So anyway...

Prepared by Hope

2010-06-08T17:22:00.005-04:00

Luke 21:14

But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves.

1 Peter 3:15

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. . .

Sabbatical Journey - a good book

2010-06-05T02:06:00.001-04:00

When I find a good book, it's hard for me to take it slowly.

I usually lap it up as fast as I can, thinking about it during the day when I should be paying attention to something else and staying up all night to finish it when I get the chance. I'm only a couple dozen pages into Henri Nouwen's "Sabbatical Journey" and I know it is going to be one of the best (most influential, encouraging, resonating, exhortative, moving, surprising, enjoyable, go-back-to) books I have read.

What's amazing is I'm reading nice and slow. I read it a page or at the most four per day, a day or two at a time (it's his journal, written day by day through his sabbatical year break from his regular workful life, and last year of life). As I read, with about every other sentence, I think of various of you, my friends. I keep stopping myself from buying copies and sending them out, in part because by grace I know I can be more "miss" than "hit" when it comes to recommending books. Plus, I'm not done yet and it might turn out to be a stinker after he gets a little farther into his sabbatical. It could happen.

Also, there is the little business of it might be the right book at the right time for me (and my sabbatical journey, although as far as I know it won't last a year and I'm not planning on dying at the end and I think I might be working harder than he did on his; in this it-could-just-be-me vein, I am the one who found reading "The Year of Magical Thinking" as quickly as I could, staying up all night to finish it, just two months after my dad died actually helpful, not "too soon").

So I decided just to mention it here. If you'd like to taste a book that, through intimate and somewhat random reflections on a life-break, illuminates writing, belief, prayer, patience, solitude, purpose, friendship, tiredness, commitment, imperfection, and some other stuff, then maybe check it out.

I got my copy for $2 at Half Price Books. But, I'd go up to the $15 Amazon's asking. . . so far.

http://www.amazon.com/Sabbatical-Journey-Diary-Final-Year/dp/0824518780/

Sense and Sentimentalities

2009-08-27T21:14:00.002-04:00

Sentimentally, I've been using my dad's last wallet for the past year. My mom removed his driver's license, credit cards, health insurance card, and left the wallet empty in a pile of things to give away. I picked it up and filled it with my driver's license, credit cards, health insurance card, school i.d.s.

This morning as I walked across the floor inside a Dunkin Donuts, holding my wallet at the ready for iced coffee purchasing, slightly swinging my arms (in a good mood, I guess), all my cards flew straight up out of their slots inside the wallet and splayed across the tiles.

This afternoon I bought myself a sentiment-free, zippered wallet.

Still I can't bring myself to give or throw away the wallet, so maybe I'll put it with his even more useless and more sentimental hearing aids, socked away in the back of my sentimentals drawer.

Nor could I, as I emptied the wallet tonight to make the transfer, throw away the "warning" ticket a very nice young Texas State Ranger gave me for speeding through the middle of nowhere in July, as any sensible person would have done.

Angels & Plastic Body Panels

2009-06-14T16:34:00.003-04:00

[Editor's note: I've decided not to be funny or sentimental in this particular blog post. Is this a sign of a concussion?]

I spun out in the drizzle taking the exit loop from 93 to 95 this afternoon. Made at least two full turns, hit the guard rail hard, bounced off, spun some more, and came to a stop, somehow, facing oncoming traffic. While I was spinning I felt like I would never stop turning around and around, ever. The car behind me didn't hit me. The driver pulled onto the grass and offered to call someone to help. She even came over to check on me. The next car in line offered to help. I was stunned. My engine had cut off. But as soon as I figured out I was okay, and put the car in park and tried to restart it, I decided I'd just try to get out of the way and didn't need any help. (There's no real room to pass at that point, so I needed to move.) The car started after a couple of tries, it turned around fine, and I pulled onto 95 slowly.

Amazingly, none of the following occurred:
- someone hitting me
- my airbag deploying
- my car not starting
- my engine steaming or smoking
- my car wobbling.

In fact, my car drove no worse than if I'd just gone through a big pot hole. I didn't notice any difference, actually. I drove extra cautiously up to 129, exited, and decided just to keep going all the way to Lynn. I couldn't think what else I should do.

Should I have stayed and taken responsibility for the guard rail? I would've been in the way of lots of traffic. Should I have pulled over on the side of 95 when I got out of the way and made sure my alignment was okay? (How?)

I stopped at CVS because a house with a special needs cat and no more clean litter waits for no man or car. (And my brain worked enough for me to remember this need.) Looked at the front of my car, which is scraped, a little out of order, has a little piece of the frame missing altogether, but is not dented. Saturns don't dent. The light was sticking out a bit. I popped it back in. I tried to pop the hood, but couldn't get it up. Might just have been my wobbly arms, or it might be bent out of shape.

The saddest thing about it all to me is that in that crazy slowed down alien moment when I was spinning and realized I was going to crash, my only thought was "what is this going to cost me? I'll have to transfer money out of savings." I am thankful to God I have money in savings, but sorry this is where my mind goes in a crisis. (What else should I have thought, though?)

My safety belt caught, and hard, but I'm breathing fine and don't feel bruised. In fact, I feel slightly miracled all around. I'll take the car into Saturn tomorrow to see about the hood and the light and make sure nothing's sprung a leak in the engine.

Now I'm going to take a guilt-free Sunday afternoon nap, and I suggest my angels take a rest as well.

Sometimes the night is beautiful.

2009-06-11T03:03:00.000-04:00

Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and it'll all be gone.

There's more that rises in the morning than the sun. . . A music higher than the songs that I can sing.

We all wanna go there something awful, but to stand there takes some grace.

The sound of a car, the color of the pre-dawn sky. A trip to the office with my dad, on the back of his motorcycle, in the industrial green van.

Midnight blue. Dark willow, the color of my purple-brown hoodie. Periwinkle becoming pink then perfectly sky blue.

Pre-dawn airplane, sleepy and hopeful, children imagining, anticipating new smells, weather, going far or going home.

Sometimes you feel like a camel

2009-04-10T17:12:00.003-04:00

I just apologized to a couple of dumpster diggers, garbage pickers, whatever. I went downstairs from my fourth floor luxury double-entry condo bearing two bags of human refuse (including uneaten, probably still good food -- I'm going out of town and who wants to come home to old food in the fridge) and a stinky bag of used cat litter. I heard them before I came around the corner of the white pickety fence aesthetically enclosing our unsightly green dumpster. I briefly hoped no one was peeing and made the turn to find a man standing at the side door, rooting around in my neighbors' trash.

"Excuse me," I said. Politely. "Excuse me." He looked up, irritated. He was, of course, ignoring me, wondering why I didn't return the courtesy. "I didn't want to..." I don't know what. I couldn't say "I didn't want to toss my stinky garbage on your head." Yet, neither could I, apparently, say, "I didn't want to disturb you." But I didn't.

His female partner, unseen on the other side of the dumpster, snorted. He, kindly, said, "Go ahead, just toss it in."

"I'm sorry," I said. Awkward.

I walked back to my building, punched in my security code, took the elevator upstairs, and grabbed my redeemable bottles and cans to take back down to them.

Of course, they were gone by the time I got back. Either they'd gotten anything valuable out and moved on, or, they figured I'd do what the sign said I'd do -- call the police. I set the about $3 worth of aluminum and plastic in a couple of bags outside the recycling bin. Someone will come by and collect it and cash it in. I wish I'd told them I was coming back, or asked them... something.

I hate living in this neighborhood because I do it so poorly.

Seymour Mouses

2009-03-23T12:19:00.004-04:00

I listened to Hadden Robinson's 15 minute radio show "Discover the Word" on my drive in this morning.

The group of participants who discuss a short selection or topic of Scripture were in the gospel of John and on the subject of having the heart to see the signs. How is that two people can grow up in the same home, receive the same education and church experiences, and one have faith while the other does not? How did Billy Graham come to be - and remain - a follower of Jesus, while contemporary evangelist Chuck Templeton no longer believed?

So, Hadden Robinson offered the nursery rhyme "Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat" (with some slight variance from what I've heard before, but more to his and my point) as metaphor:

Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat,
Where have you been?
I've been to London to visit the Queen.
Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat,
What did you see there?
I saw a little mouse right under the chair.

You see, the radio teacher concluded, we see what we're inclined to see. He elaborated on the rhyme, taking the role of the interlocutor: what was the queen wearing? how was her hair? But the cat only saw the mouse. It's all the pussy cat had the heart or openness to see, though (by extension), God had revealed to it so much more -- and, presumably, so much that was greater.

The moral, Hadden Robinson concluded, is: "What you are determines what you see, and what you see determines what you do." And, some people exposed to the same thing come to faith, while others come to murder.

Yes, I understand that it is in the nature of the cat here to not only see, but to wish to kill and eat (or just to play with?!) the mouse under the queen's chair. But, to go too far down this metaphoric road gets uncomfortably Calvinistic for my heart and mind. (Why design the cat to kill the mouse if we're going to judge it for its nature?)

Does no one besides me think it's great, inspirational, valuable. . . that someone saw the mouse while everyone else was looking at the queen? We're glad the little boy accepted that the Emporer wore no clothes. We see what we are inclined to see, I totally agree, and thereby miss much that is true and noble, worth thinking on for sure. That's the beauty of community and conversation, though, not reason to chastise the cat! Ask the pussy cat what she saw, and welcome that she saw not just the expected, celebrated pomp, but the mouse (whatever its worth or function), as well.

Seeing the mouse in the castle enriches our understanding and makes us, as community, more whole. We will certainly do ourselves no good to then see only the mouse, and listen only to the pussy cat. Neither, though, should we dismiss its perspective -- however off-topic or critical -- especially if we asked for it in the first place.

Faith plus . . . relationship?

2009-02-21T12:53:00.001-05:00

"I believe veganism can be beneficial for the individual and the world, and of course the animal, but belief is like laying in the dark with someone and telling them you love them and hearing nothing back. So I've never had the confidence to get on a soapbox and tell someone else what to do."
-- Casey Affleck

Competencies, Dreams, and Automobiles

2009-02-18T18:36:00.004-05:00

When I am president, my first act shall be to create separate road systems for those who are good drivers and those who are not. "Segregate Our Highways!" my campaign slogan shall ring out. Because the time has come and gone for such inefficiencies as me getting stuck behind someone driving 40 on my way to work, or - worse - 20 on my way home.

No doubt coincidentally, periodically I dream that the brakes on my car don't work. The situations are rarely frightening, though. Because in most cases I'm not surprised: my brakes giving out is somehow routine in my dream, and I'm usually explaining it with frustration, embarrassment, and a little resignation to some (uncomfortable) companion or other who sits in the passenger seat. Often the brakes don't work in weird, particular ways: they will work to slow the car down to a crawl, but will never bring it to a complete stop; or they work going forward but are right out (sometimes having the opposite of desired effect) going backward.

Plus ca change. . .

2009-01-19T19:46:00.014-05:00

Today's post is brought to you by the letters "denial" and "reality," and by the numbers "old" and "new." Today's soundtrack is the new U2 officially unreleased, released for fans as of today single, "Get On Your Boots."

I bought a new pair of snow boots today, for the first time since 1993. I want to sleep in my new snow boots. I love them and they love me. They do not have a hole in them, letting the snow in to soak my feet.

They do not have loose tops, letting the cold air and snow in to freeze my feet. They are furry and you know I love fur. They are comfy, and I am sometimes partial to comfort.

You know what makes me comfortable sometimes? (Pop quiz: the answer is furry, comfy, water proof, non-16-year-old snow boots.)

No, but also, too: More of the same. Sometimes I am comforted by redundancy. Hello, I'm on a sprouts kick right now. And cannot get enough Trader Joe's soycutash.

Sometimes we need something new, like snow boots that actually work. They should be called anti-snow boots, actually.

This is a new year. A new semester. So far, I'm in denial. It will be awkward, and probably financially devastating, if I don't get my new semester properly on for sixteen years. Nevertheless, I'm easing my way into the present from the far and recent past.

I spent three weeks in TX, doing Christmas and New Year's and change and old and new with my family. (And my ample cat.)

I came back to start the semester smack up against it, without the buffer week or two I usually have. Without a reliable familiar pair of snow boots, but with several inches of wet, cold snow. Reality. Denial. Process.

My family's cat, Binky, used to be as wide as she is long. She's maybe 16 or 17 years old now. That's 148 human years for an outdoor cat. And, she's lost about two times her remaining size. She sticks around. She's old, but new.

My mom ordered the Snuggie from the infomercial. But wait, she ordered now and got two for the price of one, and a free reading light, too. We came home from dinner just after my brother and s-i-l and their little funny guy to find him sitting in Grandma's chair, wrapped in Grandma's Snuggie, reading Grandma's Bible by the light of Grandma's free reading light. The new follows the old. My new snow boots will get a hole (but they better not for 15 years).

I celebrate tomorrow's Inauguration. I'd like to do it lying on my couch at home, wrapped in my Snuggie and wearing my new snow boots, super-comfy new socks, and two cats. But, I'll stream the coverage live in my classes and teach the new semester, because you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

We spent a lot of time going through my dad's things while I was at my mom's house. We gave away several hundred books, and kept several hundred more amongst ourselves. We recycled thousands of pages of clippings, scrap paper, weekly Science News magazines. Gave away clothes, and kept some. Recycled a dozen and a half pairs of reading glasses through the Lyons Club. Divvied up pictures, notes, and office supplies. (I brought back a lifetime supply of erasers and wonder how long it will be before I can't find a working eraser on my desk at work. If things don't change, if I remain the same, I give it until about March.)

I couldn't bring myself to throw away my dad's hearing aides. Custom fit for his ears. Unrecyclable, not functional, not rationally sentimental. A representation of his changing in his older age. I went with him to Miracle Ear in Sears for the tests. He sat in a soundproof room and responded to beeps and hums. He made conversation with his audio tech, discovered his story, knew he'd travelled to Morroco for his missionary assignment with the Mormon church. My dad adapted to his hearing aides. Figured out how to turn them down for technologically enhanced selective hearing. I brought them, two hankies, a framed picture he had of my sister and me in front of signs for the National Communication Association and the Restless Leg Syndrome research organization conventions being held simultaneously in the same hotel in San Antonio, a couple dozen books, a lifetime supply of erasers. . . . Up with me to my snowy home away from family, but steeped in good friends, valuable work, new snow boots, and sprouts for the nations.

I haven't had a day yet that I don't miss my dad. But the ways I miss him, and way I feel and the ways the world is different after the loss of my parent, and the things I think about -- old, new, and timeless -- are in flux.

These are some things I've been thinking about and feeling since I last posted on Thanksgiving Day. I don't know how much I'll process things through this old form in the coming weeks and months. But I like having it here and the freedom and confidence to put these bits out there.

One by one. . .

2008-11-27T08:06:00.005-05:00

In addition to these, and in the spirit of this, I participate in the gift of ritual I too often undervalue. Today I share gratefulness for:

Stories. Told, living and breathing in my memory, to be told. Their telling. The life and humor and insight and pain and growth and ridiculous and sublime they embody. Stories told casually, explosively, almost ineffectively. Told carefully, ritualistically, familiarly. I'm grateful for how much my dad loved telling stories, how many he told, and how often and freely and confidently and joyfully he told them. I undertake to listen for and to more stories.

Patience. And many other super-natural gifts of fruit I sometimes taste and people often give to me.

Food. I enjoy it. I don't lack for it.

Movement. I am rarely stuck, though sometimes I am, and then I like moving along even more. (Maybe next year I'll learn to be grateful for seasons of stillness.)

My vacuum. You should see it fill up with cat hair! What accomplishment it helps me feel! And, it's green.

The color green. And green food! (The kind that is meant to be green when it's eaten - not green too early, and certainly not green too late.)

Friends and family who embrace tradition and ritual before and more than me. Sometimes it helps to remind me in new ways of the blessings of old ways. As long as they're a little flexible.

Flexibility.

Carrying each other's burdens

As I think about my friends right now experiencing loss and grief, and some newness of life, I am grateful, again, for these reflections (linked above) from my boss this season:

And I hope I can discover, in the fortitude of others, ways of giving thanks in times of grief. Gratitude without blindness to others' sorrow. Unlike some colleagues at Westmont--and so many persons in the world--I enter this Thanksgiving with a home, without great deprivations. My life is blessed. But each year all of us can count some losses. There will be no Thanksgiving call this month from my father, given his dementia, the scorched neurology of age. But there are plenty of images in my mind of our Thanksgiving leaves, fully raked, only to be scattered by impromptu football games in our family's backyard. The psalmist would find in such irretrievable moments a glimpse of something eternal, something equally lost and luminous. More and more I see God's grace in the architecture of hope and memory.

The fortitude of others. The architecture of hope and memory.

Self-portraitzzle

2008-11-13T18:49:00.003-05:00

Puppies

2008-11-13T18:42:00.001-05:00

I'm sorry. I don't usually post Youtube videos, but sometimes one just needs a puppy. . .

Silence. Mission Ends.

2008-11-11T08:00:00.012-05:00

I've been following the latest mission to Mars on Twitter. I'm not really sure why. In the midst of updates from friends on three continents (here on Earth) and the middle of this country, reports of meals eaten, tasks procrastinated, momentous and quotidian life experienced, I've read the humorous, beyond-my-ken-or-passion scientific reporting of a robot in outer space. For reals.

So when I checked in on Twitter last night, I was a little surprised and sad to see this flurry:

Though I'd known it was coming, because last week there was this:

And these:

And even earlier, the clear warning:

It's only natural, my Twitter friend Phoenix told me. Robots to Mars can't stay in communication with us forever.

So, I will sit and watch the silence on my Twitter page. Another thing over. The rest of us carry on.

Good Times Recipe

2008-11-09T20:23:00.001-05:00

One part friends.

Two parts people-watching.

Eleventy parts books.

Mix ingredients together in giant warehouse on a Saturday morning.

(Warning: product may include allergens such as claustrophobia and clutter.)

I took my work break first thing yesterday morning, joining Three Friends and a Baby at the quarterly (or thirdly?) CBD warehouse booksale. It was a trip! CBD's 10 minutes from my house, but I'd never been before, unless you count driving past it every day to and from work. Arriving 20 minutes after opening, I had to park at the back of a muddy field then joined the throngs of hundreds filing in to paw through highly reduced Christian books, CDs, and Junk of All Kinds.

I went away happily, and remarkably, book-and-junk-less, but had a good time, thereby getting me in the mood for a day of dissertation-writing back at home.

Action sequence starring 2-y-o X, taken on my new smart-phone's camera (does not love low, unnatural light and movement; but I love it).

Say Something Nice

2008-10-30T14:44:00.002-04:00

How to reduce tension, get along now and in the future, exude the tasty fruit of kindness...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/30/greene-if-you-can%E2%80%99t-or-can-say-anything-nice/

Eventually (maybe!) this election cycle will end. And we will have (maybe!) results, which will take, at minimum, months to play out in any tangible every-day-life ways.

Our rhetoric and our conversations now are necessarily different from what they will be after next Tuesday, given the urgency some feel yet to make a persuasive difference in the voting process. Still, what we say now has consequences for relationships and reality now and into the future.

Is it possible to be passionate, driven, righteous, wise, even angry, and at the same time able to see and speak of goodness in neighbors with whom we disagree?

Group hug-it-out in five days!

