1. I didn't sleep well last night. There's a reason I chose this teaching schedule; I'm an insomniac, and regardless of what I do or don't do during the day, my body's not usually interested in going to sleep until 4 or 5. I tried to make it go at 2 last night, and it was most unhappy with me.
So bear in mind as I go through this day, particularly the morning, that I wasn't in a very good mood. I am fully aware of that. I also tried not to talk, because I knew I wasn't in a very good mood and didn't want to snap at anybody, but I talked, probably more than I should have.
I think for the first item, I'll just give you the chronology of the morning, and then I'll discuss. (It's hard to figure out audience awareness, so I'm basically just typing to myself.) I should also say that everyone who was in these meetings this morning is someone I like and respect.
The Literature Committee met at 9. I haven't been able to make the two previous meetings, and I was late today. They were essentially asking for final approval on new course descriptions, outcomes, and assessment plans. The primary reason the Dean (and maybe the Chair) mandated this committee is that our institution was dinged on assessment in our last accreditation, and right now, all degree-seeking students are supposed to take either 231 or 232; as required courses, and as terminal English courses, they should have been assessing for years, so this committee was put together to come up with a plan.
I should also mention that the chair of this committee worked her keester off and, for the 2008 catalog, anything higher than 223 (our Topic course) will count as a Lit credit; it won't have to be only one of the World Lits. To be honest, I really didn't think it was going to be possible to do this, and this was announced as I walk in the door, so I was sort of winded (in a happy way). This was phenomenal news.
Having said this, I'm concerned about the assessment plan that was generated. I've been part of the assessment effort for--I believe three of the last four years (and I can't figure out how I missed a year; I kind of think we just skipped a year). Before last year, we all submitted our student essays with all identifiers removed in our terminal Composition course. The first two years I did this were exercises in futility; the assignments were obviously radically different, and it was really hard to come up with meaningful comparisons (some assignments were clearly research, others non-research thesis-support, others literary analysis [some involving research, some not], others reports or biographies or fact pukes--impossible to find a set of apples to compare to another set of apples). Then a few years ago, that course's curriculum was revised by mandate of our local university from an Intro to Lit to a research-intensive course. Now while I loved my intro to lit and was (and am) sorry to see it lose its required-course status, I think this is a better comp course that better prepares students for what they'll actually be doing in college. Since it moved from a lit course to a comp course, this helped; now we knew at least that everything should be a research assignment, although that's still defined differently.
Between two years ago and last year, our assessment of that Comp II course was revised to reflect the new curriculum; the new curriculum required new outcomes, and as we were devising the outcomes, we specifically formulated them to be concretely measurable and therefore assessable. We had had vague, blobby, non-measurable outcomes, and we refined them so we could measure them. ("Has a clear thesis sentence" is a yes/no question; "demonstrates knowledge and use of the writing process"--well, since all you've got is the final draft in your hand, that's not measurable. That's a guess.)
Also last year, we made a move that our first comp course needed to be assessed in addition to our terminal comp course. Now to be honest and fair, most of this happened last spring term, and my last spring was so zoo-like that I was not involved in the process the committee developed. It involves a pre-test and a post-test, and I like that. I gave the pre-test as my diagnostic. It seems to call for more drafting than that, and to be honest, major assignments, of course, should be drafted (I think)--but you know what? Students are going to have to do in-class writing sometimes which will not necessarily be drafted, so I've always given a diagnostic the first day that isn't drafted. I don't think that's a contradiction; I think that gives students practice with skills they'll need. I also give them an essay final, because they need to practice taking those, and I certainly think English Composition is a logical, sensible place to do that.
The problem for some people is the procedure the committee came up with. We knew there was to be a pre-test and a post-test. That's a good idea; part of what was missing from the other assessment was growth, and our sense was that, by evaluating student essays from the beginning of the term and from the end of the term, we'd have some sense of whether there was growth, which certainly needs to be first and foremost on an assessment of a writing course, I think.
The prompts for the pre-test came in the week before the semester started. That wasn't optimal; some people already had syllabi done and didn't have a convenient slot to work this into. (Like I said, I just slotted out my old diagnostic and used the new assessment for that. Since I have access to a computer lab, I could have them work in there after I'd done my Intro to the Course stuff, and these were all done the first day of class, no big deal.)
The prompts for the post-test came three weeks ago. Most of us had already started the research paper. To be honest, I didn't look at it until this week; I figured it was the same format as the pre-test, and I don't like to look at prompts too much beforehand because I don't want to teach specifically to the prompt, even subconsciously. I was a little surprised when I looked at the prompt choices because they all involve some research. Now my in-person classes meet once a week, so I have a nice, long three-hour class period which becomes a three-hour final exam block, and I'm still not sure that's enough time for a little mini-research paper. I haven't exactly decided what I'm going to do about that. Probably punt. I'll decide Monday (which is also the day I give this final to my in-person course).
People are going ballistic, though, because they see this as something they were supposed to do as an alternative to the research paper, but they didn't get it in time to do that. Now I didn't see it as an alternative to the research paper, and I wouldn't have used it as that; the prompts aren't the sort of practice I think students need for a full-on research paper (although I think they're good response prompts).
(I said I was going to go chronological and then discuss, didn't I, and I'm not doing that. Oh, well.)
Anyway, some people in the department are upset about the 101 assessment, and as a result, the lit committee drafted vague, fuzzy outcomes. Some of them made comments about the
outcomes being assessable, but I'm not convinced they're quantifiable.
Things to note in this transaction: a. With the exception of the chair of the committee, who was at last year's assessment (she wasn't with the department before that), I don't recall ever having seen anyone else in the room at an assessment. Since the committee chair was only at last year's assessment, she isn't familiar with the sturm und drang we went through to come up with measurable outcomes, so they haven't done that. Now I either could have pointed that out or sat quietly. I normally would have pointed it out, but I knew I was in such an unpleasant mood that I was afraid if I started that I'd just be mean and bitchy, so I decided to ruminate. I've ruminated all day. I'm still not convinced these outcomes are assessable.
b. With the exception of three or four people in the room, the members of this committee were a curious bunch: I don't think I've ever seen most of them on another department committee. Just to be blunt (and remember, I like these people and respect their work and opinions), several of these people are the sort who don't ever help make decisions and then whine and moan about the decisions that are made. The way I look at it, committee work is like voting: you have to have some sort of nerve to think you're entitled to an opinion about the results when you didn't participate in the process. (Translation: Shame on you. Shut up.)
c. There was another colleague who was obsesed with the fact that people were going to be unhappy and we should try to cut this off at the pass. If anyone does anything, people will be unhappy. If anyone does nothing, people will be unhappy. In academia, it is my observation that people are just going to be unhappy, and this should not affect your course of action in anyway. You can't make them stop breathing, either.
But anyway, that was the first hour.
2. Then we went to the Department Meeting. First on the bill was a half hour presentation by the Library. Now I love our campus library; all of the assistants at the campus branch I use know me by face and name because I use the dang thing to death, and when I request things from Interlibrary Loan, I don't have to give all my information anymore because the ILL person knows it. I use (and abuse) the library.
