Traffic the Music

Well, I just couldn't resist the urge this morning to capture this mess on my camera as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic headed into the campus. These images of the line of cars in front of me and the line behind me have now been sent to several interested authorities at the campus.

The really, smart -- did I say really, really, smart early architects of this campus could not foresee the day we've have over 10,000 students. We have one road into the campus. Did I explain that the campus has only one road in? Brilliant planning. So the 8:00 a.m. time zone is jam-packed. Exiting at noon or the end of the afternoon is equally frustrating.

I could tolerate the poor planning of 20+ years ago, but I am having difficulty tolerating that our campus police have decided that the first few weeks of the semester are over now, so they no longer are out directing traffic to keep the flow moving.

So I'm just considering this campus the most popular place on earth at 8:00 a.m.

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My Thursday students were terrific today. We had a great class this morning. Not one of them grumbled about receiving a less than "A" grade on the project that was returned last week, nor did they complain about the quiz results from last week. They willingly moved forward with me as I explained the next writing project and even gave a glimpse of the project just beyond that one. I left the classroom believing we together had accomplished something this morning.

Then I had Writing Center duty, after that office hours, and ended the day in a meeting with all of the English faculty. We laughed, griped, bitched a little, suggested some projects, laughed a little more, and adjourned.

Moments later I was in the parking lot about to load my things into my car when I noticed an engineering faculty colleague. I suggested he might want to take a few of my students' papers home with him to grade. He smiled, chuckled a little, and politely declined my offer. As I was getting seated in my car two of my English colleagues walked into the parking lot. I offered both of them some stacks of my papers. We all did some joking with each other, some knee-slapping, and some dreaming of the days when papers won't need to be graded.

Then I pointed the front of my car toward home, revved the engine, found first gear, and was out of there.

I arrived home to find that Mr. Fun had just arrived too. Tonight is date night and we decided that a date at home would be just terrific. So we hugged, kissed, toasted, danced a little, laughed a lot, and when the celebration settled a little, we ordered a pizza -- a veggie with double pineapple. I love pineapple. We devoured the pizza, blew the diet, burped a little, and tagged this as one of our best date nights ever, but actually, they are all good dates.

And traffic, well -- I'd rather listen to Traffic than be in it.

Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka