No words....

I received spam this morning purporting to be from a "Ferdinand Bong."

I know there's a joke in there but I just can't seem to come up with it...

screaming meme-y

Some other folks are doing this, so I thought I would too:


1. If you could choose one career, regardless of your natural-born talents/station in life, what would it be?

I assume this means that when you chose the career, poof, you'd have the necessary talent bestowed upon you?

I would like to be an opera singer. Yes, really. It would be a chance at a mild form of celebrity - and best of all, a celebrity where your size is less of an issue than it is for the typical famous female. And you get to dress up.

The fact that I can't actually, you know, sing, is only one of the reasons that would keep me from trying it "for reals" - any kind of entertainer type job requires horrible hours that I would, in the real world, hate.

2. Do you have a tattoo? If so, what is it? If not, would you get one? What would you get?

No, and I won't get one, for two reasons:

1. Fear of needles.
2. I'm reaching the point in life where skin begins to sag, and I can see how hideous some tattoos will look once their owners reach 60 or so. (Mind blowing thought - all of those 20-something woman with "tramp stamps" hitting 70.)


3. Movie theater or DVD rental?

Rental. My last few theater experiences have convinced me that my fellow man no longer understands the concept of behaving in public in a way different than when you are sitting on your sofa at home.

4. What's your current pet peeve?

Litterbugs and vandals. Put them on the space ship destined for the Sun, please.

5. Fiction or non-fiction?

Both - I have a book of each going at the same time most times.

6. What's your typical breakfast?

Cereal or toast. This morning it was a glass of orange juice and a bowl of "Cinnamon Puffins."

7. Vegetable you hate?

Brussels sprouts and broccoli top the list. It would actually be quicker to list vegetables I LIKE.

8. If you could magically play a musical instrument as well as a professional, what would it be?

Piano all the way, because of the versatility - I could play Bach prologues for myself when alone, I could play for sing-alongs at parties, I could accompany people who sing or play other instruments. Also, there's a huge repertoire of music for piano, from the 1600s to last week.

9. Do you believe in luck?

Sort of, but sort of not. I tend to think that you get back in life what you put out to it - not in any kind of karmic sense, but in the sense that breaks tend to come if you're expecting them, and you tend to overlook the little opportunities if you're convinced, Eeyore-like, that nothing good ever happens to you.

I also would like to observe here that I have been very blessed in my life. Very blessed. I have gotten good things far beyond my desert of them.

10. Are you overly concerned about your physique?

I am an American female who is larger than a size 6. In other words, yes. Probably unhealthily so.

I also hate with a passion the news stories that come out and worry us about what we eat or drink. Did you know there are actually nutritionists who say you should never, ever drink fruit juice because of the calories?

11. Cat or dog?

I don't have either (never home and also have allergies) but in preference cat edges out dog.

12. Do you like manual labor?

Provided it's not 95 degrees out with a dewpoint in the 70s, yes, I do.

13. If you are female, do you wear makeup?

Yes. I am naturally pale and I also have come to regard it as part of my "psychological body armor."

14. (Male or female) Do you pluck or wax your eyebrows?

I do a little "shaping" but I'm not going for the Claudette Colbert look. They're fairly natural, just not Brooke Shields natural.

15. What's your ultimate vacation?

Going to an interesting city somewhere with lots of good museums, lots of interesting shopping, lots of nice restaurants, staying in a nice fancy hotel. Oh, and the city has to be one where you can walk around without being harassed. Not sure if such a place exists.

16. If you could retire to anyplace, regardless of money, where would you spend your twilight years?

No idea. Probably stay closest to the friends/family I have at that time. I don't quite understand the mentality of uprooting yourself totally when you hit 65 or 70 and moving halfway across the country - what if you don't LIKE the people you wind up living near?

17. Who do you envy?

First off, as Nightfly said, that should be "whom." Second off, I will once again quote Plato: We know not what burdens others carry.

The grass may LOOK greener but usually that means there's a broken sewer line or something under the surface.

I'm honestly pretty happy with my life so I have no need to envy others.

18. Do you wish you were filthy rich?

No, not really. While it would be nice to be able to snap my fingers and have someone do my laundry for me or go to the market to pick up the skim milk and eggs and spinach I need, I also think I'd lose something of myself in the process of not having to do those things.

19. Is your house clean and tidy or dirty and disorganized?

What point of the semester are we talking about? Early on, or a few days after exam week it's very nice and clean. But about midsemester - or when I'm actually writing exams - it gets to be a bit of a sty.

20. What do you miss about your twenties?

What do I miss? I know what I don't miss - a lot of the emotional crap, a lot of the worrying about what's going to happen to me, a lot of obsessing about my body size coupled with spending months writing down EVERY DAMN THING I ATE in a note book, a lot of the worrying about why Mr. Right hadn't shown up yet on his white charger and swept me off my feet and carried me away to a life where everything's perfect....

Okay - one thing. My metabolism was a wee bit faster when I was in my 20s. And I could eat fried chicken without getting an upset stomach afterwards. I kind of miss that.

another little good thing

My tooth (the one with the temporary) hasn't hurt this week. (Well, unless I drink something really really cold, but that sometimes sets off my non-messed-with teeth, so I don't count that as a concern).

And one more week to go (if things go as they should) and I get the real crown put on and can eat more or less normally again. (I've been very cautious about not eating sticky or really hard things - which is kind of a challenge for someone who likes nuts as much as I do.)

This is why...

I love my summer classes so much.

Today I was talking about meiosis, and the human life cycle, and all that.

And I talked about how "all" men needed to contribute to the formation of a baby (well, at least before it comes out of the womb) was some DNA, and the mom needed contribute allllllll the cell organelles, the mitochondrion, the cytoplasm, and all, and THEN she has to carry the baby for 9 months...(yes, I play it up a little, and yes, maybe it's a leeetle bit sexist, but it makes the students laugh and I figure if they're laughing over something they may be more likely to remember it).

And then, at the end of class, when one of the guys - a young-married with two small children at home - talked about how he didn't have to go to work today so he could go home and "relax," one of the women (herself a mother) scolded him gently:

"Rocky, you need to go home and change some diapers or something. Because all you had to do earlier was just contribute some DNA."

