Book meme

No one officially tagged me but I'm in my office trying to write an exam (which is NOT writing itself, I tell you), so I'm going to do this thing.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

Pretty much any book that hints that lots of bad crap happens to the protagonists, and they basically wallow in the bad crap. Or that it's crap they brought on themselves. (One thing that frustrated me about a particular novel my book club read? The female lead started sleeping with her boyfriend's best friend and was all "Nothing bad can come of this, la la la."

Well, I've never even BEEN in a position where I had a boyfriend with a sleep-with-able best friend, but I know that nothing good can come of that situation. And the nothing good DID come of it, and the next 75 pages or so were the heroine wondering why her life was so mucked up.

I'm sorry, but any book that makes me want to go Dr. Laura on the characters of, I don't want to read.

Oh, and Danielle Steele. It's an irrational prejudice but I will not read Danielle Steele.


If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

Okay, I'm going to assume I get to interact with them, and I get to set the thing in the time and place I want.

So I'm going to indulge my deep and abiding love of Golden Age Mystery here and say I'd bring to life Hercule Poirot (to talk about stuff with, and perhaps play chess with - did Poirot play chess?) and Albert Campion (even though that's not his real name, and even though he does put on that affable-idiot pose a lot of the time, I still have a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him. He'd be the one who'd get to take my arm when we all went in to dinner.) And Archie Goodwin. Because as much as I love Poirot and Campion, if someone was really going to try to HARM me, Archie'd be the one most likely to be able to kick their ass.

Oh, and the setting? Some kind of upper-middle-class Edwardian British thing. A tea-dance or something, or maybe a weekend in one of those immense country houses where the host and hostess invite all their friends and relatives.

I'd like to be able to swan about in high-society 30s-era clothing.

Yes, I just made that question all about me.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?

I know there are people who will be horrified at me for saying this, but: it would have to be something by Ayn Rand. Perhaps The Fountainhead. I tried reading it and my brain just started going Do. Not. Want.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?

Man, that's hard to think of one like that. I'm more likely to hint at familiarity with movies I've not actually seen.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?

No, can't think of any, but in a similar vein, one of the things that annoys me? The fact that publishers, sometimes, when they re-issue books, will give them new titles. The re-issuers of Golden Age mystery novels are particularly bad for this. And I can't always remember from the catalog blurb which ones I've read and which ones I've not, so I have more than one copy of a couple of them.

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP)

This is kind of tough. Since the person's not a "big" reader, it would have to be a book that's fairly arresting and not "boring." (I am well known for selecting books other people find "boring.").

I might consider "The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" which fascinated me because it was a peep at the way someone who thinks very differently from us (a boy with autism) has an inner monologue, it's fairly short, it's suspenseful in places (well, if you have enough empathy to feel for the main character), and you do feel a bit like you understand human nature better at the end. And it's not a book that "breaks bad" like some of the novels I referred to in the first question.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?

Oh, man, that's tough.

I'd probably choose New Testament Greek so I could read the New Testament in the original.

Or maybe Japanese so I could read some of the poetry. I'm sure it comes through very differently in translation. (Bonus with knowing Japanese would be that I could read manga without having to refer to translations)

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

I'd probably pick something like C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce." It's not overly long, it's deep enough that multiple re-readings would reveal something new, and it's well enough written that I'd be less likely to get sick of it.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?

Hmmm...I've learned a bit more about "steampunk" (even the sheer fact that it's a genre) from reading around on blogs.

I've also purchased the occasional book because someone referred to it and wrote a review of it that made me think I'd like to read it.

Oh, and I bought a Philip Yancey book (which I haven't read yet, yipes) because Tracey talked about him.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.

Oh my goodness. How much time do you have?

It would be a large room, perhaps octagonal. Two or three of the walls would boast leaded-glass, diamond-paned windows that look out over a large lawn that slopes down to a forest (and I would own all the land so no one could ever come and build condos on it). One window would probably face west so I could watch sunsets (I'm usually at work up until sunset). The room would be paneled in sort of a medium cherry or oak - not too dark but not that blonde wood that smacks of 1950s Danish Modern, either. All of the non-window walls would have bookcases on them. (One of the windows would have a small desk below it - not a "work" desk but a place to write letters or sit and read).

There'd be a deciduous tree outside the window so there'd be shade in the summer, but not too much of the view would be blocked.

There'd be a good carpet - either Aubusson or some kind of older Persian rug - in the middle of the wood floor, and arranged on that would be two good comfortable armchairs and a sofa. There'd be a coffee table and a small side table between the chairs, because one needs a place to put one's teacup while reading. The sofa would also have enough loose pillows to make a comfortable backrest for reading while stretched out. There'd also be an ottoman big enough to serve both armchairs if both were occupied.

The sofa would be a good glove leather but the armchairs would be a subtle brocade.

There'd be good light - the ceiling would be vaulted but not too high and would have down-lights in it, and there'd be good lamps near each reading spot (including one on the desk). It would be possible to make the room as bright or as dim as desired, especially to dim down the ceiling lights at night and just rely on the single pool of light from a reading lamp.

The books would be mostly hardbound, lots of vintage books, lots of books with illustrations in them (I tend to think adults are as deserving of illustrated books as children). There might be some paperbacks if that's the best way to compile sets - some of the old orange-bound Penguins, some of the sets of re-issues of detective novels all from the same publisher so they're identical. (I have a big thing about wanting all books that I own by a particular author to be as similar in binding and style as possible.) The shelves would go nearly to the ceiling and there'd be one of those rolling ladders to gain access to the books higher up.

The topics of the books would be anything and everything that interested me. I'd have a wall of mysteries, a wall of history books (focusing heavily on the ancient world, my current historical interest), a wall of classics with full sets of works by people like Dickens and Austen, a wall of books about quantum mechanics and math, etc., etc.

I'd also have a knitting basket next to my armchair - either for times when I didn't feel like reading, or for times when I want to knit on something simple AND read at the same time (I guess I'd also need a bookstand to hold up my book in that case).

And there'd be a good radio in there, with the ability to pick up quiet classical and jazz stations, maybe even more than one of each (this is an issue in my part of the world, where the music choices tend to be Top 40, Top 40 Country, and Top 40 "oldies" which are actually from the 70s and 80s.)

Just outside the door of the library, there'd be a sort of mini-kitchen with a set up for making tea, and perhaps a couple of canisters of good crackers or "biscuits". A filtered-water tap, a single burner for heating the kettle on, some canisters of tea, sugar, a small refrigerator for milk and lemons, a sink for washing-up, and a cabinet with mugs in it.

President's quiz

Ken and others did this, so I figured I would, too.

I tend to get Washington on these things. (There was another, different, presidential quiz out there). I'm not sure what that means - either I come from a more aristocratic background than I think of myself coming from, or it's the fact that I only accept responsibility/power because people tell me I will do a good job at it, and not because I want it so much.



Or maybe it's those wooden teeth.

Which Great US President Are You Most Like? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as George Washington 1st President, in office from 1789-1797 Born: 1732 Died: 1799 George Washington 79% Dwight Eisenhower 69% Abraham Lincoln 62% Ronald Reagan 62% John Kennedy 60% Harry Truman 53% Theodore Roosevelt 52% Franklin Roosevelt 50% Thomas Jefferson 45% Lyndon Johnson 43% Woodrow Wilson 40%

sorry, but you get moar kittehs....

Because this made me laugh, and also, I have to offer up a confession:


moar funny pictures

If my parent's cats weren't 19, one of them rather fragile, and the other a little tank (and so, I'd have been afraid of dropping her)? I would TOTALLY have done that the last time I was up visiting my folks.

Prayers

Once again: thank you all so much for the cards, the good thoughts, the messages during my crap week. It helped tremendously to know that people "had my back," at least emotionally speaking.

One thing that kind of sucks about being single is that there's no one else at home so when you've had a crap day, you either have to figure out some way of forgetting it, or you wind up dwelling on it, because there's no one else there that you can tell it to, who will say, "Well, yeah, that's stupid that they did that" and who will make you a cup of hot chocolate or tell you a pirate joke or something to make you feel better.

(And yes, I realize I'm idealizing here, but lots of the folks I know who are married have someone who is like that).

One of the things that I have come to realize is a blind spot of some coupled people - this happened when all the Youth Group stuff hit the fan back in August, after the grape-fight and after I had the "double secret probation meeting" that I wasn't warned about in advance - I was sitting there at the table sobbing, feeling like a complete and total waste of flesh, and the minister looked at me and said, "I just realized that you have no one to go home and talk this out with."

And fortunately I was sobbing hard at that point or I would have snarled "YA THINK?!?!?" at him...because I was kind of angry at him at that point. (I've long since forgiven him and just chalked the whole bad-communication mess up to blind spots piling up on blind spots).

Anyway. To make an overlong comment shorter: it helped a whole lot, what you all did, so thanks.

And now I see that there are two folks out among the bloggers I read who need prayers and good thoughts, both for similar reasons - Tracey and Joel.

You guys are in my prayers. I hope it works out for you. I hope you can have some peace and not too many sleepless nights during this process.