{semi-cross-posted on Fake-I-Mean-Facebook}

Value: Conviction & Convenience

2008-10-19T22:19:00.001-04:00

I heart brussels sprouts. And how cute is it that mine came still on the stalk from my farm this week? But enough pleasantness. On to unpleasantness:

When and how did we reach the place where one of the breaking points for me in continuing a relationship with my CSA is my intense dislike for how much more I have to wash my fresh, community-grown and -supporting, organic produce?

I just spent probably 15 minutes standing at the sink not triple washing, but probably ten times rinsing a few baby heads of beautiful, fresh, community-grown and -supporting, organic lettuce. I love lettuce. Greens of all kinds, from bok choy to kale and spinach, are my absolute favorite vegetables. But -- not even considering how much water I had to use to get them even halfway to running clear in the rinse -- how much labor has been going into preparing the mass market grocery chain lettuce I've been buying all these years?

And what in the world does it mean that I'm now paying so much more for dirt-caked lettuce, requiring so much more of my own effort to get it ready to eat, than most in my society are paying for triple-washed, ready-to-eat produce at the grocery chain?

You should know that the only reason I bothered so thoroughly washing my lettuce is that even more than I heart lettuce, I hate the feel of sand in my teeth. And if I didn't have a SALAD SPINNER!, don't even get me started. I would've had to dry it all, too!

But my point is, I'm not the most religious advocate of all the values the CSA stands for. I like them, yes: healthier foods and earth, farer wages, localer community and economy. All seem good to me, but not in absolute or convicting terms. I do still buy corporate, processed, global stuff, too. Maybe I'm on a journey and I'm moving toward stronger convictions in these areas. I do respond most strongly to the issue of labor, more than personal health and global environment. Though, don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting these aren't important and CSAs aren't appropriate means of addressing them. They just don't get me in the gut as much as thinking about abusive labor systems in which the terminally poor are viciously and cyclically treated without dignity or regard for their human lives in order to give me cheap, well-washed lettuce (and to give workers sequentially higher up in the system's chain exponentially higher profits). If making purchasing choices on my end can help to change or avoid participating in that de-humanizing system, then all the better if it's good for the land, local economy, and my immune system, too.

But what are the costs of our convictions?

At Girls on Friday, my friend Amy expressed her overwhelming frustration with not being able financially to afford to make the choices her convictions about inhumane animal treatment in the raising of mainstream meat and dairy demand. She's not the only one in this dilemma. How to raise children the way you so passionately believe is best -- spending more time with them in formative days and years than someone paid (necessarily less than you need to make) to take your place; educating them in the contexts you absolutely believe are necessary -- on a single or less than full-time salary; doing work you know is valuable, contributing to society and redeeming human existence, while paying off your exorbitant student loans. . . .

All this passed through my head as I rhythmically, excessively rinsed my lettuce, thinking that I would pay more to have the of-the-earth produce my CSA provides come to me less earthy. And wondering about the value of convenience, and how it came to be so deeply ingrained in me. It's one thing to have sloth be an eternal human temptation and vice. It's another to be faced with the convenience (and expectation) in society of being able (in my case) to afford to calculate convenience into my budget: my desire and ability (and the normalcy of it all) to afford to pay to have people wash my lettuce for me. And then, wondering about just how little the people who wash my grocery chain lettuce must receive for their work, given how much less it costs to get their produce than the conscience-easing produce of the CSA. And, so, wondering where all that leaves me.

Also, after you're done answering me all that, please explain to me when and why I agreed to live in a region where my nose is constantly cold from October through April. That's just wrong.

Friends, Farm & Food

2008-10-18T22:19:00.013-04:00

I took a breathtaking (crayola box leaves lined the highway) hour's drive up to New Hampshire Friday to combine a writing-work day with a Girls day. I popped my noise reduction headphones on and worked on my dissertation in between breaks to eat pumpkin dark chocolate chip cookies and make scrapbook pages for no-longer-local Girl B's fourth baby while the rest of the Girls' curly blonde spawn played Piles of Blurry Giggling Children.

I got some good work and some good living and being done, then drove back down to Mass. to head with SEF to the farm where we collected fresh crayola box produce and enjoyed ever-larger turkeys and ever stinkier pigs eating pumpkins.

This year our CSA gave us tons of greens every week as they did last year, and more than last year's potatoes and onions.

Pulling a few potatoes out to fry up a couple of weeks ago I was surprised to find them purple underneath their protective dirt.

These are a few of my favorite things.

When You Think About It

2008-10-11T19:26:00.005-04:00

There are two kinds of people in the world.

Those whose trouble comes from stopping too long to think about things too much.

and

Those whose trouble is they really don't think about things enough.

Guess which kind I am.

Of Brussels Sprouts, Turkeys, and Stinky, Stinky Pigs

2008-10-04T17:42:00.008-04:00

The crappiest.

2008-10-02T09:48:00.000-04:00

In an email from a friend who might not mind my quoting:

"PS – I was really sorry to hear about Paul Newman, though this is the wrong medium in which to say so. This has probably been the crappiest few months in your entire life, and I’m really sorry about it."

Thanks for helping me feel freer not to pull it totally together if someone knocks on my door while I'm crying or catches me in a blurry or sudden-onset-teary moment mid-conversation in a parking lot or hallway.

And the rest-of-life challenges haven't happened to go away.

The brights spots are true, too. I'm not lying.

But it is crappy grieving and living at the same time.

Through the Windows (Alternate Nuts and Quacks)

2008-10-01T06:33:00.010-04:00

Sometimes, when I have a 13-hour day's worth of commitments on campus, and I neglect to bring a lunch (or dinner) from home -- or just to get a change of scenery and air, I drive into town, grab some fast food, and sit in my car in a parking lot by water.

This pond in Wenham is a favorite spot for a 30 minute breather.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Sometimes, when I can't get off campus for a breather, I sit and watch the leaves change and wave in the wind outside my office window.

Paul Newman was not my grandfather

2008-09-27T12:32:00.008-04:00

He was like a grandfather to me in some of the ways my two biological grandfathers were, and some they were never.

I did not meet any of the three men I've called "my grandfather" for most of my life. I knew them only through stories -- told to me, read by me, imagined by me -- and through pictures, still and moving.

It's silly, I guess. And a little bit true. Friends who've known me since I was a teenager, or since I was in college, or since I was just out of college. . . when did I grow out of my adopted grandfather Paul? . . . referred to Paul Newman as my grandfather. And I did love him and respect him. But he was not my grandfather.

My brother called me while I was meeting with a student in my home this morning. The only reason I took the call and interrupted our independent study class time was because I feel like we're all sort of experiencing heightened sensitivity to being available and connected to each other now, almost three months after my dad died while four of the five of us were relatively unavailable and disconnected -- out of the country and away from my mom, who right now herself is out of the country and out of communication for a couple of weeks. He asked if I'd heard the news. When I didn't respond like he expected or hoped I would, he transitioned into it: "Paul Newman." "Oh, did he die?" He'd just heard on NPR and called me. I said I hadn't heard, but I knew it was coming. Then I went back to work. It was providential that he called then, and that I, after initially silencing the phone to put it away, decided to take the call, as later in our session I brought up a news site online and would have been confronted with the headlining words and image, and I don't know how I would have responded with my student there to news that my sometime-someway grandfather Paul Newman had died at 83.

I met Paul Newman through the medium of my family's little TV set and late-late-night programming in 1984 or 1985, in the living room of our house in Kota Kinabalu. I met him once or twice at sleepovers with my friends LuAnne and Lois and Alex and Christa. I grew to love him alone, as I'd stay up late when my brothers and parents had gone to bed. I have no idea why Malaysia TV -- we had two channels when we first moved there, three by the time we left the country, sharing time and airwaves between programming in four languages: Malay, Chinese, Tamil, and English -- played 1970's and 1960's Newman flicks around midnight.

I saw "Harper" and "The Drowning Pool," possibly "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Buffalo Bill and the Indians." I think I saw "The Towering Inferno," maybe "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Sting" in this time, but I don't know in which country, what home, I ended up seeing most. Maybe I only saw "The Drowning Pool" and "Harper" in Malaysia. But I know I saw each more than once, in the dead of night in our tile and rattan living room. I remember each scene, the melodramatic staging and interactions, the deadpan sarcastic delivery, the beauty of the face, eyes, actor, character, man.

Back in the States, I checked out "Hud" and "The Verdict," "The Left Handed Gun," "The Hustler," and most of the rest. I saw "The Color of Money," and eventually Newman's non-present Oscar win. Sometime in high school I saw Newman's 1958 "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and then I saw it again at least once a year for the next probably 15 years. By the first scene, I was in love.

But I was in love with him as my pretend adopted-grandfather. When did I decide that, because I'd never had a chance to meet either of my grandfathers, both dying of heart attacks young, years before I was born, I should get to create my own in a currently living figure I never visited, talked to, knew? When did I begin to relate to him the way I related to my grandpa Luther, Dad's dad of whom he'd tell so many inspiring stories that I knew him to be the spitting image of Atticus Finch?

My grandpa Luther W. Cobbey was a multiply-decorated war hero from WWI, a lawyer in the deep south in a time of deep racial divide and oppression, a generous, reconciling, well-respected man who modeled for my generous, humble, much-loved and respected father what it meant to live with others with integrity. My dad told a story of the response of blacks in the Tampa community to his father's funeral which I always pictured as the scene in "To Kill a Mockingbird" when Rev. Sykes says to Scout, "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise, your father's passing." My grandpa John Newgard, my mother's dad, was less present to me in my childhood because my mother is less of a storyteller than my dad. But I knew he worked hard, did the grocery shopping, made an ice skating pond for my mom and her sisters and brother in the cold Minneapolis winters.

Somewhere along the line, I came to know, and seek to know, all this and more about my grandfather Paul Newman. I thought he made a great grandfather figure for me, a generous, vibrant man, made up in my mind of the personalities of his intense, funny, sharp film characters, the narrative of his charity, his visits with David Letterman, his racecar addiction, his long-lasting marriage, his tragic loss and larger than life donations, and his own-personness-outside-of-the-celebrity-system vibe -- while one of the biggest celebrities over five decades worth of fame.

I knew, funnily enough, he didn't become a grandfather until much later than many of his generation, with his children producing only two (non-imaginary) offspring to give him that special relationship I imagined him filling for me. I was in my mid-20's by the time my grandfather Paul became a grandfather himself.

I knew his birthday was Australia Day, January 26, and I still note it every year.

Paul Newman was one year and just under a month younger than my dad.

I watched them age together. The sagging, blotching skin, the fading blue eyes, the loss of hair, the feebling of build and movement. I wondered, earlier this year, when he was in the news as ailing, what it would be like for me when Paul Newman died before my dad.

But then, he died three months after him. And I'm still not sure what it's like. I know that I am sad for his wife and his five children and two grandchildren in ways that I know more intimately -- the sadness -- than I did before. I'm sad for those who knew him through time and conversation and touch. I know that I am sad that if I ever have children, they will know their grandfather Max only through stories the way I knew my grandfathers, real and imagined.

I have a book-length study of celebrity death in popular culture that I always believed I'd finish and publish before my dad died, even when my academic commitments took me in a whole other direction. I could apply a series of theories and systems of analyzing and predicting the public response to today's news. But, if you came here looking for a moral of the story, some insight into culture and society, or something funnier than me calling an actor a year younger than my dad my grandfather, I will disappoint. It's just me, still grieving my dad, and mourning Paul Newman, who was but also was not my grandfather.

Fitting Friends and Finds: Antiques Roadshow, Here We Come!

2008-09-21T16:30:00.021-04:00

Post Table of Contents
Section 1: Moral of the Story
Section 2: The Story Before Pictures
Section 3: The Story Continued With Pictures

Some of you will want to skim section 2.

The Moral of the Story: Always travel with a friend who can find cool stuff for you, and you for her; remain open to the input and help of others, even if they overly confidently suggest something you just tried and found failing; don't measure things before deciding whether to buy them; and be willing to ask to borrow a screw driver from someone who is actually trying to sell not loan it for free!

The Pictureless Part of the Story
We wandered around the flea market for a couple of hours this morning, admiring kitsch, families, nostalgia, and possibilities. (Shawn also named all the breeds of the many dogs we encountered. But that's not part of the story. I also don't have any pictures of that part.)

Shawn was looking for a ring. A nice, unique ring for $50 birthday money.

I, who really am usually (and happily) just along for the ride on our adventures like this (my contribution to the social calendar this fall was to suggest we attend a high school football game in October; my sister, mother of two teenagers attending the #1 ranked high school football school in the nation, assures me it isn't creepy for non-alumni, non-parents, non-h.s.-teachers to attend; I'm going for the nachos and nostalgia; do they serve nachos at New England high school football games?! At least they should have a marching band. Right? Oh, but I did take us to an art gallery after the flea market, so never mind). . . I announced cheerily as we left early this morning, "I'm going for a bike and furniture!" I'd been thinking about buying a bike for awhile, but not seriously planning to pick one up today. And, I don't need any furniture, but I'd just been admiring a corner shelf unit Shawn has in her dining room, so I thought it would make a nice focal point for me on our trip. I wasn't really looking for furniture, just company and society.

But we weren't finding any nice rings. I kept flirting with a spinning globe that lights up and an unpleasantly framed supercool old map of Boston Harbor, but neither one was priced to sell (to me).

Then I said to Shawn, using my subtly-toned "I'm serious, not ironically pointing out a hideous piece of never-fashionable trash" voice, "I think you will want this." It was a very nice old camera, in amazing shape -- inside the case, the camera, etc. -- for its age. She loved it, bargained it down to just slightly more than she should have paid, and had her find.

We wandered around some more, then she said, "Wow! You must love this!" And pointed out a contraption I'd never seen before or known existed, but didn't even bother bargaining down to just slightly more than I should have paid. It's a library-step-stool-arm-chair. Apparently they exist.

The professional-garage-saler cleared it of the books he was using it to display, showed me how it folded over, assured me it would hold me if I climbed up the steps (it did), and pointed out how it was broken in a few spots and imperfectly mended. I gave him all the money I had in the world (of that time and place) and we distractedly wandered the rest of the flea market until we admitted out loud that we were both a little concerned about it fitting in Shawn's car.

We have a history.

A few months ago we drove a couple of hours west to visit a huge warehouse of letter press equipment. I didn't even know it existed, but Shawn took a class. On the way back, or maybe a little way out of our way, we stopped in a thrift store and I fell in love with a very comfortable green chair. For quite a bit less, I must say, than what I paid for my new ladder-chair. But it didn't come with its own step stool so. . . . But, being two hours from home (so not inclined to find alternate forms of transpo if needed), we used the measuring tape Shawn carries in her purse. For such a time as this. We measured all the several widths, lengths, and heights of the chair. We measured all the openings of the car. We calculated. We did not purchase the green chair. One or the other of us thinks of it and brings it up at least twice a month. Semi-monthly, even. Except for its size (or the size of Shawn's car door openings), it was a perfect chair for me.

I had paid the man for my new chair-with-steps. We had not measured. We drove Shawn's car as close as we could get it to the row with the library-chair-ladder-man's stuff, including my paid-for chair. I won't tell you the part about how we wandered up and down a couple of rows before we found him and my chair again. It was pretty close to the car. The chair is made of solid walnut (he says). Shawn said this would be heavy, but we're two strapping women. I didn't tell her or the man I'm not so strapping. (I just looked up "strapping" on dictionary.com. I changed my mind. I am strapping ("large, whopping" in sense #2); Shawn is strapping ("powerfully built" in sense #1). So, we're good.)

We carried the awkwardly constructed chair (it has folding and flapping parts) to her car.

The Part of the Story With Pictures

And then the comedy began. We tried it front first. Sideways. Back first. Front seat. Back seat. We cleared everything out of the trunk, and there was a lot of stuff in there (I didn't take a pictures, because I sensed Shawn's issues with this part of the story). We tried it frontwards, backwards, sideways, in the trunk. Nine days old.

And friendly, helpful person after friendly, helpful person stopped by. Offering to help. Suggesting we try another way (almost always the way we'd just tried). Several saying they do this for a living ("I move antiques"). One man suggesting I could rent a trailer -- just add another $10 to the cost of the chair. I do not believe I could get a Uhaul trailer in this northern town and use it to bring my library-chair-steps down to my house in my southern town for $10. I did not call him a liar, because I believe he meant well. The little Eyetalian man running the booth right next to where we were illegally parked kept insisting we just tie it in the trunk. "It not going nowhere! I know! You drive all the way to New York, it not go nowhere!" We had no rope; I had no hope. I asked to try it one more time on its side in the back seat, just for my sanity before she went in search of rope and I pictured it flying off the back of the car for the whole drive home.

We tried it in the back on the side again, and a nice man stopped by to give us more advice. It has hinges, he said. Yes, Shawn said, but it's still too wide. I said, "It's so close, let's try to take the bottom step part off the hinges."

The nice Eyetalian lady let us borrow a screwdriver she had displayed on her flea market table with other random tools (how much were they asking to sell that single, used, simple flathead screwdriver for?!).

The steps came off. The chair went in. It's a beautiful thing.

After brunch in a cafe in Salem and visiting my friends-colleagues' home-which-doubles-as-an-art-gallery open house and (both of us) buying art for other friends, we parted ways, I inserted the chair-in-two-pieces in the back of my car, drove home, brought it upstairs, screwed it back together, and: voila!

I haven't figured out yet where I'll put it or what I'll use it for.

Though I do have excruciatingly high ceilings and light bulbs that consequently have been burned out for over a year, I don't have bookshelves up high (and the step stool is not only not nearly tall enough for me to reach the bulbs, it also emphatically must only be used in library-like climbing activities).

Georgie does not like the new chair (nor does she like Buddy).

It's a beaut and I'm pleased as punch and a pickle.

I also found a scary looking bug on it, which I brought to an end, and vacuumed up some other animal's hair off it, but it could use some more cleaning. Which makes it fit in just fine in its new home.

Also, it has wheels (Shawn says "casters"). I love furniture with casters.

Wherever you are, may there be music, strangers, ice cream (if you like it), and fat dogs in strollers

2008-09-20T08:55:00.020-04:00

When my bus blew a tire last Saturday evening in The Middle Of Nowhere, Connecticut, maybe halfway between a refreshing visit with my friend Heidi in NYC and Boston's South Station, Humanity reared its interesting head.

No one freaked. Everyone seemed to take it in stride, even while we sat for well over an hour on the side of the interstate while CT staties, take-charge passengers, and the inexplicably smiling driver couldn't seem to make any progress in applying our contingency plan. We have a contingency plan, don't we?

No, everyone seemed just to do their own thing. The college kids made immediate friends smoking and swapping stories about bars, while the rest of us wandered or stood around calmly in the field where we'd pulled over.

One passerby pulled over on the side of the highway and ran the quarter mile back to us, entered the bus and asked if a certain person was aboard. No? She went to the back of the bus to check, then ran back to her car and kept driving. Another car pulled over and the driver came to tell us "I have room for three -- I'm going to Boston." My nervous seatmate and two others ran across the field to pile in the stranger's little car, all of us accepting he was a Good Samaritan and not a crazazy freak.

The young couple in the row in front of me -- he in an Israeli Army Reserves shirt, she reading a novel in Hebrew script -- tried to tamp down their curiosity and enthusiasm. I served them, by getting my camera out and snapping away. He grinned and almost seemed to crackle with enjoyment as he, and soon a few others, confidently documented the misadventure.