Hahahahahaha.

Not so "smart," now, are you?

Some dude swapped out that standard "Smart Car" (those tiny two-seaters promoted as a solution to urban congestion and pollution) for a 13,000 RPM motor (I'm not enough of a gearhead to know what that motor is FROM).



(You might want to turn the sound down unless you're a fan of thrash metal. The soundtrack gives me a wee bit of a headache).

Now, if it weren't for the deafening nature of the motor (I hope that a pair of noisecancelling headphones come with it), I'd think that was pretty damn cool.

I've always wanted a car that I could put into the "James Bond Escape Manoeuvre" and pull straight from that into a parallel park. And being able to do a 360 and make donuts around trees are just another part of the fun.

But yeah, the motor noise would drive me up a wall. And I'm sure none of my colleagues would ever want to bum rides off me again, especially after I pulled that maneuver I described above, turned to them, grinned broadly, and said, "Now...THAT'S how *I* parallel park!"

(I just hope the thing comes with a really good roll cage. And maybe some five-point belts, while we're at it. And maybe some high-grade reinforcement of the metal, especially since those little cars kind of look like the "crumple zone" is also known as "the driver's knees.")

Stupid Spam: It Liiiiiiives!

I know it's been a long time since I did one of these, but I haven't had any unintentionally-funny spam in a while.

But tonight I got one. Subject line: "How to win craps!"

Um, no thanks. I didn't realize there'd actually be a CONTEST over it. Really, you're welcome to keep it.

Or, perhaps it's something eBay related- lots of people sell a lot of their crap on there, and I know folks talk about how they "win" something on eBay (I don't count it as a "win," exactly - you still have to pay for it, after all).

It's Friday, isn't it?

I've got a bunch of stuff to do, so instead of keeping logging on to It Comes In Pints for the FFOT, I'll list a few things that have got under my skin this week here:

1. Ants. Ants can go to whatever kind of Underworld exists for insects. I hate ants. No, I don't hate ants across the board. I only hate them when they come in my house. I had a small plastic bottle of honey that apparently self-destructed some time Wednesday night. Thursday morning I found a few ants walking across the counter. I cursed, wiped them up with soapy water, and went to work. Came home at lunch. There were approximately 10,000 ants streaming through the tiny crack where the windowsill meets its frame, down the wall, across the counter. I figured it had to be SOMETHING attracting them - so I looked and found the plastic bottle of honey with the crack in it. So I wiped up all the honey (and the ants) and proceeded to clean my entire kitchen. Again.

2. Ortho Home Defense "Max," which should be renamed "Min" or "Zero," can bite the wax tadpole. I went outside after finding the ants and saturated the window frame and the wall the ants were walking up with the stuff. And they did not all die. In fact, many of them did not die. This product claims "4 months ant-free life!" if you use it outside. I STILL HAVE ANTS COMING IN THIS MORNING. (Of course, they are out of luck as there is absolutely no food for them to find - everything is sealed up and put away). I don't like using chemicals that could be toxic to me and I especially don't like using them when it turns out they don't work as promised.

Off to the Lowe's today to see if they still sell those "Terro" baits - which are corn syrup with borate in it. Ants eat it, ants die. It worked last year.

3. Vandals. A few towns over from me a bunch of a-hole d-bags have vandalized the senior center. AGAIN. They destroyed a compressor (didn't steal the copper tubing - just destroyed it to be mean) that served the cold room where food for the Meals on Wheels program was stored.

This kind of thing infuriates me. Not just because it's so pointless - I could even understand it better if they had stolen the copper tubing, which they did not. But because I have had elderly relatives (in other parts of the country) who got Meals on Wheels. And it made a HUGE difference in their lives - not just that they got a hot meal when they were not really capable of cooking one (towards the end of her life, my grandma was blind, and she was afraid of using the stove because she feared she might burn herself. And although she had some of her children and grandchildren near, they couldn't ALWAYS be there to cook for her). The other thing that Meals on Wheels does that is valuable is that they check up on a person - when my grandma fell, not too long before she passed away, the person who first found out she had fallen and got help for her was the Meals on Wheels volunteer. So I guess I feel kind of protective of the program and it makes me very angry that some idiot would compromise its ability to help people. Especially elderly people.

I hope that idiot's grandma wasn't one of the people getting food from Meals on Wheels. And I hope they find that idiot and assign him (or her, I suppose) a GREAT many hours of community service to make up for it.

There has been a lot of vandalism in my region lately; it's always that way in the summer. I don't know if it's the heat making people act stupid, or if it's teenagers with no jobs and no parental supervision going out and getting into trouble. (And if it is a teenager who did it, I hope they throw the book at their parents as well. If my parents caught me even PLANNING something like that, they would have tanned my hide - yes, even as a teenager - and then grounded me for several months.)

4. I'm also getting kind of sick about all the complaining about gas and food prices. Yeah, it's bad. But it is what it is and we can't really do a lot to change it. Listening to people gripe about paying $4 a gallon for milk doesn't make paying it myself any easier. I'd rather just suffer in silence at this point, or try to figure out some kind of ingenious way of saving money. (Lentils. I bought a pound of lentils for 94 cents this morning, and I have a recipe that potentially sounds good. I may be using dried beans a lot this summer because they're a cheap source of protein).

(That said? If OPEC does increase production - which was hinted at in the news this morning - and gas prices drop a little, I hope grocery retailers also lower the prices of food that have been affected by the higher gas prices. I suspect they WON'T, but I'd hope they'd cut us a little break.)

5. I know I said I thought stimulus checks were a bad idea - and I still think they are - but where the hell is mine? It still hasn't come. Maybe they're screwing me out of it because (with capital gains) I made just a bit over $75K last year. But I'd at least appreciate a letter from the government saying "HA-ha! Your investments did too well last year!"

But if I am getting one - well, I've done a 180 on this and I'm NOT going to chunk it into my savings account (where it can earn less interest than what inflation eats up). Hell, I'm spending it. I'm going to go out and buy something FUN. What that is, I don't know yet. I'll figure it out if and when the check comes. Because I'm tired of hearing the constant drumbeat from some sectors of the news of "sit in the dark, turn up your air conditioning to 85, don't eat much, don't drive anywhere, save all of your money, don't have any fun, because it's going to get lots, lots worse before it gets better - if it ever gets better."