I'm thinking of you, for what it's worth.

It's funny, how a lot of pundits talk about how "isolating" the Internet is, how it leads people to be ruder and less caring than they would otherwise be, how it allows isolated people to persist in the "pathology" of being isolated. (As a lone-wolf type, I dislike the pathologization of those who prefer to go it alone most of the time. We're not all serial killers in the making, I promise).

At any rate - one thing I've found at least in the tiny corners of blogland I inhabit (here, and the little circle of blogs I visit here, and also the craft blogs where I hang out) there's an awful lot of caring and support. Someone has something really bad happen, and people are there offering prayers (even folks you would not expect to offer prayers). Offering good thoughts. Offering, in some cases, real concrete help. When people have something tremendously good happen (as in Wunderkraut's "gotcha day" for Mei), people are there ready to celebrate. Even when people are having problems that really aren't problems in the wider cosmic scheme of things (like my little meltdown of last week which really WASN'T that big a deal except I was in a place where it was hard to see my way out of the pile of things...kind of like being in a room full of manure, shoveling like heck, but still seeing no sign of that pony), people will offer support and caring instead of an "Oh, get over yourself already." (Although perhaps in some cases, with my "stuff," a firm "Ricki, get over yourself" might be what I actually need to hear).

But anyway...I don't know where I'm really going with this and I don't have any punchy way to wrap it up in a neat package, but I have to say I'm glad the Internet exists. And not just because I can order yarn and books and fabric and tea and have them delivered to my door, and not just because I can look up information on any movie I might have seen on tv and been asking "who was that guy and was he also in that other movie?" I'm glad the internet exists because there are a lot of caring people out there who are on it and who share the goodness of their hearts, and their humor, and their expertise and advice with other people WHOM THEY HAVE NEVER MET.

It's kind of a mindboggling thing when you think of it.

The essence of "Do Not Want."

(I almost titled this "Moar Catz" just to warn the non-cat-people, but what the heck - I think the other one is funnier).

There is a Flickr group called World's Heaviest Harness that is nothing but pictures of cats doing the non-violent resistance thing when their owners put harnesses on them.

The funniest one was posted on Cute Overload (I can't link to a specific post there; they seem to have disabled permalinks). It's this one.

I think we've all had days when we felt like that.

Awwwwwww!

Normally, I claim to be very very cynical about things like Valentine's Day.

Part of it is actually because deep down, I'm a real romantic, and I'm kind of repulsed at the apparent quid-pro-quo some of the ads present (like Pajamagram, which stops JUST SHORT of saying, "hey, you bought her something. And it's pajamas. You're gonna get a little of the ol' wink-wink, nudge-nudge, knowwhatImean?"). Or I'm disgusted by the sheer "buy buy buy" attitude. (And again I ask: most couples pool their incomes, no? So if you buy your significant other a $10,000 Valentine's gift, you're both taking the financial hit, if it's not something easily affordable, no? I mean, if I were part of a couple? I'd be happy with a silly card and ecstatic if I got lunch at the good Italian restaurant in town - which would set the chap back less than $30, total)

And I'm also a little bereft at how hard relationships seem to be - or at least how good the people around me seem to be at screwing them up.

But still - for Nightfly and his Ladybug (or Ladybug and her Nightfly), Ken and Sainted Bride, and all the others who are happily coupled, this LOLcat's for you:


moar funny pictures

Awwwwwwww!

You guys!

First off, I have to admit I'm a bit freaked out at how easily my email address (which I don't have up here, for some particular reasons) seems to zip around cyberspace when it wants to.

But that's fine.

Thank you all so much for the cards and notes of support (and Far Side cartoons.)

This week is going better.

Part of it is that in the academic world - or at least my corner of it - the first week of the month is often just nucking futs, and you just kind of have to grab on and ride it out.

And part of it is just that I got a bunch of crap dumped on me at a time when I was kind of at a low point to begin with, and so I was less cheerful about dealing.

But. The church window is now fixed, my department chair said that being temporarily denied graduate faculty status would NOT hurt me because it was a silly rule and she'd get me reinstated this fall, a colleague made me a semi-permanent loan of equipment to replace the missing equipment (semi-permanent until the missing stuff gets reordered).

The difficult people I have to deal with are still difficult, but, meh, whatever. The world is full of a-holes.

And it's Friday. Even though I have an on-campus commitment tomorrow morning, it's still Friday.

If it wasn't broken...

...when did I get the idea it needed fixing?

For years and years - gosh, since I was in fifth grade, I think - I had a particular way of doing the background research for a paper. I'd get my sources (whether they were check-out-able books at the library, or books my family owned* or books that didn't check out and had to be read in the library), grab a big packet of lined 3 x 5 cards, a pen or pencil, and start reading.

(*Yes, I am in that group-of-privilege, from that crazy survey making the rounds, of people who grew up with more than 500 books in the house. Which I think in the wealthy circles of the town I grew up in made my family seem not so much privileged as it made them seem batsh*t crazy. I learned early on that "being rich" and "caring about learning" are not necessarily an overlapping set)

The first card I'd make for a source was my "bibliographic" card, where I copied down all the information about the author, title, year of publication...yadda yadda fishcakes. The stuff that I would need to make my Bibliography or Literature Cited at the end.

Then I'd start reading. Any time I encountered a fact that I thought might be needed for my paper, I'd write it on a separate 3 x 5 card, with the author's name and year of publication at the top. (YES, even when I was a kid. I think my dad taught me this. My dad did a lot of research and wrote lots of journal articles). And I took the stuff down "in my own words" so I could be protected against even unintentional plagiarism.

And I'd just keep working, happily away, until I had digested all my sources.

Then I made an outline.

Then I took all my cards and I wrote the outline codes (like I. A. 2. ii.) on the card corresponding to where it would fit in the outline.

Then I lined up all the cards in outline order, and started writing.

This is how I wrote all the papers from, as I said, about 5th grade on. (I remember getting really high marks and really nice comments from teachers in the sixth grade on a long paper I wrote on cougars, partly, I think, because I made a real effort to find good background - read a whole book, a long one, on them, in addition to consulting the Usual Sources like National Geographic World and Ranger Rick and the various encylopediae.)

It is how I wrote both my thesis and my dissertation.

But recently, for some reason, I stopped. Laziness, maybe - it's easier, if you have a printout of a .pdf file of an article, or a journal that belongs to you and you alone, to just underline or make a note in the margin.

Or maybe it was lack-of-time.

Or maybe it was the effort of deciding whether to move or chunk the boxes and boxes of labeled and filed cards I had made over the years. (Just the ones from grad school. I'm not QUITE obsessive enough to have saved the cards from my cougar paper. Or the one I wrote on Shakespeare's England in high school. Or the one on William Purcell, also from high school).

But at any rate. I was working today on a new paper and I got to thinking. The last paper I had easily accepted for publication was, in fact, the last one I used the card system on. Since then, I've kind of foundered - haven't written as well, have banged my head against a figurative brick wall while revising, just haven't been as happy with what I'm writing.

So I pulled out a packet of cards, and a couple journal articles on my most recent research topic, and started making cards.

And you know what? It felt like coming HOME. It felt right. It felt like all those years of good-paper-juju are coming back to me. And even if that's all 100% psychological placebo effect, it will still make me write better. (And I don't think it is; I think the cards force more reflection and more organization, both of which are better). So I have two other papers I want to overhaul; I'm seriously considering doing the card-thing for them.

I wish I had figured this out earlier.

Sneezy

Today is going to be better. It just is. I have declared it to be so and with all the powers of denial and imagination I have in me, it will be better, even if it actually isn't.

Unfortunately my allergies have flared up. (Which is probably part of yesterday's distress as well - right before an allergy attack, I get kind of dysphoric and easily-overwhelmed and tired). I'm sneezing this morning and had a sore throat when I got up. (This is about the time of year when trees start flowering here, and even though it's kind of cold out, I suppose they could have. Also, we are having a lot of renovation done down at church and there are paint fumes EVERYWHERE - not bad enough to actually make a person sick, but I'm kind of sensitive to all those things and so it sets off my sinuses).

I will say youth group went fairly well last night. We had to have game time indoors (it was cold and it gets dark early enough that there really isn't a chance to play outdoors). One of the kids suggested charades (Charades!) and they all went for it, to my amazement (this is a fairly diverse-interest group so it surprises me to find a game they all like). The only disappointment was that some kids had a hard time coming up with things, and since the game was kind of on short notice, we didn't have a list to choose from. So I told them that for next week, I'll make up a bunch of slips of paper with things on it they can do, and they can draw one out of a coffee can or something if they can't come up with a thing to do.

(One of the kids last night did "roadkill" as his thing).

