that's it.

It's now 1:30. I've done all the work I brought home with me.

I am beginning to think I will never have hot water again. Maybe I should go fill that 10 gallon bucket I bought at the Lowe's (in case I needed to drain the dead water heater) and set it out in the sun under a black plastic garbage bag and try to rig my own kind of solar hot water heater. Maybe I need to buy a bunch of those "camp showers" that are basically black rubber bladders you fill with water and hang in the sun, and just use those for washing. That'll be just another one of my chores at 6 am when I'm getting ready to leave the house: time to make the hot water.

And as for eating - I'll just buy paper plates and plastic forks. To hell with the environment. Or maybe I'll just NOT eat - I'd lose some weight that way. Make all the war on obesity people wet their pants with joy.

And as for clothes - well, I'll wash what I can in cold water, and the rest, I'll use my camp shower water on. Or maybe I'll just get a bunch of sheets, wear them toga-style for a week each, and then pitch them when they get too dirty or sweaty.

whimper. Yes, I'm whining. But I don't like sitting around at the mercy of someone else.

Or maybe I'll just burn the place down and start over with the insurance money.

(Oh, the guy just called again: he's running a little late.

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.

I mean, seriously - when the phone rang, I knew it was going to be him. But still - what I need is not, "Oh, it's going to be a few more hours," but "I'm on my way."

He asked if it was okay if he came later - he'd call me when he finished the job he was on. Well, I guess since I've already grabbed my ankles and said "Okay," I'll keep on holding them.

Damnit, Lowe's - if you have too much work for one plumber, HIRE ANOTHER ONE. This is bull crap! I can't take off work tomorrow.)

12:46

The guy FINALLY called when he came in to work (what the hell kind of plumber starts his day at 9:30 am? When I was a kid...I know we had plumbers out at 8, some maybe even earlier). He said he'd be here at noon.

The title of this post is the time it was when I started writing it.

This sucks. I hate sitting and waiting on people. If he doesn't show today, I AM going to Lowe's customer service and bitching and asking them for part of the installation fee back. No, I won't accept a "gift card." No, I won't accept an apology and some lame excuse.

Maggie, you didn't infect me with bad customer service. Bad customer service is RAMPANT where I live. I'm actually surprised when someone shows up on time. I'm actually surprised when someone calls me.

Why does it have to be this way? Why can't "professionals" be more so? Is it because they know we're dependent on them and so they can do whatever the hell they want.

The reason I'm getting antsy is I suspect this is not going to be an easy installation, and I fear him turning off water to the whole house (because there is no convenient shut-off valve near the hot water heater) and then leaving for the day - and me having to check into a hotel over night because one of the side-effects of this cold is that I'm peeing like every hour on the hour and I can't go a night "holding it."

In other news: having watched tv while sitting here waiting, I can say now with confidence that I really really really really really really really really do not give a capital F what happens to OJ. He can rot in prison and if we never hear of him again, good. I also think the Goldmans (Goldmines? Golddiggers?) can rot as well; I wonder if they partially orchestrated this to bring publicity for the fact that THEY'RE trotting out OJ's "confession" book to make money off of the name of their dead son.

They should all be sent to a very small island with minimal tools. Sort of like "Survivor," only it wouldn't be on tv.

#$*($&#$()#&*$#$#(*&!!!!

So, I called Lowe's this morning.

The installation-dispatcher lady was a little snappy with me.

I said: Yesterday, you said the installer would call yesterday afternoon and he didn't call. I wanted to call in early, before he got busy, and see if there was any way he could come out today, because I can't take the whole day to just sit by the phone.

Dispatcher lady: "He has forty-eight hours to call you! It's still within the forty-eight hours!"

Interesting. The customer-service guy, when I first asked about the installation, said, and I quote: "We consider being without hot water to be an emergency, so we make an effort to have hot water heater installations done within forty-eight hours."

Not: you have to sit by the phone with your thumb up your butt for the next forty-eight hours and pray that the installer has some time for you this week.

I told her I could be available today, but not tomorrow, and Thursday and Friday in the afternoon. She made an annoyed grunt and said that he was coming in to pick up a dishwasher this morning (which means there's at least one job ahead of me) and she'd have him call me then.

Uh-huh. I wonder what time he comes in.

I'm just really peeved because it is NOT FUN to have to heat water on the stove every time you need to wash dishes. It is NOT FUN to look at your underwear drawer and wonder when you have to start rationing (because I will NOT go to a laundromat in this town...I'd be afraid of catching something having washed my clothes in those machines). It is really NOT FUN when you have a fever and chills to bathe in tepid water.

This drives me UP THE WALL. Every time, every damn time I need something done by a professional, I wait and wait and wait and when I call after waiting to say, "hey, is there some kind of an ETA on when the job might be started" they act like I've been calling them every fifteen minutes to bug them. I thought it would be better through Lowe's, them being a big chain and all and having an interest in not pissing off their customers, but I guess I was wrong.

I refuse to call up my friends and ask to use their showers or their laundry rooms. But if I have to wait more than a few days I am going to be even more unhappy than I am now. I wonder if I could, in desperation, get a motel room for one night (just so I have a real shower that's not cold) and ask Lowe's to foot the bill for it?

Part of my frustration is that when someone "needs" something from me, I drop everything to do that something...you'd think I'd get a little bit of the karma-love for that, but nooooooooooo.

Hot water: not yours

Well, the guy never called, and it's 4 pm where I am.

"Karen" in the installation-service department goes home at 3 pm. When I called her (midday) she told me the installer was "out on a job" and would call me.

I think "the service person will call you" is the modern variant on "the check's in the mail."

So, I've hauled out my four-quart crockpot and am heating water in it. Once it gets warm, I'll heat water in my 6-quart kettle and my 4-quart dutch oven on the stovetop, and hope that's enough to wash my hair. Because I can't go another day like this.

And then I get to repeat the process to take a bath tonight.

And I'm not sure I want to eat anything requiring a plate or silverware, because boiling water to wash dishes - that's another batch.

Tomorrow morning, I'm calling Lowe's customer service around 8 and bitching at them if the installer hasn't called by then. Because Wednesday is my 8 am until God-knows-when day at work, and I'm danged if I'm cancelling my classes just because the "48 hour installation time" stretches to longer than that.

If they can't install it until next week, by God I'm asking for some of the installation fee back.

You've seen the ugly shoes, now check these out

Bunny slippers for the office?

I think these are less offensive than those "Sportilettos," but not much. Besides, isn't the point of going to work being a grown-up? I might wear silly slippers when I'm at home, but I kind of want to break out the "grown up" shoes when I'm teaching.

Maybe on a 20 year old "Club Kid" they'd work, but not a real adult woman holding down a real job.

"Because I'm sick and feel like crap, that's why."

So I collected the homeworks - which I gave a grace period over the weekend for, which were originally due Friday.

Three people did not have them done and sat in the back of the class and worked on them. I didn't say anything because I feel like crap.

Their homeworks - the highest score is a 60%.

One person BITCHED and GRIPED and MOANED and talked about how much the homework "sucked." I reminded him that I was not requiring them to meet two hours every week for a scheduled lab; the homework takes the place of lab. (And: two hours in class equals a minimum of two hours outside class prep and write-up. So I don't think he has any right to complain.) This is also my "getting on my last nerve" person - the one with a smart remark for every situation. I think he knows I'm irritated with him right now.

I mean, seriously: they were supposed to have this done FRIDAY. I realize that the weekend is social time, but surely, surely they could find an hour or two to work on the damn thing? (That's what really gripes me: almost never to I get a weekend where I'm work-free. These are people planning to go into careers somewhat similar to mine. They should get used to it.)

Oh, and the installers have not yet called. I was under the impression they would call this morning - it is past 10 am and no word. I am not going to be a happy camper if there's some weird codicil that lets them out of their "installed in 48 hours" promise. Maybe it's "installed in 48 hours when the installers have nothing else to do" or "installed in 48 hours provided the Lowe's and your home are located in a Major Metropolitan Area."

Or maybe they just lied all over the place to me, and what the case really is is, "the installers will CALL in 48 hours of your purchase and good luck at getting an installation time."

I don't know. I just want this taken care of.

Because I hurt ALL OVER. My back and chest are just racked from coughing. I want nothing more than to go home and take a hot bath, and I don't know when I will be able to do that.

And if they say they can come out Wednesday, I'm screwed: unless I cancel all my classes, I can't be at home AT ALL on Wednesday. And I have ZERO patience. If someone comes and bitches to me about homework/paper/test/whatever, they're getting an earful.

Because I'm sick and feel like crap, but I'm too responsible to stay home and watch cartoons for a day.

"CNN Envy"?

CNN Envy: Weather Channel has it.

I don't see it on the website, but yesterday they had some promotion on the tv channel saying "First Day of Fall 2007: Live Coverage! September 23, 2007!"

Um...WTF?

Live coverage of the first day of fall?

Like, anything's actually going to HAPPEN?

What are they going to do? Put up tree-cams to watch for the first leaf turning? Monitor daylength and nightlength? Have NASA simulations showing where the Earth is in its orbit around the Sun?

I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. I'm so tired of the "OMG WTF Everything Must Be Huge Giant Breaking News" trend that's developed in this country.

Yes, I'm happy that fall is starting. Will it make a difference to my weather? Probably not noticeably, at least not ON the 23rd. It's process, not an event.

I wonder if the Weather Channel realizes how stupid it looks by frothing up the First Day of Fall like it's some kind of news event. Then again - maybe no one really understands what real "news" is like any more, considering the amount of OJ coverage that's been put forth the past couple days. Okay, okay, so he was arrested. Fine. Mention that. But don't spend fourteen hours in an onanistic panoply of lawyers, former judges, former sports stars and people who just want their faces on tv talking about what this "means." I can tell you what it "means" as far as MY life is concerned: nothing at all.

