faces, but mostly familiar ones. The one thing I had forgotten, however, was how draining the whole thing is. My first day back there was a pile of work to do and I thought to myself, “what the hell? Did anyone do anything while I was gone?” So I started right in and was making pretty good time with it all until the paging requests starting pouring in. (Note: my job consists of fetching materials for patrons and then putting those materials away when they’re done with them. I also photocopy stuff for them, make sure the materials have the proper paperwork to circulate, etc.) Paging requests are the number one priority on the to do list. So when there’s only one page working (me) and about 10 requests for 20 different items, I pretty much run around like a chicken with my head cut off for the next few hours. Then, when it all finally stops, I see that the stack of other work that needs to be completed is now twice as big as it was before. So when I leave at the end of the day, it looks like I’ve accomplished nothing. }:-(

So, that’s my excuse for not writing more. That and I have to prepare for a conference at the end of this week. I haven’t even looked at the paper I’m supposed to be giving. Not such a smart idea, huh? But rest assured, my readers, I’ve got big plans in the next few months. Exciting tales and exotic locations are on the horizon. Stay tuned!!

Okay, evil LEECH, stop calling me!!!! I’m obviously not home, or not answering my phone so just give up god damn it!!! Why call repeatedly and never leave a message? What good could that possibly do? If I’m not here, then that just annoys the neighbors to hell and wastes your time and money. And if I am here and I’m choosing not to answer my phone for whatever reason (busy, sleeping, working online, feeling anti-social, taking a crap, etc.) annoying me is not the way to get me to stop whatever I’m doing and pick up the phone. Instead, it makes me just want to disconnect my phone entirely. If you’ve got something important to tell me, leave a message that says, “hey, something important’s going on, call me.” And if you don’t have anything important to say, STOP CALLING ME LIKE A FREAKING STALKER!!!!!

Come on folks, even if you don’t have rats, throw a pro-rat party!

When one blog just isn’t enough, start a RatBlog!