You don't need a Man Catcher in San Francisco! 

The Man Catcher, Part 2 (and other stories)

WARNING! This blog is going to be long and overly-dramatic, but such is the life I lead. Read to the end, it's the best part!

So, right now I'm sitting in my own private hotel room watching the Bay Bridge and San Francisco skyline slowly light up as the sun sets. I just finished eating clam chowder straight off of Fisherman's Wharf, and I'm seriously considering opening the Ghirardelli chocolate basket the was delivered to me from the Manager of the hotel with his compliments. Plus, there's a Law and Order marathon on TV. Have I died and gone to heaven? Hardly. But if this is torture, chain me to the wall!

But the road to such bliss was not easy. The death knell came when my boss said that there were no flip-flops allowed. Apparently "no flip-flops" means no jeans, t-shirts, cute blue linen skirts and deliciously gaudy jewelry. Thus I began the excruciating process of acquiring a suitable wardrobe. I even bought one of those tweedish suit jackets (gasp, faint, die). But, I drew the line at sensible shoes. Sensible shoes--what a frightening description. I figured that spending several dollars on a pair of ugly shoes I would only wear for a week wasn't really sensible at all. Thus I settled on some semi-respectable footwear that was already in my closet.

THE GOOD NEWS:
While I have to be responsible during the day, the nights are all mine. And Ethan Hawke's hotter and younger twin works security in the lobby. It's funny how easy it is to get lost around here. I always seem to need help...

THE BAD NEWS:
I FORGOT MY MAN CATCHER. Blast! The perfect opportunity and I blow it. But, how hard can it be to find fish netting in a coastal city?

Stay tuned for further developments...

p.s. Did I mention that I sat next to STEVE YOUNG on the plane over here? 'cause I did.... (:

what the?!?

What do you think when you see a girl dressed in blood-red scrubs, hefting a giant frying pan who stops whistling only long enough to gleefully tell you she's off to the trenches again?

I cautiously cross the street while wondering what color her scrubs were originally...

What do you think when your professor comes to class wearing a battery-powered bowtie and a Cat-in-the-Hat hat that rivals any towers coming out of Italy, and proceeds to tell you YOU'RE the ridiculous one?

I think of padded cells...

What do you think when you're taking a final and one of the questions is, "What is a pirate's favorite fast food restaurant?"

I think, Arbys?...

What do you think when you see a precipitous proliferation of polka-dotted pajama pants prancing across campus like so many poppies on a pleasant plateau; both babbling and burnt-out bodies blundering 'cross a quad quite comparable to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"?

I suspiciously re-think the whole poppy thing...

But besides a few valid concerns about the “prescription pills” popped by the pirate-passionate professor, I decided it must be finals week.

And I’m glad it’s almost over.

A few thoughts on Pavlov...

So this one time when I pretended to be really smart, I took a psychology class, hoping it would launch me into a career as the next Dr. Laura. I promptly forgot that dream after the semester ended, but I do remember one thing, and that is Pavlov.

Ivan Pavlov was the guy who coined the term "conditioning" while studying dogs. He rang a bell right before he brought food to his salivating dogs and after a while, it got so he could simply ring the bell and the drool would pool because the dogs were "conditioned" to believe the bell meant dinner.

And then there was this other experiment with rats. A rat in a cage would push a green button and food would come through a tube, if he pushed a red button, he got a nasty electric shock. It didn't take long before the rat would avoid the red button and live on top of the green button where he got fat and lived a happy, pain-free life. This was called “positive reinforcement.” Good results led the rat to continue practicing a specific behavior.

As I stressed my way through last week, these thoughts spent way to much time circling in my brain like so much flotsam and jetsam, taking up valuable room and making me dizzy. But they did get me thinking. It seems an obvious truth that if a student stays on top of his or her work, a fat, happy, and relatively pain-free life will ensue. The very isolated experiences I have had with this have proved it to me. Why is it then that I continue to push the red button? I don't particularly enjoy pulling all-nighters with only Shakespeare and a Thesaurus for company! I am not a masochist!

And yet, the fact remains that the green button is getting lonely and my brains are being scrambled. But then again, how much use can they be anyway if I can't even measure up to a rat? :)

I come away perplexed

Can an entire day be ambiguous?

When I went to work today, my sister asked me how I was; I responded "I am..." and was at a genuine loss as to how to complete that sentence.

I woke up early today! At 7 am! Then I showered and put in contacts, which I haven't done in a week. (Put in contacts that is, I'm not a complete Neanderthal)

However, I "accidentally" got back into bed and promptly fell asleep until 11 am. I woke up after having missed two classes still wearing my towel turban.

So how do I describe my morning? Quasi-successful?

Then, I went to my last three classes. The first one had a sign on the door that class was cancelled. Sweet. In my last class we talked about the process of electing a new Pope. Is it bad that I relied on The Da Vinci Code to answer the questions?

So then I came home. When I got to the crosswalk, I thought of Tiffany's blog on "stopping traffic"--but then I pushed the button and the flashing hand STOPPED and turned back to the walk sign!!

Ouch.

Then I went to the Distribution Center and bought Preach My Gospel along with about 20 million other Richard G. Scott fans. That was pretty cool.

Traffic was another story.

So there I was, trying to answer my sister.

Know what I did? I just ended there. I said "I am."

And discovered that it was a pretty good place to be if you have to tree-diagram your emotions.

Oh, to be an English major...