some Saturday things

* Busy week; I had almost 35 job applications to review for this search committee. That took me almost until 5 pm yesterday afternoon. I also wrote exams for next week, and then this morning I went in and caught up on grading, and did the prep work for next week's teaching. Yeah, no research got done, but I was just beat by half-past noon (when I finally got done with the teaching stuff). Maybe next week.

(I remember someone once said that the urgent tends to drive out the important, and that does seem to be the case: urgent for me was to read all the applications as we are having our first real meeting on Monday to discuss them, but that was something over and above what I normally do. And a lot of the paperwork type stuff we've had added on in the past 15 years tends to be urgent - in the sense of "needs to be done now" and research, while important, has a more nebulous timeline, and so, like the stuff for "myself" (e.g., my knitting) it gets pushed off to some indefinite future time.)

And a thought: part of the reason piano lessons are good? It makes practicing seem more urgent. As in, "I have to do this so I will have progress to demonstrate to my teacher so I'm not wasting her time." Because without lessons I'd be more likely to either go "meh, I'm tired, it's 8 pm, I COULD do 20 more minutes, but I won't" or "meh, I don't feel like it." Having to do it "for someone else" gives me more motivation to do it on tired days.

I probably need to get better at setting myself deadlines to work on my knitting/quilting projects so I actually DO.

* I finally got out to the "Amish store" (not actually run by, but carries some products made by) about 10 miles south of me. They DO have the "Amish Wedding" brand pickled (dilly) baby corn - which I had been previously been ordering from Lehman's, but this means less waiting and not paying shipping. And also, I think theirs is cheaper than Lehman's. They also have "sweet and sour" pickled corn and maybe I get a jar of that next time to try. (I also got some snap-pea pickles to try).

They also have lots of kinds of cheese, and Amish butter, and nuts and candy, and they make fudge on-site (I think those kinds of fudges are mixes, though; they look very similar to those that a number of other "fudge shops" I have been in have.

But it is a nice little jaunt, some of the stuff is locally made (some of the jams, and they also have breads) and there are some food items (the specialty pickles) I can't find in local groceries.

And this also might provide another source of gift-items for faraway family: I noticed they had damson plum jam (locally made), which you can't get just anywhere. 

* But driving home, I saw a kind of headscratcher of a bumper sticker. On someone's truck. It LOOKED commercially printed (that is, not Sharpie on a piece of tape) but it said

"If you get passed on the right, your an idiot."

Yes, with "you're" spelled that way.

So either there's some kind of metajoke there (which isn't all that funny) or the person making it didn't proofread/didn't consider the difference between possessive and contraction.

(And yes, I TOTALLY thought of that Internet thing where someone makes a "contrarian" sort of point but also makes a bad typo or a grammatical/spelling error, so everyone gets to call them on that. Or maybe THAT'S the metajoke in the bumpersticker? Or maybe I'm just overthinking it.)

But in my experience, the main times when I see someone passing on the right:

1. They are impatient and are driving a good bit faster than the posted speed limit, or are driving too fast for conditions (like it is raining heavily) on a two-lane. In that case, I think the person doing the passing is the one who is not thinking, not the one who is being passed.

2. It's a two-lane country road, the person being passed is trying to make a left-turn (against traffic) into a business, their driveway, or on to a side street, and they're having to wait on oncoming traffic to pass. In that case, again, maybe there's "impatience" on the part of the passing driver, but also mainly just "bad luck" on the part of the person being stuck there before they can turn.

So no, no real "idiocy" there, though I have seen a few instances where someone was driving in a way I would regard as reckless and would blow past people on the right side.

(And yes: I forgot about the situation where there are two lanes of traffic each way, and the left lane is the "passing" lane, but there are left-lane "slugs" who just stick to that lane. I didn't even think of that because it's so inculcated in me to "stay right unless passing" but yeah, maybe THAT is what the bumper sticker meant, but I HATE the "person blowing by you on the berm" when you're out in the country on a narrow road)

(I don't like right-hand passing, but I suspect that's because I grew up in a state where it was technically illegal, and also, most Ohio roads didn't have berms wide enough to safely pass on the right)

* Current reading:

- Brian Fagan's "Fish on Friday" (history of diet, especially in early Christian times, apparently). I like Fagan's writing but again, like a lot of pop-anthropology, he probably oversteps what can actuall be stated.

- re-reading (in the nice, fancy Folio Society edition I bought last fall) "The Daughter of Time." I wanted something "fiction" but am kind of at the point right now where dysfunction/cynicism/very much violence gets to me, and I just couldn't with "Pere Goriot" and I also looked at some of the other things in my TBR pile and just couldn't with those either....and figured a nice historical mystery, where the "murder" (if murder there was) happened hundreds of years before would be fine.

Yes, it is. I'm enjoying it. I vaguely remember that I read this years ago - back in grad school, I think - in a cheap used-book-store paperback form, and I ALSO suspect for part of my reading I was actually "down in bed" myself (but not with a leg injury like Grant; with one of the many upper-respiratory infections I got before seeking treatment for my allergies).

I dunno. This is another one where I figure the author is maybe overstepping the bounds of factuality a bit (I believe in the end the conclusion is "bad old" Richard III didn't do it, when there's probably some actual historical evidence that implicates him). But yeah....the whole "mental puzzle" aspect of it is restful and enjoyable.

(Allegedly, according the the genealogy my mom had done, we are v. distantly related - through her side of the family - to the Plantagenets. I'm not sure how it works because I don't think Richard III had any (acknowledged, maybe) offspring*, but maybe he's some kind of many-times-great-uncle? I don't know. It just amuses me to contemplate maybe being distantly related to such an infamous figure; kind of like the people who can claim descent from Genghis Khan)

(*Added: actually, he apparently had three: two sons and a daughter. So I don't know. And any family tie I have, if there is really one, is very distant....you go back enough generations and you are related to A LOT of people)

And then I read someone's blog online where she referenced Kristin Lavransdottir, and I realized I meant at some time to read the whole trilogy (I think I read most of the first book 20 some years ago, but would have to go back and re-read. Maybe after I finish "Daughter of Time." I admit I pulled the first book off the shelf but then thought of how very long it was (And I think the Plague also makes an appearance) and so, put it back.

It's kind of....getting close to the tired time of the semester for me. And I find at this time I don't have a lot of emotional energy for "hard" entertainment or things that are sad. (Perhaps this evening I go back to watching my way through "Parks and Rec; I think I'm midway through Season 3. I find that is pretty easy to watch, in a way it's like cartoons. And "The Good Place" is similarly easy on the heart/mind....oh, it requires more thought but it's diverting and not stressful in the way a police-procedural show would be.

*Also, I learned a new word the other day. And from the local news, no less: "Estray," which is the legal term for a loose livestock animal whose owner can't be found. When I first saw the news story online (the semi-local tv station's webpage), I thought "heh, that's a weird typo for 'stray,'" but it turns out it's a really-real legal term. Again, not having grown up in a ranching area I had never heard it before. Apparently the term is from English common law. (It was cattle that were estray in this case, and weirdly, they had brands, but they weren't registered with the local authorities, so....I don't know. Someone from far away dumping a bunch of cattle because they couldn't sell them for some reason? And of course, other stories become more "urgent," so you never hear a follow-up)

* I did start the Stroopwaffel socks over break and worked a bit more on them last night. Maybe this evening - I need to do 20 more minutes of piano practice and wash my hair and consider dinner- I knit on socks and watch something soothing, either Parks and Rec or maybe Dr. Pol....

I also finished the ribbing on the second "Deputy Headmistress" sock, so I could start the complicated knit-purl pattern for the leg on that one.