Chicken Surprise

Remember when I said in my previous post that we didn't get torrential rains? Well, I take it back. They came yesterday afternoon, as this rather haphazard photo (taken clumsily under my red umbrella during my walk home from work) hopefully shows. We even had hail! I was still at work at that point and it began clattering down on the windows and freaked us all out. It was only pea-sized but it was loud.

All I could think was, "Our poor garden." But it seems fine.

Here's what Olga thought of it all. (OK, I actually took this picture several days ago but I'm sure this accurately reflects her reaction to hail.)

In the library where I work, we have a no-food rule. My ears are specially trained to hear the rustle of a crisp packet at 400 paces, and yesterday, as some 9th Grade boys sat clustered together in a corner, I kept hearing that telltale rustling. So I walked back there and found a kid with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand and crumbs lying like beach sand all over his keyboard. (He insisted he hadn't been eating the sandwich but merely pulled it out of his bag in order to get to a book, which I don't believe for a second.) After a scolding, and while he discarded the sandwich, I took his computer to the vacuum cleaner and tidied it up, which was a first in my career -- having to vacuum a student's computer.

I didn't do it to be nice. I did it so he wouldn't blow the crumbs onto the carpet.

Here's a bizarre and useless feature I found on my iPhone. I can make a video of myself making faces as a chicken! (Or as a cat, panda bear, robot, octopus and about 30 other creatures or objects, animate and inanimate.) Apparently the camera reads my facial expressions and changes the creature's features to match. This particular video is silent, but if I wanted to I could even record myself as a talking chicken.

I suppose that's a fun way to tell someone, "Hey, I'll be late for our meeting."

Ah, the wonders of technology.