What does the Iraq war or chasing down and routing out Al Quaeda mean, as far as MY life is concerned: actually quite a lot, in the long run. I don't want to see the U.S. travel down the path that many European countries are. I don't want to feel unsafe in my own town because of the possibility of a terror cell setting up shop here. I don't like to think of western culture being subsumed into a caliphate. I CARE about what's going on in the middle east. I CARE about what's happening culturally in Europe. I DON'T CARE about a criminal, washed-up, bad-actor former sports star and what he's done now.

Maybe what I need to do is start up RNN: the Real News Network. Where there's no stupid celebrity news. If a celebrity dies, or is arrested, or does something heroic, it will be mentioned, but not dwelt upon. Instead, coverage will be devoted to things that matter, things that will really truly affect the lives of ordinary folks, folks who don't live in the apparently-insulated-from-reality regions like Hollywood. We'd have experts - not just people who are attractive and pushy - and there'd be an effort to get both sides time to speak. People who were rude or snarky would be dismissed and not invited back. Our tagline: News for Grown-ups.

Of course, it would probably never succeed.

55 questions

Spotted both at Caltechgirl's and at Ken's. So wotthehell, here are my answers:

1. Is your second toe longer than your first?
No, in fact my first toe is longer.

2. Do you have a favorite type of pen?
Whatever kind is close at hand. Whatever kind my colleagues won't borrow and "forget" to return. (Maybe, seeing as most of my colleagues are male, I need to get Hello Kitty pens or something).

3. Look at your planner for March 14, what are you doing?
Not a clue. That's much to far away for me to plan. Who wrote this thing, a marketing type?

4. What color are your toenails usually?
I used to paint them - color called Vixen - but I haven't in a long time because I've just not felt like putting the time in on upkeep. So now they're just normal toenail color.

5. What was the last thing you highlighted?
Highlighters are tools of the devil. Bite your tongue for even asking that.

6. What color are your bedroom curtains?
Green and pink plaid. Because if there's no other perk to being a single girl, it's that I get to decorate my bedroom the way I want.

7. What color are the seats in your car?
Gray.

8. Have you ever had a black and white cat?
No. Lived with (but did not actually own) a few Siamese, but never black and white.

9. What is the last thing you put a stamp on?
Oh, gosh, some bill or other.

10. Do you know anyone who lives in Wyoming?
No.

11. Why did you withdraw cash from the ATM the last time?
I don't use an ATM. Too hard to keep track of withdrawals.

12. Whose is the last baby that you held?
No idea. I'm a shockingly unmaternal woman. I don't go all drooly over babies.

13. Unlucky #?
13 and 52. I'm surprisingly superstitious about those for a scientist.

14. Do you like Cinnamon toothpaste?
Sounds kind of nasty but I've never tried it. I can't use any whitening toothpastes as they make my teeth sensitive.

15. What kind of car were you driving 2 years ago?
Ford Windstar.

16. Pick one: Miami Hurricanes or Florida Gators?
Neither. Not really a football fan. (Michigan, as much as anyone, at least when they're not getting their asses handed to them on a regular basis)

17. Last time you went to Six Flags?
Willingly? Never. Supervised a youth group trip to one of the Six Flags family of waterparks once; that is something I will never do again without either a very large bribe or a large dose of tranquilizers first.

18. Do you have any wallpaper in your house?
Both bedrooms and the kitchen. It was there when I bought the place, and a quick check revealed it had been put on over paneling (which probably means the plaster underneath is totally shot), so I've not considered taking it down, even though wallpaper's not my favorite

19. Closest thing to you that is yellow?
Yeah, one of the stripes on the yellow-and-white-with-big-ass-pink-roses wallpaper.

20. Last person to give you a business card?
Some guy who was doing environmental consulting for a highway bypass near me. He found some plants and didn't know what they were and wanted me to identify them. Luckily it was nothing rare.

21. Who is the last person you wrote a check to?
Person? No idea. I wrote one to my church this morning, though.

22. Closest framed picture to you?
A picture of an outdoor cafe.

23. Last time you had someone cook for you?
No idea whatsoever. I mostly wind up having to cook for myself. Probably the last time I visited my folks.

24. Have you ever applied for welfare?
No, never had to, thank God.

25. How many emails do you have?
No idea at all.

26. Last time you received flowers?
It's been too long.

27. Do you think the sanctity of marriage is meant for only a man & woman?
My attitude is this: I don't care what consulting adults do in the privacy of their homes as long as I don't have to hear the details of it. And that goes for mixed-sex as well as single-sex couples.

(Actually, I have to add to this: as for governmentally-sanctioned "unions," I don't give a fig - I've known gay people who really wanted to have some kind of long-term commitment to their partner - I mean, like a formal commitment. However, for church-sanctioned marriage - I think it should be up to the leadership of the individual church or denomination to decide. I don't think priests or ministers or rabbis who have an opposition to marrying a gay couple should be forced to marry them. I admit some considerable conflict here: I've read all the Scriptural arguments, but then again: I also have known gay people. And from what I've read, it seems like "gayness" is at least partly biologically determined. I'd rather see someone accept that they are gay, than marry a person of the opposite sex and wind up cheating on them.

I guess the best thing to say is: I feel conflicted about this issue. Perhaps if our culture weren't so heavily sexualized it wouldn't BE an issue [they used to talk about, for example, "Boston marriages" between women - and it wasn't always clear that they were a lesbian relationship; in some cases it may have been two straight-but-uncoupled-and-uninterested-in-having-children women who banded together. Because, one thing I've learned is this: even today it's easier if you have another person around.))

28. Do you play air guitar?
No. I kind of think that's a Y-chromosome linked thing.

29. Has anyone ever proposed to you?
No. At least not a guy who was sober.

30. Do you take anything in your coffee?
I don't drink coffee. You wouldn't like me when I drink coffee.

31. Do you have any Willow Tree figurines?
No, not a figurine kind of person. I'd rather have a couple of nice vases, even when they're empty.

32. What is/was your high school's rival mascot?
Lord, I don't remember - a cougar, maybe? I went to prep school, we didn't really do rivalries.

33. Last person you spoke to from high school?
One of my old friends and I email back and forth occasionally.

34. Last time you used hand sanitizer?
I think after the last town trash-off, because there was no actual water to wash hands with and I was kind of skeeved about some of the stuff I had picked up. Normally I don't use it because I think it just breeds more resistant bacteria.

35. Would you like to learn to play the drums?
No, would rather learn violin, cello, or piano.

36. What color are the blinds in your living room?
White.

38. Last thing you read in the newspaper?
The tv listings.

39. What was the last pageant you attended?
I don't do pageants.

40. What is the last place you bought pizza from?
I prefer to make my own pizza. In the town where I live we have Pizza-the-Hut and Domino's, and the last Domino's pizza I bought had this weird, steamed-cauliflower smell when I opened the box.

41. Have you ever worn a crown?
"Some people out there in our nation don't have crowns, and, uh, I believe that our beauty pageants such as in, uh, Iraq and South Africa and everywhere like such I believe that they should, our beauty pageants over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. and uh, er, should help South Africa and Iraq get crowns..."

In other words: no.

42. What is the last thing you stapled?
A student paper. ("Dr. Ricki, do you have a stapler?" "Sure, let me go over to the pack-mule I bring to every class with me and get it.")

43. Did you ever drink clear Pepsi?
I don't drink BROWN Pepsi. (Heh: "Don't drink the brown Pepsi. People. Don't drink the brown Pepsi; there is some bad Pepsi out there.")

44. Are you ticklish?
Not any more

45. Last time you saw fireworks?
It's been a while. Last heard them the other night - apparently there was a high school football tourney and they shot the $()%$$ things off after every touchdown. (At 11 pm? WTF?)

46. Last time you had a Krispy Kreme doughnut?
I don't remember. Never had a hot one.

47. Who is the last person that left you a message & you actually returned it?
A student, the other day.

48. Last time you parked under a carport?
I don't think I ever have.

49. Do you have a black dog?
Only in the figurative, Churchillian sense.

50 . Have you had your mid life crisis yet?
I have minor crises a couple times a year. I'm hoping to spread out the midlife crisis amongst those.

51. Are you an aunt or uncle?
Nope.

52. Who has the prettiest eyes that you know of?
Oh, geez, I don't know.

53. What kind of soap or body wash do you use?
Usually some kind of lavender stuff.

54. Do you remember Ugly Kid Joe?
No clue at all who that is.

55. Do you have a little black dress?
I own a black dress but it's not exactly "little" in the sense that you mean. I don't look so good in black so I reserve other colors for my "date" dresses.

Well...

After consulting with my dad (and a couple of the guys I go to church with), the general conclusion is:

the water heater is very likely to be kaput
if it isn't kaput, it's probably going to go in the next year.
Therefore, it's probably money ahead to just get a new one.

As it turns out, Lowe's "guarantees" installation within 2 business days of purchase.

We will see.

I'm $600 poorer (that's the heater plus the installation cost - I flinched at paying it up front, as my experience is that if you pay for work before it's done, it never gets done. But hell, this is Lowe's. Surely they have business principles to uphold. Surely they wouldn't rook a poor college prof out of $250 for an installation that doesn't happen)

They're supposed to call tomorrow. I gave my office number, and I think when I go in early tomorrow morning I'll change the greeting to: "If you're the installers, I'm in class now. But I can be home by 1 pm today! Or I can be home all day tomorrow! [thank goodness I don't have any classes Tuesday] Just tell me when you'll be there!"

And yeah, yeah, I know - Consumer Reports said people were less satisfied with Lowe's-sent people than with the people they chose themselves. But I don't feel like playing plumber-roulette right now, calling dozens of people to see if ANYONE is free within the next several weeks.

