In which her hair is the ultimate cat-toy

As I went to bed the other night Boots scooted around behind my headboard-less bed. I lay down, and I guess some locks of my hair hung over the edge of the bed, because next thing I know a paw comes up to bat at it.

*

Managers should know how to perform basic desk functions because then, if they're trying to talk to other staff at the desk when a not-so-sudden onslaught of students arrives and they decide to help, they can in fact help, instead of interrupting another staff member trying to deal with another student to ask where the requested books are held, and then to ask if you issue it in the "check in" screen, and then instead of selecting the "check out" screen to minimise it, and so on and so forth, taking up more of said staff member's time than if the manager had stayed well out of it in the first place. --Alternatively they should know to stay away from the front desk when a major assignment is taking place, and I'm talking about an assignment that one year famously cleaned out all the books on the history of engineering from every library in town.

*

Dear colleague:

...Never mind, it'll be quicker to start reciting Latin straight away. Domine, dominus noster, quam admirabile est nomen tuum, quoniam est terminus hebdomis!

In which she reads two millennia of science-fiction

(Cross-posted to 50books_poc.)

Lucian of Samosata
- The True History
- Icaromenippus, An Aerial Expedition
Ibn al-Nafīs - Theologus Autodidacticus
Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain - Sultana's Dream
Naif Al-Mutawa - The 99: Origins

Sometimes when reading old things that have been called "early science-fiction" I think "Well, that's not really very science-y," but while I was reading these I thought more about what was known of science in the times they were written, and about how even some modern stuff doesn't fit my sometimes exacting preferences for storytelling, and decided that these all definitely count each in their ways. Lucian does the fantastic voyage; Ibn al-Nafīs the message story; Hussain the utopia. And of course the 99 doesn't need any explanations, it's just a modern superhero series.

( Long post behind cut )

Also of interest: Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad's website Islam and Science Fiction.