Look busy

Yesterday everybody had to stay at work til 6:30 because there was some VIP around, and the CEO thought he might take the person through the office just to prove people actually work here, and he wanted people to stay at their desks and work. Then it started raining on the way home, and I didn't get home til 7:30. I immediately jumped on the treadmill and did 4.5 miles. Really wore out my ankles.

It rained all evening and was still raining pretty hard after midnight when I was going to bed. So I was surprised when I got up and the streets were dry. But during morning prayer -- Sara is back from the east coast -- it started raining again, so I had another rainy drive back down to Redwood City. I should have taken the train, except that I didn't bring any lunch. If I take the train and don't bring lunch, I'm SOL -- I have to order something to be delivered, which is expensive and takes forever. The only time I tried it, I started ordering something at noon and it wasn't delivered until way after two.

Another thing I did last night was run across the online edition of the Daily Texan, the student newspaper I used to write for. It has been redesigned, but the huge staff box on page 4, listing every single person who worked on that day's paper, right down to the Associate Entertainment Editor -- my job -- is the same. I noticed that the formerly ubiquitous ads for foreign films being shown on campus are gone. When I was at U.T. thirty years ago (!!) you could count on as many as 12 films being shown on campus on a Friday night. For a couple bucks you could see the 70s best of Wenders, Herzog, Antonioni, Wertmueller, Godard and many others. Four-year-old Hollywood films were shown at the Student Union. Gone are those days.