Three "glad" things

There were three things that made me smile today:

• Cat napping: I had to go to my car to get the small 250w AVR which I always use with my laptop or for charging my cellphone whenever I'm at work. (I usually plug my more precious electronic stuff--like camera, my Yamaha P-80, my LCD tv, laptop, printer and cellphone--into an AVR. The electric current around here fluctuates so much that I'm afraid it will spoil my appliances, as it did my nice Sony component a few years ago.) When I got to my car I found the white and yellow tabby, who usually hangs around the area, stretched out and sleeping under front of the car on the passenger side. He was sleeping so peacefully in the shade--the sun was out and it was most probably a scorching 35C outside--that I didn't have the heart to scare him off. So instead of opening the front door on the passenger side to get the AVR which I had placed on the floor on that side, I got in through the driver's side and reached across the front seats to the get AVR. The cat was still fast asleep as I walked away.
• Help wanted and a prayer answered: For a few days now, I had been agonizing over the teaching load of the unit I work for due to the depleted teaching staff we currently have. I had to no choice but to give most of our junior staff a bit of an overload contrary to instructions from the administration to give no more than 9 units of teaching load credits to instructors with study load. Worse, there were still a couple of courses to which I had been unable to assign an instructor. My thoughts then were if only we had just one more lecturer to handle the surplus everything would be just fine. And then late this afternoon, our director came with the surprising news that a former instructor will be flying back home after resigning from a lucrative job abroad and rejoining the staff as a lecturer this semester. That's what I'd call an answered prayer! Hallelujah!
  
• Diamond in the rough: I came across this popular video of a talented contestant on "Britain's Got Talent" while reading a classical music blog at the Minnesota Public Radio. While I'm not completely impressed, there is something about the guy that makes me also think it's genuinely affecting to see his expression at the end of his performance.