We're also the English Department. The two primary comp courses, which nearly everyone is required to teach at least occasionally, both involve research. And after that presentation, I was just seething: anybody who heard anything new in that presentation is not qualified to do the job for which we were hired.
I take that back: there was one new thing I heard. We have a program in which students and faculty can check out e-books. That I knew and have played with a little. However, it came out in this presentation that, if someone has an e-book checked out, nobody else can use it; it's treated as though it were a book on the shelf, and we have to act as though we only have one copy. Now I understand copyright and publisher concerns, but for pity's sake, what's the point in an electronic program if you can't have multiple virtual copies? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Then someone talked for a few minutes about a new technology program we'll have available for fall. This was interesting, and I'll probably go to their website to learn more about it.
Someone else gave a very interesting and even moving presentation on Service Learning. That was worthwhile.
Our Reading Lead Faculty said we're starting a Reading Committee in the fall. Now I think Reading is so crucial, and has been so lacking, that my immediate response was, "Oh, I'll have to do that!" And then I thought, "You are already on the committees for Comp I, Comp II, and Literature, as well as the College Readiness Task Force. Just realistically speaking, you can't do a good job on anything else." So I guess I won't get to be on that even though I think I probably should be. I'm right; nobody else is going to protect my time but me. (But as Placement Lead, don't I need to do this? Probably. You're still not going to unless you're specifically told to, and then I, as your brain, will make you give up something else.)
I think there were a few other miscellaneous doo-dad reports here.
And then the extravaganza began.
Our Comp I lead faculty started talking about the logistics of the assessment, and someone made the comment that the prompts were intrusive and of questionable value. Now the institution as a whole is thrilled with Comp I's decision to assess, so this was an odd thing to say and told us more about the faculty member than about any actual facts. (I like this man; I think he's smart, has a fun sense of humor, and is very rigorous and student-centered. However, I also think he intentionally plays Devil's Advocate whether or not he actually believes what he's saying. Now Athens needs a gadfly, don't get me wrong. However, he is also one who usually complains about results without having been involved in the harrowing experience of thrashing them out.)
However, this whole assessment process has been so hellacious, and the committee has taken such heat about it from the department, that the lead became upset and left the room. That was a first. People didn't quite know what to do.
One person pointed out the essays had just materialized three weeks ago, which was true. Someone else (who was trying to represent the departed lead and generally did a very good, credible job worthy of a true and loyal friend; I should have done that) said the essays hadn't just materialized, since we'd had them all semester. I pointed out that they were different essays; the three prompts in the first batch were simple respond-and-support, while the second three prompts had a research component--which meant that, in fact, these prompts had arrived after most of us had started our last paper. We had a little dispute about that, but most people who had actually looked at the prompts realized they were different essays.
Then someone from the Lit committee pointed out that, when some faculty members had balked at the procedure at the beginning of the semester, they had "felt ignored." Now again, this is someone I like very much; I have seen her in a social setting several times, and I think she is very smart and funny. But you know what? Boo hoo. The Chair and Dean had charged the 101 committee with coming up with a assessment plan, and this was clearly announced at last spring's introductory meetings; people knew it was coming and should have participated. Those concerns needed to come up during the formulation of that plan, not at its presentation, and since the people had opted out of participation, they had forfeited the right to whine as far as I was concerned. (This is essentially the only act of the Comp I committee in which I haven't been involved because of my schedule last spring, and although I essentially agree with what they formulated, if I didn't, I'd keep it to my own damn self. I didn't participate, so I don't get to bitch.) Boo-hoo that you "felt ignored." The committee didn't receive the benefit of your input at a useful point. Again I say: Shame on you. Shut up.
And then there was some discussion about whether or not the committee had been charged to do that and what the proper bounds of committee work was. Beats me. Sure did sound to me like the committee had done what it was charged with and then got reamed new ones for it.
I will now take this opportunity to give my opinion on assessment, which nobody gives a rat's ass about but me, but you know what? This blog is cheaper than therapy, so I'm just going to type it. Usually, once I've typed something out, my brain will permit me to move on.
In my personal opinion, assessment is among both the most useful and the most useless things we do. During the assessment itself, we discuss the criteria for the papers, and then we all read a number of papers written by a variety of students in the course. These discussions and the readings of the essays are invaluable; I have learned such a lot from my colleagues, and from reading other people's students, during these sessions. Just learning how other teachers prioritize things is fascinating. "Hmmm. Several people seem to think that X is more important than I treat it." So the next semester, maybe I'll push X a little more. We should constantly be learning and growing (which means tweaking our syllabi), and I've gotten some wonderful ideas for doing that from the discussion and reading.
I'm considerably more conflicted about the results themselves. The results are meaningless, as far as I'm concerned: what the hell does it mean if 62% of outgoing students can do a task? Always? How would we know? Will they be able to do it in three months? Could they already do it when they came? I have never seen an assessment result that gave me any usable information. (Is any number less than 100% acceptable? Even if that number were 95%, and it never is, that still means 5% of students are falling through the cracks for that objective. This frustrates me.)
The more ominous problem I have with the results is what tends to happen to them. Once results go to Administrators (there should be a shudder and perhaps some hissing here; think Rocky Horror or British Panto), they become sticks with which to beat us. Even if the stats are good (and again, they can't, almost by definition, be 100%, so they can never really be good enough), then if we don't do at least as well the next year, we're Bad.
Now assessment, at least at the post-secondary level, has never been about individual teachers that I have seen. It's a pain in the butt, but I think the intellectual freedom issues are generally not terribly heinous (although I suspect this will be an ongoing concern, as it should be). Once students have become statistics, education is over. (We must bear in mind that this is from the Lead Faculty for Placement. Much of my job is about turning students into statistics. The difference is, I hope, that I at least attempt to turn them back into human beings when I'm done with their statistics.) I think the huge trend right now is to have a top-heavy organizational scheme to keep track of all these assessments and statistics--and you know, I think a better use of those resources might be either to put those people in a classroom and let them teach (most of them were originally faculty) or to use their salaries and pay for more teachers, or raise the salaries of the teachers we've got.
Administration is The Peter Principle. It is a dark side that swallows everyone. (That's obviously not entirely fair; I can think of several people who haven't been entirely gobbled and some, I fear, in the process of being gobbled. However, these exceptions prove the rule. Note to new teachers: don't think you're going to change the system from within. It's going to change you. By definition. No exception. Stop whining. Move on.) Once people leave classrooms, the priority of necessity moves away from students. Even when the focus is on students, it isn't, quite, really. (That's the sort of broad, sweeping generalization that requires support, and I don't have any right now.) I have already made several friends promise me that, if I ever make rumblings about moving to Administration, they are to beat me with a rock until I am senseless. (I really don't see my doing that; I didn't go into education to work a 40-hour week.)
All right, let's see if I can move on now.
