Maybe you can hear this better...

Figures.

It's 8:32pm, and I am still at D2U. My late class got out at 7:15pm, and I stayed until 7:35pm helping a student with her essay. Then, I hopped in Boo-Boo the Wonder Truck to go home, stopping on my way out to fuel up at the corner gas station. As I stood at the gas pump, I reflected on what a tiring yet pleasant day it had been. Everything was going well--my students seemed to have learned something today, it was balmy and raining very lightly, Mr. Greenjeans was waiting at my house with a big plate of BBQ, and my day would soon be over.

Until I cranked the truck up again. CHECK OIL, the warning light read.

Five quarts of Havoline 10W-30 later, I was back on the road, watching in the rear-view mirror as thick white smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe. Is this what it's like to throw a rod? Blow a head gasket? I wondered. And why hasn't the warning light come on before now, if the truck's so low on oil? Thankfully, the gas station is only 1/2 mile from D2U, so I pulled back into the faculty parking lot, ran back into the English Building, and called Mr. Greenjeans.

From my office phone, that is. I had zipped out the door without my cell phone this morning.

Mr. Greenjeans is on the way, bless his heart. We'll see about Boo-Boo in the morning.

Chicken what?

Everybody needs one of these shirts! Embrace your inner 12-year-old!

One Horse Shy has the best t-shirts. This one and Grammar Police are my favorites.

Today's E&P KittyGram brought to you by Molly

Office hours for the ungrateful

I'm in my office at D2U today--this is usually a light-duty day for me. Today I'm seeing students during my Extra Office Hours, which I'll also be holding on Wednesday and Friday and probably next Monday, too. Lord knows my students need all the help they can get. Last week, I handed back pre-graded rough drafts to my 8:00 and 9:30 classes; the highest grade was a C+. Whoooo, little dogies. So Friday and today are all about helping students as they find their way into the dank, murky lair that is the English Building.

I've been here since 9:00am and have seen a grand total of 17 students out of 50. (I think two or three more will be dropping by before I leave at 4pm; a couple e-mailed to see if they could get appointments.) So 34% of my students have deemed it necessary to get extra help before the final version of Essay #1 is due. Good for them. Bad for the other 66%.

On Saturday, I walked out to the mailbox to find that my student evaluation results from the spring AM4C class has finally arrived. Funny how just one or two bad evaulations can ruin a professor's day. Eleven percent of that class had marked that I was a "somewhat ineffectual" instructor, while six percent marked that I was "highly ineffectual." Of course, these numbers mean that 83% of the class thought I was a pretty good instructor, which isn't too bad. Still, though, I wondered who out of those 23 students had marked me in the lower rankings. And WHY? Of course, these evaluations don't leave any room for students to actually EXPLAIN what they mean by the ratings they give each professor. Perhaps those who rated me as an awful instructor were those who weren't doing so well in the class. That's what I'm hoping. Or perhaps they were in a hurry to fill out the form and didn't give it much thought.

I also noticed also that 12% of the class had responded that I was "not at all interested in helping students." I can't help wondering where this came from. I devoted hours of time outside of class to helping students with papers. Out of those 23 students, twelve or thirteen regularly asked for help on their essays either before or after class. Perhaps the unsatisfactory marks were from someone who didn't show up for help and then got upset about a low grade. Or maybe it was one of those who showed up, got help, but didn't follow my instructions as to what to change in the paper to make it better.

I'll talk with Dr. Awesome at AM4C this evening to see where the disconnect may lie, if it actually does have to do with my teaching. I'm hoping it's something I'm able to fix before we get too far into this new term.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIS & GUY!

Here's wishing my sister and brother-in-law the happiest of happy birthdays! Have a great time in Boston, and travel safely!

Ever been fussed out by a chicken?

International Technology & Mechanical Problem Day

What? You didn't know that's what today is?