And I'm not worrying about "best brands." The Lowe's near me had Whirlpool and some made-in-China brand I didn't recognize. So I went with Whirlpool (besides, the Chinese-made ones may only have been for propane and not natural gas - I didn't look too closely.)

I have to admit this is one of those times I kind of wish I was married - especially to a "handy" sort of guy. Then I could just say, "Honey....there's no hot water. What do we do?" and he'd take care of it.

Still, I WOULD have liked to have had a hot bath tonight. And if the installers can't come out Monday afternoon, I may have to bite the bullet and heat some water up on the stove to wash my hair.

"Just like the 'good old days'" one of the ladies at church said.

The "good old days" can kiss my butt.

water heater curse

Cullen, Tracey...some of you might look out.

It seems that the rolling bloggers' hot water heater curse is on the move.

Maggie May chronicled her troubles last week.

Well, now I have it.

Yesterday afternoon, I guess I used up the last of the hot water out of the dead heater when I took my shower - I had to have the hot water turned on full-blast and it still felt not-warm-enough. (At the time, I was HOPING it was just my perception because I had chills - it turns out I have a $(*%&*$ fall cold and I'm running a fever).

But this morning, when I went to get warm water out of the tap to make a salt-water gargle - nothing. Ran the tap ten minutes and the water never warmed above room temperature.

Dammit. It frustrates me that this kind of stuff seems to happen when I'm in the least mood for tolerating it. I was contemplating taking a hot bath tonight before bed to help me breathe - but I do not have enough large vessels to heat water on the stove to fill a tub.

I'm not even thinking ahead to what I'll do for washing dishes, doing laundry...I guess laundry can mostly be done in cold water (thank goodness I have enough towels ahead and enough sheets) and with the dishes, I suppose I can wash them by hand and then sterilize them with water boiled on the stove.

For washing, I'll just fill the sink with water and use a washcloth. My hair, I'll find a hair place and pay the $10 or whatever it costs for a shampoo. Because I'm just not willing to get into a shower of cold water, and the thought of choreographing the heating of water on the stove and the washing of my hair in the sink is more than I can cope with right now.

I have a plumber who has an "emergency" number. I'm going to try calling it after church today to see if "emergency" extends to Sunday hours, and if he regards a possibly-dead hot water heater as an "emergency."

There's an outside chance that the gas pilot just went out - but the heater is 24 years old so I'm expecting it will need to be replaced. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to see where the pilot was and everything, and couldn't.

And the gas is not off in my neighborhood (though I wouldn't put it past the local gas company to shut off the gas for some reason and not tell anyone); I tried putting on the heat and IT worked.

I guess when I run to wal-mart in a few minutes, I go to the adjacent Lowe's and look at prices and models of water heaters. I've heard of the 'tankless' kind but it's my understanding you need one on every water line where you require hot water, and my house isn't exactly configured to allow that.

Ugh. The only good thing about this is that the newer heaters will be more efficient (cheaper to run). And the old one HAD been declining in its performance - if I wanted a REALLY hot bath last winter, I'd have to heat supplemental water on the stove. I suppose the old heater is all filled up with scale and crap from our hard water.

If I can just get a plumber. That's the issue. Last time I called a plumber, I was given ETAs of over a week, or in one case, 2 weeks. And that is Not Acceptable as far as not having hot water is concerned.

Saturday Surreal Spam

I just got a spam-message (at least I assume it to be such, I delete such things without ever opening for fear of malware)

from: System Adminstrator

subject: 1 unreal message


Is that like imaginary numbers? Are they beginning to send virtual spam? Is this the "etherware" I've heard so much about?

OMFG

There is just about nothing worse when doing figures for a research paper, or at least nothing I can think of, than getting them exactly perfect (or as perfect as my limited graphic-design skills can make them) and then transferring them from my laptop (which has a particular analysis program on it) to my desktop, so I can e-mail them to my co-author, and finding out the desktop doesn't have the same symbol-set - so all of the nice neat squares and triangles have turned into U's and &'s.

I used a string of words I normally rarely use when I found that out.

Especially since the laptop is old, and the program is buggy, and it was sending me round the bend earlier this afternoon with nonsensical error messages that it had no right to give me.

Fortunately, I realized (as I was gearing up to spend ALL DAMN NIGHT here and redo the $#(*&%#'ing things) that I could save them as .jpeg files and send them that way.

If my co-author doesn't like the figures as .jpegs? He can suck it. Or he can suck them. Whatever. I'm done with this.

(Seriously - I think that's my new not-to-be-voiced-in-public attitude about people or things that are not grateful, don't understand the hard work I put in, want to complain about petty things when I'm the only person making an effort to do certain large things, etc., etc.)

I'm going home. It's cruel and unusual punishment to still be working past 5 pm on a Friday.

It burns! it burns!

Oh, man.

I'm not a drinking woman, but if I were, I'd be heading to the package store after I get done with my grading.

The papers, they are not so good.

These are project-plan papers for one of my classes. I gave a list of guidelines and suggestions. I at least briefly discussed the topics each student chose with them, to let them know if the topic was appropriate or not. At least half of the papers have gone off on their merry way, not following a SINGLE guideline. Several of the projects planned are ones that I specifically told the students wouldn't work for this class when we had our pre-paper consult.

And on top of it, I feel like crap. My allergies are really bad - I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, but the cold NEVER COMES. I think it's going to be like this until the first frost, which could come as late as December here.

I'm just furious at the people who, after I spent time explaining why their project plan didn't fit in with the guidelines of the class, just went ahead and proposed it anyway - because it was easy, because it was what they wanted to do despite the class guidelines, because they didn't want to go searching for a new project.

No. I am bleeding red ink all over your paper. You are merely going to have to re-do the project. This is not like when you were 13 and your mother got so sick of telling you to clean your damn room that she finally gave up and just kept the door closed on your soiled underthings and moldy half-eaten sandwiches.

I have standards, dammit. And I can be even more stubborn than you are. I'm older, and I get a better paycheck. And it's my job to make you do stuff right. You wouldn't walk into your job and go, "Yeah, boss....I know you wanted a white-paper on the effects of hand-sanitizers on the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, but see, last week I was really, really interested in Dokken, so I wrote a white paper on Dokken instead."

You'd be laughed out of the damn lab.

And college is preparation for the real world, if it isn't actually itself an outpost of the real world. So please take stuff seriously.

I will reiterate Ricki's First Rule for College Students:

Thou shalt not piss off thy professor.

And guys? With your deliberately non-conforming (DEFIANTLY non-conforming - you knew better) papers, you're really pissing me off.

Oh, and: there are 24 people enrolled in the class and I have received 19 papers. Which were due three hours ago. If anyone comes wanting to give me a late paper, I think I'm going to use the same insulting phrase Kathy Griffin used.

(And no, not, "This award is my god now.")

(And that's another rant for another time: short version: I'm not surprised, and I'm not so much offended as I'm just sad. Sad that someone thinks that's a way to get approval and a laugh. Sad that someone apparently has such a dim view of faith and those who practice it...but whatever. I don't find her funny at all, and I'm guessing the remark was frantically blowing on the dying embers of popularity...)

Question

This is particularly for caltechgirl, but if others see this, feel free to chime in:

Is a week TOO SHORT of a period of time for a college student to complete a homework assignment that includes:

Making a frequency table of 120 pieces of data and a graph from those data
Calculating the mean and standard deviation of a couple of smaller, sub-sampled groups from the overall set, plus the 120 points themselves (I told them I wanted "hand calculations" for the small sets, but they could use Excel or a calculator for the big set)
Answering five (5) questions.

I just had someone in here all gripey because he "only had a WEEK" to do this. (And he didn't have it done. And it is due in about 10 minutes).

Now, I know people have busy lives. But - a week? Surely that's enough time.

(On second thought - I'm just going to relent and give them until damn Monday. I have too much stuff to grade anyway this weekend, and I have another project I have to tackle on Saturday. And I don't like having a weekend with no time off for me.)

But I'm really getting tired of the constant complaints from this one fellow about the amount of time involved in doing the homework. They are NOT THAT LONG.

swag

I admit ahead of time, this is going to be gripe-y and kind of jealousy-motivated and all that. But whatever.

While taking a break between two bouts of grading this morning, I visited one of the yarn-purveyors I've ordered from in the past. And I noted on their "splash page" that they said they'd basically be out-of-office this week - because they're involved with some awards show or other, putting together and giving out "swag bags" of their yarn.

The whole concept of "swag bags" irritates me. Celebrities - people who have people fawning at their feet - get all kinds of free stuff, given them in the vague hope, I suppose that they'll mention the company that gave it in some interview (or maybe, so the company that gave it can claim "as used by Celebrity X!").

And yeah, I know some celebrities give away at least some of the stuff. But I wonder if maybe for a lot of them, there's really not that much joy in accepting a swag bag - "Oh, another bunch of crap that someone's trying to push" or something like that. I mean, when you have more money than God - do free sample sizes of new moisturizers and fluffy slippers really mean that much?

I know an awful lot of people who'd probably appreciate the swag bags more.

Let's see: the ladies who work in nursing homes, helping take care of people who are no longer capable of controlling their bodily functions. Soldiers on the front line (and I know - there's an immense grassroots effort to supply them with good stuff, and I applaud that). 911 dispatchers who work the overnight shift. Special-ed schoolteachers (many of whom buy supplies out of their own pockets). Church secretaries. Bus drivers.

Basically, all of the working stiffs who go do their job every day, who don't often hear a "thank you" or a "you're doing a good job."

And I know - doing the job well should be its own reward. But it's nice to hear a little thanks now and then. I've occasionally done small gift baskets (of nice soap, or fancy cookies and teas, things like that) for people who were particularly helpful to me, or people that I think work really hard and aren't appreciated...and well, the response tells me that it's worth doing.