I'm still thinking about those "embroidered childhood heroes" things that I linked to the other day. I love that idea so so much. I got to thinking and came up with the idea of selecting a bunch of my favorite authors, doing embroidered portraits of them, and turning it into a quilt. That idea pleases me - sleeping under a quilt representing one's favorite authors. I'd have to have on there Madeline L'Engle, and Anthony Trollope, and M. F. K. Fisher, and C. S. Lewis, and Margery Sharp (who wrote some wonderful grown-up books, which she should probably be better known here for, as well as the Rescuers series), and maybe Kathleen Norris, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Agatha Christie....
Of course, it is one of those things that would be a lifetime project for me - I have so little time to work on anything like that, ever, and it takes me a long time to do embroidery, so I don't know if I'd actually do it, but the idea pleases me. And yes, it would specifically have to be embroidery, and my own sketched portraits of the author plus things indicative of him or her...like for Margery Sharp I'd have to put a white mouse in there (Miss Bianca) and for Lewis certainly his pipe and either a cup of good strong tea (how does one depict STRONG tea, I wonder, using embroidery) or a pint of ale, and for Fisher there would have to be vegetables and prawns and things like that. Cooking things.

Also, I can't draw very well, especially drawing recognizable likenesses of people, so that would be a stumbling block. (Though then again, I could enlarge-photocopy dustjacket pictures and trace them, I suppose).

But still, it's an idea that pleases me, and sometimes having an idea like that, even if I don't put it into practice, is good enough.

thanks guys

Thanks for the ecards and the messages and stuff. I'm doing some better.

Somedays you just have crap days, you know? I suppose it's so you appreciate the days when stuff doesn't go wrong.

One other thing you probably need to know about me is that kind of minorly freaking out in the blog is one way I deal with stuff. I react strongly and I react fast but I tend to get over stuff pretty fast. I'm actually fairly resilient.

Of course, the fact that some buttmunch swiped some of the Vital Lab Equipment I needed for today didn't help, but even that I managed to recover from. (But if I find out who said buttmunch is...they better watch out).

Now just have to write a quiz, eat my lunch, and teach an afternoon lab. Oh, and do youth group. (I hope the kids got to have recess today and ran off all their energy...)

well

I've done what I can.

If it's not good enough, screw 'em. Two of my colleagues agree it's sort of unreasonable, so at least I feel better about that.

I just get tired of all the HOOPS, ya'know? The fact that everything has to be so minutely documented. I had to re-submit a travel reimbursement claim 3 times this summer because they kept asking for more stuff - even though my name was on a list of "section moderators" they still needed a receipt for my registration, stuff like that.

It irritates me because it makes me feel like they don't trust me. And I know, they do that because there are people who can't be trusted. But it drives me up the wall that the lawabiding, rule-following people always wind up getting slapped with more hoops to jump through because of the few bad apples.

Frankly I work my ass off. Some days I meet myself coming and going. I take on extra responsibilities willingly, because I understand that sometimes stuff needs to be done, and it's stuff that's not fun to do and you don't get paid for it. But I don't appreciate people turning around and going, "Sorry, you didn't fill out form Double Secret Q-46, you need to go back and start all over."

oh cripes

I don't know what it is - probably just some dumb hormone related thing, or allergies, or some stupid thing messing with my head - but I'm having a really hard time this morning. I've actually shed a few tears and it's not 8 am yet, so that's not a good sign.

I got up, did my usual workout, washed up, and as I was digging through my dresser drawers, I idly thought, "So is this what I'm going to be doing for the next 30-odd years? Hauling my ass out of bed far earlier than I want to, doing what amounts to a forced-march for an hour to try to stave off weight gain and other health problems, and then have to spend time searching for socks that match?"

Brain, don't go there.

Because although I can take the thing one day at a time, thinking about the sheer weight - the day-in, day-out - of getting out of bed early, trying to find something I want to wear, preparing my sad little lunch, going through the day (and yesterday wasn't a good day), coming home, thinking, "yay, I have an hour and a half to do what I want," doing it for 30 minutes, realizing I'm too tired to keep going, and going to bed - just exhausts me.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are lots of people who have it worse. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I should be happy.

But there's one thing - well, more than one thing, really - eating at the edges of my consciousness. In another year or so I'm up for Full Professor. And I'm beginning to worry I've not done "enough." Because on my campus, "enough" can be a moving target. And we have a new president who'd bringing in new administrators, and I'm frankly scared they're going to change EVERYTHING and suddenly what looked like "enough" before is now "you've got to be kidding"

And it's not helped by the fact that, on my campus, you don't get to stay permanently on "graduate faculty" - you have to "prove" yourself every three years. And they changed the burden-of-proof, and made it a lot tougher. And I didn't do one of the five or six things on the list - at least not in the form that it's expected - in the past year. So I'm DENIED. Graduate faculty - NOT YOURS.

And I've done what I can to try to repair it, to try to ask to stay on, but they don't seem to want to hear it. (And the killer? I got the message after 3 pm yesterday. I teach pretty much from 8 'till 3 today, and then have afternoon responsibilities at church. And they want the information before tomorrow. This is very very very very typical of people from other departments - they assume we're all sitting on our butts just WAITING to jump up and provide them with documentation, so it's perfectly OK for them to ask the day before they need it).

I forwarded the e-mail to my department chair and kind of threw up my hands and said, "I can't deal with this right now; if it's essential to me making full professor someday, I will try to deal with it, but I don't think they've given me enough time"

And I know. I shouldn't be so tied to the desire to make Full Professor. But you know? I've not done much with my life. I've not married, not had a kid, not traveled much, not been in plays, not made a record, not published anything that people outside of a tiny narrow field would ever read. Everything I do is pretty intangible, and so it's kind of nice to have some sort of outside validation that I actually did something with my time here.

Some days I have to admit I feel like if I fell off the edge of the earth people would only notice because they'd start complaining: "What's up with ricki? Why hasn't she done those things she usually does for us? She OWES us! She's SUPPOSED to do those things!"

And yeah, I also know that's not true. But it kind of FEELS like it's true right now. I feel like someone's got a hold of each limb of my body, and they're all pulling, trying to get a piece of me. And there's no "me" left for me - I went to bed at 8:30 last night because I was so exhausted. And when you get home at 5, and have to fix dinner, and have to do the dishes, and have to go to the grocery...going to bed at 8:30 doesn't leave a person with a lot of mental recuperation time, and that's something I need.

Smiling

I saw this this morning (linked on another craft-blog I read) and it made me smile.

It's a woman who has done embroidery "portraits" of people she thought of as "heroes" when she was a child: Jacques Cousteau, Crystal Gayle (The hair! I love how she did the long hair!), Shel Silverstein, and Bob Ross.

That kind of thing just makes me laugh with delight - don't misunderstand, I'm not laughing AT the person for doing it. Not at all. I'm laughing because it's so wonderful, it makes me so HAPPY.

And it makes me think: who were my childhood heroes, that I would try to capture in embroidery? Mr. Rogers would have to be one; I'm inclined to think that Margery Sharp (although I've never even seen a picture of her) would be another. And Jim Henson. And maybe Marie Osmond (don't laugh, lots of kids looked up to her I bet)

(Margery Sharp is the person who wrote the "Rescuers" series of books, upon which Disney loosely based the 70s cartoon movie. The books are a lot better, though - they're almost little comedies-of-manners in some places and are very intelligently written.)

Yup

They were open. Third person in my district to vote.

And since the Nice Ladies at the Polling Place asked me to tell five people to vote, I'm going to say: if you're reading this, if you're in a state that's doing Super Tuesday, go and vote. Even if you don't particularly like the candidates. Even if you don't vote for the presidential candidate and just for any local seats (we had a person running for School Board).

I'm saying it here because I don't like to even breathe a word about politics at work, lest I become the audience for someone's ranting.

You would think...

The time the polls open on "Super Tuesday" in one's state would be a news story, no?

I cannot find it ANYWHERE. It was not in the 6-page-long local rag of a newspaper (2 pages devoted to local school sports, two pages devoted to classified ads). They have not mentioned it on Stupid Local Morning News. I tried going online and searching "poll opening times [MyState] [MyCounty]" Nothing. (I presume the county leadership, as is typical, think the Internet is Evil because it's New, and so, won't use it. But still I hoped).

And YES, I am 100% sure my state goes to the polls today. We are on the list.

I'm gonna ASSUME it's 7 am (it always has been before) and go down there then, but it irks me that this information seems to be hidden from us.

And a question: does ANYONE enjoy getting those taped phone calls from a candidate (or candidate's "good friend" or spouse) asking you to vote for them? I am SO Freaking Glad that is done with (for a while at least).

It offends me that I jump up from what I am doing in the evening (working, reading, trying to relax) to answer the phone (I have relatives who are unwell, I have a friend who doesn't drive and whom I have told can use me as an emergency driver if she needs me, so not answering the phone is not an option) to have it be "Hi! It's Mike Huckabee! Would you please vote for me tomorrow?" Not a chance in Hell, Mike-o.

(My vote, in part, is influenced by the fact that there is one candidate in particular - I'm registered R - that DIDN'T plague me with phone calls. I don't think he's the one who's going to win, and it's a holding-my-nose-and-voting thing anyway, and I don't think it's going to matter, but whatever.)

done in two ways.

Good done:

I am done for the day. After this I can power down, go home, put my feet up, and decompress.