I've tried four times today to post about Mr. Greenjeans' & my wonderful trip to Warm Springs, Georgia, yet Blogger and Picasa either eat my posts, screw up the order of the photos, or post the photos one at a time instead of all at once. So a colorful post about awesome food in a cute little Southern town will have to wait until Monday evening or Tuesday morning. When I have more patience. And when I am not ready to become a complete Luddite and permanently forgo computers.

Last week, during Tiny Tech's final exams, I realized that I couldn't upload the English 101 Mandatory Almighty Departmental Final Exam to BlackBoard...because I didn't have ExamView on my computer. So William* loaned me the CD-ROM to put the program on my hard drive. What a lifesaver this was! Hooray! Now I could put up the exam for all my far-away English 101 students! Awesome!

Except my CD-ROM drive had died without my knowing it. Must have been all the dust and cat fur I found in the CPU. (It's a miracle this poor computer runs at all, bless its motherboard.) I promptly ordered a new CD-ROM/DVD drive from Dell and was really looking forward to installing it, but I quickly realized that I have NO hardware expertise. I hope I can find an inexpensive local equivalent to Geek Squad. It takes about 20 minutes to install a CD-ROM drive...if you know what you're looking at. If you don't, call someone who does.

The gorgeous new ceiling fan that Mr. Greenjeans bought for my living room is getting on his last good nerve. He's been fooling with it since 3pm. It's now 7pm, and he's thrown in the towel until next weekend. It seems as if today's industrial designers mean for homes to be designed around fans, and not vice versa. "The hell with it," he grumbled. "I'll fool with it later."

At least we have Godiva-chocolate-covered pretzels and gourmet biscotti to help ease our frustration.

Today's E&P KittyGram brought to you by Lewis

If loving this is wrong, I don't wanna be right

Photo & shirt from Vintage Vantage.

Seriously, though...a fella with good diction is a keeper. Diction. That word sounds dirty even now, 20 years after seventh grade.

Good syntax and correct punctuation also merit a plus each, in my book.

I hate getting up early on a day off.

Technically, today is not a day off for me, as I have a class at AM4C this evening. But I love having my Mondays and Wednesdays mostly free, and being able to sleep in until 8am or so those days. Alas, Tiny Tech is wrapping up final exams for Summer Term, and I am up early to meet students at the school to watch them give their presentations and give final exams. TTC has a crazy rule about online students coming to campus to do all their end-of-quarter exams. It sort of makes sense when I think about students cheating on final exams, but it's a pain in the ass. Could be worse, though.

So in between giving final exams and watching final presentations, I'll be madly grading papers for D2U. I managed to get very little done this weekend, so I'm trying to make up for lost time and have all my D2U papers ready by 8am Tuesday. Oh, and I'm trying to find a proctor for my Tiny Tech students who need to take their exams Tuesday, as I'm not able to be at Tiny Tech until 8:15pm Tuesday.

Wish me luck. This will be one helluva push through Wednesday morning.

Who you callin' chicken?

The photo's dark, but Myrtle Mae shows up fairly well. About a week ago, she began roosting here on the back patio railing, very near the back door and, therefore, people.

Myrtle still doesn't like to go in her little house, although I put her in there Friday night with nary a brkbrkbrk--I just picked her up from her rail and took her out to the little house, and she settled right in. After the possum incident Tuesday night, I pushed down the window so that only the upper portion lets air in; varmints can't just climb in as they please, all la-dee-da, we're-here-for-the-eggs. Still, Myrtle's not having any of this hen house business. She's decided to stay on the rail for the time being.

I think that when the weather gets cooler in a few weeks, she'll think about the hen house again. Even though my back patio is sheltered from cooler temperatures, it still gets mighty cold back there. A 75-watt "heat bulb" should do it for warming up the chicken coop.

Edited to add: I just heard loud "brkbrkbrkbrk-b'GOCK!" clucking from the back yard; Myrtle has laid an egg in the hen house for the first time since Tuesday morning. Hooray! She might not be sleeping in there, but at least she's re-identified it as her egg-laying place.

