Okay, to try to put some stuff over that "downer" post (talked it over with a colleague - yes, there is more than one of us here today - and he reminded me, use what you can, discard what you can't.. And he agreed the "stoned tenure committee" guy was just way out of line. I think also on some level I'm bothered that I know my department chair and the secretary and perhaps the dean all read all the comments faculty receive, and I'm kind of embarrassed by that, even though I suppose they see that kind of stuff from time to time).

Annnnnyway.

Over my break, I finished the Grasshopper socks (picture to come later). I also completed the A World Lit Only By Fire scarf (picture to come later, after blocking). Didn't work on the Hiawatha shawl AT ALL. (That's twice I've taken it on a trip with good intentions and twice I never took it out of the bag). Began the "Verona Shawl" which is good "comfort knitting" - it's just plain stockinette, lace yarn on big needles.

I also began the Cape Cod socks, using the Crest O' the Wave lace pattern. I'm happy with how they're turning out - I do think a tight gauge, 9-10 stitches to the inch in stockinette, on size 1 needles - is the best way for those new soft KnitPicks sockyarns.

Had my annual checkup, found out high blood pressure is NOT a problem, that the automatic blood-pressure machine was probably inaccurate. Had my first mammogram (yeah, I'm old enough that it's time for a "baseline," my doctor said). I will say the comediennes who make a big deal out of it do women a big disservice. I hope no one's been scared off of getting one by those cutesy "poems" that make the rounds of the internet. For those reading this who are young enough to still not have had one yet: it's not scary and it's not painful. It's a little awkward but is less uncomfortable (for me at least) than having a dental x-ray done. (And as for the "squishage" - it was no more than what a person could do with their hands. The descriptions that some people had given me lead me to believe that there was some kind of super-tissue-flattening power in the machine, and there isn't). And everything came back lookin' good, so that's one less thing to worry about for now.

I will say, any medical test that doesn't involve an instrument being inserted into a bodily orifice is an OK medical test by me. The mammogram is really quite easy and doesn't take very long.

Learned a few more things about my family on the Memorial Day get-together. Like, I had a great-grand-uncle who was an opera singer in Germany. And I had a great-great-grandfather (I think that was it) who was a manufacturer and inventor of brass scientific and navigational devices. Apparently there are some patents to his name...if the Patent Office records are online, I should check to see if his are there. Also, the German side of the family apparently came here in the 1840s or so in order that the sons of the family not be conscripted into the Kaiser's army - so my family history includes draft-dodgers. (And the Irish side apparently includes some rebels, or at least rebel-sympathisers). And I had relatives fighting on both sides in the Civil War. The Irish side fought in a Louisiana regiment and the German side in a Wisconsin regiment.

There was some sad news, a woman I was fairly good friends with (as much as you can when there's 55 years difference in age and we lived pretty far apart) had a massive stroke and is not expected to recover. The last I heard she was in the hospital. That seems to be the hallmark of my vacations these days - there is at least one person who dies or who has some kind of major health event. I suppose that's one of the drawbacks of having friends mostly older than yourself.

I went to the farmer's market when I was visiting my parents. I miss things like that. We have a farmer's market but it's very small and is mostly people who buy from produce wholesalers, so it's not really a "farmer's" market.

It's funny the things that strike me and that make me feel a little homesick, or a little nostalgic, or something - the difference in the landscape, flat plowed row-crop fields, which I as an ecologist are supposed to deplore but which I actually personally find quite beautiful, versus the relatively more untamed unmanicured pasture land here. The old familiar restaurants. Even, oddly, the little Illinois Lottery symbol - the pot of gold with a rainbow - somehow that seemed nostalgic and a little sad to be leaving it again. It's becoming increasingly hard to leave after vacations.

I remember when I was a kid, and my family would visit my grandmother (my mother's mother) in northern Michigan, and how when we were heading home, my mother would always cry. And as I child, I was sort of bewildered and even frightened by those tears. And now, as an adult, I cry those same tears, sitting in a compartment on a southbound train. It's hard to see your parents get older and suffer health problems and get the sense that there will come a time when you won't be making this trip any more...

And so I guess I'm a little lonely and sad today, a little at loose ends. It's good to be home again but damn, do I wish there was less space, less landscape, between my family and me.

I guess I have to remember: my work is important but it is not the sum total of who I am. And I have to tell myself that maybe I had some sourpusses last semester, and maybe I wasn't as good as I could have been, but a new semester is starting and I can try to do things differently, try to be more engaging, try (if it's possible for a person to change their set personality deeply) to be less shy and reticent and prone to like to hide behind the information.

I don't know. I do think people who are kind of shy and who are "all business" (as I tend to be when I'm teaching) are at a disadvantage in our culture. Otherwise, why would they push Zoloft for shyness? Why would the big joke about serial killers or the people who mow down others with giant amounts of armaments be "Gee, I don't know, he was real quiet and kept to himself." I guess I'm justifying here but I do know I'm not as charismatic in person as a lot of people are - and I'm sure that hurts me some. But I don't know what to do to be moreso. I know that trying to be "hip" would only fall flat, I can't do that. And I refuse to make myself look ridiculous in front of the class just to gain sympathy or to make people like me. And I refuse to do like I am sure some profs do, and waste a lot of class time on stuff that isn't related to what I'm supposed to be teaching.

I don't know. Part of me wants to discount the evaluations, and say "but they don't always know what's good for them, the people who complain about 'too much work'" or tell myself it's partly the media-saturated generation that expects to be able to change the channel if they're marginally less interested. But then again another part of me says that the students, like them or not, are the ones paying the bills and I damn well better give them what they want if I want to keep my job. But I don't know if what they want is compatible with my standards. So anyway.

I think I need to go home and weed the garden for a while to forget all this, and also to get some of the weeds out of my garden.