Today when I was walking in to school I met a friendly stalker.
A cat was creeping silently along as she stalked a tiny yellow butterfly. When, pounce…as the butterfly flitted away and then circled back and flew a little diving run across the cat’s back in a "laughing in her face" kind of way.
Now I was all prepared to scold the stalker for her bad behavior. I mean I did have my Ani "evolve" shirt with the moth on it on and I needed to represent. But as I neared her she saw me and wandered over in a very pleasant "how do you do?" sort of way. Imagine that, a cat saying hi to me. Me. Cat. Hi. Weird.
Anyway, I gave up on the scolding because she really was just applying a little "selective pressure love" to that butterfly to help it in its own personal quest to evolve; and it did escape AND have the last laugh.
Well, that silly cat strolled right up so I bent down in a friendly way and said Hi. She started to brush against my leg like cats are wont to do—what is it with that full body rub thing, anyway? It could get a human thrown in jail or at least a bad butt whuppin’—and as soon as I touched her back to pet her the silly damn cat flopped over on her belly and put her legs up in the air.
So I rubbed her belly like she was a dog or something. Then she started flippin’ all around under my hand. Just about the silliest cat I ever met. Never say a stalker can’t be friendly. But I bet that butterfly had best watch it’s back.
I got a friendly reminder today that there are other UIUC GSLIS grads out there besides Karen at Free Range Librarian because of a comment I made at my Carnival #2 post, where I said:
And for any of my schoolmates
out there, where are you? I keep getting told that we’re the #1
school; so help me show it. We can’t rely completely on the alums to
represent for us can we? Folks like Karen do a great job, but is our responsibility too.I know some of you are lurking out there; you’ve told me so. What
are you up to? What are your interests? What are you doing to develop
professionally? I may be sticking my neck out here on occasion, if the
Tribbles and Gormans of the world have their way, but I’m also engaged
in a community, thinking, working out ideas, learning about others’
takes on those same ideas, learning about other ideas, developing my
writing skills in a new format, and many other useful things all at
once. Join me; it is a friendly crowd here.
Rochelle had also made a comment at that post, "I’m here! I’m here!" [And sorry for taking so long to respond Rochelle! Been hectic getting that Civil War paper done, training new LEEP students, getting myself ready for a new semester….]
I know that there are plenty of wonderful UIUC grads out there who are blogging and I didn’t mean to dis anyone—and I’m not saying Rochelle or my emailer today was saying I was. I was just too lazy or tired or busy or something when I made the comment to look up who else had graduated from UIUC.
And I am quite confident in the alums capacity to represent for the school. My comment was really directed at my current peers though. I know a few of them blog. Two have LiveJournals, another something else but I’m not sure what his schtick is and I never remember the name of it. I also know several of my classmates have stumbled over my blog because they have told me so. Anyway, it was a call to them, and others, to join us if they’d like.
So I hope I didn’t offend anyone! I’m certainly glad that those of you who are here are. Just trying another way to engage with some of my fellow students.
And on another note, classes start tomorrow. Yikes!