No. Fun is good. I like fun. I want some fun. So I'm going to spend that check (if it ever comes) on fun.

I (heart) my summer classes

I totally wish there were a way to "infect" my regular-semester classes with the sort of enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity my summer classes have.

I'm particularly talking about the non-majors class. Frequently, the Ecology class is pretty good (though I do get difficult people in it from time to time). But the non-majors class tends to be night and day from regular semester to summer.

(An aside - that is one of the reasons why I've stopped a lot of the beating-up-on-myself for student enthusiasm not being higher some regular semesters. It's NOT 100% the part of the teacher to generate enthusiasm! I teach the class much the same in the summer, and I have students asking questions and discussing and sharing stories that relate to the topic and going into the activities with enthusiasm - and during the regular semester, I often get a class that Will. Not. Open. Their. Mouths. And it's very frustrating to try to teach to what feels like a brick wall).

But this group is so much fun. They enjoy the demonstrations (even ones my regular semester classes called "childish"). They do well on the tests. They're interesting and they're interested.

I just wish they did evaluations for summer classes; I'd be willing to bet my evaluations are higher in the summer.

One thing summer teaching does for me is it allows me to refute the little inner critic that grows in my mind during the regular semester, the inner critic that tells me "if you weren't so boring, they'd respond more favorably" or "you just don't have the knack for teaching; that's why the students are so disengaged."

Dr. Teeth and the non-electric mayhem

WordGirl, thanks for the reassurance. I think you are correct - it's just occasional twingey feelings, it'll bug me for a couple minutes and then by the time I'm able to go find the Advil, in a lot of cases, it's gone away.

I've also developed the bad habit (which I should try to break myself of) of feeling the temporary with my tongue, with "just checking" to make sure nothing's wrong, and that's probably irritating the tooth and gum more.

The fact that I can (gently) chew on that side without pain is a good sign, I think.

I am still taking Advil right at bedtime, if no other time of the day - it's kind of unpleasant to wake up to a hurting mouth in the dead dark of night and have to go into the bathroom and turn on the light (so I can be sure I'm getting Advil and not, say, that little canister of silica they put in the bottles that is labeled DO NOT EAT). And then be wide-awake for the next half-hour or so because I had to put the light on.

Dental problems really suck, y'know that? I really sympathize now with the people who have serious dental issues - the worst I ever had up to this was the occasional filling or a once-or-twice-a-season tooth and sinus sensitivity brought on by crazy weather.

I also really feel for the people who live with chronic pain - I suppose at some point you learn to accept it and maybe even manage to work around it, but as someone who lives a (mostly) pain-free existence, it's like, wow, it really distracts you to have something hurting, even intermittently.

And I think the fact that it's been goshawful hot and humid here (it's about 10 degrees above what it "should" be right now) and the fact that some of the rooms in which I teach have indifferent air conditioning at best (and I think it was OUT in the lab room I taught in this afternoon - or at any rate it was pretty sticky and nasty by the end of the afternoon and a lot of the students were grabbing paper towels to wipe their faces with (and not just the big guy who's always perspiring).

I'm really glad tomorrow is "my" Friday, with no classes the next day (and my research student is out of town, so no running out to field sites, either. I do have work I can do but it's inside-type work that I can even do at home if the a/c isn't running well at school.)

the jokes just write themselves, sometimes

Heard on the radio (while running out to my field site quickly this afternoon) that a group of Clinton supporters - who are apparently disaffected with Obama - have formed a group called PUMA.

PUMA stands for "Party Unity, My A**"

(In other words: they just don't want to give up on Clinton being nominated. They're making insinuations about sexism and such. To which I say: yawn.)

At any rate - they're calling themselves Pumas. Apparently, they're mostly female. Well, there's another group of females that go by the nickname Cougar.

(I don't think they CHOSE that name for themselves, but it has now become a part of slang).

I suspect that some PUMAS are also Cougars. But I also suspect that you don't want to confuse the groups and refer to ALL PUMAS as Cougars.

Oh, it makes me want to make up some kind of funky Venn diagram....

(I also have to admit - and this is kind of how big of a geek I am - last summer I happened to flip past E! while visiting my folks, and the "program identifier" said something like "50 Greatest Cougar Attacks!" and my first thought was "Why is an entertainment network showing a program about mountain lions?" and my next thought was "It's really tasteless for them to promote voyeurism about animal attacks in that way! A lot of the people killed by mountain lions, their deaths are pretty horrible and not for public viewing." I finally figured out what a "cougar" was in that context and felt kind of like Emily Litella....)

Well, I don't know...

So, two weeks ago tomorrow, I had the prep work done for a crown (a simple crown. Not a root canal. Basically it was the removal of an old filling and the "shaping" of the tooth [and believe you me, that thought makes me shudder] to be able to accept the new crown).

New crown comes in two more weeks. Or at least that's when I can get it put on.

So I've had a temporary. Or rather, temporaries. The first one seemed not to work; it was okay the first couple days (but that might have been because I was assiduously following the "every six hours take either Tylenol or Advil" regime - I have a very small mouth and any kind of work being done in there leads to a lot of pain, simply from my having to prop my jaw open for that long).

Starting on - I guess it was Saturday after the procedure - I started to have pain. Pretty bad pain. Mostly while eating. So I sort of stopped eating, decided to let the thing heal itself (bad idea, ricki) and just kept going.

I taught Sunday school on Sunday but wasn't at the top of my form.

(An aside - I think for me, tooth pain or head pain is the most miserable kind. I think that's because I have a harder time "detaching" it from "me." I broke an elbow about 15 years ago and spent six weeks (in the summer) with one of those crooked-arm casts from my shoulder to my wrist. And I managed. And I even refused the Toradol prescription my orthopedist wrote for me. And I have a bum ankle thanks to years of having one foot that pronates and years of wearing flat flat shoes (Keds sneakers in grade school; those damn flat Chinese cotton shoes when I was a pretentious high-school student). And I can deal with at. But anything around my neck, mouth, or head - forget it.)

