Another election has drawn to a close, and yet again the results suck. Conceding is almost worse than losing, I think. Imagine if the Red Sox had lost Game 7 against the Yankees and then taken them all out for beers to celebrate, stopping to mention to a Boston Globe reporter, "What idiot roots for the Red Sox anyway? Even we knew the Yankees would win." How can someone who volunteers to go to Vietnam be such a Nancy-boy when it matters? Was he thinking that he would preserve his good name to run again someday?

But, we continue to receive resumes, which brightens my day. Today we got one that included the candidate's weight: 185 pounds. It did not, however, include his height, and so it is hard to know what to make of this stat.

Tuesday was our second writing class. My boss was in a cranky mood, owing to the 85 spider bites he had received in a dodgy Midtown hotel the week before, and picked a fight with the woman over the content (classical economics) of a short passage which we were supposed to be using to correct some sentences written in the passive voice. As a former radio jingle writer, she was unprepared to debate economic theories, and it grew tense. Then she tried to tell me that I had done my sentence wrong, claiming that every use of the verb "to be" was, in fact, a passive construction.

It reminded me of the time my fifth grade teacher, God bless her, looked out the window into a blinding snowstorm and sent me to the office to see if we would be having outdoor recess. I told her that we would probably be inside, because of, you know, all that snow, but there was no convincing her. I went downstairs, asked the office ladies, and they said, "Huh? Wait, did Mrs. Hearn send you?" Good times. There's nothing sadder than a teacher who, having made a glaring factual error, won't back down.

For the next class, we're learning how to write e-mail. Issue #1, according to the19-page handout we have to read: when it's ok - and not ok - to use emoticons. :) !