I do hope the swag-bag-givers get a similar response from celebrities. But I don't know...some of the current crop aren't always known for showing gratitude or for appreciating others.

I just hope that yarn shop is only giving out its swag bags to celebs who actually knit or crochet...I'd hate to think of bags full of that lovely stuff being tossed in the trash by some starlet who rolls her eyes and thinks, "Who do they think I am, a grandma?" as she heads out for her next round of partying.

Another open letter

Dear neighbor,

I know you are the one person on my street who "walks" your dog by not putting a leash on the beast, and walking on the sidewalk while he runs wherever he pleases. So I am going to assume this is your fault.

Your dog crapped in the exact geographic centroid of my front yard.

Now, I wouldn't have so much of a problem if it had been at the edge - or if it had been on that useless strip that exists between the sidewalk and the street (which the city technically "owns," but which I am apparently responsible for mowing, edging, and weeding).

But instead, he went in the middle of my front yard.

You must also understand that I don't own a dog. Nor do I own a cat. Nor, even, a turtle. (I do not have pets partly because - and I am sure you are aware of this because you seem to watch the activity of everyone in the neighborhood - I am rarely home during the daylight hours and it does not seem fair to a pet to spend its days alone in a house or staked out in a back yard). So I do not expect to find random piles of poo in the middle of my yard.

I also might take this moment to remark on the dog's diet. Whatever you are feeding him, I think it contains too much insoluble fiber. You might try using canned food some of the time rather than exclusively dry.

At any rate: dog crap. Middle of my yard. I don't own a dog. I often get home in the evening as or even after the sun is going down. Those things do not make for a happy combination for me.

I was lucky this time - I happened to get home before it got dark and I saw the little cloud of flies that had gathered over the mess.

But now, you see, I am faced with a dilemma. I do not own a "sharpshooter" type shovel, or an appropriately non-stick garden shovel, or other tool that would work for removing the pile from the geographic centroid of my lawn and depositing it - I am not sure where. I do not own a compost pile because (as I am sure you remember) of the Renter Fiasco of 2003, where we all wound up with rat infestations because someone chose to rent a house on this street to a group of individuals with no talent for hygiene. So I really have no place to put the waste. And I do not wish to get close enough to baggy it. And I am not putting it in my trash; the hardworking garbage collectors of this city do not deserve to have to meet stinky dog poo at 8 am when they are doing the pickup on our street.

So, either I have to try to find a place to which I can move it, or I must leave it there until it decomposes. Which means I cannot mow that patch. And I know, because of the many times you have slipped me cards for Eugene n Jorge's Lawn Service, that you don't like the way I keep up my yard, especially the frequency (or rather, the infrequency) of my mowing. (I will observe - have you seen the house at #415 on our street? That is a family that does not mow frequently enough. At its tallest, the grass in my yard is less than 4". That is not a crime. And I will remind you: I often leave the house before dawn and return after dark. And I don't quite trust Eugene and Jorge, even if you use them...there's just something about getting a business card with two phone numbers crossed off and a third written on the back that doesn't inspire confidence in the businessman.)

At any rate: I do not wish to come close enough to your dog's leavings to remove them to my yard, even if the place I could remove them to existed in actual fact and not merely as a theoretical construct. So I will not be mowing that patch, probably for the rest of the year.

The other option, of course, is for you to come and retrieve it. I doubt that will happen, though. I also expect to find future piles because it's my experience that if someone doesn't bag their dog's waste, they never will, unless they're "persuaded" by a law - which we don't have on the books in this town.

So - although you feel you can deliver all kinds of unsolicited advice to me (oh, and I didn't appreciate the recommendation that I cut down my pecan tree; that tree provides shade which helps keep my house cooler in the summer. Just because it drops leaves and twigs on the lawn of the rent-house you own next door doesn't seems like a justification for killing a perfectly healthy tree), you cannot be bothered to either prevent your dog from taking a dump in a place where the unsuspecting homeowner may well step in it, or bag the creature's waste. I think that is extremely unfair and I consider myself justified in ignoring any and all of your future "Martha Stewart-ized" suggestions that I hire "people," or that I remove important landscape elements, or that I use large quantities of toxic chemicals to make my lawn more cosmetically appealing to you.

Because dog poo is, I think most people would agree, even less cosmetically appealing in a yard than some clover is. And as I remember, it was because of the clover in my yard that you thought I should unleash numerous toxic herbicides on my lawn (and, by extension, on the surface water in the area, the air, myself, and all other living things coming into contact with my lawn).

So, bug off. Don't presume to tell me how to clean MY stuff up, if you can't be arsed to clean up your dog's stuff.

My opinion on "extreme" fashion in general:

Do Not Want.

(seen first at It Comes in Pints?)

I can think of so many punchlines:

How many Smurfs had to die to make that shoe?
Does it transform into a little VW Bug?
Is that the Swiss Army Shoe? Does the stiletto heel turn into a nailfile?
I thought VPL* was a fashion crime, but apparently VSS** is not

(*Visible Panty Line)
(**Visible Slotted Screws)

So is it now officially okay to wear socks with sandals?
Do they double as crampons for when you mountain-climb? (The very word "crampon" makes the 14 year old in me giggle)
Does it come with training wheels?
That red thing on the back - is it a mudflap? Can you get it with a tiny little silhouette of a naked guy on it? (These being women's shoes...only about 1% of the female population would be interested in having a naked woman on their "mudflap." That said - I've seen "naked cowboy silhouette" mudflaps and they're really not all that - his legs look weird, too feminine or something)
Is that green piece sticking up in back a camouflaged 'fro pick?

I don't know. I guess some people look at those and go "WANT!" or else they'd not make them; I'm frankly puzzled by the things. (That said: they do rather look like a puzzle, kind of like Shoes by Rubik.)

And what are we supposed to do with this?

You know, there's a certain kind of news story I hate. It's a story that has a combination of "no sh*t, Sherlock" and "but there's no solution to it proposed" in it.

It's like the OMG WTF AMERICANS ARE LIKE SOOOOO OBESE stories. The only solution is individual people doing what they can. And to stop taunting the people who for whatever reason (hormone imbalance, on long-term prednisone therapy, whatever) who can't slim down to an "acceptable" weight (And I hope to God the upshot of these stories is not some kind of massive fat-camp movement where all of us with bmis over 20 or some not-in-this-lifetime value are herded off to break rocks for 14 hours a day until our next meal of shredded lettuce and lemon juice...)

But anyway. That particular crochet of mine aside, there was another one of those annoying stories this morning on the radio:

"MORE AND MORE AMERICANS ARE RISING BEFORE DAWN TO DRIVE TO WORK!"

um, yeah? And we're supposed to do what about it? I know they're referring to the people with hellacious commutes, who are leaving at four a.m. or some time like that just to try to avoid the worst of the traffic.

I have a five-minute commute and I often leave the house before dawn. This is because I have to be at work before 8, and I LIKE to be at work at least an hour before my first class so I can (a) put out any "fires" that came up overnight (and it happens, sometimes) and (b) prepare mentally for the class.

I put up with it. I put up with getting up at 5 am most days to work out. I do that because there's not really any other choice the way my life is configured. Is it a pain? Sure. Is it kind of depressing to drive to work in the dark at 6:45 a lot of the time? Sure.

But - absent Congress deciding to give us back the weeks of Standard Time they took away from us this year, I'm just GOING to be driving to work in the dark a lot.

So what Earthly use is it to me to hear a news story (at 6 am, when I'm staring in my closet and trying to figure out what to wear) about how so many Americans, poor babies, have to get up really early to drive to work, and they're doing it in the dark? I do not see any benefit of that story other than to make a lot of people feel kind of sorry for themselves. (I admit I did for a few moments after listening to the story).

I hope this isn't some kind of whipped-up issue, where one candidate or another is going to declare some kind of "public transport FOR ALL" and make the claim that people could leave the house later (or at least not have to drive to work at 0-dark-30) by all of us coughing up a few more bucks come tax time. (And, comes to think of it, perhaps part of a reason so many people work such long hours is the tax rate?) Or I hope it doesn't lead to some cockamamie scheme to require all businesses to start after 10 am or some fool thing.

What I WOULD like is to get Standard Time back. I honestly don't think this extension of Daylight Savings is going to save anything for anybody (except maybe for members of Congress who can get a few holes of golf every Thursday afternoon in after voting themselves bigger paychecks and us larger taxes...hrm.). And it means a lot more of us are driving in the dark for a lot longer this year.

What I DON'T want is some kind of top-down solution (well, other than giving us back something that worked in the past) like what Hugo Chavez did, where he set clocks forward a 1/2 hour to "benefit the metabolisms" of his citizens. (Seriously: WTF?)

What I also DON'T want is some kind of boondoggle where they're going to make buses run faster or something for the people who ride buses, and they're going to let all the rest of us pay for that. I can't take a bus to work, even if I wanted to: the buses in my town run from 8 am until 3 pm, and they're kind of "reserved" for seniors and the disabled (We don't have many buses). And at any rate - in a town of 12,000, it's kind of foolish to have a large-scale "intracity" public transportation system. (Now, if they wanted to bring back the Interurban trains that would run between my town and the nice shopping and arts areas of the cities an hour to three hours away from me, I could go with that. I'd love to be able to hop on an Interurban early on a Saturday, go see a matinee somewhere, do some shopping, and then get home by 8 pm to sleep in my own bed that night).

But - again. Why the news story? Why tell people something they already know: that commuting sucks and people are trying to come up with dodges to make it suck less. I've heard a few weak cries for "affordable housing close to places of employment" but in my experience, it seems that "enforced" affordable housing quickly becomes a place few people want to live (well, few people other than criminals).