After awhile, the state police told us all to get back on the bus. They figured 45 minutes of milling about freely on the side of an interstate was enough danger for that time and place.

The driver never told us a thing that was going on, but one passenger took it on himself to give updates so I wasn't confused when we pulled off at the exit and drove slowly and carefully to the Shell Station parking lot where we lived for the next nearly two hours.

The band members riding across the aisle from me eventually got their instruments out, set up by the dumpster and played not particularly inspiring jazz. The very fact they were playing music was great -- but I wondered if their level of talent warranted taking instruments on the bus back and forth from NYC to Boston: did people pay to hear them outside the context of a surreal roadtrip?

I sat on the bus and ran my ipod batteries down. I finished reading "The Year of Magical Thinking." I twittered and photographed our "progress."

And a mechanic arrived to change the big tire, then a new bus from Boston? New York? pulled up, and with no instructions, we all piled on and headed back to the Big B.

I'd gone to New York to see where Heidi's been living on the upper upper west side for six months (last trip I took down we hung out on the lower east side for a few hours and I took another bus right back up, without staying over night). This visit I took the bus down, the subways up, spent the night in her miniature home, and we thrived in good talks and walks through her neighborhood and then midtown the next day.

There are a lot of people in the world. There is a lot of music. There are mishaps, adventures, dogs and dog poop, cell phones, a limited but sufficient supply of patience, and. . .

Life is a highway. It's beautiful when we manage to roll with whatever comes our way: walk our dogs, take our pictures, play our instruments, keep our cools, and accept rides with strangers across state lines.

Buy a Tree Frog, Name Him Kaiser Bill

2008-09-04T14:28:00.004-04:00

If you know me, and some of you may just, you know that I'm subject to the occasional odd inspirational inexplicable thoughts, a la Adrian Plass and his sacred diary's documentation of a note-to-self containing this blob entry's subject line.

(If you do not know Adrian Plass, I invite you to know me and Adrian Plass further by reading his sacred diary soon, and whenever you are feeling low or sick. I used to have copies special sent to me from Australia because I kept giving them away and couldn't get a replacement here. But, good news: it's now on Amazon. HOME OF THE TREE FROGS!)

This is not a story about one of those times, in which I face down the mysteries of why I suddenly think to myself "Well, honestly, Bob!" or "sometimes a chocolate donut."

No, there are no such thoughts in my head today.

Instead, this is a post with a link to a story and photo-collage about tree frogs. Because, besides catties, they're really the only animals I happen to love.* And I have a student doing an internship in science writing this semester, so I figured maybe I should do some science reading in my spare time, you know, to better guide her learning experience. Because if you know me. . . .

From poisonous hoppers to screaming frogs

Enjoy. I know I did.

(Okay, I mostly just looked at the pictures. But I know science writing when I see it!)

*After I post this, I expect I'll remember other animals I love, too, such as elephants or bunnies. For now, though, let's just go with tree frogs and cats.

The Surge is Working

2008-09-03T15:27:00.001-04:00

Once upon a Wednesday morning I was driving to work and experienced an overwhelming surge of love for someone I haven't seen (and barely thought of) in nearly 20 years. It happened, of course, as Guns-n-Roses played on the radio and I recalled the community theatre actor who played Giles to my Molly in a fabulous production of "The Mousetrap" in 1989. The actor, who I can picture, hear, and feel vividly enough, but whose name I would have to work a little harder to recall, was alcoholic, young and mixed-up, with a shot-gunned, knocked-up wife, and a dead-on Axl Rose impersonation. He was not -- to me -- particularly lovable. But, I always sort of did have a feeling of (no doubt slightly patronizing) compassion for him. Today, I felt a rush of super-human love for him to the tune of 80s glam metal.

Facebook chatting with my pal K the other night I found the metaphor to describe how I feel a lot of the time these days. She, in a new chapter of her life (job, geography, relationships, status) after years of relative stability (is that fair, K?), and also being a photographer, said it feels like she's experiencing things through the lens of a camera, not as a real person present in her own situations.

I, in a relatively same chapter of my life (my eighth year in this job -- do you know how many tries it took me to figure out how to spell 8th?! what an odd word -- the longest I've EVER done ANYTHING), yet relative stability also so immeasurably disrupted as one of the most stable roots of my life is absent. . . . I feel much of the time like I am in the other room trying to take a nap but can hear the rest of my life going on around the corner and it's bugging me. I just want to sleep, but I'm (mentally) sweaty, groggy, and irritated by. . . my actual lived life.

Yet. . . I get these mysterious, energizing feelings of love like little electric surges throughout my days and weeks. I just love the women who work the drive-through at my local McDonald's. I kind of miss them now that I am the normalized-owner of a coffee press and make my own iced drink to take to work in lieu of buying on the run. Back when I did fast-food it, though, I often had this moment of powerful, improbable love for them as we seemed to genuinely wish each other good days over the exchange of paper and liquid addictive substances.

And every now and then I'm sitting at my desk and get a surge of love for one or the other of my two bosses. Not necessarily or rationally connected to an immediate task, just a wave that washes over and then I carry on.

This morning I was reading through some old journals and emails from my time in Cambodia four years ago, remembering thickly a feeling of love for all the people I would sit and watch -- from our balcony early in the mornings while markets set up, in crowded tourist spots. . . . How more present and awake I felt even while so incredibly exhausted and exhilarated, and sticky with sweat. I realize that was a season, an exceptional time and place away from the often sickening, productive pace of my culture, job, and personality-leanings. But, I covet even a taste of those surges of what I can only call love, even while knowing it's a complex, over-misused word.

And it does happen with other people and in other times now, beyond a random radio-ized memory or McDonald's drive-through. In the midst of busyness, blurriness, blechness. . . . Oh! I just met with my new TA, and I LOVE her. (That one makes a little more sense than more random surges, because not only does she help me a lot, but she also, of course, reminds me a little bit of long-time-ago-Me.)

It's mysterious, unbidden, sporadic, and welcome; the love surges are working.

All we need. . .

2008-08-22T18:33:00.007-04:00

Yesterday at the end of a rather long and discombobulated faculty workshop to start the new year, a professor was asked to pray and dismiss us. She asked us to close our eyes and think of something that we hoped for this school year. I'm not much investing in wide ranging hopes these days; I think hope has something to do with the future, and I'm not much imagining futures these days. But, I easily thought of one thing I hope -- in all hope's complexities of belief, expectation, and desire. To love my students.

I do love my students, of course I do. I love everyone In God's Way. Ha -- such the goofball phrase from my 70s-80s church-talk childhood. Did you ever say it? I remember in elementary school if we were asked if we loved someone that we really "liked" (romantically) we could preserve the privacy of a crush by answering quite properly, "I love him in God's way." As in, most definitely not in the movies or Top 40 radio way so no need to tease me. Oddly, the same response applied even more frequently to someone that we found quite difficult to like at all (not least of which romantically). Amy Grant's 1979 song "Giggle" serves well here: "Must I hug him real close now? He smells so bad I'll faint! What will my friends think if they see me? Kill my pride, I caint!" But do I love him? Of course I do, in God's way. Because the simple fact is, God loves everyone. So, I indiscriminately loved everyone, too.

But the less simple fact is to love a human being as a person, not a conglomeration of humanity, demands discrimination.

And sometimes that takes things I don't have a lot of in my natural state: patience under pressure in particular. When I get stressed, I get in a hurry, and the apparent most important thing is to do the tasks I'm supposed to do.

This morning at the annual Faculty/Staff chapel service, our Assoc. Dean for the First Year Experience gave one of the most refreshing reflections I've heard in a long time, miraculously saying words and painting pictures I needed. She spoke about hospitality, and all followers of Jesus being called to provide a welcoming place for strangers, being attentive to their needs at the time we meet them. Visiting them in prison (not necessarily breaking them free), a drink of water (not necessarily digging a well). I think my dad was good at this, what my brother and I meant when we talked at his memorial service about his generous and paradoxical interactions with strangers and with family.) Mainly what struck me this morning was hospitality not as "entertaining" (providing well-planned, shiny food and decorations) but as providing an opportunity for the people we encounter to be who they are with their needs and not letting them get lost in the big fat details of the doing and the tasks.

It's certainly a familiar idea (be present, love people, meet needs), and my reflection here is a fuzzy one, but her saying those things in the way she said them today was what I needed, and I now hope with more faith that I can love my students as I meet many of them for the first time -- strangers to me, to be treated as if entertaining angels unaware even though, as my friend said this morning it becomes clear they are not angels soon enough -- and as I welcome back so many more in a fresher, more discriminating way.

My to-do list is ridorkulously long and convoluted, and the tasks are not irrelevant or without some connection to meeting real needs, but I hope in some moments I will be more hospitable, providing a space for individuals to be present and to have some needs met by me that I might otherwise be inclined to miss.

Off Day

2008-08-15T10:14:00.007-04:00

... Not in a good way, as in "I have the day off today." I'm thinking of it in a sort of Lady MacBethian vein: "Off, damn'd day!"

Stay up past 1:30 one night and I wake up in the swollen throat, eerie silence, wackadoodle calendar Twilight Zone.

How is it that I can be so unsick just hours before, and wake up after a truncated night's sleep with a hacking cough, sore throat, and CHUNKS IN MY NATURAL BREATHING APPARATI?

So I roll out of bed, bleary, and check the world on the Interwebs. Oddly, nothing seems to have changed since I went to bed. Usually something transpires - an email from my epifelines group, a twit from an early morning pal, an "It's your turn in Scramble" message on Facebook, updated headlines on CNN. It was a like a Ghost Web - not a soul on Facebook (I often chat with the China sis or an Aussie or two for a bit when I get up), and no note on the news sites that anything'd happened in the Olympics since about 10 hours before.

Blink.

I think I watched the little girls tumbling and they won some shiny prizes and stuff. I didn't stay up playing Solitaire! No other sites I check in the morning had changed noticeably either.

I step out into the hallway to head to campus, and my across-the-hall neighbor's shoes, which he puts on to head across the street to catch a 7:30 a.m. train every weekday morning, are sitting nice-as-you-please in their on-the-mat evening and weekend spot, while the sounds of his saxophone playing lilt uncannily through the air. He's inside, on a Friday, playing the saxophone at 9:10 a.m. I literally stop in my tracks and wonder if I missed a day. What's that you say? You say today is Saturday? Or, if the world's On A Break, and everyone got the announcement but me. Because there's some agreement not to post it on the Interweb, and I never turn the TV on in the morning. Seriously, I get down to my car and turn the radio on in slow motion, anticipating a helpful but scary revelation. It's annoying morning DJ banter.

So I drive to work, for a 10:00 committee meeting. I arrive at the Provost's office, and it's a Ghost Office, save for the kind admin who tells me "Your meeting's Monday" and "I really like your new hair." (Note: when awkward employees show up on wrong day, compliment to maintain calm.) I guarantee you I do not have any record of this meeting having moved to Monday from its long-ago scheduled August 15th date. But, I'll amble back to my building through the eerily empty campus.

Why am I even telling you this?!

Because when I packed to come in this morning, I intentionally did not bring any of the books I need to be working with since I was going to be busy in meetings or the farm until I went home, but I've just found out my 12:30 trip to the farm is scheduled for 5:30 and I have nothing but piles of old paperwork and journals to occupy me in my office until then.

And my cell phone doesn't ring anymore. Not because people aren't calling me. It doesn't ring.

And it's not like I even watched the gymnastics anyway. I can't watch gymnastics except for an occasional glance up from my laptop or book, because I get so tense imagining them falling. Not worried they'll hurt themselves physically - just too empathetic to be able to stand the humiliation of falling off a 4-inch-wide beam when their REASON TO LIVE and self identity is tied to keeping their balance.

I can't watch the diving either, though I really enjoy it once they're out in the air. But it doesn't last long before they hit the water since I have to close my eyes when they jump because I PICTURE EVERY SINGLE DIVER WHO EVER DIVES EVER hitting their head on the board on the way down. Always.

My office phone just rang once. And stopped.

It's gonna be a long, off day, and I'm PUNCHY.

UPDATE: I am not the only crazazy one. Just got a call that the meeting I thought was today at 10, which the Prov's admin thought was Monday at 10, is today at 2:30. Who here needs a drink? Oh, did I mention I can't raise my right arm all the way over my head as of this week? Wait, what was this post about?

As it is. . .

2008-08-13T09:08:00.006-04:00

When I get to heaven and all things are revealed, when I see no longer as through a glass darkly, I expect I will learn that many things are less important than I thought they were, but also, that many things are more important than I thought of or treated them.

Sometimes I wonder which category will have more - the things I care or attend too much to, or the things I don't value or I neglect.

I suppose we all know a little what I'm talking about -- our personal "deal breaker doctrines" that others are happier to agree to disagree about, or the things we don't do (or we do) and we're aware that others believe and act as if these actions are essential to truth and godliness. I don't know if anyone really believes that cleanliness is next to godliness, but occasionally I find myself really hoping it's not (as I sit on a film of cat hair or leave my dishes in the sink for three days).

Sometimes I think about my dad and his Big Deals which often did not line up with mine -- the things he was passionate about and I either disagreed or (!!) didn't care. In his fullness of being and knowledge, what has he found? That they mattered less or more?

It is not just a matter of Romans 7, where the very thing I know matters I treat as if it doesn't. Although, sometimes it is that. Because, it is not as if I am in here in the absolute dark, bumbling along to prioritize things all on my own, with the one next to me discovering a whole other set of values in their own dark stumbling. Nor, though, is it as if I am in the absolute clear, where The Bible Tells Me So and there's no room for different understandings, even discernments and convictions.

Or, it may be that what mattered to him should matter to him, but not necessarily to me.

But, I do still wonder whether there are (more) things I care too little about, or too much, and how I can know that now, as it is known in heaven.

Approximately 24 things I've thought recently or that you might need reminding of

2008-08-05T18:22:00.011-04:00

1 - A lot of early (78-82) Amy Grant song lyrics are as profound and true as it gets. That's not to say some aren't quite silly, too.

2 - I would rather be weird than worried.

3 - I abhor false dichotomy. I like the word "abhor," but it also kind of scares me.

4 - Among a few things I remember learning in high school is to be sensitive to starting too many sentences with "I."

5 - In junior high I read a "Doonesbury" book entitled "Adjectives Will Cost You Extra," more than once.

6 - Even I don't always know what movie, song, or mouth-of-babe I'm quoting in everyday conversation.

7 - I've never been (maxi) golfing. (But as you know, I did get my PE credits in college for SCUBA diving and bowling classes. I lost a nice swimsuit in the UTA pool locker room in the Fall of 1990, same semester I saw Billy Joel in concert with the flam during which he dedicated his performance of "Honesty" to Milli Vanilli, and withdrew from "Anal Geometry" so I wouldn't fail, and received a B in my English class from the Graduate Teaching Assistant named Michelle Pfeiffer who proclaimed herself a witch, did not wear bras, and measured our essays with a literal wooden ruler.)

e - I had a manicure once in the 8th grade, in Brookside Village outside Manila.

9 - Despite all the serious troubles, it cannot be denied that, among other musical talents, Michael Jackson dances phenomenally, and George Michael has a beautiful singing voice.

10 - I keep forgetting (or remembering?) I have a gym membership.

11 - I start a lot of things I struggle to, and often, just do not finish.

g - Some people find me redundant or predictable. Others say I'm hard to read. I figured out the other day that while I think of myself as a remarkably open person, willing to share just about anything, I tend to wait until asked, and then judge the sincerity or depth of the request before "opening up." Except on the blob, of course. Of course.

13 - Symmetry really makes me really uncomfortable.

14 - I can remember exactly when, how, where, and in the company of whom I learned the following words: sarcastic, obfuscated, facetious.

15 - I never did Summer Stock, but for many years I imagined that I would.

16 - I am not too uncomfortable (sometimes, may be too comfortable) admitting I've made a mistake.

17 - I keep thinking I'm about one purchase away from being over my pink phase.

Water

2008-08-04T12:38:00.019-04:00

I'm not sure what it is, but there is something so soothing to me about being on, in, or by water (in that order).

A walk down along my local beach will often do it. The evening I got back to Massachusetts from Ireland, having just found out less than 24 hours before about my dad's being gone and having just made arrangements to go back to the airport to fly down to Texas in less than 18 more, I found some relief from my jittery, jet-lagged, jolted existence by walking right on down to Lynn Beach with my friend Shawn, scuffing my shoes in the wet sand while Shawn drew pretty pictures in it with her feet.

My last day in Ireland, those lovely few hours before I got the message to call my mom, who'd been trying to find me for a couple of days, was one of my favorite in the 10 day whirlwind working-vacation. And it was the least check-it-off-the-tour-book of them all. The three of us remaining (my boss K and colleague A) were each charged with saying what we would be disappointed to leave Ireland without having experienced, and I chose "be by the sea in Dublin."

Dublin is a port town; I would've thought it would be easier to get down to the beach.

It turns out, after an aborted attempt to take a bus and a long walk by the river (happy, that),

. . . I had to do a little research and planning to get us on a local commuter train, which we took out to a gorgeous seaside town

. . . and I took my shoes off, rolled up my pants, and felt like a cell phone recharging (!) by just a few minutes in the ice cold water.

Previously, on our drive in the mountains surrounding Dublin, and then across the island to the Western side, while my colleague-friends enjoyed the gorgeous green foliage and fascinating old architecture, ruins, and cemeteries,

. . . I found myself drawn like a duck to the presence wherever, however, of water.

Who knew we'd see surfers in the Atlantic on the west coast of Ireland?

And the gift of an hour's sunshine just at the time we arrived at the Cliffs of Mohr, priceless and postcardy, but the chance to touch and breathe, not just admire from afar, life-giving.

Coming back up to Mass. after a couple of weeks in Dallas with no dips in flooded rivers or lakes this year left me dryer in spirit than I even would have been otherwise. When my friend Susan called out of the blue to offer a day and night by a lake in New Hampshire while she traded kids out at camp, I packed on the spot.

But before I left for the lake Saturday morning, Shawn and I picked up burritos in town and sat by the water to celebrate her birthday at her local beach Friday night, and, despite coveting the kayakers and resisting walking in the waves, I felt energized enough to face a roadtrip with kids and emotional catch-up conversation in the morning.

In New Hampshire, while Susan promised a walk around the corner to partake of the beach (and the Blob!),

. . . I couldn't wait and jumped right off the dock at our house and swam out in the lake like a fish coming home. I floated, lay, swam, and was. On, in, by the water.

This past Friday night, Shawn and I went into Cambridge for some disappointing Shakespeare Slam in Harvard Square, followed by what should by now predictably have been the highlight of the trip: picking up hummus and grape leaves wraps and walking down to sit by the Charles River while the sun set, me coveting the rowers and soaking in the nearness.

If it were not for the water's nearness -- vast, wide open water or streams -- I might not be able to find a way to live up here in Massachusetts now, weighed down by work not done and family not near. But, the water is near, and there are friends to share it with me. And, maybe someday too, there will be another boat for me to sit or stand on.