I didn't sleep - well, hardly at all - Sunday night before last because of the combo platter of pain, high humidity, my #$&# neighbor's barking dog and my neighbor's $#%(*&$ security light.

So finally, on Monday, I decided I HAD to have it looked at. That even if it meant a root canal, I had to have something done, I couldn't keep going on with the pain and the not-eating and the very-gingerly-drinking of water (water made it hurt too).

So I went in. Turned out that a little piece had broken off of the temporary, exposing part of the "shaped" (shudder) tooth.

So the dentist took the old temporary off (he said it could have been the hygienist who made it didn't do it just right) and replaced it with a new one.

And it's mostly been better. Mostly. My mouth still hurts periodically. It's not the horrible, throbbing, why-is-someone-pushing-an-icepick-into-my-gum pain. It's more like sinus pain - sort of a dull ache. It's worst when I lie down at night or when I get up in the morning. Once in a while during the day - usually as I'm closing up on the end of my classes for the morning - I will get a twinge.

The thing is - one Advil is enough to get rid of it. So - and this may be just denial kicking in - I don't think it can be anything TOO bad. And I'll go for many many hours without taking another dose (like, 20 hours) and be OK. But then it'll come back.

So I don't know. Part of me really doesn't want to have to live on Advil, or at least not to live on it until the permanent crown goes in. But part of me just wants to tough it out until the next appointment - my dentist is very busy and while he's kind enough to 'fit someone in' who's having pain - it often means an hour+ wait in the waiting room.

But part of me is terrified that it's something horribly terribly wrong. Like, I have the world's only case ever of dry-socket-without-having-a-tooth-pulled-first. Or that there's some kind of horrible brain-eating infection getting established in there. Or that he'll pull off the old temporary, recoil in horror, and tell me I need an emergency root canal followed by prep for dental implants. Or that the tooth NEXT to where the crown work is done has a crack in it now, and I'll have to go through the same agony again next month.

Part of the problem is that this is new territory for me. I've never had this process before so I don't know if the occasional bit of pain is just an expected follow-up, or if temporaries are just uniformly unsatisfactory and getting the real crown will clear everything up. And friends who've had experience are little help - one person blinked at me and suggested I ask my dentist for a pain-pill prescription (yeah, great. Then who will drive me to work? And for that matter, who will teach my classes for me when I'm out of it?) And another looked very worried and started muttering about root canals and stuff like that.

So I don't know. But it's one of those minorly life-sucking things that I wind up with sometimes - that aren't really horrible enough to, say, take a sick day over, but which are horrible enough to affect my concentration and focus.

What did I say about panic?

This line, from an article in the New York Times, about "food insecurity":

"At a moment when the country’s corn should be flourishing, one plant in 10 has not even emerged from the ground, the Agriculture Department said Monday."

Now, I SUPPOSE I am possibly reading that wrong, but, from where I sit, it looks like they're saying there's 90% germination of corn thus far.

I realize I'm not a farmer, just a plant ecologist, but if some of my research organisms had 90% germination - well, I'd be doing cartwheels up and down the hall.

(And I am quite sure farmers don't plant TO THE INDIVIDUAL PLANT what they need. Bugs in the soil probably take out more than 10% in a bad year).

(They also have, embedded later in the article, comments from a farmer who has a remarkably good wheat crop this year. But even that's not enough for the OH NOES crowd.)

One thing I will say? If this really IS an issue - if the corn crop is in fact going to be short - we should as a society SERIOUSLY consider if we actually want to be converting food into fuel. (And at any rate: cellulosic ethanol is far more efficient. I don't remember the exact ratio-of-yield but it seems to me that I've seen ratios that are about 2.5 times as efficient for ethanol made of cornstalks, switchgrass, or sugar cane as opposed to ethanol made of corn GRAIN. And we shouldn't be using land on which food crops can be grown to grow ethanol feed stock. Use the marginal land for that.

That is, if you HAVE to have ethanol in fuel. I'm coming more and more to the idea that it was a boondoggle designed to buy votes in places like Iowa than a for-real, for-true attempt at energy independence.

And I'm all for energy independence. I would love for our nation to be able to go to Saudi Arabia and say, "You don't want to boost production so prices drop? You say you can sell all your oil to China? Good luck with that!" and go on our merry ways and power our cars and planes and electrical plants and everything else with homegrown sources. I don't know that it's POSSIBLE but it is something I'd very much like to see. But I don't think using a costly, involved, and low-yielding process to convert food into something that can maybe be mixed with 85% gasoline [for most cars] is the best way to go...)

Awwwwww!

I LOVE stories like this. They make me into a big old crybaby because they make me so happy:



Soldier in Iraq happens to get leave early - coinciding with his mom's birthday. Doesn't let her know so he can surprise her. So he arranges to have himself wrapped up in a big box (a La-Z-Boy box no less. Nice touch, that). Mom unwraps the box, sees camouflage. Son stands up, mom screams, starts to laugh, cry, and hug her son.

(I also love the stories where the military dad-on-leave comes to his kid's school to surprise the kid and the kid just goes crazy to see his dad again).

Consuming

I don't have issues with conservation. I try to do my part - keeping excess lights turned off, taking quick showers most of the time (in the summer, a quick lukewarm shower works pretty well), not driving about aimlessly.

(One of the things that surprises me, where I live - though I guess it shouldn't, we're a small town kind of far from lots of things - is the tendency some folks have just to go out and drive...drive with no goal in mind, without planning to go anywhere. That's sort of different from what I always knew, from what my family always did. Oh, maybe sometimes we'd take a more circuitous route to the restaurant after church, or we'd decide to go somewhere "new and different." But I'm often a little startled when someone new here - and it seems students especially do it - ask me where I drive to when I'm out 'driving for fun.' And I'm never able to answer that...if I'm driving, I'm going to the next town over that has better shopping, or I'm going to one of my field sites, or something. I'd like to go out and just explore but that's so not a part of my background and upbringing that I don't think of it. And now, with gas closing in on $2 - not so much).

But some people - and I read this on some folks' blogs - really get into the whole conservation/environmentalism issue so much that it makes me twitch a little to read what they're thinking about.

There's this horrible sense of GUILT. Guilt for just living, guilt for needing to consume food and resources and stuff like having to drive to work. People who are racked with guilt every time they spend money on something.