So I don't know. But it irks me - especially on my longest workday of the week, especially when I'm already carefully planning the strategy to get prepped for my classes AND get the demonstration set up for one class AND set up the involved and extensive lab for another class AND make sure I'm available for a student who needs to take an exam early AND remember to do preparation for youth group this afternoon AND sometime find the time to change the burnt-out lightbulb in my porch light (which I need, so I won't break my neck on the stairs when I'm leaving the house before the sun's up, and coming home again after it's dark), that I hear some news story about how getting to work and the hours we must spend there sucks and we're all miserable.

As I said at the outset: no sh*t, Sherlock.

Six years on...

I wonder how many people are going to mark the day today. It's odd, but this year "feels" different than last year- the five-year mark has been passed, I suppose.

I still think about all the people who died. How horrible. Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, uncles, grandparents...all of those life-webs with a strand violently pulled out. The human tapestry frayed. That's what stays with me. How many people's lives were changed violently and suddenly.

I also think about the fear that followed that day - the sense of sitting around waiting for the proverbial "other shoe to drop." (I remember going out and gassing up my car - in case I had to, I don't know run for the hills?). I don't feel that this year. The fear has pretty much faded, which is a good thing.

I detect a certain weariness from some quarters - a sense of "but can't we move on already?"

I don't know. There's a difference between going about your life bravely and not letting yourself be scared, and pretending the thing never happened. I don't want us to pretend it never happened because that could then allow certain things...it could be like the slow boiling of the frog that never notices the temperature is going up in the water he's sitting in until it's too late. Pretending it never happened leads to pretending that there are not those who would change our culture - not for the better, at least not as far as most of us are concerned.

We need to define who we are.

I think of the stuff that happened after that day - how there was a big outpouring of love, it seemed. People did things they wouldn't otherwise do. It was like there was a suspension of the usual hostilities that exist in our culture.

Sadly, we've gone back to the snark and the sniping. (I don't know if that's part of the "pretend it never happened" squadron).

I don't want to see this day become another hollow "Federal Holiday" - already the calendars I have up at home and in my office refer to it as "Patriot Day." A pretty, sanitized name. "Patriot Day." It sounds so bloodless - like a Fourth of July with out the fireworks, without the memory of Jefferson and the Declaration.

I hope that in my lifetime we do not see "Patriot Day" become a time for carpet sales and dumb television ads - it's happened to Presidents' Day, and it's even happening to Martin Luther King Day in some quarters.

Maybe we need to re-name the day "Hell No" day. As in, "Hell no," we won't let families living on our soil as our citizens stone their daughters to death because she got pregnant out of wedlock. As in, "Hell, no," we won't make accommodations on college campuses for some faiths and then tell others that they can't have a classroom in which to meet after school. As in "Hell, no," we won't ban certain books or certain speech or certain whatever, simply because some people's sensibilities are offended by them. And "Hell, no," we won't pull grandma out of her wheelchair at the airport and take it to bits because we want to show the world how "sensitive" we are in searching passengers and not-profiling.

I don't know. I didn't mean to get so belligerent about it. But I have a friend - a woman from Britain who grew up there in the 40s and 50s - who says she will not go back now, because it's "changed" so much. When pressed, I learned that "changed" was a polite euphemism for "they've made so many accommodations for the separatist-minded Muslims that it doesn't feel like home any more." And that's sad. I had looked forward sometime to maybe GOING to Britain for a visit - but now I feel less inclined after hearing from my friend some of the things that she has seen while over there. And I don't want my country to change in that way.

give me strength

This is not going to be a fun week, work-wise.

I have my first exam for one class to write. (As I hand back the exams - unlike some of my colleagues - I have to write new, from-scratch ones every semester. Which takes time.).

All day tomorrow is taken up with the Sept. 11 remembrance thing which I now wish I hadn't volunteered to work at. (And after that - I got kind of roped into something. One of the ladies at my church - who is a representative of one of the Major Home-Based Cosmetic Concerns - came up to me and told me that she felt like I needed a little "pampering" [this being after the whole mess with the youth group, which I think - hope - has corrected itself]. Turns out she wants to do a facial and "makeover" on me. Well, I am of two minds. One part of me says, you meet people where they are, and to her, she is trying to do a very nice thing for me, something that she'd regard as pampering. Never mind that I'm kind of touch-averse [the facial] and my general feeling on makeup is that the less you wear, the better - I wear it mainly to camouflage a little unevenness in my complexion. But I feel like if you're pretty to begin with, makeup doesn't add that much, and if you're not, there's not much point - kind of the old painting a mud fence thing. [and I've still not decided which camp of those two I fall into - "doesn't need it" or "it won't help anyway."] So I don't know. I'm going to go, and I'm going to be polite, but at most I will buy a lipstick from her [if there is, in fact, a hard sell attached to this thing]. I'm a long-time Clinique user, I like it, it does well for me, and I'm not willing to change just to make a friend happy.)

I got the WRITING part of the paper rewrite done, and got set to attack the figures. Unfortunately, my idea of "will just take a little work to fix up" and my co-author's idea of "will just take a little work to fix up" are very very very different. What he proposes be changed will require, I expect, about 15 hours of grueling, eye-crossing labor over the computer. And I can't push it off on him as I'm the one who has the software package that allows the map generation. I sort of want to cry; I feel like no matter what I do to the damn diagrams it's not good enough for him. He seems to think I'm magic and the only reason I've not made them PERFECT is because I'm stubborn or something. No, I've not made them PERFECT because your standard of PERFECT is almost impossible given the limitations of the program.

I will be going nuts with grading this weekend. Why did I choose to give a short-test in one class, collect a major homework in another, and collect a project proposal in my third on the same day? (I've made the short-test as much multiple choice as I can possibly justify to myself. I feel bad about that but I fear I have no choice).

Finally - for those of you who teach - how do you keep from Homer-Simpson-style strangling (or at least being distinctly uncivil and chilly to) a student who has a smart remark for EVERYTHING? I feel like I shouldn't be ticked off at this guy because I genuinely think it's how he relates to the world, that he can't be serious about anything, and that he HAS to be the center of attention by making his cracks. HE thinks he's funny, but his humor's getting on my last nerve. The thing is, when I react less than jovially, he gets all hurt, like I'm rejecting him.

On second thought - heck yes, I am rejecting him. I am too tired and too old to put up with a constant stream of peanut gallery remarks.

I've explained to students (including him) on a number of occasions that things that seem like they're funny and new clever remarks (Like: "Not many people in class today! Are you going to give us bonus points for being here?") are actually very old to faculty who've been teaching more than a year, and are not at all funny. (I use the analogy of this: you're a checker at wal-mart. The checkout system's on the fritz and things won't ring up easily. Every time something won't ring up right, the person you're waiting on says, "Oh, it must be free today! Ha ha ha!" I ask them if they would find it funny the fifth time someone said that. Yeah, maybe I should just suck it up and not say anything but I SWEAR I am going to go medieval on someone's backside someday if I hear one too many "Are you going to cancel class" cracks.)

(And I know - were I posting this on a certain bulletin board I visit, a certain person would immediately pipe up that the guy who's annoying the hell out of me is probably an Asperger's Syndrome person, and I should just suck it up and try to be nicer to him. There's someone I know where that's her response to everything - no one's ever a jerk; everyone who's annoying has some kind of syndrome that excuses them. Look - I know all about autism; I briefly had an autistic kid in Youth Group. There's a difference between Autism/Aspergers and being a total git, and I think I can identify total gits when I see them).

And I have a meeting tonight from 6:30 until dog knows when. And I woke up at 4:30 this morning and could not get back to sleep, so I just got up and worked out then, since I would have had at most another half hour to lie there.

Oh, and I had a weird dream last night - one of my colleagues and I were on some island somewhere doing research, and we saw this porthole/door thing. Looking in it, I realized that there was a meth lab set up in there, and that we were probably in some danger to us, because the meth-lab people (who were in there at the time) saw us and gave us evil looks.

Then Fred Thompson (?) came walking along and said, "It's okay. I'll sit on the porthole here and keep the people from getting out until you can go and get the police."

Huh? At least that's better than the dreams I have where I'm trying to find something and I can't, or where everyone's misunderstanding what I say and everyone's angry with me even though I'm trying to be nice.

That said - sometimes I wish I didn't dream, or at least didn't remember my dreams - they tend to be pretty exhausting.

RIP, Madeleine L'Engle

I saw on Sheila's blog that Madeleine L'Engle had passed.

I wanted to write something here, but couldn't think of anything good - and I wanted to be home, with my copies of books she wrote, to take a few stories and quotations from them.

I only read 2 of her books - "A Wrinkle in Time" and the sequel (the one with the mitochondria and farandolae) - before the age of 20 or so. I didn't know of her as an essayist or a writer on faith until fairly recently.

But I did love "Wrinkle in Time" - not just for the language, not just for the concepts, but for the underlying worldview, I think.

Two of my favorite books of L'Engle's essays are "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art" and "The Rock that is Higher."

In "Walking on Water," she brings up a couple of concepts that I carry with me now, every day of my life: the idea of cosmos vs. chaos, and the idea of being "named."

...all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos. At least all Christian art (by which I mean all true art, and I'll go deeper into this later) is cosmos in chaos. There's some modern art, in all disciplines, which is not; some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in mysic, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.

I know there are perhaps things to quibble with there. I don't think you have to be a Christian (or even a Deist) to try to find the cosmos - the pattern, the meaning - in the universe. But I do agree that there are some (and probably not just confined to "modern" art) that only want to keep showing us the chaos, without any sense of cosmos.

