servant_of_clio

Overdue update

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:24:33 GMT

Boy, I have not posted here in a long time. Sorry about that. I think most of you will have seen my somewhat more regular facebook updates. The quick synopsis:

We moved.
We're mostly but not entirely unpacked.
We started our new jobs.

I've just finished my first block course on my new employer's block schedule. In brief: classes meet every day, for three and a half weeks; it's the only class the students are taking, and the only class I'm teaching. Then everyone moves onto a new class.

It's an interesting adjustment. The block has its own rhythms, which are both like and not like those of the standard semester. My personal experience was:
week 1: high energy and enthusiasm for me, high to moderate from the students. Exploring what this new class is like is intriguing for everyone.
week 2: student energy drops precipitously; I get tired from trying to keep them going
week 3: everyone is sort of treading water; students miss class without explanation
week 4: vanished students re-appear; collective energy seems to rise as we all make the push to finish up
I really enjoyed my students, fortunately, and most of them told me they liked the class. I hope the evaluations will be both useful and positive.

On Monday I'll start teaching a totally new class. The first class I taught was a 300-level course for majors with 15 students; the new one is going to be a 100-level course with about 25 students. It should be an interesting change. I'll have a non-teaching term after the coming course, and by then I'll be good and ready for it, I think.

Letter to our former neighbors

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:38:11 GMT

(I meant to post this shortly after we moved, but got distracted.)

Dear now-former neighbors,

I really feel obligated to thank you for livening up our spring and summer. In spite of all the stuff we had to do, we would have been significantly more bored without hearing your conversations and arguments. I still haven't figured out how all of you are related to each other, if at all, but piecing together your stories proved an interesting puzzle. So I have a few things to say to some of you individually.

To the very angry young woman:
You're right, you do have a lot of problems. They appear to include drinking, depression, pregnancy, and that guy you are involved with (married to?). I wish you the best, and I'd like to respectfully suggest that it may not be the worst thing in the world if the guy does leave you. And if you're avoiding hospital care because you fear he will, I'd also like to suggest that may not be a good trade.
PS. You're right, your relatives probably should not be calling your therapist to ask questions about your meds. That's not cool.

To the guy:
Ragging on your wife/girlfriend is not going to fix her depression. Also, have you noticed she's visibly pregnant? She probably has good reasons for wanting to rest.
On another note, I do appreciate your making sure that your kid doesn't run into our car on his bike. You seem to yell at him an awful lot while he's riding his bike around the driveway, though. Have you realized that he is just imitating you when he rides around in circles making "vroom vroom" noises? It is actually a lot noisier and more annoying when you ride around on that motorcycle you are constantly fixing up.

To the kids:
I am sorry all the adults in your lives spend so much time yelling at you and telling you not to do things, although they're of course right that you need to stay away from the street. You might consider being nicer to your kitten, instead of yelling at it, too. I hope someday you'll move somewhere you actually have a yard to play in instead of just a big driveway. I also hope at some point you encounter adults who model healthier gender relationships.

To the kitten:
We really wanted to take you with us, you friendly adorable little thing, although I do think the kids would have missed you. You would have hated being cooped up in our car for a couple of days with strange cats and humans you didn't know very well. I hear you have made friends with everyone on the block; I hope one of them succumbs to your charms and gives you a permanent home. That way the adults in your household will stop trying to give you away to everyone who shows an interest.

Sincerely,
your former neighbor

Phase 1 of the move is complete

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:24:36 GMT

The movers came today and took our stuff away. Everything from here on out should be more fun.

C's parents, sister, and uncle visited on Tuesday to say farewells. They also did us immense service by helping to pack up the kitchen and, even more importantly, to clear out the massive accumulation of boxes in the basement. Now, these were not boxes useful for moving. Most of them were too small to hold much, and those that were bigger were too mildewed to use. We had already cleared out usable boxes from the basement, but a tremendous amount of junk remained. To our relief, the trash collectors dutifully took away all the boxes on Wednesday morning.

So yesterday was our last packing day, and we did get everything packed. We had a couple of bad moments late at night, when we realized that we had forgotten certain things too large to go in any boxes but the ones we had already packed and sealed. We fell into bed around 1 am, expecting the moving truck by 8 am.

