too soon old, too late smart

I just had to rewrite a 6-line letter for the third time so we can send it for the third time. I hate searches, and I really hate the post-SOP paperwork for searches. And the way things are looking, I'm never going to have anybody to take over the post-SOP paperwork.

My inner 5-year-old has been having a heck of a tantrum at me lately, but I can't get it to calm down enough to tell me what it wants. I wish it would, so I could figure out what it wants and do something about it. It seems mostly to want to eat things that are bad for me and stay up past my bedtime and spend a lot of money, all of which are things I can't do right now. (I can't otherwise explain my sudden inability to stop buying expensive coffee drinks with caramel in them.)

However, May is one step closer to August, and May 3 is one step closer to Friday.

the weight of a cloud and the weight of an accusation

Earlier this week I got to wondering how much a cubic foot of cumulus cloud weighs. I was walking home and noticed the clouds ripping along through the air, and wondered how much wind it takes to move a cloud, and decided that depends on how much the cloud weighs. (I found the answer for a cubic kilometer of cumulus cloud, but I haven't bothered converting cubic kilometers to cubic feet.)

Anyway, my second thought was that the high school English teacher who accused me of plagiarism for making a general statement about Victorian England in a paper without citing a source (and didn't believe me when I said we talked about that sort of stuff at dinner, and probably didn't believe my father when he told her so) would never have believed I could come up with a question like that.

I had that English teacher almost 15 years ago, and I still wonder, every time I come up with an off-the-wall idea, what she would have done if I could have proved that I really do wonder about things and then go look them up and find the answers. (Which is how I knew about Victorian society's view of women, thank you very much, even though I did cite an encyclopedia in the end just to make Mrs. Frink happy.)

I like to think I don't hold grudges, but for some reason I just can't let that one go.