My two jobs

My job at the high school:

Today I was notorious. I was summoned publicly — via intercom — to the principal’s secretary’s office; but as it turned out, I wasn’t the culprit she was after.

I’m becoming too efficient for this job.

I complete most of my tasks by Third Period, and then I try to kill off two more hours. This morning I spent a good deal of time looking for spare change so that I could buy a sandwich. (The students were selling Chick-fil-A sandwiches in the cafeteria.) I did find enough change. My sandwich was soggy but delicious.

My tutoring job:

I’m clocked in right now.

There’s no one here for me to tutor. I’m killing time, blogging this.

How these jobs look to other people:

When my girlfriend’s mom interrogated me on Valentine’s Day, she said, “I hope you’re aware of certain things about your life that you need to fix.”

“I am,” I said.

“What do you think those things are?”

“Well,” I said, “I was hoping you’d tell me what you think those things are.”

“Well,” she said, “I was hoping you’d tell me, so I could be sure of your awareness.”

Then I was quiet, because of course there are many things I’m aware I need to fix, but I didn’t know which things she had in mind for me to fix. And so she told me them. What she had in mind was my employment. I needed more of it.

Probably, some of you are thinking, “Hurray for Karin’s mom.”

News

Snowed In until this afternoon all day. I write blog posts on days we’re Snowed In because, other days, I’m too tired.

New gf: Karin, my church friend. Monday was our one-week anniversary. I spent Valentine’s at her mother’s house so that I could be interrogated.

This is my first gf since 2008, when Xavi was in his prime.

Pepys, pt. 2

No longer feeling sick, but still coughing up phlegm.

My Kindle ed. of Pepys’s Diary is unwieldy. Footnotes interrupt the text (and then go on for pages). Thus I’m retreating to The Shorter Pepys — 1025 pp. of continuous, but heavily abridged, diarying. My initial plan was to read one entry per day, reaching the Diary’s end in one decade (more or less). I’d also keep a diary of my reading of Pepys’s Diary. I’d publish that diary on this blog.

Last night, though, as I lay in bed, I briskly read five or six diary entries because they were so absorbing and concise. Pepys eats hearty meals. He hears pedantic sermons. For hours and hours, he plays card games.

Entertaining though this is, I don’t think I’ll be describing much of it.

I, Claudius, pt. 3

Using Mucinex. Sick since Wednesday. On Thursday, as the temperature was climbing into the forties, Martin and I enjoyed an unexpected snow day. I slept all morning, on the couch.

Tomorrow it will be truly cold, and I expect to be Snowed In again.

Shoppers have been crowding the grocery stores, buying food for this snowstorm and for tonight’s Super Bowl parties. (Ah, yes, the Super Bowl. My policy is to boycott football, but I’ll watch this game.)

Edoarda wants to read I, Claudius — Stephen and I have persuaded her. Our enthusiasm for the book is undiminished, though we haven’t read much more of it. Last night I did get through two other chapters. There were a few more poisonings, and some suicides and banishments (for variety). But not everything was awful. There was a lovely account of little Claudius’s education (in particular, of his earliest forays into historiography). Claudius’s tutors were shrewdly described.

My first Kindle purchase, for my smartphone: Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete ($0.00). Let’s see how much I read of that book.