zeborah: Map of New Zealand with a zebra salient (NZ)
[personal profile] zeborah
So I went into work today despite feeling like the Earth's centre of mass was constantly shifting under my feet. Fortunately, yesterday's excessive sleeping was successful in preventing my eyes from leaking today. Also, I got an email from a certain library vendor saying I'd won a prize draw at conference, which explained the mysterious arrival of a glossy book of photos in the post yesterday. I must confess I'm still a bit jealous of the person who won the 1-terabyte hard drive.

However, I must not be distracted from my miracle of science!

Today is the last day of the university teaching year before study week and exams begin, and you can guess what that means. Yes, it's the annual Tea Party! (Note that little tea is consumed at the Tea Party. In fact, if any of the liquids consumed at the Tea Party are tea then they almost certainly come from Long Island.) Every year, Central Library closes at 5pm on Tea Party Day because, being the nearest library to the Tea Party, it's the most likely to be disrupted and vomited in by Tea Partygoers.

The Tea Party officially begins on the Friday afternoon, but in practice people begin consuming appropriate liquids on Thursday evening, and continue consuming them through the morning. Thus it was that at about 10:30 this morning, several women wandered past Engineering Library with bottles in their hands and pink and white tights and tutus on their cheerfully swaying bodies.

It is this swayingness to which I wish to draw my readers' discerning attention. For, sometime in the late morning / early noon region of the day, my own propensity to sway began fading away. It is my hypothesis, therefore, that the presence of so many, so very inebriated, young people in one location caused a singularity to form in the sway-time continuum, attracting all symptoms reminiscent of inebriation towards the centre of mass of the Tea Partygoers.(1) Never let it be said that young people today bring no benefit to their community!

As the bus drove me home this evening, a little swayingness returned to me (see, my hypothesis could have predicted that swayingness would increase according to the square of the distance from the Tea Party, so it must be true!) but all in all, I feel approximately 82.3% better than I did this morning. My colleagues have made me promise not to make any sudden movements this weekend; but I feel this is excellent advice in general, which is bound to stand me in good stead for all sorts of situations, such as if I should come face to face with a rhinoceros, an avalanche, or a certain felis catus(2) staring intently at my hand as her tail switches back and forth.

(1) Do I have the coolest medical hypotheses since germ theory or what?
(2) I've decided to name her Scruffles for the rest of the day. Until she annoys me, and then it's back to "Ts!"

Date: 2009-10-17 04:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] birdsedge.livejournal.com
Your Swayingness Continuum has leaked through to the upper floors of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Ottawa. I'm on floor 22 and ever since I arrived i feelas though I'm on board a boat. I'm not quite dizzy enough to fall down, but I have this odd feeling that the floor is not quite static and that everything is rocking slightly.

I blame jet lag.

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