Not so good done:

In lab this afternoon - which I set up as a self-paced lab because it does take a bit longer than the prescribed lab time, most of the students are free before the start of lab, and frankly, I'd rather be done before 5 pm as well, so I just told them in lecture, "Here's what you do. I'll be in my office writing an exam if you want some help."

Anyway - most of the students did the lab successfully on their own. A few came with minor questions which were easily taken care of.

One of the chaps, though - someone not known for his attention span or general interest in classes - came in late to lab. I asked him (I was in the room anyway, setting up for Wednesday's lab) if he wanted help. He said no, and then proceeded to wander aimlessly about for 20 minutes.

(this is one of my pet peeves. I realize it is petty and it is very much "my stuff" but it irks me when someone has something to do - especially when other people's time is impinged upon by their not doing the thing promptly - and they lollygag and procrastinate and generally fart around. Though fortunately, I later found out his lab partner - more diligent than he - had come in on his own and done the lab, so he might as well copy the data from him. So what if he doesn't know the procedure for the exam; he was warned.).

Well, next I looked over and I saw the guy copying the introduction and materials and methods - basically the first part of the lab write up - off of another guy. (They do lab books in this class; I have them do it like the standard chem lab book where you write out in your own words what you're doing, collect your data, and then write up the interpretation of the results at a later time)

I didn't say anything. I could have, but I didn't.

Because, you know? I am so done with that attitude. Done, done, done. Done with the "I don't want to work so I'll get someone else to do it" which is almost invariably followed by pouting or confrontation when I call them on it. Done with the "college isn't important, this class isn't important, I'll phone it in and then get a good job in the Real World when I graduate"

I am so done that I'm not going to fight it any more. I'm going to let the people make their own ropes to hang themselves with. (I did note down who it was who was copying; I'll check his book extra carefully when it comes in).

I have decided - I have limited energy. I am going to save it for the people who give a crap. The people who, like my genetics specialist who is taking a conservation class from me, who comes in and asks me questions about conservation genetics and things like genetic drift and I can see he's making the effort to form links between what he's doing in his lab and what he's doing in my class. Those people I have time for (even when I don't really, literally, have time, even when it means I need to take more work home with me because I took 45 minutes to talk with them), because they care. Because they actually want to do something with their lives.

I am not going to beat my head on the brick wall of people who don't give a crap and who wonder why I bother to give a crap (because that's the attitude I get from people: "Geez, it's only a single paper, why do you care so much that I plagiarized it?") Oh, I'll still give them 0s for plagiarizing. But I won't expend any of my limited energy on them.

I hate doing "triage" like that - letting the ones who MIGHT be savable if I expended a lot of effort and maybe somehow broke through the shell to show them that what they're learning really IS important, but it seems my success rate in that instance is SO low, that I'm better off devoting myself to the people who have already decided that what they're learning is important. Or the ones who may be on the fence, that I can pull over to the Light Side of the Force (or how I visualize it) with a little effort on my part. But the ones who have decided not to care - I'm not going to burn myself out over them.

And hell, they're like 20. Maybe I could justify killing myself to try to pull them back if they were, like, 8. But I think by 20 they've kind of made their bed and it's too much work - certainly work for someone more talented than I - to get them to care.

petty pet peeve

Or maybe not so petty.

One of my colleagues is ANGRY. It is, apparently (the best I can determine from his ranting) because he effed something up that is going to negatively impact one of the benefits he receives.

He is stamping up and down the hall, cursing, and saying stuff he probably is best advised not to be saying when students are around.

I've closed my door because I'm tired of it. He gets like this maybe once a month. And it's always the same: some little, potentially fixable thing becomes this GIANT MASSIVE HUGACIOUS PROBLEM that comes about SOLELY because the bureaucracy is doing it to SCREW HIM OVER. And him only.

Oh, I've told him: dude, it's BUREAUCRACY. Bureaucracy, by definition, is stupid. It has stupid rules. You just kind of have to roll with it sometimes.

But no. It's always someone's FAULT and it's always done to thwart his happiness and well being.

And the other thing I've done, that I'm tired of doing and will do no more: I offered a suggestion. Call the folks in HR, I said. They're happy to help, I said. I bet they can resolve this for you in two shakes of a lamb's tail. (Because the minor benefit-related issues I've had? HR HAS resolved them snappy fast. And they're pleasant about it. And they always act like it's no effort at all for them, and it's something I shouldn't have to deal with, that it's their job to fix it.)

But no, he won't listen. I guess he'd rather be angry, rather walk around cursing and suggesting this is somehow Bush's fault (but then, isn't everything, these days?). And how it will only get worse in the future.

And you know? Crap happens. This is extremely little crap, at least from what I've seen of it. And yeah, I realize, we're all carrying heavy loads and what is "roll with it" to me is "big massive unsolvable problem" to someone else (and perhaps sometimes vice versa), but I'm really tired of his TONE and his CURSING and his stomping around yelling while I'm trying to work.

(And no, saying "Dude, step off before you have an aneurysm," even said in the politest and gentlest of terms, does not help. He's one of those people who gets MAD and who can't be placated. So I just close my door.)

little kids

There's a young family that belongs to the same church as I do: the man, his wife, and their two kids, a girl of perhaps 4 and a boy who is not quite 2.

The man comes early every Sunday morning to check on the soundboard and make sure the mikes are all working right. His wife and the kids come a bit later, right before church. She sings in the choir and the little ones go to the nursery.

I saw something today that made me smile. The mom brought her kids in, and the dad came walking out of the sound-system room just to say hi to her and to make sure everything was right. The little girl saw him (they couldn't have been separated for more than an hour) and she said, "Daddy!" and ran up to him and grabbed him around the knee (he's a tall man). The little boy kept reaching out until his mom put him down, then he ran over to his dad and stretched up his arms, wanting to be picked up. His dad picked him up, and then said, "Okay....let's go to the nursery now" and led them out gently.

Those little simple moments, a family being a family. Oh, I'm sure there are times when the kids are cranky and the parents are tired and everyone wants to yell at everyone else, (But I don't see it in that family; they always seem to be content when I see them).

Seeing the little kids - the girl in particular - reminded me of my own early childhood. When you have good parents, how easy it is to trust. When I was little, I thought my mom was the most beautiful and the most talented woman in the whole world - she could sew and knit and crochet and make toys for me and bake and cook and grow a garden and she knew the names of the birds and the bugs and she could sing and she could make me feel better when I skinned my knees or the bigger kids in the neighborhood made fun of me. And I thought my dad was the smartest and strongest man in the world, that he could fix anything when it broke and he knew the answer to all of my questions.

And while I still esteem my parents highly, I don't have quite the same blind admiration I had as a kid. And while I realize it would be impossible to hang on to that as an adult - and it probably isn't even desirable to - still, I kind of miss that feeling, that feeling of being able to trust another person totally and 100%. Of them always living up to your image of them.

And I thought about two other things: when did this feeling change? I think, reflecting upon it, it changed after I went to school. Part of it being in and around other people, but a bigger part realizing that there were some things my parents just couldn't protect me from (I was teased a lot in school; I got knocked down a lot in the halls. And though the teachers were more attentive than what you hear in some of the horror stories from schools today, they still didn't always manage to stop things or prevent things). I began to learn that grownups were falliable - some played favorites, some pretended not to see stuff that happened, some even lied to you.

And I also got to thinking this morning: I wonder if about the time I learned that grownups weren't as perfect as I thought they were, if that was when my mental image of God started to change. When I was a kid, I had the typical kid mental image: the old, old man with the long white beard, sitting up in the clouds. But after some of my school experiences I began to realize that that image didn't work for me any more.

Now, if you asked me to describe an image of God, I'd be hard-pressed (well, at least for God the Father). I'd probably hem and haw and say I saw God as something like a Force (not The Force, although in the original Star Wars movies - the ones that came out when I was a kid - the description of the Force comes sort of close. I did not like that "midchlorian" thing they introduced in the "prequels that came later" movies. I liked the more non-material, mystical, non-reductionist version of the Force). But it's hard for me to really conjure up an image, while it would have been easy as a kid.

I don't know - just thinking out loud here. Sometimes when I see a little kid I'm briefly reminded of what it was like - the dim and shadowy memories of my own childhood, and I wonder a little at how I got here from there.

Just one little thing...

If I found a genie who offered me three wishes, I'd hand them over to Tracey and her husband to do with as they saw fit right now.

My crappy week (the crap of which is mostly OVER now) pales in comparison with what they're dealing with right now.

They're in my thoughts and prayers. Even though I've never met them "for reals."

*cackling*

Opened up my webmail box this morning. Full of spam.

But there was one message that turned out to be from a business I had bought from before, a quilt-fabric shop. But its subject line looked funny in the context of all the other spam:

"Hot batiks cure the winter blues!"

Now, of course, they mean "hot" as in "brightly colored" or "new and popular" and not in the sense of, well, "Hawwwwt," but a person gets so inured to the spam promising to "promote your love private to a big general" (and yes, I got that one once. Yuck.) and offering "hot bored housewives" (it seems to me 90% of spam must be directed at heterosexual males).

