ION, two days until husband moves. I am a giant stress ball.

Changing a student's grade makes me RAGEY. Horrible lesson for the students and horribly dishonest.

Absolutely! Grades should reflect students' mastery of the material. Not where the administration wishes they were, not how well they move a ball into a desired location, just their mastery of the material. Period.

The shooting at TX highschool is not Mac's school or near b.orgers. Not that that makes it less horrible, just getting that out there as news catches it.

Wow, Dana.

Thanks for that, msbelle. I like to get the reassurances as early as possible. Ugh, apparently is still happening.

I somehow managed not to bring in my oatmeal this morning. I was really looking forward to that.

t /trivial disappointments

OK, I don't think any of my currently pending tasks are all that urgent.

Kat, that is terrible. I am outraged by the grade changing and appalled by the principal. You Aren't Letting Us Support You is a crappy fucking criticism, what the hell? They need Oz's "I told you what I need, this is not about helping me" speech looping on their personal soundtracks for a while. And so early in the year, sigh, I'm sorry, that must be really hard.

Buddhism is not really about afterlives, although for a long period in China Buddhists were the preferred officiants for funerals (I think it was funerals) because they had the most variety of hells and great descriptions of them.

The end game, as it were, for Buddhism is not about having something good waiting for you after this life, it's about getting out of the game entirely. Off the wheel. Escaping the cycle. Pascal's wager would be, I would think, entirely moot.

Now, I have given a lot of thought to how to deal with finite lifespans and what gives me the most comfort (and seems to fit reality as I understand it) is to consider the universe in 4 dimensions. The space-time representation of your life, or anyone's, occupies it's hypervolume whether our current conscious experience of time intersects it or not. Not unlike eternal life.

Well, it makes me feel better.

Also, as opposed as I am to being required to manage others' emotions, I would hypocritically like a little more regard for my feelings. I cannot think of a way to say "I thought I would be informed about this process before it was active" that doesn't sound whiny, so I'm not saying anything, but I am peeved.

Hmmm...

So our life (as we perceive it) is a 4-dimensional slice of something much larger? That's an interesting idea. That's nice and non-linear.

Course, we probably just get uploaded to a floating spherical hard-drive with spotty virtual wi-fi.

On the Shake Shack in Korea topic, when my K-pop band played in New Jersey last year one of the few things the members said to the audience from the stage in English was "we had Shake Shack burgers and they were really good."

Another random interjection from me: I just read an obituary where the names are so generational, I had to share.

Deceased and his cohort: Ted, Martha, Joan, Lyndon
His children and their spouses: William, Cheryl, Susanna, Stephen
His grandchildren: Aster, Gardner, Wyatt

I mean, right?