3. Co-Vivant and I had dum-dum food. I was tense, and this is a treat for both of us. (It's actually dim sum, but she tends to make up little nicknames, and they often stick.) We always have a good time with dum-dum food; we both eschew forks, and I'm really terrible with chopsticks, so we have a good time, and our tablecloth is always messy. (Actually, I'm getting better with the chopsticks, but I suspect we'll find something else to have a good time with once I am competent with them.)
4. One of the things that came out of the meeting was that there was a nice handout for how to put together a new course for the catalog, like I'm trying to do with Arthur. It surely would have been helpful to have had that handout before; it would have saved me considerable time and embarrassment.
It also looks like, based on what people said today, when you have a course go before the Curriculum Committee, you're supposed to attend that meeting. I've never heard that before.
Now what was originally arranged was that the course would come before the last meeting today. However, I never received any information about when or where this meeting would be, so I don't think I was expected. I also don't know when it would have been held because our department's representative was at the department meeting.
So I don't know if I've totally wasted all this dumb paperwork or not. (I put this here because I checked to see if I had any e-mail about this after lunch.) Frustrating, frustrating experience, and unless the Dean makes me, I have no intention of doing anything like it again.
4.5. At lunch while I was telling my Co-Vivant all the above crap, I made a comment about how eye-opening it would be for the lit committee when they assess next year. And then I had a little giggle fit, and she asked me what about. "Wouldn't it be cool if I weren't there and this wasn't a problem that involved me at all?" We'll have to see if I can pull that website together in time. I feel sort of like The Iceman Cometh: if I don't take steps to improve what I don't like in my life, I deserve the life I end up with. If I take steps and fail, that's one thing--but if I don't even try, then I deserve the bitter, frustrated, angry personality I'm going to end up with.
5. Took a nap. (I'd had fewer than three hours of restless sleep. This was a good thing.)
6. Reading. Didn't read much today.
7. Pogo. Got my badges to 60%.
8. Got my WOW Human Mage to Level 24.
9. BigFishGames. Today's game involved Dora the Explorer. I'm excused.
10. Made dinner. (I actually made a recipe from a few days ago, the Chinese Chicken Salad.) However, it was neither enough protein nor enough carbs, apparently, for my diabetic Co-Vivant, so she had low blood sugar twice (not once, but twice) during the evening. This is frustrating.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Friday, May 4, 2007
5/3: What I Accomplished Today
1. My colleague from the local university finalized and submitted our 4C's proposal. It's a good proposal. I hope it's accepted.
2. Still don't know whether Arthur's going before the committee tomorrow or not; no e-mails on this topic were answered today.
3. Trying to get the placement ID passwords updated. That was supposed to happen this morning, but it doesn't look like it did.
4. Read The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, and Academe. I don't know if it's my mood or the articles, but nothing seemed really interesting today.
5. We watched three lackluster comedians on TiVo. We also rewatched Bob Osborn's Private Screenings with June Allyson and Debbie Reynolds.
6. Finished a premium badge and got the other badges to at least 40% on Pogo.
7. Worked on the Level 22 Human Mage, but didn't level.
8. The BigFishGame today was a Mah Jong thing. What the world doesn't need now is more Mah Jong things.
Playfirst released Chocolatier. I would like to buy this. I have two choices here.
a. I can buy it now from Playfirst Advantages: i. I'd have it now. ii. Playfirst has badges available for many games it makes itself; I checked, and Chocolatier has badges. I am demented for badges. Things I would never, ever do in a million years I will do quickly if I get a badge. (I was an excellent Girl Scout; in my troop, I was the only one to have both the Sign of the Arrow and the Sign of the Star. They were badges! There were holes on my badge sash without them!)
b. If I wait a week or two sometimes a month, Chocolatier will be available on BigFishGames. Advantages: i. It will cost $6.99 as opposed to $19.99. This is the only advantage.
I think I'm impatient enough that I'll probably end up buying it from Playfirst so I can have it now and earn the badges, but it just seems fiscally irresponsible.
9. I put a new water on the counter this morning. That is the only remotely useful household thing I accomplished today.
I have three hours of goofy meetings tomorrow, so I suppose I need to go to sleep. I hate having to go to bed and wake up to an alarm clock. On my teaching schedule, I don't usually need an alarm; I usually start to wake up between 11 and 12, and by 12:30ish, I'm ready to be up, which gets me up in plenty of time to eat and get to 2:00 office hours. Tomorrow's meetings are at 9 at a campus far, far away. Blech.
2. Still don't know whether Arthur's going before the committee tomorrow or not; no e-mails on this topic were answered today.
3. Trying to get the placement ID passwords updated. That was supposed to happen this morning, but it doesn't look like it did.
4. Read The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, and Academe. I don't know if it's my mood or the articles, but nothing seemed really interesting today.
5. We watched three lackluster comedians on TiVo. We also rewatched Bob Osborn's Private Screenings with June Allyson and Debbie Reynolds.
6. Finished a premium badge and got the other badges to at least 40% on Pogo.
7. Worked on the Level 22 Human Mage, but didn't level.
8. The BigFishGame today was a Mah Jong thing. What the world doesn't need now is more Mah Jong things.
Playfirst released Chocolatier. I would like to buy this. I have two choices here.
a. I can buy it now from Playfirst Advantages: i. I'd have it now. ii. Playfirst has badges available for many games it makes itself; I checked, and Chocolatier has badges. I am demented for badges. Things I would never, ever do in a million years I will do quickly if I get a badge. (I was an excellent Girl Scout; in my troop, I was the only one to have both the Sign of the Arrow and the Sign of the Star. They were badges! There were holes on my badge sash without them!)
b. If I wait a week or two sometimes a month, Chocolatier will be available on BigFishGames. Advantages: i. It will cost $6.99 as opposed to $19.99. This is the only advantage.
I think I'm impatient enough that I'll probably end up buying it from Playfirst so I can have it now and earn the badges, but it just seems fiscally irresponsible.
9. I put a new water on the counter this morning. That is the only remotely useful household thing I accomplished today.
I have three hours of goofy meetings tomorrow, so I suppose I need to go to sleep. I hate having to go to bed and wake up to an alarm clock. On my teaching schedule, I don't usually need an alarm; I usually start to wake up between 11 and 12, and by 12:30ish, I'm ready to be up, which gets me up in plenty of time to eat and get to 2:00 office hours. Tomorrow's meetings are at 9 at a campus far, far away. Blech.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
5/2: What I Accomplished Today
1. Didn't hear anything about the Arthur paperwork, so I assume all's well. If I haven't heard anything about it tomorrow, I'll send an e-mail.
(I may have been wrong about a department policy about using the generic literature course outcomes; they may actually be the English A.A. outcomes. Whatever they were, it was my understanding we were to use them for all lit courses; I have been doing that since then.)
2. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.
3. Got 20% done on the new Pogo badges.
4. Watched the new Biography about the guys who founded Google. It wasn't really a biography of these two guys; they're not 30 years old yet. It was more a show about the history and some of the technologies behind Google. We really enjoyed that more than we expected to.