It is almost if they think, "If I were only a better person, I could have zero impact on the environment!"

And here's a truth of life: for things to live, other things must die. The lion has to kill the gazelle to eat it. The bear ripping open a log is going to kill all the grubs in it that he eats. Even the (comparatively) peaceable deer is going to limit the growth and reproduction of the plants it grazes on.

And that's life. You can't have no impact. You can't be so "good" in your behavior that it has no effect. You can't not use resources.

And I kind of feel like feeling guilty just for living is kind of counterproductive. Kind of energy-sucking. Kind of removes the joy from things - if you're so busy feeling guilty that a salmon had to die to feed you, you can't enjoy the fact that it tastes good or is nourishing.

(And I almost think that some of the more "indigenous people" type beliefs - for example, I've read some Native American tribes "thanked" the animal that gave up its life so they could eat it and live - might make more sense here. Or thanking whatever higher power you believe in for the availability of food. Because being wracked with guilt seems so counterproductive to me.)

I also think all of this guilt is a byproduct of a couple of things in our modern lives. First of all, so few things that used to be "wrong" are seen as "wrong" any more - even things like (for example) impregnating a woman and then skipping town, leaving her to have to try to raise the kid alone. Even stuff like that - where it's been shown that in the vast majority of cases it's clearly detrimental for a kid to grow up in a single-parent family - both in terms of the kid's social development and also the fact that the kid tends to grow up under less prosperous conditions. But there's not the stigma attached to it there once was - used to be, the guy would at least CONSIDER "making an honest woman of her" and manning up and taking on the role of father, even though he might not want it at first.

But now - fathers are seen in many circles as basically disposable. A provider of sperm to get the next generation going. So if they skip out- no biggie. And if they do stay and marry the woman and help raise the kid, it's seen as OK to ridicule them or disrespect them. (This is totally off the topic but I HATE the "stupid dad" commercials - where the man is shown as clueless or foolish and has to be put straight by his much-smarter wife or kids. That's no more fair than the "ditsy woman" ads of years ago, or the "woman driver" jokes that used to be a staple of comedy routines).

And so - in the vacuum created by society redefining what used to be "sinful" as "not so bad" or "but there were other circumstances involved..." or even, in some circles, as "OK" - new sins have to be found. And the sin of needing resources to live seems to be one of them.

I think the other part is that we've gotten so far from the sort of subsistence living our ancestors did that many people imagine the pre-Industrial-Revolution times as sort of a golden age - almost a Before the Fall type era.

And, my friends, it was not so.

I have read enough history to know that I am very, very glad to live in the 21st century. I have already talked about my appreciation that vaccines and antibiotics and pasteurization and modern dentistry are a part of my world. (If it were not for antibiotics, I might be dead. Seriously. I had scarletina as a child and in the pre-antibiotic days some did die from it. I also had strep throat numerous times, which could kill as well).

But I am also glad that the water I have to drink comes from a tap and is clear and free of parasites. And that if I cut my hand while working in the yard, I can wash it out with soap and water and be almost 100% sure to avoid infection. I am glad that I can control the climate where I live by using a dial mounted on the wall, and that instead of having to chop wood to keep warm, I pay someone to provide natural gas into my house. I am glad I spend my summers in air-conditioning rather than lying in a perspiring, enervated heap on the sofa. (Another aside: how did women in the Victorian and other earlier eras manage? Where they were supposed to wear corsets and petticoats and floorlength dresses and tall boots even in the summer? I'm actually kind of amazed the South was even settled by people before the advent of air conditioning. I cannot imagine trying to function on a 95 degree day in all the kit that women were formerly expected to wear, indoors, with virtually no air circulation.)

But I think perhaps some of the folk who feel guilty - who would return to an earlier way of living - don't think about that.

(I also don't camp. To paraphrase an old Jackie Mason joke, my people were Irish farmers and herders. They spent enough nights sleeping out in the cold, on rocky hillsides. Why should I PAY to do something like that now, when I have a nice house and a nice bed?)

And there's another issue - just how much pollution do we actually generate, anyway? I've seen recent figures for human-generated CO2 that are considerably lower than most natural sources - and are considerably lower than what most of the guilt-mongers would have you believe. So I don't know. I hate it when people tell me I should turn my thermostat up to 80 degrees in the summer - I might as well sit outside in the shade if I'm going to do that.

The other thing that bugs me is when people start wanting to prescribe what others can or "should" do.

I'm perfectly fine with people making choices for themselves, based on what they believe or want to do. (standard disclaimer: provided it is legal and doesn't disturb the others in their area). If you want to be a vegan, God bless you. Have at it. I might even have a few recipes I could share.

But don't expect me to become one as well. And don't keep hammering at me, don't keep making snide comments about the food I eat, don't keep doing the "poor cows!" or "poor chickens!" thing to me.

Because that's childish. And it also pisses me off.

I've run into this kind of attitude on some of the craft blogs. You'd think craftbloggers would be happy fun tolerant people. And most of them are. But some of them unfortunately give off a little bit of the stink of "I'm better than you because..." because they (a) only use recycled materials or stuff they buy at a thrift shop or (b) only use locally-produced stuff or (c) only buy the barest minimum of what they need to finish a project, and don't buy anything new until that project's done or (d) would never, ever, in a million years buy supplies from a (gasp) evil corporate CHAIN.

And again - if that's how they want to live, fine with me. But then they have to go and diss other people who choose to do differently. Look, I want to tell them, I live in a small small town. Even if I drive (another no-no) a half-hour to the next biggest town, my craft-shop choices are two big evil corporate chains.

It's a particular sort of mania, I think, that some people develop - the idea of "it works for me, therefore, everyone else on Earth should do it." You see it sometimes with people who follow a particular diet. Back when Atkins was in full swing, a lot of my friends were doing it. They'd boast about how much weight they lost, how great they felt, how carbs should be outlawed or treated as a controlled substance. (Seriously - some people actually used the term "addiction."). Then they'd look at me and go, "You know? You should try Atkins! You'd feel so much better." (Never mind that I didn't complain of feeling anything less than fine). I finally had to start telling people that if I had to eat eggs before 10 am, it made me hurl. (Because on Atkins, eggs are the main breakfast choice). Usually that shuts the diet-pushers up - telling them that something central to their "plan" makes you spew.

