can't talk, orienting. Really.

[extemporanea]

Things That Have Amused Me About The Last Three Days:

1. Realising at 3pm, after a total of 4.5 hours speaking to a lecture theatre full of 550 first-years, that I forgot to brush my hair this morning. Fortunately this hairstyle, or possibly more accurately this "hairstyle", is apparently sleep-and-go as much as wash-and-go. In related news, I have slept like a log for two nights courtesy of my amazing doctor, who faxed through a new prescription for the necessary sleep meds at half an hour's notice. Death to insomnia! and other revolutionary slogans.
   
2. My orientation leaders, sitting on the Jammie steps, breaking out into a spontaneous cheerleading routine featuring my name, at the tops of their voices, with dance moves, as I randomly walked past.
   
3. Students whose first names begin with the very common Xhosa sufprefix "Nom" (Nomfundo, Nombeko, Nombulelo, etc). They make me wander around vaguely thinking "nom nom nom" for hours.
   
4. A totally random postgrad wandering into my office to tell me, at length, for 15 minutes, how my "Disney is the Antichrist!" lectures in his first year eight years ago made him realise that texts need to be questioned suspiciously, and helped him end up where he is now. I didn't have the time for it, but it was worth it. You can tell a cultural studies teacher no more heartwarming and validating thing.
   
5. The merry piece of "you have won the lottery!" spam in my inbox this morning which included as its subject line the simple, nakedly honest inscription "SPAM:". (With the colon. No idea about the colon. It seems fraught with implication).

Things That Have Not Amused Me About The Last Three Days:

1. The giant catfight that woke me up at 5.45 this morning. I hope it was the Hobbit seeing off the Evil Spraying Ginger Tom of Doom, but I doubt it. Wimp.
   
2. The unpleasant discovery that one of our main orientation buildings, in which we have a total of about 12 venues booked over five days, is full of builders, ripped-up floors, wet paint, dust, rubble, more builders, the personal stuff of the builders left all over the lecture venues, five giant fans in the main venue drying paint noisily, and a regular refrain of splintering crashes as they throw old roof tiles merrily off the roof down giant plastic chutes. Orientation is a logistical bitch of the more evil-goddess sort, and a sort of private low-grade apocalypse in the venues really doesn't help.
   
3. My inbox, which is full of random queries a full 60% of which shouldn't be coming to me at all. It is absolutely fatal to develop a reputation for efficiency and knowing the answer to Absolutely Everything. Because I mostly do, but I really don't have the time to tell you the surname of the lecturer in a particular department when you only remember his first name and the issue you discussed with him. Also, I don't have time to laboriously spell it over the phone, particularly when you persist as hearing my Fs as Ses and my Ps as Ds. Which is not my problem, but yours. Go away.