I’ve had a really weird interaction with this professor. So, total tangent, I, at the time, was working at a retail store and it was -- it would’ve -- must have been December. So, it would have been that winter semester, but around Christmas. And my professor had come in to buy something -- it was my professor and then their child. And I was really uncomfortable, not because I had an issue with this professor initially, but they had come in and I was trying to check them out and their credit card kept getting declined. And I knew like, “Oh, I have their exam in a couple days. Like, this is really uncomfortable.” And I kept saying, "Oh, I don't know. It says --" Um, what would that be? Uh, non-sufficient funds. "It says NSF, like, I don't know what that means." I was trying to, like, get him off the hook, trying to get him to use a different card. I said -- so I said that initially and then I said, "I think the card reader isn't working." So, I go into the back to talk to my manager and I said, "Hey, like, the -- you know, his card keeps getting declined. Like, what do I do?" And -- I said, "Can you come out there and just like razzle-dazzle and, you know, like, smooth this over?" I was, whatever, 20? Probably 20, 21, and I was just so uncomfortable. And normally my manager would be right there, but he was like, "I will not talk to that man." And I was like, "Excuse me?" And he was like, "You heard me, like, you're on your own." And I was like, “What in the world?” So I went back out and I don't know what I said. I think eventually I was like, "I need a different card. Give me a different card, this one is not working." And so he did and it was -- like, it was, like, 30 dollars. It was not a ton of money. So that card went through.  And after he left, I went in the back and I was like, "What the hell? Like, that was so lame!" You know, I -- and I had said when I went back there like, “This is my professor and I’m feeling really uncomfortable.” And then he launches into this whole story about…

And by far the best thing to happen to me this week, is that my friend's dad decided my friend needed a cat stroller. Not a cat backpack. Not a cat leash. A cat baby stroller. They make such a thing. They're very cute. But he didn't just decide any stroller. He decided that it wouldn't be fair if it was just one stroller because there was two cats in my friend's apartment: her cat and her partner's cat. So he got a double-decker cat stroller and ordered it for her and sent it to her house as a surprise. And then we got to take these two cats on a double-decker cat stroller walk. They both actually are very entertained and seem to enjoy it. They make a lot of noise, but they also seem to be having a good time. And because of that -- 'cause they were having such fun, you know, we decided to find out where you can take cats in your double-decker cat stroller. And we tried the grocery store. And we asked, we asked before we went in, do they allow cats? And they said, “Technically yes, but no one had ever asked them before.” So we took our cats into the grocery store. I wanna -- I wish I could say we took our cats grocery shopping, but we didn't. We weren't trying to shop. We were fully there to give our cats this experience. So we kinda had to make up some items to buy to sort of feel like we were having the full experience. But a bunch of people stopped and asked to take photos and talk with us and it was so cute. And our cats made a lot of noise, but people didn't seem that annoyed by it, hopefully. And they seemed to enjoy themselves a lot, the cats.

When I went to high school, so I was a freshman brand new at a K-12 school. It was parochial Catholic school. And I didn't start going there till freshman year of high school. There were people that went to school together from preschool on who had established best friendships, histories, and that was a really hard -- like, the first semester, everyone was so nice and welcoming, and then you start to realize like who your people are.  And I remember for Christmas, I, I wanted to get along with everyone, and so I bought all -- everybody these little individualized ornaments with their names on them, and made them these peppermint bark things that my family would make, and I still make that, but I tried to put together these like really cute Christmas gifts for this group that I thought I was in. And they all exchanged, and they didn't buy -- none of them got me a gift at all.  And I think that's when I realized like these are not my people because they already had their people, and like they thought it was nice and they appreciated it, but like, they didn't think of me when they were planning their presents for their friends at school. I don't have friends with any of them. Like there's like one or two that like we follow each other on Instagram, and we actually are more aligned than we realized in life, but I don't talk to them like truly. Like it's a comment here and there. And then the majority, like, I don't even know what they're up to.

I was in, I don't know, I think I was in high school, maybe younger, and we went to the wedding of the daughter of a family friend. And at several times during the service, and I mean several times. At least, at least twice, I think it was more. It would be at a quiet time. Maybe the officiant was intoning something, or during silent prayer, or when the bride or groom, maybe were saying their vows. Suddenly there would be this blast from the organ. And I don't know if the organist was like unfamiliar with the organ in that sanctuary, or if she was, you know, I don't know, wearing dress shoes or something that she didn't normally play in. But she was clearly like accidentally stepping on the, you know, the foot pedals or whatever, and I just remember it was like so startling. It would, you know, just kind of blast you out of the pew. And I'm sure she was mortified. But I thought about how like all these years later, I couldn't tell you which daughter it was in that family that got married, or like what her dress looked like, and the flowers, the bridesmaid -- anything, but I absolutely remember, I remember those organ blasts. So that may not have been the way that bride wanted her wedding to be memorable, but memorable it was!

Speaking of which, I need to get an axe, and I don't know if getting a used axe from the internet is a good idea or a bad idea. And before you connect one and two together in a bad way, my neighbor finally downed the dead birch tree in her yard, finally. And there's a lot of really good logs. And it turns out birch is actually pretty heavy. I don't own a chainsaw, um, because I just -- I've never needed a chainsaw. I ha- -- Do I have loppers? I don't think I even have loppers. I think I just don't have anything. I have hedge shears, but that's not quite what I need. And I need to get an axe to split the wood. But I don't own an axe. And I mean there's the question of what happens when I buy a used axe, and what did the previous owner do with the axe? And that's a scary question when you're buying off of, like, Craigslist or something 'cause Craiglist is kind of shady sometimes. Anyway, everyone's afraid to let me borrow an axe now, apparently, for murder reasons. Why would I murder someone with an axe? Um, yeah, so I don't know what to do because it's nice to have a bonfire, but it's also nice to be able to not chuck a literal entire log onto the bonfire and hope it catches. Hence, I need to buy an axe or borrow an axe. Apparently, no one's going to let me borrow an axe because they either like, you know, like I just said, or they just don't have an axe on them. I guess normal people don't just own axes for whatever reason. I've got a firefighter, maybe I can ask that guy!

I don't remember ever having stage fright per se, but there was a time when I completely did not know the lines that I was supposed to be reciting. I don't think that it was necessarily that I was afraid to say them and I like tensed and I forgot them. I think that I just never really learned them. It was my senior year in college and it wasn't a very big presentation or performance. I don't even know what you would call it. But we as seniors in the German program had to present a, a reading basically. We had to memorize some sort of text in German and basically perform it in front of a fairly small group of people but still a, a group of people. And, I remember I was just so done with school at that point. It was right at the end of my senior year and I was done. And I remember not really putting in very much effort to actually learn this piece that I was supposed to learn and it was kind of a fun -- it wasn't a dry like text or it was -- I'm not even gonna say it correctly, Struwwelpeter?  I can't even remember what it was. But it was this -- I mean, it was kind of a children's story but like a very, very creepy adult children's story. And I just didn't know it, like, I just did not know it. And I went up there and I -- like I said, I don't think I was -- I don't think I had stage fright or I don't think I was really afraid to say it and I kind of just stood up there, like I really don't know this. And somebody else who was clearly a much better student that I was at that point. I think she had either learned the same thing or she -- maybe we'd practiced it. I don't -- somehow she kind of knew what I was supposed to say, so she was like trying to help me along with it to kinda prompt me so that it would maybe cue me into actually saying the proper thing. But it, it never -- it didn't. Like I really just did not do well with it at all. I don't remember if we were graded on it or what…