But I see that too with the low-consumption people. Yes, I think it's wonderful for you that you buy your clothes at thrift stores. Sorry, not something I can do. (especially not for shoes. Ew.) But please- if you want to keep me as a friend, if you don't want me to totally tune you out, don't tell me how I "should" be doing what you're doing.

It's even creeping into the media and that drives me up the wall. It's just another part of the whole "panic" mode that the media seems to want to develop in people. (I suppose it is because it gets ratings.) It's the whole "OH NOES!" phenomenon: "OH NOES GAS PRICES ARE GOING UP!!!" or "OH NOES THEY'RE RATIONING RICE!" or something.

And you know? Even on someone trained in critical thinking, it does have an effect.

I had been thinking earlier this week that I should go to the Target in the next town over. I had one of those "10% off your entire shopping day" coupons that expired the middle of next week. And I wanted an additional bookcase (they have some decent cheap folding bookcases) because I was tired of stacking my recent book purchases next to my bedroom closet door. And I needed a bunch of other "little" stuff like aspirin and leg-razors and laundry soap and all that boring stuff that 10% off of would be a nice perk for. And I had a 40% off coupon for Jo-Ann Fabrics (and even if all I bought was a spool of thread - well, since it's right near Target it's worth going in). And I wanted to go to the natural-foods store and get some nuts and seeds and stuff to make granola again.

So I planned the trip for Saturday.

Then I watched a bunch of news.

Then I got to thinking: but what if the economy gets worse? What if food starts to cost even more? Would the $150 or so I spent this weekend be something I'd live to regret? What about gas prices? Could I afford to spend (by my estimation) $15 to drive down there and back?

And I almost canceled the trip.

Then I thought some more: I really wanted that bookcase. And I needed the other stuff. And I decided that, well, if the cost of food went up more, I'd just have to deal with it. (And I needed aspirin. And I needed laundry soap. And if they were going up too, better to buy them now...)

So I went. But it irks me that there seems to be that attitude out there in the media, of "let's scare the rubes" - sort of like one of the neighbor kids I grew up with who liked to poke holes in anthills and watch the ants run around in a panic.

So I don't know. I think we're all going to have to be kind of careful in the coming months and watch the news and go "What are they telling this, and how does it compare with my reality?" I don't know. I do know I don't like being told, "hole up in your house, turn off the lights and air conditioning, prepare for food rationing or at least impossibly high prices, everything's bad, everyone's going to suffer, pain, misery, horrible stuff..." Because I don't operate like that, and if I begin to get sucked into that mode it makes me angry.

"I Love the 80s"? I LIVED the 80s, my friend...

Oh, that takes me back. Takes me back to the days, after tennis, sitting in the dormitory common room at my prep school, waiting for my mom to pick me up. Several of my friends were Thundercats fans, and we used to sit and watch it.

And debate whether Lion-O or Panthro kicked more ass.
And make rude comments about Cheetara's costume.

And diss the "kiddie" cats and that inane worrying creature (the Snarf, I think it was?) that were put in for comic relief.

Good times, good times.

You know, given the recent spate of superhero/fantasy movies, I wonder if they'll develop a Thundercats movie. (I'd hope it would be some kind of live-action with awesome special effects, rather than an animated movie - either a CGI* or what now passes for "traditional" animation).


(*I have to admit, I do not like CGI when it is used on humanoids. Fish, yes, fine. Bugs, great. Small furry mammals, OK. But trying to make semi-realistic humans, it seems to fall flat - they look plasticky and "fake" to me. And I can't suspend disbelief any more. I'm sure they'll perfect it in a few years and we will wind up with "new" Bogart movies using a CGI Bogie and a voice-impersonator, or "new" Marilyn Monroe flicks using the same, but for now, I don't like the attempts to make "real" humans.

Oh, and - I think making "new" movies featuring super-realistic versions of dead stars is as much of a travesty as you do.)

Bizarre and funny

And OK, OK, I get it - it's aimed at the under-five set. But it made me laugh like crazy:



The only bad thing? They never get to the part in the song that goes, "And if the devil doesn't like it, he can sit on a tack OW sit on a tack OW sit on a tack..."

Seriously, it's the "world peace" fantasies that do it...

How evil are you?

Saw this both at Maggie May's and Kate P's. So I had to do it.

I'm kind of surprised yet also not kind of surprised. If I thought pacifism was actually, you know, practical, in this fallen world I probably would be a pacifist.

And the fact that I chose "Habakkuk" over "Michael Palin" (my second choice) probably helped. (I had to go with Habakkuk; spent several weeks teaching about it in Sunday School).

please pray

I have a friend - I think I'll just give her first name here, it's Gail - who had something horrible happen this week.

She lost her husband last year - this week last year - to a sudden blood clot.

Well, almost to the day, the grandson that she and her husband raised committed suicide. And she was the one who found his body.

I'm horrified by this. It makes me so sad - Gail seemed like she was just starting to get back on an even keel after the loss of her husband, and now this.

I got the call from another church member this morning - apparently I was in class when all this happened, and the people who know Gail really well just went over to her house to be with her without taking the time to notify anyone else (which I totally understand and that was the right thing). So now they're slowly getting the word out to everyone.

If you pray, please say one (or more) for Gail. She's going to need a lot of love and strength and support during this time.

And, if you're so inclined, say a prayer for her grandson's soul. I always feel like "such a waste" when I hear something like this - he was only 25 or so. I know, you never know the underlying stuff that's going on in a person's life and sometimes to the person it looks like dying is the only way out of the pain but, still - what a horrible thing for the family.

Sleep

Sleep is very important to me. I consider it so vital to my well-being that few things infuriate me more than feeling that sleep is being "stolen" from me by someone who is being selfish or who is not considering the other people sharing their world.

Sunday night, my neighbors were out of town. They have several dogs. I guess they don't have a doggie-door. So they put the dogs outside. The dogs are, understandably enough, not happy - it is hot, it is sticky, they are outside, their "pack" is partly missing.

