Last night Em was babysitting two young children from the church. Luckily (or sadly – depending on your outlook) I missed most of the evening as I had to work late.

Soon after I arrived at the house and had dinner, Em and the kids took off – leaving me with a pair of kittens and a grumpy old cat. The kittens proved to be a pain – causing all kinds of trouble as they happily bounced their way through life. The sad part is that Jasmine, our first cat, hasn’t fully accepted them into the house – the outcome of this being that she snares at them every time she sees them….

Trying to ignore the bounces and screams of the cats, I sat down at the kitchen table, picked up a pen and started blankly at a piece of paper. Only this was just a normal, every day, safe and innocent piece of paper – it was the enemy of all students, the bane of mankind. For on this paper was printed the words forming a final exam.[@more@]

The only way I was able to brace myself for the fate ahead was to take a sip of Jack Daniels – a guarantee way to wake one up and clear the mind. Of course, if you take too many sips the clearness of mind quickly becomes numb and you fall into…well, you fall into anything that happens to be close by.

Sigh.

You know – exams aren’t as bad as papers. Papers are tough – well, it kind of depends on the paper. Research papers are easy because you just write down what you find. By comparison paper – those of tough!  They make you think!!  And that is a dangerous thing.

But I drift off course…. In the end, I completed my exam, locked the kittens up, turned on an audio book, grabbed a glass of wkisky and sat down next to the fire with a snuggly old cat curled in my lab.

Life is good.…