Kittens

As you may know, in November David and I acquired a cat problem to deal with our mouse problem. We no longer have any mice, and the cats are among the sweetest, best-looking, affectionate, and chillest that I've ever encountered.
Which is a good thing, because left to their own devices, they would destroy everything in sight.

That's not quite true. Their favorite objects of destruction are toilet paper, plants, textiles, sewing/crocheting supplies, and cardboard boxes. If we're careful about limiting their access to those objects, they may still scratch a bit on the furniture (Icy) or steal David's razor (Pobbes), but wreak far less havoc.

Before we realized we had to keep them away from most clothing, however, we did have a few casualties. They chewed a hole in the back of a silky new camisole with the tags still on it, and multiple holes in another top I'd only worn once. Worst, though, they got a hold of the cashmere sweater my sister and I got David for Christmas last year. Pobbes first got to it when it was on the top of David's (tall) dresser, chewing a hole that rendered it unwearable but still left plenty of material for recycling. I put it in my closet to protect it, but yesterday discovered that Pobbes had pulled it out from under the closet doors and was again mauling it. In fact, he had Swiss cheesed the whole thing, leaving hardly any material suitable for crafting. Upon this discovery, we decided to let him keep his furry quarry, in the hopes of dissuading his destruction of other prized clothing.

David captured the following video when Pobbes had dragged his trophy to one of his other favorite things, the big sleeping bag you can see on the red chair. Also visible in the video is Fernie the Palm, who is tattered but hanging on after suffering greatly as one of the kittens' earliest targets. Try to ignore my maniacal cackling, and enjoy our kittens doing what they appear to do best:

Foot, Part Deux

This is the "before" X-ray;
I neglected to snap the "after"

I suppose I've been posting here infrequently enough that my prolonged absence after glibly reporting that I was headed to surgery didn't cause any alarm, so that's good!

In fact, the surgery went really well. The most unpleasant thing was probably just waiting for it to start: feeling frumpy and naked in one of those drafty gowns, a hairnet, my glasses, and no make up, whilst being grilled by a bevy of medical professionals. Oh, and hungry and thirsty; my surgery was at 2, and I hadn't been permitted to eat or drink anything after 10pm the night before. The nurses were extraordinarily kind to me, though; they wrapped me up in heated blankets, and even switched out my pillow on the operating table for a comfier one, even though I was planning to be as little aware of it, and everything else, as possible. (The anesthesiologist was kind of a jerk; he told me I might wake up during surgery, but that it wasn't a big deal if I did. Ahem? [Thankfully, I didn't.])

So. They gave me something delightful to knock me out; although I felt it tingling through my veins as I did when I had my wisdom teeth out, I mostly felt chill and awesome. Then they slipped the oxygen mask on and I went under.

I woke up without crying, and felt pretty excellent as the nurses helped me off the table and into a chair and wheeled me into recovery. I felt even better when they brought me snacks, and lots of water! David tells me I was a little loopy as we heard the post-surgery instructions, although I felt pretty clear-headed--just nice and chill, still. My foot didn't hurt at all (I ended up not regaining full sensation in my toes until Monday!), and before long at all they wheeled me out to the curb, where David helped me load into the car with my foot on the dashboard.

The next few days were super lame. I was in a surgical shoe, so I could put weight on my foot, but only to go from the couch to the bathroom or bed. I took some Vicodin that night, out of caution, but it just knocked me out and messed up my sleep schedule. I did a lot of reading and cuddling with the kittens. It was spring break, so I thankfully didn't have to do any teaching work.

Tonight

Anyway, even when I regained feeling in my foot, it didn't hurt much, although it turned all sorts of colors. I had my first post-op visit on Wednesday, when I got my first look at the incision, had an X-ray, and got a nice lighter dressing. (The X-ray was amazing; I only snapped a picture of the "before" image, but that big bump on my joint is totally gone in the "after.") The next week I had my stitches out. Today I went in for another follow-up, and got the green light to do yoga. Within the next two to four weeks, my podiatrist says, I can even start easing into running. Don't worry: I am obviously going to take it very slowly. But it is a very exciting thought, especially since our weather has been preternaturally vernal!

Obviously, I've been taking pictures. Here they are, if you want to see them.* They're not too gruesome, for the most part, although my toenails do look pretty nasty from the betadine. And I've been Mederma-ing my scar, but I do kind of like how simultaneously badass and feminine (pink! like cherry blossoms!) it looks.

*Picassa's not letting me add captions right now, and it's past my bedtime, but I'll try to add them later. They're roughly chronological, and the flowers are from my mom and David (who also got me a  fruit arrangement!).

Foot

This is my foot (along with my helpful assistant Pobbes,* who is perpetually intrigued with the camera's wrist strap). The divot you see just below and to the right of the center of the photograph is a scar from the time I dropped my bike on my foot and the chain ring bit out a chunk. It and a mark from another of the teeth are more visible when my foot tans and the scars remain white, but as I attempted to photograph it today, I realized how subtle it is.

Today is the last day that will be the most noticeable scar on my foot.

