Hey! Get your flu shots.

It's that time of year, and the first vaccines are coming in. So do yourself a favor and go get a flu shot. And get your kids vaccinated too. I plan to have Ellie do the flu mist, guessing that she's only 5 and wouldn't like a shot. I can't believe that the schools don't promote this more. They are all over the other vaccinations, and make a big deal about keeping your kids home when they are sick. And why exactly do we think December through March is flu season? Maybe because we all travel around on Thanksgiving and Christmas exchanging bugs which the kids are happy to spread around at school.

If you don't get the flu shot, then: When it's the middle of January and your suffering from chills and fever and a massive sinus headache that lingers on for 2 weeks as "the crud," ask yourself, wouldn't it have been better in October to have spent that $20 (that your insurance probably catches for you anyway) and get a quick shot that might not even have hurt? Would you pay $20 to make the symptoms vanish when you have them?

I know the vaccinations don't always take, and sometimes the strain is different than what was in the shot. Fine. Ask yourself, would you spend $20 on a 50/50 chance that your symptoms would go away?

More advertising

Since I'm advetising, Curtain Call Theater is doing Dracula this month. We're not in it, but we know a lot of people who are. I don't know what it costs, but I do know that it is playing at the round barn on October 26, 27, 28, and 31.

Just Sitting Around at Home

I was just sitting around, twiddling my thumbs (didn't know I could twiddle, did you?) and decided to watch the movie 'An Affair to Remember,' with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr - you know, the one where they meet on the ship, fall in love, then promise to meet in six months time at the top of The Empire State Building in New York, only she is staring up at the top of the building while she's on her way to meet him, and there's the hint that she's hit by a car... Long story short, she doesn't show up because she can't... then, much later, the two meet again by chance, and it's Christmas, and his grandmother left a shawl for her when the grandmother died... To make a long story short, he finds her in her apartment, stretched out on the couch with a blanket over her legs, no wheelchair in sight, and he has to figure out what's happened to her... And all the time, I'm sitting there, watching this movie, seeing them go through the motions of their first meeting in ... what? A year?... and all I can think is that she's there, on the couch, there's no wheelchair, and she can't walk... What the heck does she do if she has to use the bathroom? Is she supposed to crawl there?

Isn't it weird what you think while watching the climax scene of a movie?

Excuses, Excuses

I had to wake up early today, on a day that I usually get to sleep in on, because Don had a student coming to his office to take a make-up exam. I have no idea if the student remembered to show up or not... I only recall that when I was a college professor and a student made a very early appointment to come to my office, the student often overslept. He or she often apologized later... well, 'apologized' is a relative term. I started rembering when I heard about Don's make-up test, and that got me thinking that in the great wide world of students and parents, probably very few know one important detail of any apology... Know this; when apologizing for missing class or missing an office appointment, you would be surprised how often a student then gives the excuse that the reason he or she missed is because their grandparent died. Now, I realize that this truth is certainly not humorous in any way... except one... This excuse has been used so often that it has been overused, to the extent that it is automatically disbelieved the minute it leaves a students' mouth... Whether it is true or not, the point is that any student who has missed class or an apppointment needs to come up with a better excuse than 'my grandma/grandpa died.' This is a little known secret that finally needs to be shared. Students should give other, more imaginative, excuses, as most professors have already heard this one before.

So, what's the best excuse I ever got during the three years that I taught college? You won't belive this, but once a student told me that he or she had to leave class early because the UPS office was holding a package for him or her, and the office is only open from 4:00 till 5:00, so he or she was going to have to leave class early in order to pick up the package. But there you go, hands down, the winner of three years worth of excuse after excuse after excuse... Professors have heard it all...

TECHNOLOGY

The rant of the day (isn't there always a rant of the day?) has to go to technology. And by 'technology,' I don't mean your TV, your push-a-button-to-activate-it oven, or your stereo... I mean your computer. Specifically, email programs. Here's the story.... I recently changed email programs because whenever I was writing a loooong reply to a letter, and meant to make a correction, I inevitably hit the wrong sequence of keys, and ended up erasing the entire letter. This happened so often (I know, it was really all my fault, and I knew that, but... Should an entire letter be deleted just because my brain writes faster than my fingers can type?) that I decided to see if other email programs were set up in a similar fashion (where one wrong keystroke can erase the entire message). While using a new program that I had decided to try, and sending a reply to a friend in high school who had contacted me about our class reunion, I did something very similar (my brain went faster than my hands) and, not once, but TWICE, deleted everything that I had typed thus far. Now, I enjoy the benefits of email as much as the next person, but this habit of mine to hit wrong keys in the wrong sequences is most irritating. However, I no longer have to wonder why I'm still stuck on the actual feel of a good book in my hands instead of having an ebook on my palm pilot... At least the book won't suddenly disappear without notice!