Laughing on the Journey to Hell

Students are back on campus, which means this is going to be a stunningly busy week, full of orientation events to attend and lots of additional things to write for the Web site—at the beginning of the school year we all pitch in to take care of new-student stuff. The new GAs are coming in, so they will need to be introduced to our department and to their work with us. The dean had two minor tweaks to the big magazine. The text and photos for the research magazine went to the designer today. After I got home from work I took Emily to the library to find the out-of-print book which she needs to read before school starts (geez, thanks for the advance notice, school; way to go, library!). Then we did a super-fast house straightening and bathroom cleaning and kitchen floor mopping, because my MIL flies in later tonight. She stays for a day, then flies back to Arizona with the girls on Wednesday, which means packing them up tonight and tomorrow and then taking time off work to drive them to the airport. Everything is just so crazy. 

Adding to my sense of general confusion and dismay, my new boss seems to be a touchy-feely type, and I really don’t like people randomly putting their hands on my back or shoulder or wrists. Am I just way over-sensitive? I am probably just way over-sensitive. But I am also creeped out. His hands are too warm. Please don't touch me, new boss.

On the positive side, and there is one, I have a job. And the economy is looking so bad that I am grateful for steady work.

FMA 86:
Ran Fan took out Gluttony! BY HERSELF! And I like that Arakawa doesn’t give her any cutesy quips. Ran Fan is a professional. Her job is to protect Ling, and she does it without feeling the need to show off or prance around. She killed a homonculous! By herself! Did I mention that it was by herself?!? Ran Fan now enters my personal pantheon of truly awesome girl heroes. Whoo! You go, girl.

A major villain gets killed off by a tertiary character, and I don’t feel cheated; I feel thrilled to death. How often does that happen in a story? But after all that Ran Fan has lost, this feels so right. She deserved this.

Otherwise, I am paralyzed with fear for Al. Arakawa’s world is dangerous. Actions have consequences; people suffer and die. I can’t bear the thought of Ed losing Al. Even worse is the thought of Al losing himself. But I think he’s fighting; the cover (which in my opinion is even more effective than the one of half-naked Ed) shows Al possessed by Pride with a caption that reads “I Will Not Surrender My Soul.”

The eyes behind Al’s mask are still horrible. The eye-topped tentacles creeping out of Al’s body are horrifying. But oh, that fight in the dark—that was such a smart move on Ed’s part, and the effect was so creepy. I love when the heroes are clever and daring and bold. Great, great fight.

Ling and Greed are developing a strange partnership. Maybe that’s the secret of immortality that he’ll take back to Xing.

Other thoughts—Miles and Grumman are funny. They totally have each other’s numbers. I’m disturbed to see that they can’t find the Fuhrer’s body, because in story logic No Body = Not Dead, and I wanted him to be dead. I think it is amusing that Grumman thinks he’s using Mustang, because I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Mustang’s using him.

Work has not been fun recently. Some of it is interpersonal conflict with the new boss—not with me because I can usually get along with anybody, but new-boss-and-everyone-around-me. It is stressful but not yet crazy-making. The rest of my weeping and gnashing of teeth is just normal for this stage of the alumni magazine. Today, for example, I looked at final page proofs and discovered, to my utter and complete horror, that a whole set of photos had the wrong captions. Like, referencing the wrong historical buildings in an entirely different country, wrong. The captions came from one of my student writers, who worked on this article last April. He isn’t here now, of course, so I can’t task him to go find out where the students in these photos actually were. I’ll get to do it. Le sigh. But at least I realized it before this was printed. It’s embarrassing to misidentify the National Basilica of Koelkelberg or the Eruopean Union Parliament building in print. In the midst of fiddling with these and other final, final things, I found out that the United States Postal Service is going to require us to go through an additional expensive and time-consuming process to check the validity of our mailing addresses. I am still trying to write the final pieces for the quarterly research magazine. I have to get an e-newsletter out this week. I feel totally and completely overwhelmed.

On the plus side, I made dashi last night for the first time, and the minute I smelled it I recognized it immediately as the base flavor for so much of Japanese cooking. (Dashi is a broth made of seaweed and shavings of dried tuna. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? The result is greater than the sum of its parts). I used it to make the batter for okonomi yaki, a kind of cabbage pancake, and it was super-yummy. Not sure if I can get the kids to eat it—or Darrell, for that matter—but I was happy.

Women’s peloton: yikes! That was quite a fall in all that rain, and it looked like the Korean woman who took everybody else out might have hit her head on the ditch she fell into. Hope she’s okay.