When finding efficiencies goes too far

Dregs of mocha in a mug

I was going to start this post with the following sentence:

“Sitting around brunch this morning…”

But a few things occurred to me to make me rethink the thought. Namely:

1. “Brunch” does not occur at 10AM. People call that breakfast. Brunch is a leisurely activity partaken in the immediacy of noon, at the absolute earliest. Heck, in DC, brunch is still going on at 3PM. Emphasis on post meridian. Thus this event this morning, emphasis on morning, was not actually brunch, because we were groaning at 9:17 that we had to get moving. Thank goodness nothing in Walla Walla is more than 8 minutes from anything else.

2. This so-called brunch was hosted by a veteran of the herbivore movement. Now then, I was a vegetarian from 1995-2000, and I learned very, very early that the whole idea of fake meat using soy products is the grossest possible way to be a veggie. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather just not eat a sausage than eat a sausage that in no way tastes like sausage. My mouth gets angry at me for the deception, I think.

So now that I’ve cleared all that up, I’ll begin again.

Sitting around a breakfast of plastic bacon, fine pastries, the remnants of my pie from last night, and some rather delicious cornbread, we were talking about people on the campus and the funny buildings they’ve acquired over the years. Readers of this blog will recall that Susanne and I call our house the Liar House, because it looks cute on the outside but inside is actually the Amityville Horror. So it came, really, as no surprise, to hear that one of the administrative buildings on campus used to be a mortuary.

The Liar House

Here’s the funny/not so funny aspect to it: most of the people in the building are emeritus faculty. So waht is it saying that they’re in the old mortuary? I mean, is that the message we want to send older faculty who’ve dedicated themselves to the institution? “Hey, if you pass away in your office, we’ve kept the formaldehyde in the basement! So no worries!”

Then there’s the former hospital that is now a dormitory for the students. Everything gets recycled in this town. Even the recycling center used to be someone’s house. So why couldn’t they have turned the house into student living, and used the hospital as the recycling center? I have no earthly idea. But someone, somewhere made the decision. I’ve been trying to figure out how someone gets the idea that

hospital : dormitory or mortuary : retired professor offices

but I got nothing. This is the campus, after all, that takes care of a pet goat, so it could just be that there are algorithms here that I do not comprehend. Maybe it’ll take more time living here, and by February I’ll be like, “oh is that a broken down pickup truck parked outside in the alley? well, now it’s a compost pile!”