Rainy Sunday. The day never knew the sun. The afternoon passed imperceptibly from the early noon into the evening.

I put away stacks of paper and books today. My filing system for the semester goes like this: find an empty box, throw every paper, note, scrap and presentation scribble into the box. Stack the box under my considerably more organized, thinner and already daunting dissertation folder.

These things are in the way of the office closet door. That closet is clean and the office is dirty. The migration of clutter may move in there before the week is over.

The Yankee has been gone today,  visiting with Wendy’s family. They asked me to go, but there was too much to do — naps, cleaning, phone calls, Email — so I’ll make the next trip. This is, I think, the second night I’ve been a bachelor since last fall. The previous time was last fall.

So I’ve dug up magazines, as I mentioned, and went out for chicken fingers last night, as I did not mention. At the chicken place they’ve cleverly labeled the restroom doors for roosters and hens. A teen-aged girl walked down that little hall, got confused and came back asking her friends, at full volume, for advice. Would she be a rooster or a hen?

Kids. You don’t even have to be from a farm to get this one. The teachings of that great philosopher Foghorn Leghorn would have explained this:

When The Yankee returned home we all went out to a pizza place called Mafiaozas. I mentioned it the other night for some reason, remembering a relatively new place a student told me about last year. We ventured that way, got behind a nasty three-car wreck on 280, in the rain, through an intersection with no power for the traffic lights.

These are among the reasons I don’t make a lot of restaurant choices. Things happen. We were in the place for almost two hours. Did I mention it is a pizza joint? The pizza is good, a bit on the gourmet side, but you’ve had better. You can order it by the slice, though, for $2.75 each. Two filled me up.

And then more rain. More of it is coming in tonight and more tomorrow. May showers hold off the June drought, we always say.

Tomorrow: is a busy day. I have four errands to run before getting to campus. There’s a class to teach — this is the last week of classes — and then the year-ending awards picnic. Then a student-produced movie, to wrap up the last Monday of the semester.

Lest you think I didn’t do any school work today: I pulled three research articles to read. Even on these, the first days away from school work since January I still found research material. For the things you enjoy the semester never ends.

Did you watch the Foghorn video? From Bachelor’s Anonymous to “I won! I won! Hey there musta been some way I coulda lost …” in three minutes. Things move quickly around the chicken coop.

Kids today. Nothing a few good episodes of Looney Tunes wouldn’t fix.

Last night — I was stretched out across the sofa, typing on the laptop. Having created a WordPress database at the end of a busy week, played with the layout until late in the evening and then finally started writing the first post, the cat interrupted.

Cats have patterns. She spends her evenings on the right side of the sofa. (She spend dinner in the center, so she can beg for food with ease.) She gave me the “I’m getting down” look, which meant that I had to move the computer so she could walk across me and get down.

"Move out of my way."

Only she chose instead to curl up on me.

No problem, I figured. She’ll move soon.

She isn’t always the most affectionate cat. For her, humans exist as a provider of food. She likes to be near us, but seldom on someone. And even then it is only temporary.

Which is about the moment where I fell asleep.

So I slept on the sofa last night. I woke up this morning to her headbutting me. Probably she was mad that I’d rolled over and ruined her spot.  And then I fell asleep again.

Later in the day, while watching Der Untergang, I fell asleep again. Two naps in one week sounds decadent. Two in one day is a signal you need the rest.

About Downfall: This is not a cheery movie. There’s no way you could make a dozen days in a bunker with a bunch of sociopaths while the Russians closed in a happy thing. And there’s nothing sympathetic in any of the characters. There is the famous scene, of course, but the parodies are going to overwrite the original sequence in our memory. Tonight I’ve found three meta-parodies, so I’m guessing the meme is just about out of breath.

Also today I cleaned out my Inbox and straightened up a few things around the house. I played with the cats. One is sitting with me now.

I dug up my back issues of the Smithsonian Magazine and started catching up. I put them aside at the end of last summer and have  my way up to October of last year.

I learned a few words in Italian.

Not bad for a day with two (much needed) naps.