Clean and Jerk

Georgia Tech is hosting the Olympic weightlifting trials this weekend, so I thought I'd drop by for a cultural experience.  I watched a group of the women competitors and I was intrigued by the diversity of their weightlifting styles. To be honest, I had never thought of weightlifting as a sport where "style" had much relevance, but it was fascinating to see each competitor assume her competition persona, and go through her rituals before the lift.  One woman started with a bow, in a martial-arts kind of way, then paused for a moment of meditation.  Another would crouch down and shake the bar vigorously while tossing her huge curly blonde ponytail from side to side before raising 200lbs over her head.  Another would meticulously coat each of her fingers with chalk, pace back and forth across the platform, then let out a loud "Ha!"  One of the competitors set a new American record for her division.  This inspired me to go to the gym, where I did far less remarkable things.

Best comment ever

And the winner for best student comment on my teaching evaluations for this semester:

"You were weird and I enjoyed it."

Success is mine!

Animal-Assisted Therapy

Mollie has started the process of becoming a therapy dog, the plan being to take her to campus in an official capacity where she can provide everyone with therapy for their university-induced stress.  The certifying organization is called "Happy Tails", and I attended one of their orientation sessions last weekend.  Most of the discussion was about therapy dogs, but there were a couple of people at the meeting with cats who aspire to therapeutic status.   After explaining the assessment criteria for dogs (under handler's control, recovers well from loud noises and strange human behaviour, won't have a panic attack if separated from handler for a few minutes), she pointed out that the assessment is much simpler for cats.  The main question is "Will the cat agree to get out of the carrier?"  I imagine that for most cats, the answer is "No! What kind of question is that?"  

Oral Hygiene/Moral Hygiene

One of my students has been absent this week because he knocked out his two front teeth on the weekend and has been having root canals ever since. He showed up today to ask if it would be ok if somebody else recorded his audio essay, since he now speaks with a hilarious lisp. I confessed that I had not anticipated extreme oral injuries when I designed the assignment. I said it would be ok as long as there was a good story behind his now toothless grin. He did not disappoint.

On the weekend he attended an unofficial event for participants in the Relay for Life. By "unofficial" I guess he means "one of my buddies had a party that was spatially and temporally proximate to the Relay for Life." One of the attractions of said party was "pudding wrestling" which involves people jumping in a tub of pudding and grabbing one another. In the words of my student "You could just watch, but I wanted to participate. The problem was, the guy hosting it decided to protect his floors by covering them with plastic. That was a really dumb idea." (Yes, THAT was the dumb idea.)

Let's do the math:
Pudding + plastic flooring = fall on your face and knock your teeth out

My student explained that he was perhaps intoxicated at the time, and after his pratfall his plan of action was to just put his teeth in a glass of milk and go to the hospital after the party was over. Fortunately, saner and less drunk heads prevailed, and he was transported to the ER. He explained further that all he was wearing at this point were a pair of shorts, i.e. no shirt, no shoes, but plenty of pudding and blood. The nurse asked "What happened to you?" His reply "Well, take a guess." I suppose that he thought the physical evidence made it obvious what he had been up to, not realizing that his appearance raised more questioned than it answered, and that the nurse was probably afraid to speculate.

Extreme Hold

I was out at the airport yesterday doing some aircraft maintenance for my flight club. After we finished, I went into the swanky terminal building to wash the grease off my hands and I noticed a basket of complimentary toiletries in the ladies' room. Most notable was the can of "extreme hold" hairspray - this makes good sense given the hair styles one sees in the South, but it also occurred to me that you would need the most extreme of extreme hold if you're flying this kind of aircraft:

Yum

This woman in period dress is eating a bag of pork rinds and drinking sarsaparilla. I think it's part of her costume.

They're here...

Today in class we were talking about Terminator 2, and I was drawing connections with other films by James Cameron. I asked the students "How many of you have seen Aliens?" One of the smart-asses at the back of the class said "You mean, like, real ones?" Har har.