Another hour deeper in the night
Another mile farther down the road
A man can drive as hard as he can drive
And never get as far as his heart was meant to go
Sometimes when you look up in the sky
You think we might be closer than you know

Another tune forms in my head
More harmonies, more empty words
Oh, I could play these songs 'til I was dead
And never approach the sound that I once heard
I remember when I was just a kid
Listening in the sky
Believing that the wind would stir

And I know the river is deep
I found out that the currents are tricky
And I know the river is wide
And oh the currents are strong
And I may lose every dream
I dreamt that I could carry with me
But I have failed so many times
And You've never let me fall down alone

'Cause I know the river is deep
I found out that the currents are tricky
And I know that the river is wide
And oh, the currents are strong
And I could lose every dream
I dreamt that I could carry with me
Oh, but I will reach the other side
Please don't let me have to wait too long

Another hour deeper in the night
Another mile farther down the road
We could be closer than you know

-from Rich Mullins, "The River"

-- view from the WB Yeats tower, middle of Ireland.

Rain

2008-07-31T09:27:00.003-04:00

Around the time I first wake up these mornings, when the sun shinily arrives in its white and yellow newness and the sky plays along in its pink and blue newbornness, I awoke with a start to the presence of something entirely different. My room was bathed in greys and blacks and the window showed no white or yellow. What was that sound? It was insistent, heavy, steady. It felt apocalyptic. It was raining, straight down, with no accompanying wind.

I stood up groggily. The sandwiching snuggly cats got up, too. I stumbled along the line of windows on my southeast wall, pulling down heavy plates of glass, running my sleepy hand along thick wooden sills to check for mop-up needs. But they were dry. Dusty, even. Still, I closed them all, except the ones on the bedroom side of my place, with the sills which typically receive little but withstand what rain does come in with sturdier treatment. I climbed back in bed, to enjoy the sound of a steady rain as I tried to sleep another two hours.

But there was something different about the rain. We had torrents last week, sideways, violent, gusty heaves of rain. At 4:30 this morning, it was a stealthy, straight up and down sheet, like movie rain without the wind machines. And it seemed, in my sleep-craved state, both ominous and promising at the same time. It reminded me, if you'll let me go there, of the idea of God in Aslan. I could not fully relax while lying in bed. Yet, I felt somehow safe or sure at the same time, a feeling of biblical and clearly indescribable proportions.

It was as if somehow the rain were a symbol of how it both is, and is terrible and powerful beyond reckoning or even direct consideration. The rain was straight, it was heavy, it was not dramatic in an entertaining way, but it was undeniable and authoritative. It lacked humor and patience, but was not rushed or distracted.

There is little sign of it this morning, except in Buddy's odd exhaustion and my own tired resignation.

Queen of Same

2008-07-29T11:47:00.011-04:00

There's a little black spot in my brain today.

It's the same old thing as yesterday.

With the world turning circles running 'round my brain
It's my destiny to be the queen of same.

.... Which is much better than the way The Police sang it*, I'd say.

While I was a bit worried during my 3-month follow-up yesterday that in my emotionally unstable state on top of my hospital phobia I might burst into tears in the MRI tube, disrupting the process which requires NO MOVING with my head wedged in a hockey mask between shoved-in hand-towels to HOLD IT IN PLACE - THERE'S NO CRYING IN MRI TUBES, instead I was unnaturally calm and the worst part was when the tech (we'll call him Greg, because I think that's his name; he said he remembered me from last time and that I was less nervous this time) had a little trouble injecting the contrast dye. I have the world's smallest veins. Check the Guiness Book, if you're so skeptical. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here incredibly shrinking my cat with my defective-veined arm.

Yes, after all, I always seem to have catties on the brain.

For those of you keeping score and unamused by obscure misquoted Punk New Wave song lyrics from the early 80s or cute and scientificy cat and head shots from this week: my 12-year-old doctor says the radiologist says there's no change in three months to my thumbnail-sized cyst on the front, right side of my brain, and we will discuss it further at my annual physical in November and maybe follow up with more hockey-masked, collapsed-vein, contrast-dyed, early morning, unnaturally peaceful, car-alarm-aliens-from-Contact-jack-hammer-broken-refrigerator-sounding MRIs in another 9-12 months.

Thank you, and good day.

(Please see "King of Pain" lyrics through google as needed.)

Super Hero: "Loitering Boy"

2008-07-23T17:36:00.003-04:00

Spotted on way to work:

Two youths wandering aimlessly (and separately) about the McDonald's & Brooks' Pharmacy parking lot, each wearing a tshirt announcing "Inspired by Edward "Chip" Clancy."

Chip's our local mayor.

Hellooooo???

2008-07-22T09:32:00.001-04:00

My neighbor came downstairs the other day to give me a sympathy card and tell me he was sorry for my loss, but glad I was back. I said thanks and mentioned I remembered his mom had died suddenly two summers ago. I think that threw him off, because he was a little at a loss for words and clarity (not a good sign if it predicts my own emotional state in two years), but he did say that what he learned was that after a loss like this, the lost loved one isn't gone. They're still with you. He's here. With me. I nodded and said thanks.

But I can't seem to get there, even though I can feel that "there" just on the other side of my "here."

Is this the "denial" stage? I'm all good on the shock (that's not one of the official stages I'm supposed to check off my to-do list, is it?) and the anger. Hoo boy am I all set on the anger stage (I have some to spare if you need help in that department). I forget what the other stupid stages supposably are (I warned you about the anger), but I guess my acceptance and denial are at war, because I know he's gone and believe that is anything but gone forever from my life, but I cannot get myself to imagine my dad in heaven, or feel or accept his spiritual presence (is that what it is? or just memory?!) with me. I've experienced the newness of life after death before - had no trouble with my grandmother, or Rich Mullins for that matter (I talked to him for about a month after he was gone, and sincerely believe it was me experiencing-accepting the truth of his other-full-new life).

People keep saying this about my dad, in beyond the cliché ways -- more specific than that he's "in a better place." He's worshiping, enjoying himself, someone said to my mom the other day "if there's a library in heaven, I know Max is there and having a ball," which was sweet and probably true. Too bad it just made me (inexplicably) want to punch her. He's having so many questions answered, someone said, learning so much. Which is not only probably true, but is actually something my dad himself talked about looking forward to.

But I'm stuck. Not really emotionally constipated, as my sister-in-law seems to have suggested she is (I cry quite nicely at least twice a day, thank you very much), but stuck in this spot, unable to imagine or see (which for me is how I accept or "believe") his presence in heaven, much less his presence, which my neighbor promised me, with me. If I wanted his presence with me I'd just pick up the phone and call him like I was in the habit of doing every other day.

Except I know I can't do that. I just don't fully know (or have the capacity to feel or see) that there is something other than absence.

And now I have to put on my stupid makeup to go to a stupid meeting on campus so I'm all done with the emotions for today.

For a muse of fire*

2008-07-21T20:01:00.004-04:00

You know how a blog sometimes might sort of rise above when it employs the metaphor? You know, like the opening anecdote to a sermon or speech, which starts out about a piece of clothing or an amusement park and ends up about the nature of good and evil or gender, through the power of well, not always subtly, placed metaphor?

Or, sometimes blogs just work on the basis of cute animal pictures.

Well, right now Buddy's working on his performance art project tentatively entitled "Cat Smells Like a Farm" (not photographable), and Georgie's on strike.

But, more to the point, metaphor right now makes me feel like I have the flu in my neck and cranium.

Although, that could just be the grey sky and heavy humidity. "Stormy weather" and all.

*. . . but fire more like what Tom Hanks made in Castaway, not fire like heartburn feels like.

Bizarro World

2008-07-15T00:46:00.004-04:00

Drove downtown this morning to Dallas City Hall Vital Statistics Department to pick up copies of my pa's death certificate for business purposes. It would make a good scene for my novel.

Also spent some time this afternoon pretending I was a cat who thought she was a duck while nephew Daniel was a dog who thought he was a monkey (et al).

Big Man

2008-07-11T00:49:00.006-04:00

We did Vietnamese for lunch to celebrate my sister's birthday today (followed, physiologically improbably, by Mexican for supper -- but that's another story). Once, maybe twice a year, as many of us as are in DFW at the time go for Pho at one of the many good 'Nam restaurants in Arlington. Today while making plans on the phone and choosing a place to meet, my sister suggested we go to the one we'd all been at most recently.

Here we all (minus sis taking pic) are on New Year's Eve Eve last year, at the long middle table my family takes over when we arrive.

Today we were minus three -- bro-in-law David at work (somebody has to bring home the bacon!), nephew Timo at soccer tournament out of state, and dad/Grandpa in Heaven.* One waiter (restaurant family member) took our orders. One brought our food and drinks. One stopped by to check that we had everything we needed. I noticed him greet another customer warmly, with familiarity. I consciously thought (maybe said something out loud -- I'm not real clear on the distinction between thought and spoken or written word too much these days, oops in advance), "Why don't we get most favored customer greeting?" Then he stopped by our table again, looked at my mom, and said, "I see you come in, you usually have big man with you. Is he okay?" My mom said, simply, "No, he died." The manager said something like, "Oh. Anyone need any more water," or something like this. My sister said, "He didn't understand Mom." I went up to pay at the counter. He said, "You usually have big man with you." I said, "He passed away, about two weeks ago." "Oh, we are very sorry. We all remember him here. He always wore a hat." He said a couple more things I don't remember exactly. But that was it. They knew my dad, they knew us. It felt sweet.

I often think about the importance and mystery of "being known." I have been struck, even in the perhaps quickly cliché-ing bits about his hats (he had a lot of skin cancer and was protecting himself outside; his bald head and circulation left him cold so he was warming himself inside) and quietness, that people really did know my dad. He wasn't his hats or his books or his quietness, though he was these things, too. He was (relatively) easy to know because he was honest and true, not simple.

I don't know if "big man" is a differently meaningful term in Vietnamese language or culture, but the almost literary irony of it in reference to my dad's incredibly shrinking physical presence over the past few years struck me while nevertheless capturing the truth of his role in our lives.

Okay, enough eugoogolizing for now. But, it's true, what I'm saying.

Then we went to my sister's house where half the family took naps.

The end.

(*I'm not ready to say or imagine that yet, although I absolutely do believe. I needed to say something here, and I couldn't leave it at "heaven," because I want to say something more specific than that, but I can't. "With God." But we're with God. "In eternal life." But our lives now are connected to our eternal lives. What is heaven? The pastor's message yesterday at my dad's service got it right - it's fullness of life. It's unimaginable to us. It certainly is to me, and I'm not thinking these days about what exactly it means, other than sureness of being whole, complete, and with God forever. Is he aware of us? What happens to time/space for him? It matters more to me now to think about, but also less.)

Dad

2008-07-03T14:32:00.003-04:00

I am sorry to any readers of this blob who may find this means of learning this news uncomfortable. But it is uncomfortable news. Since I found out on Monday, I have written many things. Writing is one of the ways I live. It is one of the un-numberable ways my dad and I connected, from the little notes and Bible verses he would put in my lunches in elementary school to the massive epistles we would exchange during my boarding in high school, to the poems he'd write for our birthdays, and the articles he'd write and send around to all the kids about whatever political, theological or popular cultural issue he was wrestling with at the time. He was one of the most faithful readers of this here blob thing, as it's been my main writing outlet in recent years (though he'd also ask to read my academic stuff, too; a couple of weeks ago he said, "You'll bring down a draft of your dissertation for us to read when you come for vacation in July, won't you?" Good one, Dad).

Talking about what to include in our public time of memorializing, my mom's been wondering about having a hat table. Anyone who ever met my dad would not be able to picture him without two things: a hat and a notebook. Mom wants to put on a table for visitors to see the box of notebooks that sat next to his "devotional" glider in his home office, full of the thousands of pages of notes he's written over the years. It was the most important thing, she said, that they had to get out with them when they had to leave Vietnam in a hurry with limited luggage in 1975. There are two little notebooks sitting next to my mom's recliner, my dad's last few weeks of thoughts, observations, learning. His handwriting is atrocious. So we will never be without new words from him as we spend the rest of our lives muddling through his writing.

How many times did I call him driving home from work, tell him about my day, and hear him say, "You should put that in your novel." I'm not writing a novel, which he never seemed to remember (or accept). But, I am going to write about my dad and the ways my family and I are experiencing the shock of losing him and the memories of his un-measurable life and love for us.

My dad died of a heart attack on Saturday morning at home with my mom. Four of their five children, including me, were out of the country. I'm with my mom in Texas now, as my oldest sister has been. The others return from China on Saturday. This is the obituary I wrote for the paper today.

Maxwell Elliott Cobbey, Feb. 20, 1924-June 28, 2008
Max Cobbey passed from this life and joined Jesus in eternal life on Saturday, June 28, 2008. A much loved and respected husband, father, grandfather, friend and neighbor, Max will be missed sorely. His devotion, generosity, and wisdom blessed everyone who knew him. Max served as a radar tech with a Marine bomber squadron in the Pacific at the end of World War II, taught high school, then spent over 40 years serving in Asia and Dallas with WBT/SIL. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Vurnell, five children and their spouses, four grandchildren: David, Kari, Timothy, Catherine, and Michael Eamma; Heidi Cobbey; Luther, Mónica, and Daniel Cobbey; Rini Cobbey; Nels Cobbey; and three cousins, Nancy Gentry, Eugenia Maxwell, and William Maxwell. A service to celebrate his life and homegoing will be held in the Activity Center at the International Linguistics Center, 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd, Dallas, on Wednesday, July 9, at 3:30.

Breathing, being, seeing green

2008-06-27T05:16:00.002-04:00

Five minutes 18 seconds counting on my coin-operated Internet access. 5:02... 4:57...

Oh!

We're in Doolin, stunning country town on West Coast in Clare County just south of Galway. Lucious drive across from Dublin yesterday. An hour of sun broke through for Cliffs of Moher. Yummy local pub (I recommend the garlic mushrooms and cider) with trad'l Irish music and TONS of (well-behaved) tourists last night. Contemplating buying expensive wool sweater.

Would find this place quite relaxing if we didn't have to run off for more sites - hills, ruins, sheep, cows, potatoes, and ale - on way back toward Dublin today.

Keeping in mind this vacation is not about relaxing, but still can BE.

Eating lots of meat.

Having lots of conversations, some better than others.

Running out of Interweb time.

Looking forward to posting pix to share with you. . . . some day.

Ireland on the Quick

2008-06-24T09:53:00.003-04:00

Twit-like notes w/out the 140 character limit on my Irish working-holiday so far (Day 2):

Trip over was fine, though I do not recommend Aire Lingus, or whatever the overly crowdy, loud, technology-deficient, non-entertaining Irish airline calls itself. Only 5.5 hrs, which feels odd for an international flight, as it would take me 6 hrs to fly to San Diego from Bos. Squished in tight seats between colleagues; good thing I like them fine.
No sleep, so w/ five hour time change, arriving at 6 a.m. on Monday morning was a bit functionally challenging. Took city bus to University College Dublin, where the conference did not provide helpful signage, so walked around a lot before checking in. Saw swans on campus, so the answer is yes: there will be swans.
Accommodations are simple and comfy: single bed individual rooms w/ own shower. Had breakfast w/ colleagues in cafeteria and all took separate naps.
Went to evening sessions - keynote speaker, reception and banquet. Drank my semi-annual allotment of wine. Found speakers to be generally unimpressive, unless you count witty colleagues speaking casual conversation.
There are odd birds in Dublin - common urban birds are much larger than where I come from; and I thought everything was bigger in Texas.
Full day of sessions today. Every one I went to was disappointing in quality, though perhaps each one less so than the one before it. Was going to go to one more just now, but showed the description to my boss (who was already skipping this time period of sessions) and she said, "Oh, you'll hate that. It will drive you crazy. Don't go to that." So, while colleagues go back to dorms to freshen up, I'm using stand-up Interweb. We all think the 4:00 big session will be better than all the morning and afternoon ones so far. Why do academics pay all this money and travel all this way to give poorly organized, un-insightful presentations to crabby, critical colleagues??!!! (Oh, so they can tack on a vacation as long as they're over here.)
Spent evening yesterday pushing one colleague around in borrowed wheelchair due to her arthritis. She was embarrassed (not entirely because I almost dumped her in the street trying to get up on the sidewalk more than once). Another conference attendee is using the UCD wheelchair today, so I hope my colleague is going to be okay. I feel badly for her with all this sitting in cramped quarters and walking.
I said something silly while in line for lunch, colleague A asked me, "What did you say?" I said, "I was just being silly; not worth repeating." She said, "I'm seeing a whole new side of you I've never seen before." !!! She does not read my blob. FYI, I'm not nearly as silly as my boss.
I miss my catties.
Have not seen U2 yet, but am visiting a town on the West Coast known for traditional Irish music, so expect they'll be there waiting when arrive. {smiley face?}

Okay tag, siblings: time for you to post about your simultaneous trips to Miami and China.

Leaving on a Jest Plane

2008-06-22T11:40:00.003-04:00

Suitcase packed.

Carry-on packed.

House. . . taking a break from being cleaned for a minute or a million.

Cat-sitter prepped.

I'm off to Ireland for 10 days of international "First Year University Experience" conference followed by vacationing with boss and colleague friendies. The sheddy catties and computer cattie will stay here and miss the tall cattie while she wears wrinkly clothes and tries to be present in the moments and enjoy herself, keeping an eye out for the U2 catties (oh, and beautiful scenery and ancient Celtic stuff, I guess. Yay, basketball!).

Peace out, yo! See you next month.

Note: the "s" in this Blob's title was a typo. I believe typos are sometimes reflections of deep truths.

Extra Credit Movie Madness

2008-06-18T18:42:00.015-04:00

You may be wondering what I learned today. So I will tell you.

The question: how long does it take to film one single-block chase scene for a Bruce Willis movie?

The answer: ALL DAY AND COUNTING!

I thought it was loud when I left for work this morning after about an hour of the tireless, polite, Hollywood crew repeatedly filming a motorcycle weaving through fake traffic

. . . (complete with fake cop cars) on the road below my windows.

I came home from the office TEN HOURS LATER to the same scene in repeated rotation, this time filmed by two helicopters.

Both flying right outside, I mean right outside my window.

Over and over again.

I feel for the extras who've been wearing these stupid clothes and walking on the same spot for nearly 12 hours.

I feel for the motorcycle stunt drivers. (Okay, so that's a reflection of my flowery blouse in the photo, but if you squint you can see the tough guy on his extrasuperspecial loud bike in the bottom of my shot.)

But mostly I feel for the fake drivers who've been moving their cars forward ("ROLLING!") and backward ("RESETTING!") over the same half a block all day.

I don't need to tell you the catties are traumatized.

Not so the people in my neighborhood, including this young man staked out on top of my dumpster, enjoying the view. I tossed in some cat poop on my way to the office this morning.

Tomorrow: filming includes a burnt-out city bus and prop trash in my parking lot on the other side of the building. I was relieved to find my (deeded, in my name) parking space unblocked and free for me to park when I arrived home.

That's a wrap!

(Except it's not. Poor little guy downstairs has just yelled "Rolling! Action" for what must have been the eleventy billionth time for today! I attended three multi-hour meetings and changed massive quantities of curriculum while these dudes shot one short scene. What monotony, movies! Who wants to finish writing my dissertation about the Indian versions for me now while I take a nap?)

Pre-Ireland Blues

2008-06-17T18:02:00.001-04:00

He knows.

We haven't really talked about it yet.

How I'm going to be gone for ten days. How they need to be a good boy and girl. No seizures, no fighting. What they want me to bring them back from the Land of Ire.