Today we didn't have to do much but sign paperwork, answer questions, and point the moving team in the right direction. What we ended up doing mostly was cat-wrangling. Our own cats were stuck in their crates and put on our apartment's little side porch, out of everyone's way. There is, however, a neighborhood cat that really really wants to adopt us. He is a gangly adolescent cat who, I believe, technically belongs to our next-door neighbors, but is rather neglected. He bounces around the neighborhood seeking attention from everyone. Today, our door was open and people kept going in and out! Whee! We removed that cat from our apartment probably a couple dozen times. He also dashed into the moving van several times. Keeping track of him kept us pretty busy.

The Undecorator

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:23:17 GMT

I am become The Undecorator. Stuff is coming off of walls and shelves and out of cabinets. Brown Cardboard Box is the new decorative scheme. Walkways through the house have narrowed to barely viable passages, cluttered by boxes or stuff waiting to be packed. On the plus side, most of the books and board games have been packed. I think we're making good progress.

Report

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:51:03 GMT

Reports of trapped kittens were investigated.

Kittens were indeed trapped, most secured in solidly constructed cages. The cages appeared comfortable, and kittens were provided with food, water, and other necessities.

The beetle was nowhere in evidence. It appeared to have entrusted the kittens to human servants. It may be nocturnal; nighttime observation is recommended.

Kittens did show vampiric tendencies. Caged kittens made several attempts to bite digits held near the cages. A kitten temporarily freed of its cage climbed up this investigator's arm, making for the neck. In no case did a kitten draw blood, however. If vampires, they are still young and ineffective.

Recommendation: leave the kittens in traps and continue to monitor for vampiric and other undesireable behavior.

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:35:29 GMT

Today we found a bit of time to swing by the house, which we still seem to be happy with:

But tomorrow we have to take a break from all this house business to go save the kittens...

Seen on the road

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:33:26 GMT

Let the kittens go, nasty beetle!

Off we go...

Fri, 29 May 2009 15:58:30 GMT

Tomorrow we're off to the wilds of New State in search of a place to live. We have a pretty good list of what we want to look at, we have appointments set up, and, if all goes well, at the end of the week we'll be ready to make a decision.

Will update when we get back.

Neighbors, and kids of neighbors

Thu, 07 May 2009 02:04:05 GMT

I accidentally got the neighbor boy in trouble today.

Our driveway is right next to our neighbors' driveway, and they tend to hang out there (it's also next to their porch), talking, smoking, doing whatever. Today I pulled into the driveway and waved a brief hello to them. As I opened up the trunk to get stuff out of it, I smiled and said "Hi there!" to the little boy riding around the driveway on his bike. I would guess he's about five. He looked at me solemnly and said, "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."

"Oh, OK," I responded, and went back to hauling things out of my trunk.

But as I walked up to the house, I heard one of the adults call the kid over and scold him: "Don't talk to people you don't know!"

OK, I don't really know these people; we've not done more than exchange pleasantries. But I live NEXT DOOR. They see me going in and out all the time. Plus, the adults were standing right there, within earshot of both the kid and me. I felt a little irritated, both that I am apparently a dangerous stranger in their minds despite living next door to them for years, and that the kid was getting scolded when all he did was tell me he couldn't talk to me. I didn't quite have the chutzpah to march over and introduce myself, though.

So, parents, what do you think? Am I being irrational? Should my neighbors lighten up? Maybe I should just never talk to small children, ever.

Uh-oh

Fri, 01 May 2009 12:14:15 GMT

So we have been dosing Cat #1 with meds for her thyroid problem for a couple of months now. We stuff the tiny little pill in the Pill Pocket treat, she loves it and begs for more. No problem.

Except now Cat #2 has figured out that she's getting something he isn't. (He's not too bright, so it took him a while.) The normal routine is that I give them both food in the morning, and then give Cat 1 her "special treat." Well, this morning, Cat 2 ignored the food for a while, nibbled at it, and wandered off. When he'd left the room I went ahead and started fixing the treat for Cat 1. And suddenly Cat 2 leaps up on the table next to where I'm standing. I found a different treat for him, and gave each cat their treat. They ate them and then glared at each other, and had a brief spat after I left the kitchen.

