My mom was telling me about a patient of hers who recently ticked her off so badly she had to walk out of the room. Apparently the lady started their meeting by talking about how awful it was we'd elected a man "who wasn't even a citizen" because he was "born in another country," and when my mom protested (against one of the perhaps several issues in that statement she might have tackled) by saying "I don't think that's true. I believe he was born in Hawaii," the women said, "Ohhhhh no. He was born in Kenya, and his grandmother had to go get him there." My mom, once again said, "That's not true."

This particular topic being exhausted after a few more rounds of the same, the women then decided to make some tax structure suggestions: "We just need a flat tax. That's the only right thing to do." By this, she actually didn't even mean a genuine flat tax with equal percentages, but instead an exact dollar amount for everyone. You know, like, if we all just chipped in $50, guys, this whole problem would obviously be solved!

My mom was so disgusted she pretended she needed to go get something to continue her treatment. After she told me about this, I asked her if this woman was on Medicare (mom has lots of Medicare and DSHS patients), and she said yup. I told her she should have told the woman: "I almost want to agree with you because it would mean I'd never have to see you again."

*

My new crops of students are... unique... interesting... fine, just fine. And all lined up in rows in the classrooms looking straight forward at the board (which I hate).

My heart sank a bit looking at the first group - a bunch of very younguns, and sure enough, when I read their letters of introduction, about 1/2 of them are Running Start and only 2 of them are over 18. In the past, I've had a hard time with RS students because they're under so much pressure for A's that they almost can't pay attention to anything else. But when I read the sum total of this batch's Introduction Letters, I changed my mind and was happy to note that they are all quite excellent writers, and from a pretty diverse, nomadic background.

The second group is my second-quarter writing students and I was originally nervous and thrilled to be teaching new material. I'm going to teach a manifesto and public apology and bring in Colbert as a sample of "personae" and "ethos" in the rhetorical triangle. But then I got this batch's Diagnostic Writing, and they were almost all uniformly horrible - like monkeys throwing poo at the screen horrible. The gamut from sentence problems, to misreading my question, to rambling, to absolutely no description of anything. It's going to be uphill if I have to review the entire class before this one in the sequence before tackling the fun stuff. Ug.

Anyhow, still happy to have work. And overwhelmed by the change in my schedule. Herald is pissed, let me tell you. He's also very pissed off at the nasty, interminable rain, just like me. Grrrrr.