Another musical piece

This pretty much sums up how my days have felt of late.



(I am sure, quite sure, this (or part of it) was used as the theme song to something I used to watch - maybe on PBS? Maybe the broadcasts of the Boston Pops? It's extremely familiar. I heard it again on Sirius the other day and have been going around racking my brains to figure out where I know it from)

In the video, I like Karajan's grumpy expression and how he sort of taps his fingers at the beginning.

Onward and upward

1. A modern retelling of a parable:

"Or imagine a professor who has ten letters commending her service and volunteer work and who loses one. Won't she go through all the stacks of old correspondence and bill-stubs until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she will open up her blogging software and write, 'Rejoice with me! I found my lost letter that reappointed me to the city Beautification Council!' That is the kind of joy when a lost soul returns..."

Yes, I finally found what I think is the last missing piece of support. (Oh, I still have to deal with all the evaluations, bleaurgh, but at least I know where they all are). It wasn't absolutely essential but it's a nice thing to have, something else certifying my service.

2. I went over yesterday afternoon and looked at the model portfolio that the dean keeps on file. I was misremembering that you needed to write a narrative for each section documenting your contributions, but apparently you just do a short version of that in your letter of application. So I'm actually further along than I thought I was and closer to done. (I will be very glad when this is done.)

3.

4. Last night, I decided to get a pizza for dinner. This is a rare treat; I'm more likely to make my own, or make some kind of demi-pizza (like an English muffin "pizza."). I'm not a big fan of either of the big chains that have outlets in my town so I always get pizza from Roma's (a small, locally-run restaurant - probably the best restaurant in town) when I get it. Also, Roma's will do a true medium-sized pizza, where a lot of the chains have a "large" as their smallest size. A medium provides a generous first-evening dinner but leaves a manageable amount of leftovers (as opposed to bigger pizzas, where I'm pushing the leftovers around in the fridge 3-4 days later and going, "Aw man, I guess I'm going to have to eat this up sometime")

Also, Roma's pizza is good. It's more expensive than the chains but is definitely better and is worth the extra cost to me.

So I got a pizza, and made a little salad, and poured a glass of juice. And as I ate the pizza, I felt my shoulders dropping back to where they belong. All this past ten days, I've felt a bit like (I think it was) Alfred Molina's portrayal of Hercule Poirot - shoulders hunched up painfully, talking too fast and too loud in an adenoidal voice, ready to yell at people with little provocation. So hopefully I've passed the worst anxiety of this thing, and I can relax again and get back to doing what I am supposed to be doing: teaching, doing research, and working with students.

(As I said: I'll be very glad when the portfolio is done).

5. The week after the portfolio is due is our Mid-Fall Break. Despite my somewhat wavery pledge to be more frugal, I think this merits getting some cash and going to Longview for a day of shopping and just being away from town.

Modicum of success

On the advice of the Computer Services guy, I tried saving the files to a CD a different way. (And wound up using a CD-R, as we were all out of (I had taken the last two and messed them up) CD-RWs).

The files are on, they open without hangups regardless of whether they are opened from "My Computer" or from PowerPoint itself. (Because you know if it only worked one way, the other way is the way people would try).

So that's one thing done. And my second letter-of-recommendation person has her letter done. I still have a long way to go on this (or at least, it feels that way).

I did make plans for Saturday fieldwork; one of the students who's assisted me before will most likely be free then. And the weather will be pleasant. And I just need to get out and clear my head. I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday, and I think that's because I spent more time in class and less time working on the portfolio. And I wound up providing some individual guidance and cheering-up to a student who is struggling with a project, and felt much better for having helped her. (What kills me is, there's no check-box in the portfolio to demonstrate that kind of activity. And that's the thing I really value, and that I think I'm pretty good at.)

Now, if the dean's office is still open this afternoon, I'm off to look at the sample packet again and see what mine still lacks.

I did also get an "invitation" e-mail out about the upcoming meetings, that was something that was weighing on my mind.

Random morning thoughts

- I think I need one of those 1970s era posters of the kitten hanging off the tree branch, with the caption "Hang in there, baby" for my office now.

- Could that poster have been the proto-LOLcat?

- Sometimes I think all academics should be married. Preferably to someone like a plumber or someone who builds furniture: a person whose work is more grounded in the real world. It would help a lot these days to (a) have someone to "talk me down" when I get way too wound up about the stupid minutia of this portfolio and (b) have someone who feels like they have the time to mow the lawn and pick up the house. (Both are getting bad and it distresses me terribly).

- I'm going to try saving the bloody files to my "spare" flash drive (the one I carry papers to conferences on) and try taking it and a CD home and seeing if I can transfer the files from my home computer. If it works, I save the $50 or whatever it would cost to have the computer dudes do it; if it doesn't, I'm only out a little time.

- I need to dive into the student evaluations today. This is one thing I've been sort of dreading, because the dean asked me to "provide sample student comments" and I'm conflicted. Do I just provide good ones? Or do I go the honest-but-probably-foolish route and provide a randomly-selected sample? And I don't even want to re-read the "This class bores me" or "There was too much math" comments again, but will have to.

- I also need to: contact the other Education Section members and invite them to give papers, work on my paper, go out and collect the fall soil invertebrates, go out and do a fall vegetation sampling, write a homework for one of my classes, write an exam review for another, and work on getting used to the new stats package enough that I can teach students to use it. I can get the homework and the review done for sure today. Maybe I need to promise myself that if I work hard tomorrow and Friday on the packet, I can go out and do the veg sampling and soil collection Saturday; fieldwork will actually be a relief.

- In more serious matters: there was another campus shooter incident. At UT-Austin. (Which was the site of the first of these, back in '66 or so). The good news is their program of notification and alerts worked very well: every faculty, staff, and student wound up safe. Well, except for the shooter. But he wound up killing himself. (Which is, I suspect, the goal-in-part of any public shooter.)

My campus has a somewhat similar system to what UT has now. (We do not have the sirens/loudspeakers as yet, but I think we're supposed to get them). There's a system that will automatically flash a warning on every computer logged in to the Internet, and also sends messages to office, home, and cell phones. (I have my settings set NOT to send to my cell phone; it's usually only on when I'm far away from campus and not likely to come back right away). And I will admit to having a mental plan to keep the students safe if a notification comes during class: fortunately, many of my classes are taught in lab rooms that have connecting sturdy prep rooms with doors that stay locked - so I would just shepherd the students into the prep room, turn out the classroom lights (and power down the projector) so that it looked like no one was there. (In the other classrooms, it would be trickier: the doors are not lockable from the inside so I'd have to quick reach out in the hall, lock the door with my key, shut it behind me, turn out the classroom lights, and get everyone over on a wall away from windows or the door. And if there were a couple big strong guys willing to help me pile tables against the door, all the better.) In my office, it would be simple: shut the door (which is set to lock when shut), lights out, sit under my metal desk and wait for the all-clear.

It makes me sad that I have to have those plans in my mind, but I think I'd be afraid if I didn't have clear plans.

meltdown somewhat averted

It's mainly 2 things that are making me crazy:

1. A lot of the things I do, and that I value, there's no check-box in this process to show that I've done them. As I said earlier: a lot of the things I value don't HAVE value in this process, and that makes me nuts, because....it makes me feel like I shouldn't have been doing those things, and yet I know that's wrong, and it turns into a big ball of cognitive dissonance, which I just don't deal well with. There's nowhere to list the students you advise, formally or informally. There's nowhere that shows a lot of the volunteer work - I suspect my service in AAUW will count for little, for example. The time I spend out in the field - like I did for my late-day class today, where I share all kinds of natural history stuff like plant identifications, which the students seem to enjoy, doesn't really count anywhere.

In a way, it's kind of analogous to the "world vs. Kingdom" problem that's talked about in Christianity. That one of the most poisonous things the "world" does to us is it convinces us that the things that are truly valuable are actually without merit, and gives us things of false value and holds them up as avatars. (see: "Snooki.") And it's horribly easy to get sucked into that idea that because something is or is not valued by the "world," that that is the be-all and end-all of what is valuable.

One of my colleagues keeps telling me that this is a game I just have to play. I'm not good at these kinds of games because I tend to take them too seriously. (I will admit to - and this is a risky thing to do because you can hurt yourself - breaking the bad CD, the one that was claiming to have corrupted files, in half with my bare hands in a rage this afternoon.)

2. The CD-writer on my computer is, I think, busted. That, or the "wizard" that is supplied with the Windows interface is malevolent. Both CDs I tried came out messed up, and in different ways. (This is the first time I've ever tried saving anything on my office machine to CD. We all use flashdrives, which seem less breakable and easier, in my department.) I don't know. As much as I loathe spending more money on this project I think at this point the best route to go is to put the stuff on a flash drive, drive down to Computer Services, and hire them to put it on a CD-ROM for me. I'll just eat beans and rice more often, or something. Or continue to wear the same old worn overcoat this winter. (My granddad did that. But that was because he used his spare money to buy books)

One last thing, for those who know a bit more about CD-ROMs than I do: is there a difference between CD-R and CD-RW disks? I vaguely remember, back in the pre-flashdrive days, someone saying that saving to one model was better and easier and surer than the other. (CD-RWs are what we had on hand). I suppose I could go by CD-Rs if I knew they were better...but again, I tend to be suspicious of enterprises that require too many new tools.

(Hrm. Looking around a bit online, I wonder if my office computer (it's a slightly older model) could have a CD-R drive, rather than the newer RW drive, and it's a disk incompatibility issue.)