So I almost unintentionally deleted it as spam. (Well, it kind of IS spam, except that once in a while I've been notified of good sales on something I want by those quilt shop e-mails).


Incidentally, for those not into quilting, a "batik" is a fabric that's either been made using the batik process (where you have a light colored dye that is protected by a wax resist, and then is overdyed with a darker color so that you get a pretty two-toned print) or a fabric that is printed to LOOK like a batik (but doesn't use the process. They're very popular in quilting right now.

better

There are few things more gratifying to me as a teacher than these two:

1. Having a student stop me in the middle of class and ask a really good, really interesting question about the day's topic that then ties in something learned earlier.

2. Sharing a funny but topic-appropriate anecdote or joke and having the class laugh at it. I have a few "funny stories" that I like to share and it's always great when the students find them funny, too (or at least that they feel comfortable enough to laugh)

Both those things happened today, so I count that in the win column.

***

My aunt is doing better. It turns out it was what my mom thought, and they just put her in the hospital as a precaution. (Still, I wish my cousin would do the paperwork to allow my mom to get notification. She doesn't have to give up any of her power-of-attorney power; she just needs to make the information able to be shared).

Simple solution

In one of my classes, I give regular homework assignments. Most of these involve digesting and synthesizing material out of the textbook.

A distressing number of students leave at least one question blank on the assignment. Because I am a diligent person, and also because I don't like complaints of "I couldn't FIND that!" on things, I had been writing in the correct answer (or writing it in when people got the question wrong). And it took a lot of time, and it gave me hand cramps, and it frustrated me.

(Yes, I know, I could just mark a big X on the blank spaces and not do anything else, but I'm a little too nice for that).

This morning, I hit on an even better solution: the homework is based on textbook information, right? So I just write down "see page x" when someone leaves a question blank. That way, while I may not exactly teaching 'em to fish, at least I'm not completely handing 'em an already-fried-up slab o' perch.

But the thing is: these homework assignments are like five questions long. And the stuff is both stuff I go over in class and is in the textbook. And they count, all together, for 1/4 of the grade. And people get a week to complete them. How lazy do you have to be to not do that kind of a homework assignment?

(The other thing? I consider them as "fair game" for the tests I give - so doing the assignment, I tell the students, is essentially a bit of study time.)

This week

moar funny pictures

and that's all I have to say. Thank God tomorrow's Friday.

Better on some fronts, not on others

Well, I called the church as soon as it opened and the secretary didn't seem too concerned since we had done what we could to take care of the window.

And my class today went well; we started out on enzymes and enzyme inhibition and a couple people got interested and started asking about changes that happen in enzymes and natural selection and stuff so it kind of morphed into a discussion of "where does antibiotic resistance come from" which is good, because it tells me (a) the students are thinking about the topics and trying to apply them and (b) they give enough of a damn to ask questions, which is better than some semesters.

But.

My aunt, my 87-year-old, blind and disabled aunt, who had been in a nursing home, is in the hospital. And no one can tell us why. My mom called her nursing home for her regular chat and the person at the front desk was "She's not here. And I can't tell you where she is and why because of HIPAA."

Now, I'm all for medical-records-privacy, but my mom is her SISTER. And her BLOOD sister, as in came-from-the-same-mom-and-dad. And just because my cousin, who is the "medical contact person" can't be arsed to fill out the paperwork to allow the place to notify family members, we're all in the dark until she chooses to illuminate us.

My mom (at least over the phone) didn't seem too worried; she said, "I talked with her the other day and while she was complaining that the area around her [port involved with a medical procedure] hurt, she seemed in pretty good spirits and pretty with-it." Or it's possible she's putting on a good face to keep me from freaking out. I don't know.

But it irritates me that HIPAA makes us jump through these hoops. (Seriously? Once the gyn I see called my mom up [because they had the wrong number on file for me and couldn't reach me] and said, "ricki needs to call us" and they wouldn't tell her why and I was all freaked out that they had seen something bad in my tests and it turned out they just didn't get a good sample for the Pap smear and I needed to come back in...after that I filled out the paperwork and let the doctor know in no uncertain terms that anything that happened to me, my mom WOULD find out. From me. So they didn't need to hold stuff back in the name of "protection." Even including if I got pregnant out of wedlock. [though at that time - and now, as well, for that matter - that is just slightly more likely than my winning the lottery and getting hit by an asteroid in the same day])

It also irritates me that apparently my cousin LIKES having the power to disseminate or conceal information about my aunt as she sees fit. It's just a little power and attention play thing and that kind of mind**** that people do bugs me.


***

And I've decided that part of Eating a Healthy Diet is also knowing when a treat is good. So I'm going down the hall (as soon as I finish my $*%&$ plain lowfat yogurt) and getting a Hershey bar or some peanut butter cups out of the vendeteria if they have them.

Yes, that is the detestable "using food to soothe pain" but you know, for me? It kind of works. And I only need one Hershey bar for it to work, and then I'm like, "Okay, I'm good now." So it's not like I'm falling into a pool of dysfunction or anything.

outbursts

I can tell that this is going to be one of those times when I need to practice holding my tongue and such. Because I'm irritated at humanity this week. It's no one big thing, it's just lots of little things:

-- Hillary Clinton's "I want to save you from yourselves!" commercials that are running with unpleasant regularity on the television. This is the one where she talks about, among other things, "predatory student loan corporations." And basically, it's Every Business Bad, Little People Good, Let Me Fight Big Business For You.

and you kind of know that the funds to fight big business - and whatever kind of "retribution" winds up being made, will be out of taxpayers' pockets. Or there's going to be some kind of horrific unintended consequence of her fight.

-- my campus, because they "can't give the faculty a raise" have made what was a pre-tax, tax-free fringe benefit into a "salary increase" that, instead of being put into a retirement account on our behalf, now becomes income. I'm irritated two-fold: first, it means I'll be paying tax on something I didn't have to before, and second, if I want the "salary increase that was retirement savings" to continue to be retirement savings, I'll have to do a little math and THEN truck over to HR and fill out a bunch of paperwork.

look, none of us are likely to jump ship solely because you can't increase our pay for a year. We understand. But it is irritating to have to do a little extra accounting (and 35 years down the line when I retire, try to remember what year the changeover happened).

And yeah, it also kind of irritates me that they think we'll fall for the idea of "Hey, we've got more money now!" We're not that stupid. At least, some of us aren't.

-- the youth group kids broke a small bathroom window last night. It was the classic kid accident - ball thrown badly, window hit. (They were, I hasten to add, playing OUTSIDE. Not in the bathroom.) But I fear this is going to be used as Yet Another Example That Ricki Is Incompetent And Can't Control The Kids by someone who has never ever raised a finger to help out with the program. (Why is that? Why is it that the people who complain most vociferously about people doing unpaid, largely unthanked volunteer work are ones who can never be bothered to take it on themselves?)
I've already volunteered to either pay for it myself, or suggested the money be taken out of the youth fund, but I'm bracing for some kind of blowback.

-- the fact that when you're an adult, the only way you have of knowing you're doing an OK job is that people aren't actively criticizing you at the moment. That's been the hardest thing for me to learn: no news should be equivalent to praise.

-- I have a student in one of my classes who's getting on my nerves. He's very vocal, has an answer for everything, complains a lot. It's like, dude, none of us have it easy. Just make it easier by not voicing your displeasure every 10 minutes.

-- I have another student who asked me if he could do the late-afternoon labs "early" because "My last class gets done at 10 and then I'm stuck here until 3." While I do not deny the potential suckitude of being stuck on campus for 5 hours with "nothing" to do (except we do have this big building full of books and quiet places where you can study, read, or even nap, called a LI-BRAR-Y), I didn't like it that he got really kind of whiny and upset when I told him no, that wasn't possible.

Look, I'm sorry there was a conflict with another class and my lab lost in the deadlock. I don't like a 3 to 5 pm lab either. But I'm NOT going to do two separate lab sections just because one person is put out that he's got a big block of time with nothing to do. (Dammit, I'd love to have five open hours on a single day.)

I don't know what it is with students asking the moon from us and then getting unhappy when the best we can give them is a funky-looking cratered rock. I don't have a problem with them ASKING; the problem I have is that they EXPECT. I deserve a life, too. I deserve enough time to get done the myriad things I must get done, and in order to do that, it doesn't include teaching classes-on-demand.

-- Apparently Brit-ama-ney Spea-ama-ears* is being taken in for an intervention. On one hand, I hope she gets help. I hope she finally decides that the way she's acting can only lead to an early grave. But as I yelled at the tv this morning: "She has more money than God, hundreds of sycophantic yes-men. And those of us out in flyover country, we bust our humps, we pay our taxes, and if we're lucky, someone will say something nice about us at our funerals." I know that's not very charitable to poor Brit-brit (and yes, I do think she deserves a certain sympathy, fame seems to suck pretty badly), but I do think there's some truth in the fact that the whole ordinary mass of humanity, by and large, are going "I'd love to have a $20K clothing budget and people telling me how wonderful I am."

(*Homer-fying words. Like "saxamaphone.")

