Thursday

The title of this post is particularly inspired, n'est ce pas? I'll tell you why. Today is Thursday. And I'm writing this today. I marvel.

I am listening to Neko Case on iTunes, much like I did sitting in this very office at about 10:30pm last night. I thought it might, you know, bring things full circle and create a sense of closure.

Now, I do realize that there are many jobs where people routinely toil until 10:30pm, either because they work in some kind of important sector or because they have somehow come to believe that it is important. It's more unusual to go home at 5pm, but then get a call at 9:30 informing you that you've totally screwed something up. And by "something" I mean the sophomore treasure hunt. A thing that is universally understood to have no importance whatsoever. And yet.

In similar circumstances, most people opt to come in early to solve the problem. I do not enjoy early. I prefer to be asleep during early. After many self-deceiving years of "I'll get up early and do that" I finally know this about myself. On the contrary, to catch me at 10pm is to catch me at my best. Another thing I've learned about myself is that I need to be at the very height of alertness in order to understand anything at all about the logistics of a scavenger hunt.

And that, dear readers, is how I came to be here with the janitorial staff and Neko Case, five hours after I'd already gone home, cutting up colored slips of paper yet again. Colored slips of paper that I had spent rather a lot of time cutting up the first time. Colored slips of paper that I had put in an envelope along with some instructions and some bus tokens and then...I don't know. Recycled? Gave to someone as a memento? Ate? I have no idea what became of it. I managed to successfully distribute 14 other such envelopes, but number 15 apparently got the better of me. Among the only things I do understand about scavenger hunts is that they don't work without the clues. (Seriously, if you knew how hard I have to think in order to prepare these accursed clue packets, you probably would lose all respect for me. But I figured it out! Without crying! Or being totally wrong! I rule [in a miniscule, correcting-your-own-stupid-mistake sort of way]!)

A great many other small, tiresome things went awry today, which, were we drinking, I would enumerate in a lengthy, profanity-laced fashion, but, for now, let's just say that I don't think any students went missing irretrievably. So that's something. Also, it's over for another whole year, which is even better.

Tonight, as a hard-won reward, I get to see the Blog Bully. We're going to a play that's the second in a trilogy. Having already seen part one, I'm quite confident that it is not secretly an opera. I'm also thrilled to report that we already know how to get the theatre; there will be exactly zero riddle-solving required to find it. Things are looking decidedly up.