I don't know, a lot of that stuff is far enough out of my welkin that I can't always diagnose problems, and I can't always figure out the right way to do it, so my default reaction is "I screwed it up somehow"


The other thing that bothers me is how much this has taken over my life. When I'm not working on the packet, I'm thinking about the packet...wondering where some of the materials I don't have are, trying to compose the letter-of-application in my head. The truly frustrating thing is I'm having a hard time escaping it on my "downtime" - when I'm knitting, I think of it. Worse, when I try to sleep, I think of it. I've spent several nights lying awake for a long time thinking about what I have to do next, what I haven't done yet. (I can foresee obsessing about the not-being-able-to-get-the-files-on-a-CD tonight). I'm not good at "decoupling" my home life from my work life, and when something frustrates me in my work life, it colors everything else.

Hitting the wall

I have done it on this promotion packet. Everything's still in a scattered mess, I've tried multiple times to copy my presentation files to a CD-ROM and it seems that while I can get one or two on, the rest wind up getting screwed up or corrupted or something. (And no, it's not an issue of file size. I checked. I don't know, I may have to buy a new flash drive, save everything to the flash drive, and hire the computer guys to put it all on a CD-ROM for me. Because it HAS to be on a CD-ROM for the packet.)

I can't find stuff I think I need. I keep finding horrible stuff though, like the jar of potato pieces in salt water I used over a year ago to demonstrate osmosis to a class.

I haven't won a teaching award. That's one of the things listed to include in your packet. They give out one a year. I wonder if that means only people who won the award make full professor. I know I'm not that good of a teacher. But the truth is, this isn't Lake Woebegone, we can't all be above average. Some of us have to be lousy in order to make the superstars shine.

I've done so little. SO LITTLE. Other people here have written books, or run whole entire conferences, or gone off and done research far away. Or they've gotten giant grants. I've tried for giant grants twice and got turned down both times.

Compared to other people here, I suck so hard. I'm amazed I even got tenure in the first place. Everyone everywhere is better at everything than I am. I'm kinda-sorta good at a lot of things, but kinda-sorta good isn't good enough; I wish I were really darn good at one thing or two things. I wish I were better at being single-minded, that I was one of those people who could happily spend 40 hours a week on research over and above their teaching load. Who never needed sleep or downtime, who had no need to go visit family.

I don't think I'm going to get full professor and it's killing me right now. Why am I even bothering? Why do I bother to do anything?

And I can't even go home and cry; in an hour I have to go get the vans to take my evening class off on a field trip.

Pop the popcorn

There's a minor argument (I'd call it a "wankfest" but that's a ruder word than what I would normally use on here) spooling out via e-mail.

It's an argument, an issue, that does not touch on my life at all, but I'm an unwilling party to all the gall and bile that's being spewed.

I find myself of two minds about these: I know some people use it as an opportunity to people-watch, to figuratively pop some popcorn, crack a cold soda, and sit back and be entertained. I can't do that. It distresses me to see people that I had pegged as responsible adults behaving like petty children. (Seriously? You have a problem with one person and you sent your screed to everyone on the e-mail list? Just because you want everyone to know how upset you are with them?)

I will say I am ENORMOUSLY grateful that this is something that doesn't touch my world at all, that I can just ignore the angry accusations. One of the great gifts of maturity that I've gained is realizing that you can choose your battles, and that a lot of the time, you can just keep your mouth shut, that you don't have to weigh in on a topic if you don't want to. I've gone to plenty meetings lately where I told myself walking in, "You don't have a dog in this hunt. Just keep your ears open and your mouth closed." Realizing you don't have to contribute something, that you don't have to be the "fixer" who comes up with the grand solution, that it's really OK to let people fight it out sometimes, is a huge relief.

Not quite done

I did the last bit of the straps on Honeycomb last night, did the three-needle bind-off to attach the front to the back, wove in ends, and sewed the side seams.

By that time, I didn't have the energy to try picking up stitches for the bands, so that will have to come later. Probably not today; this is the day I have my late afternoon class and get home around 7.

I also re-measured the swatch and realized that the gauge varies from 3.5 to 4 sts to the inch depending on where you measure. Argh. So I don't know, it looks like neither needle is going to be ideal. Maybe this is just not a good yarn to work with. Or maybe it will all just average out in the final sweater.

***

I'm burning out fast on the promotion packet. Part of it is the sheer compulsive attention to detail it requires....everything in the right place, everything found and organized. (I still have not found my post-tenure reviews for 2005, 2007, and 2009, but I suspect I can get copies from the secretary; I think they keep all of those. It's also possible that they weren't done in those years; at one point we were told post-tenure review only had to be every three years).

There was also a bit of micromanagement that came down from On High that makes me annoyed and frustrated, and I'm trying to decide if it frustrates me enough to go to my chair with it (she is not the originator of the dictum) and point out that what I am being told NOT to do is actually something that has worked well for certain students in the past. Or whether to just do a quiet, passive-aggressive adjustment of how I do things so I'm complying with the dictum but also not doing the extra I used to do. I don't know. It annoys me. I hate being told what to do because damn it, I'm an ADULT. And also being told what to do when I am already teaching 15 hours, when I taught 8 hours in the summer, when I taught 14 hours last year...and never saw any kind of thanks or bonus for going over what we're expected to do, well, it annoys me.

Many years ago, at the end of the school year, one of our teachers crafted awards for all of us, based on some specific trait of our personalities he wanted to celebrate. Mine was the "Extra Mile" award. (I laughed kind of bitterly, years later, when I realized what the Scripture that came from was actually referring to, as the metaphor that the statement originated from). And yeah, that's something I've prided myself on over the years. But when you're going the extra mile, and someone tells you, "No, don't do it that way, do it THIS way" when "that" way has worked for you and your students....well, it's a temptation to just sit down by the side of the road and go, "You know, I'm tired. I think I'm gonna stop going that extra mile now."

I don't know. I'm going into one of those emotional cycles where I feel like no one appreciates anything that I do, that I'm just the little cog in the machine who would only be noticed if it broke. And knowing that's how I feel doesn't stop me from feeling that way.

So it doesn't help to have additional rules handed down to me in the name of Uniformity or whatever.

And it begins

The first item placed in my promotion-to-full-professor portfolio: My vita. (This is an academic's version of a resume. Better known as CV or curriculum vita).

Now I'm putting the published abstracts from papers I've given places in the required sheets.

I'm going to do this, slowly, over the next several days, so I don't get to the point where I feel like I'm going to scream and run away.

I don't know

I measured the swatch on the size 9s several times...I'll go back and check again. But sometimes I find dropping a needle size does actually loosen up my gauge, oddly enough, at least when I'm working with "huge" needles. I think I hold the slightly smaller needles differently.

Also, it's entirely possible I mis-measured the earlier part of the swatch and that it was 3 sts to the inch rather than 4. Also, it was a less nice-feeling fabric, too loose. (So that makes me wonder if I really was getting 3 sts to the inch on 10s).

***

I found out that my swap box still has not been sent. The swap-mama e-mailed me and said if I didn't have it in several weeks, to let her know and she'd try to arrange an "angel."

I reacted somewhat badly. I wrote back and said, "At this point I don't care any more. I don't want someone else to have to go to the trouble of filling in for a swapper."

And I wondered later why I said that. But I think this is another example of How Junior High School Shapes Your Adult Life Sometimes.

Not receiving the swap - even though it was the other person either being too busy or too broke or just flaking out - reminded me of my school days. I remember one instance where ALL the girls in my class got invited to another girl's birthday party. Well, all but me. And with typical little-girl cruelty, she made it very obvious that I was NOT invited, and everyone else was.

And I also think of the years spent eating alone in the cafeteria, especially after the person I thought was my BFF got invited to join the popular girls' table, and she passed me a note that essentially said, "I think, in light of my being popular now, it's best for me if we didn't hang around together at school any more."

And you know? It amazes me now but I accepted that. I just figured, "That's how it works. Some kids are popular, some kids aren't, I'm just one of the unlucky ones."

Once in a while some well-meaning teacher or volunteer would push another kid to sit and eat lunch with me, but I never liked that. I saw it for what it was: an attempt to get someone to pity-friend me, and I was both made sad and upset by that. I'd have rather been alone honestly, than had someone who was sitting there only because the teacher told them to.

So I think my bad reaction to the swap-mama's suggestion that she would get someone to be an "angel" for me was an echo of that in my mind. Not that my swap partner is neglecting me because I'm unpopular or anything; I'm sure there's something else going on, but it's hard not to feel a slight echo of that, of having been unpopular enough in school to have spent most lunch hours eating alone.

I think that's probably the origin of my suspicion of other people. I admit, in a few cases I've rebuffed instances of guys who were probably genuinely interested in me and were trying to flirt with me, because I'd had enough instances of people of EITHER gender acting like they were interested in being friends, only to have it to turn out to be part of some mean joke that their friends put them up to.

I think about those times now and I wonder if those kids realized just how poisonous what they were doing was. It takes me a very long time to warm up to most people; I've had people tell me, "You're a hard person to get to know" and I think it's because I hold enough of who I am back, because I still remember those instances of being made fun of after I revealed some aspect of my personality that was a little weird or atypical. (Many of my colleagues, for example, are not really aware that I knit and quilt.)

And yeah, I realize that most adults have matured past that point, and that the ones that aren't are themselves worthy of mockery and scorn, but still: it's hard to break old patterns. It's hard not to fear rejection even when it's probably unlikely.

It's funny, though. My mom said something to me the last time I was up there visiting that made me see her in a slightly different light. All through my growing up years, I had assumed my mother - my smart, capable, pretty mother - had not had problems with being unpopular in school, either because:

1. Her school was so small, that kids couldn't afford to be in cliques; that everyone kind of was friends with everyone else.

2. She WAS one of the popular girls. (But not the snotty kind of popular girl: the kind who is popular because they're nice and genuinely talented at stuff).

3. She was too cool to be concerned about popularity; she was above all that.

But this story she told me - it involved going with a couple of slightly older girls for ice cream and essentially being snubbed and treated like "poor trash" (my mom's family did not have that much money but then again, no one in the town where she grew up did).