So the dogs barked and howled most of the night. (Maybe all of the night; I don't know. About 1 am I got up and went over to the guest room on the other side of the house - threw all the books stacked on the bed onto the floor, found a battery for and reset the little alarm clock I keep in there, and grabbed maybe a couple hours of not-very-good sleep.)

Also, my neighbors have a security light. I've talked to them about this. They know it shines in my bedroom when it turns on. They've tried repositioning it to no avail. (For some reason, they can't be persuaded that, even though we live in a v. small town, even though they have a lightly-sleeping neighbor who WOULD call the cops at any mysterious noise over there, even though the police patrol regularly, they don't need said light). The light is one of those motion-triggered ones.

So: unhappy dogs + motion-activated light = light is on all night long.

In addition to those two things - which, really, I think should be more than any person should have to bear who is trying to sleep - we have entered our "summer weather pattern" here. Meaning: hot (high 90s daytime, maybe dips to 75 at night), humid (it was especially bad Sunday night), and high pressure (which just makes me hurt). So I was miserable on top of everything because sometimes, even with air conditioning, you cannot make a room totally pleasant when it's that miserable outside.

And my tooth - the one I had worked on last week- was hurting. (I'm supposed to go in and get it checked out again today. I'm praying that it's not going to require a root canal - though it does hurt a lot less this morning; maybe it was something related to the weather).

So all of those things combined into a giant swirl of misery. I get irrational when I'm tired, when I feel like I SHOULD be sleeping but can't sleep. So I stomped around my (dark, but not dark enough) room cursing my neighbor, their dogs, the person who invented security lights. I wondered if I bought a bb gun the next day and shot out the light, if they'd be able to trace it to me. (Probably, I decided grimly).

I thought mournfully how the next day was the first day of classes and how nothing was worse than trying to teach when I was sleep-deprived. I felt that sort of existential despair you feel at midnight when you want to sleep, when you know you have to be up in less than 6 hours, but you can't sleep. You start to get the feeling of "it will ever be so" and you wonder how long it takes a person to die from lack of sleep.

As I said, I finally decamped to my guest bedroom - I didn't do that earlier because (a) I held out a vain hope that my neighbors would come home and take their slavering Hell-beasts indoors and (b) there was a lot of crap - books, my academic robe, posters, etc. stacked up on the guest room bed and I'd have to take time - and "rev" myself up, energy-wise - to remove them. And I'd have to find an alternate alarm clock (What I use in my room is a big CD player with an alarm function; too heavy to move, especially in the middle of the night). So I finally did all that - set the alarm clock for the time I needed to get up.

And then, I admit, I did something not very nice. "I need a backup" I thought "In case the little alarm clock isn't working right." And I looked at my CD player - it's set to turn on and play the CD I have in there when the alarm goes off. So I turned the volume all the way up. I figured, "I'll hear it from the guest room if the little alarm clock fails." And, coincidentally, my neighbors would probably hear it in THEIR bedrooms.

But I also have to admit - there was, at that point, a "dose of their own medicine" thing about it - as in, "If they don't care that their dogs are barking at midnight and keeping those of us who must rise early awake, let's see how they feel about a dose of loud Shostakovich at 5 am."

(I did, however, wake up before the alarm went off - and went in and turned it off. Though I still feel perhaps I might have been justified in letting it happen).

****
So to try to solve at least one of the problems (and not have to move semipermanently into my guest room - which is small and not entirely satisfactory as a regular bedroom - I decided to see what I could purchase in the order of "room darkening" shades.

Now, I wanted to do it quickly and easily - not have to schedule someone to come out to my house and install them, not have to screw with all kinds of new hardware myself.

So I went to Lowe's (there's one in town, now. My choice would have been them or wal-mart - as far as I can tell, we don't have any "just window coverings" type store). Waited about 10 minutes for someone to help me. Found a blind that I knew would work with the existing hardware, but figured it was no better than what I had. Looked at the Levolor blinds. Talked with the guy - would these work with the hardware I have? Oh, yes, he assured me, it's the same. And these are more room-darkening!

So I bought four blinds for my bedroom.

Came home. Problem #1 - one of the blinds had clearly been returned. I hope it was just that it was supernumerary or that it didn't fit the intended window.

Problem #2 - they DIDN'T fit the existing hardware! (Well, that's what you get, accepting the advice of someone who's not an expert, I guess). They almost fit. They would stay - temporarily - in place, until I had the energy to put up the "right" hardware.

But then there was Problem #3 - these were sold as "room darkening" shades, right? They didn't darken the room any more - and in fact, did less - than what I already had up. So I took down the blind I was struggling with and put the old one back up.

And decided I lacked the energy to return them right then. I really didn't want to truck back out to Lowe's, and wait in a giant line again (apparently they are trying some kind of cost-saving program where they only have one person working the customer-service desk - and they are also running the only register open - at this time). I didn't want to be told, "But you took one out of the box! You cannot return a blind you took out of the box." To which my reply would be, in a barely-controlled, Linda-Blair-in-Exorcist voice, "But how are you supposed to know how crappy the supposed 'room darkening' feature is unless you TAKE ONE OUT OF THE BOX?"

So I don't know. They are now sitting in the middle of my dining room floor, a pile of FAIL. I don't know whether to go and get the $64 back or whether to install them in my family room instead - they will fit, I have the right number, and I sort of need new blinds in the family room. But I can't make up my mind on that right now; I just simply lack the energy to deal with it.

****
I do have to say last night was better - the people were home and I guess they realize that their dogs make a lot of noise (though you'd think they'd realize the dogs would make the noise when they were NOT home, as well). About 10 pm I heard the woman go out and talk to the dogs (yes, that is how close our houses are) and take them indoors. And I guess she turned the security light off at that time because I didn't notice it going on during the night.

So I slept through the night. But still...few things make me more irrationally angry than someone being loud late at night, or someone with a light that shines in other people's bedrooms, or something like that. That's why I think high-density housing - as much as the Greens like it, because it is more energy-efficient - will never work 100%. Because there are far, far too many people in this world who think, "I should be able to play Top Gun on my XBox with the volume turned up to "11" all night long, and anyone who's bothered by that is just a big poopyhead and they will have to suck it up." Or there's the person who thinks that 6 am is just a PEACHY time to run their super-sucker vacuum cleaner that rattles the windows of everyone around them.