But he knows. Buddy spent the greater part of the day seeking comfort in the most primal of ways. With the box.

Before I left for work, I found him lying in the litter box. Inside. Just lying down in there, gazing out its entryway. Denying the precarious world outside the box. He could smell me thinking about packing. I'm sorry: I had not scooped the box yet for the day. He's just that wary of the future.

It's a long time to be left to the wiles of a Condo Without Me. It will be the longest I've left him (he usually comes along if I'm gone over a week) since his first summer with me, when he was still very much a violent, volatile, literal crack baby and I went to London for my first taste of Europe. I hated it and wanted to spit it out. His Aunt Shawneee kept him safe, living in our old house with us. With him, while I went away.

Now I'm going back to give the old world another try, and no one is staying with him except his sister. Who hates him. With the neighborgirl coming over twice a day to pill him, feed them, water them, scoop the (security blanket) litter box, pat them on the heads. And he's very sad about it.

She's nonchalant.

I know her addiction to the human being. She'll be fine as long as neighborgirl pets her twice a day. He? He'll be heartbroken because nobody loves him like I do.

Yes, I know they're "just cats."

Everything Falls In Place: Eat, Surf, or Be Billionaires

2008-06-16T10:38:00.005-04:00

Current CNN top headlines include the following links, in this order (links ~~not~~ provided on my blob because ~~I'm too lazy to~~ apparently CNN's code automatically works to copy and paste URLs--~~do your own goofy "news" tracking!~~):

KITV: Texas workers handle Hawaii drive-thrus
Fortune: Why does Steve Jobs look so thin?
Time: How America's kids packed on pounds

I feel there are always lessons to be learned through reading popular news websites' headlines as poetry.

I feel this so strongly I can hardly stand not going to a Hawaiian McDonald's to order an eleventy billion calories snack from a worker in El Paso. But, maybe I should invent a virus-less computer instead.

(I didn't actually click through and read ~~either of~~ the final ~~two~~ headlines, but I did skim the first ~~one~~two, and now I'm informed.)

Please feel free to analyze and interpret this headline poem for me and your fellow readers. Extra points if you do it in haiku, limerick, or sonnet form.

Update: No disrespect intended toward billionaire Jobs, whose organs are, apparently represented in medical illustration form on the click-through page. Did I ever tell you about my SDA friend from college who did her undergrad degree in Art and went to medical school, now a practicing D.O. and freelance medical illustrator, whose work shows up in random news stories about famous people's insides when you least expect it?

Dear Ms. Etiquette: Who Needs a Punch in the Nose (or a poke in the ribs)?

2008-06-15T15:34:00.006-04:00

When is an unintentional quirk a problem the quirker really should take responsibility for?

Last night, I attended the fourth annual film festival screening shorts produced by students in a local film school. It's an amazing organization called Raw Arts serving kids through providing space, material, training, community, and art therapy in all forms. And, they make some great films! I'd seen a few before on local cable access, had met and talked with a couple of staff members at the program, including the inspirational director of the film school, and was psyched to attend the exhibition as the end point of a Day of Art with my friend Shawn.

We settled into the filling auditorium at the oldest continuously functioning museum in the U.S., perused the program and the students, families, local artists, teachers, and supporters around us. A couple took the two seats to my left, announcements were made, the lights went down, and the short films rolled. And the man sitting next to me breathed.

Audibly.

Continually.

Intensely distractingly.

He breathed. He obviously has a problem breathing, so maybe I should feel happy for him, that he did such a successful job of it all evening long. But I heard every inhale and exhale through his clearly impacted upper respiratory system. He breathed through his nose. I couldn't help turning for a subtle-pointed look every now and then when the sound on the film was particularly crucial and the sound of his living was so unsubtly obtrusive.

I was not the only one who noticed. Shawn held herself back from looking, but shifted a couple of times in response to his breaths. The man sitting in front of him turned around and glared a couple of times.

Nothing changed on the part of the Man Who Was Breathing.

He kept breathing. Loudly. Through his nose. In a sound-sensitive social setting.

So, I wonder. What's the deal? Does he have any idea what he sounds like? (Do I smell? Am I grinding my teeth?) Is this a one-time thing--the poor guy is sick--or a chronic problem? Does he have any responsibility to control an obviously unintentional quirk? Is there a time and a place for expecting control over these things? (I snore at night when I'm congested, and when I share a room with someone else, I feel badly about this. But, there's only so much I can do to correct it while we are sleeping. Still, if I know there is something I can do, I am so glad to know it, and to try and do it!) He wasn't sighing intermittently: this is how he normally breathes. He probably needs surgery to correct it. Would it have helped (I think it would!) if he had breathed through his mouth instead? And if it would, should he have chosen to do so? Could I have asked him to?

Do your answers to these questions change at all if you know he also (audibly) unwrapped some kind of candy at one time to suck and chew on - and not just one piece? I thought he had popcorn (in the "no food or drinks" auditorium) until I smelled sweetness; he was holding some kind of container and dipping back into it for a period. How about if I mention his female companion who punctuated the evening with repeated (and I mean repeated - she would repeat her questions and he would have to repeat his answers) stage whispers or outright voiced comments for clarification, prediction ("I told you it was going to be Saturday," she said, after she did in fact tell him at the beginning of one short film in which a boy goes to school on Saturday), and assessment?

The latter are intrusions we're trained to confront (or, rather, silently but acceptably seethe about) in public situations, along with cellphone sounds and babies crying. But breathing? The man has a loud breathing problem. It might have been temporarily quieted through some physical adjustments. Was he rude, or am I?

(Does it help to know one of the shorts involved a student trying to concentrate while taking a test while another student repeated clicked her pen?)

I nevertheless enjoyed the evening, but for when I'm president and can do something about how we collectively live our lives, please advise.

"I Sleep in a Drawer"

2008-06-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

Rini Reads a Fluffy Feature Article For You (and makes it all about her) so You Don't Have To

I trust you to find your own way to articles and images of interest, I really do.

Still, here you go, play-by-play and color commentary all rolled into one. Blob.

"Sleeping at work -- more of us are doing it" - CNN.com.
My plan was to work my way through all the books and articles I've already collected toward supporting my doctoral thesis during the month of June: read, skim, type up notes and initial interpretations or synthesis. Then turn in July toward the more cohesive writing and tracking down more sources which came up in the process. Two books a day sounded reasonable. Call me a dreamer.

If it's not distraction from the drowning-feeling-inducing administrative tasks that pop up in my email and in my silly brain, it's the accidental afternoon napping that keeps throwing me off my game. In the final two semesters of my Master's program at BG I taught an 8:00 a.m. class. Actually, I think I might have taught two in a row, followed by office hours held in a dark, dank grad assistants' office down a dark, dank hall - I can't really remember the details now. What I do remember when I think of that year is staying up all night researching and writing, heading through what should have been illegally cold temperatures, wind and snow, into a classroom to discuss stereotypes and TV, then over to the office where I regularly and promptly fell asleep, head jerking back, scratchy snoring, the whole uncomfortable bit. I never saw any students during office hours, but I have no doubt some could have seen me unbeknownst to me. And that was all before they invented iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Or, anyway, before I lived in the land of DD's growing wild on every corner. I'm thinking about getting a coffee maker for my bday so I can start saving money and the world by making my own, since apparently I drink (albeit iced) coffee now. After all those years of being clean!

(For extra points, please diagram the previous paragraph.)

We're a sleep deprived nation, CNN helpfully tells us. I bet if I keep reading the article will tell me stuff like "Less sleep will make you die sooner, never read in bed, don't eat after 8:00, and what's with the cats walking on your head at 2:00 a.m.?" Oh, here we go: "the Sleep Foundation puts the annual cost at $100 billion in lost productivity, health care costs, and employee absences, among other factors." I don't even know what that means. If we weren't so sleepy everyone in the world would be $100 billion richer? Who exactly lost that money? What did my nap cost me (or my nonprofit bosses) in fair wages? Or, how much more profitable would my notes on today's book have been if I'd actually been less tired while writing them? (Would you believe my dissertation is actually partially on economics? I slept through that book last week.)

And there's a video link: "Watch how sleep loss can harm the brain." Goodie! A multimedia treat about brain damage! That will help me sleep better. (That and the red wine pill a comparable article promised me last week. I didn't read and summarize that one for you, because my mom told me about it first and said I should drink more in the meantime until they get the wine pill ready for me.)

And then there's the good news, that many companies are offering nap rooms and relaxing, healthy environments, so we won't resist the need to take a break to stay on task. Yesterday, in an effort to stave off the overwhelming waves of sleepiness as I plowed through "Beyond Bollywood," I ate a pear. Ninety minutes later, when I awoke groggy and annoyed, I ate another pear. Just say it: "she ate a pair of pears." Today's article nevertheless tells me, "The Fruit Guys, a San Francisco fruit-delivery company, doesn't have a nap room, but its employees enjoy unlimited fresh fruit."

Some are against the band-aid nap-room, fresh-fruit solutions. Or maybe just the nap-rooms. The "president of the Specialty Sleep Association, a nonprofit trade and industry group representing manufacturers and retailers of air, foam and other types of beds" (who's just worried, I guess, that humans will discover that we can sleep anywhere, like in our cars. . . not while we're driving! Haven't you ever gone out to the parking lot for a steamy nap at lunchtime? I used to drive to a park in LA and park under some trees and kick back in my sweaty seat for 15 minutes of twitchy dozing and checking the clock) compares a 20-minute nap to "drinking a shot of sugar soda." I ran out of club soda, but found a bottle of cranberry lime selzer in the back of my fridge a little while ago. I discovered that mixing a little of this with diet coke provides the taste of a melted summer snocone from Auntie What's-Her-Name, what's that snocone place on Main Street called? Anyway, I like it, but I'm all hopped up on the caffeine now. Which, as you may know, or if you believe in genetics and are familiar with my mom, means I'll be sleeping like a cattie any time now. It's like benadryl, only less pink.

Ha! I made it to the end of the article, and I was right. "Tips for a good night's sleep." Why do fluff articles like this always go there? Always repeat the same four points every preceding article in any way related to its topic has repeated for decades ad nauseum?

Wait, what?

Ralphie.

Off My Back

2008-06-05T09:01:00.004-04:00

Did I ever tell you about the time a friend of mine was working out at the Y before heading in to the office one morning and when she got into the shower she realized she'd forgotten to bring pants to wear to work?

And so she spontaneously exclaimed, "I forgot my pants!"

Unexpectedly, a couple of (mostly undressed) women in the locker room with her began immediately to come to her aid. (I always picture an older woman thrusting a ginormous pair of granny panties in her face. I do not know if this is an accurate image, but I do recommend it.) All at once she was hearing, "Here, take mine!" and "How about these?"

Suddenly, with no one knowing each other's name, a community formed. So, rejecting a few articles of clothing not quite her size or style, my friend accepted the skirt of a woman who lived across the road a bit and said she could go home in her workout clothes and get another outfit for herself before she headed to her office. (My friend lived 20 minutes away and would have been severely late or under-dressed for work without this generosity.) My friend could just bring the skirt back to the gym the next day to return it.

(Finding that the dress shoes she'd brought to wear with her absent pants didn't go with her borrowed skirt, she wore gym shower flip flops in freezing weather to her job that day.)

Oh, I didn't tell you that one before? Well, it's a good one! Did I tell you about the group of one-armed philosophy TA's my friend worked with at Yale?

Streams and Consciousness (aka TMI)

2008-06-04T18:04:00.004-04:00

Since before the sun came up but not out this morning, an uninterrupted rain’s been falling outside. Inside, we’re all a little under the weather.

Buddy and I have been sneezing up a storm. When he’s in general weaker, I’m in particular stressed-er. He’s been twitching, on the verge of another seizure, and that gets me upset. Plus, he’s just a little too sad when he’s like this.

But these days, what doesn’t get me upset, or isn’t a little too sad for me? If you’ve had much interpersonal (human or machine) interaction with me in, oh say, the last 10 months or so, you’ve undoubtedly run into one of my sudden, inexplicable crying, bitter, angry, exasperated, dejected, or manic, goofball, quick-witted, non sequitur silliness (really, even more than is my genetic predisposition), or slow-witted inarticulateness streaks. Although, you might not have noticed because my outward expression tends toward the understated, I've been told. ("I can't tell, are you kidding or not?" Not.) Some days are better than others. Some weeks are great!

Add to my normal makeup tendency toward the (admittedly on the calm side, but still for me. . .) (melo/mellow) dramatic the dual paranoia of the Mad Libs-inspired Democratic Primary (and my taking of it all personally) and my brain abnormality, and as a result there are some spans of time when I’m so on the edge I’m two-dimensional. Ha ha. Now I had to go and remember my yo-yoing disgust-acceptance of my yo-yoing weight. Good eye.

I was lying in bed the other night when I had a flash, and then I realized (again!) it was my randomly flashing Tiffany-style bedside table lamp. It gets a little surge and turns itself on and off for a split second every now and then. (Hasn’t burned down any of the six places it’s lived with me in the past eight or so years, so believe it or not, this safety hazard is not a source of anxiety for me!) I rolled over, washed in a wave a dizziness for a minute. I’ve been dizzy in relation to various movements and non-movements for about a week now. Because I have about 100 pictures of my brain, maybe one-tenth or so of which contain apparent proof of a tiny, benign mass, naturally I imagine a tumor palpably growing or shifting when I get dizzy, or get the little zap headaches that feel like micro-shocks in one side of my head I’ve been getting a dozen or so times a day for about a week, although come to think of it I’ve only felt maybe once or twice this rainy day. Then the zaps will shift to the other side of my head for a time or two, just to wink at me in their psychosomatic playfulness.

So, I had this flash of insight, in which I came to understand and accept my cranky, hyper, lethargic, roundish (but not a lot), paranoid self. But, I can’t remember exactly what that insight or feeling of acceptance was. Oh, no, I remember: it was that I didn't have to pretend that I wasn't thinking or feeling or wondering certain things. Or at least, I don't have to pretend all the time.

Also, I'm pretty sure I'm mildly allergic to oranges.

Okay, actually I feel better now. I sure hope the catties do something photogenic early tomorrow’s sunny morning so I can quick post something else to take the top spot on this here waaaaay overly indulgent blob thingy.

Attendance and Participation

2008-06-03T08:07:00.000-04:00

Rini: dissertation prospectus.

Buddy: the world outside.

Georgie: Why do you love Computer-Cattie more than me? I'm a naughty kitty sitting on the table, so will you pet me now?

Surround Sounds: Outtakes (or Sequel)

2008-06-02T16:41:00.004-04:00

(See previous post for context.)

While neither of these is exclusive to morning (or evening - when sometimes the birds return), they do often join the cacophony of morning sounds. Though I just heard the latter right now: 5 p.m.

Some mornings, though not all, the chirps of the menagerie - birds outside and catties in - and the ding and roar of the train, are joined by the unnaturally loud voices of a few neighbors whom I only assume sleep in the train station parking garage or its cheery walkway. These are neighbors not prone to rational conversations, but then who is? Sometimes they sing. Often they shout. They like certain words I don't often say myself. Often they repeat themselves. They, too, wake with the sun.

One other common morning sound is the distinct clatter of little wheels and metal frames bumping along asphalt, methodically rolling down the block outside my long bank of high windows. The sound frightens and fascinates Buddy. More than once its particular clangs and rhythm seem to have been the trigger for an early morning grand mal seizure (bringing its own horrific sounds of wheezing, thumping, and my distressed voice, "it's okay, baby"). Sometimes he'll run and hide from it, sometimes he'll jump into the window to see, then jump back down to get away.

Its sound is always the same. You have to hear it, echoing in between the midrise loft buildings down a quiet dawn street. But its source alternates, unexpectedly. Some mornings I'll look out and down on a big grocery chain employee, working a long row of connected metal carts through the neighborhood and back to their corporate home. Most mornings I look down on a single cart, or maybe a pair, pushed by a single or pair of neighbors, full of cans and bottles or blankets and personal items, moving from nowhere to nowhere (or from park bench to dumpster?), rattling up the street at morning's first light.

Surround Sounds

2008-06-02T15:59:00.003-04:00

Setting aside the 4:30 sunrise and my tall curtainless bedroom windows, the way I know it's morning is by the morning sounds.

First are the birds. Some unknown, unseen breed hangs and tweets together in the beauty- and pollenful trees lining the parking lot just around the corner from my newly sunbeamed bed. Sun comes up, the little birds squeal with - what? With surprise, gratitude, annoyance, plan-making? How do they get anything done with all of them squawking at once? The birds we can see, if we open our eyes and don't turn away for one more hour of sunlit sleep, are the big grey and white breed. These chatty, flirty gulls swoop around outside my corner unit taunting the baby as he chirps back at them from his impotent perches inside, sometimes following them from one room's window sills to another as he cries in his baby voice ("I want to play!") and they laugh at him. Why the flocks of seagulls visit us every morning, I don't know, but they come just around dawn and stay until just after the arrival of the next morning sound.

First train of the day is the 5:53, so I would never need to set an alarm if I wanted to get up by 6:00. Our trains announce their arrival with a bell, not a horn blast, an almost pleasant series of dings and then the squeal of brakes and the white noise of an idling train engine. They come and go, the bells and engines, on the half-to-quarter hour, for the next couple of hours.

Roadwork begins at 6:59. If I'm still in bed then, I can close my eyes, lie very still, and imagine myself in a long metal tube, but the MRI sounds are not slicing and photographing my brain, they're tearing up the street so that tomorrow they can pave it again so that tomorrow they can tear up the street so that tomorrow. . . .

Just before dawn, the promise of morning is often heralded by the pitter-patter of dainty, too-long-nails galloping through the house in a fit of alien-invasion-of-cat. This is Georgie, our night runner. Buddy sometimes joins the chase, forgetting she doesn't like to play with him, but more often, he waits for her to re-settle on the bed huffing and puffing from exertion and purring her little broken-voice-box, angst-equals-love purr. With Georgie at as-close-to-peace as she will get, Buddy then hops down, crunches what's left of his dinner in the next room, and then joyfully announces the coming of day with a monologue or two in the form of a Siamese ring tone. Then he jumps up into the window sill, chirps at the gulls, jumps back down to the floor or bed (one choice louder than the next), to make sure I've heard: morning has broken. Then jumps back up to the window to enjoy the show until the gulls head back to the beach, the trains arrive, and I've decided to accept the gift of a brand new day.

Volunteer of the Year

2008-05-28T07:46:00.004-04:00

My friend Shawn is the volunteer of the year for her region of a large volunteer organization. She’ll be “saying a few words” at a big gala event next week, with our governor, among many others, in attendance. She said they selected her because they heard her one time and liked the way she talks about volunteering. I like the way Shawn talks about a lot of things (even though I may disagree a high percentage of the time). She believes in stuff and brooks no guff.

Every week Shawn spends her evening, not once, but twice, investing what’s left of her energy after a long, stressful day in academic administration. She travels half an hour to a shelter/halfway house across the tracks from my neighborhood to play with the children of a group of single mothers while they have their weekly house meeting.