Remember the X-ray I posted a while ago, showing the apparent source for my toe woes? And how the cortisone injection I had in November (November?!) made it so much better? Well. That wore off, and my foot went back to hurting as much, if not more, than before. It felt worse, anyway, since I was virtually pain free while the cortisone lasted. So! I went back to the podiatrist, and we decided that after exhausting the conservative options, it was time to consider surgery.

He suggested a minimally invasive procedure called a cheilectomy, in which he will remove the osteophyte, clean up the joint, perhaps drill some to stimulate production of new collagen, rinse everything, and then sew me back up. This should take, in his estimate, about 20 minutes. Recovery (which will mostly take place over spring break, next week) will involve a surgical shoe, but no boot or crutches. I only have to wear the shoe while I'm on my feet, and while the stitches are in (10-14 days), and he thinks I can be back to running in three to six months.** (When we were initially discussing the surgery, I immediately did the math in my head, and determined that this would potentially allow me to train for the Twin Cities Marathon--though even I realize this is a bad idea.)

So. I have no illusions that this will be a magical fix, or that my young, healthy, athletic, non-smoking ways will make for a perfectly non-eventful surgery or recovery. But after so long living with this, and having been forced to stop running altogether (and even walking as much as I would like to!), I'm read to give this fix a try. I check in to the surgical center in just over an hour.

*Pobbes is one half of a Kitten Problem we acquired in late January to deal with our (then) Mouse Problem. He and his littermate Isis (Icy) have educated me on just how quickly such small animals can become such a huge source of love (and frustration!). Most of you who still read here are already my FB friends and have access to my "(Almost) Daily Kitten" album, but I'd also be happy to post more kitty pix here!

**My podiatrist is a runner--marathoner, Bostoner, and triathlete--and he is the one whose focus has consistently been on running, which I think is pretty fantastic.

Pests

Brian posted today about a close encounter with a mouse, one closer--and funnier!--than many of my tales of the historic Mouse Wars. As I was looking through a few of those stories earlier today, I found some that I could definitely laugh at, and others that still seriously creeped me out. Of all the things I don't miss about the old place, the vermin are high on the list.

However, last night we came home to another horrifying pest: a house centipede. Seriously, these things are awful. According to Wikipedia, they can have up to fifteen pairs of legs. (Wikipedia also includes this charming quote of 1902, credited to entomologist C.L. Marlatt):

It may often be seen darting across floors with very great speed, occasionally stopping suddenly and remaining absolutely motionless, presently to resume its rapid movements, often darting directly at inmates of the house, particularly women, evidently with a desire to conceal itself beneath their dresses, and thus creating much consternation.

I'm pretty sure they're the grossest bug I've ever seen, and that's counting Louisiana cockroaches and Borneo cicadas. We were indeed consternated to find one waiting for us on our dining room wall when we returned from an evening out with friends.

I'm sparing you the close-up of the house centipede;
you can just see it as a dark blur here.

This is the second one we've encountered in this apartment; the last one so disturbed us that we used the vacuum to avoid having to touch it. Because we have one of those lightweight models, without a hose, David lifted the whole thing up above his head to aspirate the foul creature--which, thankfully, worked.

Last night, though, David just smashed it with a paper towel, and I Windexed the wall afterward. Ewwww.

Thinking about that as I read Brian's post and some of my old ones, I wondered whether I'd rather have house centipedes or mice. No question, really: as gross as they are, I'll take the arthropods any day--though I really, really, really hope I don't have to.

Microcosm

I boarded the 18 bus outside the public library. As usual that far up Nicollet, it was nearly empty, and I sat by the window in the first non-priority row of seats. Two African-American women sat in the bank of three seats in front of me, perpendicular to mine. The one nearest me carried an infant, whom she partially unswathed from a huge bundle of blankets, so that just her little fleece-hatted head was visible.

I watched bundled people shuffle along the sidewalks in rubber boots and sensible shoes.

At 9th, which is always a busy stop, the bus started to fill up. One man asked the bus driver how she was doing, and she replied that she was "blessed." He laughed loudly as he took his transfer and said that was a good answer. A statuesque young woman partially undraped herself from the priority seat on the other side of the bus from me so that an elderly woman carrying bags could sit there.

At the next stop, with the bus almost entirely full, the bus driver called out that she needed a seat up front, and a middle-aged woman vacated one of the priority seats. A man carrying a cane and squinting through thick round glasses shuffled to the seat and sat down.

At the stop after that, things got even more crowded. A large, shabby white man wearing a bright orange knit cap and laden with stuff got onto the bus. It was clear that he wanted a priority seat, and he did appear to meet the criteria, which he would later list aloud: he was a senior, with a disability. It was equally clear that the two women in front of me did not intend to relinquish any of the three they were occupying. He stood in front of them, holding the overhead rail, while they sniggered and made faces.

When possible, I avoid riding the bus at that time of the afternoon precisely to avoid this sort of uncomfortable crowding: no one relishes close contact with strangers, particularly not when they're wrapped in swinging bundles and a clear cloud of crazy. I usually sit with my backpack on my lap, shoulders squeezed up to make space, and try to distract myself with the view out the window. None of us likes it, but we all want to get where we're going as painlessly as possible, so we deal with it.