I also watched the end of an episode of Big Love, the episode with Roberta's funeral; I think that was the only one I hadn't seen. This show drives my Co-Vivant nuts ("I wouldn't really be interested in a show about circus freaks, either"), but I'm fascinated by people whose lives seem perfectly average and ordinary except for one extraordinary thing; in that regard, it's rather similar to The Sopranos. (Freudians in the crowd are thinking, "Well, isn't that because your life seems perfectly average and ordinary except for one extraordinary thing?" To that, I reply, "As far as I'm concerned, there are half a million extraordinary things about me; to which one were you referring?")
5. Reading the Paul book has been slow, but I've actually been taking the opportunity to read big chunks of it out loud. It's just delicious to read prose out loud sometimes. I do that while my World of Warcraft character is flying or riding the Tram or doing something time-consuming that doesn't require my interaction at all.
6. Got my World of Warcraft Human Mage to level 22 (yes, she dinged twice today).
7. The BigFishGame was a puzzle inlay thing; they're sometimes fun if I'm in the right mood, but I'm not in the right mood, so I didn't download that.
Playfirst, however, has released Chocolatier. I got to play this in the FirstPeek program six or eight weeks ago, and it was fun. I've downloaded it to buy it; I'll probably do that tomorrow, mebbe. Similar to a Tradewinds sort of game, but with a resource-allocation factory component and an arcade component added (the length of time you play the arcade game determines your factory's productivity, which I think is a fun twist).
8. I don't think I did anything useful around the house tonight.
9. About half an hour ago, I was sitting here quietly performing my various tasks, and there was a loud crash on the front patio. A few months ago, a drunk guy stumbled to the porch at 2 am one night and kept yelling for someone named "Patty"; we left the door open and said he had the wrong door. He started making some vaguely threatening gestures, and we finally said, "Nobody named Patty lives here, as you'll see to your embarrassment tomorrow when you wake up and realize you've been knocking on the door, and if you're still on that patio in two minutes, we're calling the police." We never heard again, so we figured he must have realized what he'd done (acting under the huge assumption that he could remember it).
Anyway, when this loud crash went off, I thought maybe it was the drunk guy or maybe a basher of some sort. I started to get up to check out the noise, but then I realized that that probably is not the thing to do. I went back and woke my Co-Vivant (this is difficult), saying I didn't think this was a one-person job. She got a flashlight, and I got the phone, and she edged open the door. It turned out that it's gusty tonight and the wind had taken out a trash can. Now this was dreadfully embarrassing; I had awakened her quite late and gone into Lockdown Mode, and a trash can blew over. Oh, well.
(I may have been wrong about a department policy about using the generic literature course outcomes; they may actually be the English A.A. outcomes. Whatever they were, it was my understanding we were to use them for all lit courses; I have been doing that since then.)
2. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.
3. Got 20% done on the new Pogo badges.
4. Watched the new Biography about the guys who founded Google. It wasn't really a biography of these two guys; they're not 30 years old yet. It was more a show about the history and some of the technologies behind Google. We really enjoyed that more than we expected to.
I also watched the end of an episode of Big Love, the episode with Roberta's funeral; I think that was the only one I hadn't seen. This show drives my Co-Vivant nuts ("I wouldn't really be interested in a show about circus freaks, either"), but I'm fascinated by people whose lives seem perfectly average and ordinary except for one extraordinary thing; in that regard, it's rather similar to The Sopranos. (Freudians in the crowd are thinking, "Well, isn't that because your life seems perfectly average and ordinary except for one extraordinary thing?" To that, I reply, "As far as I'm concerned, there are half a million extraordinary things about me; to which one were you referring?")
5. Reading the Paul book has been slow, but I've actually been taking the opportunity to read big chunks of it out loud. It's just delicious to read prose out loud sometimes. I do that while my World of Warcraft character is flying or riding the Tram or doing something time-consuming that doesn't require my interaction at all.
6. Got my World of Warcraft Human Mage to level 22 (yes, she dinged twice today).
7. The BigFishGame was a puzzle inlay thing; they're sometimes fun if I'm in the right mood, but I'm not in the right mood, so I didn't download that.
Playfirst, however, has released Chocolatier. I got to play this in the FirstPeek program six or eight weeks ago, and it was fun. I've downloaded it to buy it; I'll probably do that tomorrow, mebbe. Similar to a Tradewinds sort of game, but with a resource-allocation factory component and an arcade component added (the length of time you play the arcade game determines your factory's productivity, which I think is a fun twist).
8. I don't think I did anything useful around the house tonight.
9. About half an hour ago, I was sitting here quietly performing my various tasks, and there was a loud crash on the front patio. A few months ago, a drunk guy stumbled to the porch at 2 am one night and kept yelling for someone named "Patty"; we left the door open and said he had the wrong door. He started making some vaguely threatening gestures, and we finally said, "Nobody named Patty lives here, as you'll see to your embarrassment tomorrow when you wake up and realize you've been knocking on the door, and if you're still on that patio in two minutes, we're calling the police." We never heard again, so we figured he must have realized what he'd done (acting under the huge assumption that he could remember it).
Anyway, when this loud crash went off, I thought maybe it was the drunk guy or maybe a basher of some sort. I started to get up to check out the noise, but then I realized that that probably is not the thing to do. I went back and woke my Co-Vivant (this is difficult), saying I didn't think this was a one-person job. She got a flashlight, and I got the phone, and she edged open the door. It turned out that it's gusty tonight and the wind had taken out a trash can. Now this was dreadfully embarrassing; I had awakened her quite late and gone into Lockdown Mode, and a trash can blew over. Oh, well.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
5/1: What I Accomplished Today
1. Off to a bad start today; I apparently wasn't feeling well, so I didn't hear my Co-Vivant's alarm go off. She needed to be up at 5 to go to a networking breakfast at 7 at which she was supposed to speak, and she didn't get up until 6:40. She got there, but it usually takes her a very long time to wake up, and since she didn't get to ease into the day, she never quite felt right. I know that's unpleasant.
2. While she was at her breakfast, and then the meeting she went to afterwards, and then her reinspect, I slept as I always do; I don't have to be up until noon or 12:30 or so, and I don't really sleep soundly until she's up because her alarm's going to go off and wake me. (To my knowledge, she has never heard an alarm clock in her life; someone else hears it and wakes her.)
I started to stir a little and looked at the clock: 10:56. Plenty of time left; roll over, go back to sleep. Had a nice little nap. Started to stir, looked at the clock: 10:57. Oh. Plenty of time; back to sleep. Dozed a little. Started to stir, looked at the clock: 10:57.
Now I knew she was upset that I hadn't gotten her up in a timely manner, and I was still half-asleep, so my mind came to a stupid conclusion: she has somehow managed to slow down time on my clock (I knew it hadn't stopped because it moved from 56 to 57) so that I will oversleep. And then my brain kicked in enough to go, "Now, that's the stupidest thing you've ever thought. Go back to sleep. Everything's fine." Rolled over. Went back to sleep. Had a good doze. Started to stir, looked at the clock: 10:58.
At this point, I had decided that something odd is happening. I checked both of my clocks (it sometimes takes two to get me up if I have to be somewhere early): 10:58. Her clock says 10:58.