It's interesting... that I should be reading these words again so close to the anniversary of September 11. (In fact, I just saw a bit on television of the firefighters of the 54th being interviewed, and footage of them carrying the remains of one of their men out of Ground Zero. And I found myself tearing up again, feeling both sad and angry for the monumental loss). You can look at that event and see the horror - the loss, the lives destroyed, the security shattered. Or, you can TRY (and I realize it's hard, especially for those who directly witnessed it) to look at it and see the thousands - millions - of Americans who rolled up their sleeves to donate blood (even if they knew that was an entirely symbolic gesture - and the first time needle-phobic I ever gave blood in my life was shortly after September 11, 2001). The people who comforted the fearful, who tried to console those who lost loved ones. The outpouring of artwork - maybe it wouldn't be called "art" by some, as it was entirely amateur-made - by people memorializing their loved ones or trying to make some sense out of what happened (I think, again, Sheila posted some photos of these).

Or you can see it as a wake-up call, a reminder that we need to be vigilant. That we need to define who and what we are, that we need to protect that which we hold dear.

But we (or at least I) can't look at the event and just shut down, just stop going forward, just say "This is how the world is." (As one of my friends said: "I prefer to think of God as not being in the towers falling, but of God being in what the people did to try to pick up the pieces afterward).

L'Engle also talks about the concept of being Named. Which, if I understand her meaning, is similar to being loved, being a part of God's creation - she also introduces the idea of Naming and being Named in "A Wind in the Door" (one of the Time Quartet novels). In it, at the very end...not to give too much away, but one character has to Name another character, a character who has done his best to make himself unlovable...and there's something very deep about it - realizing that we are at times pretty unlovable ourselves, and yet there are still those here on Earth (and, if you believe in it, Beyond) who would Name us and call us their own.

...the act of Naming is very closely connected with the act of loving, and hating is involved with unNaming - taking a person's name away, causing anyone to be an anonymous digit, annihilating the spirit.

When we are unNamed, we are broken; all around us we see fragmented, mutilated people. And the world offers little help for healing, for knitting up the "raveled sleeve of care."

I think she also is saying something about the anonymity many of us feel in modern society. I describe it as feeling "invisible."

Another, unrelated quotation that I find in my copy of "Walking on Water":

Children don't like anti-heroes. Neither do I. I don't think many peopl do, despite the proliferation of novels in the past few decades with anti-heroes for protagonists. I think we all want to be able to identify with the major character in a book - to live, suffer, dream, and grow through vicarious experience. I need to be able to admire the protagonist despite his faults, and so be given a glimpse of my own potential. There have been a few young-adult novels written recently with anti-heroes; from all reports they are not the books that are read and reread. We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with the sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination

(emphasis in the original). Again, some might quibble with this. But it's something I personally agree with. The books I tend to press on people are the ones with, as L'Engle says, protagonists I can admire despite their faults.

At any rate. (And I have not read all of her works, for that matter. I still have a goodly chunk of the Austins books to read, and also the other three Crosswicks journals (I read the one dealing with Spring). And I recently got a copy of her Genesis trilogy). I've re-read both the books I referred to above (Walking on Water and The Rock that is Higher) a number of times; they are books that I keep on hand for when I feel kind of beaten down by the world. Or when I feel that dark night of the soul opening up to me, when I wonder - how on Earth and beyond can there be a loving God when people are so evil to each other? Or when I feel like the odd woman out - I think I said once before I pretty much ALWAYS feel weird, because I'm a bit too theologically-liberal in some ways to run with a lot of the Christians around here, but I'm too much of a person of faith to run with many of the academics. Reading L'Engle (and also, C.S. Lewis, and to a lesser extent [merely because I have to think so hard while I am reading him] Chesterton) comforts me - makes me feel "less weird," and tends to assuage my doubts. And reminds me that God really doesn't want me to "check my brain at the door," which is what some flavors of Christianity (or at least the stereotypes of them) seem to suggest these days.

I am a little sad I never thought to write a letter to Ms. L'Engle; that I never wrote to thank her for what her writing has meant to me. (I am sure, however, that many others did the same; it seems that a great many people love her writing very deeply and that gives me hope). Her books - especially the books of essays on faith and life - are among the small number of books I re-read, and among the small number I'd take with me if I had to move, say, and could only take two boxes of books or so with me.

Open letter

Dear yarn purveyors, especially purveyors of beautiful handpainted yarn:

Could you please take a vacation for, like, six or eight months? Could you maybe stop for a while turning out limited editions of new beautiful things that I convince myself I MUST have? Because, you know, I have no more room to store stuff and even I realize that I don't need eighteen different fancy scarves. And when I buy NEW beautiful stuff, I don't knit up the beautiful stuff I already have.

Thanks.

And while you're at it, could you ask the book publishers - especially the ones publishing fascinating books that are "layman's versions" of science-y and history things I'm interested in, to go on vacation with you? And the people writing the mystery series I read?

Because, you know, I can't NOT look. And it's sooooo tempting when there's wonderful new stuff out there, and I just got paid, and my "entertainment" budget for the month's still flush.


So could you maybe slack off a little, and let me enjoy the stuff I have now before you tempt me with new stuff?

k? thx. bye.

--ricki

stuff that makes me laugh

* The whole trash-talking, sad-boo-bye generating business over at Tracey's "best thing ever" game.

* My students. Today, before one of my classes, a couple of guys in the back row were discussing something, and a guy in the row ahead of them kind of butted in, giving his "expert" advice. (I have a lot of people who are self-styled "experts" on various things, from the best hunting sites to the best kind of truck to which of the females in their classes are "hot."). One of the guys involved in the original conversation glared at him and said, "This is a tacos and burritos kind of conversation. In other words: Nachos!" (not yours)

hahahahahaha. Sometimes it's hard not to bust out laughing right in front of the class.

* I saw a truck near a construction site. Name of the trucking company: Beaver Express. The truck was driven by a woman. I blame Kurt Vonnegut for the fact that I laughed at that.

* This:


* And finally, upon hearing that Osama bin Ladin is releasing another video tape, my immediate response to bin Ladin and his posturing are pretty well summed up by this photo (The expression, as much as the finger placement.) The fact that I can think something like THAT, rather than being scared, makes me laugh with relief.

iPhone iNsanity

So, apparently Apple's decided to drop the price on the iPhone (yee gads, it was $600? Just for the phone?).

And apparently the people who went out and bought them at $600 are unhappy, and feel they are entitled to some money back.

I have but one thing to say to them:



HA-ha < /nelsonmuntz >



More seriously: Have you EVER seen a technological item that didn't become cheaper as time went on? My father talks about the first calculator he ever bought (in fact, I believe it was called a "desk calculator," rather than a "pocket calculator," because it was about a foot square). It was about $100, and as I said - about a foot square. A couple years ago, when he renewed one of the newsletters he reads, he got a "freebee" calculator with the renewal - that was more powerful than the $100 calculator from the 70s.

Okay, that's an extreme case. And I suppose the iPhone iPhreaks didn't expect the price to come down quite so fast. But as someone who knows someone who actually WAITED IN LINE to have one of these on the first day and has been subjected to "look at this! look at this! Isn't it cool! Don't you wish you had one?" (answer: no, not really), I'm not that sympathetic to claims that they're due some kind of restitution from Apple.

Back to my father. One of the most valuable pieces of advice (well, one of many) that he gave me over the years was: when you are planning to buy something, ask yourself if it is worth the price to you. If not, find a cheaper alternative or wait and see if the price comes down.

That's why I have the el-cheap-o cell phone offered by my cell-phone company for a penny with my monthly plan. It doesn't have a camera, it won't surf the web. I don't even have text messaging enabled on it - because why would I need to do that? I have a phone. If I need to get in touch with someone I will call them - or I will go to my computer and send an e-mail.

I mainly have the phone so that if my car breaks down when I'm out in the middle of nowhere, I can call someone to come help me. (Although I will admit I've used it more than once to order carry-out ahead as I'm leaving work at the end of the day).

I guess my attitude is this: either you really wanted the iPhone, and so the $600 you paid should be seen as the cost of having a really cool thing before everybody else, or it wasn't worth it to you and you didn't buy it at $600.

But don't demand money back just because "I'm a really big Apple supporter and Steve Jobs OWES it to me!" No, he doesn't. He's in it to make money. Obviously you were willing to help him do it.

This is not like some shady furniture store that sells you a couch one week for $1000 and the next week sells it for $500 without any hint that there will ever be a sale - we all know that the price of technological stuff drops over time.

And even then - if you bought a couch for $1000, it must have been worth $1000 to you at the time. It's not like there's only one couch supplier on Earth, and it's not even like the couch is necessary to the continuance of your life. (Now, if the water company started jacking up prices - without any reason why - and prevented competition, even in the form of bottled drinking water, THAT might be a problem. But we're talking about cell phones, not water.)


And even at the cheaper price, I really don't need an iPhone (nor do I really want one), so I won't be getting one. The little blue Nokia that my cell-phone company issued me is just fine.

You know, I do a lot of things for other people. I do a lot of things I probably do not have time to do (but I make time). Some of these tasks are basically thankless, most of them don't "advance" me any (in the sense that devoting time to doing good teaching and research "advance" me). Many of them are tasks that others, with fewer things on their plate, could undertake.

But still, I do a lot of things.

Part of it is - and the odd thing is that I learned this from an article on "8 problem personalities of Youth Group Kids" from "Group" magazine - is that I tend to be what "Group" calls a "Dear Abby Type" - the one always quick with advice, the one always quick to help.

I'm not going to go into the full-depth analysis (mainly because I don't have my copy of the magazine in front of me and I don't want to get it wrong), but basically, that type of person has somehow learned that they way they get warmth and love is by doing things for other people. That people will love them less - or will not love them at all - if they aren't jumping through a bunch of hoops for them. I suppose a simpler term would be "people pleaser."

I don't know whether that behavior is more innate or more learned. I do think there's a certain part of our personality that's genetically coded for and is hard to change; but I also think some of my early school experiences did help contribute to my general people-pleasey nature.