A time warp at Tiny Tech

Thursday evening, I made a trip over to Tiny Tech to see a student give a presentation. While I was there, I spoke with William*, the head of the English Department and a childhood friend of mine. What he had to say amazed the hell out of me.

"Kitty," he said, "you, Lynn*, and Marlene* are our online program. We couldn't do it without you. I want you to know I'm here to help you out; I've got your back. If you're having problems with a student, send that person to me. If you need help with things for your classes, let me know. I'll do anything I can to help you, because you're doing a great job, and one that we couldn't do without you."

I almost asked him whether he could punch Crazy Betty* for me. That would be doing all of us a favor. He'd probably even receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for giving our division head a knuckle sandwich.

"Wow! Thanks! I really appreciate your help." I was trying not to fall over in amazement. Hell, I was thinking the whole college was pissed off at me. That's the way it sounded when Betty* relied on my colleagues to relay her anger to me a few weeks ago. "I want you to know that you'll definitely be hearing from at least four or five students in each of my classes. They quit turning in work about five weeks ago, and I'm going to fail them."

"No problem," William replied. "You have on your syllabus that it's not your responsibility to drop students from the class, right?"

"Right. I put that on there years ago. My job is to teach, not play nurse-maid. If a student's not grown-up enough to drop him- or herself from the roll when they get too busy to do online courses, then he/she doesn't need to be in school. It takes three minutes on the internet to drop a course and then print out the proof that they dropped. And they need to double-check with their advisors to make sure the drop went through."

"Right," William said. "If it's on your syllabus, you're covered. Just send 'em to me, and if they're not satisfied with the answer I give them--which will be 'Tough shit,' coincidentally--then I'll send them on up the chain of command. Our students are working adults, and they'd best act that way when they're in school here."

William also thinks that Crazy Betty has forgotten about my pissing her off, since she's been dealing with staffing emergencies all quarter long. "In any case," he added, "it's been so long since she was mad at you that even if she is still pissed off, you'll be back in her good graces before long."

I was only somewhat relieved. "Well, I guess we'll see. Perhaps she won't drop all of her wrath onto me all at once."

We both laughed. Crazy Betty's reputation is that she's constantly paranoid and in a rage...except when she's just taken a Dilaudid. Then she's reeeeeeeeally caaaaaaaalm. No, I don't know for sure that she's addicted to prescription drugs or alchohol, but I've known enough people who are to be able to recognize the signs.

The conversation with William was the damnedest thing; I didn't expect him to say any of what he did. It's nice to know I have at least one ally at Tiny Tech. It makes things a lot more bearable.

D2U stalker update

Lulu*, our Best Receptionist of All Time at D2U, told me the other day that Jacques* has been calling her from Copenhagen and leaving breathy, tension-filled, desperate-sounding messages. (At least she thinks he's calling from Copenhagen; the Caller ID lists it as "Unknown Number," as it does for most international calls.) Jacques "can't understand why [she] isn't answering when [he] calls." Lulu has alerted D2U City Police to these messages, and the detectives have come over to her place and made copies of the recordings.

So far, Lulu still has no way of confirming whether the guy is actually in Denmark. He doesn't have many friends around here, and his family doesn't have much to do with him, so no one around this area can say for sure he's out of the country. Lulu and the police detectives did a little checking with his former employers; one of his former supervisors said they were surprised D2U hired him. "We had so many problems with that guy," the department head at Other College told Lulu. "He would get mad, obsessive crushes on students and colleagues. It was a real mess. I fired him because he couldn't keep up with the [teaching] work, and he was so weird that nobody wanted to take his classes. One of his students had to quit school and move out of state, he followed her so closely." Evidently, Jacques has also been hospitalized due to his obsessions, too. I guess the treatment didn't take.

