Um, help? As most Bayistas know, the middle of my house is a mini-patio open to the sky. This is normally not a problem, but I noticed that water was collecting there and asked my laissez-faire housemate if we should do anything about it. He said there was a drain underneath the big clay pot and it might be clogged. his attitude=whatever.

Anyway, it has now rained a lot to the point that there is about two inches of water there (just under the sill of the French doors to the house) and I discovered this has been leaking into the basement (onto his stuff, not mine). So I waded into the cold water to unclog the drain and discovered--there is no drain!

WTF do I do now?

Wet Vac?

Wet Vac?

Ideally, yeah, but with no car, that will be difficult to come by I imagine.

Is there any where you can push the water onto, like an unpaved area, with a heavy broom or something like that?

Okay, nevermind. I am an idiot. 1) For listening to the housemate as to the location of the drain. 2) Not exploring further, since, how could there not be a drain? As I used to tell my students--Use your brain!

IOW, there is a drain; it was covered by dirt. Now I have to figure out how to get the pot back up on its bricks.

Tonight on the train, a crazy homeless person threw a plastic bottle cap at me. (He said, "Hey you! Catch!" before he threw it.)

I ignored him and then he ignored me, and went back to his talking to himself, whistling Christmas songs, and occasionally yelping in pain.

I have bad weather and booze - where's my sex spike?

Also. I'm sitting here on the quiet car of the train, getting unreasoably annoyed at people making the slightest noise.

And then I remember how lucky I am that I have a brother, and that he is alive and not maimed or anything like that.

Because yesterday he spent twelve hours on a plane. With a cat. Who meowed. Every five seconds. For twelve hours.

So holiday wishes go out to all the passengers of flight whatever from Moscow to Atlanta. You are better people than I, no question.

(Seriously, y'all, they were tying to make the cat drink wine in the (futile) hope of getting him to shut up shut up shut the fuck up already. My only question was how many times did they get punched in the head, which, none. So I guees it was all aliens on that flight or something?)

So anyway there's your holiday miracle if you were on the lookout for one.

t Skipping

t Then skipping even some more

t Waving

Um, hi? Remember me?

I have to finish grading these exams. They're due tomorrow, which is actually already here, looking at the time. I teach on 8am, so the exams are due back in 6 hours.

I had guests here for lighting Hanukkah candles until half an hour ago (some people don't have to work tomorrow!), and therefore had the perfect excuse not to grade. Now I'm all out of excuses.

So of course I have to log on and ask ho everybody is doing and wish you all a good time whether you have any holiday to celebrate soon or not (I love it so much when Hanukkah and Christmas coincide. It's like there's an "increase the light quota in the world" order out or something).

So, to sum up (yet not in short, because who am I trying to kid), hi.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanks Kat for the NORAD link, I meant to look it up.