Wow, I really hate those ads that interrupt LJ viewing. XP

Dear LJ,

Are you there? It's me, pylduck.

My left eye has been red and irritated since yesterday. Allergy eye drops haven't helped. Maybe I need to take more allergy pills. :P

My eyebrows are starting to be more unruly and to poke out all over the place, too. Is this what it means to get older?

Paul

So the vet says to me, "I want you to think about trying Giles on a hypoallergenic diet." She explained that it would involve strictly feeding Giles ONLY the prescribed food--no dog treats, no human food, absolutely nothing else--for eight weeks. I looked at her skeptically and told her that it is hard for us not to feed the Giles little bits of all kinds of food throughout the day. She acknowledged my concerns but persisted in explaining that she thinks it's the best course of action to try to deal with Giles's allergies without the periodic regimen of steroid pills, antibiotic pills, and antifungal/antibacterial ointment (he is now on all three of these meds).

As she is explaining all this to me, she keeps feeding Giles treats, and when she's giving him what is probably the tenth biscuit, she laughs at herself and says, "I see what you mean about the difficulty of keeping food away from him."

So the other day, a colleague mentioned that his students described me as the professor who always talks about his dog. This is surprising to me since I don't feel like I really talk about Giles that much in class. At least it is a pleasant surprise. There are worse reputations to have.

It will probably only cement my doggy reputation that I have Giles with me in my office today. Four students came in for advising meetings, too. :O

I find myself in the midst of the Obama baby boom. In the past month, I've been to two baby showers. In the past week, I've run into two professors at my school (who started the same year I did) and discovered that they are pregnant.

I keep cracking/popping my wrists lately since I started lifting some weights again at the gym. They feel tight all the time now. Is it bad to crack joints? Oh, aging.

we're back to 3-cup-coffee mornings (from 2 this summer). plus another cup or two later in the day. i probably need more sleep. :O

Thesis: Many people don't "get" poetry, especially the kind that plays with subtle slippages of meaning, because their own use of language is so messy that they don't see the precision and multivalence of poetry.

1) Mr. Frog says that in North Carolina the summer I worked out every day, I looked BLOCKY. :O Or perhaps that emoticon should be :[]

2) I just glanced at an e-mail that begins: "TIAA-CREF staff will be on campus this week to counsel employees on their accounts." I misread the "counsel" as "console" at first. I was dismayed. Grief counseling for plummeting retirement accounts.