Mr. Greenjeans and I have both let Lulu know she can stay with either of us whenever she needs to, and she has our cell phone numbers on speed dial. I've also offered her the loan of my trusty Smith & Wesson .38, if she'd like. As CrankyProf commented on the last stalker post, she can "turn him from a rooster into a hen with one shot." That'd fix his crazy ass. Hopefully. Lulu's a pretty good shot, and says she thinks she could hit close to his heart or head.

No word yet on the restraining order; Jacques has no job or address in Copenhagen, so there's no physical place to which the cops over there can deliver the paperwork. Jacques took off for Europe when he realized he'd screwed up all his possible job opportunities here in the States. Not to wish him on the great nation of Denmark, but I hope he finds something over there and stays put.

It makes me angry that someone who's being stalked really doesn't have any recourse until the stalker actually, physically attacks her/him. All of us in the English Department at D2U are looking out for Lulu, and Lulu's looking out for herself, but there's only so much all of us can do.

And that's what's so scary about the whole situation.

Tagged

Dadgummed ol' Kilroy has tagged me. Actually, this is the second time; I've yet to respond to the first tag. So here goes. Please do make some alternative suggestions for #10, as in its current state it might as well be titled The Mostly White Folks International Film Festival.

1. What time is it? 4:24pm

2. What was the last thing you had to eat? Leftover chicken fingers from the local (very good) “chicken joint”

3. What is your favorite television program? “Weekend Outlook” on the Weather Channel. (I don’t even have cable; I watch about 30 minutes of TV per week at someone else’s house, and weather’s what I watch.)

4. You can travel anywhere in the world, one destination per day from Friday through Monday. Where do you go? France, the Cayman Islands, Belize, Vietnam.

5. Who is your favorite character from a cartoon or comic strip? For a comic strip: Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Cartoon: Foghorn Leghorn from the Warner Brothers cartoons.

6. What would you like for breakfast? You mean you're going to cook?

Fluffy scrambled eggs; buttermilk biscuits (preferably my sister’s recipe); thick-cut bacon; home-fried potatoes with green chiles & cheese; shrimp-n-grits; orange-and-cream-cheese coffee cake (known as Orange Bread in my family); a Bloody Mary; coffee.

7. Who is the first public figure that comes to mind that you think is attractive? George Clooney

8. Who, outside of your family and "God", has had the greatest impact on your life? My friend June.

9. You retrieve a bottle floating in the water. What does the message say that you find inside? Everything is going to be all right.

10. What movies do you select {limit of six} for a one-day film festival?

• Gone with the Wind
• Forrest Gump
• Mississippi Masala
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Living Dolls

11. Do you have a hobby? If so, what is it? If not, what do you think would be of interest to you? My hobbies are renovating my home, reading, gardening, cats, and chickens.

12. Given the opportunity to travel back in time, when would your destination be? West Central Georgia, early 1980s—so I could see exactly how things were back when I was growing up, and not through the rather clouded lens of time and memory.

13. Vietnam gave us China Beach. M*A*S*H came from the Korean War. What will the name of the television series be that results from our current state of military affairs? The Walking Wounded.

14. What is the last book you read? I just re-read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

15. What five people do you MEET in Heaven? My dad; my grandmother; Zora Neale Hurston; Flannery O’Connor; Coretta Scott King.

16. What five people do you VISIT in Hell? Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson (even though they're not there just yet), Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan.

17. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see the word pleasure? Massage.

18. Eliminating price and availability as considerations, what six things do you put on your list when you go grocery shopping? Shrimp; rosemary-and-olive-oil organic potato chips; Krispy Kreme doughtnuts (original glazed); New York Strip steak; goat cheese; fresh pesto.

19. What is your favorite non-blog related link? http://www.stuffonmycat.com

20. What will the title of your life story be? Yew Tawlk Purty Good fer a Redneck Gal

21. What three people alive today would you like to have join you for dinner? Former President Jimmy Carter, Neal Conan (from NPR’s "Talk of the Nation"), and Ken Rudin (from NPR’s "Political Junkie" column).

