Have you seen Indiana's state quarter?.

It has NASCAR on it:

That would be like if Mississippi had a picture of fat people eating butter on it, or Loiusiana a topless woman with a ton of beads around her neck vomiting in a gutter on a cobble-stone street.

Ice cream!

I've been craving it so much lately - mint chocolate chip, cherry-and-chocolate, even dulce de leche.

Ice cream and pie are the big desserts I like (I can go without cakes and cookies, though I die for pastry and strong black coffee in the morning).

My pale yellow polo shirt...

...got a small small stain right by the bottom right of the collar.

For some reason, it reminds me of that small beauty mark right at the bottom left of my mouth.

...from an emeritus German prof...

I asked an emeritus German prof at that one year-end reception with African food what he thought about the German bailout of Greece.

He said it was self-interest, Germany exports so much to Greece, including even toothpaste.

When I said I wondered if we'd have the euro still in three years, he was very pleasant and like, "I think we will. You know, the crisis of the euro is not world news. In Europe, all the headlines are about the crisis of the dollar!"

2 updates.

1) At a year-end academic function, they did end up catering in African food from that one African restaurant!

2) Am figuring out what's happening with my dissertation proposal - when I sent out one revision to the 3 profs with their suggested changes, I noted that the proposal was already at 13 pages (there's a 7-page limit), and at my colloquium they required me to put in more additions, which boots the page length up to 15! My advisor just emailed me to make sure to talk to my one (black) (female) dean about that, so I'm going to set up an appointment with her...

Money's worth.

That one convenience store in my neighborhood carries this small brand of ice cream that I like - I always get their mint chocolate chip, and I tried their dulce de leche and it's good too; their cookies 'n' cream is only okay - but I tried their black cherry ice cream the other day and it had this really fake, unpalatable flavor almost like cherry medicine

- so -

after I ate it all I cut off the proof-of-purchase and mailed it in for their money-back "any reason you're unhappy" guarantee.

Phone problems: kind of nice.

For a while, the leaking cells in the cracked outer display on my new cell phone would look like a "V", and every time I pulled it out, I felt like it was making a peace sign at me, and that the whole world (even inanimate objects) was wanting peace.

Apartment problem: Drain.

When I drain the bath, sometimes water comes out from under my sink cabinet. I don't know how it does it, but it does.