If you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you can get a free lunch.

First day back to school after three weeks of solid slothfulness, and I�m exhausted beyond belief, and it�s not even 9 o�clock yet. I slept very poorly last night, probably apprehensive about having to rise early. I even went to bed early, lay there unable to sleep, woke frequently (I know this because I would hear the clock downstairs chiming the hour, as it is doing right now) and finally awoke at 6:00 a.m., but continued to lie there for another hour, determined to squeeze some more sleep out from under my eyelids, to no avail.

Anyway, Mandy, my cleaning lady, did a wonderful job on my kitchen. She pulled out the stove and cleaned all the shit underneath it and wiped down the sides and when I left she was on her hands and knees using a steel wool pad to clean all the black spots off the floor that form directly beneath the counter. My floor has never looked so pristine (even with all the damage to the vinyl). However, my wonderful Mandy has one bad habit: she�s a smoker, and while she exercises her addiction outside on the front porch, she still hangs her jacket in the closet where it stinks up all our own coats. I hate that.

Today she got onto a harangue about how the government is going to force a non-smoking ruling in restaurants and bars come May 1 (it was supposed to be this month, but this is Quebec, don�t you know) and she thinks this is a terrible thing, especially after she�s finished her meal and wants to sit back and enjoy a cigarette with her coffee. I said nary a word. She needs not know my opinion which is that I will sing hosannas the day that smoking is banned from all public places and when I can go into bars and not die of asphyxiation. They�ve already enforced this in the rest of Canada. I really don�t know why Quebec is such a bastion of die-hard nicotine addicts.

Okay, I�ve probably offended several of my smoking readers, so I�ll go on to other things.

Patsy asked me to attend the lectures of the candidates for the classics department�s tenure stream position. I totally missed last week�s (I was still in vacation mode) but was determined to go to the others, and today I heard a very interesting lecture on education in Rome given by a delightful young woman who has been living in L.A. for the past five years, but is Canadian and a maritimer to boot. I really liked her. Patsy invited me to join the committee for lunch as two of its members were unable to make it, so I got a free meal at one of the nicer eateries in Sh�brooke, a restaurant which also doubles as an antique store.

I returned home to find that my cleaning lady was gone, but the cartridges for my printer had arrived (hurrah! I can print in colour again). I practised a wee bit (I�m so rusty. Three weeks of vocal inactivity sure take their toll) and headed back out to the U. for choir rehearsal. Herr Doktor Professor is back at the helm and is his usual crazy self. It will be a zany semester, that�s for sure.

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