All of a sudden I am planning product demos and consulting documentation and doing conference calls and fine-tuning document templates and chasing leads. This is the professional life I never thought I would have or even want. But I'm just happy that unlike trying to be a teacher this life never makes me think "Here is the most important thing going on right now and someone recklessly put me in charge of it."

Actually I did have pretty much exactly that thought today while preparing a demo. But that expression of bewildered incompetence is just an approximation of a metaphor of what it means if said about being a liberal arts teacher.

It's a birth announcement!

Still reeling from the stomach bug on Saturday morning, Friday went into labor. That night we brought home a baby (7 lbs. 19 in., in case you want to know). After a couple of hours of sleep, I stumbled through the day, put the kids to bed, and succumbed dramatically to the stomach flu myself. One night of groaning, tooth-gnashing, violently emetic despair and two days of alternately enjoying my new daughter and pursuing the zombie lifestyle of stomach flu recovery later:

It's time for a beer.

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.