Got mice in my apt.:

I saw one running around the edge of the kitchen one morning 10am when I was making coffee, then called the landlord and he said that the people on the 3^rd floor had reported some too and that in previous years some had gotten into the 1^st floor thanks to the dirt basement, but that this was new.

Pest control came and set traps and there were no problems, though I’d occasionally hear something in the drop ceiling or the walls around the kitchen when I was working late at night like around 10pm or 11pm…

                                                                                                

Then, I was making rice one evening, and I noticed that the bag on the kitchen counter had a small hole in it, and I thought that something must have punctured it at the store and I had just brought it home and had never noticed it, since the hole was almost too small for any rice grains to come out of.

Then, 2 days later, when I was in the bathroom at like 7:30am after making coffee, I heard something out in the kitchen, and as I came out, I saw something scurry across the counter and down the stove through the burner, and all of a sudden I realized that a mouse or mice must have been coming up onto the counter and getting into the rice.

So, I shifted all the bagged rice up to the shelves in my apartment, and the pasta too, and one had a hole in it and a few noodles pulled a couple inches out of the end (from a mouse gnawing through the wrapper and biting and pulling the noodles out?).

I also took a (not dangerous to humans) pest control trap from the bathroom and set it on the counter so that it was the only food there.

That day, too, I also got 4 regular mousetraps from Target and a jar of peanut butter, and late that night when I got home from my very long day between my jobs I set all them up on the kitchen floor and on the kitchen counter.

 Since then, nothing. 

My neighbor upstairs said she’s been setting traps with peanut butter too, but the mice haven’t been taking the bait at all.

She thinks they’re getting too smart for traps.

Aside to students in my writing section:

After saying to them that I wasn’t upset about unprofessional behavior per se, but rather was trying to help them identify proper behavior so they could benefit long-term:

“Because really, I wasn’t upset… If you want to see ‘upset’, go ask an older lesbian whatever happened to the feminist movement.”

. . .

You know how young my writing students are?

The other day before class started, 2 (female) students were discussing how much they paid for their high school prom dresses, and one mentioned finding the perfect one at a resale shop only to discover that it was $300, used, so she had to go find another one somewhere else.

You forgot a lot that they're that close to high school.

New teaching strategy: Slightly wacky handouts.

I’ve gone back and forth about what type of text examples to use in teaching handouts to illustrate principles of writing.

Initially, I leaned away from wacky examples like some people use, since I think some people just note the humor or the whimsicality and don’t actually go on to engage and absorb the material underlying them.

So, for a while, I used serious text examples, but from texts unknown to the students, since the way I figured, I was teaching about generalizable principles, and they should be able to see the underlying structures and apply them with what they know.

That didn’t work out so well, so I switched to examples from texts they had worked with and achieved some degree of understanding on, and those handouts worked *much* better; I've heard in fact that college freshmen work like that a lot, esp. at first, and you have to meet them where they are.

Lately, now, esp. since I’ve been working with the same students mostly and we’re almost halfway through the year and they’ve been good at identifying structures in writing, I decided to start using wacky examples again.

This time, I illustrated a brainstorming method by using lyrics from the Katy Perry song “The One that Got Away" (249 million YouTube views!!!).

Some students got hyped – a handful of the female ones did, at least, perhaps because they sang along to the lyrics in high school? – but more rolled their eyes at Top 40, or laughed with me (I hope) at the seriousness with which I parsed the lyrics.

Some students also claimed that they didn’t know the song, though 2 of the Chinese students did.

In any case, I guess we’ll see how the material sticks…  I may ask the students too how they felt that they absorbed the material, with the Katy Perry lyrics illustration.

Pleasant surprise from the house opposite my living room window:

A clump of snow on the side of the roof melted into a shape that resembled an Easter Island head, in profile.

Nightmare of Decay: Tomatoes in a Bag at a Movie Theater.

The other week I dreamt –

I’m sitting in a movie theater with old upholstered seats lined by metal and a sloping concrete floor, and I lean over to pick up a small white paper bag rolled up at the top so that the tomatoes inside can ripen.

As I pick it up, I noticed a thin clearish juice soaking out of the bottom of the bag and running down the floor a bit:

The tomatoes have become more than overripe, they’ve become a bit rotten.

Recent Cold Snap (2 of 2): Bar.

That same day after the store I popped by a taqueria for a sandwich and a bar for a beer, all because I had been cooped up all day doing work and it was nice to change settings and read.

At the bar, someone was talking about Shia LaBeouf.

“Or, as I call him, ‘Shia LaGoof,’” one guy was like.