And you know? It made me sad and angry. Sad that my mom may have gone through some of the same junk I went through in grade school. But also angry at those stupid snotty girls, enough that I would have liked to look them up (even though they are women in their 70s now and probably don't remember the incident) and go give them a talking to for being mean to my mom. (Silly, isn't it?)

You know, I don't know about popularity. As I said before, I'm kind of surprised the number of people I talk to (when we do get talking about school-days) who talk about having been unpopular or disliked. Maybe a lot of kids felt that way, even if it wasn't necessarily so bad. (But I remember it as being BAD for me.) Or maybe the popular kids are now embarrassed about how they treated some of their peers, and down play their popularity. Or maybe the weird kids who got picked on tend to be the ones who end up in academia (who are usually the people I wind up talking about the whole school-days phenomenon with) and the popular kids wound up, I don't know, in Management or Sales or something. (Or in university administration, which would actually explain some of the interactions I've had with administrators over the years).

I don't know. In one sense, I wouldn't go back and change things: I think having been unpopular made me a more compassionate person, more likely to see the other person as a person rather than as an obstacle. And it taught me fairly early on that it's preferable to be true to myself, because even by trying to be someone else I wasn't going to get popular, so it was better to be true to myself and slightly miserable because I was unpopular, than to be doubly miserable because I was denying who I was AND failing to achieve popularity as a result.

I think it also kept me closer to my family; they were the only people (at times) I felt I could reliably count on not to make fun of me.

So anyway: sometimes when a person reacts in an unexpected (and perhaps uncharacteristic) way, it's that there's something else going on, that the situation reminds them of something in their past, even though it might not necessarily be the same.

Swatching for new

I'm almost done with Honeycomb. I've done all the decreases on the straps for the front - I have to knit another inch or so on these. Then I join the shoulders, sew the side seams, and pick up the stitches for the ribbing at neckline and armholes.

I doubt I'll get it done yet today; you have to be alert to do the picking-up-stitches evenly and I'm starting to get tired.

I did also swatch for what I am pretty sure is going to be my next project.



This is the swatch of the Plymouth Baby Alpaca Brush for the Whisk Cardigan out of the most recent KnitScene. You can't really tell in the photo but I changed needle sizes about midway in the swatch. The pattern called for a 10 1/2, the yarn called for a 9, so I tried a 10. It was too big; I was getting 4 sts to the inch rather than the 3.5 the pattern calls for (and that is great enough to make the difference between a decently-fitting sweater and one that's too big and sloppy. Even with blocking). So I dropped down to a 9 (which is 1/2 mm smaller in diameter, you wouldn't think it would make a difference) and got gauge.

Now I have to contemplate, as I work to finish Honeycomb: do I do what would be the "typical" size I think of for me (44 1/2 inches finished bustline), or do I drop back a size (to 40"), seeing as the fabric is fluffy and kind of stretchy, and after all, it's a cardigan designed to be worn open? (And I generally only wear cardigans over cotton blouses or t-shirts or thin turtlenecks).

I didn't bind off the swatch - in fact, I'm not doing what you're "supposed" to, which is wash and block the swatch, as I'm close enough (880 yards vs. 853 yards) to what's listed as the required amount that I want to be sure to have all the yarn available to knit with - I will probably be raveling the swatch back. (As it is, I'm sure I will wind up sewing this up with embroidery floss or perle cotton or matching-color sockyarn instead of the fat, fluffy alpaca, because sewing-up is less of a pain with thinner smoother yarn)

This will be very different from Honeycomb: bulky weight, and all stockinette. (I can even knit while I read for much of it; there's very little shaping to it - which is another reason why I'm wondering if the 40" size might not be better; I find on bigger people more fitted clothes look better, if you try to "hide" in loose clothes they often look a bit sloppy and make you look even larger)

Actually, scrutinizing the schematic, with all the measurements: the 40" size should work fine. There's enough overlap worked into the front (well, the fronts are supposed to "roll" a bit) and the sleeves will be large enough and I think it will be long enough (or, heck, I can knit it to the slightly longer length anyway). And since the 40" size is just a bit smaller, I can be more secure in that I will have enough yarn (always a concern when I'm using yarn not bought specifically for a pattern).

Another daily thought

This one comes from another blogger. Kirbanita, who writes over at Take Joy, uses this as her header:

"In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, war spreading, families dying, the world in danger, I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover. —Wendell Berry "

I need to remember that. That I can figuratively sow clover while all the bad stuff swirls around me.

Last week, I had a student stop in - this was someone who had taken Biostats from me last year - and thank me for teaching her how to do chi-square analysis (not all intro stats courses get to that, believe it or not), because she had to do chi-square as part of a genetics lab and it was easier for her because she already knew it. (This is also someone who told me that the second-year chem course she took was easier for having had soils lab, where I expected everyone to know what all the glassware was)

I also heard back from all my letters-of-recommendation people. They are all willing to do it; in fact two people (who don't know each other) remarked they would be "honored." (Honestly, I sometimes think other people see things in me I don't see in myself.)

And one of the people on CPAAG has put out a call for warm things for a women's shelter near her. I have a warm but plain scarf I knitted that I realized I had no use for (and was probably too bulky for the Red Scarf Project). So I'm going to send that off. And I'm going to check in the box where I put things that I knit "just to knit" and not that I would use - stuff I save for gifts and such - to see if there's anything else appropriate. The thought that my efforts may go to warm a person far away (in Canada, actually, where it gets a lot colder than it does here) makes me feel a little better about how this semester is going: by mailing that scarf off I will have done at least one tangible useful thing for someone.

I'm still waiting to see if the trash-off is going today; it's wet out but not actually raining. I have to run over there in a few minutes to see if they're set up for it or if they're postponing until next week. I kind of hope they do postpone; for one thing, it's miserable to pick up wet trash, and for another, if we do it next week, the Green Club will have met and the trash-off will be more publicized. (And I can take what remains of this morning and start assembling the promotion portfolio.)

thought for today

I did go out yesterday evening and get my portfolio supplies. (Just about $70, thank you very much, and I really hope it's not a $70 spent in futility).

I also picked up a couple things for myself - Target had a set of the Benji movies on their $5 dvd rack. I figured what the heck - I think the original "Benji" was one of the first movies I saw in a "real" theater, where we paid full price (as opposed to at the library or on my dad's campus). I remember it fondly. I know not all movies I liked as a kid I will still like at 41 (though a surprising number of them I still do). But I figured: it's $5. If I decide after watching the first one that they don't still appeal to me, I can always either donate them to the day-care that is run out of my church (as I remember, the Benji movies were pretty wholesome) or, if they wouldn't want it, give it as a gag gift to my brother (he was even a greater fan of Benji, back in the day).

I also bought a copy of the new issue of the Debby Bliss knitting magazine. I don't know that I'd knit anything out of it (though then again, one of the ostensibly-for-men patterns is a very nicely done v-neck sweater: it has a double cable running up the front, which then splits and runs up each side of the v-neck: very clever). But I enjoy looking at knitting magazines (even the ads, sometimes) so it was worth it to me. It also had an interview with a young designer (of whom I had never heard) named Anna Wilkinson. The interview was the source of the thought:

"The pressure of fashion causes people to be self-conscious and take themselves far too seriously."

She also referred to Grey Gardens (which I've never seen but kind of know the idea behind) and how Little Edie referred to her "costume for the day" and Ms. Wilkinson remarked that people don't have fun with fashion so much any more.

And you know, I think that actually sums up maybe some of the problems we have in our society: we take things far too seriously that should not be taken seriously. We are blessed to live in a world where, for many of us, the Big Problems: food, shelter, safety, freedom from sudden infectious disease - have been solved. You don't hear of people in your town dropping dead of dysentery or of major epidemics of typhus. (It is, unfortunately, much different in the developing world or in places where natural disasters or wars have hit. But I daresay most everyone reading this lives in comfort and safety). And I suppose it's human nature: as I once said, it was the anxiety-ridden caveman, always looking over his shoulder for threats, that survived to found the next generation of little cavemen, and his mellower brother who got eaten by the sabre-tooth. So we look for problems.

And in the modern developed world, there aren't that many big problems, at least not immediate problems in the sense that a person's own likelihood of continuing to exist the next minute are threatened. So we look for other problems.

Hence, the spates of letters-to-the-editor of food magazines: how DARE they feature Christmas cookies in a magazine supposedly devoted to healthy cooking. How DARE you treat corn as a vegetable. How DARE you feature an article about that crazy kook who says it's really probably OK for us not to worry too much about vitamins.

Or the rise of "alpha parenting," where some parents act as if raising a child requires all this Gnostic-grade understanding, which they of course have, and if you don't listen to them and do exactly as they do, your child will grow up to be a criminal. Or worse, an underachiever.

And the truth of the matter is: we've been eating food and raising children for tens of thousands of years. (Hundreds of thousands, really). And we've not screwed it up too badly yet.

I think that's part of what makes me tired of the How Dare You brigade. The other thing is the whole idea of the prescriptiveness of it: My attitude is, if you don't want to expose yourself or your family to Christmas cookies, then fine, don't make them. But don't tell other people that they should not engage in that small pleasure, that small comfort. The whole "I know better than you" attitude just bugs me.

But the other thing about the quotation about taking themselves far too seriously hits closer to home. I think part of my distress this fall is that I've somehow lost the ability to laugh at the stupid absurd things that happen, and instead let myself be annoyed by them. I'm taking things far too seriously (like, people grabbing graduated cylinders when I tell them to use a beaker for something in lab) instead of just shrugging, saying to myself, "people are strange" and moving on.

I'm also taking the Full Professor application process way too seriously. There are a number of eye-rolling things about it, and I'm sure once it's done (provided I am successful) I can laugh about it. And really, in the grand scheme of things, as I said before, it's NOT important. (And I keep trying to convince myself of that). I'm trying to envision the portfolio as a circus hoop and myself as a small white poodle in a ruffly collar, and all I have to do is jump through the hoop. Not dig my heels in and go "this level of detail is stupid" or "I don't have time to do this" or "$70 worth of supplies, are you KIDDING?," I just need to jump through the stupid hoop.

