.
Second Thoughts

I had come to the U today feeling a bit irritable.  My irritation was due to a dream (nightmare?) I had that reminded me of some very rude and unethical behavior by two people I have to sometimes deal with at the U.   Unfortunately, it was difficult to get it out of my mind

My first try at dissipating my irritation  was in my 5 mile walk this morning.  That will VERY OFTEN do the trick.  But unfortunately when I returned home, I still felt irritable about it.

My second thought was to come here and blog about these two people, and talk about all their horrible actions and how I rather disliked both of them now-a-days, where at one time, I thought they were fairly average.  But, I did not do that. 

Instead, my third option ended up being the charm.  While waiting for my computer to slowly warm up, I ended up going into my other (back) office where I sometimes hide.  There, I looked in my top left desk drawer and rummaged around the many different pouches of pipe tobacco I leave in there.  I found one especially potent and robust leaf I had not sampled in a while.  I sat down, pulled out a stack of papers I needed to grade from my bag/briefcase (or whatever-the-hell I should call it), filled up the bowl of my pipe with the robust leaf, and slowly and meticulously ignited  flame and leaf and inhaled a plume of the rich smoke deeply before I started to read the papers.  An hour  (and two pipes) later, I finished, and felt a lot less irritable. 

Food for thought, perhaps.

PipeTobacco