It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

 

It actually wasn't..... but it did become a cold, blustery, very heavily raining early morning and day today.  I do not know if it was the weather, or just a general sense of malaise..... but I damn well did not want to get out of bed this morning.  I kept resetting the blasted alarm and eventually found that it was too late to get my run in this morning (not that I wanted to run in the first place).  

Being only 38 degrees (~3 C) outside, and with the heavy winds and pelting, heavy rain..... it was not enjoyable even walking into the building with my offices and labs.  The distance from the parking lot to the entry door seemed to grow several fold longer than it had been for decades.  

All I wanted to do this morning was a) BRIEFLY get up and take the dog out for her constitutional, b) make myself a big iced coffee, and then c) crawl back into bed, deep under all the many layers of blankets and quilts nestled between the sheets and the bedspread I have on my side of the bed (I tend to be cold, my wife's side has very minimal bedding as she always feels hot.).  I would then like to have been able to while away the day reading a novel, smoking my pipe, and drinking my iced coffee and occasionally snoozing.  That would have felt like Nirvana.

Instead, after taking the dog out on her constitutional, I came back in, dressed for work at the U, and made myself my big iced coffee, and drove to the U. I lectured for ~3 hours on the biochemical aspects of limb formation in embryos.  The most enjoyable aspect of the lecture for me was when I briefly described polydactility in "Hemingway's Cats".  I wrote about that once before, but polydactic digits occur when an organisms develops more digits (fingers or toes) than are typical for the species.  Ernest Hemingway had a large number of cats with extra toes on his homestead in Key West, Florida.  And, in fact, many of the polydactyl cats around the US have their genetic origins tied to the population of "Hemingway cats".   I had a wonderful, big, burly Tuxedo Cat in graduate school with a grand total of 28 toes across his four massive paws.  After lecture, I have had at least 7 students visit me during my office hours for "guidance" on how to do better on their anatomy & physiology exams.  I would have thought most of the kids would have high-tailed it off of campus as quickly as they could have to start their Thanksgiving break (my U does not have classes the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.... it is a long story). 

Continuing with the ever present thoughts in my mind of homonyms, the image above shows what I believe would be a perfect Halloween costume.  I would love to dress as a knight in a suit of armor. 

Because of my ill-mannered ways this morning, this means.....  I need to run my damnable 10 miles NOW, this afternoon sometime, and I am not pleased at my shoddy behavior nor my life choices at the moment.

I want a pipe.... VERY MUCH.  Sometimes I get awfully damn tired of writing about this... because it is always the same damn thing.  But, it is true.

PipeTobacco