I hope this isn't going to become an ongoing problem...

Update

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:21:39 GMT

Wow, I hadn't realized it had been so long since my last post.

Our Winter of Being Sick has been followed by the Spring of Car Repairs, as our primary car spent the last 3 or 4 weeks at the body shop. We had taken it in to get some minor damage fixed, and then got a call that they'd found much worse damage once they started taking it apart. As we drove to the shop to check it out, I speculated on whether we should trust them. It turned out to be easy--they'd taken the front bumper off, so we could easily see that the bar supporting the engine looked like this:

______/\__

Yeah, I don't think it's supposed to be bent like that.

We had to wait on having the insurance company see it, then on getting parts from the manufacturer to replace the damaged stuff (including the radiator and the condenser for the air conditioner). Still no real idea what happened, just that at some point something (maybe a rock or a even a piece of ice) hit the bottom of the car hard. But now we have it back and so far everything seems to be working beautifully.

Snow Day!

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:45:26 GMT

A rare thing at a residential liberal arts college--but we have a snow day today.

Unfortunately for me, I cancelled class last week when I was sick...and there was an official school holiday the week before...so my class that normally meets twice a week has now met only once a week for the last three.

Also, I have to rearrange my schedule completely.

Oh well.

Typhoid Mary here

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:22:08 GMT

Dammit. I am sick AGAIN, this time with a stomach bug. So far 2009 has been the Year of Feeling Like Crap.

In other news, though, earlier this week I had a job interview, at a small midwestern college. I could do this job. This job would be really good for me: it is teaching-focused, with lots of opportunities to do research and contribute to the school in other ways. The downside is that we'd have to move and find other employment for C.

I had some intimations I wasn't well during the interview: I thought I was still getting over a cold (hence congestion and a bit of a cough) and I had one bout of stomach upset which I attributed to nerves on Wed. night. I was fine on Thurs. and Fri. I was supposed to fly home on Thurs. night, but Northwest cancelled my flight, forcing me to come back on Friday instead. Still, I was OK those two days, and yesterday developed a fever, more GI symptoms, and a general feeling of misery and lethargy.

Great. I probably just made everyone at Interview School sick.

Not a good year healthwise

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:41:19 GMT

So far this year:

C. slipped on the ice and banged his head on the concrete steps of our house
C. got a bad cold, and developed a secondary bronchial infection
I got his cold, and developed a secondary sinus infection
C. got a gastrointestinal bug
I got a second, minor cold
I developed a rash in response to the antibiotics I was taking for the sinus infection

Now I am itchy. :(

Improvements

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:19:48 GMT

My computer is working again. The current thaw allowed me to free my car from the driveway. My previous attempts to get it out have left impressive ruts (oops).

Curtis and I have both been walloped with bug after bug this winter, though. I think I have had at least two different viruses in the last three weeks. C'mon, immune system, surely you can do better than that!

Things making me cranky today

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:02:35 GMT

My car is stuck in an icy part of my driveway and I can't get it out.
My computer doesn't want to run smoothly today.
Some of my neighbors have not bothered to clear, sand, or take other measures to render their sidewalks safe to walk on.
I've been asked to meet someone for lunch, and I don't know if there's a hidden agenda here.
Because I can't get my car out of the driveway, I had to take the bus to my meeting; because of the bus schedule, I am now likely stuck on campus for the next several hours.
Also because I can't move my car, I can't run errands on my way home from this meeting.

Grr.

Pilling the cat

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:13:59 GMT

We've noticed Cat 1 has been seeming thinner lately, and last week she had her annual shots and check-up. A couple hundred dollars' worth of blood tests later, it turns out that yes, she is sick. She has an overactive thyroid, which is pretty common in older cats. We basically have two options: we can give her meds (for the rest of her life) or we can take her to a nearby animal hospital where they will nuke her poorly-behaved thyroid. We're considering this option, although it's rather expensive, but we decided to try the meds first. With some trepidation, because she's a feisty cat, and we thought it might be difficult to force her to take pills.

