One of my friends drove me out to Maryland and back for Passover shopping, but we managed to avoid the Pope -- we went at about 1:30, and came back around 4, and I think the Pope was mostly messing up traffic earlier in the morning and later in the evening.

I also ended up buying way too much Passover food. But they had farmers cheese and all kinds of Israeli stuff that I usually can't get.

How's this:

Hi PROF. I just wanted to thank you for your honest appraisal of my final paper. I agree with you that it wasn't my best work/effort. The death in the family was definitely a factor in my performance in your class and truthfully I'm kind of bored with the topic that I chose. I think I might have benefitted from branching out and trying something new, though probably not during last quarter due to the above-mentioned stress. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I appreciate your candor and agree with your assessment.

I would still like to work with you on my independent study this summer (Session C) if you're up for it. I'll try to get a proposal together soon and might like to meet with you to refine it.

Thanks again,

Glamcookie

It's good, GC. I'm trying to think how to work in something along the lines of

I appreciate your candor [and this is how I know I'll learn from you which is what I'm here to do]

I am, however, brain dead.

Where did you Passover shop, Hil? My DH has to do something about his Passover diet. I know Silver Spring has a large orthodox population.

I went to Kosher-Mart in Rockville. I've been to a few of the kosher grocery stores around here, and it seems like Kosher-Mart is the biggest.

p-c, to my gmail? Hasn't shown yet, so I will check the spamtrap at home.

How about:

Anyway, just wanted you to know that I appreciate your honesty and will strive to meet (hey, maybe even surpass!) your expectations in the future.

We are on friendly terms so I think he'll laugh at the parens remark.

OK, heh. After our discussion of the Gulu-Gulu cafe here, I decided to go for a quick beer to kill time before my massage. I order the Hennipin. It's pouring mostly foam. OK. I order the McChouffe- it looks like this: [link]

What I get, no lie, looks like this: [link]

I pointed out the color discrepancy and was told "It's a *Belgian* brown ale" as if somehow the color brown is completely different in Belgium. I take a sip; it is SO NOT anything EVEN resembling a) Belgian ale b) Scotch ale (one of the style inspirations) c) a brown ale. It is crisp and bitter- it's a fucking pilsner! I mean, it's so absurd, that I half expect that the hipsters are conducting some sort of social experiment to expose beer snobs as total fools. Despite the server's protestations, I return the beer and get a Sierra Nevada ESB in the bottle.

So funny.

Excellent, GC. Professors rarely get appreciated for their grading, and you'll have established a good working rapport.

You should reward yourself with a new pair of shoes!

You should reward yourself with a new pair of shoes!

We should all reward ourselves with new shoes!

Nora! Dude! That's beer fraud!!!

(And Sierra ESB is a fine bottled beer. But I'm sorry about your lost Hennepin, as it's a fave of mine...)

(Have I mentioned lately how y'all bring out my barely-hidden inner beer snob?)