-- Valentine's Day is coming up. I have rather a hatred of this day, mainly connected to the fact that I'm single, and the implication is that if you're single on Valentine's Day you are a Big Loser (and not in the ABC reality-show sense). And it's stupid. I hope no one out there uses the day as a "get out of jail free" card but I suspect people do: as in, "It's okay that I harp on you all the time for little stuff, because look, I bought you a video game." or "It doesn't matter that I never lift a finger to help out, because here are some flowers."

If it were an ideal world, we wouldn't need Valentine's Day, because people who had someone they loved, they'd show it every day. And they'd also not feel the need to smush the grapefruit-half of Valentine's Day in the faces of the singletons to "prove" that they're worthy because they have love. (And yes, it's happened to me, before you think I'm overreacting. I've had too many female co-workers and others "have" to come and show me the gifts they got, and stand around expecting me to say something about how wonderful their man is. And there's this subtle sense of "I'm better than you, look, I have the flowers to prove it.")

-- And the weather is just for crap here. It's an unpleasant combination of cold, wind, and wet, without any chance of "winter precipitation" that could actually shut campus down and give us a day off.

-- I have a toothache (well, several teeth aching, in fact). Can't tell if it's the tooth or my sinuses. Can't get a dentist appointment any time soon. I hope it's sinuses.

So anyway. I'm struggling a little today.

Enthusiasms

Yesterday morning, before church, I sat down and sort of flipped around on the television. So many of the channels either had infomercials (bleah) or were running news footage that seemed (as it so often does) to just be a litany of the bad stuff people do to other people. So I kept flipping, feeling kind of down - one of the channels, there were like three stories within 3 minutes that basically showed the suckier side of human nature.

Then I hit PBS. They were running a show on trains. Specifically, on old steam trains that train-buffs keep running. Some of the trains have short, dedicated routes; some of them use track belonging to freight companies that they get permission to use. The program talked about how the guys (mostly guys) who are interested in trains work to restore them- how a lot of the trains had been rescued from scrapyards - and how the train people spend their free time keeping the trains running.

That kind of thing makes me extremely happy. I need to see stuff like that as an antidote to the "People are getting killed in riots in Kenya; there might be a serial killer on the loose in Florida; homes are being foreclosed at record rates" stories. The barrage of bad news.

Part of it is also that when I was a kid, my dad was kind of interested in trains. Oh, not enough (and he didn't have the time) to actually go out and try to buy a caboose or an old steam locomotive or anything - the most we had were HO scale trains in the basement - but some weekends we'd get together with a couple other families and make a trip somewhere where there was an old steam line, and we'd take a ride on the trains. So as a young kid I kind of knew what the old steam trains were like. I remember winding through the forests of Pennsylvania on one such trip.

I love anything, though, where a person has a passion - a deep and abiding love of something - and they follow that. Especially if the passion isn't something particularly "practical," in the sense that the person will never get rich or famous off of it. (Yes, maybe it's snobby of me, but I tend to see the kind of impractical passions as somehow purer). The old steam train buffs are like that - no one is going to give them millions and millions of dollars to do what they do; no Hollywood producer is going to want to make blockbuster movies about them. But they don't care, because they enjoy what they do.

It also makes me happy from the "preserving history" standpoint. My main interest in history revolves around "how did people live?" - what were their houses like, what did they wear, how did they get from place to place, what did they do for fun. Being able to get on an old steam train, although it might never be a 100% recreation of the past, still gives you sort of an idea of what it was like.

And I just find people with a deep and abiding interest in something, especially something that seems kind of obscure, interesting - how did they get into it? What is it about that thing that keeps them so fascinated?

(One of the women who was married to a train fanatic, made the comment, "I get to go on a date with my husband and help drive a steam train at the same time. No other woman in America, I bet, gets to say that." hahahahaha.)

I remember this summer I was at an art festival and I saw a group of people who did clog-dancing. Now, I know boo about clog dancing other than that it reminds me a little bit of Irish step-dancing, it looks very challenging to do, but it looks like it would be fun once you were good at it (and were in sufficiently good shape!). The leader of the group talked a little between each set and described how his group would go to conventions (they have clog-dancing conventions. That makes me smile) and how they'd trade routines with other groups, how people would track down sources of traditional music - all that stuff. And it made me extremely happy - there's this whole secret "underground" world of clog-dancing that I know nothing about, but that there are people who are fascinated by it and want to do it and want to learn about it and want to share it.

It's kind of like a secret identity, I guess - that this ordinary-looking woman behind a desk somewhere has this whole secret life where she knows jigs and reels and wears shoes with taps on them. The idea that everyone is interesting, everyone has something cool about them, if you just take the time to pay attention.

There's also a dulcimer festival a couple towns over once a year. I've never gone - it always seems to fall on a weekend when I have other obligations, and I don't know, as a "muggle" in the dulcimer-world, how openly I'd be welcomed, but it makes me happy that there are people out there keeping that alive.

I also love the shows they do on Food Network about the barbecue fanatics - that there are people out there that do this serious scholarly study of 'cue and how it's made and what the differences between the four types (Carolinas, Memphis, Texas, and Kansas City) are and what the historic recipes are. And they actually argue about what's the best wood for smoking, or whether the meat should have sauce or not.

I think I love all those things for a couple of reasons. First, when I'm enthusiastic about something, I'm enthusiastic about it, and I don't really care whether it's "cool" or not. So it makes me feel happy (and maybe a little less weird) to see that there are other people out there who feel the same way about their particular interest. (And I have to admit, in recent years, because I've been so busy, some of my passions have gone on the back burner, and that makes me sad. And it makes me feel like a little bit of me is slipping away - like, "What is happening to that girl who used to be able to name almost any doo-wop band correctly on the basis of hearing a few notes of one of their songs?" or "How much do I remember any more about the marks of the different doll-makers of the past century?" Stuff I used to be really really into, used to actually STUDY because I had the time).

Second, I often see just the "surface" of people - people I work with, people in my classes. And sometimes that "surface" has kind of a glaze on it - like, you get the feeling, "This person isn't interested." And you begin to wonder, "Are they interested in ANYTHING?" And while I suppose there are people who have either taken the "cool" stance to the extreme that they don't care about anything, or people who are truly so uninterested in stuff that they really have nothing they're passionate about, I bet those people are rare. So seeing people working at what they love reminds me that even if my students don't LOVE biology, they probably have something somewhere they LOVE.

And finally - somehow, I think in some kind of weird mystical/spiritual way, the people who have those deep and abiding passions, who want steam trains to continue to run, who want to preserve traditional forms of music, who care deeply about a particular skill and want to pass it on, they're good for the world. They somehow make it a more interesting and deeper place. And they remind others that what you do to earn your bread - or the titles after your name - are not the sum total of who you are.

YES!!!!

'Member several months ago, how I was fretting about not being able to find my Social Security card, and how it was probably going to make renewing my driver's license far more complicated?

Well, this evening, I decided to listen to some music over the computer* (long story but basically I wanted to hear the original version (the 1963, Bob and Earl version) of the Harlem Shuffle again and couldn't find my recording of it. I realized YouTube MUST have it [they do].) While listening, I decided to sort through my desk drawers, to see if maybe the tape I was looking for was in there.

(*Edited to add: good grief, I sound like my grandmother. "Listen to music over the computer"? Sheesh. Next thing, I'll be saying that someone sent me an Internet.)

You know how they say you find a thing you're missing when you're not actually looking for it?

I ran across a stack of cards that I had formerly carried in my wallet - some business cards from different places (including the Dutch Oven Yarn Shoppe and Bakery in Alanson, Michigan) and my old library card from where I used to live. And I thought, "Wonder if my Social Security card might be in this stack?"

Hey presto, it WAS. So now I know where it is (and even better, I know that some weirdo doesn't have my card (as Bart Simpson once famously speculated about his soul, after selling it for $5, I think for a comic book).

Of course, if the lady at the DMV was right, I already have the "digital" driver's license and don't actually NEED the card to prove I am who I say I am. (But I'm bringing it, and my birth certificate, with me, just in case, when I go to renew next month.)

Now I just need to figure out something else to search for so I can find that "Soul Shots" tape...

(Yes, I really need to buy an iPod one of these days and just spend the money to load it up with all the almost-forgotten R and B artists I like).

random jumble

Oh, thank God I am home. Thank God it is the weekend. I really need some time to let my brain relax.

The meeting this afternoon was not bad at all. It's a committee I serve on on campus, but I'm happy to serve as everyone on the committee is quite sane and usually cheerful and we get stuff done.

Driving this home this afternoon (the committee meeting even ended early enough I could contemplate cooking a real dinner!) I asked myself: what do you want to eat more than anything? What appeals to you? Because part of my distress these past couple days (which could be chalked up to the cold that I'm pretty sure I now have) was that the food I had laid in a supply of - food I normally eat without complaint - just looked awful to me.

And I thought: I really want some nice chewy garlicky focaccia bread, with a bowl of good tomato sauce to dip it in. And maybe even a salad on the side.