The other day she asked if I had a CD player/boombox lying around I wasn’t using, because she’d given one to the house but it had gone missing. It was about the fifth player that had been stolen. Who steals from the homeless?! The kids loved dancing and singing along to the CDs she brought to play on it for them. I had a CD player/clock radio literally collecting dust on my desk at the office. I put it in a bag along with a bunch of free toiletries I’d collected from CVS to pass along to Shawn. She’d made the effort I was too lazy to make to find an organization that would take my stash of toothpaste, shampoo, and Tylenol. (Another shelter/service in her town.) When I gave her the CD player, she said the other one had been returned, but I should only give mine to her if I didn’t mind it being stolen and maybe not returned. Who borrows from the homeless?

A few weeks ago Shawn and another volunteer rented a van and piled the shelter’s residents in for a roadtrip down to Connecticut to attend the wedding of a former volunteer. The young women, all teenage mothers, had never been to a wedding before. They thought it was “cute” that their volunteer-friend was getting married, but didn't imagine it for themselves. It’s not unusual for one of them to become pregnant again during the year she is supported with housing, job and parenting training by Shawn’s organization. This bothers Shawn and she consistently loves and serves them.

That’s the once a week, but way beyond, commitment Shawn makes to volunteering in my town. Another one or two days a week she volunteers in her town tutoring math and English for the GED.

Once a month, she takes a special-needs friend out to lunch. For a couple of months recently, her friend was not talking to Shawn, having verbally abused her in a fit of rage and paranoia. Trying one more time to connect, Shawn found her friend was back on her meds and was excited beyond measure to be getting together again. “I’m glad,” Shawn told me. “I missed talking to her. She’s good to talk to.”

One of the things I like about how Shawn talks is her amazing balance between adamancy and listening. The other day she was ready to draw the line about something offensive at her job, something relating to her faith and saturatedly lived-out religion. She sat and prayed with a friend, taking her extreme stand, and her friend offered another perspective: one that still allowed Shawn to act passionately and righteously. For such a time as this. And she gratefully, graciously, with integrity accepted this word.

When Shawn told me she was getting this award and giving this little talk, she didn’t say she was nervous, or humbled, or any of that guff. She merely matter-of-factly let me know, the way she matter-of-factly (though passionately) volunteers, talks about volunteering, loves, learns, and applies her high standards for life. Anything more I could say about it would be empty. Except, I know sometimes it’s good to be recognized, so I’m recognizing her here. And I feel like I've only gotten started.

(Even though she doesn’t believe in blobs, I secretly think she sometimes secretly reads this. So, S, if that’s the case and you don’t like it, you can secretly tell me and I'll take it down. I just wanted to share your award with my friends and fam.)

Talk talk talk

2008-05-27T18:31:00.005-04:00

My dad once found one of these trophies for sale at a knickknack store (at Olla Padrilla!) when I was a wee thing. But, I like to listen, too!

This afternoon as I sat in the waiting room at my latest head doctor's office I enjoyed an elderly couple's stand-up routine as she filled out the medical history form she'd just filled out last July (but they're updating their computer system in the office). She asked if she was supposed to fill in one area. He asked "What did they tell you to do?" They were good-natured, not complaining. "That section asks for your bank account balance?" was the cliché. The unexpected came in a seemingly celebratory, "Well, there it is! Cancer!" when they reached the line about whether she'd had this: apparently she has/does. I shared the receptionist's surprise at confirming (plenty loudly) that this other man at least in his 60s isn't taking any medications currently.

Loving to sit and listen to the tidbits people say can be an all the more rewarding or distracting thing when you throw the interwebs in the mix. Please enjoy with me these gems posted by people I don't know on their Twitter accounts and momentarily out there for all to see on the Public Timeline:

(Twitter handles removed, with one exception. It's not like I got the old couple's home address so I could go listen to them celebrate cancer on a daily basis!)

Does anyone have the Cowboy Bebop movie?
TIME TO DIE HONKEY
hard to stay positive in a meeting when you are talking about making your job disappear
you have graciously ommited the chainsaws, which is probably a good thing as far as dreams go ;-)

and two Twits - from the same account, w/in 2 hrs of each other! - after my own heart:

The cat has been found!! D found her at the humane society!! Yeah!!
techmato It's taco Tuesday! Let's eat!

Literature Review?

2008-05-26T09:40:00.004-04:00

While preparing for a day's work on my dissertation prospectus, I stumbled upon (breakfast of champions) this.

Clearly a sign I should abandon today's research schedule and go to the beach.

Same old thing as yesterday

2008-05-19T20:17:00.006-04:00

By unpopular demand, I give you. . . my brain.

Good Day Sunshine

2008-05-15T09:04:00.003-04:00

In which I list random good things in my present life:

- Boss approved a mileage bonus for an adjunct who commutes far at the cost of (he mentioned the other day) "what is it up to now? $9/gallon?" Good people on board on both ends of my administrative reach.

- "Essentially" done w/ grading two of three courses, w/ only stragglers and internship papers to go. Getting good work done and off my plate for a few.

- Housekeeper offered to come by for one last cleaning before she graduates on Saturday! Get all your shedding done before she arrives to vacuum it up in 30 minutes, babies. Then you have to hold it in 'til we find a replacement.

- Guess who had chocolate cake for breakfast???

- Graduation promised to be outside on Saturday "light rain or shine." I have trouble breathing when we pack in the gym, so bring on the light rain under an open sky.

- Did I mention I'm going on a random conference-disguised-as-vacation trip to Ireland in June? With a gaggle of women colleagues whom I like?

- Get a little tiny feeling of energy/excitement when I think about starting serious work on my dissertation prospectus next week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (It's tiny, so the exclamation points are uncalled for, alas.)

- Truly proud of and excited for (most :-) of my 40 kids walking the stage on Saturday. I like my school's tradition of having department chairs read their names, so I'm sure to look each individually in the eye with congratulations.

- Umm. I love my dental nightguard.

Aspirations

2008-05-11T16:40:00.004-04:00

It's unusual for a local TV channel to play a self-scored four star movie on a Sunday afternoon. I'm always amused to find "Weekend At Bernie's" playing as I flip through the channels, marked on the digital cable info box with a solitary star. It's like, "Ya, we're running a really bad movie right about now. What's it to you?"

Channel 56 the CW is playing "Good Will Hunting," which they've labeled with four stars. I concur: perhaps one of the closest to perfect movie scripts ever produced (minus a few record-makingly excessive placeholder words).

And I can never really make sense of it.

But this might be the first time I've ever realized that I aspire to aspire to the commitment that seems to come from compassion of Robin Williams' character. Yes, I said "aspire to" times two. It's so far from me sometimes.

I have the honesty and directness down, for the most part. Many time I've had occasion to say to a student in my office, "Well I think that's that's a *SUPER* philosophy," and I've followed through. I can call them verbally on their short-sighted, misguided, indulgent, goofball choices. But I never seem to do the equivalent of standing up and walking to the door and saying the session is over. That's what I mean by commitment.

But more disturbingly, I don't always call them on the *SUPER* philosophies with the kind of compassion that Williams' Sean feels for Will. Is it because every time I drive over the bridge into the city and pass Bunker Hill College below, compelled to point out to whoever's in the car, "that's good Will Hunting's counselor's college," I am secretly wishing I worked there instead? And is that because I have these delusions against grandeur, deep down believing that the only thing that works about "Good Will Hunting" is its setting in Southie, its hero's background of poverty and abuse, and therefore the same comparably intellectually gifted kids at my school don't deserve the comparable patience, investment, and compassion when they throw their gifts away and mock the education and opportunities they've been given, because my kids are (comparatively) privileged, supported, and for all I know never physically hurt in their lily lives?

"You do what's in your heart, son, you'll be fine," Sean tells good Will.

Besides knowing how well that philosophy turned out when Williams taught the privileged kids in "Dead Poets Society," my problem with this movie, what I don't get, is how to help them find what's in their hearts. Especially reconciling that with the business of my job. Because for so many of them, and certainly what's shown in the movie, that means not being in college and playing the game I'm refereeing in the first place. So many seem genuinely not to want to be there, and remain for the very reason good Will (whom many would quote and profess to aspire to! - if I have to hear another reference to the "two dollars and a library card" line *from*, mind you, not directed *to* a college kid paying well over $100,000 for their college degree, I'm going to become a shepherd myself - how do you like *them* apples?!) the very reason that good Will rejects it all: a job. A job that conflicts with their view of the way the world should be, yet utilizes their expensive upbringing and education "productively." I despair at being in a job that is understood by way too many as existing for the sake of getting other people jobs. I don't want to teach or advise or administrate if it's for the sake of a life existing only:

to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

That'll never be me, don't you even think it.

Wait, where was I? No, but I'm always conflicted about "Good Will Hunting," because it's so truthful and so foreign, and so depressing and so hopeful. And I think I aspire to the kind of compassion and insight it offers where I am, without deluding myself into thinking that if I were just over the bridge, across the tracks, everyone would be so much more passionate and real and inspired. Including me.

(Caveat/Disclaimer: The attitudes expressed in this and recent other blob postings do not represent the whole of my existence, nor even the majority of my students or job. There are plenty with passion and drive, even some with passion and gifts! Emotions run high at the end of the year, and I've been witnessing and feeling the negative ones which always seem to out-volume the good ones. I'm going to try to get that fixed soon.)

Mantra

2008-05-06T16:49:00.004-04:00

Sometimes people make me so mad that I just about can't function.

In the "I can't do this a minute longer, these people are impossible and it's not worth it anymore, I give up and won't invest another piece of energy, effort or caring" aftermath of one of these times recently, I was chatting with my sister online and she told me something our mom had said to her when she was in a comparable situation:

"Maybe if you could just find an ounce of love for them..."

Well I tried, and I'm not sure an ounce is a good amount for me to start with in some situations. Is there such thing as a milli-ounce?

But you know what? I've been giving it the ol' college try for a few days now. I don't really believe I can on my own summon up a milli-ounce of love for some people. But, I've taken to repeating the phrase in my head when I'm faced with the temptation to hate, despair, obsess, kick in the shins, poke in the eye, or otherwise dysfunctionally respond.

Students disrespectful? Inner-voice Rini: "ounce of love." Colleague disconnected? IV Rini: "ounce of love." Situation after situation of unproductive, unforgivable, imperfect interaction? "Ounce of love."

And, whadya know. It's helping.

Therefore you should not name your dogfood Old Yeller

2008-05-01T06:35:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of fairness to the Other American Pet, the dog, I give you an old story about a dogfood named after a dog who gets rabies and dies from an owner-inflicted gunshot.

For those who visit this here blob thingy in search of games and challenges: "It's like {tragic character} {food product}." I'll get us started.

It's like Beth from Little Women bubblegum.
It's like the guys who saved Private Ryan hotdogs.
It's like Bambi's mom salt licks.

Story at Flak Magazine, or if you prefer, the Kroger Stores press release.

Confession

2008-04-30T07:47:00.004-04:00

One time I took my bottles and cans to get deposit refunds at the grocery store. The redemption machine spit out about two dollars in tickets for me to turn in at the checkout. I carefully calculated my purchase of bananas, bread, and peanut butter, with a coupon, so that I wouldn't be giving the checker more than one coin out of pocket to cover my cost.

I got into the line, discovered I'd dropped my tickets, and turned around to see a disheveled, dirty with the look of spending a lot of time outside shuffling around the neighborhood, older man having justed scooped the good-as-cash tickets up off the floor. He was looking at them, and then glanced up at me looking at him. A split second passed. I stepped up to him, and said "thank you, I dropped those." He handed them to me, I got back in line, made my cheap exchange, was congratulated by the checker on my thriftiness at getting so much for so little from me.

And have felt ugly whenever I recall it in the year or more since.

Tuesdays are for Twos

2008-04-29T06:00:00.001-04:00

Hot sauce, a cat, the answer "yes," a light jacket... Add one of these ingredients to just about any thing or situation and you almost always net a gain.

But, two things we're supposed to like that I just don't get the added value of are:

One: SECRETS
Do I want to know a secret? Nah.

That's a thing, though, right? A given in our culture that by answering yes (I know, I know, I said almost) to that query we're somehow enhancing our relationship with the secret sharer, our self-esteem, and our general quality of life. I not only don't get it; I disagree. Good things, true things, noble, pure, right, lovely, admirable... but mostly true things... should not be given to some and hidden from others in some twisted system of truth-as-Hallmark-card.

Or even as self-revelation-as-Hallmark-card. It's hard, usually riddled with failure, but I kinda think To Be Known is a form of To Love. And I'd like to try to love somewhat indiscriminately, or at least not as a matter of competition and team-dividing.

Right, there are certain times and ways to tell certain truths: pearls-to-swine is an exception clause. And truth-overflow is no better, when we have no sense of time or place or mood or purpose.

It's just I don't find that if I know something, plus I know that other people don't know it, I'll feel (or anything will be) better.

and, Two: lies...just kidding: SURPRISES
Same song, different verse.

If you're going to give or do something good, or I'm going to receive such, what's the added value of its being a carefully crafted surprise? What's the improvement in its arriving by way of untruths by omission, manipulations, and conspiring to leave the recipient out? The good thing is good. Is it better because the recipient pessimistically expected a less good reality?

But maybe it's just me, and I just don't get it.

Conversation

2008-04-26T09:49:00.004-04:00

If you didn't already watch it on PBS this week, you have an hour to spare, and you're interested, I recommend the Bill Moyers interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, available (in two parts) here.

Happiness is...

2008-04-25T11:23:00.003-04:00

So I just popped my head in Buddy's room (slash the office slash the guest bedroom) to see how he was doing before I headed off to work, and was greeted with this vision:

Nice try, buddy. I'm not turning the air conditioner on until July.

BFFs

2008-04-24T14:07:00.000-04:00

Apple & Tree: Me and my neurologically challenged Buddy.

I have a benign cyst the size of a thumbnail in my brain. The medical professionals in my life say it's probably been there for years, isn't pressing on anything, and needs no further attention except for a follow-up look in three months. (I got the impression that was so I wouldn't sue them if in fact my head exploded in the meantime.)

I also have an amazing set of pictures of my brain, including the spot in several shots, that I'll be scrapbooking this weekend. Oh, except for the part about scrapbooking.

(Oh, I also have "minor sinus disease" and a couple polyps in my sinuses, but who's counting?)

Thanks for caring.

See also: Cat Lovers Appreciate Soul Mate in Vatican.
From the NYTimes:

Along with an enormous entourage and a message of peace, the Pope brought with him to the United States a lifelong love of cats.... His house in Germany [has a] garden guarded by a cat statue.... And Benedict is, without a doubt, the first pope to have had an authorized biography of him written by a cat [“Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told by a Cat” (Ignatius Press, 2008)].... Ms. Fredericks [cat-loving Catholic fan of the pope] said she thought that the pope would benefit from continued contact with animals. “I think every church should have a cat colony,” she said. “But I don’t think that will happen.”

Meta-Hypchondria Plus Phobia Equals Irritation (which beats irrigation)

2008-04-22T17:10:00.008-04:00

So I canceled a class today because my doctor scheduled a CT scan (when and why did they stop calling them "CAT scans"?! So mean!) as retribution for my not feeling all better after two rounds of antibiotics for a sinus infection. Have I mentioned my special condition: meta-hypochondria? It's where I think I have hypochondria, but I don't really. So I feel guilty going to the doctor because I'm afraid I might not really have the symptoms I have. I told her about this. She gave me a look. She is 12 years old and has not yet developed a sense of humor.

Did I mention my other for serious condition: hospital phobia? Well, happily, at the hospital I visited this afternoon they're nothing if not efficient, probably exacerbated by the technician's recognition that even though I was in for a common, non-invasive procedure that would last less than three minutes, there was a good chance I was going to pass out while there because sometimes I forget to breathe.

Speaking of efficient. So, I was anticipating hearing back from my doctor in a couple of days, at which point she would tell me what the CT showed and send me on to a scheduled ENT appointment one month from now.

She just called. Two hours. Turns out when they take two days to get back to you with results it's not that it takes them that long to look at them. They're just making you wait because, why not?

The radiologist was, I quote my GP doctor (the 12 year old without a discernible sense of humor) "unimpressed with the sinus infection." We don't know what that will mean for dealing with my ongoing symptoms - probably schedule me to see an allergist down the line. But, it turns out she saw something in my brain she wants to look at some more - the radiologist, that is. My brain! Well, that explains things. Not my symptoms, per se, but things none-the-less. So I now have an MRI scheduled for my head tomorrow morning at another hospital, at 6:30 a.m. Blech. I wasn't planning to leave the house until noon because my campus schedule was morning-free.

The nice thing is, I'm sure it's nothing (but I'm not sure if that's a symptom of my meta-hypochondria or not!). But I'm a little annoyed (a) at their efficiency (I wouldn't have had to cancel my class - coulda started half an hour late and not messed up the end of the semester stuff, if I'd known I'd be in and out so quick), and (b) that my sinuses are "mostly clear" when I've been under the stoopid weather for nearly two months now. (I don't like to have infected sinuses, just like to have an explanation for why I'm sick and a clear path for how FIX IT.)

Fortunately, I watch "House," so I know what to expect with procedures like these: they'll keep escalating in seriousness as doctors war with each other about what's killing me, my condition (meta-hypochondria and hospital phobia) will worsen until I nearly flat line from their giving me the wrong treatment, they'll consider and rule out "lupus" until one of the characters says, "it's never lupus," and then it'll turn out I have a small toad ingested in my brain (I watched 1970s SNL "Barber" sketch, too) that, when removed, returns me to full health, with a paid-off mortgage and completed dissertation to boot.

(While typing this up, the doctor called again, and now I also have to call and pre-register with the hospital tonight like I'm having surgery or something. Did I mention I'm grateful to have insurance?!)

Tuesdays are for Twos

2008-04-22T07:35:00.000-04:00

Two signs that winter has gone away

One: The skateboard gang is back.

Unseen kids (I presume - though what's to say they're not middle-aged middle managers?) ride their skateboards around and inside the echo-y parking garage across the street from my home, beginning after 10 p.m. and sometimes continuing well past midnight. The sounds are as persistent and insistent as those of their early morning counterparts, the just past sunrise 6 a.m. seagull gang.

In the late evening human bodies glide through the air, inches above concrete, repeating the sound of wheels on horizontal and inclined surfaces over and over broken only by the occasional faint grunt-shout (of approval or pain) and the dwindling drone of city traffic, conversations, or live music and a neighbor's TV. In the morning bird bodies glide through the air, sometimes inches away from red brick mid-rises and vast loft windows, repeating the sound of mewing and cackling reminiscent of the sounds of a local produce, fish, and used clothing market setting up with sunrise outside my window in Penom Penh four summers ago. The dwindled drone of city traffic, conversations, and neighbor's TV soon returns after the circling, spiraling, cat-in-the-window-taunting gulls have had their morning romp. They have no idea how late their audience was up the night before with the sound of the skateboard gang appreciating evening temps slightly above 40.

Two: Potholes, multiplied like hotcakes, left behind by the plows and freezes, creating in their otherwise welcome absence a challenging route full of surprise concrete canyons that the alert and practiced driver dodges to evade consequences more significant than the video game the drive in to work begins to feel like.

Subject?

2008-04-16T12:45:00.005-04:00

You know how sometimes random phrases pop into my head with such intensity that they just have to be heard, even said out loud? Acknowledged somehow?

So I'm walking back across campus in the clear, bright, sunshiny day, after back-to-back win-some-lose-some meetings with the EVP of development and the Academic Dean, carrying the weight of my job on my head and shoulders, when a not-fully-formed-phrase thought but undeniable feeling asserts itself loudly in my mind:

What if my name were Amanda?

