figment

Yesterday was pretty excellent. It involved making a successful presentation to a bunch of deans from Nigeria, catching a cab like magic, getting our heat fixed, getting back into yoga, and having a good evening at home.

So the deans of ABTI-American University of Nigeria are visiting AU right now. The two universities are connected; ABTI was basically started by AU, or with its help anyway. The deans are going to various offices and functions and so on at AU, trying to learn what they should do next and think about developing their university. So they came to CTE, where we talked to them about many things, but they were most enthusiastic (I think) about the distance learning and videoconferencing options. We only had them visiting us for an hour, but I laid out a good spread (including, because I am a geek, cookies decorated like the Nigerian flag) and they had a good visit. I also winged a pithy little presentation on marketing CTE, in which I surprised myself by (a) having a lot to say, (b) connecting it all together very neatly, and (c) sounding like I'd rehearsed it, although I'd done nothing of the sort. It made me feel really good about my job, and like I know what I'm talking about and I'm smart.

Shortly after the Nigerian deans left, I got a call from the heating people. The repair man was at my apartment and needed to get in, right now. Ack! (They were supposed to give me 1/2 hr to 1 hr notice, and it was supposed to be between 12 and 3, and this was 11:30.) I told them I would try to catch a cab and be there in about half an hour, and then ran out the door. I have tried to catch cabs from AU before, and generally it sucks. You wait and wait and wave frantically at some taxi going by only to fail to get them... so I was all set to take the shuttle to Tenleytown metro station and try from there. Amazingly, though, a taxi started to drive past just as I was waiting for the shuttle, so I flagged him down (I'm sure I made him happy, he'd just dropped someone off) and he got me home in about 20 minutes. Not bad!

The heating guy was waiting but was not surly so that was nice. He poked around at our heat, said that whoever installed it was an idiot because of various factors, and declared that our only problem was the filters desperately, desperately needed cleaning. Oh. We have filters? And they need to be cleaned every 30 days? This was news to the landlady as well as to me. So. I now have a very filthy permanent filter sitting in my tub trying to get cleaned (and clogging up my drain in the process; I just dumped part of a bottle of Liquid Plumr down there), and a set of temporary paper filters in the heater, and functional heat! So happy. Also,

msmaryclare, you were correct. We have a heat pump and he acknowledged that they don't work so well when it's below 30 degrees. Also our heat is stupidly located with the vents near the ceiling; we have 10-foot or so ceilings. So even though the vents blow down, the heat mostly ends up where no humans (or cats) are. Dumb. But! The most important thing, I need to reiterate, is that our heat is working again! Hooray!

I cruised back to work as soon as I knew that the heat was working and I struggled to catch up on email, etc. I am behind, but hopefully I can catch up today. Around 5:15 I stopped working, changed into yoga clothes, and ran over to the gym, where I joined a pretty full class doing yoga until 6:30. It felt great. It'd been at least a semester since I'd done any - I'm pretty out of shape. Warrior I reminded me of that. Ergh. But oh, so good. I came home feeling just excellent. I spent a fairly lazy evening and Azure made us a really yummy dinner and we watched the last ep of Battlestar Galactica season 2.5 - so now we have to switch over to watching it not-on-Netflix. That's kind of a bummer, but oh. So good. Mmm. Is there a place we can watch season 3 episodes online? Or does iTunes have it?

So that was my good day. And today

xatharine comes to visit, so I know the weekend will be good.