So I found a focaccia recipe in one of my books, and it's rising now. I'm relieved that I feel like eating food again, instead of sitting down to the plate and going "do not want."

I always crave tomato things when I have a cold. I don't question it; I figure maybe there's some body-logic reason for wanting tomatoes. Tomato soup, tomatoes stewed on toast, bread with tomato sauce, tomato and cheese rarebit...

I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I'm out of a few semi-vital things and maybe I should get some decent cheddar with the thought of making a tomato-cheese rarebit at some point.

****

I forgot a piece of funny graffiti I saw last weekend. Now, understand - I really hate graffiti. I think it's extremely presumptuous of the "tagger" or would-be artist to assume that the owner of the property he or she is defacing is happy with the modification.

But once in a while there's one, even though I wince at the thought of it having to be cleaned up by some city employee, it still makes me laugh.

This one was a stop sign. Below the word "STOP" someone had (using a stencil) painted the word "Hammertime!" in a fancy curly script. Being a child (well, teen, really) of the 80s, I had to laugh.

I totally forgot about it until I saw this:


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And you know? I still like that song. It still makes me laugh.

I watch too much television, I guess

Because this clip



just makes me think of those creepy Michelin commercials where Bibendum (yes, that's the Michelin Man's name) is fondling the newly-made tires.

****

(I've decided part of my distress - see outbursts below - is that I am, in fact, suffering from a Ninja Cold - the cold that you don't realize you have until it's kicked your ass. The good news is it's Friday, and after a meeting [luckily not an acrimonious meeting, this one should be fairly pleasant] this afternoon I can go home and get into bed.)

cold

Kate, I've not gone totally low-fat. I do still use olive oil when I saute stuff (and that's supposedly one of the "happy fat" sources) and I do still eat some nuts and cheese.

Though maybe I need to add a bit more back in. My skin is starting to look kind of flakeadelic so maybe I've cut too much.

I also wonder if I've loaded up too much too fast on antioxidants. I've read that people who get too MUCH vitamins A, E, or C (though I'm probably not getting too much E) kind of experience a low-level "blah" feeling, because their energy kind of gets sapped. (It has something to do with free radicals. Too many of them in your body and you die but too few and you're kind of miserable.)

I think a big part of the frustration with the eating plan is mental. I get the feeling of "Fud: Not yours" or "No, You Can Not Haz" (to put it in LolCatSpeak) and I just get frustrated because (for example) one of the skinny-girl students in one of my classes will sit down and unwrap her daily fast-food sandwich and eat it all up and I'm headed back to my office for watery yogurt and high-fiber crackers. (And I don't even LIKE fast-food sandwiches).

I wouldn't do well if I had salt-sensitive hypertension or if I developed Type II Diabetes (which actually, this plan is a frantic and probably over-worried attempt to prevent. I really probably am not at that great a risk because I get enough exercise and all, but when the news is trumpeting "Fatties: you're gonna die soon!" on a regular basis at you, it's hard not to fall into the trap of "must...punish...self...for...liking....sugar") because of the restrictive eating plans those require.

I think a big part of the frustration is a failure-of-the-imagination too. There are just honestly not that many vegetables I like, and of the ones I do, there are only so many ways to prepare them. (And carrots and celery and their relatives are out - I am actually allergic to carrots and their kin. And I can't eat raw broccoli or cauliflower because they cause some really unpleasant digestive issues). And there are only so many sources of "lean protein" - I've been rotating chicken breast, beans, low-fat cheese, and boiled eggs and I'm getting really tired of all of those. I feel like all the food I'm eating (well, except for the veggies and fruit) is white. White white white. Bleah.

I also think I may be fighting some kind of low-level cold or other respiratory virus. I've been sneezing, I've coughed off and on, I've had lots of muscle aches, working out has been hard because my chest feels like it's full of crap. And I'm just tired.

So I said the hell with exercise this morning and didn't, because my back hurts and my knees hurt and my chest hurts and I just feel like crud.

Heh. If nothing else this whiny post gives me another use for the "food?" tag.

armor

I have certain pieces of clothing that I've come to imagine as a sort of psychic or emotional armor.

I wore one of them today. It's a dressy faux-suede vest, with a faux-shearling lining. It's long and straight and closes with clasps.

I've been feeling a little shaky and fragile these past few days - I think it's partly midwinter doldrums, partly tiredness, partly maybe something else I don't know. And today I had a meeting that I knew was going to be kind of acrimonious.

(It was. It ended a little while ago. The outcome was that we need more meetings. Ugh.)

All this morning, in my vest, I walked around thinking, "This is my armor. I will not let my feelings get hurt when I wear this. This is my armor; it will protect me."

It did, sort of. I also told myself, during the meeting, "Just keep your mouth shut. Nothing you try to contribute will help. Just observe, don't opine."

I did wind up opining, a little bit, because I can't help it. I made a suggestion. I thought it was a possible solution to the impasse we kept hitting. Several people disliked the suggestion very strongly and talked about why it won't work, and why what they originally planned to do has to be done exactly the way they want to do it.

I might have just as well not offered my suggestion.

So anyway. I'm still tired, still feeling - I don't know, a little shaky and fragile. Like I'd like to go home and heat up my buckwheat pillow in the microwave and crawl into bed curled up around it. (It's also been really cold here; unusually cold for this part of the world. And my building is an old leaky building with unpredictable heat so there are some days I just get cold at work and don't get warm again until I've been home for a good long while. And I do think being cold - being kind of consistently chilled - affects a person's well being).

And the diet-thing-that-I'm-not-calling-a-diet is starting to piss me off. Food showed up at the meeting but it was (a) richer food than I've been eating and (b) I had already eaten my plain yogurt* and rice cakes and oranges and tiny handful of mixed nuts for lunch.

So I had to be That Woman - the one I've complained about in the past - who demurred eating the Tasty Food the meeting-moderator had procured because "I already ate lunch" "But just eat a second lunch." "No, I can't. My metabolism is so slow as it is that I can barely eat one lunch." Yes, that was the actual exchange. And yeah, it was TMI on my part, I should have just said, "I'm not hungry," but I was kind of overwrought already thinking what the meeting was going to be about.

(*And plain yogurt? You are On Notice. What is up with that yellow whey crap you make? I drained you off first thing this morning and proceeded to dish up the solidified part of the yogurt into my sad little plastic tub for lunch. And by 11:30, you had separated into sort of dry-ish yogurt and more of the damned whey. I do not want the whey - it is disgusting. Please, in the future, avoid whey-making, especially when you are sitting in my lunch)

And I'm so Foo King sick of spinach salad. I've eaten enough salad these past few weeks that I can almost photosynthesize on my own.

And it has apparently been for naught - no clear loss, no looser fit to the clothes, no comments from anyone that I'm looking thinner. Yes, I know, it's been less than a month BUT it seems like on all the damn talk shows there's some fat person who comes on and Dr. Phil or whoever lays out all that they eat in a day on the table, and then tells them, "You could lose weight if you cut out one of these Big Macs and a couple cokes per day." And the person does that, and a couple months later they're back on the show, 50+ pounds lighter, through the power of Dr. Phil's shiny shiny forehead, and of cutting out one damn Big Mac a day.

And I've cut my diet to the stinking BONE, to the point where I'm barely even eating meat any more in favor of "lean sources of protein" (which, yeah, includes skinless boneless chicken breasts that have been either broiled or poached, but I don't really consider that a MEAT. It's not fun to eat like real meat - real steak or real ribs - is). And I see nothing.

And I've even substituted weak, sugarless black tea for dessert, for having an extra piece of bread when I'm still hungry, for some kind of solace when I come home tired and sad and just need SOMETHING.

So yeah. The emotional armor of a warm vest, she may help with me not wanting to run screaming out of a meeting where people are disagreeing with each other, but not so much when it comes to seeing everyone eating tasty food and me stuck with watery yogurt and listless broiled chicken and crap like that.

I'm almost ready to say "forget this mess" (except using less polite words) and just go back to eating what I damn well please, and just count on (with the annual poundage creep-up) being 300 pounds by the time I'm 70, if I make it that far.

Well, it made ME laugh...

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Except, for where I come from, the REAL redneck cat carrier would be a carton from PBR.

video game proposal

Maybe this has already been done, I don't know. I haven't played many video games.

But it struck me this afternoon that there are games for people who want to be rockstars, who want to play Indiana Jones, who want to shoot Nazis, who want to blow up things in outer space.

But there needs to be a video game for the rest of us.

I'm not sure what best to call it. "Joe Doakes" was the first name that sprang to mind (an earlier version of "Joe Blow" or "John Q. Public"). But "WageSlave" might almost work as well.

It would be a maze type game. The goal would be to get in your house, with the door locked behind you (locking out the outside world) in the shortest amount of time with the fewest number of "energy draining" interactions possible.

You would be armed with the ability to detour (either in your car or on foot), an "ignore" button, and a "white lie" button (to be used only once per game, for situations such as telling someone "Sorry, I have an appointment..." when you actually don't).