If everyone had the same schedule, the same expectation of "Noise goes off at 10 pm and doesn't come back on until 8 am," then it might work. Or if your typical high-density housing was built with Fortress-of-Solitude grade walls.

But seeing as I can live in a house - a SEPARATE house, a house I own - and I can be disturbed by stuff going on in the yard 10 feet from my bedroom window, I don't see all of us living in hive-blocks, and being able to be 100% happy and 100% tolerant of it any time soon.

I know lots of people live in apartment high-rises and love it. Maybe I've just had bad experiences (tending to live in housing in a university town...). But I've said before - and will say again: unless I absolutely cannot afford anything else, I will not live in an apartment again. Not unless I have a good guarantee of the soundproof quality of the walls, ceiling, and floor. (Because sometimes I'd like to be that person running the super-sucker vacuum cleaner at 6 am. I wouldn't - not unless I knew I wasn't disturbing my neighbors - but sometimes I'd like to have the option, you know?)

T -1

Tomorrow, summer classes start. Last time I checked, I had 11 in one class and 10 in the other. (Sometimes we gain a few the last day of registration or the first day of classes - someone's work schedule changes and they can take classes after all, or they decide they want to get a class out of the way, or something). But if the classes don't grow any, I won't mind. That small of a number - provided everyone is willing to participate - is pretty much ideal for a class.

I re-did the introductory material for one class (I try to re-do stuff a little each semester, to keep fresh and also to discard stuff that doesn't work). I'm eager to start that class because I think it will start things off well, it will get people into the idea of planning the experimental work they are to do as part of the class, and hopefully will get some discussion going. The other class, I've kind of "mentally redone" some of my examples; this is a class that we're getting a new book (and a "forced syllabus," sigh - they want to make all the sections of the class as identical as possible even though multiple people teach it) this fall, and so I'm redoing the lecture material for it this summer.

(I've decided - to force myself to stay on the "forced syllabus" - to allot myself a set number - say 12 to 15 - Powerpoint slides for each class, and force myself to strictly prioritize what I put on them in terms of graphs and figures and terms. Unfortunately this "cram it all in" new syllabus is going to require me to let go some of the weirder and - to me at least - more wonderful stuff I shared with the class in the past, but whatever. The challenge will be to make the basic stuff I have to teach as interesting as possible.)

Summer teaching is good for me. I don't deal well with long periods of idleness - when I'm not teaching, I have a hard time staying disciplined to do things like work on research and write papers and even exercise. (It's ironic - when I'm busy, I can make time to do the things I should be doing, but when I'm not busy, I kind of fall into a mañana philosophy and don't get much done.) When I'm actively teaching, I plan my schedule pretty tightly - for example, I get out of class at 10:45 Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. After that, I plan to work on some research papers I have going until lunch, and then after lunch, plan the next day's class material. And then once I get that done - back to research until 3 or 4 when I go home. I have one paper I MUST finish this summer (as I'm submitting it when I go to a conference the end of July) and I have another I would very much like to finish (and will, unless I get lazy). And I have a third project I can kind of poke away at as I make time for it.

It will be nice though to have more evenings open - AAUW does not meet in the summer, Youth Group is on summer hiatus (some of the kids work and some are going to camp), most of my evening responsibilities go away in the summer. Which is just nice. It is nice to have a period of time when I can come home and STAY home, when I can come home at 4 or so and make some kind of more-elaborate dinner preparations instead of washing salad greens, throwing them in a bowl, opening a can of chickpeas, and calling it good (which is what I often do during the school year).

I enjoy the slightly relaxed schedule on campus, as well - a lot of the horsepucky doesn't take place over the summer - no committee meetings, no OH NOES WHAT DO WE DO NOW directives from the administration, much less busywork designed to make some administrator look good. A person can focus on teaching and research, and that is why I took this job - to teach and to do research.

I also like the peace of the campus in the summer - only perhaps 10% of the students are present that are present during the school year. It's a lot quieter, a lot less trafficky. You can walk across campus and be largely alone, even at class-changing time. The quietness is a nice change, and I think for me it's necessary - I get overwhelmed by too many people being around all the time.

I also find the summer teaching restorative because of the students. We tend to get really good students in the summer - usually they're people who are committed to finishing their undergrad degrees in three years, or they're incoming freshmen who want to get a jump on their schoolwork, or sometimes they're advanced high-school students who want to earn college credit early. At any rate, they tend to be more focused, to care more, and that's good. I also think the more relaxed atmosphere of the summer - and the fact that we meet every day (except Fridays) helps the students' personalities to come out more - they're not so much an amorphous mass, they're very clearly individuals with different personalities. And some of them are so funny or so interested. I get a lot of music and theater students in my non-majors class in the summer and they tend to be a lot of fun to have - creative, clever, a lot of them ask good questions. It's almost as if the people who feel so pressured to be "cool" - "cool" in the sense of not letting on they CARE about anything - don't bother to show up in the summer.

And I like that. I like the slight geekiness of a student who will make a joke about Stentor (as one of my students did last summer...and you know, that just totally made my day when he did that, when he made that mythology reference. It was like, "You don't mind that we're seeing your personality and sense of humor! And it makes you interesting to me!"). I suppose it's because I'm a geek myself and I tend to make those funny little references in class (I try to make ones that aren't TOO obscure. I did get a laugh one day by making an offhand comment about "filing TPS reports").

So summer - even though I'm working - kind of restores me. Having classes of good students is better for me than a total rest because it re-energizes me, it gives me hope for the future. (My ecology class this spring was pretty darn good, too, so that helps my enthusiasm).

And I have to admit, the money's not bad, either. The one summer I DIDN'T teach (because my classes didn't "make"), I had to really watch my pennies; summers I do teach my budget is a lot happier.

So, tomorrow at 8 am I will be beginning a new season, a new group of students. New personalities, new interests to learn about. Hopefully good classes with interested (and interesting - and I tend to feel that people who are engaged with life ARE more interesting than people who feel that need to be detached and "cool") people in them, and hopefully I can live up to their expectations in terms of what they want to learn and do this summer.