As the bus moved forward and it was clear the women in front of him were laughing at him more and more loudly and were displeased with his presence, the man began a litany of complaints: "I've had two heart attacks and a pulmonary embolism and now I have diabetes and have poor circulation in my leg!" They were unfazed. "I am on coumadin! If I fall down, I could die of internal bleeding!"

"You back the $*(% up or I'll give you internal bleeding right now! I will beat you!" the older of the two women said.

"I could kick you out of this seat, if I wanted to--"

"You just try and kick me out! I'd like to see you try!"

"I have a disability, and I could kick you out--"

As the bus moved forward, a water bottle strapped to the man swung forward, and the woman shoved it away.

"Don't you touch my stuff!" the man roared, raising his voice for the first time, and the woman rose from her seat to shout back, "Keep your stuff out of my face!"

She grabbed her bag and began to dig through it, saying, "Okay, I'm going to get my magic $#*^ out and make you back up..."

"What, do you have a gun in there?" he asked.

"No, I don't have a gun! But I have something else..."

"I'm going to call the police!" he said. "I'm going to call the police, don't you touch me..."

"I'll give you internal bleeding..."

Another woman standing at the front of the bus joined in. "This is because they're black, isn't it? You wouldn't be doing this is they were white!"

"This isn't racial!" he protested. "I'm not racist, I just want to sit down!"

The young mother, who had been talking into her cell phone, giving a running commentary on the "bum" in front of them, ripped into him. "You need to leave her alone and talk respectfully to this woman! She hasn't done anything to you, so you need to behave like a decent human being! Now you need to stop &#$%ing talking to her and leave her the &#(% alone!" She started quietly, but ended shouting in righteous indignation, clearly pleased with her performance, which drew appreciative chuckles.

We had stopped again, and the tall young man sitting beside me, who could barely fold his legs up in front of him to clear the aisle grabbed his girlfriend and said, "Come on, baby, we can walk--it's only a few blocks from here." They left, freeing two seats, and the people crowded near the front pointed out the open spaces. The man squeezed through and sank down beside me. I stared out the window.

A few blocks later, the two women rose to leave. So did the man beside me. "Oh, is this your stop? Guess who else is getting off here!" he said.

Despite her earlier threats to beat him, as they got off the bus, the older of the two women said dismissively, "We're not going to hurt him. We're just going to go our own way."

The man, however, did not appear comforted, and asked the driver to call the police. She said she was required to do so when asked by a passenger, and so we sat there, waiting. The bus cleared out as people got off. Another 18 stopped behind us, and passengers from our bus transferred. I stayed where I was, and as the other bus passed us, saw that it was, as expected, packed to the doors.

Eventually the driver told the man that the police would be there momentarily, and we pulled away again. At my stop eight blocks later, the driver was still so flustered that she didn't notice me at the back door and had to slam on the brakes, already partway into traffic, to let me out after several of us shouted "Back door!"

"Sorry," she said. "My bad."

This story doesn't have a point, exactly. The bus is frequently crowded, and is usually carrying a mix of crazies, the exhausted, and occasionally the loudly obnoxious. This isn't the first time I've seen the cops called; the last time I saw the officers pull a man off the bus who (loudly) couldn't understand why the business card he was holding wasn't a bus transfer. It's not always bad, and sometimes it's even fun: last week my jovial driver announced the stops in a sort of late-night DJ voice.

There's a fair amount of crazy in the world, and a fair amount of really unfair life circumstances, too. The city bus provides a more concentrated sample of each than one might ordinarily encounter, and in a necessarily intimate setting.

I found myself angry at the two apparently able-bodied women on the bus for not being grown-ups: for not sharing, for picking on someone who was clearly physically and mentally challenged, and for exposing that baby girl to all of it. I was angry about the playing of the race card, which seemed unfair and uncalled for, and angry that this is what the discussion of race looks like in America. But I didn't say anything.

X-ray

Google informs me that today is the 115th anniversary of the discovery of the X-ray. In commemoration, or something, here is an X-ray of my malfunctioning foot, complete with helpful arrow pointing out the "one little problem. That little guy right there."
This image was taken in April; I think we X-rayed it for the first time in January. Seeing a very visible cause for the continuing pain in my foot was simultaneously relieving and disturbing. Happy anniversary, X-ray.

Avatar

Two and a half weeks ago, David and I saw Avatar in 3D. Because some days I am productive (yesterday I did get a conference paper to my dissertation workshop) and some days I am not (Google Reader is empty? Is that seriously all you have for me, Internet?), and because I'm ready to mentally move on, I thought I'd write about it.

First of all, I thought the previews for this movie looked terrible. James Cameron, massive budget, blah blah blah... Who did they actually expect to watch this? But then people went to see it--a lot of people--and most of them seemed to think it was pretty amazing. NPR even seemed on board. David and I were both curious. So...

...we bought tickets to a Sunday matinee. At the Mall of America. In 3D.

And I think maybe I have a slow brain or something, because it seriously took my eyes about an hour and a half to adjust to the 3D. By adjusting, I mean that after a mere hour and half the 3D wasn't a constant distraction, making me wish we'd just stuck with good old twentieth-century flatness. It made my head hurt, and by the end of the film, my eyes and ears as well (those glasses are heavy!).

Anyway.

The film has problems. The Na'vi embody pretty much every "noble savage" stereotype out there, right down to their surprisingly literally animalistic forms (alien natives as human-feline hybrid? Subtle!). The story is an old and tired one: member of invading dominant group joins the natives, partakes of their wisdom, and then must fight to defend their tragically doomed culture against the inevitable forces of Western Progress. Actually, if you haven't seen this nifty comparison of Avatar to Disney's Pocahontas, you should check it out; it sums it up pretty neatly.

However, when David turned to me at the end of the film to ask what I'd thought of it, I was still wiping my eyes. I had expected entrancing visuals and a ridiculously involved imaginary landscape (did you know that Cameron named every single plant and animal on screen, in both Latin and Na'vi?), but not to find the story so emotionally involving. I found myself bafflingly drawn to the characters and landscape, and terribly sad to see their destruction. And Cameron may be corny, or essentializing, or simplistic, but he does know how to tell a story, and to do it in the style of classical high Hollywood, with carefully cut scenes and surging soundtracks that hit (this over-analyzing skeptic, anyway) right in the heartstrings.

It's also a very pretty film. I expected to be distracted by the blue-skinned aliens, but as I mentioned before, the visuals are so seamless that I was able to (mostly) forget that I was watching computer-generated imagery and become involved in the characters and plot. I do wish it had been edited a bit better; I found the beginning a bit slow and the ending a bit protracted. Three hours is a long time to wear those glasses.

If you're interested in seeing it, I would recommend doing so on a big screen for full visual impact, but probably not in 3D, unless you're really into that sort of thing. I'll probably see it again if it comes to the Riverview, because problems aside, it really does do at least one thing that Hollywood does very well: create a beautiful, fantastic landscape and characters into which one can escape for a few hours, partaking in joys, sorrows, and battles completely out of one's own head (and, in this case, solar system).

Now that I've gotten my review out of my head, I can go read other people's!

"Could It Be The Weather?"

I'm a bit uninspired recently.

And cold. I'm so over Minnesota winter.

On the Academy

Today I spent eight hours in a rather small room with some of the smartest people I have ever met or heard of at a university symposium on sexual difference.

Parts of it were interesting and enlightening, a fair amount of it was slightly-to-mostly incomprehensible, and then there were a few positively painful passages.

Sometimes, events like these make me feel inspired about my research; curious about literature, philosophy, and the world in general; and both humbled and grateful to be in this fine institution of higher learning and in the presence of such learned scholars. Often, however, they make me want to disavow any connection with these pompous, onanistic pedants; drop out of school; and generally gnaw my elbow.

I'm not sure how to reconcile these competing desires, especially since I frequently oscillate so rapidly between them.

600

For real, guys. This is my real 600th post. Yay!

This morning I was sitting around in my pajamas, drinking coffee and thinking I didn't have anything scheduled for today other than the fellows' luncheon at noon, when I realized that as today was November 11, I had a presentation to give in the freshman seminar I sit in on, directly following the luncheon. A presentation that hadn't even crossed my mind since I'd written some notes and a tentative outline a week ago. A presentation that was supposed to be 30-45 minutes long!

I moaned a couple of oh noes,* dashed for the shower, and there calmed myself with the reassurances that it was really more of a facilitation of discussion than a lecture, that it was over material I knew well, and that I could just grab a couple of slides from PowerPoints I'd already presented.

Anyway, it ended up being fine, and I had a really interesting discussion with the freshmen about what it means to be a human and an individual, about science and our understanding of life, and even about some art. I'm still not sure how intelligible or coherent I was, but, yeah, the students had some great comments, and the two professors and my fellow sitting-in grad student told me it had gone well.

The moral of that story is that I really need to make sure I write everything on my Google calendar. That way, even if I forget about it, David will see it and remind me.

*I always remind myself of this weatherman when I do that (see 0:46', in particular--and don't see it at all if you're particularly profanity-averse!).

Rodeo

Hello again, Few Readers I Still Have Left.

I write from the rest area in the middle of the Grapevine, at which we have paused en route from Santa Rosa (where we stayed with the ever-fantastic Jon and Lauren) to Loma Linda (where we'll stay with the charming Becca and Justin), via LA for dinner with Jeni and Soroosh. Epic Roadtrip II is underway, and more reports will doubtless follow, but for the moment I want to make good on a promise on which I've been remiss: the rodeo report!

In my last post, as you may recall, I was anticipating attending my first ever rodeo. Here is a sampling of the pictures we took; as always, click here to view larger versions, leave comments, etc.:

I've been telling people that aside from all the cringing and gasping (of which there was plenty), I actually had a pretty good time. It's interesting how quickly one (or I, in any case) grows inured to the violence and constant threat of injury to both man and animal. I was also struck by the fact that the people participating in and attending what could be perceived as an exploitative manifestation of cruelty are actually the ones who in contemporary culture maintain the most actual contact with these animals, and possibly love, respect, and understand them more than those of us urban vegetarians; on the other hand, as Ter pointed out, they may just be numb to the concerns of the dumb animals who form their property and source of income.

Anyway, philosophical concerns aside, it was a good time. We started with the fair, which runs concurrently, checking out various animals and crafts pavilions before heading to the rodeo arena. Unfortunately, we missed the Mutton Bustin', which apparently is a huge deal at this rodeo and prompts allegations of political scandal, as far as whose kids get in. We did make it for the bareback and saddle bronco riding, individual and team calf-roping (especially cringe-inducing: those poor baby cows!), steer wrestling (no joke), barrel racing, and bull riding. You can see the videos David uploaded here.

The other interesting aspect for me was how, in our position of privilege in our box seats (whose long waiting list doesn't preclude people hoping to jump the line from calling the rodeo office, apparently, upon hearing that a particular box seat owner has died--despite the fact that the box seat is just an upgrade from bleachers to metal folding chairs, closer to the ring (although I was still grateful that David was able to get them from his work)), we had a view of Hermiston's Who's Who, from the local Toyota magnate to various business owners. David said that once he even sat next to a senator.

Pictures of Adventures in Glacier National Park and Epic Roadtrip II will follow as soon as possible; don't abandon me yet!

Travel Adventures

Last weekend, as you may already know, I was in New Orleans for the annual national conference of the Pop Culture Association/ American Culture Association, giving a paper. The trip was ridiculously, ridiculously expensive (conference registration was $125, after the $55 association membership fee, in addition to airfare, hotel, and food) and rather stressful, as these things are, but was still a good time.

I could spend hours telling stories (as a few of you can confirm), but in the interest of this post, I'll stick to bullets (call me if you want longer versions!).

The Good:

• I didn't miss my flight Thursday morning, even though, despite my otherwise judicious planning, I discovered, upon reaching the front of a long security line, that I was in the WRONG TERMINAL (this happens).* I ended up putting my marathon training to good use by sprinting (with rolling suitcase) back through the Lindbergh terminal, onto a shuttle, back onto the light rail, through the parking garage to the Humphrey terminal, through security, and to my gate, arriving almost exactly 10 minutes before the flight was to leave.
• On non-holiday weekdays, the city bus runs straight from the airport into downtown, for just $1.60
  
• Warm weather in New Orleans
• Comfortable rooms
• Lunching like a lady of luxury at a cafe near the hotel just after arriving Thursday; despite a rather blustery breeze, I enjoyed sitting outside people watching and lingering clear through white chocolate bread pudding and coffee.
  
• Hanging out with Leah and Brett (definitely the highlight): beignets at Cafe du Monde, strolling the French Quarter, Louis Armstrong Park, St. Louis Cemetery, French Market, delicious African food...
• Taking a bump that not only earned me (hopefully... still waiting) a roundtrip fare voucher, but actually got me home earlier than my original flight
  
• Feeling like I gave a bang-up presentation at my panel on Friday

The Bad:

• I was the only person (of three!) on my panel to show up on Friday; the audience was also quite small
• My antiperspirant wasn't up to the New Orleans challenge: Wunderground tells me that although it only hit 81°, the humidity hit 90%!
• Because food was so expensive, I felt underfed for most of the trip, with the notable exception of Friday afternoon and evening, when beignets and coffee sustained me through miles of walking until I stuffed myself with vegetables and couscous at dinner.
• The city can feel a little sketchy, especially when one is by oneself and pulling a rolling suitcase (although I'd heard the phrase "murder capital" bandied about, I'm glad I didn't look up crime statistics before going...)
• Our touring took place on Good Friday, which meant that several attractions, including Preservation Hall, were closed
• The airport bus does not pick up downtown/in the French Quarter on holidays or weekends, stopping two and a half miles away
  

The Ugly:

• The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority website is the worst transit website I have ever seen, let alone tried to use. Look at the "routes and schedules" link, just for fun. Even if you're intimately familiar with the city geography, and don't need to get to, say, the airport (it's in another parish!), it still strikes me as basically unusable.** After great frustration, I finally gave up and took a cab the two and half miles to the airport express bus stop Saturday morning.

I went ahead and uploaded all of the nearly 100 photos I took during the trip, and am actually kicking myself, anomalously, for not taking more, as I'm not sure the ones I got capture the glory of the city, and particularly the French Quarter. Click below to start the slideshow, or here to view larger images, read captions, and make comments.


*In my case, it happened because I had checked in from school the afternoon before and printed my boarding passes there; had I attempted to check in at the terminal, or to check bags, I would have realized my error before spending 40 minutes in the wrong line.
**I do realize I'm spoiled by the inimitable Metro Transit website, and am further convinced of the superiority of the Twin Cities' public transit.

Wrong

Today I came across, for the first time, in an e-mail from the University president about our fairly dire funding situation, a word that made my skin crawl: planful. As in,

While it is clear that we will need to reduce the size of our workforce over the next two years, it is our goal to limit layoffs by continuing to take advantage of attrition, by reexamining the ways we work and being planful about filling vacant positions, by exploring other options including voluntary reduced-time appointments, and by improving service and efficiency.

Ewwwww.

Other things I am over:

• Winter (snow this morning)
• Staring at my computer, unable to write
• Finally writing something, only to end up
  
• Workshopping said paper and being told that I need to do a lot of
• Revising it before
• Giving a Dry Run presentation on it tomorrow

I'm also over grading essay exams, and submitting fellowship and grant proposals--but at least temporarily, I'm actually done with those! Woo! More time for "revising," which at the moment means staring at my computer and procrastiblogging. Sigh.

Dear Landlord,

Hi! How are you? Personally, I'm a little peeved. First, because it's the middle of March and I'm completely over these subzero temps (though they are predicting 50s by Monday, which is a huge relief). Second, because the mice are back.

Yesterday, I noticed a sudden preponderance of their... evidence... under my sink, and so carefully cleaned and disinfected everything. Yesterday evening, I heard rustling, and so sneaked up to my sink, opened the cupboard door--and saw the mouse in the corner. Startled, I flung the door closed--and then, examining the afterimage seared onto my brain, realized to my horror that there had been another mouse, in the trashcan, its furry silhouette visible against the white of the liner.

I did what I usually do in these circumstances (you will recall, dear Landlord, a long and unfortunate history with these things) and went next door. M had both mousetraps and sympathy, which I accepted gratefully.

I baited and positioned the traps, and as of last night hadn't caught anything. This morning, however, the check revealed both traps full. I had things to do (as one does), so I put off the unpleasant task of emptying them.

However, when I reached the point in my fellowship application writing that disposing of mouse corpses seemed preferable to staring at my laptop screen any longer, I put on my boots, steeled my nerves, and opened the cupboard door again--only to be greeted by a tiny mouseling, perched on the edge of the trashcan. My shout of shock and outrage either didn't faze him at all or stunned him into immobility; he just pointed his oversized ears at me and stared, miniature nose twitching. I cursed the fact that I had ever read The Tale of Despereaux, and that now I was even considering this small pest an "orphan" (at my hands, nonetheless!).

To make a long story shorter, after more silent standing-off and indecision over what to do, the mouseling climbed off the trashcan and disappeared into the black hole that connects all four units. I disposed of the occupied traps (jaw clenched and barely fending off the full-body shudders--you'll recall, dear Landlord, that I am a sensitive, conscientious, quasi-vegan, pacifist), again cleaned and disinfected the area, washed my hands several times, and am now writing you.

Because I've reached a solution. I'm putting a bounty on these mice.

I've decided that $50 per head is reasonable. If I were a slovenly person--storing bags of grain in the house, say, as the hippie downstairs neighbors did, and not noticing that the mice were feeding from them while breeding a colony that would only move north to my kitchen upon the crazy hippies' departure--or were otherwise welcoming vermin to share my space, this might be considered excessive. However, dear Landlord, I am not, and I am tired of dealing with this uncompensated.

If you had called an exterminator at any point during the past three years; if you had been more conscientious about the upkeep of this building (which I understand is old--and which I love for its antiquity--but the ceiling of which, to cite a single example, is about to cave in next door); or if I were feeling generally more charitable, I'd continue letting this go, as I have in the past.

As it is, I won't bill you for the--oh, 20?--mice I've already dealt with (at the price of a callus on my soul). But I will be taking $100 off my rent for next month (provided, that is, that I don't have to produce and dispose of any more corpses, although we already know at least one mouse remains). I will continue to keep my kitchen clean, disinfected, and as unattractive to mice as possible.

If you would hire an actual professional to come assess and remedy the situation, you might be able to make things better for all of us. As it is, I'm guessing that you won't, and would prefer to pay me (especially if I don't file a written complaint with the city, to which lengths a neighbor was recently driven). It's not pleasant for either of us, but as long as I'm doing someone else's job (at the expense of my own--remember that fellowship application?), I might as well receive some compensation.

Thanks, dear Landlord, and stay warm!
CëRïSë

Smelly

So I'm pretty sure whomever was stocking cosmetics at the K-Mart was wearing a perfume that my grandma used to wear--White Diamonds, maybe? The fragrance followed me throughout the store and back home; closer sniffing reveals that it's all over my lipstick tube, and now all over my hands.

It's not a bad smell, but I only want scents lingering on my person that I have deliberately applied, and preferably not ones that keep evoking memories of the 1980s. Actually, I think this one might be doing double-duty: remember those Designer Imposter fragrances in the 90s?* It's possible I, or someone near me, had a synthetic version of this scent as well.

I need to go wash my hands again.

*Blogger thinks that "imposter" is misspelled; apparently "impostor" is more common, although Merriam Webster admits the former as a variant of the latter. Isn't that crazy?

Holiday Wrap-up

So after nine hours in the car yesterday, which followed another 14 or so on Tuesday, I am back in the desert. My parents and I had headed north on Christmas Eve, arriving at my sister and brother-in-law's house Christmas afternoon, having survived a scary spin off the road just south of Roseburg, Oregon and having been semi-miraculously still able to drive the damaged vehicle the rest of the way north to Port Orchard, Washington--despite snow for much of the way, including a nasty storm around Portland. Due to weather and The Spin, we arrived approximately seven hours after our most optimistic estimate, but still had a festive evening, opening some of the Christmas presents even though we'd planned to do the tree after New Year's, and not all of us had finished our shopping (ahem).

We spent a few days there before heading over the mountains to Walla Walla, where I had a fantastic time eating delicious food, jogging with the aunts, being silly with my eight-year old cousin, and visiting friends (Ted and Heather hadn't managed to talk Veronica out yet, but I did get to see, among others, the blogging types boy-Lorin, Kuyler, Burtmiah, and David).

We returned to the we(s)t side in time for New Year's Eve, which I celebrated in Seattle with a variety of friends and relatives, first at The Rockstar's* CD-release party in Pike Place and then at a smattering of festive locations around the city.

On New Year's day we did Zoo Lights at Point Defiance, and Friday my mom, sister, and I met another aunt in Tacoma for lunch. On Saturday Joel ferried over from Seattle and we did a big dinner and the second round of the Christmas tree.

Sunday, Abraham were playing another show at a little cafe in the U District, so we headed over the waters again, where I thoroughly enjoyed not only an awesome show, but meeting up with both a high school friend I hadn't seen in a decade (adorable as always, and especially so at eight months pregnant), and with David, who'd made the trip up from Portland after hearing the band New Year's Eve. A few flakes had started to fall during the show, but by the time we'd finished a big dinner afterward, it was snowing in earnest, making the drive home adventuresome and stranding David on the west side of the mountains. By Tuesday it was gone, so he, my sister and I tripped to Tacoma to meet up with another friend at the Antique Sandwich Company before he had to head back to the east side; my mom was also able to fly back to Palm Springs that morning.

Wednesday, my dad and I drove as far as Santa Rosa, getting lost briefly in wine country, before staying with the inimitable Jonathan and Lauren, about whom I have blogged before and whom I see far too infrequently and miss terribly--although it looks like, through the most serendipitous of circumstances, they will be coming out to the desert this weekend!

I posted a random and lopsided but large selection of photos from the past two weeks here. My flash is broken, so lots of the indoor shots are a bit blurry. And somehow I ended up with about a ton and a half of pictures of cats and car-window landscapes--and none of plenty of important people, places, and events. Still, they give you an idea of the holiday adventures.

And now, I am back at my parents', where, as I was typing this, I just felt an earthquake** that shook the kitchen table from side to side and made things on the wall rattle. I also just realized that I am sunburned from this morning's (74 degree) run. Viva la California!

*If you're on Facebook, I recommend that you become a fan!
**Speaking of Facebook, I love that people's statuses were updated almost immediately to reflect the tremor.

Travelin'

Last night was very festive indeed, and this morning very early: I had a 7:15 Greyhound to catch. It was also very snowy; Champaign must have gotten about three inches of snow overnight. I got into Chicago mostly without incident, although our bus driver, upon learning from his dispatcher that he couldn't transport just the eight of us, drove us around the block and back to the station, where we had to get on a far more crowded (but thankfully also Chicago-bound) bus. I didn't have a window seat to myself with room for my backpack, but I did manage to sleep despite my gently snoring neighbor and what seemed like an extra-lurchy trip through snowy fields.

I had hoped to visit the Art Institute, but my friends wanted to outrun the impending snowstorm and thus picked me up early. The roads weren't too bad on the way home, but traffic was some of the worst we'd seen, even--and especially--in the seemingly empty stretches of Wisconsin around the Dells. It ended up taking us around eight and a half hours to get home to (also snowy) Minneapolis.

But now here I am. I ate an entire pizza and a tangerine, and still feel slightly hungry but entirely uninspired to do the things that need doing, which include completing my work for the online course, writing an abstract for a conference paper, drafting another conference paper to submit to my writing group, and getting rid of the occupied mousetrap I discovered under my sink upon returning (I caught my first last Saturday: sigh). The deadline for the first three things is tomorrow. I would far rather curl up in bed and sleep.

Comparison essays

The final essay on my students' second midterm asked them to identify and then write about the images you see above, Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

WARNING: Generally, one should avoid reading student essays before trying to do any serious writing of one's own.

The native speaker who is not on track to pass the course:
"In both paintings we are both looking at the woman as being the major focus. They both just stare at you in a gaze which women of the time period really seldom did. Image on the left didn't get to appear in all studios due the fact the woman didn't car she was "naked" not "nude" the forest was not what was being captured backgrounds in both of these image really was to impotant. The mono Lisa on right thugh fully clothes still captured the viewers gaze. The lighting the image on left shows the shadowing of the womans body. Overall you get a feel that women in image on left doesn't have high authority but is just a woman from the streets with the artist trys to depict since he was from (?) streets personally. The Mono Lisa seems to be a women with restrant dignity fully clothed with the gaze that seems to follow you everywhere."

Another native speaker, whose essay is more representative, and includes more information, but is rather oddly phrased:
"The comparison I want to make between these two images is the subject of women. Mona Lisa has always been a famous portrait of a female, and Manet's subject of the naked female and fully dressed scholars have both been seen as controversial paintings. Mane's picnic scenery caused great uproar of women being no more than objects or showcase by them being nude and appearing to be no more than animals. The subject matter for this piece was not exactly what Manet was shooting for, because he was focusing on technique, which this piece is part of the beginning to Impressionism, but besides that his artwork reflected a negative context on women. On the flipside, Mona Lisa appeared long before Manet's painting and similar to Manet, Leonardo was putting focus on painting techniques as well of the use of sfumato (the hazy appearance), but the subject matter of the woman is a complete different connection. Mona Lisa does not appear with jewels or extensive elaborate anything. She shows no other than an average woman. The positive aspect of this piece of the woman, because she is able to gaze at her viewer and this was something very new and real for the time. The similarities between these pieces is the use of landscape as distance, creating a lighter background to bring the viewer backwards. Also the color choices are both part of a muted pallette. There are no bright reds or ranges. Finally, I want to note the difference of the Mona Lisa being very sculptural and Manet's piece has the essence of flatness like the canvas. This was part of his style creating a flatten image with dimension."

The non-native speaker that I kind of just want to hug for this gem:
"These two paintings have some similarities and also there are some differences between "Mona Liza" and "Lancheon on the grass". These two paintings were made at different time, i.e. different Art period and characteristics of that time influence the composition of the painting. First, you notice the nude model on the paintig on the left where Mona Liza has her dress on, almost all body is covered under it. The model from painting on the left look straight to us as Mona Liza does. However, they look differently on viewer, especially that model on the left. She is nude, and it does not seem like she is worried about, she is in compony of to mans but it also does not worry her. Her body is so realistic, and she is like wants to show as that this is not unmoral. She shows that she is beautiful and she does not want to hide it under any dresses, she wants to show her true beauty. L. Da Vinci shows the beauti of Mona Liza by not using any jewerly on her or any bright and fancy dresses. He shows her true beauty by elimenating all these details. He use Light and dazziness on his painting to show mona Liza's mystic view. Background of these two paintings are very different. "Lancheon on the grass" has very peacefull in very warm colors painted background where L. Da Vinci uses very mystic and unrealistic in cold colors back ground. There are more Realistis view of "Lancheon on the grass" than the wiew of "Mona Liza." It is like Leonardo Da Vinci wants to show mystic character of his woman where Monet opens his woman to the viewer and says "Look at her she is so beautiful why does she need to hide it under the dress"

Native Speaker

Dear Student:

Please note that drawing beveled "frames" in brown crayon around the individual entries for your museum project will not distract me from the fact that you write as though you fell asleep at your keyboard:

This sculpture of Cyprus in comparison to Doyphorus [sic] show cases [sic] a smaller built. The drapery does not show the true shape of his body but you can tell there is not a muscle built the most you can see in comparison to other Roman natural look at all while the hair on his head is a more real but still not as perfectly sculpted as a whole piece.

It also doesn't hide the fact that this entry is nowhere near 500 words, despite the 16 point font.

Sincerely,
Your T.A.
(Who is still such a softie that she has given you a pity grade of a D on the project, though it dropped to a D- since you turned it in late.)

Strangeness

So yesterday, although my lame mini-blog hardly alluded to as much, was a rather strange day.

It started with me waking up at 8:00 a.m., terrified I'd overslept; realizing that my alarm wouldn't go off for another half an hour and going back to sleep; and then waking up at 9:21, having actually overslept significantly (as class starts at 9:45, and I'm a 15 minute bike ride away).

It ended with Angela and me touring the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, eating at the Bad Waitress,* and then having a ridiculous chocolate chimichanga at Little Tijuana on the way home after strolling around the neighborhood.

Before that, I had been cleaning my house when I noticed that the light in my middle room/office was really bright. It looked as though someone had replaced the regular bulb with an extra-bright fluorescent bulb. I wondered briefly if I were going crazy, actually, or if someone were trying to make me think so. After a couple of hours, the light burned out. When I went to replace it, the glass bulb pulled right out its metal sleeve, leaving the latter still threaded into the fixture. I had apparently put a 100 watt bulb into a fixture designated for 60 watt bulbs only, and probably only very narrowly avoided something terrible. The problem is that the light from the 60 watt bulb I installed yesterday is positively crepuscular. Every time I turn it on, I think of that scene from Amelie where she switches the bulbs in the grocer's apartment. I need to buy bulbs with higher lumens, apparently.

The strangest part of my day, though, was in the middle. On Wednesday, I'd received an e-mail from a guy I'd met briefly at a party on Tuesday, asking me to lunch. (That alone was strange: I hadn't been asked on a proper date in a long time, and it had been something like eight years since a relative stranger had looked me up to ask me out.) He had sent the e-mail Tuesday night, but with all the festivities, I hadn't received it until Wednesday afternoon. Anyway, to make a long story short, I thought he had wanted to meet next Thursday, and came very close to accidentally standing him up completely, but ended up texting to confirm and keeping the date after all, just a bit late (and still unshowered, with my hair under a scarf, and following a full roundtrip bike ride from school to home--in the rain).

Anyway, he likes me and wants to go out again. I'm not sure how I feel about that--but I'm also not sure this blog is the correct venue for those sorts of neuroses. However, I am proud of myself for accepting and then actually attending the date, though I'm also vividly reminded of why I have historically avoided this sort of thing.

*I realized that I have taken every single person who has come to visit me to the Bad Waitress. I think it's because it's so close to my apartment, is open until midnight, serves breakfast all day, and has an awesome name. Angela and I were going to eat Greek food, but we were at the museum until closing at 9--which is when Christo's closes, too.