Being Met

My daughter has a habit of meeting me in the garage when I arrive. She's learned that if I just sit there for a couple of seconds after arrival, she probably shouldn't bound up to me, but otherwise, sure. Sometimes she will walk in, and sometimes she'll ride her scooter in and do little arabesques in the empty part of the garage. This afternoon, she walked in, met me, and asked if she could help carry my stuff upstairs. As she was picking up the laptop, she said that she wanted me to know that she had tried hard, and that a lof ot it was due to some material that was turned in late, but that this could be partially corrected. This announcement immediately triggered a klaxon in the parental alert system, and it was, regrettably justified. She'd gotten an abysmal grade in one subject. We talked, I said the expected Good Parent things... but inside, it was a different story.

This was, overall, a strange day. It started with an odd dream -- not of escape, this time -- in fact, I'm not sure what it was about, as the only thing I could remember of it upon awakening was the word 'supernode'. That's not in my common lexicon; though its etymology is pretty obvious, I looked it up on Google and found that it is a phrase referring (among other things) to a master node in file-sharing systems such as KaZaa. I don't use them, or anything like them, so I am stumped as to why I should recall it. Breakfast was uneventful. Work -- well, work was pretty stressful, but in fact it was SO stressful that at the end of the day I had achieved a sort of nirvana. I simply didn't care, at that point. Fire me or knight me, its all the same. It was a very odd feeling. And you know about the arrival home.

Tonight we're having pizza -- pepperoni and pineapple, one of my personal comfort foods.