22. Which candle scent do you find most pleasing? Rose.

23. What question would you suggest I include the next time we play this game? "What is your ultimate dream job?"

Spelling & Grammar Hall of Shame Entry #608

Behold the dangers of random abbreviation.

Thanks to MileHighPixie for this photo from Ridgeway, Colorado, taken over July 4th weekend, 2006.

Possums is Creepy 3: Miss Possum, if You're Nasty

The only nasty thing I like is a nasty groove.

This is not my photo--I borrowed this one from this page on Wikipedia to illustrate what just transpired in my back yard.

Minutes ago, I was preparing a bedtime peanut-butter sandwich when I thought I heard Myrtle Mae's "help-Mama-I'm-in-trouble" cluck from within her coop. I didn't really want to go out in the slow, steady rain, but I grabbed the flashlight and tip-toed out to the hen house anyway, just in case my sassy feathered girl needed something.

I walked into the coop to see the food bin and waterer turned over, hay strewn out of Myrtle's nest and all over the floor, and Myrtle flapping around and squawking at A NASTY, HISSING, FULL-GROWN-CAT-SIZED POSSUM.

Myrtle ran out the coop door and into the rain as only a half-asleep frightened chicken can run. The possum and I stood face to face. "Hccchhhh!" it hissed.

"Heeeeannh! Git! GIT OUT! GIT, POSSUM! GOAAANNHH!"**

When my animals are threatened, my Southern accent becomes very strong. I went from concerned chicken-mama to brawling West Georgia redneck in 2.3 seconds.

The possum hissed again. I began stomping the coop floor and kicking in the interloper's direction, shooing it toward the now-wide-open door. It quickly scampered out--seems like it had come in through a weak place in the window screen, about 12" from the ground--and off into the night.

Myrtle is all right, thanks for asking. But she's walking around at 11:04 on a rainy Tuesday night, pecking and clucking beneath the big floodlights in the backyard.

Perhaps FarmGirl was right. Desperate times call for desperate measures, especially when a sweet Rhode Island Red girl is in danger.

**Standard English translation: "Here, now! Get out of here, opossum! Go on!"

You'd think this blog was called Educated & Poultry

Forgive my recent lack of education-related posts. My D2U schedule is proving to be hellacious; I teach there Tuesdays & Thursdays from 8:00am until 7:30pm. By the time I get home, I'm completely worn out and frazzled, and I usually fall right into bed. Posting mainly chicken photos/updates makes me laugh and helps me relax.

Tiny Tech is causing me serious worry. My new supervisor at TTC, Crazy Betty*, is the kind of boss whose daily mood depends on whether she remembers to take her Prozac-Premarin-Mad Dog 20/20 cocktail each morning. It's not a comfortable situation.

A little background: eight years ago, when I was just out of grad school and teaching an evening English 101 at TTC, about half of that class had Betty for another (required) course immediately prior to mine. They would often walk into the room laughing or whispering about what had just transpired in her class. When I asked them what all the fuss was about, my students remarked that they never knew which Betty they would get from night to night: sedate, matronly, too-calm-for-words Betty, or wild, pissed-off, just-walked-in-from-her-shift-at-the-Kittikat-Lounge Betty. One night, she would come to class in an ankle-length skirt and long-sleeved, baggy sweater. The next, she would arrive in a sheer silk tank top, black leather miniskirt, black fishnet pantyhose, and 4" red-patent-leather stillettos. Her mood matched her outfit: with the more conservative clothes, she was loving, kind, and ever-helpful when students had questions or didn't understand the material. With the racy ones, she was angry, impatient, and coldly condescending to her students, many of whom hadn't been in school in over 20 years and who needed extra help with the class. The students found it hilarious and frightening, by turns. I found it appallingly unprofessional.