Miracle of miracles, the vet provided us with little chewy cat treats to hide the pills in. The treats have a hole in them, so it's easy to insert the pills and pinch the treat shut to conceal them. Yesterday we gave her her first dose, and she gobbled the treat/pill up and begged for more. We're crossing our fingers that it continues to be this easy.

Fabric trove

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:46:23 GMT

OK, back when I posted about our trip to New Hampshire I mentioned going through my lovely MIL's boxes of fabric--carefully kept, but not used in years.

Photos and details below the cut.

Here's the most eye-catching part of the collection I hauled home:

Those are all 100% wool fabrics, which she thinks her father brought back from England some fifty years ago. Some beautiful plaids and a nice tan solid. There were also some solid knits and several yards of a nice navy and white striped shirting fabric.

Another wool, a lovely blue and green stripe, was cut out for a garment that had never been assembled:

I think the pattern is this cute top and pleated skirt:

Unfortunately I don't know anyone it would fit. Fortunately, the intended skirt had very deep pleats, so I think there's enough width there to make a simple straight skirt to fit me. Again, the fabric was beautifully kept. Even though this fabric is pinned to the pattern pieces, there seems to be no sign of rust from the pins.

Views from a train

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:33:42 GMT

This weekend I took the train from Massachusetts to New York and back again. This morning I was too sleepy to read, and yet not sleepy enough to actually sleep, so I wound up gazing out the window a lot. The view from the train is interesting. Houses and businesses tend to face toward the street, not toward the train tracks, so I saw a lot of backs of buildings: delivery entrances, parking areas, tiny urban backyards, bikes locked to little apartment balconies, rusty fire escapes. Lots and lots of trash ends up the embankments sloping down toward the tracks. I could spot old tires and plastic cups among heaps of anonymous and tattered rubbish. Graffiti tags caught my eye with their colors, stark white on reddish brick and bright colors on concrete, and with their shapes: letter forms sharp and jagged, or round and balloonlike. On an otherwise drab pond, surrounded by bare trees, a group of swans majestically glided about.

From the cold and foggy north

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:12:06 GMT

Hope everyone who is celebrating has had a nice Christmas.

We had our Christmas late. We meant to drive up to New Hampshire on Christmas eve, but the roads were icy, so we held off until Christmas day. Although I proposed that we could then open gifts when we arrived in the evening, I was overruled and we opened on the morning of Dec. 26. I also had fun helping my mother-in-law clear out boxes of fabric from her closet. This ranged from some real treasures (beautifully kept wool plaids that she's had for 50 years) to some terrors (orange polyester doubleknit from the 1970s). Mm, fabric. We feasted on salmon, tried out our new games, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Baking

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:38:42 GMT

Around Christmas time, I feel the urge to bake goodies. I feel this urge at other times, too, but it's particularly acute now.

The desire to bake started a couple of weeks ago, and I baked ginger cookies to take to my last class of the semester. Those are almost all gone now (the students accounted for a good number of them). Yesterday I made lemon date bars, and mixed up the batter for my favorite chocolate crinkle cookies. It's a very soft batter, so it needs to chill for a long time, and I baked those today. The chocolate crinkle cookies are from a classic "Betty Crocker's Cooky Book." My in-laws have an old and battered copy of this book, and we have a bright shiny new reprint that we bought a few years ago. The reprint is exactly like the old one, not updated at all, which means it is occasionally cringe-inducingly retro (as in the comment that peanut butter cookies are popular with men and children), and occasionally just quaint (as when it calls for brands of flour that may no longer exist). The cookies are rolled around in powdered sugar before baking, so making them is messy but highly worthwhile.

Next up, maybe tomorrow, is my mother's recipe for "orange jumble cookies"--basically a shortbread cookie baked and then dipped in a hot glaze of sugar and orange juice. It's been a long time since I've made these. This recipe was a traditional holiday one in our family. Most of the stuff I make might not fit typical definitions of "Christmas cookie," though. I've never been that into plain sugar cookies, so we tended not to make frosted and decorated sugar cookies very often. So I always want to bake at Christmas, but I don't have a set list, I just bake whatever I feel like at the time.

