I was grading papers yesterday - because that's what you do when you're Mr. TA Man, even during Carnival, you don't go out and get sloshed, you grade papers.

Start over. I was grading papers yesterday. Think-Aloud Protocols, which is my favorite assignment in the class. But one of the students begins half his descriptions of usability problems with "so". Example: "So there is a practical loss of functionality here because the user could not immediately get to the desired function."

Nevermind the fact that it's a vague sentence. Nevermind that it's a run-on, and could do with a comma before "because". Nevermind the use of the meaningless phrase "practical loss of functionality". (As opposed to an impractical loss of functionality?) Nevermind the use of "function" in the explanation of "functionality". It's that "so" that gets to me. God forbid this kid's profession ever requires him to write anything.

Meanwhile, I need to start paying more attention to the fire alarm in my building. They have a tendency to randomly test the fire alarm without telling anybody. Almost two years I've lived here, probably about 20 fire alarms, and there's never been a real fire.

I started just ignoring the fire alarm. But we were over here last night entertaining Nathan, and it went off at about 12:30. Better safe than sorry, we figured, so we all went outside.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, two fire trucks pull up and a bunch of firemen (some carrying large fans) enter the building.

We gave up waiting after 15 minutes and headed to campus, so I never found out exactly what happened. But presumably, since the firemen stuck around and actually called more firemen, there was some sort of fire.

Alright, I've gotta wake his sorry ass up and return the scratched copy of Grand Theft Auto 3 I bought yesterday.