Maybe it's just the weather

I was sitting at a table outside today, trying to trick myself into thinking I was INDEED actually retaining the Global Warming material I was at the moment imagining to be an exhaust pipe when I heard a squishy, suspicious "PLOP" near me. Lo and behold, a bird poo had lodged itself right in between my drink and my notebook. Right smack dab in between the two items! Like this:













I don't think you guys comprehend the significance of this. Juan Jose Lado probably does.

This is the first time I've been minorly lucky in the face of the elements. Had this been any normal day, that piece of bird excrement would have been the size of a meteor and would have landed so hard on me it would have knocked the wind out of me. Had I been standing in a huge crowd, that feces would have singled me out and would have "honed in on me like a guided missile" (to use an expression from Match Point). This event prompted me to jump up and ask the nearest person if I had any sort of unmentionable on me, and receiving an answer in the negatory, I nearly skipped off to class.

My life has been going a lot like this lately. To make another completely appropriate parallel, when crossing 55th Street, occasionally there are no crosswalks, and pedestrians sort of hang out on the painted lines dividing the road in half. One step this way or that way would guarantee pedestrian pancake for the hungry drivers, and sometimes I feel like the drivers are just passing me by the stubble on their chins. I feel like I've been getting by in everything I do by the skin on my teeth, and I'm feeling pretty antsy about everything. I want the academics of the year to be over, but I'm not ready for the summer to start in earnest.

I wish I could either decide to panic or to play it cool.