How am I just supposed to go back to work now? I've never before considered this possibility. It took me unaware. I think I need to go to the store and buy an orange to eat before my next three back-to-back meetings in an hour. Wish me luck.

Tuesdays are for Twos

2008-04-15T06:02:00.002-04:00

My friends Roseanne and Aaron are back in town after about four years away. They've returned with two and a third more children than the one they left with, and a tumor in Aaron's belly.

I used to know them from Wednesday night dinner at church, where I'd drag in after a long day of teaching and meetings and they'd be positively present with their toddler Lily and conversations of life on the seminary campus and Aaron's six part-time jobs. They moved to a small town in NY just over the border from Canada, to be able to afford to live while Aaron's education and the family expanded. I saw them again last Wednesday night over dinner at church when I dragged in after a long day of teaching and meetings and they came from three days commuting between a friend's local apartment and Mass General Hospital.

Roseanne said she doesn't know how she's supposed to feel. When their doctor told Aaron he needed to go to a big city to get help they didn't have the knowledge or equipment to provide, and they chose Boston over NYC because this is where they know people, she thought, "Yay! We get to go back to Boston! See friends!" while thinking or not quite knowing how to form thoughts about the fact that her young husband had a mysterious, painful, large mass in his abdomen. Like there's a manual for How to Deal With Impossible Situations Like This. Page 34: you find out you're pregnant with fourth child, are barely making ends meet (Aaron says they're not, actually, making them meet), have your vocational dreams on hold, feel distanced from friends and strong church family, and a frightening, debilitating growth shows up. Ah, here we are: Feel overwhelmed. Wait, wait, what's that you're experiencing? Enjoyment at catching up with old friends? Happy about the new baby? Stop! Strong pull of feeling like you've come home to the city you only lived in for three years? Improper! Get back to overwhelmed, scared...

I drove them down to the hospital yesterday morning for 7:00 check-in for Aaron's surgery to remove, and hopefully identify, the unwelcome growth. Dropped them off after chatting and laughing on the drive in. "Have a good day getting cut wide open and/or waiting for your husband to come to," I didn't say. "Good to see you. Sorry about the circumstances," everyone kept saying.

---------------------
So, Two Times I Was Confused About How to Feel:

ONE
When my first grandmother, "Granny," died the summer of, was it 81? We were taking a seven-in-the-side-paneled-station-wagon road trip up to MN to hang with cousins for vacation when we stopped at an old VN family friends' house in, was it Iowa? I remember a phone call. Or a waiting message? The sun being out. My brothers outside playing ball with the friends' son. Me sitting on the stairs next to the living room. Hearing something, someone, but no direct info. Still, I knew. I realized, had some kind of premonition, Granny had died back home in TX. I remember distinctly not feeling sad myself, but feeling adamant that we must be (behave?) sad. I went outside and chastised my brothers for laughing and playing while Dad would be very sad. I was young. Granny was old. I'd never had a chance to develop a real relationship with her as a person in any way separate from my dad. As an adult, all my understanding of who Granny was As a Person draws on my dad's stories and memories. By the time I was interacting and forming individual, conscious relationships and memories, she'd move into the nursing home where my dad brought us, often individually, faithfully to visit. I remember the nursing home vividly, and Granny in it. But I remember just as much the teenage boy in a vegetative state after a motorcycle accident brought to this home filled with old people to be or die. I drew pictures for him when I drew pictures for Granny and both nursing home rooms had my artwork on their walls.

I wasn't sad, then, to lose my Granny. But I felt like I should be. And I knew my dad would be. What happens next is a blur, but we made it up to MN, without my dad. Did my mom go with him back to TX, and did my sister Kari drive us the rest of the way up? I just remember being at the country cousins' farm, ready to run and play and chase wild animals and paint my nails and play card games... But should I enjoy it like I always did? Was I supposed to be in mourning? I was still mad at my brothers because they didn't seem to be struggling with this dilemma at all.

Well over twenty years later when my second grandmother, Grandma, died this season three years ago from now, I was prepared. I was sad. I knew Grandma. I had my own memories, my own experience of personality and relationship. It was a loss, for me as for my mom. My brothers, even, this time. But when I flew, this time, to MN to hang with the cousins for the funeral and a couple of days surrounding, I struggled much less. We laughed over memories and played games in my former country cousins' suburban dens. I cried at the funeral. I enjoyed catching up. I knew that with cousins grown and scattered and mostly married, the only thing that would bring us all together in one place anymore would be a family death. We'd all gathered for Grandma's 80th birthday. Not everyone was there for 90. We came back together missing only three of her 15 (on three continents, away) for this time before her 94th. It was good, and it was right to feel all the feelings of the time.

TWO
Superbowl 2008, when the Pats lost their perfect record to the Giants. Okay, but seriously. My title implies a series of pairs, and I'm beat from just the one. And, I do love rooting for the underdog as well as a come from behind victory. Plus Tom Brady cereally bugs me. But I was torn, because it is fun to be from a champion sports town or University (go Huskies, sorry about this year), you know, for casual conversation from time to time.

--------------------

I told Roseanne I think it's okay both to feel both ways she's inclined to feel, and to feel conflicted about it, too.

When Worlds Collide

2008-04-14T21:00:00.004-04:00

Somedays I like to remember the time I was on vacation and saw a cat in a bookstore.

Action Sequence: Catnip

2008-04-09T21:13:00.011-04:00

Then she threw up. The end.

The Memo... mmmkay?

2008-04-08T14:44:00.006-04:00

Did I miss some official announcement or ceremony in the past few years where all of the sudden (a sudden?) everyone was instructed to start not only caring about but also inexplicably knowing about the difference in meaning or proper use between presume and assume???!!!

Before maybe five or six years ago I cannot for the life of me remember ever hearing anyone utter the word "presume" outside a phrase beginning with the words "Doctor" and "Livingstone." Recently, though, it seems that every time I turn around someone is saying "I presume that..." and while they are saying it their very obvious, inescapable subtext is "Did you see what I just did there? I properly used 'presume' instead of 'assume.'" Even more insufferably, at least once a fortnight I hear someone say, "I assume... Rather, I presume..." and inside my head explodes because they said "rather" in the non-verb way and "presume" in the same sentence!!!!!

I was just wondering.

The Interwebs answer.

Update: Okay, so apparently "rather" is never a verb. It's still an adverb when it follows "would." I direct your attention to the last in the list of labels for this post and clarify that I have myriad unproductive sources of bother. But I get over things really quickly.

This drilling procedure brought to you by the letters B, a few letters C, the rare letter A, and the unfortunate letter D

2008-04-08T09:19:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow morning after a couple of hours meeting with advisees in my office, I journey again to the land of my new best friend The Dentist, where he will poke and prod in my clamped-open mouth some more, and I will give my bank card to one of his bevy of seemingly genuinely friendly office staff. She will then work her magic with my card to extract from my bank account about one week's pay. (And this after my insurance kicked in and then kicked the bucket for the calendar year.)

Do you ever think about how your salaried daily tasks relate to your common and extraordinary expenditures?

First, hear me say I am so grateful to be able to pay to have this dental work done. I was in excruciating pain, which I believe would only have gotten worse. And I did not hesitate to get it taken care of at great monetary cost, because I did not have to hesitate. I have had at least two good friends tell me, "Oh, I need to get a root canal, too," only they don't do it. Because they don't have the money to pay for it. They have the credit, but (thankfully) not the pain or complicating sinus infection that pushes them down that quicksand road. Of course there are way more people who don't have anywhere near "fair" or easy credit, much less money in the bank, to pay for necessary medical or dental work. I'm not complaining (or if I am, I regret it) about depleting my Emergency Fund I'm blessed to have for just Such a Time As This.

But, I couldn't help thinking about how the work output equals up to procedure cost output.

One week's work for one week's pay (approximately)... for one visit with my new best friend The Dentist.

For every jab and suction in my mouth just during this third impending third visit, there are the 40-some papers I've graded this past Saturday all day and mornings from 5-7 this week; the 30-40 students I'll meet one-on-one with before the week is over, for advising, guided studies, and other sundry efforts related to extracting advice and guidance from me. The 6 hours I'll spend in the classroom (though, I am thinking about showing a movie for 90 minutes of that this afternoon! and the effort that went into finding the right movie for this day was made years ago, though I did have to walk over to the library this morning, up two flights of stairs, to check out the DVD). The two committee meetings and their surrounding prep and follow-up tasks. A few official and more unofficial exchanges with colleagues in hallways and offices. Responding to interns' postings online, connecting with interns' supervisors on the job, and exchanging some obscene number of emails on every quotidian and urgent academic and administrative topic under the sun. Conferring with my 5-hour-a-week assistant about Adjunct Paperwork From Hades, explaining to a TA how to grade a quiz for half the time it would take me to grade it myself. Getting money and other intangible support to student leaders of the MK/TCK group for an upcoming event. Signing my name (it's advising/pre-registration season) on some several dozen slips of paper; saying "no" (it's advising/pre-registration season, and our classes are filling up) to some dozen (hopefully less) entitlement-scarred students. Figuring out, while succumbing to a rush of panic, why I have Friday morning carefully blocked off on my advising sign-up sheet on my door as if I have some off-campus commitment but finding no correlating event registered in my electronic or paper calendars!!! Giving a video interview to some group of students who need my "expert input" for their project in another class; ordering textbooks for the fall. Meeting with adjuncts to see How Things Are Going; scheduling future meetings with Everyone. Piling up mail and other papers on my desk, my office loveseat, the chair next to my desk, the floor... (I probably should have stopped with the numbers-based listing while I was ahead.)

So, no, maybe the 15 minutes I take to blob about this isn't a part of my job description, but isn't there some constitutional amendment or something mandating a coffee/social break in the 12 hour work day in academic-administration land?

All that. That blob in that too-long, indulgent paragraph. I do that, and in some odd, generally unnoticed system of exchange, I get money in my account, and move it out to my new best friend The Dentist and his Bevy of Perky Assistants' account. And the world goes 'round.

Next week's pay: cattie food, gas, mortgage, electricity, cheese, iced coffee, cattie litter, internet access, phone...

Well anyway, thanks to CVS I'll never have to buy toothpaste or chapstick again.

File: Kids these days?

2008-04-05T21:59:00.005-04:00

My sister was on the phone with me while she was driving home from the pet store.

"Is there someone playing the piano in your car?" I asked.

"Yes, I take it with me everywhere I go. No... I just walked in the door and T [her star athlete 16-y-o son] has some friends over. They were going to the park but he hadn't done his chores, so his two friends who I've never met before came over to wait for him while he did his chores. I thought they were just going to go upstairs and play video games while they waited for T. They're downstairs playing the piano instead."

Tough guy teen boys playing the piano at their friend's house while he does his chores.

Highlight of my day.

File: It's always something

2008-03-30T17:10:00.005-04:00

Walk this way

2008-03-29T22:14:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year again! On May 4, I will participate in Boston's 40th Walk for Hunger, a 20 mile trek through the city to raise funds for food banks. It will be my fifth annual participation.

If you would like to donate, visit my Walk Page to donate online, or email or call me with a pledge.

I'd also welcome a walking buddy if you're up for it and in the area, as my usual highly-motivating walking partner is out of the country this time. It's invigorating, painful, fascinating, and totally quittable if we're not up for the whole 20 miles. (Every year I'm surprised I make it, and never would I feel bad if I or my walking partner needed to take a shuttle bus back.)

Poor little me

2008-03-25T22:21:00.008-04:00

No reason for this photo.

Took Fung Wah Chinatown bus down to NYC and back on a Saturday to visit and cheer friend H (who abandoned me to move to big apple). $30 roundtrip, plus apparently adding 30 pounds to our faces in one afternoon. Bonus: shot immune system to heck.

Flying down to DFW last week for mini-vacation, stop off in Newark airport to change planes and call doctor to call in antibiotic for sinus infection. Four hours later, Pilot: "We're beginning our descent to Dallas." Ten minutes later, Pilot: "Dallas is closed. We're flying to Houston." Four hours later, get off eight hour flight to wrong city eventually at right city. Acquire massive allergic reaction to right city on top of sinus infection.

Do some interesting, enjoyable things with family which I document on camera for rainy day post to blob. Also because head was swollen whole time, so unlikely to actually remember anything without a/v aids.

Fly back to BOS for so-called job, stop off in Newark airport to change planes and take massive quantities of pain killers.

Return home to catties, delighted to see and sleep on top of me. They think I'm the cat's pajamas.

Wake up at 3:30 a.m. to take massive quantities of pain killers.

Spend 90 minutes at dentist poking, discussing, and poking cracked, infected tooth. Make appointment for root canal tomorrow. Go to so-called job to teach afternoon class with Novacaine-stroke-looking face. Make appointment for follow-up with sinus infection doctor for maybe some actually effective antibioitics on Thursday instead of fake actually ineffective stuff she called in after Newark airport call.

Come home, eat soup, and take Vicodin prescribed by friendly, nice dentist unlike last mean used-car-salesman-maybe-this-growth-is-cancer-you-should-get-braces-and-caps-and-come-
back-every-month-aren't-I-the-most-annoying-person-you've-ever-met-ex-dentist. Remember it actually making me sleep last time I took Vicodin narcotics five years ago. Wonder why I'm wide-awake, wired and writing fake stream of consciousness reportage on blob.

Poor little pea

2008-03-14T11:49:00.002-04:00

I don't know how he does it, but it seems recently that whenever I'm about to go out of town and leave Buddy in the hands of a friend or neighbor for a few days, the little guy has himself a grand mal seizure.

And this morning's was grand indeed. If I hadn't been around when he fell off the window sill and started convulsing violently against the dining room table leg, I'd have had quite a mess to clean up when I got home. As it is, post-ictal stage for me included wiping cat pee and saliva from the floor, the wall, the chair leg, the cat, and my hair. This one was so bad, though, if I hadn't held him gently in placed at the end, he would have propelled himself mid-seizure across the room, bouncing off walls and furniture, ripping claws, and spreading the pee. Poor little pea indeed.

It's been exactly one month since his last one, and I keep telling myself that technically one seizure per month is considered "controlled" in epileptic cats.

But of course I was already a mess thinking about leaving him and the grumpy sister in my place on their own for six nights with the neighbor girl coming over to provide pills and food every 12 hours. Maybe it's a good thing - he gets it out of his system now for a month and nothing more to deal with until I'm back from vacation. Or maybe he'll start having them more frequently again. And maybe the neighbor girl will be fine with it if she comes in one night to find a raggedy cattie and a puddle of pee. (Her childhood guinea pig had 'em, she always reminds me when I overbearingly instruct her on the catties' care.) He's always fine afterward; just sleeps the day away.

Me, I'm a mess. But I probably woulda been one anyway. It's what I do: get good and stressed out so taking a few days off for Spring Break will be worth it. No sense in heading out of town to relax if you're not a mess when you go, I say!

Oh! And to get to meet Pat Sajak! Like I suppose you could do better than that, no way!

2008-03-11T09:59:00.003-04:00

Mark your calendars! Set the TIVO. Gather the kids!!! I must say.

My friend ShawnE's mother is a contestant on Wheel of Fortune (or as my dad prefers, "Squeal of Fortune") on Monday, March 17! She'll be the lady named Joyce from Lawn Guy Land. I already know what happens, but you don't! So, tune in and squeal for my friend's mom!!!

Ed Grimley

Things I've enjoyably misread recently

2008-03-10T12:35:00.003-04:00

"Thanks for all the reptiles, this support means a lot to me."

~~reptiles~~... replies

What makes you happy?

2008-03-09T15:12:00.004-04:00

Rini: CVS.

Buddy: Plastic bags.

Georgianna: Um. Pass?

Don't Blink

2008-03-08T21:17:00.004-05:00

Today the ol' Saturn turned 100,000 miles. What's most momentous about this event in my life, is that this is the first car I've ever had that didn't already have 100,000 miles on it when I acquired it.

Case in point: Mucous, the 1981 Honda Accord my p's bought for me when I graduated from high school at 16, 19 years ago! (It came with a grinning red-headed junior high boy's head growing out the top, of course.)

Followed by the rusty red Cavalier and the aging maroon Camry that drove to the D'ville Saturn dealership to breathe its last at over 250,000 miles.

It's fun/ny thinking about a poor, young college kid or recent high school grad being grateful to receive my Saturn now that it's old-and-busted enough to have been received by me. But I ain't giving it up. Check back in with us in another eight or ten years for the 200k roll.

I bought my car new in the summer of 2001 two months before moving from the big TX to the crazy MA. Within a month I drove 'er down to Galveston for vacation, and then in another month, three days' drive up to New England for non-vacation (aka Work). We've driven to five U2 shows in Boston, Providence, Hartford, and Philly; to New Haven a bunch and NYC a time or two; to Montreal; and back and forth to Storrs, CT, more times than you could shake a stick at. Really. Your arm would get tired. Even a two-armed shake. Even with people standing beside you helping you shake the stick, like Aaron helped Moses, only in a much less significant and powerful way. I drive to UConn a lot! (Go Huskies.) What? Oh, yeah.

I put 100,000 miles on my car. (Except, I think it had maybe 103 when I bought it. Watch for the sequel video in a couple of weeks?)

Alternative post titles: Don't Try This At Home, or Buckle Up, It's Going to Be a Bumpy Video or Angels Watching Over Me

annoying things i've been doing recently

2008-03-06T10:08:00.002-05:00

Eating the lunch I bring from home before 10:15 a.m.

Reason #18

2008-03-05T17:53:00.004-05:00

My eyes are bloodshot.

I was sitting on my colleague/friend's couch, sipping a diet Pepsi when all-of-a-sudden I felt a squirt and a sting in my right eye.

I looked down at my sodar can to see if I'd unconsciously spilled. Upward, not downward.

No.

In just a second, the blink of an eye, if you will, my friend had knocked over a pile of books on a bookshelf, which knocked a pump-bottle of hand-sanitizing liquid off the shelf down onto the top of the minifridge below, which knocked over a second bottle of hand-sanitizing soap, which activated the pump, which sent the soap-gel, in a single drop, across the room, and into my facing-another-direction open right eye.

I had my eye washed out with soap! The dissolving kind, so you don't even have to rinse. Except I wanted to rinse, real bad. Still do, in fact.

It still stings a bit right now. I've sat through two hours worth of meetings since the incident occurred, but one of them was a prayer meeting, so I got to close my eyes for part of it in socially acceptable circumstances.

At least it's my bad (already corrupted from corrective surgery) eye, and not the good one I like to keep safe from such bad influences as hand-sanitizing bizarro friendly fire attacks.

(There are other reasons my eyes are bloodshot. These shall not be fully articulated at this time.)

After spending 15 minutes scanning my bookshelves looking for just the right bedtime reading flavor to suit my taste

2008-03-03T20:16:00.008-05:00

I picked up a copy of "Dropping Your Guard: The Value of Open Relationships" and a copy of "Boundaries Face to Face." And crawled in bed to read a bit before drifting off to sleep.

It was about this time I realized I might be feeling a tad neurotic.

Somewhere over the rainbow

2008-02-28T16:42:00.004-05:00

Hello, siblings of mine (except the lucky, oldest one born in ND)!!!

I always thought I'd have to wait for the Governator Arnold to push through the Constitutional Amendment which would open up a way to pursue my dreams.

