Convenience

I'm sitting at a Mudd PC to write this, having faced an all-too-difficult dilemma: should I choose to work at a first-foor PC, with a stubborn keyboard but a sublimely ergonomic chair, or a ground-floor Mac, with a responsive keyboard and a boring office chair? I chose the chair, so if I've skipped some letters, blame it on my spine.

Any life which features this dilemma is a very luxurious life.

And in fact, I feel deliciously pampered. Nobody is wearing my socks, for instance, and nobody wants rides anywhere, which is just as well since I haven't got a car. I'm walking everywhere I need to go -- a step down from biking (my chain rusted over) -- but a step up from driving for sure.

Not everything is so convenient. As iDLEC,* for instance, interim looks to me like a vast and stormy sea. Last night, for instance, myself and several other Keepers began dinner crew at eight o'clock because no one had done so at seven. Then I feared and fretted because nobody had signed up to cook lunch today.

At 10 this morning, David volunteered and turned out one of the best stir-fries I've ever tasted -- a rare and dangrous compliment at Keep, where we have stir-fry at least twice a week. That, plus pasta, a rich tomato-veggie sauce, and cucumbers dusted in salt and dill. The lunch was stunning. Almost everyone wanted seconds.

Let me stress, too, that the makeshift dinner crew, unlike othr interim crews, was not made up of people who had planned to spend an hour scrubbing pots and cleaning counters. They were sitting in the lounge, enjoying a lazy evening before the first day of classes. Nobody was exactly thrilled about crewing. But they stepped up to the plate anyway. This is the worst and the best of OSCA. And I would choose community over convenience every time.

I do, of course, miss my family. The feeling is exacerbated by Keep's resemblance to a household in the best and the worst of ways. But that's another post entirely. Ciao for now.
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*Interim dining and loose ends coordinator -- more on this later, after my first discussion.