Do you have holiday baking traditions?

Presenting our...what, exactly?

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:03:43 GMT

A few weeks ago I started taking belly dance classes. Very different from the sorts of dance I'm more familiar with. Unlike in most Balkan folk dance, the footwork is pretty simple. What's tricky is using a lot of muscles in the chest and abdomen in ways they don't usually move. Because belly dance is basically about showing off the hips and boobs--no matter how often the instructor calls it "presenting our energy."

For the first couple of classes, we were working on isolating and learning to use different muscle groups. I felt just slightly cocky when we started combining that with traveling steps: while many of my classmates had trouble doing a basic grapevine, that was no problem for me, so I could focus on developing other skills.

Then I missed two classes with a virus, and came back last night to discover that while I was gone the class had been learning a whole routine. Choreography? Yikes. I got most of the routine down in class last night, but I'm not doing it in particularly good style. That's the next thing to work on...

A taste of winter

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:12:59 GMT

We got a dusting of snow over the weekend, and again last night. Not very much, likely to melt by the end of the day, but still, it's there.

More importantly, yesterday was actually COLD--morning temps in the teens, with a significant windchill. Brr.

I have been taking the bus to work this semester, and cold weather is the test of that. Waiting for the bus was easy and pleasant when it was warmer. Now I need to dress warmly enough to walk to the bus stop and wait, but not so warmly that I swelter once I'm inside. The bus itself is warm, but yesterday I got cold enough waiting for the bus and walking from bus stop to office that it took a long time to really feel warm again. Then, in the afternoon, I left a little late walking back down to the bus stop so I wouldn't have to wait as long in the cold, with the result that I missed the bus. Oops. Fortunately Curtis could come pick me up, and I found a warm place to wait for him where I could get some hot chocolate. Mmm.

I think I need to look into some lightweight long underwear if I want to keep taking the bus all winter. Fortunately I've already spotted some possibilities...

There's some kind of lesson here

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:53:10 GMT

It turns out that if you store four yards of wool in random places for 14 years, it will no longer be in tip-top condition.

In 1994 I bought a large quantity of heathery gray wool to make a cloak, with the assistance of the fabulous malachitefer. If you knew me in college you will have seen the resulting cloak. I had four yards left over and saved it, thinking maybe I would make a skirt and vest. I moved the fabric to three or four different on-campus rooms, stashing it heaven knows where--under the bed, maybe, or in a closet. And then I moved the fabric to four different apartments in three different states.

Now I have started sewing more regularly, and now that it's finally getting cold the idea of a wool skirt sounded quite appealing. The fabric looked okay when I started cutting out pieces, and it wasn't until I started working with the pieces individually that I realized there were a number of small holes in it. They might be from moths or just from wear--the damage is mostly close to the selvage or crease lines.

All is not lost, though; I had to recut two of the six skirt panels, but I was able to get enough for both a skirt and a vest by laying out the pattern pieces very carefully. It's amazing that the fabric isn't in worse shape, really.

The Amazing Seafood Thanksgiving

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:29:26 GMT

Tomorrow probably_lost's uncle and parents will visit us for Thanksgiving. We're planning a full menu with all the trimmings: pie, mashed potatoes, dressing, gravy, and the traditional Thanksgiving crabcakes.

Crabcakes may not be traditional for your Thanksgiving, but they've rapidly become an indispensable part of ours. Most of the family are vegetarians (but seafood-eating). Uncle is the only unrepentant carnivore; I eat meat very occasionally. As the family has moved away from meat-eating, we stopped making turkey a few years back. And really, I do not miss it at all because of the crabcakes.

Uncle brings the crabcakes and won't say where he gets them. Each one weighs nearly a pound and is mostly composed of crab, not filler. I don't know what they add to the crabcakes for flavor except that it is incredibly savory and tasty. They really go nicely with all the traditional sides (the gravy is made from mushrooms). They're also easier to prepare than a roast bird.

Hope everyone has a nice holiday!