You would start out at work, near the end of the workday. The obstacles you'd have to avoid at work: the gabby co-worker. The person making the rounds collecting money for someone's birthday, new baby, or retirement party. Your boss, wanting you to come in on Saturday. Another boss, who needs to have a meeting NOW but forgot about it until the end of the day. Your weaselly co-worker who is going to try to talk you into doing the work he didn't do. The guy/girl (the game would have to have options so you could set your gender, and presumably, your sexual orientation) who is trying to ask you out but is bordering on sexual harassment.

Then, once you're in the parking lot, you have to make sure you have enough gas in the car to get home.

On the way home, you have to avoid: the red-light runner. The person who is weaving all over the road talking on their cell phone. The school crossing with the crossing guard and a string of 100 children you will have to wait for. Maybe even baby ducks crossing the road (minus 50 points if you hit one).

Then, once home, you need to (a) successfully garage your car (or else the teenaged hooligans down the street will break its windows, slowing you down for the next game) (b) get the mail (c) avoid your neighbor who wants to complain to you about how your tree is dropping leaves all over her yard and what are you going to do about it (this is one of those situations where you have to keep repeatedly hitting the "ignore" button) and (d) avoid another neighbor's dog who thinks your leg is a tree.

I suppose there are other obstacles, but those are the ones I've thought of.

No, not all of those things have happened to me, and certainly not all today, but sometimes it feels like it. I'd probably be a whiz at the game.

news

I think everyone's heard about Heath Ledger's death.

Now they're backtracking a little from what was initially said - the news reports, early on (at least on FOX, which I was watching at the time) were "OMG he was surrounded by PILLS and butt naked face down on his bed!!!!111!!!!"

And so, of course, the brain goes to a particular place, hearing that.

Or maybe my brain does, having had a relative who committed suicide. (And yeah, I'm pretty much intellectually over it, but I won't get emotionally over it - at least not with OMG WTF HE KILLED HIMSELF news stories coming out from time to time)

And now, they're backpedaling. And you know what? I'm kind of angry. Why report all the lurid crap? Why give us the "surrounded by PILLS" as the last mental image of this guy. Even if it's not true, it's still hard to shake.

Why not just wait, dammit. Why not say, "We believe he's been found dead. Foul play is not suspected." and leave it at that until you know for freaking sure.

(because this morning, the suggesting is that it was either accidental, or he was already ill with pneumonia - and maybe had a fatal reaction to a dosage that wouldn't have affected a healthy person. Or, hell, maybe pills have nothing to do with it - pneumonia can and does kill even young and otherwise healthy people sometimes)

I think this is, for me, the ugliest side of the 24-hour news cycle - the need to whip things up to some crazy messy froth. Like overbeating egg whites. And then, it just collapses later, but there's still the big mess, the slop, the salmonella. (Yes, I am good at stretching a metaphor nearly to the breaking point).

It's the whole "it bleeds, it leads" phenomenon.

And I find myself wondering: what about his family? What about his 2 year old kid? Two years old is enough to wonder "where did Daddy go" but not old enough to understand ANYTHING about Daddy's death other than a sense of abandonment. What about his friends?

If I had a friend who died in a sudden and unpleasant way, it would be very painful to see it promoted over and over again on the news as some kind of fodder for the sensation-seekers.

And why is it this way with younger stars? Is there some kind of sick fascination with the death of the young and famous, whether it's through an unavoidable accident, or a serious illness, or drugs, or misfortune, or their own hands? Many of the older famous folks who pass on get a brief mention, a nod, and then they're down the memory hole of the news, and only people like the film-bloggers or the music-bloggers actually eulogize them.

this is why....

it was the three KINGS, not the three KITTEHS.


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Petty Pet Peeves

You've been warned.

Sometimes I think I should (at least temporarily) retitle the blog "People Irritate Me." (Or maybe start a whole additional blog for that). Because periodically, people do.

Here are a couple of today's winners:

1. The young lady sitting in her car, parked at the curb, kind of blocking where I was going to have to pull out, who was *talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend who was standing on the porch of the house she was parked in front of*.

Okay, absent some kind of weird contagious disease (They don't hang up Quarantine signs any more, I guess) or some kind of bizarre Romeo and Juliet situation, that is just wrong. Park your damn car in his damn drive and go talk to him face to face. No, I do not care if you are having an argument. No, I do not care if you are breaking up with him - in fact, if you are, it is far, far more honorable to do it to his face rather than to sit there in your car and tell him whatever gentle lie you are using to let him down.

But the worst part? Chickie, I was CAREFULLY backing out. I saw you. I was making an extra-special effort to avoid bumping your car even though you were in a singularly inconvenient spot for that particular area of angle parking. And I had the added complication of someone sitting "behind" where I was pulling out, wanting my space.

So you WERE NOT JUSTIFIED in honking your horn at me. I saw you; you were in the way. I'm sorry if it makes your life so terribly inconvenient that I want to go home at 4 pm and lead my life and do not prefer to wait for you to get done talking to your Romeo. But sheesh.

2. I have a student in one of my classes who apparently wears a Bluetooth piece 24/7. Now, I know I'm really being petty here, because he seems like a nice guy and a decent student, but the earpiece bugs the crap out of me. It makes me think of one of those Borg implants that people on Star Trek got when they'd been assimilated. And it also makes me wonder - does he always have that thing turned on? Is what's being said in class being broadcast somewhere? For someone's amusement, maybe?

I don't know. I know I'm a cranky old technophobe but I really don't like those Bluetooth earpieces. (I've also nearly gotten run over more than once in the Wal-mart by people sprinting through the store, talking to their Invisible Friend and totally oblivious to the Visible People they are nearly plowing into. And I am not a small woman! It's pretty hard to miss me.)

3. The whole campaign mess. I'm just tired of it. Tired of hearing all the damn minutia about what John McCain ate for breakfast or where Barack Obama went jogging. Tired of all the opining, all the projecting, all the body-English, all the punditry - all of it. Wake me up when we're down to two candidates. (But please, God - don't let one of those be Huckabee. Just, please. I know he considers himself one of Yours and all, but please...don't make me have to consider him as a choice. Especially don't let it be an Edwards v. Huckabee ticket. Because, despite what I threatened, I really DON'T want to have to write in "Wilma Flintstone" this year. Thanks much.)

What I'd really like? For the writers' strike to end and for us to get some good, entertaining, non-"reality"-based television to watch for a while. We need something to take our minds off of Bill Clinton's hissy-fit meltdowns while campaigning for his wife or Romney's big big hair. And some kind of crazy sitcom or good drama would do just that.

4. Several people I know who are permanently aggrieved about everything (as opposed to me, who is temporarily aggrieved about human nature right now). I mean, seriously: you could comment that it was a nice day out, and you'd hear either an argument as to why it actually WASN'T, or a long diatribe about how global climate change is responsible and we really shouldn't be happy about it. Or you show off, say, a new pair of shoes you bought and think are cool, and they begin asking you if they were made by fair-trade labor and how much of the earth's resources you think they used, etc., etc. It's like they can't be happy about anything and can't stand to see another person happy.

minor gripe

If you are a student, and you are going to answer fewer than half the questions on a homework assignment, JUST DON'T TURN THE DAMN THING IN! The amount of points you will get will NOT help.

And I feel compelled to write in the correct answers so you have something to study from. And this is taking really long. And it's not my job to do your assignments for you. (Yeah, I should just leave the questions blank.)

It is FAR too early in the semester for people to be giving up this way. (It wasn't even that hard of a homework - all the answers could be found, with a little effort, in the textbook.

for the fans of vodka and bacon...

I know a while back I posted that Lego Beer song (which STILL makes me laugh. I think it's a Weird Al song, even though no attribution is given on the YouTube page).

Well, here's one for those who like their liquor a little clearer and a little harder:

Make your own bacon vodka.

Now, I have to admit, that sounds a little horrifying to me - but I'm not a fan of vodka (once again: all alcoholic beverages give me migraines). And I only like bacon if it's cooked so crisp that it's just this side of burnt. But maybe some of you out there are looking for a little free-time project.

I will refrain from commenting on the geopolitical ramifications of mixing bacon (a known pork product) and vodka; I leave that to others.

I'm having to initiate a new label for this; "food" doesn't quite fit, so I'm going with "food?".

what a dog!

Got a spam message this morning with the subject title:

make your lassie moan with LUST and PASSION!

Oh dear. Oh dear dear dear dear.

I do hope that the message originated from Scotland, where "lassie" is more likely to be thought of as "girl" and less likely to be thought of as "collie."

Or maybe it's spam directed at male dogs. Then again, what I've observed of the ways of dogs, lust and passion don't really seem to factor in to the equation...

Not sure it's an improvement.

Apparently Las Vegas is changing its long-term "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" campaign.

I saw an ad this morning with the slogan, "Your Vegas is showing."

Um, yeah. I immediately think of the SpongeBob episode where Patrick actually suggests a useful idea, and SpongeBob responds, "Patrick! Your genius is showing!" and Patrick immediately does a "fig leaf" with his hands and worriedly exclaims, "Where?"

Then again, if they were going for borderline icky, they probably nailed it.

Advertising is strange.