Not to be all whiney, or all psychobabbly about it but: I was an unpopular kid. I was the kid who ate alone in a darkish corner of the cafeteria because the more "popular" kids would not let me eat with them. I was not assertive - it never occurred to me to go up to the popular kids and ask them who made them King (or Queen, as the case may be).

But I was popular with the teachers (which probably, in retrospect, didn't help my popularity with my peers any). I was a "good" child - quiet, nondisruptive, did my homework, generally knew the answers when called on. I learned early on that if I couldn't have my peers' love (for whatever incomprehensible reason - loser pheromones, maybe, or I failed to wear the proper brand of clothing on one particular day. Who knows how and why kids decide who is "acceptable" and who is not?), at least I could have the "grown-ups" love - my parents, my teachers, people at my church. I think that's partly how I became a people pleaser - my Prime Directive as a child was Do Not Disappoint The Grown-Ups. Because, if I did, I felt like no one would love me and I'd be all alone. (Well, at least no one here on Earth would love me. But when you're a pre-teen, having someone tell you "It doesn't matter that you're unpopular in school; God still loves you" doesn't really help that much. Sorry to say.)

But anyway. I think a certain amount of the frustration I deal with is related to the fact that I'm a people-pleaser. And there are some people, no matter how many tap-dances you do for them, no matter how many times you bake their very favorite cookie in the whole wide world and let them eat them ALL while you stand there and watch, are not going to be pleased.

And it's kind of exhausting sometimes, being a people pleaser.

And it makes you prone to question yourself when you deal with people who resolutely refuse to be pleased - the kid who sits in the back of class with her arms crossed and refuses to take part in the discussions you are trying to get going, who rejects the class activities as "stupid," who sleeps during lecture. You ask yourself - why am I not reaching her? What do I need to do better?

(Never, of course - what does SHE need to do better. Never, of course - why is SHE not showing ME respect?)

But anyway. It's something I'm beginning to recognize. Maybe someday I'll be able to be a cranky old lady who tells people where to go when they aren't respectful. Or maybe someday I'll be able to tell someone who makes petty, meaningless criticisms of something I've done "Okay - then YOU do it next time."

Maybe I'm on my way.

Last night, at church, one of the ladies stopped me in the hall. We do an annual "first responders" lunch on September 11 to honor the police and firefighters and EMTs and highway patrol dudes and people like that. I had already volunteered to help out at the lunch, as I don't teach on Tuesdays.

And the lady asked me: "Hey - could you bake a cake for the Tuesday lunch?"

A cake. Could I bake a cake? When would I bake a cake? Part of the situation is that I'm trying fairly hard to push through the last few bits of a paper rewrite, hopefully so I can get it to my co-author (and dear God I hope he likes the changes I've made this time) by the end of this coming week. So I didn't immediately say yes. (Also I was flat exhausted - teaching for 5 hours solid will do that to you - and had a headache).

Before I could say anything, she added "...Or do you not have time?"

And I realized: yes, that's exactly it. I do not have time. Oh, I could make time. But that would mean taking time from somewhere else. (And in the end, the time you make is NOT equal to the time you take). It might mean my paper rewrite doesn't get done as rapidly. Or that I don't have a chance to revamp one day's stuff for teaching (I kind of revamp stuff each semester - discarding what doesn't work, trying new things in the hope that they do, polishing up the stuff that worked in the past). Or it would mean a chunk of time when I don't get downtime. And these days, what downtime I get is something I want to jealously guard. (yeah, yeah, I know: it's just a darn cake. It would mean 50 minutes of effort, tops, on my part. But still.)

So I blinked, and then I heard myself say: "No...no, I don't have time. Sorry."

And the world did not collapse in on itself.

And the lady said, "Oh, that's okay. I'm sure G. [another lady from church who is retired, widowed, and all of whose children are grown] can do one."

And I didn't even feel guilty about saying no.

So...baby steps. I need to remind myself that it is okay for me to say "no" to things that I really don't want to do and that someone else could do (perhaps even more easily than I).

12 hours....

I have been at work (prepping teaching) for an hour.

(I have been AWAKE for three hours...woke up before the 5 am alarm, got through the hour's workout, cleaned up, dressed, packed a lunch, ate breakfast, and drove over here).

I can go home "for good" (outside of the quick run home to get the mail and grab the stuff for tonight's youth group lesson) in 12 hours from now. If I'm lucky.

I have 3 lecture classes plus a lab (plus, probably, lab set-up - why do the student workers I agree to so often flake out on me?). Then youth group. And, if I'm lucky, home in time for Mythbusters and to fall into bed to try to scratch out 8 hours of sleep before tomorrow.

I hate Wednesdays. I feel like if I make it through Wednesday, the week's essentially over for me - Thursday and Friday are easy by comparison.

It's like some kind of cosmic joke that I have youth group - which I really need to be "up" for - on the same day as ALL of my classes.

random newsy things

A couple random newsy things:

* Normally, I roll my eyes at celebrity-ish doings and rich people indulging their fantasies being a part of the news.

But you know? I really hope Steve Fossett turns out to be OK. I hope he just decided to touch down in some remote area and run to an In-n-Out Burger just to see if he could do it without people recognizing him. Or that he went to meet a mistress. Or something.

I'm really not an aviation fan but I think what he did - the round-the-world flights and all - was pretty cool. So I'd be sad to think he crashed somewhere.

* When did we start calling that part of Pakistan "Waziristan," and why?

I admit to being somewhat immature about this but whenever I hear the name "Waziristan," the first thing I think of is Wizzo the Wizard from the old Bozo show in Chicago.

* I'm a bit fearful that Fred Thompson - considering all the delays and all the problems with getting his campaign going - may turn out to be "all hat and no cattle," as they say in Texas. I know, that's heresy to some of you, and I also know that may be what the media WANTS us to think, but...I'm just a little leery of the fact that he's kept putting off entering the race formally.

* Speaking of candidates - given John Edwards' talk of "mandatory preventative health care," I dearly dearly hope he's not the next president. Because I can see a day coming when those of us who are slightly fat - even if we try to watch our diets and get exercise - being forcibly put on strict diets, or that alli crap (which, quite literally, is crap for some people - makes them soil their pants). And who's going to pay for all of it? And what about people who, for whatever reason (religious beliefs, or someone who's really old and of the "let me just GO" temperament), don't WANT the health care?

And what about failed treatments? Like - they put you on some statin drug and it makes you have memory loss or some other horrific side effect? Can you decline treatment?

actually...

It turns out (thank goodness) we do not need to test the fume hoods. (But we are supposed to note if the hoods have been tested, and there is nowhere that I can find that the testers record the date of testing and status of the hood).

And we may get a student worker in future months to test the emergency showers. (And yes, I asked: they do need to be TESTED in the sense of being turned on. Turns out the student workers the university had before never bothered to do that.). We still have to do it this month because student worker schedules are up in the air. And we may have to continue to do it if our student workers flake out or quit, which sometimes happens here.

And the eyewash stations are not a big deal. But the whole "do a monthly inspection and report" thing kind of irks me...just because there are so many other things we're being asked to do. Yeah, yeah, it takes 15 minutes, but still...it takes 15 minutes. And my having to remember to do it probably pushes something else out of my mind. I hope it's just one of the random "Simpsons" lines I have stuffed in there, and not something important, like how to tell if a mushroom is poisonous or not.

I know all of this is done to ensure stuff is safe for the students. But when I'm having to bust people EVERY SINGLE STINKING WEEK because they want to bring food and drink into the lab - after I've explained, and explained, and explained how it's dangerous and how we could get in big trouble and all that - I'm less willing to inadvertently subject myself to a wet t-shirt contest testing showers and eyewashes and things. Oh, and I'm also frustrated by the students' lack of compliance with the safety-goggle regulations: they forget to bring them, they take them off in the middle of class. I don't like playing cop and I don't like that I have the reputation as a mother hen (because I'm always after them to put on their stinking goggles).

I think this is the semester I start throwing people out of class, instead of just pleading with them to leave their cokes outside and put the damn goggles on. Because being nice and pleading aren't working, and if I'm going to be the Safety Nanny, then by gosh, I'll be the Safety Nanny. Only I'll be more Nurse Ratched than Mary Poppins. about it.

foolish economy?

Well, my college has decided on a new way to save some money. They've eliminated the student workers who go around and check lab equipment (like the eye-wash stations) and asked the faculty to do it instead.

So now, every month, we're required to go into our labs and check the hoods, the eyewash stations, make sure there are no fire hazards (??? Is a poster on the wall a fire hazard? Technically it is. Is a box of equipment a fire hazard? Technically, yes - the box is cardboard and cardboard burns). We also have to test the safety showers. For which, ahem, no drains were installed (oversight or costcutting? I don't know).

So we now have a big plastic trash can to lug around and discharge the showers into.

At least we don't have to test the fire extinguishers ourselves. (But if we did? I'd bring in a twelve-pack of pop every month and treat everyone to a cold pop, Mythbusters style. [alcohol is banned on campus, plus I don't drink, so it wouldn't be beer]).

This is beginning to get ridiculous. We are really not hurting that badly for money as a college, certainly not more than we were a few years ago when we managed to have someone whose job it was to do all this stuff. But this is just one of those needles-under-the-fingernails things. (We have a CFO who LOVES to save money, even if it means burdening people with additional unpaid chores or tacking on additional "user fees" the students should not have to pay)

It's just another task. We've already had four or five new tasks loaded on to us - some shoved off of the plate of someone else, some that were developed brand new as a way to promote the college.

My biggest concern is that I have periodic trouble with my shoulders and upper back - an old injury from swimming in high school. What if I re-injure myself lifting the heavy drum filled with the discharge water? Will they pay for my PT or whatever I need, or will they just shrug and say I should have done it more carefully or asked someone not prone to injury to do it for me.