Betty* has been at TTC since Genghis Khan was a private. In the early days, she was the only one in her department, and she's managed to outlast changes in administration, budget cuts, student complaints, and the general passage of time. This has to be the reason she was promoted to be head of the department. She's a technical/science person in charge of language/fine arts people. She's all right in her field, but knows next to nothing about English and how English instructors conduct classes, give tests, and and evaluate students' work. She's either fired or driven away several good part-timers in the last few months. According to a friend of mine who's in the TTC loop, "If an adjunct pisses Betty off, she drops 'em like a hot potato. Even for the tiniest infraction--whoosh! That adjunct is out and won't ever be asked back."

Somehow, I've now managed to piss off Crazy Betty, but she hasn't told me this to my face. No, she's relied on other colleagues to relay her wrath to me. Although I've attempted to assuage her anger several different times, I've gotten no replies from her via e-mail or phone. She likes to play manipulation games with those under her in the department.

There's a reason my students called her Crazy Betty.

So I may be able to leave Tiny Tech quietly and neatly at the end of December. Or I may get fired in the next week or two, simply because when Crazy Betty said, "Jump!" I didn't answer, "How high, O Fabulous One?" Either way, at least I'll be free of those online responsibilities. And I sure won't be asking anyone at TTC for a reference.

In happier news: this evening marks the first night of Fall classes at Awesome Methodist Four-Year College (AM4C). I'm teaching English 206, "American Literature to 1865." This is my first-ever sophomore-level class, and I couldn't be more excited. My specialty in graduate school was American lit, and I wrote my thesis on an obscure (at the time) figure in antebellum Southern literature.

I just hope that I can make Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" interesting. Those Puritans were full of vim and vigor.

Possums is Creepy 2: Electric Boogaloo

As regular readers know, Myrtle Mae and I have recently had trouble with a marauding possum. I've only confronted the possum a time or two, and it's moved too quickly for me to stun it with a BB gun or punt its smelly behind out the garden gate.

We gave up on the Crime and Punishment idea. Sure, reading it aloud would bore the poor possum to death. As well as Mr. Greenjeans, the neighbors, kids playing in the street, Jehovah's Witnesses on their weekly rounds, the meter reader, and yours truly. "Tragedy strikes tonight in West Georgia: sixty-two people die at an anti-possum Dostoyevsky reading. The story at 11."



So Mr. Greenjeans borrowed this humane trap from his brother, and we set it up in the back yard to try and catch the little booger.



We placed one of Myrtle's eggs in a makeshift dish (yes, it's an old ashtray) to tempt the smelly snaggletoothed thief. We didn't think the dirt and ash film would make any difference. Possums eat dead things, you know.



Myrtle had to check it out, naturally. I was scared that she'd try to get in there herself. Fortunately, Mr. Greenjeans lured her away with a green tomato.

Curiosity caged the chicken?

We've been watching the trap for two full weeks now...nothing in there, morning after morning.



Well, except Lewis.



"I thought the sign said 'No Cover Charge before 8pm...'"

Fortunately, Lewis only spent 20 minutes in the cage before I heard her meowing and ran outside to free her. I am officially on both her and Molly's respective Shit Lists, and without a damn thing to show for it, either.

Thursday night, I noticed DeeDee sitting in the kitchen window in a weird position; she seemed to be looking down at the back patio. When I went to investigate, I saw that she was staring at Myrtle, who'd figured out that she could perch atop the railing. (For the last ten days, she's refused to let me catch her at dusk and put her in the coop--probably because she still remembers how I tried to put miticide dust on her back.) I figured the possum had been back. The extra cat food I'd put out for Elvis minutes before was gone.

Friday night, Myrtle actually went into her pen. And our possum buddy made another appearance, lumbering up onto the back patio to eat cat food. The little S.O.B. was clattering around on the front porch last night, in front of God and everybody, where the whole neighborhood could see him munching on generic-brand cat food. Guess I should've put cat food in the trap. I'll try that out tonight.

But there's good news: Myrtle has started going into the coop on her own in the evenings, which is nice. (Ever tried to catch a chicken that doesn't want to be caught?) Maybe when I get her a couple of sisters, she'll teach them to head for the little red house at dusk.

