![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Good kitty...
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 05:02 pmI may have mentioned here once or twice before that there is a lion in the basement of the library in which the day job is located. It's a full-sized marble reproduction of the Lion of Lucerne, and it honors the Civil War dead, or at least some of them, whose names, bewilderingly translated into Latin, are carved into a massive marble tablet that hangs above the Lion.
Among the students of the college, it's a tradition, so I've been told, to seek out the Lion in times of stress -- as, say, before a Big Exam for which one is perhaps not quite as prepared as one ought to be -- and pat its nose. For luck.
I don't always come into the library through the basement door, and I didn't this morning. However, I had an early errand to run, and so returned by that route. I usually tell the Lion "hello," when I pass it -- it seems a reasonable courtesy. This morning, on nothing more than a whim, really, I stopped, put my hand on his nose, and murmured, "Good kitty..." before proceeding upstairs.
I was greeted upon my return to my proper level with the news that something which should have been in a particular seminar room, wasn't, and would I please look around the hall to see if I could locate it in a place where it ought not to have placed, and fetch it back.
This task I undertook, finally coming to another seminar room, where I thought I spied the missing item behind an extended movie screen. I advanced upon the place, leaned over the table, and tugged on the string to retract the screen.
...which promptly exploded off of the wall, giving the left side wall-mounted speaker one hell of a whack before landing heavily on the table and rolling to the floor.
The whole thing was over and done in a matter of seconds, and words can't really adequately convey the amount of energy that was released. The screen itself weighs on the order of twenty/twenty-five pounds and the edges are sharp metal.
It happened so fast that I don't recall moving from my place by the table, but I must have done, because (1) I wasn't brained, and (2) I was standing in the doorway when the two faculty members who had heard the racket rushed in to see WTF had happened.
So now, my neck and shoulder and arm, which are vulnerable to being twisted the wrong way on account of having led the way through a windscreen back before the rocks cooled, hurt, and I'm still pretty jazzed, though the event happened pretty early in day.
Thank ghod there wasn't a class in there when this happened.
Among the students of the college, it's a tradition, so I've been told, to seek out the Lion in times of stress -- as, say, before a Big Exam for which one is perhaps not quite as prepared as one ought to be -- and pat its nose. For luck.
I don't always come into the library through the basement door, and I didn't this morning. However, I had an early errand to run, and so returned by that route. I usually tell the Lion "hello," when I pass it -- it seems a reasonable courtesy. This morning, on nothing more than a whim, really, I stopped, put my hand on his nose, and murmured, "Good kitty..." before proceeding upstairs.
I was greeted upon my return to my proper level with the news that something which should have been in a particular seminar room, wasn't, and would I please look around the hall to see if I could locate it in a place where it ought not to have placed, and fetch it back.
This task I undertook, finally coming to another seminar room, where I thought I spied the missing item behind an extended movie screen. I advanced upon the place, leaned over the table, and tugged on the string to retract the screen.
...which promptly exploded off of the wall, giving the left side wall-mounted speaker one hell of a whack before landing heavily on the table and rolling to the floor.
The whole thing was over and done in a matter of seconds, and words can't really adequately convey the amount of energy that was released. The screen itself weighs on the order of twenty/twenty-five pounds and the edges are sharp metal.
It happened so fast that I don't recall moving from my place by the table, but I must have done, because (1) I wasn't brained, and (2) I was standing in the doorway when the two faculty members who had heard the racket rushed in to see WTF had happened.
So now, my neck and shoulder and arm, which are vulnerable to being twisted the wrong way on account of having led the way through a windscreen back before the rocks cooled, hurt, and I'm still pretty jazzed, though the event happened pretty early in day.
Thank ghod there wasn't a class in there when this happened.
