Here is a partial list of good things that have happened this week:

1. The weather. While seasonal allergies have been making my eyes all sort of foggy, the warming daytime weather has been admittedly rather lush. Better still, the atmospheric fog that rolled in most nights this week was so creepy & delicious (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on."
––Carl Sandburg

2. At an open mic hosted by the literary magazine and performing arts club yesterday, a student stopped in & said to me, “You look like Andy Samberg & that makes me very happy.” I’m not sure I totally see it…

Ok, I guess we do both have sort of oddly-shaped heads & weird hair. Maybe I see it a bit more than this even. Still; whenever I can keep the people happy, it is a good day.

3. My friend Miss Williams & I spent our third consecutive Wednesday night hanging out. We went to the Point Diner to use up this $25 gift certificate I somehow found myself in possession of. We bandied back & forth a few six-word memoirs; talked teacherly shop. I forgot to snap anything on my phone, so here’s an image from online…

Imagine this in the early evening with lots of fog all around & some tattooed dudes in the parking lot smoking.

4. Miss Williams & I discussed our travel plans for the immediate future. Effie & I have to go to a conference in Baltimore (early June) that I keep forgetting about. The Russells have also decided to return to London/environs this Christmas. We haven’t been to London at Christmas since 2008 when my sister hid behind the statue of Samuel Johnson’s cat (see below). My dad’s interested in taking lots of daytrips out into the surrounding countryside, which should be nice. I’m not sure if it’s dysfunctional or highly functional that the four of us still travel together & genuinely enjoy each other’s company.

Rachel & "Hodge"

5. I hesitate to mention this last bit of good news, lest it prove disastrously untrue, but I think we’ve finished this year’s college magazine & seen it safely off to the printer. I nearly cried real human tears on four or five separate occasions this week as we struggled to get everything to the printer’s specifications. Yesterday, before the art editor arrived to help with some final adjustments (I didn’t tell him this, but) I tried to open the InDesign file and an error message popped up, saying that the file was corrupted. My mind flew into a panic as the kid next to me in the computer lab listened to rap videos on YouTube, which didn’t help the situation any. At that moment, I thought I would just have to run away. I would pick up my Brothers Bray bag, walk out of the computer lab, get in my car & just go –– disappear and reinvent myself in some town out in Salem County maybe. I would be a waiter & my co-workers would wonder about my mysterious past; every once in awhile the talk would turn to college literary magazines & I would abruptly absent myself from the conversation. Actually, I’m sure my mom would be somewhat ok with this scenario; she always wanted me to be a waiter for some reason. She used to say, “You’re tall & personable; you’d make a great waiter! Or maybe a model.” Or maybe a model waiter?

6. But Effie did this week tell me how proud she is of me. Even if I’m not a waiter.

Image from Don Hertzfeldt's "I am so proud of you"
http://www.bitterfilms.com/proud.html

It’s always nice to hear & to tell someone.

*7. Coda: Somehow I got the InDesign file to recover itself through Dropbox. I don’t know. I re-labeled the file & hopefully we won’t need to fuss with it anymore anyway.