Single White Professor

The first place I go when I arrive at D2U is the copier room, which is located in the main English Department office. It's nice and quiet when I get here at 7:20am or thereabouts, and I can make my copies and drink my coffee in peace before my 8:00 class begins.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived this morning at 7:25 to find the Best Receptionist of All Time, Lulu*, already there...with three University Police officers in tow. They were all standing as far away from her desk as possible, as if it were radioactive, or had cut a deadly fart from its pencil drawer.

"Is everything okay?" I asked.

"Umm, yeah. It's okay," Lulu said unconvincingly.

Two of the three officers excused themselves to return to their squad car for the print kit. The third officer walked out into the hall for a moment, and I stared at Lulu. "What happened?"

She sighed. "I don't know what the fuck Jacques* is thinking, but this is way too creepy. This more than crosses the line. It blows the line away."

This was the first time I had ever heard Lulu curse.

"Jacques? You mean the one who used to teach here?" I thought back to the mustachioed, milquetoast, perpetually sweat-stained instructor who left D2U back in August. He was a nice enough guy, but sort of odd. Something about him struck me as weird--mostly how he had no other life except grading papers, and how interested he seemed to be in my weekend activities.

"Yeah, that's him. I've already filed two complaints about him with University Police. And this is going too far." She gestured toward her desk.

Right on top on Lulu's computer keyboard were a handful of chocolate truffles and an envelope addressed to "Dear Lovely Lulu." In the floor next to her chair was a shopping bag (full of what, I didn't know) from a local high-priced department store, and...a brand-new espresso machine, still in the box.

"Wait," I stammered. "Jacques? Left these? For you?"

"Right. Look at that espresso machine! The bag's got all kinds of clothes in it that he bought at London's.* The letter is four pages long. He says he'll miss me while he's overseas, and that he knows we'll be together one day soon."

"But I thought he didn't work here anymore..."

"He doesn't," Lulu sighed. "That's what's so creepy. He's gone from here, supposedly teaching in Europe. I told him directly: 'Do not talk to me, do not touch me, stay on your side of the desk. I am not interested.' He's seeing how much he can get away with."

I was getting goosebumps and a weird nauseous feeling. "Well, at least he doesn't know where you live."

Lulu rolled her eyes and shuddered. "No, Kitty, he does. He called me last week and asked, 'Do you still live on the corner of Jones and 17th?' And that is exactly where I live." She sat down in one of the chairs in the waiting area. "And my front-porch light didn't work when I got home last night. Okay, so it might be coincidence..."

"Right." Now I was really creeped out. "So what now? Are you filing charges?"

"Yeah, and I'm going to see if I can get a restraining order against him. Dr. Pepper knows about my problems with him; I've complained to her about him a dozen times. So I think she's going to put in a work order to have all the building and office locks changed."

That hadn't occurred to me--that Jacques might still have keys to the building, although it seems he was forced to leave D2U and should've been asked to turn them in. He could very well have made copies of them. Now there would be a huge to-do over getting 65 people new keys to the English Building, and the worry that one of our (former) own is a stalker.

"Wow," I said. "I'll keep an eye out for him, even if he says he's in Europe. If you need to stay with anyone, just let me know. I've got a spare bed."

"Thanks, Kitty." The police officers were just walking back into the room with their fingerprint kit. They began clicking away with their digital cameras and making notes on their clipboards.

Often, we simply don't know the weirdness that walks among us.

Pandelirium!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I feel like the trailer park resident who's always interviewed on the local news immediately after the tornado: confused, ignorant, and wondering why Carolyn's still got my casserole dish. "We coulda got killed, or worse!" (Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.)

Will get back to posting soon.

Molly started her Labor Day party a little early...

Damn tequila! Molly should never drink that stuff. But ever since Myrtle Mae ran her out of the yard... [sigh]

Isn't it amazing what you can do with an old Igloo cooler and a sleepy cat?

Have a fun and safe Labor Day Weekend. I'll be back to posting in a few days.