Still no word from the school where I interviewed last week. They said to contact them anytime with questions, and that they'd answer any questions about my status in the hiring honestly, because the hiring and deadlines and everything are confusing enough as it is without getting inaccurate information, so, since they said they'd let me know late this week, and I hadn't heard anything yet, I emailed this morning, but haven't heard back yet.

In the past week, three schools have emailed to ask if I'm still interested. One of them is a definite yes (highly-regarded liberal arts school in New England with Birkenstock-type reputation), one is a maybe (medium-sized medium-ranked school in a medium-sized city in Virginia, with a math department that seems even less organized than I'm used to), and one I think is a no (school I've never really heard of in Illinois, really rural, not a great academic reputation.)

I'm sorry you are having such job-hunt frustrations, Hil.

I am trying to fix a problem for a bad tempered doctor. He doesn't seem to get that I am going to fix the problem at the same rate of speed if he is pissy or pleasant. Or maybe I might have to take a distraction break to be able to properly assist him.

"I'm sorry, I can't understand you when you talk with your mouth full of shit."

ETA: That's to the nasty doc, not to you, Laura.

Not wanting it to be June?

May 35th! [link] a lots of kids in Israel read this book so many times. So me and my friends were supposed to hike to the Dead Sea today (which is, geographically speaking for all of us, the South Sea. We could have gone to the Red Sea, I guess, but it's way further down the road). It got postponed due to heatwave. I'm sure they didn't have heatwaves on June 35th in Germany. Grr!

Then he asked me a few questions about my opinions on a few Israeli political issues, which I answered honestly. It seems that my priorities weren't the same as what the guy on the radio said Jews' priorities were

Dude never heard the expression "2 Jews, 3 opinions", has he?

And only 1 cup between them.

I'll politely ignore P-C and quote The 35th in May to end my day and go to bed:

Anyway, they were walking along Glacis Street and the uncle asked: "What's with the glum face?", when someone pulled on his jacket. When the two turned around, there was a big black horse. With a straw hat. It asked politely: "Have you by any chance a lump of sugar on you?"

Konrad and the uncle shook their heads.

"In that case, please excuse the trouble", said the horse and lifted his hat. As it prepared to leave, uncle Ringelhuth asked: "Can I offer you a cigarette?" "Thanks but no", replied the horse, "I'm a non-smoker." It bowed and trotted towards Albert Place, halted in front of a delicatessen and left its tongue hanging from its mouth.

"We should have invited the horse for lunch", the uncle said, "it looks hungry". Then he looked at Konrad and asked: "What's the matter, Konrad? You're not even listening!"

"I have to write a paper on the south seas."

"About the south seas?", the uncle said, "now that is dire."

"It is terrible", Konrad replied. "Everyone who is good at maths has to do the blasted south seas. Because we lack imagination! Everyone else has to describe a house being built. That is a piece of cake compare to the south seas. That's what you get for being good a mathematics!"

"You may not have an imagination", said Uncle Ringelhuth, "but I'm your uncle and that's just as well. We'll present your teacher with a south sea that he won't know what hit him!"

Then he stepped of the sidewalk with one foot and hobbled on. Even Konrad was just a human, he got amused.

And when the hobbling uncle greeted a man and right afterwards said: "Disgusting, that was my enforcement officer", the boy could not help himself and giggled as if tickled.

Seriously the doctor just called to remind my office that he "is the busiest man in his profession" in case we forgot how very important he is. I may have to get another cup of coffee before I can properly address his problem. Which requires transferring a couple GB of data from his server since he hosed his machine. Think I should abort the file transfer and start over to see if it can go quicker?

I really do try and fix stuff as quickly as possible but not all is under my control.

I wonder if the office could tell the very busy doctor that the laws of physics don't know how busy he is, the processes to repair his screw up are done by machines, and can't be done faster than the machine is physically able to operate. Not as smart ass as he deserves, but maybe simple enough that even an arrogant idiot can understand it.

Yeah, he is not so much with the listening and being reasonable. Shockingly, he is also the type to be obnoxious to the other office staff then be all sweet when he gets me on the phone. I am working from home. grumble

oh Laura, I know that particular pain. I'm in DC ... where one of the favorite decorating elements seems to be pompous grass.

Laura, tell him if he keeps hitting the Enter key on his computer it will go faster.

I just made it rain by spraying Roundup. For my next tricks, I will water and leave my umbrella in the car. It's an absolute frog-strangler out there, too, and graphically illustrating my drainage problems.

I'm loading software onto a Windows 7 machine while working on an XP machine. It's kind of like rubbing your tummy while patting your head.