Ah, I think, but she has performed this mystical time-slowing thing on all clocks in the room. So I got up and went from room-to-room checking all the clocks. Now bear in mind that this includes the clocks on the cable box and the Tivo, which she can't possibly have affected in any way, and the clocks that are so high up on the wall that, even with the stepladder, 4' 9.75" Co-Vivant isn't going to be able to touch them. It takes me fully 30 seconds of this house-wandering to realize I'm being an idiot.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I made the bed and slept the rest of the morning on top of the covers. I don't sleep quite as soundly that way.
3. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.
4. The Dean called me; my little plan yesterday to avoid having to drive back to that campus to get signatures on the Arthur course appears to have worked, because he had it and was preparing to put it in the last person's mailbox. However, he called and told me he didn't like the outcomes I'd come up with because they were generic Literature outcomes and not specific to the Arthur course.
Now I was in the meeting that developed these outcomes. We decided that all lit courses were going to use the same outcomes with nothing specific to the course in them; that the students should become a bit familiar with the specifics of the particular course is such a given it seemed goofy to include it on the list, and without the specific, the same outcomes work for each course.
But I'm going to argue with the Dean? Not a good idea. (Well, sometimes I do, actually, but I try not to do it every time; if I disagree with him, I want him to understand that it's something important and he should try to agree with me or at least see why I'm not going along with him. You can speak truth to power if you choose your occasions.)
Now in real life, I wouldn't really care, because this isn't really that big a deal. The problem here is that the outcomes are on the form with all the signatures, and the signatures have to be on the original; if I change that original, I have to regather all the signatures, which are due at a meeting to be held on Friday, and realistically speaking, I probably will not have time to do that signature run again. The Dean suggested that I get the chair's approval for e-approvals; if I add one outcome and edit another, I can do what he'd like to have done, so I'd e-mail the amendment to the four signators and ask for approval in that venue. I don't know if the chair will buy that or not. The alternatives are 1) we just submit the course with the generic outcomes (which, frankly, was the correct procedure in the first place, but whatcha gonna do), or 2) wait a year. It doesn't matter to me; I'm perfectly happy teaching the course under the generic Topics number, but the Dean would like it in the catalog, and I told him I'd try.
5. Completed the Placement statistics for April and the Placement Newsletter for May. (The newsletter is called the Placement Reader. The people who score the tests for us are called, sensibly enough, readers. Catchy, huh?)
6. Took a look at the Assessment form to begin to think about what the Assessment criteria for Placement might be. Put an item in the newsletter asking others to give me their ideas for what we might assess and how we might assess these things. Nothing will come of the request (the newsletter generally feels like I'm whistling in the wind; I don't think anyone actually reads it, and I seldom get responses to questions I ask), but at least I asked, which was the right thing to do.
7. Didn't play much Pogo tonight; I was at the office late putting together the stats & newsletter. Tomorrow is new badge day, though.
8. We watched Janeane Garafolo do standup; it was pretty good. Whenever she has been in something, my co-vivant says, "Oh, I don't like her," but she enjoyed the show tonight, so maybe she will mellow a little on the Janeane Garafolo front.
We also watched the episode of Mad About You in which Jamie has to spend the day with her helpless father because her mother is staying with other relatives, so Paul discovers how clueless he is about the actual logistics of running his home. He didn't know that the dry cleaning got picked up, or that they belonged to the Meat of the Month club, or other such things. We both laughed a lot during the episode, and at the end, I said, "Just for the record, I know I am Mr. Magoo about the running of this house; I am utterly clueless, and very little would be accomplished if you weren't here to do it." And then that was funny, too, so we laughed about that a long time.
I can remember how to play nine classes of World of Warcraft characters, or I can remember that funny little vinegar thing she does with the laundry. My brain cells self-selected; I think the cells containing the vinegar trick ran away and joined the circus.
9. Speaking of which, I worked on my level 20 Human Mage. No ding tonight; kind of a bummer.
10. Tonight's BigFishGame looks like another three-matchy. No, thanks.
11. I changed the toilet paper roll in the front bathroom when I got up. I also cleaned the trap in my shower.
12. In the interest of public service (and because the very idea has just been making me giggle since I thought of it), I have decided to give some of the many extremely useful recipes that get me through the week.
Cinnamon Toast
Take two slices of bread. I like Orowheat's Country Potato, and my Co-Vivant likes Wonder. Any sort of bread will do.
Put the slices in the toaster. Set the toaster for the setting you like (we usually use 3 or 3 and a dot on a ten-point scale). Depress the lever.
Get out a knife, the cream cheese, the cinnamon, and the sugar.
The first time you make this, you will have to make sugar and cinnamon. Sometimes the store sells this, but it costs a silly amount of money even if you happen to live in one of the few stores that still sells this. Put one teaspoon of cinnamon and four teaspoons of sugar in a little Tupperware bowl with a tight-fitting lid. (Once the cinnamon smelled much too potent and I had to cut it with five teaspoons instead of four, but four is usually right.) Stir this mixture up.
By now, your toaster has probably popped. Put your toast slices side by side on a paper towel.
Use the knife to spread a layer of cream cheese on each slice. You want cream cheese, not butter, for two reasons: magically and mystically, cream cheese is simultaneously richer-tasting and less fatty than butter. (Frankly, this doesn't sound right to me, but I lack the Dairy Knowledge to counter the less-fatty claim of Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese.)
After you have a nice layer of cream cheese on your toast, sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on one slice. Then sprinkle it less vigorously over the other slice. Pick up the first slice, which will probably have extra on it, and tilt it around until the cinnamon is well-distributed. If there is still extra, shake it onto the other slice of toast.
Pick up the second slice of toast and tilt it around until the cinnamon is well-distributed. If there is extra, shake it onto the other slice of toast. Continue this until you like your cinnamon distribution.
If there is still extra cinnamon, shake it onto the paper towel.
Now put your two slices, cinnamon sides touching to maintain warmth and help promote rich creamy chewiness, onto another paper towel; the first one has cinnamon on it. Use the first paper towel to put the remaining cinnamon back into the Tupperware bowl and seal tightly.
Eat the toast.
Here is a dessert I made up.
Ingredients:
5 Keebler Grasshopper cookies
3 Kraft Marshmallows (if you must use the generic, be sure they are extremely fresh)
Optional: one half (two quarters) of a Honey Graham cracker
Procedure: Take two of the cookies and place them bottom-side-up on a surface. On each of these two cookies, place a marshmallow.
If you have half a graham cracker, break it in half (Honey Grahams have a perforation) and put a quarter graham cracker on each of the two marshmallows on top of cookies.
Then cover the marshmallow with another cookie.
Eat the extra cookie.
Eat the extra marshmallow.
Eat your two little sandwiches.
These could be called Faux S'mores. To my knowledge, they aren't, but they could be.
One more recipe. This is what I had for dinner today.
At Costco, buy the Chinese Chicken Salad package. They usually only carry this in the spring and summer. It is in the deli section with the cheese and the lunch meats and such.
Then go around the corner to the cold room with the produce and buy either a bag of shredded lettuce or a three-pack of lettuce heads.
When you get home, get the Ziploc bowl that you put the popcorn in; it still should have a lid. From your Chinese Chicken Salad package, take out a package of meat, a package of crispy noodles, and a package of nuts. That will leave you one of each of these for the next time. There are also two packages of dressing; you are certainly welcome to put this on your salad, or at least to put it in a bowl so you can dip your salad into it, but I don't usually eat salad dressing.
Open the three packages (nuts, chicken, noodles) and put them in the popcorn bowl. (That doesn't mean it has popcorn in it; it just means, when we have popcorn, this is the big Ziploc bowl we put it in.)
If you bought a bag of lettuce, open it and dump in enough lettuce so the bowl is almost full, leaving yourself just enough room to mix things up a little. If you bought a head of lettuce, portion it however you like to portion your lettuce (shred, cut, rip, section) and, again, dump it in so the bowl is almost full, leaving yourself just enough room to mix things up a little.
Mix things up a little.
Put the lid on the popcorn bowl. Depending on the lettuce, this will stay good three days or longer. (I don't know how much longer because this never lasts three days for me. I like this.)
Variant: if you are eating low carb, discard the crispy noodles. Shame, though. They're tasty. Maybe you should send them to me so you're not wasting them.
Three helpful, original recipes.
Maybe you can help me out with this one: when I was a little girl, my mother used to make radish sandwiches--just spread butter or margarine on a slice of bread, slice a radish or two, arrange the radish slices on the bread, either cut the bread in half and put half on top or put on another slice to make a sandwich. It was really delicious--refreshing in the spring and summer, with just a little bit of kick. I sometimes still have radish sandwiches (which my Co-Vivant considers unacceptably deviant behavior), and sometimes I make them with butter or margarine, and sometimes I make them with cream cheese. (I love cream cheese. I also use it for potato chip dip.)
Anyway, it seems to me there has to be a way to make this into a really delicious, petite, stylish appetizer for gatherings. The last time I hosted book group, we bought some little bread thingies at Costco, and I spread on butter and topped it with a slice of radish. It wasn't enough radish, but putting on more would have messed up the aesthetics. I don't know.
Okay, I think that's enough Suzy Homemaker tips for one night.
2. While she was at her breakfast, and then the meeting she went to afterwards, and then her reinspect, I slept as I always do; I don't have to be up until noon or 12:30 or so, and I don't really sleep soundly until she's up because her alarm's going to go off and wake me. (To my knowledge, she has never heard an alarm clock in her life; someone else hears it and wakes her.)
I started to stir a little and looked at the clock: 10:56. Plenty of time left; roll over, go back to sleep. Had a nice little nap. Started to stir, looked at the clock: 10:57. Oh. Plenty of time; back to sleep. Dozed a little. Started to stir, looked at the clock: 10:57.
Now I knew she was upset that I hadn't gotten her up in a timely manner, and I was still half-asleep, so my mind came to a stupid conclusion: she has somehow managed to slow down time on my clock (I knew it hadn't stopped because it moved from 56 to 57) so that I will oversleep. And then my brain kicked in enough to go, "Now, that's the stupidest thing you've ever thought. Go back to sleep. Everything's fine." Rolled over. Went back to sleep. Had a good doze. Started to stir, looked at the clock: 10:58.
At this point, I had decided that something odd is happening. I checked both of my clocks (it sometimes takes two to get me up if I have to be somewhere early): 10:58. Her clock says 10:58.
Ah, I think, but she has performed this mystical time-slowing thing on all clocks in the room. So I got up and went from room-to-room checking all the clocks. Now bear in mind that this includes the clocks on the cable box and the Tivo, which she can't possibly have affected in any way, and the clocks that are so high up on the wall that, even with the stepladder, 4' 9.75" Co-Vivant isn't going to be able to touch them. It takes me fully 30 seconds of this house-wandering to realize I'm being an idiot.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I made the bed and slept the rest of the morning on top of the covers. I don't sleep quite as soundly that way.
3. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.
4. The Dean called me; my little plan yesterday to avoid having to drive back to that campus to get signatures on the Arthur course appears to have worked, because he had it and was preparing to put it in the last person's mailbox. However, he called and told me he didn't like the outcomes I'd come up with because they were generic Literature outcomes and not specific to the Arthur course.
Now I was in the meeting that developed these outcomes. We decided that all lit courses were going to use the same outcomes with nothing specific to the course in them; that the students should become a bit familiar with the specifics of the particular course is such a given it seemed goofy to include it on the list, and without the specific, the same outcomes work for each course.
But I'm going to argue with the Dean? Not a good idea. (Well, sometimes I do, actually, but I try not to do it every time; if I disagree with him, I want him to understand that it's something important and he should try to agree with me or at least see why I'm not going along with him. You can speak truth to power if you choose your occasions.)
Now in real life, I wouldn't really care, because this isn't really that big a deal. The problem here is that the outcomes are on the form with all the signatures, and the signatures have to be on the original; if I change that original, I have to regather all the signatures, which are due at a meeting to be held on Friday, and realistically speaking, I probably will not have time to do that signature run again. The Dean suggested that I get the chair's approval for e-approvals; if I add one outcome and edit another, I can do what he'd like to have done, so I'd e-mail the amendment to the four signators and ask for approval in that venue. I don't know if the chair will buy that or not. The alternatives are 1) we just submit the course with the generic outcomes (which, frankly, was the correct procedure in the first place, but whatcha gonna do), or 2) wait a year. It doesn't matter to me; I'm perfectly happy teaching the course under the generic Topics number, but the Dean would like it in the catalog, and I told him I'd try.
5. Completed the Placement statistics for April and the Placement Newsletter for May. (The newsletter is called the Placement Reader. The people who score the tests for us are called, sensibly enough, readers. Catchy, huh?)
6. Took a look at the Assessment form to begin to think about what the Assessment criteria for Placement might be. Put an item in the newsletter asking others to give me their ideas for what we might assess and how we might assess these things. Nothing will come of the request (the newsletter generally feels like I'm whistling in the wind; I don't think anyone actually reads it, and I seldom get responses to questions I ask), but at least I asked, which was the right thing to do.
7. Didn't play much Pogo tonight; I was at the office late putting together the stats & newsletter. Tomorrow is new badge day, though.
8. We watched Janeane Garafolo do standup; it was pretty good. Whenever she has been in something, my co-vivant says, "Oh, I don't like her," but she enjoyed the show tonight, so maybe she will mellow a little on the Janeane Garafolo front.
We also watched the episode of Mad About You in which Jamie has to spend the day with her helpless father because her mother is staying with other relatives, so Paul discovers how clueless he is about the actual logistics of running his home. He didn't know that the dry cleaning got picked up, or that they belonged to the Meat of the Month club, or other such things. We both laughed a lot during the episode, and at the end, I said, "Just for the record, I know I am Mr. Magoo about the running of this house; I am utterly clueless, and very little would be accomplished if you weren't here to do it." And then that was funny, too, so we laughed about that a long time.
I can remember how to play nine classes of World of Warcraft characters, or I can remember that funny little vinegar thing she does with the laundry. My brain cells self-selected; I think the cells containing the vinegar trick ran away and joined the circus.
9. Speaking of which, I worked on my level 20 Human Mage. No ding tonight; kind of a bummer.
10. Tonight's BigFishGame looks like another three-matchy. No, thanks.
11. I changed the toilet paper roll in the front bathroom when I got up. I also cleaned the trap in my shower.
12. In the interest of public service (and because the very idea has just been making me giggle since I thought of it), I have decided to give some of the many extremely useful recipes that get me through the week.
Cinnamon Toast
Take two slices of bread. I like Orowheat's Country Potato, and my Co-Vivant likes Wonder. Any sort of bread will do.
Put the slices in the toaster. Set the toaster for the setting you like (we usually use 3 or 3 and a dot on a ten-point scale). Depress the lever.
Get out a knife, the cream cheese, the cinnamon, and the sugar.
The first time you make this, you will have to make sugar and cinnamon. Sometimes the store sells this, but it costs a silly amount of money even if you happen to live in one of the few stores that still sells this. Put one teaspoon of cinnamon and four teaspoons of sugar in a little Tupperware bowl with a tight-fitting lid. (Once the cinnamon smelled much too potent and I had to cut it with five teaspoons instead of four, but four is usually right.) Stir this mixture up.
By now, your toaster has probably popped. Put your toast slices side by side on a paper towel.
Use the knife to spread a layer of cream cheese on each slice. You want cream cheese, not butter, for two reasons: magically and mystically, cream cheese is simultaneously richer-tasting and less fatty than butter. (Frankly, this doesn't sound right to me, but I lack the Dairy Knowledge to counter the less-fatty claim of Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese.)
After you have a nice layer of cream cheese on your toast, sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on one slice. Then sprinkle it less vigorously over the other slice. Pick up the first slice, which will probably have extra on it, and tilt it around until the cinnamon is well-distributed. If there is still extra, shake it onto the other slice of toast.
Pick up the second slice of toast and tilt it around until the cinnamon is well-distributed. If there is extra, shake it onto the other slice of toast. Continue this until you like your cinnamon distribution.
If there is still extra cinnamon, shake it onto the paper towel.
Now put your two slices, cinnamon sides touching to maintain warmth and help promote rich creamy chewiness, onto another paper towel; the first one has cinnamon on it. Use the first paper towel to put the remaining cinnamon back into the Tupperware bowl and seal tightly.
Eat the toast.
Here is a dessert I made up.
Ingredients:
5 Keebler Grasshopper cookies
3 Kraft Marshmallows (if you must use the generic, be sure they are extremely fresh)
Optional: one half (two quarters) of a Honey Graham cracker
Procedure: Take two of the cookies and place them bottom-side-up on a surface. On each of these two cookies, place a marshmallow.
If you have half a graham cracker, break it in half (Honey Grahams have a perforation) and put a quarter graham cracker on each of the two marshmallows on top of cookies.
Then cover the marshmallow with another cookie.
Eat the extra cookie.
Eat the extra marshmallow.
Eat your two little sandwiches.
These could be called Faux S'mores. To my knowledge, they aren't, but they could be.
One more recipe. This is what I had for dinner today.
At Costco, buy the Chinese Chicken Salad package. They usually only carry this in the spring and summer. It is in the deli section with the cheese and the lunch meats and such.
Then go around the corner to the cold room with the produce and buy either a bag of shredded lettuce or a three-pack of lettuce heads.
When you get home, get the Ziploc bowl that you put the popcorn in; it still should have a lid. From your Chinese Chicken Salad package, take out a package of meat, a package of crispy noodles, and a package of nuts. That will leave you one of each of these for the next time. There are also two packages of dressing; you are certainly welcome to put this on your salad, or at least to put it in a bowl so you can dip your salad into it, but I don't usually eat salad dressing.
Open the three packages (nuts, chicken, noodles) and put them in the popcorn bowl. (That doesn't mean it has popcorn in it; it just means, when we have popcorn, this is the big Ziploc bowl we put it in.)
If you bought a bag of lettuce, open it and dump in enough lettuce so the bowl is almost full, leaving yourself just enough room to mix things up a little. If you bought a head of lettuce, portion it however you like to portion your lettuce (shred, cut, rip, section) and, again, dump it in so the bowl is almost full, leaving yourself just enough room to mix things up a little.
Mix things up a little.
Put the lid on the popcorn bowl. Depending on the lettuce, this will stay good three days or longer. (I don't know how much longer because this never lasts three days for me. I like this.)
Variant: if you are eating low carb, discard the crispy noodles. Shame, though. They're tasty. Maybe you should send them to me so you're not wasting them.
Three helpful, original recipes.
Maybe you can help me out with this one: when I was a little girl, my mother used to make radish sandwiches--just spread butter or margarine on a slice of bread, slice a radish or two, arrange the radish slices on the bread, either cut the bread in half and put half on top or put on another slice to make a sandwich. It was really delicious--refreshing in the spring and summer, with just a little bit of kick. I sometimes still have radish sandwiches (which my Co-Vivant considers unacceptably deviant behavior), and sometimes I make them with butter or margarine, and sometimes I make them with cream cheese. (I love cream cheese. I also use it for potato chip dip.)
Anyway, it seems to me there has to be a way to make this into a really delicious, petite, stylish appetizer for gatherings. The last time I hosted book group, we bought some little bread thingies at Costco, and I spread on butter and topped it with a slice of radish. It wasn't enough radish, but putting on more would have messed up the aesthetics. I don't know.
Okay, I think that's enough Suzy Homemaker tips for one night.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
4/30: What I Accomplished Today
(I appear to have messed up yesterday's date. Oops.)
1. Went to a meeting this morning with representatives from the local school district about college readiness. These have always been perfectly pleasant meetings in which I have enjoyed getting to know some of the K-12 people, and my colleague from the local university is there, so that's been good. However, few people were there today, which was supposed to be our final, "Here are our recommendations" meeting, and suddenly several issues that hadn't been discussed before popped up (like, we have a recommendation to assess writing, but not reading). Now this is certainly a good idea which I fully support, but I do wonder why nobody brought this up when we started last September. Ah, well.
2. Continued the big signature hunt for the Arthur class; if I can get signator #3 to inter-campus the forms to signator #4, and signator #4 to leave the forms in the mailbox of the chair for the curriculum committee, this should be good to go.
3. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.
4. Finished an issue of The New Yorker and a few pages in the Paul book.
5. My Co-Vivant finished my dumb Pogo Pool badge! Hurray! My joy knows no bounds. Having badges the weekly badges, I worked on some previous badges.
6. We watched a not-bad comedian (Pat Dixon, I think) and The Sopranos. Tonight, Tony was a compulsive gambler; it seems a little late in the game to throw in that rather important piece of information, but okay.
7. Much to my surprise, got my Human Paladin to level 25 and finished the paperwork and mailcheck to switch tomorrow to the level 20 Human Mage.
