Lost Causes

Never underestimate the power of misplacing something important. If you can't find that passport or paycheck, this is your chance to:

• trash out your car
• find all the other important things that have been accumulating in piles all over your house
• organize your file system

Also, remember Hunt's law:

The thing you are looking for is where it belongs, but is invisible until you have looked there x+1 times, where x is the number of times you have to look before you're absolutely sure it's not there.

Bad Index Workaround

Ever tried to study the development of a theme in a book with no index, or a bad one? Here's what I do in this situation:

1. Find the book on Google Books (this works best for books in "snippet view")
2. Search for the term in its various permutations inside the book.

Works for all the books I've tried.

At the end of Greek class yesterday, the prof defended his evaluation of our English-to-Greek sentences by flatly contradicting the textbook and the lexicon. My great accomplishment for the day: I knew he was wrong, but I kept my mouth shut.

The President of the University just got me coffee, chatted about the business of higher ed with me, and offered to find me a job on campus. What? Am I awake yet?

Memoranda

ATTN: whoever stole my bike last night

If you didn't want the helmet, you could have just left it on the patio instead of dropping it in the parking lot and driving your car over it.

ATTN: myself

Get a lock for your next bike, stupid.

Rule of Life

You're not having fun until security shows up looking confused.

Those of you who were concerned about the danger of English-to-Greek translation exercises propelling me beyond the measure of Golden Mediocrity, rest assured that:

• I spent twenty minutes copying out and translating the wrong set of sentences
• The sheet of paper I was working on caught a pool of salad dressing on the table, leaving a healthy grease spot in the upper right corner
• I arrived fifteen minutes late to class to turn them in.
• The sentences came back with their fair share of red ink, but
• I got those bad boys done.

This morning I will be vainly striving to catch up on my flashcard repetitions (I have 400 to get through).