Skip to main content

the way things work

My plan:
1. Send email to professor on Sunday night with a question.
2. Receive eager response on Monday morning, Tuesday morning at the latest.
3. When eager response not received by Wednesday afternoon, go to professor's office and demand that he respond to you.
4. When professor appears not to be in his office, stand in hallway and play with iPhone just in case he walks by in the next fifteen minutes.
5. When professor does not appear, walk back to library in the cold wind and ask God if he has a better plan.

Better plan:
1. Send email to professor on Sunday night with a question.
2. Wait patiently for a few days.
3. Stop in at the professor's office on Wednesday to follow-up.
4. In case professor is not in office, don't worry, just go to library.
5. After picking up books at library, get on subway to go home.
6. Transfer subway lines and while waiting for the next train, look around.
7. See a woman looking at you. Do I know her? Look away. Look back at her. Yes, I do know her.
8. Smile at woman coming over to talk to you.
9. Say, "Hi, I was just at your husband's office and he wasn't there."
10. Have a great talk with professor's wife while riding on the subway.
11. Have message delivered in person to professor by loving wife.
Nellie is a well-trained dog belonging to my friends. This is a photo of Nellie's front paws. She knows something about letting her master dictate her behaviour. She also knows when she is supposed to keep her paws off something.

Comments

Shelley said…
so which plan did you follow?
Matte Downey said…
I tried "my plan" first, then jumped to "better plan" after "my plan" lost steam, though I skipped a few of the first steps due to already having done them according to "my plan."
Anonymous said…
Great story... Fate? Great coincidence? Worked either way :)
Lori said…
We should all be as smart as Nellie :)

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim...