1) Oh my gosh, yes.
2) Oh my gosh, yes.
12.30.2009
12.25.2009
A Day Late, For Real
So, as longtime readers of this blog (and who else, really, reads this blog but you?) know, I do an annual Christmas Eve entry where I post something Christmasy and then give shoutouts to all the new friends I've made over the past year.
But yesterday I was so busy with my family that I never got a chance. In the afternoon my brother roped me into a two-hour game of Mario Party. In the evening I helped Dad and the bro do some very-last-minute Christmas shopping (we went to Target during literally the last two minutes it was open, then to Walgreens, which was open much longer). That night we built a fire and sat around it, eating and talking and making my dad finally tell some stories about being a kid, which weren't really funny like my mom's about her childhood are, but which were nice because he just doesn't usually talk much about that sort of thing.
We didn't even go to church - Mom and I were the only ones who wanted to, and by the time we could have had our act together to do it, we would have been late. A surprisingly-small number of churches around here do nighttime services - well, at least a small number of churches my parents would go to, since they're kind of picky. ("We're going to Aunt Lisa's tomorrow and singing Christmas carols," said my brother, attempting to convince us we weren't really missing anything. "It's the same thing as church, just without the boring guy up front.")
So it's been nice and all, but a little disjointed all around. In that spirit, I offer you (rather than a graceful Richard Wilbur poem or bittersweet Chris Rice song) this op-ed, which was in the newspaper this morning and which, while I don't agree with some of his interpretations (for instance, consider the Magnificat; does that sound like "a mother hides a miracle in shame" to you?), had me nodding overall. Comin' clean on this, it's been a big year for staring things in the face and having to work, hard sometimes, to believe that God is there and is who I've always been told He is. Not that all years don't include a little of that, and not that they don't always end the way I hope they will, but this year I really recognize Gerson's feelings - his uncertainty, his eventual decision in favor, but with a hint of suspense. He says a lot of things that I've thought before.
I also offer you, though, my grateful greetings. Thank you for giving me someone to whisper, murmur, shout, and sob to, particularly about my teaching-related neuroses. And my thanks and greetings to this year's new friends: Dawn, Chung Eun, Elizabeth S-Z., all my WRIT 111 colleagues (I probably should've mentioned Kristi before this year), Kate E., Libby M., Ben, Kelly, Kelsey, Brian, Jerry and Sarah, Laura R. (if I've never mentioned her before), Barb W. (last year's Barb was Barb M.!), both Jasons, and anyone else from church whom I didn't cover last year. Merry Christmas and happy Chanukah to my students, especially Brian and Leah.
A merry Christmas to Manfred, to the girl whose name I can't remember (Ananda would know), to Samweli (however he's doing now), and to servicemen everywhere (especially now that Erik, though home for the holidays, is among them).
To 2009...and to 2010.
But yesterday I was so busy with my family that I never got a chance. In the afternoon my brother roped me into a two-hour game of Mario Party. In the evening I helped Dad and the bro do some very-last-minute Christmas shopping (we went to Target during literally the last two minutes it was open, then to Walgreens, which was open much longer). That night we built a fire and sat around it, eating and talking and making my dad finally tell some stories about being a kid, which weren't really funny like my mom's about her childhood are, but which were nice because he just doesn't usually talk much about that sort of thing.
We didn't even go to church - Mom and I were the only ones who wanted to, and by the time we could have had our act together to do it, we would have been late. A surprisingly-small number of churches around here do nighttime services - well, at least a small number of churches my parents would go to, since they're kind of picky. ("We're going to Aunt Lisa's tomorrow and singing Christmas carols," said my brother, attempting to convince us we weren't really missing anything. "It's the same thing as church, just without the boring guy up front.")
So it's been nice and all, but a little disjointed all around. In that spirit, I offer you (rather than a graceful Richard Wilbur poem or bittersweet Chris Rice song) this op-ed, which was in the newspaper this morning and which, while I don't agree with some of his interpretations (for instance, consider the Magnificat; does that sound like "a mother hides a miracle in shame" to you?), had me nodding overall. Comin' clean on this, it's been a big year for staring things in the face and having to work, hard sometimes, to believe that God is there and is who I've always been told He is. Not that all years don't include a little of that, and not that they don't always end the way I hope they will, but this year I really recognize Gerson's feelings - his uncertainty, his eventual decision in favor, but with a hint of suspense. He says a lot of things that I've thought before.
I also offer you, though, my grateful greetings. Thank you for giving me someone to whisper, murmur, shout, and sob to, particularly about my teaching-related neuroses. And my thanks and greetings to this year's new friends: Dawn, Chung Eun, Elizabeth S-Z., all my WRIT 111 colleagues (I probably should've mentioned Kristi before this year), Kate E., Libby M., Ben, Kelly, Kelsey, Brian, Jerry and Sarah, Laura R. (if I've never mentioned her before), Barb W. (last year's Barb was Barb M.!), both Jasons, and anyone else from church whom I didn't cover last year. Merry Christmas and happy Chanukah to my students, especially Brian and Leah.
A merry Christmas to Manfred, to the girl whose name I can't remember (Ananda would know), to Samweli (however he's doing now), and to servicemen everywhere (especially now that Erik, though home for the holidays, is among them).
To 2009...and to 2010.
12.18.2009
Grading
It went mostly okay. I'm a big jerk who grades too hard and I have no idea what anyone really deserves, so really the final grade submission inspires mostly guilt.
Especially with one guy in particular, whom I basically - let's call it what it is - screwed over hardcore, without meaning to, because he made two mistakes, one of them big, that were partly, though not wholly, my fault. I tried to fix it, but I just don't know what he really deserves, and I couldn't just doctor him into the grade I wanted to give him; if it were all my own class I probably would have, but my grading group, even after hearing the story, clearly didn't think he deserved what I wanted to give him. But I wish I'd done it anyway. Yet I had the power to do that; I could've done it if I'd decided to. And at first I even did. But then I read his portfolio over one more time. And I thought about what I'd said, and what he'd said, and what I should have said, and what he'd written, and how I offered to meet with him one more time but he didn't take me up on it, and what I surely would have told him if he had and I'd gotten to read his newest draft, and about what I would have done if it were someone else's student, and what I would have done with a kid I didn't like as much or know as well. And then, exclaiming a word not quite obscene but very close - again and again and later again - I dropped his grade by half a letter, which dropped him down into the next grade range. And as much as I thought about scribbling it out again, that's the one that stayed when I mailed my grades to Kristi. Even knowing that those peers of his who got the grade I wanted to give him didn't deserve it as much as he did.
"The friendly fire of composition," Jim called it at our grading meeting.
Before "had done things differently" and after "I," I don't know what fits better, "could" or "should."
Especially with one guy in particular, whom I basically - let's call it what it is - screwed over hardcore, without meaning to, because he made two mistakes, one of them big, that were partly, though not wholly, my fault. I tried to fix it, but I just don't know what he really deserves, and I couldn't just doctor him into the grade I wanted to give him; if it were all my own class I probably would have, but my grading group, even after hearing the story, clearly didn't think he deserved what I wanted to give him. But I wish I'd done it anyway. Yet I had the power to do that; I could've done it if I'd decided to. And at first I even did. But then I read his portfolio over one more time. And I thought about what I'd said, and what he'd said, and what I should have said, and what he'd written, and how I offered to meet with him one more time but he didn't take me up on it, and what I surely would have told him if he had and I'd gotten to read his newest draft, and about what I would have done if it were someone else's student, and what I would have done with a kid I didn't like as much or know as well. And then, exclaiming a word not quite obscene but very close - again and again and later again - I dropped his grade by half a letter, which dropped him down into the next grade range. And as much as I thought about scribbling it out again, that's the one that stayed when I mailed my grades to Kristi. Even knowing that those peers of his who got the grade I wanted to give him didn't deserve it as much as he did.
"The friendly fire of composition," Jim called it at our grading meeting.
Before "had done things differently" and after "I," I don't know what fits better, "could" or "should."
12.11.2009
Semester's End
Now that I have a lighter workload (though certainly tomorrow will be full of grading, at least it will be faster, hopefully less stressful grading), I went to InterVarsity tonight for the first time in, I dunno, prolly a couple of months. It was nice, and funny, and made me wish I were an undergrad again, that I had friends around me...that I hadn't wasted so much time in APO, to be a little too candid, after my freshman year (since freshman year with them was fine and important).
I wish I had more stories to tell about my last couple of years, wish I had time now to just spend with friends, doing the kinds of things my freshmen and the IV kids get to do. Like, my IV freshman guy B. got to be in on a joke where his roommate's left shoes all got stolen and he has to do acts of kindness to ransom them. And tonight Katy and Matt, Steve and Gary all busted out into an acapella song at the end of large group, some popular thing I faintly recognized, but with the words changed, to serenade the newly-elected incoming e-board. Whereas I can't have a decent conversation with people half the time because I just don't even know what to say: what do you say to someone who isn't a writing instructor or part of my church? That takes up pretty much my whole life. That doesn't seem right.
So hopefully the new second job, whatever it is, will pan out in such a way that I get a little more free time, and hopefully I'll turn out in such a way that I don't squander it on flipping pointless things like Facebook. I even kind of hate Facebook, much of the time, but I like knowing what people are doing: I like the socialization I can't really, in real life, have.
Next semester, let me have real friends, and stories to tell.
I wish I had more stories to tell about my last couple of years, wish I had time now to just spend with friends, doing the kinds of things my freshmen and the IV kids get to do. Like, my IV freshman guy B. got to be in on a joke where his roommate's left shoes all got stolen and he has to do acts of kindness to ransom them. And tonight Katy and Matt, Steve and Gary all busted out into an acapella song at the end of large group, some popular thing I faintly recognized, but with the words changed, to serenade the newly-elected incoming e-board. Whereas I can't have a decent conversation with people half the time because I just don't even know what to say: what do you say to someone who isn't a writing instructor or part of my church? That takes up pretty much my whole life. That doesn't seem right.
So hopefully the new second job, whatever it is, will pan out in such a way that I get a little more free time, and hopefully I'll turn out in such a way that I don't squander it on flipping pointless things like Facebook. I even kind of hate Facebook, much of the time, but I like knowing what people are doing: I like the socialization I can't really, in real life, have.
Next semester, let me have real friends, and stories to tell.
12.08.2009
In (What was Supposed to Be) Brief
This deserves much deeper treatment than it's going to get, but it's the last week of the semester, so instead of anything beautiful, profound, or properly-detailed, here're my notes on WRIT 111 right now:
-My students' work is generally much better, at this point, than I expected it to be. It's really remarkable how clearer everything gets when I drill them in sample argument structures and - this one's been big - force them to give me explicit topic sentences. I know my colleagues hate our students sounding too formulaic, and I'd like to read more graceful-sounding papers myself, but you know what? I've never taught four projects in fourteen weeks (if you count revision weeks separately, though technically they're not) before. It's hard enough for them to grasp the genres. And anyway, some of my smartest kids are figuring out on their own how to make their papers sound less mechanical, whereas my average kids are still learning how to gather and organize their thoughts and don't even have time for a lot of style - if I even knew how to teach it, which, partly because I got my English skills from a childhood of constant reading and proto-fanfic-writing instead of from school, I really mostly don't. So this's where we can be right now. And I think I'm going to have to be okay with that.
-I hope L. and I get to be friends-for-real after I stop being her teacher, because we've done quite a bit of talking this semester, and a) it turns out that we live right near each other (she's a transfer, so she doesn't have to live on campus); b) she's very smart and interesting; and c) she's a little odd, which's fine as far as I'm concerned, but she doesn't ever really talk about friends (she talks about her family, but she's an only child), which makes me wonder how many she really has.
-But...I unexpectedly got laid off from school for spring. The writing department didn't get the student enrollment it needed to keep all the sections, so, because the grad students get first crack at what students there are, all three of us adjuncts were let go. The plan thus far is to adjunct elsewhere in the area if either school will have me and to sub at a high school if not. Thank God for New York State law's just having changed to let me back on my parents' health insurance.
Okay, time for bed: after filling up on sleep over Thanksgiving break, I'm running short on it again. But Friday's the last day of the semester - for both good and ill, it'll all be over soon. And...break!
-My students' work is generally much better, at this point, than I expected it to be. It's really remarkable how clearer everything gets when I drill them in sample argument structures and - this one's been big - force them to give me explicit topic sentences. I know my colleagues hate our students sounding too formulaic, and I'd like to read more graceful-sounding papers myself, but you know what? I've never taught four projects in fourteen weeks (if you count revision weeks separately, though technically they're not) before. It's hard enough for them to grasp the genres. And anyway, some of my smartest kids are figuring out on their own how to make their papers sound less mechanical, whereas my average kids are still learning how to gather and organize their thoughts and don't even have time for a lot of style - if I even knew how to teach it, which, partly because I got my English skills from a childhood of constant reading and proto-fanfic-writing instead of from school, I really mostly don't. So this's where we can be right now. And I think I'm going to have to be okay with that.
-I hope L. and I get to be friends-for-real after I stop being her teacher, because we've done quite a bit of talking this semester, and a) it turns out that we live right near each other (she's a transfer, so she doesn't have to live on campus); b) she's very smart and interesting; and c) she's a little odd, which's fine as far as I'm concerned, but she doesn't ever really talk about friends (she talks about her family, but she's an only child), which makes me wonder how many she really has.
-But...I unexpectedly got laid off from school for spring. The writing department didn't get the student enrollment it needed to keep all the sections, so, because the grad students get first crack at what students there are, all three of us adjuncts were let go. The plan thus far is to adjunct elsewhere in the area if either school will have me and to sub at a high school if not. Thank God for New York State law's just having changed to let me back on my parents' health insurance.
Okay, time for bed: after filling up on sleep over Thanksgiving break, I'm running short on it again. But Friday's the last day of the semester - for both good and ill, it'll all be over soon. And...break!
11.28.2009
I Love Google Chrome's Incognito Windows
Especially when I write blog entries from Syracuse.
It's past 1 AM and I'm awake, partly because of this evening's chocolate consumption, partly because I slept until nearly noon today (definitely didn't plan that - that's more than eight hours). I'll say this, having graded eight op-eds today: for all I've taught badly this semester, on the op-ed unit I think I actually did okay (it helps that that's the unit that's changed the least over the three semesters I've been teaching). Their MLA formatting skills are significantly worse than I expected, but the overall grades are better than they've been.
It was a very good Thanksgiving: in addition to my immediate family, we had Aunt Lisa and Elizabeth (Uncle Paul's mother - he himself is in Afghanistan, doing the same police-training work he previous did in Iraq) and Uncle Bert and Might-As-Well-Be-Aunt Nancy. I brought minor shame upon my head with my total inability to perform basic kitchen tasks properly (where went all the budding apple-peeling skill I cultivated in Alfred? Oh, yeah, that's right: I didn't really have much, and then Erica's apple-peeling gadget swooped down and rescued me), but my contribution to dinner, Pioneer Woman's apple dumplings (the same ones I've been making all autumn - my family had never yet gotten to try them), appears to have more or less redeemed me. They pleased everyone and won my brother's heart, which is not always a small feat...it helped that, to him, they taste like McDonald's apple pies. I haven't had many of those, but thinking back to my vague recollections thereof, you know what? I think he's right.
Today we went to the Everson Museum to see "Turner to Cezanne" (please put the accent where it belongs - I'm lazy), an awesome exhibit of impressionist paintings from a Welsh collection. It's only going to four cities in America, and somehow little-ol' Syracuse managed to be one of them. Totally worth the long wait in line to get in. It goes on until early January - if you ever want to see it, let me know, because I'm game to go back.
And I put a bunch of my house's dishes, which I brought up from Binghamton in a Rubbermaid-style tub, through my parents' dishwasher. Because that's the kind of kitchen we run at my house, yessir: I can bring up a whole bin full of dirties, and we will still have enough dishware in our cupboards for the seven-person (or whatever) feast that Natasha cooked yesterday for her friends. I have reflected more than once that if we had fewer dishes, we'd probably be forced to be better about washing them. (But then I realize that this is potentially erroneous, and we might actually, in real life, probably be no better, just hungrier. Facepalm. Blush. Sigh.)
Tomorrow I have to grade about nine more op-eds, but that's okay. Really, the battle will be getting up before noon again. As much as I should, it's so seldom that I actually get to sleep for eight-plus hours that I've just been soaking, soaking it in like a sponge (or some other, less cliched item like that) (and yeah, you're gonna have to add that accent, too). Eating, sleeping, arting, grading op-eds, and writing long, rambly, boring-to-everyone-but-me blog entries: this is my Thanksgiving-break life. And it is very welcome. The end.
It's past 1 AM and I'm awake, partly because of this evening's chocolate consumption, partly because I slept until nearly noon today (definitely didn't plan that - that's more than eight hours). I'll say this, having graded eight op-eds today: for all I've taught badly this semester, on the op-ed unit I think I actually did okay (it helps that that's the unit that's changed the least over the three semesters I've been teaching). Their MLA formatting skills are significantly worse than I expected, but the overall grades are better than they've been.
It was a very good Thanksgiving: in addition to my immediate family, we had Aunt Lisa and Elizabeth (Uncle Paul's mother - he himself is in Afghanistan, doing the same police-training work he previous did in Iraq) and Uncle Bert and Might-As-Well-Be-Aunt Nancy. I brought minor shame upon my head with my total inability to perform basic kitchen tasks properly (where went all the budding apple-peeling skill I cultivated in Alfred? Oh, yeah, that's right: I didn't really have much, and then Erica's apple-peeling gadget swooped down and rescued me), but my contribution to dinner, Pioneer Woman's apple dumplings (the same ones I've been making all autumn - my family had never yet gotten to try them), appears to have more or less redeemed me. They pleased everyone and won my brother's heart, which is not always a small feat...it helped that, to him, they taste like McDonald's apple pies. I haven't had many of those, but thinking back to my vague recollections thereof, you know what? I think he's right.
Today we went to the Everson Museum to see "Turner to Cezanne" (please put the accent where it belongs - I'm lazy), an awesome exhibit of impressionist paintings from a Welsh collection. It's only going to four cities in America, and somehow little-ol' Syracuse managed to be one of them. Totally worth the long wait in line to get in. It goes on until early January - if you ever want to see it, let me know, because I'm game to go back.
And I put a bunch of my house's dishes, which I brought up from Binghamton in a Rubbermaid-style tub, through my parents' dishwasher. Because that's the kind of kitchen we run at my house, yessir: I can bring up a whole bin full of dirties, and we will still have enough dishware in our cupboards for the seven-person (or whatever) feast that Natasha cooked yesterday for her friends. I have reflected more than once that if we had fewer dishes, we'd probably be forced to be better about washing them. (But then I realize that this is potentially erroneous, and we might actually, in real life, probably be no better, just hungrier. Facepalm. Blush. Sigh.)
Tomorrow I have to grade about nine more op-eds, but that's okay. Really, the battle will be getting up before noon again. As much as I should, it's so seldom that I actually get to sleep for eight-plus hours that I've just been soaking, soaking it in like a sponge (or some other, less cliched item like that) (and yeah, you're gonna have to add that accent, too). Eating, sleeping, arting, grading op-eds, and writing long, rambly, boring-to-everyone-but-me blog entries: this is my Thanksgiving-break life. And it is very welcome. The end.
11.23.2009
I'm just so bad at my job. For real. I don't want to make a scene about it, but that's seriously the only thing I can do, make a scene, be the melodramatic panicking girl, cheerfully reassured by one and all.
But I'm just so bad at my job. It isn't okay. Teachers should know how to teach. If they're not ready to teach, they shouldn't be inflicted on students. Don't we think that freshmen are important? Or do we just think that a few years with the real professors will straighten them out?
I'm just so bad at my job. And it isn't okay.
But I'm just so bad at my job. It isn't okay. Teachers should know how to teach. If they're not ready to teach, they shouldn't be inflicted on students. Don't we think that freshmen are important? Or do we just think that a few years with the real professors will straighten them out?
I'm just so bad at my job. And it isn't okay.
11.19.2009
::facepalm::, revisited
I have never had so much trouble getting students to understand the concept of what makes a good eight-to-ten-page researched-argument topic as I have this semester. Some of them have finally gotten somewhere, but even now, though everyone's supposed to bring in two completed pages of their argument section tomorrow, I have like four or five kids that still don't even have a topic because they just. don't. get it. They just guess and guess and guess, proposing inappropriate topic after inappropriate topic, hoping by luck to hit something I'll approve.
I am going to bed before I have to answer any other e-mails that make me question my fitness for and choice of this career.
Yesterday was a good day. That makes it frustrating that today was not.
I am going to bed before I have to answer any other e-mails that make me question my fitness for and choice of this career.
Yesterday was a good day. That makes it frustrating that today was not.
11.15.2009
Alfred, the Latest
Went to Alfred for the square dance - saw Albert, Joe/Andrea (but of course!), Tom, Tim/Maggie, Jessie, bunches of staff...the dance was fun as usual, and this year I think I came in second in the limbo contest, keeping my unofficial-and-largely-unnoted title of Best Female InterVarsity-Alfred Limboer.
I was really out of it for a lot of Saturday, really sort of emotionally muted (I dunno, it's been a long series of weeks?), but Saturday night was gorgeous: the others skipped town, so Albert and I, being the only ones left, had dinner at Sandy's, preceded by fun times looking through Roger's microscope and followed by lots and lots of good talk, first Sandy and Albert and me and then with Roger there as well. I also got a chance after that to watch Ratatouille with Jessie and then talk with her until too-late.
All the staff, of course, were wonderful to us all weekend - with the Jet temporarily out of commission, we were left with about two planned meals unaccounted for, but the Snyders/McGraws/McClains made sure that we didn't want for nourishment, to say nothing of the great times we had at their houses, even though we often gave them comparatively little notice before we came.
Chapel this morning: also excellent. I never remember Paul Young's name, but I always like his sermons (and how would one not take pleasure in listening to his Irish-ish accent?), and this one was no exception.
The one blight on the whole thing is that I've come home lightly sick. It feels like a chest cold, but I'm also running a low fever, as I just discovered a few minutes ago after digging out my thermometer. So maybe, even though we're also going to miss Wednesday the 25th's class because of Thanksgiving break, I may do what I've been considering doing for weeks: maybe I'll cancel class tomorrow. It would save me from not only potentially having to teach sick, but from having to figure out what on earth I'm going to teach them.
But that will be a matter to consider further when I wake up from the nap I am now hoping to take. In sum, Alfred is still wonderful. The end.
I was really out of it for a lot of Saturday, really sort of emotionally muted (I dunno, it's been a long series of weeks?), but Saturday night was gorgeous: the others skipped town, so Albert and I, being the only ones left, had dinner at Sandy's, preceded by fun times looking through Roger's microscope and followed by lots and lots of good talk, first Sandy and Albert and me and then with Roger there as well. I also got a chance after that to watch Ratatouille with Jessie and then talk with her until too-late.
All the staff, of course, were wonderful to us all weekend - with the Jet temporarily out of commission, we were left with about two planned meals unaccounted for, but the Snyders/McGraws/McClains made sure that we didn't want for nourishment, to say nothing of the great times we had at their houses, even though we often gave them comparatively little notice before we came.
Chapel this morning: also excellent. I never remember Paul Young's name, but I always like his sermons (and how would one not take pleasure in listening to his Irish-ish accent?), and this one was no exception.
The one blight on the whole thing is that I've come home lightly sick. It feels like a chest cold, but I'm also running a low fever, as I just discovered a few minutes ago after digging out my thermometer. So maybe, even though we're also going to miss Wednesday the 25th's class because of Thanksgiving break, I may do what I've been considering doing for weeks: maybe I'll cancel class tomorrow. It would save me from not only potentially having to teach sick, but from having to figure out what on earth I'm going to teach them.
But that will be a matter to consider further when I wake up from the nap I am now hoping to take. In sum, Alfred is still wonderful. The end.
11.02.2009
Wait. What? Aagh!
Seriously, after a weeks-long slog through paper-grading, and a day today where I met with something like twenty of my students (for ten minutes each) for writing conferences, and after sitting through a 7:30 PM meeting for WRIT 100, I am happy to finally be home and somehow without assignment for the evening.
But since nobody's around to play trivia with, I came back here, and now I'm going to...clean the upstairs bathroom, because it's kind of disgusting and clearly none of my other housemates are going to clean it.
The irony here is...I'm kinda looking forward to it. Like okay, it's more precise to say that I'm looking forward to restoring cleanliness to the tune (well, so to speak) of a back-episode of Car Talk (it's become my iPod fodder for most cleanliness-oriented occasions). But still. I am cleaning the bathroom on my one night off. I'm not sleeping. I'm not cooking something cool. I'm not even sitting around catching up on Homestar Runner while eating cookies. I'm cleaning the bathroom, and when I'm done, if I'm not too tired, I may just start in on the dishes.
In other words, until further notice I am officially a monumentally-boring person. So. You know. There's that.
But since nobody's around to play trivia with, I came back here, and now I'm going to...clean the upstairs bathroom, because it's kind of disgusting and clearly none of my other housemates are going to clean it.
The irony here is...I'm kinda looking forward to it. Like okay, it's more precise to say that I'm looking forward to restoring cleanliness to the tune (well, so to speak) of a back-episode of Car Talk (it's become my iPod fodder for most cleanliness-oriented occasions). But still. I am cleaning the bathroom on my one night off. I'm not sleeping. I'm not cooking something cool. I'm not even sitting around catching up on Homestar Runner while eating cookies. I'm cleaning the bathroom, and when I'm done, if I'm not too tired, I may just start in on the dishes.
In other words, until further notice I am officially a monumentally-boring person. So. You know. There's that.
10.27.2009
Brief Update
Productivity yesterday: fairly high.
Productivity today: medium, but still higher than it's been.
Still to grade (in depth, not just check-and-return): a whole class-and-a-half's worth of rhetorical analyses, which were supposed to come back to them by yesterday at the latest. Lord have mercy.
Finally done this evening, after multiple days' failed attempts to make the time: my laundry.
Things I still have no time for, and will probably have no time for until November: dish-doing, room-cleaning, cookie-baking, using up the five leftover self-picked apples that haven't rotted yet, sleeping for more than six hours at a time, going anywhere outside of Broome County, attempting to acquire another teaching-friendly outfit, anything not involving an undercurrent of guilt that I'm not working.
What will happen probably less than a week after I give the rhetorical analyses back: the stack of op-eds to grade will come in, and the whole process will start all over again.
Currently trying not to: eat chocolate chips right out of the bag...particularly after all the other sugar I've taken in today, including, though not limited to, the wrapped "cinnamon bun" pastry I succumbed to at church this afternoon, which may be the least healthy wrapped snack ever (though, knowing humanity, I doubt it).
Okay. Back to work...or sleep. One of the two. Or maybe chocolate chips. We'll see.
Productivity today: medium, but still higher than it's been.
Still to grade (in depth, not just check-and-return): a whole class-and-a-half's worth of rhetorical analyses, which were supposed to come back to them by yesterday at the latest. Lord have mercy.
Finally done this evening, after multiple days' failed attempts to make the time: my laundry.
Things I still have no time for, and will probably have no time for until November: dish-doing, room-cleaning, cookie-baking, using up the five leftover self-picked apples that haven't rotted yet, sleeping for more than six hours at a time, going anywhere outside of Broome County, attempting to acquire another teaching-friendly outfit, anything not involving an undercurrent of guilt that I'm not working.
What will happen probably less than a week after I give the rhetorical analyses back: the stack of op-eds to grade will come in, and the whole process will start all over again.
Currently trying not to: eat chocolate chips right out of the bag...particularly after all the other sugar I've taken in today, including, though not limited to, the wrapped "cinnamon bun" pastry I succumbed to at church this afternoon, which may be the least healthy wrapped snack ever (though, knowing humanity, I doubt it).
Okay. Back to work...or sleep. One of the two. Or maybe chocolate chips. We'll see.
10.23.2009
This has to stop right now:
I cannot be teaching nine credits (with the fifteen-to-twenty hours a week that whole production entails, though goodness knows how many hours it averages out to when you throw in grading), working twelve-to-fifteen hours a week at church, helping with the youth ministry, captaining a soup-kitchen team (for the record, I genuinely attempted to escape that responsibility, but apparently some have greatness thrust upon 'em), doing Red Cross work, going to InterVarsity meetings, and doing all the everyday things I am supposed to be doing (which include, but are not limited to, shopping, cooking, laundry, room-cleaning, dish-doing, some housecleaning, and the kind of exercise a twenty-four-year-old is supposed to get ANY EXERCISE AT ALL) at the same time, to say nothing of time left over for doing anything I actually want to do, since right now I get it by way of stealing time from the above things I'm supposed to be doing.
It does. not. work. It will. not. work.
I am going to have to disappoint some people and cut waaaay, way back on all the stuff I am doing. From this point forward:
-No more blood drives during the semester, or any other goshdang Red Cross thing besides helping Cathy Haycook, no matter how desperate Veronica is.
-I'm sorry, truly, but, with the exception of Nathan's human-slavery awareness demonstration, both because I already promised him I'd do it and because I really genuinely want to do it, no more InterVarsity until further notice. It's, odd as this sounds, too big a temptation, time-management-wise, and, frankly, my heart hasn't really been in it lately because I already spend so much time at church, plus I'm in Bible study with Andrea (that one I'm keeping, of course).
I may also, depending on how things go, have to scrap helping Ife with youth group and/or volunteering for the soup kitchen.
I may also have to suspend my Facebook account AGAIN, and maybe even close down my Google-reader feed, because when I'm on the internet I leak time like broken faucets leak water - time in absolutely senseless, absolutely irresponsible quantities, and I just don't have that time or the sleep to lose anymore, which is a ridiculous statement to the extent that it assumes that at any point over perhaps the past five years I ever have. It's not even AIM, it's just...everything. I just can't do as much as everyone else can right now. I don't have the time-management discipline that that demands.
And I cannot keep failing when it comes to serving my students. They are the ones who suffer most when I do this kind of crap.
It does. not. work. It will. not. work.
I am going to have to disappoint some people and cut waaaay, way back on all the stuff I am doing. From this point forward:
-No more blood drives during the semester, or any other goshdang Red Cross thing besides helping Cathy Haycook, no matter how desperate Veronica is.
-I'm sorry, truly, but, with the exception of Nathan's human-slavery awareness demonstration, both because I already promised him I'd do it and because I really genuinely want to do it, no more InterVarsity until further notice. It's, odd as this sounds, too big a temptation, time-management-wise, and, frankly, my heart hasn't really been in it lately because I already spend so much time at church, plus I'm in Bible study with Andrea (that one I'm keeping, of course).
I may also, depending on how things go, have to scrap helping Ife with youth group and/or volunteering for the soup kitchen.
I may also have to suspend my Facebook account AGAIN, and maybe even close down my Google-reader feed, because when I'm on the internet I leak time like broken faucets leak water - time in absolutely senseless, absolutely irresponsible quantities, and I just don't have that time or the sleep to lose anymore, which is a ridiculous statement to the extent that it assumes that at any point over perhaps the past five years I ever have. It's not even AIM, it's just...everything. I just can't do as much as everyone else can right now. I don't have the time-management discipline that that demands.
And I cannot keep failing when it comes to serving my students. They are the ones who suffer most when I do this kind of crap.
10.20.2009
A Late Present to My Seventeen-Year-Old Self
Six-thirty PM: I snagged the last available space in the parking lot nearest the Anderson Performing Arts Center on campus and followed an old lady in, hoping she'd unknowingly lead me to the Osterhaut Concert Hall (there're several auditoriums in the place, and some of them take a little bit of wandering to get to), where Mike Farrell, otherwise known as BJ Hunnicutt from M*A*S*H, was giving a free talk on activism at 7. As it turned out, I could have found the place without her help, since it was right in front of us, but instead I followed her all the way in, too, sidling by her only when she stopped to talk to an usher.
For such a big hall, there weren't that many people: his visit got much less campus hype than I expected, given that many of us are familiar with M*A*S*H via the wonders of syndication. I got a seat in, I dunno, maybe the sixth or seventh row back? - something towards the front, but not actually the front - and in the center. I looked around...hardly any college students. The advertising that must have been done in the Binghamton paper (I hadn't seen it, but sure enough, there was an article) and at River Read Books (which sponsored the night) had worked, for there were people, but most of them were my parents' age and older. The few other college students there were tended to be right up front, in groups with their friends. Though, yeah, I get the demographic: Farrell is now seventy years old.
And how did I feel about finally getting to meet a M*A*S*H actor? Relatively calm. At sixteen or seventeen I would have been tingling with excitement for days preceding; now, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, I can't summon the adrenaline level I could during high school, and at first I wasn't sure I'd go: did I really want to hear about a bunch of topics I'd already heard so much argument about for so many years (the death penalty [his stance on which, don't get me wrong, I agree with, but still], the war in Iraq, election rights, etc.)? I've long felt, if anything, too little, not too much, when it comes to life in general. If this was going to be all righteous anger - as Gallagher's visit to Alfred was, to take a lesser example, and one much less self-giving - would I end up wishing I hadn't come? I feel like a bad person for not wanting to hear more about social justice (especially me, who was Miss Community Service for so long and who still tries sometimes to help Nathan Bixler, may he be richly blessed both now and hereafter, with his Social Justice Ministry projects), but I did two years of grad school and I've lived in America for the past eight years and I am therefore burned out on people's self-righteous anger. That shouldn't be so, but it is.
Yet that high-school-junior self would have jumped at the chance, and even though I'd maybe like to say that it was for love of Mike's causes, or even my real secondary reason of wondering if I'd be inspired, in the end, I guess you could say that it was primarily for that past self that I went.
Remember, I spent months of eleventh grade, after the whole Cory debacle, lost in M*A*S*H as a way to cope. I can hardly put into words anymore what that debacle was (even were it mine to fully explain, which I think it isn't), but it stands out as my first taste of what it was like to try to rescue someone who was clearly in trouble and pain, but end up not only defeated, but even to some degree betrayed. As one of Churchville's most idealistic high schoolers, it nearly broke me. I made Hawkeye, BJ, Radar, and the rest into imaginary friends, making up a complicated system part out of Star Trek: TNG, part out of Narnia, and half out of The Giver, that brought them out of their world and into mine, made them able to read my mind and feelings, but made it so hours in my time were only seconds away from theirs. I remember dark mornings in March, the worst month of that so-exceptional, so-dramatic year, huddled over my heating vent, thinking about Mere Christianity, having conversations with a mental-holographic Father Mulcahy, trying to - to what? I hardly remember now. To hope, I feel like saying, though I can't explain why the incident damaged mine so much. To be brave.
And I'm not gonna lie - when Mike arrived, those imaginary friends were there, too.
When he arrived - forty minutes late; he was driving here all the way from Maine and hit traffic - he'd clearly rushed out of his car to meet us. He was in a suit coat - but under it was a standard-looking, thickish cotton t-shirt, and the rest of his outfit, which he hadn't had time to change, was sweatpants and sneakers. He was so sorry, he said. He thanked us all for waiting.
What followed after his preliminary few stories, it turned out, was basically a Q-and-A session - people came up to microphones set up on either side of the room and asked him things, he answered. Some of it was about M*A*S*H. Some of it was about his travels around the country on behalf of various groups for change. Some of it was political. As it turns out, he is very liberal. Very polite, and very careful to think and research before he decides on his positions (thank God), but very liberal. I am a moderate (or at least I've long hoped I am, since my personal sympathies lie with neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party), and I kind of wished he'd criticize, just for the sake of balance, someone besides the right, though he never did. I think that for all he sees conservatives as suppressive of critical thought, he is a little quick to paint that whole large group with one brush.
But I like him. He was very kind to everyone he spoke to, including the two lunatic-fringe people who monopolized the microphone for minutes at a time, basically to talk at him about themselves instead of ask him anything (I would have found not cutting them off something of a challenge, but he was a perfect gentleman). He made complex and measured points. He found ways to courteously express his own views when they disagreed with those of the audience. Besides being an excellent model of good rhetoric, he is, much more importantly, a man who appears to have been the inspiration for much of what is good in his characters. The more you see of Mike Farrell, the more you realize that he didn't have to move far away from himself to play BJ.
I actually thought about asking him if he had any advice for my students about how to write for an audience that starts off disagreeing with them, since he's been on very conservative talk shows to defend liberal points, but I never got the chance. Which turns out to've been just fine, since after the talk ended, I heard Dr. Kinney call my name - turns out that she and her husband were there. She is, might I remind you, the director of composition, my favorite grad-school professor but also, now, my highest-up boss. To've asked that kind of question as my question to a celebrity might well have looked like major sucking up, so I guess I'm glad it didn't happen. (I can always e-mail him if I want to and hope for an answer, right?)
I ended up in line with Drs. Kinney and Henkel eventually, as we waited to get our copies of his new book signed (I bought mine about twenty seconds before I got to him, but never mind that). They left for home, and I was next.
I'd ended up thinking, on my way to that line, how my fourteen-year-old self wanted to act if I ever met Colin Mochrie. I wanted to be cool, to not bother him. I mean, I also desperately wanted to have an actual conversation with him, but if I ran into him in some casual setting - goodness knows what that would have been - I wanted him to know I knew who he was, but to leave the communication to his opening.
I thought, too, of what my mom had said once while we watched Good Eats together - that she wouldn't want to bother Alton Brown, but she wanted to shake his hand sometime, tell him she enjoyed the show. That had seemed a bit anticlimactic to me at the time, but I understand it now.
So I got to Mike Farrell, who played a larger part than he'll ever know in my junior year of high school. And I looked at him, said something like, "Hi, so nice to meet you," and shook his hand, suddenly feeling a bit shy. I spelled my name; he signed my book. To [Laurel] - Peace! He gave it back, shook my hand again. A nice handshake, too - lively, sincere. "It's a pleasure to meet you," I think he said, and he has a talent for sounding like he means it.
"Thanks so much for coming out here," I said, probably turning a little too quickly, the whole transaction a bit too businesslike from my end. But I did say it, and then I turned and let the next person go. And so it was that I saw and met Mike Farrell, who played one of my favorite characters on my favorite TV show ever.
Junior-year self: merry Christmas, happy birthday, or anything you choose.
For such a big hall, there weren't that many people: his visit got much less campus hype than I expected, given that many of us are familiar with M*A*S*H via the wonders of syndication. I got a seat in, I dunno, maybe the sixth or seventh row back? - something towards the front, but not actually the front - and in the center. I looked around...hardly any college students. The advertising that must have been done in the Binghamton paper (I hadn't seen it, but sure enough, there was an article) and at River Read Books (which sponsored the night) had worked, for there were people, but most of them were my parents' age and older. The few other college students there were tended to be right up front, in groups with their friends. Though, yeah, I get the demographic: Farrell is now seventy years old.
And how did I feel about finally getting to meet a M*A*S*H actor? Relatively calm. At sixteen or seventeen I would have been tingling with excitement for days preceding; now, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, I can't summon the adrenaline level I could during high school, and at first I wasn't sure I'd go: did I really want to hear about a bunch of topics I'd already heard so much argument about for so many years (the death penalty [his stance on which, don't get me wrong, I agree with, but still], the war in Iraq, election rights, etc.)? I've long felt, if anything, too little, not too much, when it comes to life in general. If this was going to be all righteous anger - as Gallagher's visit to Alfred was, to take a lesser example, and one much less self-giving - would I end up wishing I hadn't come? I feel like a bad person for not wanting to hear more about social justice (especially me, who was Miss Community Service for so long and who still tries sometimes to help Nathan Bixler, may he be richly blessed both now and hereafter, with his Social Justice Ministry projects), but I did two years of grad school and I've lived in America for the past eight years and I am therefore burned out on people's self-righteous anger. That shouldn't be so, but it is.
Yet that high-school-junior self would have jumped at the chance, and even though I'd maybe like to say that it was for love of Mike's causes, or even my real secondary reason of wondering if I'd be inspired, in the end, I guess you could say that it was primarily for that past self that I went.
Remember, I spent months of eleventh grade, after the whole Cory debacle, lost in M*A*S*H as a way to cope. I can hardly put into words anymore what that debacle was (even were it mine to fully explain, which I think it isn't), but it stands out as my first taste of what it was like to try to rescue someone who was clearly in trouble and pain, but end up not only defeated, but even to some degree betrayed. As one of Churchville's most idealistic high schoolers, it nearly broke me. I made Hawkeye, BJ, Radar, and the rest into imaginary friends, making up a complicated system part out of Star Trek: TNG, part out of Narnia, and half out of The Giver, that brought them out of their world and into mine, made them able to read my mind and feelings, but made it so hours in my time were only seconds away from theirs. I remember dark mornings in March, the worst month of that so-exceptional, so-dramatic year, huddled over my heating vent, thinking about Mere Christianity, having conversations with a mental-holographic Father Mulcahy, trying to - to what? I hardly remember now. To hope, I feel like saying, though I can't explain why the incident damaged mine so much. To be brave.
And I'm not gonna lie - when Mike arrived, those imaginary friends were there, too.
When he arrived - forty minutes late; he was driving here all the way from Maine and hit traffic - he'd clearly rushed out of his car to meet us. He was in a suit coat - but under it was a standard-looking, thickish cotton t-shirt, and the rest of his outfit, which he hadn't had time to change, was sweatpants and sneakers. He was so sorry, he said. He thanked us all for waiting.
What followed after his preliminary few stories, it turned out, was basically a Q-and-A session - people came up to microphones set up on either side of the room and asked him things, he answered. Some of it was about M*A*S*H. Some of it was about his travels around the country on behalf of various groups for change. Some of it was political. As it turns out, he is very liberal. Very polite, and very careful to think and research before he decides on his positions (thank God), but very liberal. I am a moderate (or at least I've long hoped I am, since my personal sympathies lie with neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party), and I kind of wished he'd criticize, just for the sake of balance, someone besides the right, though he never did. I think that for all he sees conservatives as suppressive of critical thought, he is a little quick to paint that whole large group with one brush.
But I like him. He was very kind to everyone he spoke to, including the two lunatic-fringe people who monopolized the microphone for minutes at a time, basically to talk at him about themselves instead of ask him anything (I would have found not cutting them off something of a challenge, but he was a perfect gentleman). He made complex and measured points. He found ways to courteously express his own views when they disagreed with those of the audience. Besides being an excellent model of good rhetoric, he is, much more importantly, a man who appears to have been the inspiration for much of what is good in his characters. The more you see of Mike Farrell, the more you realize that he didn't have to move far away from himself to play BJ.
I actually thought about asking him if he had any advice for my students about how to write for an audience that starts off disagreeing with them, since he's been on very conservative talk shows to defend liberal points, but I never got the chance. Which turns out to've been just fine, since after the talk ended, I heard Dr. Kinney call my name - turns out that she and her husband were there. She is, might I remind you, the director of composition, my favorite grad-school professor but also, now, my highest-up boss. To've asked that kind of question as my question to a celebrity might well have looked like major sucking up, so I guess I'm glad it didn't happen. (I can always e-mail him if I want to and hope for an answer, right?)
I ended up in line with Drs. Kinney and Henkel eventually, as we waited to get our copies of his new book signed (I bought mine about twenty seconds before I got to him, but never mind that). They left for home, and I was next.
I'd ended up thinking, on my way to that line, how my fourteen-year-old self wanted to act if I ever met Colin Mochrie. I wanted to be cool, to not bother him. I mean, I also desperately wanted to have an actual conversation with him, but if I ran into him in some casual setting - goodness knows what that would have been - I wanted him to know I knew who he was, but to leave the communication to his opening.
I thought, too, of what my mom had said once while we watched Good Eats together - that she wouldn't want to bother Alton Brown, but she wanted to shake his hand sometime, tell him she enjoyed the show. That had seemed a bit anticlimactic to me at the time, but I understand it now.
So I got to Mike Farrell, who played a larger part than he'll ever know in my junior year of high school. And I looked at him, said something like, "Hi, so nice to meet you," and shook his hand, suddenly feeling a bit shy. I spelled my name; he signed my book. To [Laurel] - Peace! He gave it back, shook my hand again. A nice handshake, too - lively, sincere. "It's a pleasure to meet you," I think he said, and he has a talent for sounding like he means it.
"Thanks so much for coming out here," I said, probably turning a little too quickly, the whole transaction a bit too businesslike from my end. But I did say it, and then I turned and let the next person go. And so it was that I saw and met Mike Farrell, who played one of my favorite characters on my favorite TV show ever.
Junior-year self: merry Christmas, happy birthday, or anything you choose.
10.16.2009
QPQ: Your Source for News Not Involving Hot-Air Balloons (Except Maybe During the Binghamton Spiedie Fest)
I just got done with the epic nap I've been craving for days...
...hopefully my students will soon catch up on sleep themselves (is it still midterms, maybe? We don't work on that kind of schedule in WRIT 111, so now that I'm not a student, I don't really know), since two or three of them pre-gamed on it during my classes today. Oral presentations began this morning - there're four groups, each taking 20-30 minutes, but only one group goes per day - and I had to follow today's up with a lesson on citation because, frankly, I was too tired and out of ideas to do anything else (though I did also let both classes out early). I took a stab at creativity via drawing my textual examples out of A Wrinkle in Time, but probably a lot of them haven't read it, so even though I gave them enough context to get by, even children's literature couldn't save my topic. (In my own partial defense, not all of the sleeping went on during my part of the lesson.)
On a more satisfying note, this past week has also involved two separate makings of this quite-tasty dish. Read this recipe: it does not work how you'd expect. My first pan (what with five housemates, plus Joe and Andrea coming over and that sort of thing) disappeared in less than a day, and I've still got a bunch of apples anyway, so I made the second one last night with some crescent-roll dough I grabbed out of the church fridge because it'd been weeks and no one had used it. Read the recipe. Try it. We all recommend it, though I'm in favor of cutting the sugar down to 1 1/4 cups or even slightly less if you want, especially if (like me) you're using apples less tart than the Granny Smith she suggests. Decrease the butter proportionally. It'll be fine.
Okay, so that's your update. I'm'a get myself some dinner, and then, if I have an ounce of sense in my head, I will at some point do some WRIT 111 paper-commenting, since I took so long on it the first time that I only got one free weekend before the next unit's essay came due and now I have to do up thirty other papers. I'm skipping IV because of all my work, so I intend to do some work, and I ought to do the work I should do instead of just other less-important work that keeps me from boring work yet still salves my conscience (I have discussed this kind of work in the past, I think).
Yeah. Sigh, how boring and too-fast and anticlimactic adult life can be. Yet how good it feels to not be writing the papers myself.
...hopefully my students will soon catch up on sleep themselves (is it still midterms, maybe? We don't work on that kind of schedule in WRIT 111, so now that I'm not a student, I don't really know), since two or three of them pre-gamed on it during my classes today. Oral presentations began this morning - there're four groups, each taking 20-30 minutes, but only one group goes per day - and I had to follow today's up with a lesson on citation because, frankly, I was too tired and out of ideas to do anything else (though I did also let both classes out early). I took a stab at creativity via drawing my textual examples out of A Wrinkle in Time, but probably a lot of them haven't read it, so even though I gave them enough context to get by, even children's literature couldn't save my topic. (In my own partial defense, not all of the sleeping went on during my part of the lesson.)
On a more satisfying note, this past week has also involved two separate makings of this quite-tasty dish. Read this recipe: it does not work how you'd expect. My first pan (what with five housemates, plus Joe and Andrea coming over and that sort of thing) disappeared in less than a day, and I've still got a bunch of apples anyway, so I made the second one last night with some crescent-roll dough I grabbed out of the church fridge because it'd been weeks and no one had used it. Read the recipe. Try it. We all recommend it, though I'm in favor of cutting the sugar down to 1 1/4 cups or even slightly less if you want, especially if (like me) you're using apples less tart than the Granny Smith she suggests. Decrease the butter proportionally. It'll be fine.
Okay, so that's your update. I'm'a get myself some dinner, and then, if I have an ounce of sense in my head, I will at some point do some WRIT 111 paper-commenting, since I took so long on it the first time that I only got one free weekend before the next unit's essay came due and now I have to do up thirty other papers. I'm skipping IV because of all my work, so I intend to do some work, and I ought to do the work I should do instead of just other less-important work that keeps me from boring work yet still salves my conscience (I have discussed this kind of work in the past, I think).
Yeah. Sigh, how boring and too-fast and anticlimactic adult life can be. Yet how good it feels to not be writing the papers myself.
10.06.2009
::ga-a-a-asp::
Guess, just guess what Sara and Megan saw at Stratford this past weekend! Oh, I wish I could have come! I saw Colm Feore play Coriolanus when I went with the English department three years ago; I didn't understand the play well enough yet to judge his performance, but in retrospect I think he was good (I mean, his reputation would apparently suggest that anyway), and I bet he'd be even better in this.
Man.
Man.
10.03.2009
On a Different Note
Recipe for Three-L Stew (lamb and lentil, made partly with leftovers), which I had for dinner tonight and which was more or less of my own design:
1. Take a little over a half-pound of bone-in stew lamb (which you can get for cheap at Wegmans, or at least that's what I did) and about half a big onion. Put them in a Dutch oven and cover them with cold water (cold, rather than hot, helps the collagen in the bones come out instead of getting plugged up inside. Or so claims Alton Brown about chicken bones, and I am not about to question that man when it comes to collagen) and turn on the heat. When it boils, turn the heat down and simmer for what you think is going to be about an hour.
2. Halfway through that hour, take the lamb back out of the pot, brown it in a pan because you forgot before, then put it back in. Or do this before Step 1, if you'd like to be more efficient than me. At some point, by the way, add some salt, pepper, coriander, and a little bit of thyme.
3. Round about the one-hour mark, throw in the following: a sliced carrot; a sliced half of a potato; between 1/3 and 1/2 a bag of red lentils; as much in the way of regular lentils as you feel like; and some celery that you would have chopped, except that everything in your house's crisper drawer freezes, so you got lazy and just broke it into ugly uneven pieces.
4. Cook 'til soft. Remove lamb bones (chop up the meat before you put it back in) and any vegetable matter you find excessive (I removed most of the onion and part of the carrot) - or, if you're more virtuous than I am, just put in less of those things to begin with, or just man-or-woman up and eat everything you put in the pot.
5. Taste the broth. Add more spices.
6. Ladle into a bowl. Pour yourself a glass of milk. Eat stew and drink milk and read from Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2.
7. Have chocolate chip cookies and more milk for dessert.
Serves between 1 and 8. Or maybe more, who knows.
Or maybe fewer, if you don't have that many chocolate chip cookies.
Also, here in my third semester of teaching, I am pleased to say that I have personal-essay grading down to a greater art than ever before. Most of them now take me between twenty and thirty minutes to read, grade, and give fairly-extensive end comments (the essays themselves are three to four pages long). This is not yet the ten minutes I'm supposed to be able to stop after (how?!), but is a big improvement from the much longer time I was taking in semesters past. I think I may have graded eight papers today, which is not my all-time record, but is remarkable considering how easy it felt to do so (though I didn't do them all at once). I could even have graded one or two more if I hadn't stopped to blog.
1. Take a little over a half-pound of bone-in stew lamb (which you can get for cheap at Wegmans, or at least that's what I did) and about half a big onion. Put them in a Dutch oven and cover them with cold water (cold, rather than hot, helps the collagen in the bones come out instead of getting plugged up inside. Or so claims Alton Brown about chicken bones, and I am not about to question that man when it comes to collagen) and turn on the heat. When it boils, turn the heat down and simmer for what you think is going to be about an hour.
2. Halfway through that hour, take the lamb back out of the pot, brown it in a pan because you forgot before, then put it back in. Or do this before Step 1, if you'd like to be more efficient than me. At some point, by the way, add some salt, pepper, coriander, and a little bit of thyme.
3. Round about the one-hour mark, throw in the following: a sliced carrot; a sliced half of a potato; between 1/3 and 1/2 a bag of red lentils; as much in the way of regular lentils as you feel like; and some celery that you would have chopped, except that everything in your house's crisper drawer freezes, so you got lazy and just broke it into ugly uneven pieces.
4. Cook 'til soft. Remove lamb bones (chop up the meat before you put it back in) and any vegetable matter you find excessive (I removed most of the onion and part of the carrot) - or, if you're more virtuous than I am, just put in less of those things to begin with, or just man-or-woman up and eat everything you put in the pot.
5. Taste the broth. Add more spices.
6. Ladle into a bowl. Pour yourself a glass of milk. Eat stew and drink milk and read from Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2.
7. Have chocolate chip cookies and more milk for dessert.
Serves between 1 and 8. Or maybe more, who knows.
Or maybe fewer, if you don't have that many chocolate chip cookies.
Also, here in my third semester of teaching, I am pleased to say that I have personal-essay grading down to a greater art than ever before. Most of them now take me between twenty and thirty minutes to read, grade, and give fairly-extensive end comments (the essays themselves are three to four pages long). This is not yet the ten minutes I'm supposed to be able to stop after (how?!), but is a big improvement from the much longer time I was taking in semesters past. I think I may have graded eight papers today, which is not my all-time record, but is remarkable considering how easy it felt to do so (though I didn't do them all at once). I could even have graded one or two more if I hadn't stopped to blog.
It's Like Fagin's Gang Over Here or Something
So Kelly, in defiance of the "no pets" clause on our lease, decided to get another rabbit. She had one last year, but it died, and now this new one, Peanut Butter, is the replacement.
It'd been in the house for only a few hours when our comeuppance for that rule-ducking arrived, in the form of a screaming band of hooligan children - I think there are five of them, but I can't really tell, there're so many and they're everywhere - from next door. They'd apparently come over a lot last year while the old rabbit was alive, and now that they'd heard about the new one, they were completely and utterly unstoppable.
They are, without question, the rudest children I have ever encountered. They came en masse into the house. They didn't listen to us when we told them things.
Then they wouldn't leave. Once they were shown out, they banged on the door, they climbed up the ledges, shoved up the screens, opened the windows. They climbed on and pushed one guy's car, a friend of Kelly or Kelsey's, until I came outside and yelled at them myself, despite their having met me only half an hour before. (One boy did take it to heart, but one girl just said, "It wasn't me!" and the other girl just laughed.)
Ben shoved them bodily out the door shortly after the car incident because they charged the door and leaned all over it to keep us from closing it after we let someone in (or out, I can't remember which), and I gave them a warning look. Shortly thereafter, they delivered us a crayoned note saying that Ben and I were about to get sued, Ben because he pushed them, me because I rolled my eyes.
Kelly, who found it rude but also found it funny, wouldn't do anything to discipline them, and she's the one they really respond to. So when they heard me telling her to stop talking to them (since our ignoring them is our only chance at getting rid of them - otherwise they just bang on the door and come to the windows and whine), they told her that she shouldn't follow me, that she should be a leader and not a follower. Then they started pushing up the screen and the window again, whereupon I pulled the screen back down, shut the window, and locked it this time, to an indignant whining chorus of "You're me-e-e-ean!" They chanted at Kelly, "Follower! Follower! Don't be a follower!" They banged on the panes for the next several minutes and left handprint streaks all over the glass. They talked to each other about me.
I'm not even kidding. All of this has happened over the past couple of hours. And I can hear them again outside, like a nightmare. None of us wants to go in or out because to attract their attention is to attract their whining, their scolding, their melodramatic crayoned notes (we got more, too, that I didn't mention).
I don't care if this should be funny, if they're only kids. I can't believe their rudeness. All I can say is, this had better never happen again.
It'd been in the house for only a few hours when our comeuppance for that rule-ducking arrived, in the form of a screaming band of hooligan children - I think there are five of them, but I can't really tell, there're so many and they're everywhere - from next door. They'd apparently come over a lot last year while the old rabbit was alive, and now that they'd heard about the new one, they were completely and utterly unstoppable.
They are, without question, the rudest children I have ever encountered. They came en masse into the house. They didn't listen to us when we told them things.
Then they wouldn't leave. Once they were shown out, they banged on the door, they climbed up the ledges, shoved up the screens, opened the windows. They climbed on and pushed one guy's car, a friend of Kelly or Kelsey's, until I came outside and yelled at them myself, despite their having met me only half an hour before. (One boy did take it to heart, but one girl just said, "It wasn't me!" and the other girl just laughed.)
Ben shoved them bodily out the door shortly after the car incident because they charged the door and leaned all over it to keep us from closing it after we let someone in (or out, I can't remember which), and I gave them a warning look. Shortly thereafter, they delivered us a crayoned note saying that Ben and I were about to get sued, Ben because he pushed them, me because I rolled my eyes.
Kelly, who found it rude but also found it funny, wouldn't do anything to discipline them, and she's the one they really respond to. So when they heard me telling her to stop talking to them (since our ignoring them is our only chance at getting rid of them - otherwise they just bang on the door and come to the windows and whine), they told her that she shouldn't follow me, that she should be a leader and not a follower. Then they started pushing up the screen and the window again, whereupon I pulled the screen back down, shut the window, and locked it this time, to an indignant whining chorus of "You're me-e-e-ean!" They chanted at Kelly, "Follower! Follower! Don't be a follower!" They banged on the panes for the next several minutes and left handprint streaks all over the glass. They talked to each other about me.
I'm not even kidding. All of this has happened over the past couple of hours. And I can hear them again outside, like a nightmare. None of us wants to go in or out because to attract their attention is to attract their whining, their scolding, their melodramatic crayoned notes (we got more, too, that I didn't mention).
I don't care if this should be funny, if they're only kids. I can't believe their rudeness. All I can say is, this had better never happen again.
I Think I May Have a Problem
So I left the post-large-group InterVarsity activity at 10:30 so that I could do some dishes or hang out with my roommates or, shocker, actually grade some more papers.
Instead, I've been on the computer (though not, as I originally thought, solely the internet) for the past TWO AND A HALF HOURS.
I wouldn't be so concerned, except that this is the SECOND TIME TODAY that I've done such a thing.
Instead, I've been on the computer (though not, as I originally thought, solely the internet) for the past TWO AND A HALF HOURS.
I wouldn't be so concerned, except that this is the SECOND TIME TODAY that I've done such a thing.
10.02.2009
10.01.2009
Binghamton: Our Logic Will Astound You
To be honest, I didn't even know until tonight that our basketball team had anything going on. I also didn't know that "E-Mails From Crazy People" existed.
Now I know.
http://emailsfromcrazypeople.com/2009/09/30/zoos-more-functional-than-a-sports-team/
Now I know.
http://emailsfromcrazypeople.com/2009/09/30/zoos-more-functional-than-a-sports-team/
9.24.2009
Whew
It's been a little chronologially jam-packed over here lately, and I've been going into everything (particularly teaching) a little unprepared.
Thing I've learned this week: My second section of WRIT 111 has Mac enthusiasts. They were ridiculously offended when we read a rhetorical analysis critical of Mac commercials. The following class, I tried to play them this clip (thank you, Jo!) as an example of nontextual rhet-an, but I couldn't get Natasha's laptop (I don't own my own, so I tried to borrow hers) verified on the school's wireless network because they wanted her to've installed Service Pack 2 first. The Mac kids smugly informed me that they don't have to do updates, that they can get right on the wireless. Uh-huh. (We ended up watching the clip on one girl's iPhone, projected to the class via our ELMO, which I forget what that stands for. It's like an overhead projector, except a dozen times more convenient because you don't have to make transparencies, you can just put whatever you want on it and it'll project it.)
Also learned: it's really spiritually dangerous to remember that you, as a Christian, are called to devote your life to the joyful service of God and others...because renewing your sense of calling in the world is nearly invariably followed by a really bad day in which everything goes wrong, which makes cheeriness and joy about five hundred percent harder and the whole thing very discouraging.
However: I found half my printer cord (or maybe this is the power supply...there's a difference, but I'm not entirely sure what it is). The other half is still missing, but hey. Maybe I'll find it and then have a printer that's more than a paperweight so I can print out things for my students here, instead of on campus with PODS quota money I'm not even sure how I got (let alone why I'm not being charged accurately, though it's in my favor...I'm pretty sure I owe the university several bucks).
Really, what I ought to do is to get Barb the Secretary to copy things for me, since that's available to me as a faculty member. The problem is, she needs two days' notice, and I never have two days' notice because I'm not all organized like that. I mean, crud, I'm in pretty good shape if I know by classtime what I'm assigning for homework that day - half the time I have to just post it on Blackboard that evening.
Okay, it may be time to go to campus anyway - I should find some good not-online examples of rhetorical analysis, since my students need them. Though I have to say, I think I'd really rather go to bed.
Thing I've learned this week: My second section of WRIT 111 has Mac enthusiasts. They were ridiculously offended when we read a rhetorical analysis critical of Mac commercials. The following class, I tried to play them this clip (thank you, Jo!) as an example of nontextual rhet-an, but I couldn't get Natasha's laptop (I don't own my own, so I tried to borrow hers) verified on the school's wireless network because they wanted her to've installed Service Pack 2 first. The Mac kids smugly informed me that they don't have to do updates, that they can get right on the wireless. Uh-huh. (We ended up watching the clip on one girl's iPhone, projected to the class via our ELMO, which I forget what that stands for. It's like an overhead projector, except a dozen times more convenient because you don't have to make transparencies, you can just put whatever you want on it and it'll project it.)
Also learned: it's really spiritually dangerous to remember that you, as a Christian, are called to devote your life to the joyful service of God and others...because renewing your sense of calling in the world is nearly invariably followed by a really bad day in which everything goes wrong, which makes cheeriness and joy about five hundred percent harder and the whole thing very discouraging.
However: I found half my printer cord (or maybe this is the power supply...there's a difference, but I'm not entirely sure what it is). The other half is still missing, but hey. Maybe I'll find it and then have a printer that's more than a paperweight so I can print out things for my students here, instead of on campus with PODS quota money I'm not even sure how I got (let alone why I'm not being charged accurately, though it's in my favor...I'm pretty sure I owe the university several bucks).
Really, what I ought to do is to get Barb the Secretary to copy things for me, since that's available to me as a faculty member. The problem is, she needs two days' notice, and I never have two days' notice because I'm not all organized like that. I mean, crud, I'm in pretty good shape if I know by classtime what I'm assigning for homework that day - half the time I have to just post it on Blackboard that evening.
Okay, it may be time to go to campus anyway - I should find some good not-online examples of rhetorical analysis, since my students need them. Though I have to say, I think I'd really rather go to bed.
9.11.2009
On Reading the First Hand-In Assignment (Which I Originally Thought Had Gone Badly But Maybe Mostly Didn't)
Many of my new students are laugh-aloud-funny people. It's going to be almost intimidating making jokes with them now. I can't match them.
Also, they seem to really like bottled water.
Also, they seem to really like bottled water.
9.03.2009
We what?!
Sentence received over e-mail tonight:
Oh, and you know Alfred Hillel sponsored the Great Latke-Hamantaschen Debate while we were there, right?
No. No, I didn't. How did I miss this? Under what rock was I living? My heart sinks with shame and disappointment.
Oh, and you know Alfred Hillel sponsored the Great Latke-Hamantaschen Debate while we were there, right?
No. No, I didn't. How did I miss this? Under what rock was I living? My heart sinks with shame and disappointment.
9.02.2009
Oh, the Fantasticness!
Our undergraduate class is something like 1/3 Jewish! Why do we not have one of these?
It would have been, like, the highlight of my grad school experience if we had.
It would have been, like, the highlight of my grad school experience if we had.
8.27.2009
"Now, There's Something I Didn't Expect," Revisited
Another of my new housemates, Ben, is British and very cool (and, yes, has a very cool accent as well). He also plays guitar and piano and sings. Sometimes he practices downstairs while Natasha and/or I are upstairs, and the sound carries well, so it's easy to listen as he does it. I've heard his renditions of quite a few songs - some oldies (The Ronettes' "Be My Little Baby," The Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," etc.), some more recent ones (I want to say he did "Drops of Jupiter," for example, but I may be totally misremembering here).
So what do I hear him playing on guitar and energetically singing just now? "MMMBop."
Now, there's something I didn't expect.
So what do I hear him playing on guitar and energetically singing just now? "MMMBop."
Now, there's something I didn't expect.
8.17.2009
Why Sometimes Having a Team Might Not Help
Tonight at trivia: eight of us (almost tag-teaming a little - Carrie left early, Joe came late).
Points scored prior to the final round: thirty-five.
Which, coincidentally, happens to be the same number of points I scored during that same period on my night playing alone last month.
However, I should point out that this was the night of the Hardest Trivia Questions Ever at CyberCafe, at least as far as we've ever experienced. I think the majority of the other teams were within about ten points either way of our score, whereas the night I was by myself my score was definitely one of the lower ones.
Following five rounds of mostly-ridiculously-difficult questions, however, we were presented with pretty much the Easiest Final Question Ever at CyberCafe ("What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?"), so we still tied for fifth place.
I know this isn't necessarily interesting to you, but that's the chance you take, reading the blog of a nerd.
As for everything else, it's okay. For many reasons, I am trying for about the eightieth time to get more sleep, though it wouldn't be accurate to say as yet that I've met with a big wad o' success. Little wads o' success, maybe. It depends on the night. Also, at this point, the best excuse I can think of for why I still don't have anything on my walls except my calendar runs along the lines of its being, if the time-and-temperature display at the store nearby is to be believed, in the eighty-and-ninety-degree range outside lately (today's reported temperature around 5 PM: ninety-six), so doing anything in my room that does not involve sitting or lying down has been a less-than-attractive prospect.
Okay, there's your update. You may now go back to your lives.
Points scored prior to the final round: thirty-five.
Which, coincidentally, happens to be the same number of points I scored during that same period on my night playing alone last month.
However, I should point out that this was the night of the Hardest Trivia Questions Ever at CyberCafe, at least as far as we've ever experienced. I think the majority of the other teams were within about ten points either way of our score, whereas the night I was by myself my score was definitely one of the lower ones.
Following five rounds of mostly-ridiculously-difficult questions, however, we were presented with pretty much the Easiest Final Question Ever at CyberCafe ("What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?"), so we still tied for fifth place.
I know this isn't necessarily interesting to you, but that's the chance you take, reading the blog of a nerd.
As for everything else, it's okay. For many reasons, I am trying for about the eightieth time to get more sleep, though it wouldn't be accurate to say as yet that I've met with a big wad o' success. Little wads o' success, maybe. It depends on the night. Also, at this point, the best excuse I can think of for why I still don't have anything on my walls except my calendar runs along the lines of its being, if the time-and-temperature display at the store nearby is to be believed, in the eighty-and-ninety-degree range outside lately (today's reported temperature around 5 PM: ninety-six), so doing anything in my room that does not involve sitting or lying down has been a less-than-attractive prospect.
Okay, there's your update. You may now go back to your lives.
8.08.2009
Life Downtown
It's not bad. I still haven't fully unpacked, but that's another story.
Tonight, finally running low enough on clean clothes that I couldn't procrastinate much further about it, I went to a laundromat for the first time, since there's no washer-dryer in our house. The price is mostly comparable to doing laundry in Alfred - there, two bucks got you a basic wash and dry, $1 for each machine (though I hear they're switching to free laundry now!). Here, it takes $1.50 to run the standard washer, but the other fifty cents might conceivably, on high heat, dry your clothes to an acceptable level because the dryers are so big that the air circulates a lot better. I was working with low heat myself, since some of my stuff is probably shrinkable and the tags say "low" and I didn't want to push it, but was pretty impressed at how close to dry they were after a mere half-hour (the standard time you get for a dollar). I put in another quarter for a few that were still a little too damp to just deal with, which bought me another seven-point-five minutes. I wonder whether I could get a better deal at another laundromat.
And then I wonder, am I actually going to price-compare the many laundromats of Main Street, Binghamton?
I might.
In other news, today I read the novel of M*A*S*H, since I love the TV show (to most of you, that's a reminder, not a piece of news) but have never seen the movie or read the book. I have to say, I like the TV version much better. It's not just the difference in what I'm used to - in the book, Hawkeye/Trapper/Duke (no, you won't remember Duke from the show...that's because I don't think he existed there) are supposed to come off as fun-loving and mischievous, but actually they kind of come off as a little skeevy. I wonder how closely the movie takes after the book.
The penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph reminds me: Natasha's English vocabulary is excellent, but yesterday, as necessitated by our conversations, I defined for her all of the following: "skeevy," "Muzak," and "cold feet." She, in turn, taught me that Russians have a literary concept called "talking names" - it's a term used to describe a character name that reveals something about said character's personality, like half the people in Harry Potter ("Luna" like "lunatic," "Draco" like "dragon," "Severus" like "severe," et cetera).
This week I put in the full 20 hours that's supposed to be the limit on my at-church work time (I got officially hired on for the fall semester, which gladdens both Reverend Anne's heart, because otherwise she'd have to do it, and mine, because I get what amounts to another comp-section's worth of pay without acquiring the additional out-of-class prepwork that would have come with it) because one of the ladies of our congregation got married and had me do the wedding bulletins on top of the normal work. I mention this not because I didn't want to do the bulletins or something, but to partially excuse what I'm about to say next: that I've been here for a little over eight days and still haven't put anything up on the walls except my calendar.
I went to the local farmers' market on Friday. It was smaller than I expected (maybe it was bigger back in June or something), but I bought some corn on the cob (very good - nice and sweet) and apricots (not quite ripe - maybe they were ripe by today, but I didn't try, so I'll have to go back to them tomorrow) and garlic (haven't yet had occasion to use it). Next I want to try the one at Otsiningo Park, but I'm gonna have to wait a while, as that's Saturday-only and today I missed it.
Well, it's probably time I went to bed. Much love from here within the city limits.
Tonight, finally running low enough on clean clothes that I couldn't procrastinate much further about it, I went to a laundromat for the first time, since there's no washer-dryer in our house. The price is mostly comparable to doing laundry in Alfred - there, two bucks got you a basic wash and dry, $1 for each machine (though I hear they're switching to free laundry now!). Here, it takes $1.50 to run the standard washer, but the other fifty cents might conceivably, on high heat, dry your clothes to an acceptable level because the dryers are so big that the air circulates a lot better. I was working with low heat myself, since some of my stuff is probably shrinkable and the tags say "low" and I didn't want to push it, but was pretty impressed at how close to dry they were after a mere half-hour (the standard time you get for a dollar). I put in another quarter for a few that were still a little too damp to just deal with, which bought me another seven-point-five minutes. I wonder whether I could get a better deal at another laundromat.
And then I wonder, am I actually going to price-compare the many laundromats of Main Street, Binghamton?
I might.
In other news, today I read the novel of M*A*S*H, since I love the TV show (to most of you, that's a reminder, not a piece of news) but have never seen the movie or read the book. I have to say, I like the TV version much better. It's not just the difference in what I'm used to - in the book, Hawkeye/Trapper/Duke (no, you won't remember Duke from the show...that's because I don't think he existed there) are supposed to come off as fun-loving and mischievous, but actually they kind of come off as a little skeevy. I wonder how closely the movie takes after the book.
The penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph reminds me: Natasha's English vocabulary is excellent, but yesterday, as necessitated by our conversations, I defined for her all of the following: "skeevy," "Muzak," and "cold feet." She, in turn, taught me that Russians have a literary concept called "talking names" - it's a term used to describe a character name that reveals something about said character's personality, like half the people in Harry Potter ("Luna" like "lunatic," "Draco" like "dragon," "Severus" like "severe," et cetera).
This week I put in the full 20 hours that's supposed to be the limit on my at-church work time (I got officially hired on for the fall semester, which gladdens both Reverend Anne's heart, because otherwise she'd have to do it, and mine, because I get what amounts to another comp-section's worth of pay without acquiring the additional out-of-class prepwork that would have come with it) because one of the ladies of our congregation got married and had me do the wedding bulletins on top of the normal work. I mention this not because I didn't want to do the bulletins or something, but to partially excuse what I'm about to say next: that I've been here for a little over eight days and still haven't put anything up on the walls except my calendar.
I went to the local farmers' market on Friday. It was smaller than I expected (maybe it was bigger back in June or something), but I bought some corn on the cob (very good - nice and sweet) and apricots (not quite ripe - maybe they were ripe by today, but I didn't try, so I'll have to go back to them tomorrow) and garlic (haven't yet had occasion to use it). Next I want to try the one at Otsiningo Park, but I'm gonna have to wait a while, as that's Saturday-only and today I missed it.
Well, it's probably time I went to bed. Much love from here within the city limits.
7.27.2009
Trading Suburbia for...Urbia?
So in about three days I'll have moved out of this apartment, where I've spent the first two years of my Binghamtonian life (well, I've spent it in this complex...four months of last year were spent over in the other apartment because of this one's flood damage), to live downtown. Tonight after trivia (we had an eight-person team, which we called Large Marge Sent Us), Joe and Andrea came with me to the new place because I had two boxes of books and a fold-out bookshelf to put in the new room as long as I was in that part of town, but it was a little late at night to be going there by myself.
It didn't really hit me that I was making a noticeable change until Joe said, "Wow, you really are downtown, aren't you?" when I pointed out my apartment - my street's just off of Main. The area's fine and everything, it's just...very downtown, as he said.
And it didn't really hit me, until the three of us were in it, how small my new room is. To give it its due, I believe it's bigger than the one I had in Bartlett Hall my junior year at Alfred (good thing, huh?). A little bigger. It's hard to tell because the square footage is distributed differently.
So I'm leaving the niceness that is Vestal - the easy access to school, the way my apartment complex seems full and private at the same time, the parking lot just for us tenants, the quiet and pretty neighborhoods nearby - for Binghamton proper, where what I gain in hardwood floors and better rent and good housemates, I do lose in things like ideal-to-near-ideal parking and the ability to severely procrastinate yet still make it to class on time (or at least mostly on time). (Not significantly affected: my drives to church, where I only gain a couple minutes' time advantage, and to Wegmans, which only takes a minute or two longer than before.)
And I have to say, I'm a little nervous. And sad. The new place is older - I like how fresh and clean everything is in this complex right now. I liked being a student, even if I often disliked my classes themselves. And I'm a little nervous about what my parents will think of the apartment - I wish Ben and Natasha would be there already (they don't move in 'til a couple weeks from now - Kelly'll be there, but not 'til the weekend or a little later, whereas my dad's coming Wednesday or Thursday to bring in a bed), since they could answer questions better than I could, and because occupied houses always seem nicer than empty-but-for-me ones. Even living with those friends seems like a big step - simultaneously more and less cozy than where and how my life is now.
Unexpectedly, I almost wish I could go back to Syracuse and live with my parents, which is the exact opposite of what I've wanted for the past three years.
But here's how my adult life begins - in Binghamton, which feels like so unlikely, so superficially-unimpressive a place to make a home. Yet here I am, with the whole often-beautiful world I've been given here around me: Joe and Andrea; Carrie, Ife, and Matthias (and Micah for now); Natasha and Jihye; Charles and Jackie; Sam and Scott; my fantastic church; InterVarsity-Binghamton; my good teaching job and good bosses; my students. Bible study, trivia, IV, and all the friendship I can hold, especially here in summer.
Alfred's still where I've long wanted to be. But Binghamton's seemed, for some time, like where I should be. And here I am. And this is now. And this is me.
It didn't really hit me that I was making a noticeable change until Joe said, "Wow, you really are downtown, aren't you?" when I pointed out my apartment - my street's just off of Main. The area's fine and everything, it's just...very downtown, as he said.
And it didn't really hit me, until the three of us were in it, how small my new room is. To give it its due, I believe it's bigger than the one I had in Bartlett Hall my junior year at Alfred (good thing, huh?). A little bigger. It's hard to tell because the square footage is distributed differently.
So I'm leaving the niceness that is Vestal - the easy access to school, the way my apartment complex seems full and private at the same time, the parking lot just for us tenants, the quiet and pretty neighborhoods nearby - for Binghamton proper, where what I gain in hardwood floors and better rent and good housemates, I do lose in things like ideal-to-near-ideal parking and the ability to severely procrastinate yet still make it to class on time (or at least mostly on time). (Not significantly affected: my drives to church, where I only gain a couple minutes' time advantage, and to Wegmans, which only takes a minute or two longer than before.)
And I have to say, I'm a little nervous. And sad. The new place is older - I like how fresh and clean everything is in this complex right now. I liked being a student, even if I often disliked my classes themselves. And I'm a little nervous about what my parents will think of the apartment - I wish Ben and Natasha would be there already (they don't move in 'til a couple weeks from now - Kelly'll be there, but not 'til the weekend or a little later, whereas my dad's coming Wednesday or Thursday to bring in a bed), since they could answer questions better than I could, and because occupied houses always seem nicer than empty-but-for-me ones. Even living with those friends seems like a big step - simultaneously more and less cozy than where and how my life is now.
Unexpectedly, I almost wish I could go back to Syracuse and live with my parents, which is the exact opposite of what I've wanted for the past three years.
But here's how my adult life begins - in Binghamton, which feels like so unlikely, so superficially-unimpressive a place to make a home. Yet here I am, with the whole often-beautiful world I've been given here around me: Joe and Andrea; Carrie, Ife, and Matthias (and Micah for now); Natasha and Jihye; Charles and Jackie; Sam and Scott; my fantastic church; InterVarsity-Binghamton; my good teaching job and good bosses; my students. Bible study, trivia, IV, and all the friendship I can hold, especially here in summer.
Alfred's still where I've long wanted to be. But Binghamton's seemed, for some time, like where I should be. And here I am. And this is now. And this is me.
7.24.2009
On the Previous Entry
Yikes. Aren't you glad I eventually got back to sleep and may even have gotten all the way to six hours' worth?
Yeah. Me, too.
So Jessica's coming back through town; she and Andrea and I are planning to cook dinner together. I'm off to start some dinner rolls as my contribution. Ahh, leavened goodness!
Yeah. Me, too.
So Jessica's coming back through town; she and Andrea and I are planning to cook dinner together. I'm off to start some dinner rolls as my contribution. Ahh, leavened goodness!
I May Never Fully Catch Up on Sleep Again
I've been fighting that thing where I'm so tired that I nap, and then I can't fall asleep at night because I've napped. So on Wednesday night I finally went to bed early, but then I woke up at four in the ruddy morning out of a nightmare and never got back to sleep.
Tonight I got fewer than three hours before all the pulled neck/back/shoulder/arm muscles I've accumulated over the course of the week (I started with just one, but I've been sleeping in funny positions [not on purpose] and spending too long stretched in weird ways at work) woke me up and have made going back to sleep, shall we say, difficult. So I am here, icing myself down with a bag of frozen corn (I hope it's mine - I suppose it might be Sujin's); waiting for my ibuprofen to kick in; feeling like Sujin and her boyfriend(?), who're still awake and have recently cooked and eaten stuff, keep even odder hours than I do; and wondering what it will profit me to sit here whining.
Could I put on clothes thick enough but not overheating, wouldn't it be nice to have a whole bed made of squishy icepacks? I wonder whether I'd dream of Antarctica.
Tonight I got fewer than three hours before all the pulled neck/back/shoulder/arm muscles I've accumulated over the course of the week (I started with just one, but I've been sleeping in funny positions [not on purpose] and spending too long stretched in weird ways at work) woke me up and have made going back to sleep, shall we say, difficult. So I am here, icing myself down with a bag of frozen corn (I hope it's mine - I suppose it might be Sujin's); waiting for my ibuprofen to kick in; feeling like Sujin and her boyfriend(?), who're still awake and have recently cooked and eaten stuff, keep even odder hours than I do; and wondering what it will profit me to sit here whining.
Could I put on clothes thick enough but not overheating, wouldn't it be nice to have a whole bed made of squishy icepacks? I wonder whether I'd dream of Antarctica.
7.16.2009
I Could Have Used One of These My Senior Year of Undergrad
http://www.phdcomics.com/store/mojostore.php?_=view&ProductID=13448
(One of Binghamton's campus newspapers sometimes runs PhD on the comics page. It's a funny strip...but depressing. Depressing because it's sometimes true.)
Though, y'know, another thing I dislike(d) about grad school was that it's forced me to refer to Alfred in conversation as "undergrad," which feels somehow like I'm belittling it.
Anydangway, tonight I finally went to the public library in Endicott (something I've been meaning to do) because it occurred to me that I'm not entirely sure whether I typically get charged for interlibrary loans or not (I feel like I have been in the past but don't seem to've been this last time), and it seemed dumb to pay twenty-five cents, or whatever, for the paltry amount of gasoline that it would take the George F. Johnson employees to get Season 2 of Jeeves & Wooster over to Vestal Public, where I usually claim ILLs. Not that driving that distance doesn't cost about that much, probably, but clearly it's the principle of the thing. Also, I wanted to go geocaching while I was out.
Thus it was that tonight I perused the GFJ's pleasant collection, was gratified to learn that a Four-County Library System card (which I have) is finally acceptable for taking out materials at the Broome County Public Library downtown (which, until this past winter, it wasn't, and BCPL wouldn't give me a card for their place because none of the proofs-of-residence I could easily get hold of were good enough for them), admired the prettiness of Park Street in Endicott, and discovered the niceness of its veterans' memorial near sunset (I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I only went there because of a geocache I tried and failed to find at the site, but upon looking over the memorial, I was glad to've come and felt suitably solemn).
I also stopped by the local K-Mart to get something; it's as sad an establishment as ever, really. Still, I'll always have a sympathetic place in my heart for K-Mart because my dad has always loved it so much (when we lived in Rochester, he went there all the time). I'll also always be grateful to it for two reasons: 1) it's not Wal-Mart and therefore at least probably doesn't pressure its workers to put in illegal unpaid overtime (at least not its domestic ones...I suppose I can't speak for the others); 2) it wasn't Caldor. Caldor was a discount-store chain (now gone) that my dad temporarily loved, during my youth, maybe even more than K-Mart, but which I found horrendous. I forget what I hated so much about it (since it's not like I was a brand snob or anything), but it was a huge relief to me when Caldor closed and we were at least back to K-Mart for everything. (A quick Google search, however, seems to mostly turn up nostalgia for Caldor; there don't seem to be many people whose memories of it are as bitter as mine. Make of that what you will.)
Oh, and I found two geocaches. But neither of them were in Endicott.
Incidentally, yes, I did say I was watching Jeeves & Wooster. I'm not usually one for lots of DVDing, but it's pretty much my new favorite time-waster. It's probably Reverend Anne's fault: she loves P.G. Wodehouse, so last week, a bit bored, I decided to try reading some. A few quick Project Gutenberg downloads later, I was acquainting myself with a few Jeeves stories and, I think, thinking something along the lines of, "This stuff cries out to be performed, and I know it has been, and with Stephen Fry as Jeeves, no less - I should watch." So I got Season 1 out of the library system and went through the three episodes in about a day. Besides being very well done (with A&E putting it on, how could it not be?) and very funny despite being so formulaic (entire premise: Bertie Wooster, irresponsible rich young man, lands and/or finds himself in sticky situations. Reginald Jeeves, his valet, cleverly and deadpannedly remedies them), the series also boasts one of the best instrumental themes I've heard in a very long time.
If I were like Abby or Jo, I'd come up with a clever ending instead of just saying "that's all for now." Ah, well, it's late and I'm fuzzy-headed. So that's all for now.
(One of Binghamton's campus newspapers sometimes runs PhD on the comics page. It's a funny strip...but depressing. Depressing because it's sometimes true.)
Though, y'know, another thing I dislike(d) about grad school was that it's forced me to refer to Alfred in conversation as "undergrad," which feels somehow like I'm belittling it.
Anydangway, tonight I finally went to the public library in Endicott (something I've been meaning to do) because it occurred to me that I'm not entirely sure whether I typically get charged for interlibrary loans or not (I feel like I have been in the past but don't seem to've been this last time), and it seemed dumb to pay twenty-five cents, or whatever, for the paltry amount of gasoline that it would take the George F. Johnson employees to get Season 2 of Jeeves & Wooster over to Vestal Public, where I usually claim ILLs. Not that driving that distance doesn't cost about that much, probably, but clearly it's the principle of the thing. Also, I wanted to go geocaching while I was out.
Thus it was that tonight I perused the GFJ's pleasant collection, was gratified to learn that a Four-County Library System card (which I have) is finally acceptable for taking out materials at the Broome County Public Library downtown (which, until this past winter, it wasn't, and BCPL wouldn't give me a card for their place because none of the proofs-of-residence I could easily get hold of were good enough for them), admired the prettiness of Park Street in Endicott, and discovered the niceness of its veterans' memorial near sunset (I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I only went there because of a geocache I tried and failed to find at the site, but upon looking over the memorial, I was glad to've come and felt suitably solemn).
I also stopped by the local K-Mart to get something; it's as sad an establishment as ever, really. Still, I'll always have a sympathetic place in my heart for K-Mart because my dad has always loved it so much (when we lived in Rochester, he went there all the time). I'll also always be grateful to it for two reasons: 1) it's not Wal-Mart and therefore at least probably doesn't pressure its workers to put in illegal unpaid overtime (at least not its domestic ones...I suppose I can't speak for the others); 2) it wasn't Caldor. Caldor was a discount-store chain (now gone) that my dad temporarily loved, during my youth, maybe even more than K-Mart, but which I found horrendous. I forget what I hated so much about it (since it's not like I was a brand snob or anything), but it was a huge relief to me when Caldor closed and we were at least back to K-Mart for everything. (A quick Google search, however, seems to mostly turn up nostalgia for Caldor; there don't seem to be many people whose memories of it are as bitter as mine. Make of that what you will.)
Oh, and I found two geocaches. But neither of them were in Endicott.
Incidentally, yes, I did say I was watching Jeeves & Wooster. I'm not usually one for lots of DVDing, but it's pretty much my new favorite time-waster. It's probably Reverend Anne's fault: she loves P.G. Wodehouse, so last week, a bit bored, I decided to try reading some. A few quick Project Gutenberg downloads later, I was acquainting myself with a few Jeeves stories and, I think, thinking something along the lines of, "This stuff cries out to be performed, and I know it has been, and with Stephen Fry as Jeeves, no less - I should watch." So I got Season 1 out of the library system and went through the three episodes in about a day. Besides being very well done (with A&E putting it on, how could it not be?) and very funny despite being so formulaic (entire premise: Bertie Wooster, irresponsible rich young man, lands and/or finds himself in sticky situations. Reginald Jeeves, his valet, cleverly and deadpannedly remedies them), the series also boasts one of the best instrumental themes I've heard in a very long time.
If I were like Abby or Jo, I'd come up with a clever ending instead of just saying "that's all for now." Ah, well, it's late and I'm fuzzy-headed. So that's all for now.
7.14.2009
Why I Need a Team
So last night no one else showed up to trivia and I played by myself (one-person teams are allowed) under the team name "Where is Everybody?" I was rather hoping to do better than thirty-five points out of a possible hundred (well, usually it's a possible hundred - I think last night, because the guy who runs it did several bonus questions, it was more like a hundred twenty), all of which I lost during the final round because I muffed a question on, of all things, poets.
This was a lot more interesting a story in my head than in real life. So I'll add this one: there's apparently a wooden case of some sort that sticks out of the wall near the storage closet at church. Attempting to take a few bags of stuff to said closet, I walked right into the corner of said case - didn't even see it coming. My forehead still hurts at the corner.
Also, my room is a big mess again/still (I'm not sure whether it really actually ceased to be last time).
So, clearly, I have life totally under control right now. You know it.
This was a lot more interesting a story in my head than in real life. So I'll add this one: there's apparently a wooden case of some sort that sticks out of the wall near the storage closet at church. Attempting to take a few bags of stuff to said closet, I walked right into the corner of said case - didn't even see it coming. My forehead still hurts at the corner.
Also, my room is a big mess again/still (I'm not sure whether it really actually ceased to be last time).
So, clearly, I have life totally under control right now. You know it.
7.06.2009
And Now, A Word from Our Sponsor, G.K. Chesterton
How's this for an opening paragraph?
I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
-All Things Considered
I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
-All Things Considered
7.03.2009
Pretty Cool
I don't know who the LA Times knows - apparently everybody - but the curious can read interviews with bunches of Harry Potter actors here. I suppose this would seem less cool to me if I regularly read interviews they do, but, as I don't, they seem interesting. I've only read Emma Watson and Rupert Grint's so far, as I've other things I'd like to do this morning, but I'm definitely coming back to these later. You can, too, if you'd like.
7.01.2009
In Which I Come Clean - At Least at Heart. My Intestines Are Another Story.
Sorry this blog's been so quiet. Things have been kind of weird because I've been sick a lot - the quick-and-dirty explanation is, my digestion (or, well, at least the large-intestine section thereof) spontaneously decided to get way slow and inefficient, or something like that, right after graduation, so now I get intestinal pain if I'm not on over-the-counter stuff for it pretty much all the time. The doctor's office gave me a CT scan to see if I had any obstructions or what have you, but they didn't find anything - which is mostly good news, except in the sense that that means right now I don't know what it really is. (Actually, here's the part of the CT scan experience that's most worth telling about: they make you drink a lot of barium sulfate, which is a contrast dye, beforehand so that your insides show up. This stuff comes in multiple flavors, all of which are a little odd because of the chemical burn factor. Because of some scan-lab confusion I won't go into, I had to drink two doses of the stuff; I would describe the flavors I got as "nuclear orange Tang and coconut milk" and "eggnog laced with metallic strawberry." They are a little nauseating, especially in the hours after the scan, but not as bad-tasting as you would expect. Helpful hints for you if you ever need such a scan: refrigerate the barium sulfate - that's allowed, and it helps - and drink it through a straw.)
So because this has, like I said, caused various and sundry weirdness, my plans to cook and explore and read new things this summer got derailed. Instead I've cooked a lot of whatever (or, sometimes, not-whatever: per doctor's orders this week, I am now getting very chummy with water and fiber), reread a lot of classics and apologetics, attempted a little bit of geocaching (some with Joe and Andrea, some solo, most of it relatively unsuccessful), worked at church, played weekly team trivia at CyberCafe with Charles and Jackie and whoever else we can scrounge, and made a lot of trips from Binghamton to Syracuse and back again. It hasn't been bad, and gosh am I glad it's happened now instead of during the school year, but I wish things would go back to normal.
I did have four or five nice reprieve-type days which corresponded nicely with my trip out to Tim and Maggie's wedding. I don't have much to say about them, but I am glad they happened.
That's really all the news that's fit to tell. I'll report back when there's something else.
So because this has, like I said, caused various and sundry weirdness, my plans to cook and explore and read new things this summer got derailed. Instead I've cooked a lot of whatever (or, sometimes, not-whatever: per doctor's orders this week, I am now getting very chummy with water and fiber), reread a lot of classics and apologetics, attempted a little bit of geocaching (some with Joe and Andrea, some solo, most of it relatively unsuccessful), worked at church, played weekly team trivia at CyberCafe with Charles and Jackie and whoever else we can scrounge, and made a lot of trips from Binghamton to Syracuse and back again. It hasn't been bad, and gosh am I glad it's happened now instead of during the school year, but I wish things would go back to normal.
I did have four or five nice reprieve-type days which corresponded nicely with my trip out to Tim and Maggie's wedding. I don't have much to say about them, but I am glad they happened.
That's really all the news that's fit to tell. I'll report back when there's something else.
6.17.2009
My Day: Unexpectedly Full of Cuteness
For one thing, Reverend Anne and her two daughters just came back this afternoon from three weeks in Africa (Anne's parents, who're linguists, live there; her mom was sick), so it pretty much made my day when I went over to Matt and Anne's house to get something and Emma, calling my name, came running and threw herself at what turned out, given our relative heights, to be my legs.
And then I found this. A whole website devoted to posting pictures of baby zoo animals. It's not quite the world-changer for me that I think it is for certain of my friends - ::coughAbbycough:: - but it's definitely good for a rainy day.
So to speak.
Since it's raining.
Okay, time for me to go back to stuff. Tomorrow, straight through 'til next Tuesday: InterVarsity-Alfred fantasticness, for the win!
And then I found this. A whole website devoted to posting pictures of baby zoo animals. It's not quite the world-changer for me that I think it is for certain of my friends - ::coughAbbycough:: - but it's definitely good for a rainy day.
So to speak.
Since it's raining.
Okay, time for me to go back to stuff. Tomorrow, straight through 'til next Tuesday: InterVarsity-Alfred fantasticness, for the win!
6.15.2009
SUNY, FTW
Even as an adjunct, I will qualify for health, vision, and dental insurance. You may now stop worrying that the next time you see me I will have no teeth.
6.03.2009
Slacker Cuisine
So among the bounty which my friend Chung Eun showered upon me before she left for Korea was about eight containers of ready-to-eat rice. Seriously, it's precooked and packaged, and all you need to do is put the container in the microwave for two minutes to heat it up.
So here's tonight's main dish, slacker-style:
1. Wake up from a nap to realize that you've only got a little over an hour before you have to be up at church (this part is optional, of course, should you wish to duplicate the meal - my church finalized the purchase of our new building today, so we had a brief service to celebrate).
2. Realize also that you need to cook the now-thawed hamburger that's in your fridge.
3. Wash your biggest frying pan.
4. Add pepper, garlic powder, and dried onion bits to hamburger meat. Fry meat until done.
5. Set aside maybe a quarter or so of this.
6. Make an attempt at sloppy-joe sauce by mixing ketchup, honey mustard, honey barbecue sauce, and a few splashes of leftover and mostly-flat cola until it tastes, if not exactly like sloppy joe sauce, at least like it'd be pretty good on hamburger.
7. Mix the sauce and the set-aside hamburger.
8. Eat a little on some bread. Put most of the rest of the hamburger, the part you left unsauced, into some Gladware for a later recipe (I'm thinking Slacker Shepherd's Pie, since I've also got canned potatoes and frozen vegetables, but we'll see). Put the rest of the sauced hamburger in a smaller, separate container and get ready for church and go.
9. After church, when you're hungry again, heat up some precooked rice and mix it with the rest of the sauced hamburger. Add more sauce ingredients if you've got too much rice comparatively.
10. Pretend, because you're tired, that things like side dishes and vegetables don't exist. Serve warm or hot.
I'll do better tomorrow or so.
So here's tonight's main dish, slacker-style:
1. Wake up from a nap to realize that you've only got a little over an hour before you have to be up at church (this part is optional, of course, should you wish to duplicate the meal - my church finalized the purchase of our new building today, so we had a brief service to celebrate).
2. Realize also that you need to cook the now-thawed hamburger that's in your fridge.
3. Wash your biggest frying pan.
4. Add pepper, garlic powder, and dried onion bits to hamburger meat. Fry meat until done.
5. Set aside maybe a quarter or so of this.
6. Make an attempt at sloppy-joe sauce by mixing ketchup, honey mustard, honey barbecue sauce, and a few splashes of leftover and mostly-flat cola until it tastes, if not exactly like sloppy joe sauce, at least like it'd be pretty good on hamburger.
7. Mix the sauce and the set-aside hamburger.
8. Eat a little on some bread. Put most of the rest of the hamburger, the part you left unsauced, into some Gladware for a later recipe (I'm thinking Slacker Shepherd's Pie, since I've also got canned potatoes and frozen vegetables, but we'll see). Put the rest of the sauced hamburger in a smaller, separate container and get ready for church and go.
9. After church, when you're hungry again, heat up some precooked rice and mix it with the rest of the sauced hamburger. Add more sauce ingredients if you've got too much rice comparatively.
10. Pretend, because you're tired, that things like side dishes and vegetables don't exist. Serve warm or hot.
I'll do better tomorrow or so.
5.31.2009
Let Me Remind You That IV-B is At Least Sixty Percent Asian and Mainly From LI/NYC
[Laurel]: ...How was Basileia? Carrie said you guys [that is, the InterVarsity-Binghamton members who went] said everyone from Alfred looked like me.
[Matt Tuttle]: haha it's true
[T]: they stood up there [during a conference-wide talent show]
[T]: and said "we're from alfred!"
[T]: and I thought
[T]: oh my gosh. they ARE from alfred!
[L]: ::laughs:: What makes someone obviously Alfredian?
[T]: i don't know
[T]: they were all white
[T]: and blonde
[T]: and looked like they enjoyed reading, cooking, and folk-dancing
[Matt Tuttle]: haha it's true
[T]: they stood up there [during a conference-wide talent show]
[T]: and said "we're from alfred!"
[T]: and I thought
[T]: oh my gosh. they ARE from alfred!
[L]: ::laughs:: What makes someone obviously Alfredian?
[T]: i don't know
[T]: they were all white
[T]: and blonde
[T]: and looked like they enjoyed reading, cooking, and folk-dancing
5.29.2009
Days Gone By
I kind of miss the late-high-school days when I'd iron my shirt every night before I wore it to school in the morning.
Now I'm surprised I bothered. College sure ended that phase of my life.
Now I'm surprised I bothered. College sure ended that phase of my life.
5.25.2009
Another Thing for You to Read! Oh, Good, Right?
Because clearly what I need is another blog, I've started one to chronicle my summer (I'm doing a "summer challenge" again - this time, seven new places, fourteen new books, and twenty-one new recipes). This is really because it's time I started something my parents can read. You, on the other hand, need not read it if you don't want to - I will not be insulted. Should you want to, however, you can get the link via my Facebook page or by messaging me in some other way. Tra-la!
5.22.2009
Semester's End Is...
...fielding e-mails from students unhappy about their grades. I've only had three so far, but each of them has e-mailed multiple times, not finding my initial explanations satisfactory. Two out of the three didn't bother to capitalize or punctuate their messages, but didn't appear to find any irony in that.
I'm really hoping that I'm able to put more time into teaching now that I'm not also a student. I have indeed, for anyone who still hasn't heard, been hired on as an adjunct; I've been given three classes. I've applied to another area college, hoping for another section or two, but really I'm almost hoping that I don't get them, or that I get only a single section, because if you get too far over three sections, you get into workload trouble fast. It'd be easier to be part-time church secretary as my second job, since in that there would be neither preparatory nor take-home work involved, whereas more classes will mean more of both of those things.
If I'm able to put more time in, hopefully my teaching will get better (right now it's okay, but not great - when you get right down to it, I am still more a TA than anything, and with the skill level to match) and this career will start to be more rewarding, since that's what everyone insists teaching is, but which it mostly hasn't been for me this year. I mean, it's been a good experience, don't get me wrong, but let's face it, it hasn't been something out of Chicken Soup for the Soul, especially this semester. Besides being disappointed by some of the things I've learned about freshmen, I'm markedly uncomfortable with many of the things I've learned about myself.
And now, having been a big bummer, I will rejoice in the summer stretched out before me by going downstairs, lighting a candle, maybe getting some ice cream, and continuing my first-ever read of my Penguin-sale copy of Treasure Island.
I'm really hoping that I'm able to put more time into teaching now that I'm not also a student. I have indeed, for anyone who still hasn't heard, been hired on as an adjunct; I've been given three classes. I've applied to another area college, hoping for another section or two, but really I'm almost hoping that I don't get them, or that I get only a single section, because if you get too far over three sections, you get into workload trouble fast. It'd be easier to be part-time church secretary as my second job, since in that there would be neither preparatory nor take-home work involved, whereas more classes will mean more of both of those things.
If I'm able to put more time in, hopefully my teaching will get better (right now it's okay, but not great - when you get right down to it, I am still more a TA than anything, and with the skill level to match) and this career will start to be more rewarding, since that's what everyone insists teaching is, but which it mostly hasn't been for me this year. I mean, it's been a good experience, don't get me wrong, but let's face it, it hasn't been something out of Chicken Soup for the Soul, especially this semester. Besides being disappointed by some of the things I've learned about freshmen, I'm markedly uncomfortable with many of the things I've learned about myself.
And now, having been a big bummer, I will rejoice in the summer stretched out before me by going downstairs, lighting a candle, maybe getting some ice cream, and continuing my first-ever read of my Penguin-sale copy of Treasure Island.
5.15.2009
5.12.2009
Imminent Poetry Fail
Or not really, since Joe Weil's kind of a grade pushover. I hear.
Number of pages left to write, supposedly: 16.
Number of hours in which to do so: 22.5.
Why: Because I didn't get started early enough this morning and because I took a nap. I'm starting to get a cold. I'm not proud that my graduate career in ending in such hardcore lameness, but here we are. Sigh.
Speaking of naps, I really haven't just been online tonight or anything, but this is often true:
Number of pages left to write, supposedly: 16.
Number of hours in which to do so: 22.5.
Why: Because I didn't get started early enough this morning and because I took a nap. I'm starting to get a cold. I'm not proud that my graduate career in ending in such hardcore lameness, but here we are. Sigh.
Speaking of naps, I really haven't just been online tonight or anything, but this is often true:
5.11.2009
Draft (Could Be Good, Or...)
In Which I Attempt, Per Joe Weil's Instructions, to Pay More Attention to Rhythm. In Which I Also Use My Own Blog Entry As a Jumping-Off Point. It's Not Plagiarism if You Steal from Yourself, Right?
First Whole Chicken
I’m holding a three-pound fryer in my hands:
this is what comes of a kitchen to myself
and a cold that gives me dreams of making soup.
I’ve never done this. Plucked whole chickens feel
bizarrely trusting, their small weight so deliberate,
their nipped-bud wings tucked in and motionless.
It seems too...friendly to give anyone salmonella.
Despite what you’d expect, I’m still okay
with taking my shears and new santoku knife,
commencing a stretched-out hack job on the skin
and an eighteenth-century sailor’s amputation
of thighs, wings, breasts. My pictured guide’s at hand.
I’ll crack the joints, extract the bones’ collagen
with boiling water, deal with schmaltz and spume.
In this last moment, though, the kitchen’s quiet:
grad student dripping phlegm, with messy hair,
just through with writing papers back-to-back,
meets hen – denuded, knobbly, but intact.
First Whole Chicken
I’m holding a three-pound fryer in my hands:
this is what comes of a kitchen to myself
and a cold that gives me dreams of making soup.
I’ve never done this. Plucked whole chickens feel
bizarrely trusting, their small weight so deliberate,
their nipped-bud wings tucked in and motionless.
It seems too...friendly to give anyone salmonella.
Despite what you’d expect, I’m still okay
with taking my shears and new santoku knife,
commencing a stretched-out hack job on the skin
and an eighteenth-century sailor’s amputation
of thighs, wings, breasts. My pictured guide’s at hand.
I’ll crack the joints, extract the bones’ collagen
with boiling water, deal with schmaltz and spume.
In this last moment, though, the kitchen’s quiet:
grad student dripping phlegm, with messy hair,
just through with writing papers back-to-back,
meets hen – denuded, knobbly, but intact.
5.08.2009
Here
Tonight in InterVarsity we had "testimony night," where selected speakers came up and talked about what God's been doing in their lives this semester, and after that there was prayer for everyone there as we all get ready to go out to summer-and-next-fall things. It was really good. There's been some great stuff going on in IV-B this year--our fellowship has grown and diversified; we've had eleven! people come to know Christ; and lots of really cool things have happened (for example, since the fall we graduating kids have been secretly collecting money to put towards a Basileia scholarship or scholarships--Basileia is this statewide InterVarsity conference held every May, and I'll tell you, the one time I went, it ended up being really important to my life--and the amount we ended up with by this week turned out to match the amount somebody needed if she was going to go).
I haven't gotten to be as much a part of it all as I would have liked: grad school has gotten in my way a lot more this year than last year, and even when it hasn't, sometimes my attitude has been off. Sometimes I just don't want the burden of having to introduce myself to visitors, or humble myself enough to take instruction from undergraduates, or be part of long stretches of singing sometimes-awkwardly-worded praise songs to a God that, sometimes, I still doubt. But you know what? Every time I come back after several weeks away, as I did tonight, I'm reminded of how good it really is.
I'm also reminded, tonight, of how I sometimes tend to derate IV-B just for being big and made up of city kids, assume that it can't be as good as IV-Alfred, can't love as genuinely those of us who don't live on campus and hang around the fellowship all the time. That's wrong, though. I've had plenty of opportunities to see just how wrong.
For, as I often forget, I owe IV-B a lot. There've been so many times in grad school, particularly my first semester but even after that, when, confused by some theory or some worldview or just by the fact that Christianity is literally ridiculed by a lot of people in my program, it's been IV-B's love for me and for each other and for the campus that's steadied my shakiness, given me more experiential evidence (there are other kinds, naturally) that there must be something to this. Their love has been so real.
So let me take this opportunity to say that I am so happy to be staying in Binghamton, as it looks like I most likely will be. I am so happy to be with this church, this fellowship. I am so happy to have students. Natasha and I will be housemates if I stay, but before that, I'll have a whole summer to cook and read, to geocache and hang out with Joe and Andrea, to see my friends. It's about as beautiful a prospect as I could ask for, and in a few short days--I should hand in the last of everything by Wednesday night--my Master's career will be over, my nearly-twenty consecutive years of studenthood will be over, and my new life will begin.
I haven't gotten to be as much a part of it all as I would have liked: grad school has gotten in my way a lot more this year than last year, and even when it hasn't, sometimes my attitude has been off. Sometimes I just don't want the burden of having to introduce myself to visitors, or humble myself enough to take instruction from undergraduates, or be part of long stretches of singing sometimes-awkwardly-worded praise songs to a God that, sometimes, I still doubt. But you know what? Every time I come back after several weeks away, as I did tonight, I'm reminded of how good it really is.
I'm also reminded, tonight, of how I sometimes tend to derate IV-B just for being big and made up of city kids, assume that it can't be as good as IV-Alfred, can't love as genuinely those of us who don't live on campus and hang around the fellowship all the time. That's wrong, though. I've had plenty of opportunities to see just how wrong.
For, as I often forget, I owe IV-B a lot. There've been so many times in grad school, particularly my first semester but even after that, when, confused by some theory or some worldview or just by the fact that Christianity is literally ridiculed by a lot of people in my program, it's been IV-B's love for me and for each other and for the campus that's steadied my shakiness, given me more experiential evidence (there are other kinds, naturally) that there must be something to this. Their love has been so real.
So let me take this opportunity to say that I am so happy to be staying in Binghamton, as it looks like I most likely will be. I am so happy to be with this church, this fellowship. I am so happy to have students. Natasha and I will be housemates if I stay, but before that, I'll have a whole summer to cook and read, to geocache and hang out with Joe and Andrea, to see my friends. It's about as beautiful a prospect as I could ask for, and in a few short days--I should hand in the last of everything by Wednesday night--my Master's career will be over, my nearly-twenty consecutive years of studenthood will be over, and my new life will begin.
5.05.2009
::pant::
Jeezh, writing this last paper is like trying to walk through knee-deep peanut butter. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm writing a boring paper, but then I decide, no, it's not that it's boring, it's just that I feel like I bear the accumulated mental fatigue of at least the whole last year into this paper-writing process.
Which may just be a guilt-deflecting way of saying that I've had a big case of graduate senioritis. All I know is, my rate's a little less than my usual page-an-hour, I did get some sleep but not a whole lot, and I've still got three pages to write over the course of the next four hours. Ruddy.
But then, thank heavens, this will be over, and theoretically, please God, I will never have to do such a thing again. Comp scholarship is different somehow...the theory and texts don't seem so divorced, since ultimate the goal seems always to be to work with an eye toward how to teach.
I really have only been writing this for four or five minutes. Okay, going now.
Which may just be a guilt-deflecting way of saying that I've had a big case of graduate senioritis. All I know is, my rate's a little less than my usual page-an-hour, I did get some sleep but not a whole lot, and I've still got three pages to write over the course of the next four hours. Ruddy.
But then, thank heavens, this will be over, and theoretically, please God, I will never have to do such a thing again. Comp scholarship is different somehow...the theory and texts don't seem so divorced, since ultimate the goal seems always to be to work with an eye toward how to teach.
I really have only been writing this for four or five minutes. Okay, going now.
5.01.2009
In Which I Become, Momentarily, a Total Poser
...since I'm not a southerner. But y'all ('cept R2R, which did) really need to update your blogs. How can I peer voyeuristically into your lives if you refuse to post anything for weeks or months on end?
So I was rejected from the Binghamton writing associateship, which would have paid me like a real-world part-time job (as opposed to an adjunct part-time job) but given me only an adjunct's workload. Would've been perfect, but the budget money just wasn't there. However, my best job prospect is still Binghamton. I can't talk about it unless it becomes official, only because I was asked not to tell the world, and it's not even going to be that surprising a piece of news if I can. But I may manage to get a composition job and move in with Natasha and her housemates and stay here after all. Which is exactly what I want, so hurray, hurray, hurray.
I learned today, after being confused by a line in Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker, about which I'm currently attempting to outline and eventually write a ten-page paper (due Tuesday), that the word "prodigal" does not mean "disobedient runaway who'll hopefully have a change of heart and come back," which is roughly what I'd concluded it meant from the story of the prodigal son. The word actually means "lavish," usually in the sense of "wastefully or recklessly extravagant." The son was prodigal because he spent his whole inheritance so fast, not because he left home. Thank you, Dictionary.com.
So I was rejected from the Binghamton writing associateship, which would have paid me like a real-world part-time job (as opposed to an adjunct part-time job) but given me only an adjunct's workload. Would've been perfect, but the budget money just wasn't there. However, my best job prospect is still Binghamton. I can't talk about it unless it becomes official, only because I was asked not to tell the world, and it's not even going to be that surprising a piece of news if I can. But I may manage to get a composition job and move in with Natasha and her housemates and stay here after all. Which is exactly what I want, so hurray, hurray, hurray.
I learned today, after being confused by a line in Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker, about which I'm currently attempting to outline and eventually write a ten-page paper (due Tuesday), that the word "prodigal" does not mean "disobedient runaway who'll hopefully have a change of heart and come back," which is roughly what I'd concluded it meant from the story of the prodigal son. The word actually means "lavish," usually in the sense of "wastefully or recklessly extravagant." The son was prodigal because he spent his whole inheritance so fast, not because he left home. Thank you, Dictionary.com.
4.27.2009
Thing I Simultaneously Like and Dislike
Spending almost an entire week (from last Tuesday through tonight) assisting a couple dozen WRIT 111 students, both my own and other people's, with their researched arguments. I like teaching the project. I like how easy it is to explain what they still need to do. I don't like how few of them actually have any idea of how one might go about engaging an opponent in an intellectually-honest way.
So does anybody know of any good papers in favor of gun control? Or arguing either side of stem-cell research? I want there to be good papers about these things, maybe just to know that good papers on such topics can in fact be written, but I'm really starting to think that they just don't exist at the freshman level.
So does anybody know of any good papers in favor of gun control? Or arguing either side of stem-cell research? I want there to be good papers about these things, maybe just to know that good papers on such topics can in fact be written, but I'm really starting to think that they just don't exist at the freshman level.
Monday Update, Briefly
Temperature: record-breakingly high.
Productivity level: respectable.
Food supplies with which one can make a full meal (as opposed to "let's have some canned peaches and...some canned pears...for lunch"): will not last out the week. My milk and juice, for that matter, aren't going to last out tomorrow, and the bread will probably be gone after Wednesday. I should probably get groceries tonight, while I still have some semblance of time or can fool myself into thinking I do. This despite the note I left myself on the to-do list I did actually write out for today: "DO NOT OVERSHOOT DINNER HOUR."
The bad news: I have to have what may be, God help me, about an hourlong meeting with Joe Weil on Thursday. What on earth he expects us to talk about for that long (at least I'm not the only one - everyone got one of these), I have no idea.
The good news: Writing Center shift automatically cancelled for Friday because basically Dr. Kinney's just doing various parties for various reasons that day.
Now you know.
Productivity level: respectable.
Food supplies with which one can make a full meal (as opposed to "let's have some canned peaches and...some canned pears...for lunch"): will not last out the week. My milk and juice, for that matter, aren't going to last out tomorrow, and the bread will probably be gone after Wednesday. I should probably get groceries tonight, while I still have some semblance of time or can fool myself into thinking I do. This despite the note I left myself on the to-do list I did actually write out for today: "DO NOT OVERSHOOT DINNER HOUR."
The bad news: I have to have what may be, God help me, about an hourlong meeting with Joe Weil on Thursday. What on earth he expects us to talk about for that long (at least I'm not the only one - everyone got one of these), I have no idea.
The good news: Writing Center shift automatically cancelled for Friday because basically Dr. Kinney's just doing various parties for various reasons that day.
Now you know.
4.25.2009
Saturday
My Saturdays are never as work-intensive as they should be, but I think I got enough done to justify my not going to Hot Dog Day. Of course, getting anything done, given the amount of work I have, would justify my not going to Hot Dog Day, but never mind that for now.
I have to say, it's very satisfying to be able to lie on your stomach on a clean carpet in a comfortably-lit, clean room to grade student work. Doing that on top of having gotten enough sleep meant that I wasn't as frustrated by the drafts as usual. Plus, researched arguments are, despite being the longest assignment of the semester, usually easiest to grade, since the kinds of things we're asking them to do are so logic-based and articulable. Not "articulable" in the sense of "I always did a good job teaching the first time," but in that of "at least I can tell them what they should be doing instead."
I've been noticing that my written mechanics on this blog are periodically questionable (for example, the way I do quotations in the previous paragraph), but at least I'm consistent about them, so I'm going to call it my personal manual of style. So there.
Also, unrelatedly: there is sourdough bread in my fridge, and even though it's a little tough and not nearly as good as San Francisco's, it is still good. The end.
I have to say, it's very satisfying to be able to lie on your stomach on a clean carpet in a comfortably-lit, clean room to grade student work. Doing that on top of having gotten enough sleep meant that I wasn't as frustrated by the drafts as usual. Plus, researched arguments are, despite being the longest assignment of the semester, usually easiest to grade, since the kinds of things we're asking them to do are so logic-based and articulable. Not "articulable" in the sense of "I always did a good job teaching the first time," but in that of "at least I can tell them what they should be doing instead."
I've been noticing that my written mechanics on this blog are periodically questionable (for example, the way I do quotations in the previous paragraph), but at least I'm consistent about them, so I'm going to call it my personal manual of style. So there.
Also, unrelatedly: there is sourdough bread in my fridge, and even though it's a little tough and not nearly as good as San Francisco's, it is still good. The end.
List, Newest
Here's what I definitely have to do between now and this coming Friday, in addition to class and Writing Center stuff:
-Get as much reading as possible done toward my at-least-ten-page-long theory-based paper for Strehle's class, which's almost certainly due May 5th instead of next week, but I'm double-checking that right now
-Read and comment on fifteen researched-arguments, ranging between six pages and about twelve (though I don't have a copy of about half my students': I cracked down on assignment requirements and handed back, as yet unaccepted, the work of those students who, despite my warnings, flouted MLA format, scholarly-source requirements, etc. - and will therefore end up having to do most of these between Tuesday and Thursday)
-Whatever Joe Weil makes me do for poetry class, which I'm still trying to figure out because he never bothered assigning us anything last class, which I didn't realize until after class, which is bad news because he's nigh-on impossible to reach over anything but cell phone, and I'm really hoping not to have to call him. Most likely: having to write another ten poems by this coming Wednesday. These ones should probably, unlike the last ones, refrain from sucking. Note to self: show, don't tell. Come at it like poetry, not rhetoric; you're not in comp all the time.
Speaking of which, another thing I'm checking the due date on: compiling my "teaching portfolio," which will pretty much include designing my own course and two activities supposedly part of that course, which's the last hoop I have to jump through before I get my Certificate in the College Teaching of Composition, which's the closest the comp department can offer me to a "specialization" in composition (which's great, since I had no promise or expectation of any such thing when I came in).
The reason I'm hoping to do some of my paper today is that next Saturday is my birthday, and I'm really hoping to not have to spend it talking theory. But, considering that I slept 'til past eleven(?!) today and am still half brain-dead (though I did put the finishing touch on last night's cleaning by vacuuming the floor, so my room looks very nice, though, oddly, smaller than when it was messy), I probably will. Still, it's much better than last year, considering that last year I had to write those three awful papers back-to-back-to-back. This semester I still have three projects to complete (Strehle's, Weil's, the portfolio), but at least they're not quite so bangbangBANG like that. Plus, even better, I'm in my own apartment now, not flooded out and in somebody else's.
I was smart enough this year to not go to Hot Dog Day, much as I'd like to be there right now.
Days until graduation: twenty-one.
-Get as much reading as possible done toward my at-least-ten-page-long theory-based paper for Strehle's class, which's almost certainly due May 5th instead of next week, but I'm double-checking that right now
-Read and comment on fifteen researched-arguments, ranging between six pages and about twelve (though I don't have a copy of about half my students': I cracked down on assignment requirements and handed back, as yet unaccepted, the work of those students who, despite my warnings, flouted MLA format, scholarly-source requirements, etc. - and will therefore end up having to do most of these between Tuesday and Thursday)
-Whatever Joe Weil makes me do for poetry class, which I'm still trying to figure out because he never bothered assigning us anything last class, which I didn't realize until after class, which is bad news because he's nigh-on impossible to reach over anything but cell phone, and I'm really hoping not to have to call him. Most likely: having to write another ten poems by this coming Wednesday. These ones should probably, unlike the last ones, refrain from sucking. Note to self: show, don't tell. Come at it like poetry, not rhetoric; you're not in comp all the time.
Speaking of which, another thing I'm checking the due date on: compiling my "teaching portfolio," which will pretty much include designing my own course and two activities supposedly part of that course, which's the last hoop I have to jump through before I get my Certificate in the College Teaching of Composition, which's the closest the comp department can offer me to a "specialization" in composition (which's great, since I had no promise or expectation of any such thing when I came in).
The reason I'm hoping to do some of my paper today is that next Saturday is my birthday, and I'm really hoping to not have to spend it talking theory. But, considering that I slept 'til past eleven(?!) today and am still half brain-dead (though I did put the finishing touch on last night's cleaning by vacuuming the floor, so my room looks very nice, though, oddly, smaller than when it was messy), I probably will. Still, it's much better than last year, considering that last year I had to write those three awful papers back-to-back-to-back. This semester I still have three projects to complete (Strehle's, Weil's, the portfolio), but at least they're not quite so bangbangBANG like that. Plus, even better, I'm in my own apartment now, not flooded out and in somebody else's.
I was smart enough this year to not go to Hot Dog Day, much as I'd like to be there right now.
Days until graduation: twenty-one.
Compensation
Well, I didn't start grading my students' work tonight, as I should have. On the other hand, after I vacuum my floor tomorrow (I shouldn't do it right now, as it's after midnight), it'll be the cleanest my rooms been in weeks, maybe months.
4.24.2009
Economics Considered (With Lists!)
Two things:
1. Why did none of you Binghamtonians ever tell me how cool the BU Food Co-Op is? Oh, that's right, because you've got meal plans, so you don't get charged a ridiculous amount of money for campus food. But even you, who occasionally pay $4.35 or whatever for a cruddy roast-beef wrap at New Union, should take note: if it's Monday - Friday and between 10 AM and 5 PM, go down the stairs by the food court and find Room B-20. That's the Food Co-Op, and you can probably get lunch there for half the price you'd pay upstairs (you'll prolly have to microwave it, but there's one on the premises). It'll even be organic. Where has this place been on all the days I've forgotten lunch or had to stay over dinner? Downstairs, apparently, but still.
2. I understand that things are cheaper as you get farther from a city, but I had no idea of the degree to which the types of stores change as you travel from Binghamton proper to Vestal (west of that) to Endicott (west of that). It goes from expensiveish-to-moderate stuff to, like, discount-shopper stuff. Probably none of you will be as interested in this as I am, but check it out, starting at the extreme eastern edge of Vestal (that is, just outside of the city limits) and heading west:
University Plaza (east of campus): HealthyU, Five Guys (I forget their prices, but considering that they're not a sit-down restaurant with wait staff, they're expensive as compared to other burger joints of their style), Coldstone Creamery, Moghul, WeTea (though, yes, to be fair, also Subway, Tully's, Mario's Pizza, and China Wok, which are all more or less moderate-to-inexpensive).
Vestal Parkway, heading west from campus: certainly a mix of everything, but this's where they put places like Panera, Staples, Target, IHOP, Kohl's, the new diner, the hotels, Nirchi's, all that sort of stuff. There's a second-hand clothing store, but it's a consignment shop; it's nicer stuff, and their prices are a few bucks higher than an actual thrift store.
West of that are the Wal-Mart plaza, adjacent strip malls, and stretch between them and Rt. 17, which looks at first glance like a free-for-all, but, check it out, the more moderate-to-expensive restaurants and stores are almost all on the side of the street that's going east (it's a divided parkway, each part running one way, so that's not just a detail in passing). I mean, seriously: heading east you've got, like, Pier 1, Ann Taylor Loft, Lemongrass, and Starbucks. Heading west you've got, like, Subway, A&W, and Long John Silver's.
And after that:
Vestal Parkway, west of the I-17 ramps: small local businesses (BC Bicycles, Barbells of Binghamton [no lie, there really is such a place], Vestal Deli & Bakery), the old-nifty-and-I-think-cheaper diner. The strip malls have ended by this time, though obviously there're still plazas.
From there: Big Lots, Salvation Army, Blimpie, Grand China Wok. No strip malls or shopping plazas anywhere here, as far as I can tell.
The reason I mention this is because I went to Big Lots today because, I don't know, I had a few groceries to get and I was in the mood to check it out (I haven't shopped there in several years). For those of you unacquainted with it, Big Lots is a chain of stores that buys overstocks (both food and general merchandise--cookware, board games, socks, that stuff) and resells them, so you get stuff for cheaper than you normally would. The selection isn't nearly as good as any normal supermarket, the quality is kind of hit-and-miss (though obviously they're not going to resell anything unsafe or spoiled), and you can't count on any one thing being there all the time, if I remember correctly (the reason is obvious enough). So I came in, not to do a week's grocery shopping, but just to grab some things I knew I needed, and got a bunch of stuff, most of it brand-name, for only $11.87...and started thinking about it when the cashier-lady told me my instant pad-thai (among the items I was buying) looked good, I commented that it was a lot cheaper than one from Wegmans would have been, and she answered that she usually couldn't afford to shop there. Considering that Wegmans is a better value than any other supermarket around here besides, like, Aldi, I didn't expect to hear that. But what I'd bought would have cost me considerably more at Wegmans--probably double if I stuck to brand names, like they were mostly selling here--so I could see what she meant.
Speaking of grocery shopping, it's time for dinner.
1. Why did none of you Binghamtonians ever tell me how cool the BU Food Co-Op is? Oh, that's right, because you've got meal plans, so you don't get charged a ridiculous amount of money for campus food. But even you, who occasionally pay $4.35 or whatever for a cruddy roast-beef wrap at New Union, should take note: if it's Monday - Friday and between 10 AM and 5 PM, go down the stairs by the food court and find Room B-20. That's the Food Co-Op, and you can probably get lunch there for half the price you'd pay upstairs (you'll prolly have to microwave it, but there's one on the premises). It'll even be organic. Where has this place been on all the days I've forgotten lunch or had to stay over dinner? Downstairs, apparently, but still.
2. I understand that things are cheaper as you get farther from a city, but I had no idea of the degree to which the types of stores change as you travel from Binghamton proper to Vestal (west of that) to Endicott (west of that). It goes from expensiveish-to-moderate stuff to, like, discount-shopper stuff. Probably none of you will be as interested in this as I am, but check it out, starting at the extreme eastern edge of Vestal (that is, just outside of the city limits) and heading west:
University Plaza (east of campus): HealthyU, Five Guys (I forget their prices, but considering that they're not a sit-down restaurant with wait staff, they're expensive as compared to other burger joints of their style), Coldstone Creamery, Moghul, WeTea (though, yes, to be fair, also Subway, Tully's, Mario's Pizza, and China Wok, which are all more or less moderate-to-inexpensive).
Vestal Parkway, heading west from campus: certainly a mix of everything, but this's where they put places like Panera, Staples, Target, IHOP, Kohl's, the new diner, the hotels, Nirchi's, all that sort of stuff. There's a second-hand clothing store, but it's a consignment shop; it's nicer stuff, and their prices are a few bucks higher than an actual thrift store.
West of that are the Wal-Mart plaza, adjacent strip malls, and stretch between them and Rt. 17, which looks at first glance like a free-for-all, but, check it out, the more moderate-to-expensive restaurants and stores are almost all on the side of the street that's going east (it's a divided parkway, each part running one way, so that's not just a detail in passing). I mean, seriously: heading east you've got, like, Pier 1, Ann Taylor Loft, Lemongrass, and Starbucks. Heading west you've got, like, Subway, A&W, and Long John Silver's.
And after that:
Vestal Parkway, west of the I-17 ramps: small local businesses (BC Bicycles, Barbells of Binghamton [no lie, there really is such a place], Vestal Deli & Bakery), the old-nifty-and-I-think-cheaper diner. The strip malls have ended by this time, though obviously there're still plazas.
From there: Big Lots, Salvation Army, Blimpie, Grand China Wok. No strip malls or shopping plazas anywhere here, as far as I can tell.
The reason I mention this is because I went to Big Lots today because, I don't know, I had a few groceries to get and I was in the mood to check it out (I haven't shopped there in several years). For those of you unacquainted with it, Big Lots is a chain of stores that buys overstocks (both food and general merchandise--cookware, board games, socks, that stuff) and resells them, so you get stuff for cheaper than you normally would. The selection isn't nearly as good as any normal supermarket, the quality is kind of hit-and-miss (though obviously they're not going to resell anything unsafe or spoiled), and you can't count on any one thing being there all the time, if I remember correctly (the reason is obvious enough). So I came in, not to do a week's grocery shopping, but just to grab some things I knew I needed, and got a bunch of stuff, most of it brand-name, for only $11.87...and started thinking about it when the cashier-lady told me my instant pad-thai (among the items I was buying) looked good, I commented that it was a lot cheaper than one from Wegmans would have been, and she answered that she usually couldn't afford to shop there. Considering that Wegmans is a better value than any other supermarket around here besides, like, Aldi, I didn't expect to hear that. But what I'd bought would have cost me considerably more at Wegmans--probably double if I stuck to brand names, like they were mostly selling here--so I could see what she meant.
Speaking of grocery shopping, it's time for dinner.
!
So I woke up this morning, a lot earlier than I expected, because it was so bright. Maybe it was the light quality peculiar to such days, but I kept thinking about last summer as I was getting up, had sort of a vague connection in my mind between early-summer mornings and ones like this. We've been getting days in, like, the 40s and 50s recently, so I didn't really have much reason to make the connection, but it did sort of seem, though I don't know if I ever put words (or whatever) to the thought, like this should be a warm day.
Then I went on weather.com and was pleasantly shocked by this:
Mom, Jo, and Aunt Cath are going to have a great Hot Dog Day.
Then I went on weather.com and was pleasantly shocked by this:
Mom, Jo, and Aunt Cath are going to have a great Hot Dog Day.
4.21.2009
(yikes)
I'm impressed with the people who read my end-of-term blog entries every semester. They all pretty much carry the same general theme, namely, this sucks, and I feel like a bad person.
For example, as far as the latter goes, I think I may have accidentally made one of my boys cry today. One of the formerly-arrogant ones. Like, I don't think I was harsh, but I had to explain that his researched-argument draft wasn't quite successful yet. It's near the end of the semester, and he's always come into each project with confidence in his inherent skill, and each time I've had to burst his bubble. Part of it, too, was probably the rest of his workload - I think he's also in physics, and the physics-class failure rate at this school is apparently sky-high - but either way, when he left, his voice was awful thick and he looked pretty crushed.
I keep surprising myself with new reasons to have to feel guilty about the way this stupid semester has gone. At least I'm not the only teacher of my team who's having discipline and draft-quality problems - Melissa and Leigh are, too. Aaron reassured us that spring semester is always worse than fall. Matt was just Matt - he's so experienced to begin with, and smart on top of it, that even though he must have problems once in a while, he never seems to.
I have eight poems to write by 5:50 tomorrow. I think maybe I should just go to bed now and get up at, like, three. Or something. But I need some sleep, because it's gotten to that point where I'm fine with people I'm talking to but liable to be angry at everyone I'm not, for various and probably stupid reasons.
For example, as far as the latter goes, I think I may have accidentally made one of my boys cry today. One of the formerly-arrogant ones. Like, I don't think I was harsh, but I had to explain that his researched-argument draft wasn't quite successful yet. It's near the end of the semester, and he's always come into each project with confidence in his inherent skill, and each time I've had to burst his bubble. Part of it, too, was probably the rest of his workload - I think he's also in physics, and the physics-class failure rate at this school is apparently sky-high - but either way, when he left, his voice was awful thick and he looked pretty crushed.
I keep surprising myself with new reasons to have to feel guilty about the way this stupid semester has gone. At least I'm not the only teacher of my team who's having discipline and draft-quality problems - Melissa and Leigh are, too. Aaron reassured us that spring semester is always worse than fall. Matt was just Matt - he's so experienced to begin with, and smart on top of it, that even though he must have problems once in a while, he never seems to.
I have eight poems to write by 5:50 tomorrow. I think maybe I should just go to bed now and get up at, like, three. Or something. But I need some sleep, because it's gotten to that point where I'm fine with people I'm talking to but liable to be angry at everyone I'm not, for various and probably stupid reasons.
Summary
Spring '09: In which I find that I should either 1) learn to not keep being intimidated by spoiled, patronizing, and/or sullen teenage boys; or 2) get out of the teaching business. And the phone-lending business, for that matter.
4.16.2009
Bad Press
So there's this huge whonking AIG building in University Plaza, with people working there 'til like 1:00 every morning (maybe even twenty-four hours; I don't actually know). But I noticed as I drove by the building yesterday that the big AIG sign has been covered over recently; the new banner says "21st Century Insurance."
The local AIG employees aren't gone; 21CI is apparently just an AIG subsidiary. Still, I feel kind of bad for them--the name was probably clarified for a reason.
The local AIG employees aren't gone; 21CI is apparently just an AIG subsidiary. Still, I feel kind of bad for them--the name was probably clarified for a reason.
Flaw
I have a lot of good angst music, both the overt kind and the clever, artistically-distanced kind, but I don't have anything that's good for frustration. Anger music, if I even had any, would be too much. And angst doesn't quite reach that spot.
4.15.2009
A Little More
Heh, so how about I tell you what I had my students do after they wrote the opening paragraphs, lest you think that's all we did for ninety minutes?
Because they've got oral presentations coming up, I had them practice their delivery by coming up front and reading out their opening paragraphs. (I was kind of a pain in their necks, stopping them when necessary by barking out, "A little slower!" or "Look up!" or "A little louder!") Because we were doing this with creative writing, and only short bursts of it, it was a little easier to keep everyone's attention, which was cool.
And then we had a big discussion about intros and how they work, and then they wrote the introductory paragraphs of their actual researched-argument projects (half the project is due next class, but I knew very well that most of them probably hadn't started writing yet; the kid who had just took out his draft and polished his intro accordingly), following the same "context + problem + solution" formula I'd just given them. Then a few people read theirs out, and you know what? They were mostly very good, especially considering that not everyone had done a heck of a lot of research. Even the ones that needed fleshing out at least seemed to have context, a problem, and a solution. And they weren't even too formulaic--the guy who'd already had his written ran it by me because it seemed to stick only loosely to the format (it actually stuck to it fine; he'd just dropped out the "problem" element because his audience could tell so clearly what the problem was, which was all right), and it ended up being the best intro I heard (not that I heard more than three or four, but you know).
Then we went into two other very quick mini-lessons (a thing on how to question scholarly work that might be shoddily done and a thing on avoiding "weasel words, peacock terms, and glittering generalities," which I pretty much copped right off Wikipedia, to be honest), and that was the day.
I forgot to teach them about conclusions, which I'd meant to do (since I'm thrilled to know that I can tell them it's just the intro formula backwards--"solution + problem + context"), but we'll do that later; it won't kill them not to know right away.
Whoa, gotta go shower before my WC shift.
Because they've got oral presentations coming up, I had them practice their delivery by coming up front and reading out their opening paragraphs. (I was kind of a pain in their necks, stopping them when necessary by barking out, "A little slower!" or "Look up!" or "A little louder!") Because we were doing this with creative writing, and only short bursts of it, it was a little easier to keep everyone's attention, which was cool.
And then we had a big discussion about intros and how they work, and then they wrote the introductory paragraphs of their actual researched-argument projects (half the project is due next class, but I knew very well that most of them probably hadn't started writing yet; the kid who had just took out his draft and polished his intro accordingly), following the same "context + problem + solution" formula I'd just given them. Then a few people read theirs out, and you know what? They were mostly very good, especially considering that not everyone had done a heck of a lot of research. Even the ones that needed fleshing out at least seemed to have context, a problem, and a solution. And they weren't even too formulaic--the guy who'd already had his written ran it by me because it seemed to stick only loosely to the format (it actually stuck to it fine; he'd just dropped out the "problem" element because his audience could tell so clearly what the problem was, which was all right), and it ended up being the best intro I heard (not that I heard more than three or four, but you know).
Then we went into two other very quick mini-lessons (a thing on how to question scholarly work that might be shoddily done and a thing on avoiding "weasel words, peacock terms, and glittering generalities," which I pretty much copped right off Wikipedia, to be honest), and that was the day.
I forgot to teach them about conclusions, which I'd meant to do (since I'm thrilled to know that I can tell them it's just the intro formula backwards--"solution + problem + context"), but we'll do that later; it won't kill them not to know right away.
Whoa, gotta go shower before my WC shift.
4.14.2009
Update
The service: no one went. I had perfect attendance. I feel like I sort of degraded it unintentionally in the way I gave them a chance to leave if they really felt like they needed to, but I guess I can't guilt about everything, hard as I seem to try.
The first part of my lesson: was made of win. Inspired by the text I was working from, which pointed out that scholarly introductions actually work much like fairy tales (first the context, then the problem that disturbs the context, then the solution), I had my students write opening paragraphs to fairy tales/superhero stories/Disney movies (either ones they made up or good retellings of existing ones). And it went off just about as nicely as you please--these are the moments when I'm glad for my livelier students, because as much trouble as they make when they're bored, they're great as soon as I find a legitimate way to put them on stage. Thanks be to God; I was so not ready for anything when I got up this morning, and I still could have done better in the teacher-team meeting especially, but I keep forgetting that with a little structure and divine mercy, teaching sometimes is the best part of my day.
The first part of my lesson: was made of win. Inspired by the text I was working from, which pointed out that scholarly introductions actually work much like fairy tales (first the context, then the problem that disturbs the context, then the solution), I had my students write opening paragraphs to fairy tales/superhero stories/Disney movies (either ones they made up or good retellings of existing ones). And it went off just about as nicely as you please--these are the moments when I'm glad for my livelier students, because as much trouble as they make when they're bored, they're great as soon as I find a legitimate way to put them on stage. Thanks be to God; I was so not ready for anything when I got up this morning, and I still could have done better in the teacher-team meeting especially, but I keep forgetting that with a little structure and divine mercy, teaching sometimes is the best part of my day.