More on music

Another thought on my rekindled love (though it never really went away) for Bach: The first time I really came to love Bach was during a very turbulent time in my life, when things were upsetting, and I felt like storms were raging around me. The thing I loved about Bach was that to me, his music seemed to present calm and order, an alternative to all the Sturm und Drang that people around me seemed to be engaging in.

At other times, when life was calmer, I found myself gravitating more towards the Romantics - and even to opera.

Recently, I was particularly drawn to the British Romantics.

But then, this fall, stuff started blowing up. Some of it I've talked about on here, some stuff I've had to keep off-blog. A lot of it involves my fairly calm and boring life going on in the middle of other people having huge issues, spewing hatefulness, fighting, blah blah blah.

And so, I go running back to Bach. Because he presents this orderly picture, this ideal of what the cosmos could be. Bach calms me down and reminds me that there's an underlying order to things, even if I can't see it just now.

(I hope that's not a sign of anything worse. I read today that the fellow who committed a horribly public suicide in Harvard Yard wrote about his fascination with Bach: the education blogger writing about him there notes that Bach is "the most orderly of composers," the implication, I suppose, being, when your mind is becoming dangerously disordered, you cling to order. Or something.

I don't know. I don't see - I HOPE - any creeping disorder in my mind. Though I will say I've already gone home and cried more times this fall than I have in the 2 years previously.)

I'm definitely taking myself out to dinner tonight, in addition to the Office Max trip. I heard another piece of news that suggests an ugly storm may be brewing, one I have no part of, no fault in, but will have to weather nonetheless.)

Also, not to be melodramatic or anything - because I know the line was originally delivered during a far worse time than what I am experiencing - but this morning I saw the Churchill quotation, "When you're going through hell, keep going" somewhere. I'm going to remember that as a mantra. When I want to just sit down with my head on my desk because there are SO MANY PAPERS TO GRADE, it's a lot more productive to start on that first paper and just grit my teeth and keep on working.)

A proper dinner

In retrospect, the rough-draft evaluation wasn't that bad. As it turned out, only 8 of the 19 students turned them in. (Well, a 9th did, but apparently her file was corrupted; my co-teacher said it crashed his computer multiple times when he tried opening it). And one of the 8 was an extra-diligent person who had handed hers in LAST week and which I had already read and commented on.

So they're done.

I decided this evening to make myself a proper dinner. This is one way that I try to remind myself that my well-being matters, too. (And really, it's not usually that great an effort: tonight's dinner took about 10 minutes to prepare. Because the steak was thin and I like my steak on the rare side)

So, I cooked up a rib eye steak I had bought as a test of the "alternate" grocery store in town's meat. (The main grocery store here, I will not buy meat from for various reasons). I kind of knew what to expect when I saw how little marbling was in the steak (none of the ones on offer had any, really). It came out pretty tough but I guess it still had protein. And iron. I think part of my distress may be I'm not getting enough iron. But the OTC supplements disagree with me, and I guess even though I eat a fair amount of spinach, it's still not enough. (If I had more time in the mornings, I'd make Cream of Wheat, which is pretty well fortified. But I don't.)

I also made a salad, and for variety opened the can of pickled beets (that I bought by accident, thanks so much Kroger for mixing the cans on the shelf, so I can't use the "pickled" beets for non-pickled type dishes) and cut up a few and added them, which made the salad a little more appealing. (I get very tired of salads.)

And I heated up a can of corn, which, depending on how nutritionally purist you are, is either a vegetable or a starch. (The most recent issue of Eating Well, IIRC, had a very indignant letter from someone asking them how they DARED count corn as a vegetable when it is obviously NOT. You know, I don't find those kinds of letters as amusing as I once did.)

So I had a reasonably-balanced dinner. (Later on, if I feel like I want it, I'll make a cup of either lemon-ginger herb tea or decaffienated green tea and open up the package of Newman's ginger-sandwich cookies I bought the last time I was at Kroger.)

I've also decided that tomorrow afternoon, barring any kind of OH NOES HORRIBLE UNEXPECTED THING I NEED TO DO, I'm going to go down to Sherman after I get out of class at 3. To buy my binder and page protectors and such. (The binder, with all its specific requirements - size and pockets and all - makes me think of the old Trapper Keeper craze of about 1981 or so, where if you didn't have a "real" Trapper Keeper, or you didn't have one with the "right" design on it, you were subject to the scorn of your classmates. Well, I was subject to their scorn anyway, Trapper Keeper or no. But I do remember I had a red one. (I can't remember if that was by choice - I really wasn't into having ponies or kitties on things back then - or if it was all that was left.))

And I'm going to go to the halfway-decent Chinese buffet again for dinner. Because I want a dinner out. And I'm also probably going to stop at either Hobby Lobby or the bookstore or the JoAnn's and buy myself some little treat (even if it's just a few more skeins of floss).

Partly because it's been a hard week, but partly because I'm now to the point where any time I think of working on my promotion portfolio, I kind of want to throw up. I'm starting to get apprehensive about it again, and starting to tell myself, "But you don't have outstanding teaching evaluations. And you never got an external grant" and all the hundred things that I DIDN'T do.

So I'm telling myself: If you don't get it it doesn't really matter but I'm having a hard time convincing myself of that. (I wish I did not have such a need for external validation.)

Argh, just, Argh.

As much as I've tried to confine my whines to 140-character outbursts these days, I think I need to vent here.

This is just not a good week. I have a critical mass of students this year who either think they should be entitled to hand in late papers or who feel like there's no need to read instructions in lab or who have "stuff" happen, necessitating make-up exams and the like.

And you know? I'm tired. If all my students show up to class, I have a total of 125 total students. One hundred and twenty five people to deal with. If even ten percent of those need make up exams - and of course, they will be evenly distributed across the classes - I'm writing four separate make up exams. (That is, if I can get the make-up takers to take the exams all on the same day or if I figure they won't talk to the others).

I have had so many bizarre excuses as to why I should accept people's late papers it makes my head spin. And when I say no, I get frowny faces and rolled eyes and that little disapproving "tsch!" sound that some women make. And I know I'm over sensitive, but it just wears on me and eats at me.

On top of the usual cat-herding, I'm frantically trying to put together my promotion portfolio (and dangit, I was going to e-mail my other letter-of-recommendation writers this morning and forgot). And I have to find time to drive the hour's round trip to the Office Max* and buy the 3-ring binder and what-all I need. And write my presentation on plagiarism for OAS. And plan for a couple of fall sample dates of fieldwork. And try to work in an hour of piano practice.

(*yes, I COULD mail order it, except (a) my mail order juju is very bad right now - apparently a swap I thought I got hosed in, the package got lost, and also the Folio Books order I placed back in August is somewhere in limbo in its way to me, so I'd expect that an Office Max order would probably show up 2 days after the portfolio was due. and (b) Because of the strict requirements as to style of page protectors, tabbed dividers, &c., I really need to go and LOOK at them before I buy. (You think I'm joking? I wish I were joking.)

(And DAMMIT, I am NOT going to go the route I did in high school - decide I am too busy and give it up. Other people have spouses and kids, other people do stuff. I deserve to AT LEAST be able to play the piano)

I snapped at a student in class today. I feel really bad about it. He was one of my former soils guys, and since we were doing soils lab, he half-jokingly said, "Since we've already had this, may we be excused?"

And I'm sorry. I knew he was joking, but: given all the repetitive and futile seeming things I do in a day?

I remarked, "Don't start with me. You can choose; it's worth ten points."

Later, he came and apologized for being "offensive" (I suppose one of the benefits of normally being a fairly amicable person is that people realize when you're NOT that they've either crossed a line or you're already stressed out). I apologized too, and explained that I was just having a difficult day. So I hope it's cool.

And tonight, I have rough drafts of GIS papers to look over. So my plan is: get home by 3, if I at all can, do 20 minutes piano practice, read five papers, do 20 more minutes, wash my hair, read five more papers, eat dinner, read five more papers and...I think enough people flaked on doing a rough draft that I don't have more than 15 papers to read. But gah. I'm getting worn to a frazzle and that's not good this early in the semester.

I'm getting to the point again where I look at my yarn and my fabric and my books and despair, and think, "I should just give this all away. I'm never going to have the chance to enjoy using/reading it, and it just makes me sad to look at it." I don't know. I keep saying "someday I'll have the time" but it seems that every semester gets busier and worse.

How do people who are parents manage? Do they just not sleep? What? I guess I'm glad I never married, and that I don't especially pine for a boyfriend right now, because I wouldn't have the time to devote to a guy that he deserved. It's awful and it's sad and I don't know how to change it.

Dear old Bach

Finally, my piano teacher deemed me "expert enough" at the arrangement of the first part of Moonlight Sonata and moved me on to another piece. (I'm still working on "Hunting Song," though).

The new piece I've started on is an arrangement of one of the themelets from "Wachet auf," better known to Anglophones as "Sleepers awake"

I said before I didn't like Schumann much, after playing a couple of his pieces? Well, I've decided after learning a few Bach pieces that I love and respect Bach even more as a composer than I did before.

For one thing, his pieces have that beautiful logic to them. Things make sense to me in them. The chord progressions sound "right," like there is no other progression that would work better. (I'm noticing that with the left-hand arrangement for "Wachet Auf" - at least in the first part).

I once had a friend who disdained Bach, who claimed his music was "too mathematical" for them. I don't know about that - it was the precision and the order that I always loved so much. Maybe I'm excessively left-brained (to use a concept that's apparently recently been discredited), but I like that order.

Madeline L'Engle once wrote about "chaos vs. cosmos," where the idea was that some people tended to believe there was an underlying order to the universe, that somehow things would sort out right at the end, and artists who ascribed to that belief would present "cosmos" - sort of an ordered rightness, the idea that there is an underlying good. On the other hand, "chaos" was people who did not see those patterns, who did not believe (I may be over extending her ideas here) that there was an underlying Good to the universe, a Good that would eventually win out over Evil.

Bach had to have been someone who believed in cosmos. I don't mean just because he was involved in the church, because he directed choirs and wrote lots of sacred music; when I listen to his music I can *hear* that he believed there was an underlying order to the universe. And I love that, I find it tremendously comforting. Listening to Bach makes me feel better when I'm distressed.

So it makes me happy to have another piece of his to work on, one that's familiar but now that I see the music for it (and yes, it's an arrangement of just one of the themes, but still), it's like I can see the underlying structure of his "argument," so to speak, it's like I can see some of his reasoning (the chord progressions) and it makes sense.

It's kind of like, I don't know...having heard for years about some ecological theory, maybe even teaching it, and then finally seeing the data and data analysis that led up to the development of the theory. It's kind of like a peek behind the curtain.

Or it's like those rare moments where, for just a second, just a tiny second, I feel like I understand things, like the cosmology and God and everything kind of makes sense. (Of course I immediately forget it, and I maybe never actually "had" it, but for a moment I feel like I understand).

I will say I'm a bit disappointed (I ran through the entire right-hand part of the piece; I'm supposed to focus on the first dozen measures or so with both hands) that the section I'm working from doesn't go far enough to include the tune of "A Mighty Fortress is our God," which Bach worked into the cantata later on. That's one of my favorite hymns and it sounds so good as part of the cantata. (When the recording of it I have is playing, I sing along - even though I have to reach 'way down' because the setting is really too low for me - when that part comes along). I love the hymn both for the tune and for the words. (both written by Luther; part of the words are based on Psalm 46).

It's funny how sometimes your own feelings color the meaning. There's a line in there that is something like, "And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us," which I know really means that people are tempted to slide into depravity, I often hear it in a way that I think perhaps more reflects my own feelings and life: I "hear" the word "undo" as more like "be overwhelmed by," in the sense of, as when I watch the evening news and put my head in my hands, because there's so much cruelty in this world, and it's easy to give in to despair. Or something.

So anyway, even though (after 2 days' practice) I can only barely pick out the first dozen measures or so with both hands, it still pleases me to be playing it.

Baked a cake

That was the main focus of my afternoon after piano lesson today. We're having a departmental lunch tomorrow and I offered to do a cake. And of course, I always enjoy doing stuff from scratch, so I baked a cake from one of my older cookbooks.

It's called "Dinette spice cake." The recipe came from the Betty Crocker Cooking For Two cookbook I have. I have no idea if this book is still in print or not - mine is actually a vintage 1958 copy, the little spiral bound version. I got it from my mom, who somehow wound up with two copies. (I think she said at least one was a wedding gift; I think the big-format one, which she still has, was the wedding gift).

If the book is no longer in print, it should be brought back. It's an excellent "basic" cookbook for people wanting to make small quantities. (And extra fun: it is the one with the somewhat-famous illustrations by Charles Harper, a well-known midcentury artist, who is enjoying sort of a posthumous renaissance right now).

The food in it is fairly plain, but as I've said before: I like plain food. It's the book where I got my recipe for Senate bean soup, it's the book that supplied the brownie recipe that my mother *always* used when my brother and I were growing up. It has good sections on how to do the basic preparations of meat and vegetables, and "how much should I buy for two," and what a small kitchen really needs in the way of tools.

It also has an interesting "recipes from foreign lands" section at the end (some being more authentic than others; the German menu seems to be one of the least spurious-sounding to me. And they classify Hawaii as a "foreign land," well, I guess it kind of was, seeing as the book came out before it was actually a state.)

Anyway, I doubled the "Dinette Cake" recipe, and used the "spice cake" variation of it.



However, one change: the original recipe (for an 8 by 8 pan) called for 1/2 teaspoon of cloves - which would be a whole teaspoon in my doubling. That's way too much cloves! If you had a toothache, it might be good, but otherwise, it would put your mouth to sleep.

So instead, I put in the requested amount of cinnamon (for the doubled recipe) and then just added 1 teaspoon of the Penzey's "Cake Spice" (which has some cloves in it, also cinnamon, nutmeg, and star anise).

It smelled fantastic while baking and came out looking very nice (see above), so I hope it tastes as good as it looks.

(One other change: the order of adding ingredients seemed strange. It told you to mix all the dry ingredients - sugar and flour and leavening and spices - and then mix in the shortening, then add the eggs, and finally add the milk. That seemed to me like it might promise a tough cake (too much mixing once the flour is in is bad), so I defaulted to my standard cake procedure: cream shortening and sugar first, then add eggs and vanilla, then combine the dry ingredients and add alternately with milk. The batter came out very light textured and the cake rose well, so I think I may have made a good decision there.)

I also did the recommended frosting - called "easy penuche frosting." It's reminiscent of a cooked caramel frosting my mother used to make. That took some doing; you have to boil together the butter, brown sugar, and milk, and then wait for-ev-er while it cools (and DO NOT stick a knuckle into the still-hot mixture to test. Sugar syrup burns.)

But I finally got it cooled, beaten with the powdered sugar, and got the cake frosted.



I tried a bit of the leftover frosting and it is extremely sweet. I hope putting a thin layer on top of a fairly plain cake will tone down the sweetness.

(I once said I wasn't crazy about frosting cakes. Part of that is that I'm just not that fond of making frosting, but the other part is most non-fiddly (i.e., not 7-minute boiled) frostings are excessively sweet to my taste. I said that this frosting was reminiscent of a caramel frosting my mother used to make but I do not remember it as being so sweet. Then again, maybe when I was a child, extremely sweet things appealed to me more than they do now).

(Incidentally, I love the seven-minute boiled frosting - I think some people call it "seafoam" but I know that as a boiled frosting made with brown sugar - it is about my favorite frosting but it's such a pain to make, especially with just one person to work on it, so I never do it. My mother used to make a wonderful cake where she'd make a plain white cake, then frost it with the seven minute frosting into which she had added ground-up raisins).

I enjoy baking from scratch but rarely have the time to do it, unless I have somewhere to take the finished product. I think it would be interesting to go back through the various "vintage" cookbooks (I own quite a few and I think my university library has a few) and extract some of the unusual old recipes and bake them up just to see what they're like. And blog on them. (Though the blogosphere being what it is, I'm sure there's already someone out there already cooking their way through vintage cookbooks, probably even more impressively-vintage cookbooks than the ones I own).

And also, there'd be the problem of finding enough people willing to eat up the results, especially for the larger cakes or batches of cookies.

One thing I want to make some time is a recipe called "Bishop's Bread" that is in several of my older cookbooks (I think the Settlement House cookbook has one variation. It's kind of a shortbread sort of thing, with nuts and fruit in it.

Weekend's too short

Or something.

I will probably, later today, manage to get to the point of dividing for the "straps" on the front of Honeycomb, but I don't anticipate getting much further than that. (I'm going to write down each row as I knit it, because you're doing two shapings at once (neck AND armhole) and it's too easy for me to get messed up on something like that, especially with the pick-up-put-down style of knitting I tend to do.

I am considering letting a new project cut in line in the queue. The new KnitScene (which is a nice issue - Fall 10, that is - and has a bunch of stuff I want to knit in it) has a very simple cardigan (called the Whisp cardigan) knit of chunky weight brushed alpaca.

And I got to thinking: I have a bunch of chunky-weight brushed alpaca I originally bought half-thinking of doing a vest out of, then decided I had overbought for a vest. So I went and checked. I have 880 yards of the yarn. The pattern I want to make, in my size, in the shortest length (which is probably the most flattering one on me anyway) takes 849 yards. And it's ALL STOCKINETTE. In CHUNKY WEIGHT YARN. Which means it will be gratifyingly fast after messing with the sport-weight for Honeycomb. (Plus the cable-cross row every seven rows on Honeycomb). And after dealing with fingering weight for Thermal. (Yes, I still plan to finish Thermal, it's just my big push right now is on Honeycomb, and then I really want to start something new).

The alpaca I have is a very light tan color, which will go well with a lot of things I have, and a cardigan is really more useful to me than a vest anyway.

Other than that, I'm tired again.

I think there is something stressful about clearing out lots of stuff. I'm not a "hoarder" by any stretch (I admit I watch those shows some, in horrified fascination - I begin to twitch if there are two or three stains on my kitchen floor or a dirty glass in the sink, I couldn't manage to pile enough stuff in a room you couldn't walk through it. Yes, I understand that it's probably somehow related to OCD or other neurotransmitter issues, but still). But there is something painful about taking all the drafts of a manuscript, looking at them, going, "Two separate journals rejected this. It's six years old. Should I save it to try again or trash it?" and deciding to trash it. All that work.

(In a way, it's not unlike ripping back the entire front - or more - of a sweater. No. It's like ripping back the entire front of a sweater knit Fair Isle style using the traditional British "jumper weight" yarn, meaning there are like 150 or more stitches per row. Only, when I rip back a sweater, it's that there's clearly something wrong with it. Sometimes journal articles get rejected not because they are no good, but because you don't have a sufficiently-known "name" in the field, or the journal has already published "too much" of that kind of research in a year, or one of the reviewers was really having a dyspeptic fit when s/he read it. So sometimes the rejection is a "not clearly my fault" thing and that makes the rejection - and tossing out the manuscript and data - all the more painful. But you can't keep everything.)

It's painful. It was even somewhat painful to toss out a draft and some of the old data from my Master's thesis - a thesis which I successfully defended in December 1994 and which has long since had its publication value wrung from it. And tossing out stuff from the last time I TAed Vegetation Management - 1997 or so. (And the prof who taught that is now retired). I mean, intellectually, I know it's better to get rid of all that stuff. And on some level, it's a bit of a relief to just sever the ties with failed projects. But on the other hand, it's really hard for me not to think of the hours of work that went into what is now going in the dustbin and, and cringe.

I suppose part of it is also just being in around all that dust that accumulates in stacks of paper (and there was also a bit of frass in a few papers - we had a meal-moth problem in the building a year or two ago, thanks to someone bringing in an improperly-fumigated bird skin). So probably part of my distress is allergy overload, coupled with the fact that it's been unbelievably humid here (in church today, I was propping my weight on my arms and singing *very low* during the hymns we are supposed to stand for, because I know from experience that overusing my voice when it's this humid can either make me start coughing, or I can get lightheaded. As I did in class on Friday and wound up having to teach sitting on a high stool instead of wandering around the room as I normally do).

I didn't sleep well last night. I don't know if it was the humidity, or allergies, or the psychic discomfort of throwing away so much stuff that had been important to me at one point. (That actually may be part of it: confronting the fact that so much of my work that I thought was important at one time really is quite meaningless). At one point, I was dreaming that I was somewhere in my late teens again, and my younger brother was MUCH younger (than he is compared to me in real life) and there was another brother midway between him and me. And we hurried to get home because there was a tornado headed our way, our parents were still out doing something, but we just had to get home and into the storm shelter (which was actually like a finished basement; there was a room that was set up like a bedroom for our parents, and another room with three couches in it that we used as a bedroom when storms were bad. And I remember being very distressed that my parents weren't there, not just because I was worried about them but because I hated having to be the one in charge in such a dangerous situation). And I remember debating at one point running up to my "real" bedroom (in the aboveground part of the house) and getting my teddy bear, on the one hand, if I had to be the head of the household, it wouldn't look very reassuring to my brothers, but on the other hand - I really wanted my teddy bear. And at one point, the tornado was coming through, and we were all cowering under the sofas. And then I guess in the dream we all sacked out, each on our sofa, for a while, and I remember in the dream waking up, and going to check on the in-the-storm-shelter bedroom my parents used, and they were not there.

And I just had one of those horrible moments of dismay. I don't know if other people experience those in dreams, but that moment where you realize, "Oh, no. My life has changed utterly and completely now, what am I going to do?" (I will say I have also had that feeling in a dream where I inadvertently killed someone. And in another where I realized I had become pregnant out of wedlock).

And I remember standing there, looking at the empty room, and feeling both horror that something very bad had happened to our parents, and the fearful realization that now I was the parent, that I would have to drop out of school (I was about 17 in this dream) and start working to provide for my brothers. And wondering how on earth someone goes about that.

And I walked upstairs, to see if any of the house was still standing. And it was. And I heard someone in the upstairs bathroom. And I crept up, ready to run if it was an intruder. And it was my mother; they had gotten home late the night before after the storm. And then I heard my dad snoring in their "upstairs" bedroom. And I remember feeling that incredible flood of relief...and then I woke up.

And even though the dream ended well, rather than sadly, I still had to get up and get out of bed and go stare at some anime on Cartoon Network (normally I use the Weather Channel for such things, but in this case I thought it unwise) before going back to bed.

But I hate that. I hate how intense and vivid my bad dreams can be, to the point where I remember the details so well the next day. Sometimes it's almost like they depress me a little bit; I react to them almost like I react to a bad event in my "real" life. (Sometimes I kind of wish it would be possible to turn off dreaming for a night or two, just to get some better rest. Yes, I know, REM sleep is supposedly the sleep that lets our brains repair themselves, but some nights my REM sleep leaves me feeling more tired than when I went to bed.)

Cleaning the office

Augh. I guess I last did an extensive office clean in 2006.

I decided it was time again, mainly because that was the best way (I figure) to find all the odds and ends of stuff I need for my promotion packet.

I started yesterday, with my computer desk. Cleared off the entire top, rearranged the "tea area" (such as it is - a small place next to the monitor (this is a computer desk with an elevated shelf for the monitor). The tea area holds my eat, plus a few "medicinal" items (Ibuprofen, hand cream, the herbal insect repellent I have to use now when I go out in the field) and also a small "emergency" packet of nuts and a couple fruit bars. (You never know when a freak thunderstorm will make it impossible to leave and get the lunch you had planned. Or, more sinisterly, there could be an "incident" on campus requiring us all to lock ourselves in our offices (for safety) for a period of time).

I also found my multitool and sewing kit, so they reside there now.

On the spot below that, is where I keep the tea mugs (I have two that I use, plus one now in use to hold pencils) and office supplies (chalk, paper clips, scissors, tape, tissues).

On the other side of the monitor shelf is my Happy Fun Spot, which got badly neglected and buried. This is where I keep all the odd little gew gaws I've collected. There's an upended (empty) turtle shell I found after a prairie burn (it holds business cards). I also have a nice old photo (15 years old, now) of my family and my uncle's family taken at his lake house. And I have the little Chanchito my friend Chris brought me back from a trip to South America. And the plastic frogs and lizards I bought to make the place seem more friendly. And a sand painting from the gift shop at (IIRC) Glen Canyon Dam when I was out there years back (It's a little landscape, made inside an inverted shot glass, and sealed up).

And I have the thermometer I poached from the ecology lab, so I can complain about how hot it is in my office. (Well, I have to either complain in degrees Celsius or do a conversion....) Right now it's 27* C, which is not too terrible, considering what it's been.

Of course, once I got done with that part, it slowed down considerably, because most of what I've been doing now is sorting papers. We're asked to keep (IIRC) 3 years of back student papers in case someone contests a grade. (I have never had that happen).

So far, I've got the tops of the filing cabinets clear. And I think I'm going to use the strategy in the future of (a) storing the box of "not legal to toss yet" student papers on one, and get some bookends for the other, and keep my textbooks-in-current-use on it. So I won't be so tempted to pile stuff there.

(Seriously? I could use an assistant just to deal with all the papers that cross my desk in a week.)

The other problem is tossing the papers. I TRY to recycle, but in my town, to recycle office paper, it must be shredded. Do you know what a drag it is to stand over a shredder with a copier box full of papers? So I'm going through and all the "non secure" items are going in a trash bag which (sorry, Mama Gaia) are going tot he landfill. Because, you know? I've lived in this office for four years with a box of "I'll get to shredding it someday" papers and I AM TOO BUSY WITH OTHER THINGS to do it.

The student papers, though, I still have to shred. Wharrrrrgarblllll. I don't know if I broke the shredder yesterday (it quit working) or if it just shut itself down (it does that after being used for a period of time).

Too bad I can't call Fawn Hall out of retirement (or whatever she's doing now) and get her to do my shredding for me. There aren't even any sensitive government papers involved!

Yard work ugh

I HAD to mow the lawn yesterday. HAD to. It was getting really bad.

There's one patch of the lawn - it's in the bit down between the sidewalk and the street, and technically the city, and not I, owns it, but I still have to maintain it. It's gotten invaded with some kind of heavy rank grass that grows about twice as fast as the Saint Augustine that is in the rest of my lawn. And my little reel mower doesn't work that well on it, so periodically I have to take the weed-whacker and knock it down with that.

(I think it might be one of the forage bluestems, like King Ranch Bluestem, that got spread there accidentally somehow. The flowering heads - when it flowers - looks like a bluestem)

It had gotten really bad, to the point where my house was looking (to me at least) like it was abandoned or something.

So yesterday afternoon, after class, I first ran over to the Lowe's (because I couldn't remember for sure but I thought the trimmer-cartridge in the weed whacker was nearly out). Wasted 10 minutes searching for the right one - they have compressed all the "summer" stuff down to a few aisles to make room for the Christmas stuff. (Yes, Christmas stuff. I had a "th' HECK?" moment when I walked in there. A 92 degree September day is no time for Christmas stuff to be up. I might forgive it in a place like JoAnn's or Hobby Lobby if it were craft supplies or fabric, because if you're wanting to make a bunch of Christmas tablecloths or handmade ornaments, you best start on it now. But this was fake trees and pre-made ornaments)

Finally, I grabbed a spool of plain line, grumbling about having to load the cartridge myself (which is a giant pain). A worker came by and asked me if I had found what I needed. I said no, told him the model of weed whacker I had, and he hunted around and found the right reels tucked away on a high shelf in a box.

SO I bought two. (And it turned out I needed neither, but at least I have them now).

So I went home, edged, knocked down all the tall grass, and then mowed. I stopped midway and drank a lot of water. Still, by the end I was shaky and cold and headachy - probably starting with heat exhaustion (The dewpoints here have been in the 60s and 70s, which is just miserable).

Last evening was kind of a lost evening; I just didn't feel up to doing much. I showered and washed my hair on my knees because I was afraid enough at that point that I might pass out. Then I got a migraine.

I'm some better today but still shaky and have the aftereffects of a migraine (oddly, it makes me kind of dyslexic and sometimes I can't find the right word I want to use).

I did rehydrate - first, I drank a coconut water. (These are a fairly new product to me - little aseptic-packs full of the liquid from inside a coconut. They're horribly expensive - like, $1.70 a serving - but I like them and they're filled with potassium, so I do keep some on hand for times like this. I will say that what I thought was a pulled muscle in one glute (which had been aching all day - I thought I pulled it during the previous night's yoga workout) stopped hurting, so I wonder if it was just a persistent cramp). One of my aunts put me onto the coconut water; apparently she has some kind of weird low-potassium condition so she drinks it.

As I said, it's expensive (Then again, it's cheaper than most fancy coffees from coffeehouses, and it's probably cheaper than most spirits), but I like it. It tastes faintly of coconut, and slightly sweet (but not the sticky sweetness like sports drinks have) but also slightly tart (probably from the Vitamin C that's added for preservative). So it's more refreshing than a lot of things. (And it does have a lot of potassium.)

Later, I also drank a Gatorade, figuring maybe I had lost a lot of electrolytes out there.

I woke up with a headache but took an excedrin migraine tablet and now it's mostly gone.

I hope I won't have to do the lawn again until after it cools down a bit. I hadn't been having to mow it for quite a while as it had been so dry (I don't water my lawn; several people in the know have told me, "The tops may die back but unless it's a really prolonged drought, the roots survive, and it will come back"). But last week's heavy rain had caused it to shoot back up so I just had to do it.

Spock says, "Fascinating."

I find I do, a lot, too, when I find something interesting.

Maybe it's some kind of by-osmosis effect of being in the same room when my dad was watching the old original Star Trek (in re-runs on channel 43 out of Cleveland).

But anyway, these are fascinating. Apparently fake "business cards" were made as a licensed "fan item" back in the 60s and 70s.

(The writers of the website kind of diss all of them, but I have to admit the Star Trek ones seem fairly wonderful to me: for one thing, they capture a 60s style on the cards...my dad had colleagues who had somewhat similar business cards in the early 70s. (particularly the engineers and well-drilling guys, they'd have little drill rigs or whatever drawn on the cards).

And I have to admit, it makes me smile at the sheer alternative-universe quality of it. It amuses me in the same way that the steampunk or 1940s or whatever re-imaginings of Star Wars characters makes me smile. You're seeing something in a different way, and it maybe hits you upside the head a little bit and makes you chuckle a little - or realize something about the original that you never really thought about before.

Two scarves growing

One of the things I like about scarves is that, because there's no shaping (and in some of them, you don't even need to count rows - you can tell where you are in the pattern by looking), you can set them down for long periods of time and be reasonably secure when you come back to them that you're not going to mess things up too badly.

(Unlike the armhole shaping I totally bungled on one sweater, and unlike the errors I made in another, that required ripping back a full 7" of work)

So I'll start them, and then take a while to get very far.



This is the second incarnation (that I've knit) of the Ribbon Lace scarf. This time, I bought two 100-g skeins of fingering weight for it and I'm going to make a really long scarf.

This is currently my invigilating-knitting project. (Which, sadly, seems to be the only time any more that I have much of a block of time for knitting)

This scarf pattern also has double-yarn-overs in it (where you loop twice around the needle before making the next stitch). Double yarn overs: the knitter's double rainbow? (But without the ability to amaze and confound stoners by their mere existence.)

I also have been working on the seed-stitch Malabrigo scarf.



Good old seed stitch. It takes a while to do because you're flipping back from knit to purl for every stitch, but it looks nice, it doesn't curl, and it breaks up the pooling in variegated yarn.

(The zig-zag that the gold makes in that patterning is just serendipity. I doubt the second ball will do that. And yeah, even though they tell you to alternate balls when you're knitting with a variegated, I didn't here. Sometimes that's more of a pain than the results justify.)

feeling somewhat hopeful

Dare I say it? I actually feel somewhat hopeful in regards this full professor thing. I know what I need to do to make up the portfolio. (And I hate to say it, but my packrat tendencies will serve me in good stead here: I literally never throw away a piece of documentation. My Friday afternoon/Saturday plans are to methodically go through my office and extract every piece of paper I have that I need to put in the portfolio. (And, I think, at the same time, send for recycling all the papers - old handouts, expired student tests - that I don't need to keep).

I also am working on lining up letters of recommendation. You're supposed to have a few. I already asked a colleague I co-teach a class with (he's junior to me, so cannot serve on my committee, so there will be no conflict of interest there, and he was enthusiastic about doing the letter). And I'm going to ask the library director, as she and I served on a search committee together, and she and I know each other fairly well. And my former student who's now a regional director in TNC. And I realized this morning that I could ask Diana - she was my grad student, and we also taught together and worked together on a couple projects. And maybe one of the people in the OAS Education Section, seeing as I've been chair twice. I am reasonably certain these are all people who will (a) have time and (b) be able to write a strongly positive letter.

(I've already promised myself - this whole thing is due Oct. 15 - that for Mid-Fall Break, even though I've been striving of late to be frugal - I'm going to go yarn shopping. Because even though I feel hopeful now, I'm sure there will be periods when either I feel like I'm drowning in paperwork, or where I can't find the exact pocket folder specified (yes, there are specifications regarding the types of folders and binders and such we use), or where my confidence crashes and I look at what I've done and grab my temples and wail, "But it's so LITTLE compared to what I COULD HAVE DONE")

***

I also started taking flaxseed oil again. I re-read some of my old issues of Eating Well over the weekend and ran across an article by a guy who thinks that many Americans are not getting enough Omega 3 acids, and that that may be a contributing factor to poor mood and possibly even poor cognition. I know fish oil has lots more and is lots better - but every fish oil supplement I've tried, well, let's just politely say they don't agree well with me. (And I dislike most fish. Perhaps I could have a mild allergy, even - it seems that many fish do not agree well with me). So the flaxseed oil is the best compromise I can come up with.

Walnuts are also rich in it but I don't generally eat enough walnuts for that to be a significant source.

Now, three or four days probably really isn't long enough for there to be an effect, but I do feel a bit less draggy and a bit less, I don't know, dysphoric? Maybe that's the best word for how I was feeling earlier. (Again, it could be situational: prior to yesterday's meeting I was half expecting, as I said, to get the "You know, you CAN apply, but don't expect to be granted it" sense - because of all the budget rumors I've heard - but I didn't hear anything of that).

***

Also, someone posted this on CPAAG and it just made me laugh. And I know there are other ST: TNG fans (or even just Patrick Stewart fans) who read this, and they might find it funny too.

Feeling lots better

1. I e-mailed the swap leader. She was kind of surprised that some people hadn't received their stuff and said she'd check it out.

2. The migraine I was starting to get at noon is gone, thanks to a strong hot cup of tea and some ibuprofen.

3. The big scary meeting with the Dean - preparation for me filing for Full Professor - went better than I had hoped. I was anticipating walking in there and getting subtle "don't bother, you won't make it" signals (because I am THAT pessimistic about my own abilities and achievements) but instead, at one point she said, "I don't think you'll have any trouble getting it." (The downside is I now have to dive into my Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler like files and fish out all the various bits and bobs of supporting information to show everything I've done for the past 6 years or so.)

4. My migraine may have been partly brought on by the storm that was coming and is here now. So we're not going out in the field for my end-of-the-day class but instead having a discussion with the students about potential research projects. (Which should take less time and get me home a little earlier).

5. I tried something new for lunch. I had read about jelly omelets in some of my British books (particularly in regards nursery teas or nursery suppers). I always thought they sounded odd, but then today, since I had a bunch of good fresh eggs (purchased on the way back from the insect talk Saturday) I decided to try it. It's surprisingly good. You would not think an omelet with jelly in it would be good, but then again, crepes, which are very good with jelly, are after all little more than a thin omelet with more milk and some flour in it. I used seedless blackberry jelly and although it turned the eggs an unfortunate color, it was delicious. I suppose it's not the very most healthful thing one can eat but it's certainly more nutritious than many choices. (And from all I've read - unless you have a cholesterol problem (I don't) or allergies, eggs are really very good for you and have lots of good nutrients, including stuff like lutein, which is good for your eyes).

What you do is just make a standard 2 or 3 egg omelet, and right before you plate it up, you put about a tablespoon (or a tablespoon and a half, for a three egg omelet) on half the omelet and then fold the other half over. (My omelet broke and some of the jelly seeped out because I was hurrying). I also may not have used enough butter. The recipe book (my venerable and much-loved copy of "The Pooh Cookbook" which I received for Christmas when I was 6 years old) suggests using a Tablespoon of butter and that seemed excessive to me, so I went with about a teaspoon and a half, and that may have been why the omelet broke - it stuck a little in the pan.

I think grape jelly would also be good in an omelet of this nature, and perhaps with a bit of cinnamon sugar on top of it and it popped under the broiler for a few seconds, it would make a nice dessert-for-two.

What to do.

I took part in an online swap earlier this summer. It was a wee tiny swap, not some big, "We're saying 'spend a maximum of $25' but we know most people spend more" swap.

It was really small. Like, $5 or less of stuff.

But I had fun with my bit for my person - I did what I needed to do and sent it off well before the deadline (which was July 31). She got it and was happy.

I never got a package.

I'm really of two minds about this.

Part of me says, "Let it go. It's not important. Caring about it is childish."

The other part of me says: "But a swap is kind of a promise. The person didn't hold up their end of the bargain. It's not fair to me." (For the record: I don't think the person I sent to was the person supposed to be sending to me.)

And yet again, the first part of me says: "People have difficult stuff going on. Maybe your swapper just lost her job. Or maybe she has an ill relative."

And then the other part says: "Or maybe she's just lazy. Or maybe she figured she could get away with not sending anything." And that part of me gets huffy, and folds its arms, and says, "I'm never taking part in another online swap, since I got hosed in this one."

SO the question is: do I send a message to the swap-leader and say "hey....I didn't get anything?" (I know other people have not, as well), and see if she wants to send out a reminder? Or do I just say "It was a stupid $5 swap, let it go?"

Part of it is the principle of the thing, but also part of it is that it's depressing to go to the mailbox and find bills and junk all the time. But another part of it is I don't want to seem petty, demanding my tiny swap item if my swapper had her life blow up.

Yet another Tuesday

I don't like Tuesdays right now. I have one class at 9:30 and another at 5. In between that time, I try to get caught up on everything else I have to do (I'm writing an exam right now) and schedule meetings and stuff. I'm always worn out after Tuesdays.

I had a wee tiny bit of free time yesterday, worked a little on the second Ninja sock.

I have to remember to get crickets today for lab tomorrow. If the cricket truck came in. If it didn't, I have no idea of what I will do for lab. I don't have time to go out and catch a hundred rolly pollies or those icky black beetles that have infested everywhere or something.

This 15 credit hours is going to kill me I think. I don't feel like I have time to breathe.

I'm also frustrated at piano because everything I'm doing (except for the Hanon exercises, which aren't really that fun any more) doesn't change. Working on the same pieces multiple weeks. I'm working on Schumann's "The Hunting Song" right now.

I've decided I don't like Robert Schumann very much. (I also learned "The Wild Horseman," another piece filled with staccato eighth-notes, where you have to jump around in the scale and the chances (for someone like me) of hitting a wrong note are high). I don't like staccato playing anyway; after practicing for a while my wrists start to hurt a little.

I'm telling myself this is just one of those times where you're not as engaged, and you just have to keep working until you break through it. I find myself, after long days (yesterday evening was the CWF meeting) where I'm not home much, thinking of something I once read (I don't know how accurate it is, I just remember reading it) that some of the defense plants in Britain, during WWII, they had the workers (who tended to be single women or men not quite physically up to military service) work 18 hour days, sometimes 6 days a week. I wonder how the people managed - you would have 6 hours for the rest of your life, and some of that would HAVE to be spent sleeping. (Oh, I'm sure they had lunch and tea breaks in there, but still: a break to eat a quick meal on the job is not really a real rest). I suppose if you feel like the survival of your nation - and possibly yourself - is at stake, you can do that kind of thing without breaking down. I don't know.

I find as I get older, I need more down time where I can be quietly at home. But sometimes it seems like that time is increasingly difficult to get.

Weekend wrap-up

I don't quite have the cleverness to come up with a specific title right now.

The entomology program was interesting. It wasn't as much taxonomy and "how to know the bugs" as I was hoping, but it was still interesting.

The best line? The presenter was talking about honeybees (which are probably, IMHO, the most interesting insects, at least behaviorally, because of all their neat eusocial stuff). He was describing the two very-well documented "dance" patterns that a honeybee uses to let her sisters* know where flowers with good nectar are.

There's a round dance for close flowers, and a "waggle" dance for more distant ones. IIRC, there's information encoded in the pattern and direction of waggles that serves as sort of a road map for the other bees. The other bees start following the dancer, and as the presenter said, "Then you get a little conga line of bees."

That made me chuckle.

(*In case you didn't know, honeybee colonies are pretty much entirely female. There are the sterile workers who are all sisters (or half-sisters in some cases) and the queen. When a new colony is getting ready to break off, a new queen will develop and I guess occasionally male drones must develop (the drones mate with the queens and then die, and the queen can continue to produce eggs for over a year afterward.)

We also did go out just around the grounds of the visitor's center and do a "bug hunt." There were some solitary wasps (digger wasps) that use the sandy soil to make burrows in, and we saw what is commonly known as a "dirt dauber" but which is also called a "spider wasp" because it will catch and paralyze spiders (the ecological relationship is called parasitoidism) for their larvae to feed on. And a dung beetle, and a mantis, and robber flies (which are actually beneficial - I didn't know that - but they catch and eat houseflies). And some small butterflies. And velvet ants, also known as "cow killers." (They don't literally kill cows but they have, I am told, an extremely painful sting. They're actually not ants, they're a type of wingless wasp (although ants AND wasps are pretty closely related)).

I knew most of the bugs we found so I felt pretty good about that. (And again, it's one of those cases that when you stop and pay attention and look at something, you can see all kinds of detail - these insects were all out on the construction site for the new visitor's center or the adjacent lawn.)

***

On the way back, I planned to go to the grocery store in Sherman. But I realized I HAD to eat first (it was after noon by the time I got back into Sherman). I stopped at a new Chinese buffet (well, new to me. I guess they've been open for about a year). It was much nicer than the other one I'd gone to in town: cleaner, and also there was a bigger choice of food. Lots of seafood, which was kind of nice. (They also had a sushi bar but I'm not a sushi fan and anyway, I'd be suspicious of raw fish this far from an ocean.)

The fortune cookie I got, though: it said something like "Adjust finances: make a budget and stick to it."

That's not a fortune, that's nagging. (Don't tell me what to do, fortune cookie!)

I don't know if this is a new trend but it's not as much fun as the more cryptic or Barnum-statement fortunes of earlier.

***

Today I mostly took off, my sinuses have really been bothering me. I finished the first of the "Ninja" socks and began the second, and also knit a bit on Honeycomb.

I also decided to pull out - after over a year's neglect - the dvd of "AM and PM Yoga" and do a short yoga workout. (I'm starting to look with a concerned eye at my midsection. I think it's mainly slack muscles that need working. I'm not noticing any difficulty in how my clothes fit or anything, it's just, I don't want that to become a difficulty).

I'm chagrined to see how stiff I've become after not doing yoga in a long while. I suppose that's the problem with just doing one type of workout: you work certain muscles in certain ways and you almost get a little "musclebound." I was never VERY flexible and I always had trouble with tight hamstrings, but it seems worse now.

I'm going to try to make time to do the yoga again a couple times a week. (I kind of groan because I really don't need another "appointment activity" like my morning workout and my piano practice to nag at myself about, but maybe if I do the yoga before bed I will sleep better, and so maybe I can "steal" the 20 minutes or so to do the yoga workout from my sleep time).

I also, for good measure, started doing a few crunches and push-ups. (I try to do the military-style pushup, where you're on your toes and don't go completely down on your belly, not the "girly" pushup from your knees. I would love to be able to do a one-armed pushup but I doubt I will ever be quite that tough). I could really feel the pushups in my upper abdomen, so maybe that will help with toning. It only takes a couple minutes to do those so maybe I can get myself into the habit of doing those every day, maybe right after my regular workout when I'm in the right clothes for it any way.)

I started with 10 of each. I'm trying to think of that as a "good start" and not "pathetically few."

I will say even though I was chagrined at how stiff I was, I remembered after the workout why I had kept up with it in the past: I could breathe so much better and easier after doing the yoga. I'm not sure if it's that it gets rid of build up muscle tension, or if it stretches the muscles specifically involved in breathing, but it does help me breathe better, which is important, especially now, when it's been so humid.

It will also probably be good to keep me from feeling cramped up and achy from inactivity as well.

Nine years on

After a week full of what some term "First World Problems,"* and after finally being able to keep from coughing (it's been very humid and that exacerbates my low-grade asthma) to get in an hour's workout, the guys on the news station I sometimes listen to were talking about the upcoming anniversary.

They played some of the tape from the September 11 attacks...the point where the news anchor was just realizing that it was not a horrible, horrible accident, but something planned.

I was sort of surprised (but also sort of not, I guess) how visceral my reaction and my memories still are. It brought back all the weird kaleidoscopic memories of the day - my memories are sort of jumbled and fragmented, with some very clear points I can see in my mind:

- walking into the bookstore and hearing the news being reported over the (usually country music) station they played; at that point no one knew what was going on and we were all assuming it was one of those small sightseeing planes that had crashed because of some horrible error.

- being stopped, while walking back to my building, by someone I knew from the Art department. "They think terrorists did it" was all she said.

- standing around the little black and white tv (with tinfoil on the antenna to get better reception) in my secretary's office and watching (replayed, at that point) footage of the towers falling.

- calling my parents, with the plan of asking them to call my brother and sister-in-law (whose phone number I did not have at the time) and tell them to get the H out of Chicago. (I thought Chicago was going to be next, or maybe LA, at that point). I couldn't reach my parents, and kind of freaked out.

- my then-department-chair poking his head in my office while I tried to write a Biostats exam (and feeling like it was an utterly futile task: what does probability matter any more?) and telling me they were closing the campus and I needed to go home. To this day, I do not know if they closed it out of respect to all who died, or if they were concerned that there might be something happening even here.

- waiting in line for a very long time at a gas station to fill up my car's tank, because when I finally did reach my dad - remember, this was when we still didn't know anything that was going on and what might happen later - he told me "Get bottled water; make sure you have canned goods and granola bars and stuff on hand; fill up your gas tank in case there's a gas shortage." The other thing I remember though was that people were very kind: no one cut in line, no one got angry, and in fact, one guy came down the line asking each of us: "There's a woman behind me trying to get home with her three small children, would you be willing to let her jump the line?" And everyone was.

- I also remember the silence for several days after that, when no planes were flying. And the way that many of the "fluff" television channels - like HGTV - just signed off for the day and put up a placard saying they were cancelling programming out of respect for those who had died.

(*I have to admit, I don't like the designation. On the one hand, yes, all of the getting-pecked-to-death-by-ducks kind of things I've been dealing with at work are much less serious problems than many have - but at the same time, realizing a problem is minor, when you're already in a poor frame of mind, doesn't make it any less of a problem. And having someone remind you your problems are "just First World Problems" when you're already overloaded, if you're a person prone to feeling guilty at the drop of a hat, as I am, it's like "Okay....so I have all this stuff I'm having a hard time coping with, but I shouldn't be unhappy and I shouldn't be overwhelmed because I'm not having to dig in the mud for roots to eat..." and it's just not helpful.)


Anyway, the guys were discussing another topic: one remarked that to him, it made him uncomfortable to see football games and concerts and things on this day, like people are forgetting what happened, and he speculated that maybe the 11th of September should be set aside as a day of remembrance.

I don't think I agree with that. For one thing: yes, stop and remember. (I know a lot of people do a period-of-silence at the same time as certain of the events). But I also think going about our daily lives - still having football games and concerts and (yes) entomology programs** means that we're still who we are - we haven't given in to fear, we've stood back up afterward, and we're still doing what we've always done.

(Also, designating a day as a full-day-off can lead to bad things. Like Presidents' Day turning into a day for car dealer ads featuring a rapping George Washington.)

(**Yes, I'm going. Even if I don't get all the grading done. I need something different.)