quake and grading

I don't have my meeting with my chair until tomorrow. I expect her to give me feedback that'll take me a solid week to address before the final version of my thesis goes out to my committee. So, until then, I'm going to sit here on my ass and do absolutely nothing so I can rest my grey matter. Right now I'm watching some History Channel special on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It's a really good one. Bit of trivia here for ya. The banks here in SF burned down to the ground and the money kept in fire proof vaults had to sit for days to cool off or they'd risk spontaneous combustion. But there was a one Bank of Italy owned by a guy named Giannini located in North Beach. He didn't have vaults like that so he took his horse and buggy and cleared the cash out of his bank (I guess before the whole building burned down around him). He covered up the money with oranges to thwart thieves and headed to his home in San Mateo (where I live!). He later brought the money back up to the city to set up loans for people and was clever enough to begin importing lumber from Oregon to start rebuilding San Francisco as well. It was said that, without him, San Francisco might not have gotten back up on her feet. His bank became what is now Bank of America.

In other news, one of my friends from school was grading papers in the lounge today. We were laughing about the quality of some of the stuff students turn in. We have our bad days too and sometimes what we turn in isn't publishable shit, but it certainly isn't this bad. The highlight in his pile of papers was a long run-on sentence constructed by stringing together a series of fragments, none of which made any sense on their own. But the winner by far was the student who spelled his own name wrong. We double checked. His name is definitely Jeff, not Jiff. There really should be trophies for this kinda thing. I suggested circling his name with a big red marker, but he chose not to embarrass the student any further. I totally would've done it.