And I just object to having more and more little chores. They want us to be "outstanding" teachers. They want us to be "available" to the students to the tune of 10 hours a week. They want us to do ever-increasing amounts of research. They want us to serve on campus committees. They want us to represent the college publicly by doing "good works" out in the community.

What's next? We do our own custodial work?

I'm sorry, but there's a set number of hours in a day. I usually get here at 7 and leave between 4 and 5 (sometimes later) - plus sometimes put in time on the weekends and in the evenings. Every additional task I'm asked to do takes time from my other tasks (or requires me to come in earlier and stay later, which I'm kind of unwilling to do. I know as a single person there are those who believe I'm not entitled to a life outside of work, but I disagree).

If they want us to do everything, they cannot expect excellence. I can do a few things well or a lot of things crappily.

And if I hurt my shoulder lugging around gallons upon gallons of water from testing the showers, I want them to pay for a massage therapist and rehab exercises.

(What I really want them to do? Hire a student. There are many students all over campus who'd be happy to make some cash doing that testing.

....actually, that gives ol' capitalist me an idea. I can just sidestep the bureaucracy (until they expressly tell me I can't) and pay someone to do the monthly testings for me. It would take all of 15 minutes to do - I think $10, cash, would certainly be a sufficient incentive.)

Another thought: what does this do, liability-wise, having all of these disparate, untrained people doing the monitoring of equipment? I certainly don't know all the ins and outs of inspecting a fume hood to be sure it's working right. I haven't done the safety-shower trial yet because I'm not sure I know how to turn it off. (And one of the cardinal rules of things like that is to be sure you know how to turn it off before you turn it on. I don't even know why we have a shower in my lab; we never work with chemicals hazardous enough to require a strip-down and scrub if someone got them on them.)

What if someone needs an eyewash station, and it turns out the person who inspected it was doing it wrong, and the station didn't work? Wouldn't the college be liable?

Maybe this idea is just bad enough that it'll go away.

oh...

So, Joel, straight men in Seattle are like women in Alaska?
(I was told once by a female friend that in Alaska, re: available men, "The odds are good but the goods are odd.")

I guess I wasn't aware of that but I will say from personal experience that men in my age category who are available, interested, and don't have some kind of serious personality impairment are kind of difficult to locate. So maybe times are tough all over, at least once you pass 30. (But hell, maybe some of the men in my dating pool would describe me as having a serious personality impairment, so I don't know.)

But as I've said: my life is pretty good, and it would take someone who would make it even BETTER (and I mean that in a totally non-material sense) for me to consider changing my marital status.

And no on the classical. Where I live, we have "both kinds of music" (a la The Blues Brothers). And FM reception is generally the pits - I don't know why but I cannot pick up stations that are fairly nearby. There's a station that plays some classical (when they aren't playing the more irritating sorts of NPR shows) about 40 miles from me but I cannot pick them up. There's a really nice jazz station not terribly far from me but I cannot make it come in in my house. And there's a famous, well-renowned classical station in the large city to the south of me, but I can't pick it up here. So Internet radio it is. Until I break down and buy a Sirius receiver.

Dear KING-fm

Dear KING-fm,

I love your classical music goodness. It helps me work better and keeps me at least marginally happy when I am herding electrons in the office.

However, I must inform you that if you play that ad again from M*tch.com - the one with the klaxon alarm and the "attention men this is not a drill, M*tch.com has too many women!" I am going to rip the speakers out of my computer, catch a plane to Seattle, find the person who approved you running that ad EVERY SEVEN MINUTES and insert the above-mentioned speakers into a bodily orifice belonging to that person. I will decide which one when I see them.

Surely you have other advertisers you can run once in a while? What happened to that creepy woman who was raving about "fasseroles" and "foup" and "spaghetti and feetballs"? Is she now stuck in the bathroom, thanks to her fiber over-consumption?

At least run a few begs for pledge money! Anything! I'd send you $50 just for a few hours' respite from that accursed klaxoning ad.

Thanks so much,

love,

ricki. (And you need to imagine the i's dotted with little hearts here; I can't do that using this font.)

campaign II

Just over a week ago (man, it seems a lot longer than that) I commented on the "Ozzy 4 President!" I saw written on someone's car window.

And I asked for slogans, other than my not-so-great

"Ozzy: because sadly, we COULD do worse"

and

"Ozzy: why NOT a foul-mouthed, drug-addled rocker for a change"

Well, Kate P. suggested:

"Ozzy: the scandalous behavior's up front" (sigh. The more things change, the more they stay the same...I don't know whether to laugh over the fact that the latest disgrace involves someone from I-Da-Ho or to cry over it)

Ozzy: because political speeches go down better when they're barely intelligible"

And Joel said:

"Ozzy: watch what he does to that old Clinton bat!"

(And this is kind of sad - I first read that as Clinton'S bat - as in, a particular body part of the male half of the Clinton team that got a lot of press back in the late 90s - and I was kind of "the heck?" until I re-read it)

I came up with two more, also:

Ozzy: because fat, drunk, and stupid apparently IS a way to go through life.

(That said: I'm not at all convinced Ozzy is stupid. Makes bad choices in some areas of his life, certainly. But the fact that he's still alive - and still making money off of his persona - suggests a certain level of canniness).

But my favorite? The simplest of all:

Ozzy: Why the $#)(%*# not? (Which could translate on radio or tv to "Ozzy, why the BLEEEEEP not?" Unless the ad's running on HBO, of course.)

(I feel moved to make a disclaimer: no, I don't think Ozzy would be a viable candidate in any way, and there's not just that must-be-born-here requirement that's making me think that. However...given some of the candidates we've seen in the past (coughKucinichcough), I do think there's something humorous about the thought of Ozzy running...)

perspective

A lot of things are a matter of perspective.

I am one of the Sunday school teachers (for the adult class) at my church. Because of a couple of deaths, it's basically down to one other woman and me as teachers for the class - we alternate weeks.

Well, this is the first week of the new quarter. And the quarterly books we use haven't come in. (This is not the first time this has happened). Or so I assume; no one's told me one way or another since I last asked on Wednesday.

I had asked the church secretary to call me to let me know one way or another. She never called. (Which I kind of grumbled about a little, I will admit).

I went to the publisher's website (as I said, this has happened before, so I kind of knew what to do). They have the Scripture citation up. (But not the lesson; so I have to kind of "fly blind" and do the best I can with my own interpretation and what I can find to read on it).

The scripture this week: Genesis 1:1-25.

Okay, I have to remind you of something here. I am a natural scientist. I am more inclined than not to accept the straight, basic, evolutionary model for how life came to be. I do not necessarily see that as being in conflict with being a person of faith. I tend to look at the science as giving an explanation for "how" and faith as more giving an explanation of "why" or an explanation of "now you're here, so what is to be done with the life you have?"

The problem is - we do kind of have a diversity of beliefs in the class, from people like me, who are willing to kind of shrug and go either "Maybe God used evolution as a tool" or "well, maybe evolution explains how the physical part of us got here, and Creation is really talking about our souls" or something like that. But there are others who take a more literalistic perspective.

And I have to admit, the whole thing makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don't like arguing creationism vs. evolution, because it seems that (a) no one's mind is ever changed and (b) it's a way to get a lot of hurt feelings or a lot of people who will then go "wow, they're really not a Christian after all" or "wow, for someone in the sciences, that person's really an idiot, because they believe in God."

And you know? After this week I don't feel like I want anything else that might ding what I feel is my already-shaky credibility in the church.

At one point I actually shook my fist at the website that gave the Scripture topic. "Okay, God," I said, "Do You WANT everyone to hate me? Do You want me to be the source of bad dissention in the church? I'm not going to just smile and pretend I don't accept evolution, because I'm not going to lie." And I felt really bad about it - kind of put-upon, like OF COURSE it would be the one passage out of the Bible (with, possibly, the exception of that odd bit of Paul's about women not being allowed to teach) that is the most difficult and most uncomfortable for me.

But I sat down and started writing on the lesson, figuring there was nothing to be done - the thought of perhaps whipping up a quick migraine tomorrow morning (and being too ill to go to church) also would be lying.

I wrote the lesson. I consulted what books I had and a lot of online commentary (including some Jewish commentary on the Torah). I kind of glossed over the whole "creation of life" thing (well, actually, my section ends - thank God - before Adam and Eve make the scene). I talked about the big bang and how it was actually first articulated by a priest (if my online source isn't lying to me). And about how a lot of people who seem to be at the limits of our understanding - the real theoretical physicists and such - are more prone to accept the existence of God.

(There was an article - by turns interesting and discouraging - in this month's American Scientist - about beliefs of scientists. And I'm reminded again of just how "weird" I am among my peers - a life-scientist who believes in God, and even follows a fairly "conventional" faith-path. So - I'm "weird" to the hardcore literalist Christians, and "weird" to the hardcore reductionist scientists. I'd fit in just great on the Island of Misfit Toys.)

And I kept going. I cited Madeline L'Engle and her ideas about "cosmos" vs. "chaos" (and yeah, some of the more hardcore Christians don't believe SHE'S a Christian, but whatever). And I put together what I think is a decent lesson even though I had no "official" guidance.

And I learned a little bit.

And I hope it will generate some discussion but won't wind up with someone looking at me, shaking their head, and going, "You're wrong!" on some of my interpretations.

But I do think I've overcome my own objections, and my own feeling of put-upon-ness. And heck - perhaps I made a more challenging lesson than what was in the book. (But I may ask in the future for the task of ordering the books to devolve onto me so they actually get ordered in a timely fashion. I'm kind of tired of dealing with this no-book-at-the-start-of-the-quarter thing).

So I don't know. I just hope the lesson is received okay. I really don't want another surprise meeting of "what are we going to do with her and her non-conforming Sunday School teaching."