Does it matter that McCain was born outside the U.S.?

Please, please please make it matter, so that we can fix the problem with legislation and my siblings and I can start our campaign to take over the world!!! I don't want to have turned 35 for nothing this year.

Style or Substance?

2008-02-27T18:51:00.005-05:00

Eisenstein
Einstein

When (famous creative) people looked like this back in the day, were their hairstyles (a) carefully crafted with an eye to representing the unruly, noncomformist nature of their social and political perspectives, (b) carefully crafted for the fun of it, or (c) were they just (coincidental) accidents of timing, hygiene, or weather?

Bon Jovi

Why can't the English consider unlearning how to speak, in service of greater good and just because?

2008-02-25T10:35:00.008-05:00

Do any of you understand why a proper English sentence must not end in a preposition?

I think I could muster up a little reasoning behind eschewing split infinitives (though I freely acknowledge that for me the true attraction is all in the novelty of it: rebelliously to order my phrase - to order rebelliously my phrase - in a way that just sounds cool because it's different from what I'm used to hearing - to rebelliously order my phrase). And I'm all over the imperative value of making distinct through writing the homophones - its it's your you're their they're there then than - like white on rice. (Though my well-educated friend K tells me there's a raging argument amongst philosophers as to whether this is an issue of grammar or spelling. To which I believe the proper reply is whatever.)

The dangling participle rule just makes sense. "Dangling out there in separation from its antecedent, I find the participle confuses the reader's understanding of the subject." Dangling I ain't. The sentence doesn't make sense when the participle dangles, and making sense usually makes for good human relations.

On the other hand, I would argue vehemently in favor of abolishing the "don't refer to the singular subject or object 'one' with the plural they or them" rule, on value-based grounds. Gendered pronouns exclude, historically, culturally, subliminally, and inexcusably. If one believes a contemporary case can be made for "he" including me, then I submit that he is married more to the letter of the language law than to the idea that language was made for people, not man for the word-(style)-rules. (For it is style I believe that dictates this rule, not reason the value of clarity.)

But, I just can't seem to grasp (or remember?) why we're not to end our sentences with an of, about, in, etc. Is it just because?

Srsly, if understanding, harmony, love, joy, peace, truth... may be achieved through the more proper ordering of my words, then pull me back from those slippery slopes of grammatical rule-shifting . If not, then, let's all hold hands and redeem the rules of grammar from the paralyzing grips of arbitrary absolutes and let's not be scared of a little slipping and sliding on the slopes of a living, loving language.

Live Blogging the Oscars

2008-02-24T22:35:00.007-05:00

Okay, not really. I mean, yes, I'm typing this while the Oscars are on, but I'm not really going to post throughout. I mean, I'm hoping it'll be over pretty soon anyway.

But did you see the special award given to Art Director Robert Boyle?

He's 98 years old.

And his voice is as strong as anyone I've ever heard. (Way stronger than mine!) Could he have had "work done" on his voice? How in the world is he this strong at 98? Also, I love that when old men get dressed up for something like the Oscars they wear a scarf. I'm a fan of the all day indoor scarf. What a classy man and classy moment.

Oh, and what a great acceptance speech from the director of the first film to win an Oscar from Austria (I guess if you don't count Sound of Music).

Can I just say that nothing this evening has made me want to see the movie Enchanted which I guess I missed last summer. I do like Kristin Chenowith, though.

And how can you not like John Travolta dancing up to his presentation.

And wow. Did you see Jon Stewart just bring the winner of Best Song back out after she'd been played off so she could make her speech?! This is like the feel-goodest Oscars ever in the history of the world.

It was probably about 10 or maybe 15 years ago that I stopped rehearsing my acceptance speech that I'd been practicing since the beginning of time. But the greatness of the Oscars didn't fade with my one-time dreams. Sometimes they're dull, awkward, or worse. But always they celebrate and show what is so undeniable about movies: their power, intricacies, intertwined produced-ness and reception... The way movies are made by so many different people, with so many different layers. The ways they picture so many layers of truth from blood to hope (from old to young, from wrong choices to mistakes to remorse to atonement, epic to quotidian).

Okay, I'll stop. But, seriously.

{{Hugs}}

Oh! The Coens again. Remember the time I almost took a job as their personal assistant but I went to grad school in Ohio instead of moving to NYC to work with them? Aw well, I probably wouldn't have graded nearly as many papers or served on nearly as many committees if the chips had fallen another way... And what about Buddy and G? Who'd have cuddled with them?

cat is the hat

2008-02-24T13:30:00.006-05:00

Recently Georgianna has been migrating ever closer to me when we sleep at night on the family bed. She used to curl up in a corner - on the covers by my feet, or on the sheet next to my pillow.

Somewhere in the last couple of months, she moved onto the pillow, splitting the space with my sleeping head, usually a decent distance between her half and mine. Then I'd roll over into a mouthful of fur. I found this obtrusive and told her so. She tended to make her move during the deep of night, after we'd all drifted off into a chorus of snores.

Last night as I lay me down to sleep and the catties joined me as they do, Buddy nudged under the covers to curl up by my knees, I put my head down on the pillow, turned on my side, and Georgianna curled up for a good night's sleep... On. My. Head.

She just plopped down like a 10-pound furry motorized cap right on top of the back of my head. And proceeded to laboriously purr herself to sleep. While I lay with a pudgy-dainty cat on my head.

I didn't have the heart to push her off because I do keep the heat down pretty low at night. And maybe she was thinking of my best - keep the heat from escaping out the top of my head during the night. But still. Cat sleeping on top of human head is a bit much.

(It doesn't seem to have made a difference one way or the other in the persistent throbbing headache I've had since I got home from work Thursday night. Not to bring down the tone of the post or anything.)

keepin my head above water

2008-02-22T21:20:00.003-05:00

So anyway, I've been holed up studying for (and driving down to CT to take) comps for weeks, getting out mainly just to go to the Day Job, get free stuff from CVS, and move my car into the train parking garage to get it out of teh snowstorms.

Two exams down (and passed!), one to go - next Friday.

Brain hurts. Eyes feel like bleeding. Words fail.

So, I decided to take a little LOLZ break and laugh at cute funnies.

...see you on the other side.

(icanhascheezburger.com)

Vote early, vote often

2008-02-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

I'm a qualified optimist. I like to vote.

I like the symbolism of taking action in situations which seem otherwise to be paralyzed by rhetoric, posturing and non-productive competition.

I like the elderly poll-workers who take my name, give me my ballot, show me where to go and what to do.

I like the elderly citizens who lean over the minimal divider while I'm in my "booth" and ask me to read them the small print on the ballot. "Do I just pick one?" I look at the column and instructions at the top. I like the fact that I sort of have to move it back and forth myself a couple of times, squinting and imagining that it might be time for me to get reading glasses. Because I've always liked the look of pince-nez half-glasses. "Choose no more than 25," I answer. "Okay, thanks," the octogenarian says as she and I then both try to figure out what we're voting for and if there are in fact even 25 names to choose from in this local political committee list.

I like the feeling I get when I put my ballot in the box. Like I've really done something, not just talked about it. (But I don't like thinking about whether or not I really believe that.)

Every time I've voted at my local precinct, in the community room of a multi-storied senior housing project in my neighborhood, I've thought about how easy it would be to return later in the day and vote again. (When I checked out this morning, the gentleman almost checked off my next-door neighbor's name after I gave him my address. "Valerie?" he verified. "No," I corrected, "Catherine," and leaned over to point to where I was on the list, taking in as many of my neighbors' official party status as I could in a quick glance. I'm a "U," unenrolled, so I can vote in either primary. I like that my state lets me do that, since I'm at my core opposed to a (two) party-system. I like guessing or being surprised when I find out which party, if any, an acquaintance affiliates with. And I like that I can respect and even love them whether they're an "R," "D," or "U." I like the fact that I know my being a "U" doesn't mean I'm wishy-washy or can't make decisions, but that it's an actual value-based stand in itself. But I don't like thinking about it too much, lest it become a stumbling block to me.)

A high school Sunday School student of mine this week told me "George Washington warned against it." I didn't have a Sunday School lesson prepared for this week because I thought my teaching partner had it covered, but he didn't show up. So we talked about how our faith and Scriptural/kingdom values should inform our voting. I like going to a church where the answers to that question are not (assumed to be) deceptively simple.

There are a lot of things to be skeptical, frustrated, or otherwise bothered about in our political process. But I like voting.

I can't wait to vote again on the way home tonight.

(Just kiddin'.)

If cat hair were nickels...

2008-01-24T14:08:00.000-05:00

When we all get our tax rebate checks in June, is it our patriotic duty to spend them?

Is paying down debt stimulating to the economy? (Or, is paying back my emergency fund by putting it in savings?)

I think not.

So, when I get my $600 I may just spend it on a pet-hair-hating vacuum cleaner.

But then, is growing the economy always a good thing (wonders Bill Mckibben)?

Okay

2008-01-20T21:35:00.001-05:00

I genuinely thought my upstairs neighbor was having a seizure (the human kind, which I have had the misfortune to hear and witness, not the feline kind we deal in down here).

Then I figured out he's watching a football game on TV.

Biographical Updates

2008-01-20T15:47:00.000-05:00

I was born a poor black child...

Just joshing. Anyway, this entry's not about updating my personal biography, rather my biography-reading resolution.

The good news is, I'm on page 178. The bad news is, my previous post's reference to my Eleanor Roosevelt bio as 500-some pages missed the mark by some 400. Ah well, progress is being made. But seriously, why didn't someone tell me it was going to be so sad?! And frustrating? Who here's glad they weren't a Roosevelt? {{hand raised}} Poor Eleanor apparently was one twice!

Next on my list, should I ever make it through the remaining EIGHT HUNDRED pages of this doozy, is either Under My Skin, volume one of Doris Lessing's autobiography or Carole Klein's bio of Lessing. (I'm more drawn to Particularly Cats:

"Book Description
Here Doris Lessing recounts the cats that have moved and amused her, from her childhood home overrun with kittens, to the wrenching decline of El Magnifico, whose story unfolds in a new essay, appearing here for the first time."

However I don't suppose it technically fits the genre of my resolution.*

Beyond that, I'm open to suggestions. Someone said I should listen to Bill Clinton's memoirs, read by the author, on CD as I drive to-and-from Connecticut again nearly weekly over the next six weeks. If a local library has it I might give it a shot.

If you've read a good or important biography you'd recommend, Sharing is Caring.

*The Genre of My Resolution might make a good biographical chapter title, but not mine as I've never been a particularly resolute type. You can have it if you want it, or if you want me to write your bio for you.

It's not a Game, but since the Constitution says I can't win by virtue of my Foreign Birth, here's how I'm playing it...

2008-01-17T18:50:00.000-05:00

"The essence of democracy is that you can lie about who you voted for." - Charles Krauthammer (on why Caucuses are unfair)

So I went searching for a neutral website that would give me all the presidential candidates' positions at once. And I found one that also provides a mechanism for determining which ones I agree with.

Not one of those mini-quizzes where you answer 10 questions which are impossibly worded so you have to take extreme positions and utilizes some complicated logarithm to calculate who you should vote for without apparent depth (or logic). *I took one of those, too; see below.*

MyElectionChoices.com functions on the basis of rhetoric and choice of interest, and if you visit it and participate, it's like an amusement park theme ride.

Here's the basics: You choose from a list of about 15 "issues." They suggest you choose only one or two to begin with, because it's long: each one provides you with maybe 30-40 direct quotations from candidates, which you read and check off any you agree with. The beauty of the thing is that, because the quotations are uncredited at this step in the process, so you're going through them blind, the rhetoric takes front stage. You might read ten statements (quotations from speeches, official websites, debates, etc.) that basically take exactly the same position if the speakers were allowed only to vote "yes" or "no." But, the way they say it becomes so powerful. I'm sure as I went through the pages and pages of quotations, I checked off some statements which would (ostensibly) result in the exact same legislation as ones I did not check off because I did not like something about the way a speaker presented his (or in one case her) position. Sometimes it sounded pandering (just words, no tone or body language), sometimes it sounded like a lie! How can you tell if something is a lie when it's someone's claimed opinion and it's only in writing? I don't know, but I'm fascinated by the question.

So, first I just went through two issues, and looked at my results. Any time I checked that I agreed with the statement, the candidate who'd said it got a point. The results showed me a chart with every candidate I'd agreed at least once with in a line from most to least. On the two issues I agreed with something like 7 Democrats and 5 Republicans. On two issues!

((SPOILER ALERT))

I was amused and intrigued by my results. I'd been a little concerned, and rightly it turned out: I agreed with John Edwards twice as much as I agreed with anyone else. McCain came in a lower second, with Huckabee soon behind him. Not surprisingly, to me, Mitt Romney and Hilary Clinton were in the bottom. Somewhat surprisingly to me, Obama was closer to the bottom than the top.

Following on one of the questions from the New Hampshire Democratic debate on ABC, I don't like Edwards! (I like less poor Clinton, whose feelings that hurts, she said, and really really dislike Romney.) I like Obama, and McCain has a way of popping up in my estimation when I least expect it. (I liked Huckabee for about a day in December, but haven't cared for much I've seen or heard since.) Yet, even in a system based on rhetoric, it proved I align myself most with the candidate whose positions my gut told me I most supported but whose person I'm not attracted to. Person and rhetoric. They should be connected, shouldn't they?

So I added a couple of issues. One at a time. Edwards remained at the top for almost every single one of the sets of quotations I went through over the course of a couple of hours last weekend. Other candidates moved around from time to time. Clinton inched her way up and was at the top on one issue. (Not the top of the cumulative total, just of that one issue. But then, I think Fred Thompson was at the top, or second on one, too!!!) Obama started moving up pretty consistently, and for about half the time as I moved my way through the whole set of issues and quotations he, McCain, and Huckabee hung out tied in second place to Edwards at the top.

Then, with just a couple of issues left, Obama went out in front, and after I'd read and responded to every issue and quotation the site provided, Obama and Edwards are basically tied in first, with Hucakbee and McCain not too far behind in second. Clinton and Kucinich are tied in the middle (the site also includes several more non-viable and dropped-out candidates I'm not listing who spread the results out) with Guliani a little ways below her, while Ron Paul, Romney, and Fred Thompson are bottom three. (TMI?)

The process is interesting in several ways. First, because you can choose which issues you want to respond to on their own or in combination with others (you can't, apparently, rate them against each other, though - so I ended up doing all but the first two in alphabetical order), you can see how if you're a one-issue voter you might have quite a different result than if you're a conglomerate player. There might be an issue I don't really care about, but if pressed, I do have an opinion, or I can at least tell you if I agree with a statement or not. Should this influence my voting, or not?

It's also fascinating to think that I probably agreed with both Clinton and Romney's stances (? maybe, not sure about Rom) on literal position more often than the results suggest, but something in my mind registered that I did not trust (or at least just did not resonate with) how they presented their case. And I really did do it pretty much blind. I didn't linger on quotations trying to figure out who said it, and only recognized maybe two actual statements based on either details in them or my having heard the original delivery in a debate.

Alas, how helpful was any of this? No less so than any of the other ridiculous mechanisms in place for "helping me decide," like ads and most (not all) talking-point Sunday morning interviews. (And the great thing about my job is, I can always use waste-of-time or questionable-quality media activities as Classroom Learning Examples.)

I recommend the site, if only for the fun with layers of meaning and signification.

(I took a mini-quiz on another site which required me to choose one answer from three on only 17 questions: my personality loathes that kind of thing, which is why I always mess up the poor Meyers-Briggs types by canceling out all my trends with opposing answers. Nevertheless, it told me my top candidate was John Edwards, too.)

Pictures and Captions Vacation in Review

2008-01-13T14:29:00.000-05:00

Everything's a blur.

I sprained my ankle playing tennis with my four siblings on New Year's Eve Squared. My sisters sat out the last few rounds in solidarity with me as my brothers finished up.

Hat in the air. Cousins in a box.

Dad in two hats.

Siblings in a parking lot.

Family in a restaurant.

Cat in a collar. (My sister got a new cat. Minnie got surgery and stitches.)

Music, remotes and antenna.

Photographing sisters.

Blue tongue, red tongue.

Bling.

We're baaaaack.

2008-01-13T13:43:00.000-05:00

Happy new year.

Buddy thought we should post a catch-up piece. He and I had a lovely Christmas and New Year's at his grandparents' in TX. The whole family was there. Except Georgianna, who stayed up north and annoyed her Auntie S.

Georgie has a stomach ache and Buddy's bored without all the cousins around. I have a pain in the neck. But other than that, we're good.

This year so far I'm doing a little better living in the moment. Which is why I don't have anything to post. Because my "blob" for me is about nostalgia, regrets (what was, would might have been), or fears (what might be) as much as it is about anything else.

It's a bright, blue-sky day, and a Nor'easter is coming tonight. But, I'm not stocking up on staples or moving the car to the parking garage yet. I'm here and now, sitting in a tank top in an 80-degree apartment not thinking about the coming nightfall and snowfall when the free heat of the sun will go away and the Fuzzy Electric Blankets (B&G) and I will cuddle up on the couch secure in knowing tomorrow can be a "Pajama Work Day" as my neighbor just called it on the way to the office to pick up her computer in preparation for not driving in tonight's and tomorrow's predicted mess. No, what I'm saying is, right-here-right-now it's all good.

But since we all know that's a temporary delusion, here are some informational tidbits in lieu of poetic reflections:

9) I passed my Farsi translation exam! I'm planning to take my three individualized area exams (written, each 3 questions, 4 hours) on successive Fridays in February. Upon passing those, I will be pretty much ABD. Or at least ready to write my prospectus. This is a big deal. I'm beyond relieved, as the three language requirements were the hardest and most likely to stall me out components of my eternal degree process.

w) I'm heading up to the regional airport in New Hampshire tonight to pick up my friend H who's returning from a week-long audition/see-be-seen for actors/models in LA. While thrilled and nervous for her, the selfish me doesn't want her to move out there until I'm ready to quit my job, sell my condo, and move back to the only place I've ever really felt was real and homey in my life.

f) My new year's resolutions this year include either losing or gaining 25 pounds (I am so on track so far) and reading one biography per month (not dictated by my two schools/jobs). So I've been trying to work my way through a 500-or-so-page paperback from the 70's on Eleanor Roosevelt I've had on my shelf for years, but because I spend all day reading for my exams or for prepping for Spring classes, when I get in bed and pick up the "free-time" stuff, I fall asleep within 2 pages. It was my understanding there would be no math, but if today's the 13th, and I'm on page 20-something...

4) I haven't seen any great movies lately, so stop asking. But, I have about 10 potentials on my list to see in my Spare Time (with my Spare Cash) in the next two weeks. Since January before school starts back up is usually my biggest movie-seeing time of the year, dictated by the award show nominations, should I even bother this year if the Writer's Strike may mean no shows?

Buddy says hi. Georgie is snoring. The sun is still shining.

Wised Up

2007-12-16T11:56:00.000-05:00

Finally, for today's blizzard, I remembered I should park my car for $2 in the train station garage across the street and leave my spot clear for the plows in my outdoor lot. Monday Morning Rini will thank 7 a.m. Sunday Rini for getting out in the wind and pelting precipitation so she does not have to dig her way out when the storm passes. (9 a.m. Sunday Rini was thankful Sunday School was canceled due to inclement weather.)

Happy Holidays.