Necessity? and invention

I'm not sure whether or not I'm more surprised to discover that, in a moment of necessity, cream soda makes an acceptable mixer for mediocre rum ... or that enough other people have experienced similar desperation that a mixology site would list twenty-nine other drinks that one can make with cream soda. Some of which are (at least theoretically) of sufficiently advanced formulation that they come with recommended brand for the soda (A&W leads the pack).

Fortunately, despite the first-day-of-the-new-term featuring a huge and irregularly shaped classroom that hides the lecture stand behind a pillar and faces the students' desks ninety degrees away from the projector screen, I have not reached the nadir of drinking this.

I suppose, were I a completely different person (or a person taking stronger happy pills), I would focus on the fact that one of my classes is full of "mature" students who seem interested in the topic. That deeply medicated Anne, would be brimful of joy at having made it into the ranks of "partial load" teaching rather than remaining a lowly part-timer. I'm a real academic now – my pay scale is determined by how many degrees I have! This Anne, however, remains firmly mired in the dreadful reality of having to attempt to impart knowledge to the sort of children who find it giggle-worthy that a course on wills and estates includes mention of clients dying.

Sigh...

On a somewhat brighter note, Mike Resnick's Starship: Pirates arrived from the library yesterday. Not, perhaps, quite as good as the first, it suffers from the author's realization that since he took a ten year break between first and second books, he should probably reintroduce the characters and world. Fine for people who read the first one when it came out – for anyone who reads the two back to back it results in unnecessary repetition. That said, the book is still well above average space opera, and an excellent temporary refuge from reality.