Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Letter of Rec

It's the time of year for letters of recommendation. Graduate school applications typically have deadlines in Dec and Jan. Students typically start asking me for letters of recommendation for their applications around this time of year. Today I dedicated mostly to writing letters and managed to clear my inbox! There will be more, but it's nice to have emptied the queue.

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My crick was back with a vengeance this morning. But, I put ice on it, took some advil, tried some heat and have it back down to mild inconvenience level right now. I'm going to try a different pillow tonight.

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My "office" window looks out onto the street. Across the way, there is a parking area for residents of that building. It's actually pretty interesting. There isn't one wasted square meter of pavement. The residents seem to have worked out some system where if one is blocked in, others will move. I don't know if they have some kind of car key repository or what, but it seems to work:


The only way out is through that gap right behind the black car in the middle. A couple of days ago, I realized how nice it was to live in a country where people can't own guns. At some point in the afternoon, one of the residents wanted to leave the lot, but some random car had parked across the entry, like this guy:


This happens a lot. Most times, the entryway blockers aren't far or aren't gone for more than a couple of minutes, but a couple of days ago, somebody blocked them in for like 15 minutes. The angry residents honked and honked, but nobody every showed up. At one point, they tried to push the offending vehicle out of the way, to no avail. Ultimately, the driver returned. He was immediately surrounded by 3 angry residents. I've never heard Spanish at that speed, or ferocity. If there had been guns around, I'm pretty sure somebody would've died.

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We had a nice day today. Clear and warm. Very much unlike Walla Walla where they are currently stuck in an inversion with the temperature a steady 28 degrees for the past 72 hours. Sunset was so pretty this evening that I went up to the roof and snapped this: