Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

We all live in a yellow submarine.

Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007
11:28 p.m.
Thursday is my least favourite teaching day. The gift of my German exchange student yesterday is offset by the two incomparable incompetents I had this afternoon. One of them has no voice but could learn to sing better than she does. The other has a pretty little voice and is so hopelessly stupid that I have no hope for her at all. I want to tear my hair out in bunches during the second one’s lesson. It’s a good thing I have a lot of hair or I would be bald in no time.

One of my daughter’s physics profs, who is also a regular squash and tennis partner of my hsuband’s, has been ailing for some time with indefinable symptoms. He finally took himself, after much urging by his colleagues, to a walkup clinic on Tuesday where the doctor expressed amazement that he had actually driven himself there, and immediately had him taken to the hospital in an ambulance where he has been given a number of tests and is in the cancer ward, in a private room, with a tentative diagnosis of leukemia. His spleen was five times the normal size, his red blood count down to a quarter of normal, and his white blood cell count compromised, too. They gave him a couple of transfusions and pumped him full of antibiotics and he’s starting to feel better, but tomorrow he has a bone marrow biopsy and an X-ray, and they should have a pretty good picture then of what’s wrong with him so they can commence the appropriate treatment. We are all worried about him.

While Hubby was visiting his friend in the hospital tonight, Little Princess and I went to another lecture in the humanities’ series, this time given by one of our own, Dr. DM of the religion department. His topic was about magic and mysogeny, citing in particular a passage in Numbers describing in detail the proper procedure for determining if one’s wife had been screwed by another man, a method almost guaranteed to induce a miscarriage if she were pregnant. The topic itself was interesting, and Dr. DM has a very lively and engaging lecture style. He used a couple of examples from a popular television cartoon to illustrate his point in places, and the question period afterward was interesting and informative. We continued our discussion afterwards at the wine and cheese reception in the faculty lounge.

It’s raining, and as Little Princess and I came out to the parking lot I could smell the sugary aroma of the spent maple leaves littering the lawn. There is something about this time of year that sets it apart; perhaps it is the beauty of death itself that precedes winter’s lifelessness. I don’t know. Still, it makes taking deep breaths a pleasure.

|

<~~~ * ~~~>