8. Today's BigFishGame is PetSet; the screenshots looked different, but it turned out to be a three-matchy aimed at kids. Some games need a height requirement: "If you are taller than this stick, you will probably not enjoy this game." I played the first three levels just to be fair; a little on the poky side.
9. Saw the announcement for the next Sims 2 product; it is based on a European chain of stores called H&M. I have all of the other Sims 2 expansion packs and stuff packs, but except for the holiday one, I think they've all been thin, and I've been disappointed. However, this one has something the Sims 2 has been missing for awhile: shirts that cover women's stomachs. Heaven knows I'm no prude, and if my teen or young adult Sims randomly end up in belly shirts, it's all good, but I don't think anyone older than let's say 20 ought to run about so clad. It just isn't attractive in my opinion. It has nothing to do with relative fitness or height or anything of the sort; I just think grown-ups should wear shirts that cover their tummies. (I also think it dates the game; that's fine for now, but in three or four years, I can't imagine that look is still going to be au currant. Granted, in three or four years, heaven only knows what the Sims franchise will be doing.)
10. I've been having little flash-in-the-pan earaches; it hurts for maybe 10 or 20 seconds, and then it stops. I would guess they're allergy-related; it seems to be a gummy-air season so far.
11. When I got home, I set out the paper recycling (my Co-Vivant had already taken down the trash and the cans, bottles, and plastic, but the paper is too heavy for her). She had also washed and dried my towels, so I put them back on the towel racks. She said she decides to wash the towels in my bathroom when my handtowels are gross and disgusting, which seldom takes longer than a week. She made some comment along the lines of, "Who knew teaching was such dirty work?"
1. Went to a meeting this morning with representatives from the local school district about college readiness. These have always been perfectly pleasant meetings in which I have enjoyed getting to know some of the K-12 people, and my colleague from the local university is there, so that's been good. However, few people were there today, which was supposed to be our final, "Here are our recommendations" meeting, and suddenly several issues that hadn't been discussed before popped up (like, we have a recommendation to assess writing, but not reading). Now this is certainly a good idea which I fully support, but I do wonder why nobody brought this up when we started last September. Ah, well.
2. Continued the big signature hunt for the Arthur class; if I can get signator #3 to inter-campus the forms to signator #4, and signator #4 to leave the forms in the mailbox of the chair for the curriculum committee, this should be good to go.
3. Graded two sets of papers, prepped tonight's class, taught tonight's class.
4. Finished an issue of The New Yorker and a few pages in the Paul book.
5. My Co-Vivant finished my dumb Pogo Pool badge! Hurray! My joy knows no bounds. Having badges the weekly badges, I worked on some previous badges.
6. We watched a not-bad comedian (Pat Dixon, I think) and The Sopranos. Tonight, Tony was a compulsive gambler; it seems a little late in the game to throw in that rather important piece of information, but okay.
7. Much to my surprise, got my Human Paladin to level 25 and finished the paperwork and mailcheck to switch tomorrow to the level 20 Human Mage.
8. Today's BigFishGame is PetSet; the screenshots looked different, but it turned out to be a three-matchy aimed at kids. Some games need a height requirement: "If you are taller than this stick, you will probably not enjoy this game." I played the first three levels just to be fair; a little on the poky side.
9. Saw the announcement for the next Sims 2 product; it is based on a European chain of stores called H&M. I have all of the other Sims 2 expansion packs and stuff packs, but except for the holiday one, I think they've all been thin, and I've been disappointed. However, this one has something the Sims 2 has been missing for awhile: shirts that cover women's stomachs. Heaven knows I'm no prude, and if my teen or young adult Sims randomly end up in belly shirts, it's all good, but I don't think anyone older than let's say 20 ought to run about so clad. It just isn't attractive in my opinion. It has nothing to do with relative fitness or height or anything of the sort; I just think grown-ups should wear shirts that cover their tummies. (I also think it dates the game; that's fine for now, but in three or four years, I can't imagine that look is still going to be au currant. Granted, in three or four years, heaven only knows what the Sims franchise will be doing.)
10. I've been having little flash-in-the-pan earaches; it hurts for maybe 10 or 20 seconds, and then it stops. I would guess they're allergy-related; it seems to be a gummy-air season so far.
11. When I got home, I set out the paper recycling (my Co-Vivant had already taken down the trash and the cans, bottles, and plastic, but the paper is too heavy for her). She had also washed and dried my towels, so I put them back on the towel racks. She said she decides to wash the towels in my bathroom when my handtowels are gross and disgusting, which seldom takes longer than a week. She made some comment along the lines of, "Who knew teaching was such dirty work?"
Monday, April 30, 2007
4/28: What I Accomplished Today
1. Puzzle day was for dinner today instead of brunch; people were traveling. Looks like we're not meeting at all next week. We came in 2nd; the Fellas missed 1, and we missed 2.
The Fellas had redone their back yard. It is now really lovely. They have some unspecified number of chihuahuas (might be four or five or six or seven; sometimes it feels like 20), and it was neat to see them running around and playing.
2. Read a little in a magazine and the book about Paul. Not a big reading day.
3. Watched Bill Moyers' Journal; he interviewed Jon Stewart and the bloggers who helped break the U.S. Attorney-firing story. This was really good.
We also watched this week's episode of The Riches. This is a really fascinating show with a breathtakingly dark sense of humor. Tonight's episode has the family returning home for the funeral of Dahlia's uncle, the leader of their group of Travelers. In one really astonishing sequence, Dahlia had her murdering cousin Dale at gunpoint, Wayne was being held at gunpoint by clowns Dale had hired to kill him, and Didi was trying to prevent her own wedding to a half-wit with an evil sister. I don't know where the three actors who play the children come from, but they're remarkable. (They also all manage to look like children Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver could have together.)
I'm not good at watching television. I don't mean that I don't "read" television well, or that I don't get nuance, because I do. But I can't just sit and watch without doing something else; I lack the gene. My mother never used to be able to; she used to grade papers. I don't bring papers home, but I usually play Pogo or read magazines or do sudoku or find something to do; for me, just sitting and watching television is difficult. It makes me feel lazy and useless. (I can do it if I'm sick or if I think I deserve some special treat, but it's a guilty pleasure.)
Before we started watching The Whales of August the other night, the Co-Vivant said, "You'll probably just want to watch this one; it's very visual." Yes, it was very visual--but I'd have done just fine doing something else. I felt very restless throughout. At the end, she asked me if I didn't agree, and I said, "I didn't do anything else because you asked me not to, but I could have. I have never, ever seen a movie in which I had to see every single frame."
Yesterday after she'd read this blog, she said, "Now you yourself said that the style was reminiscent of silents; how can you say you don't have to watch every frame?"
"I don't have to watch every frame of silent movies. You can tell from the music when you need to look up."
She doesn't quite buy this, and she may be right, but I just can't do it. I can do it in a movie theater because it's too dark to do anything else, but we don't do that very often.
Have I mentioned that I'm not very visual?
4. Worked a little on my Pogo badges. The Co-Vivant worked a long time today and got me halfway towards the dumb Pool badge, which I think is definitely non-shrew-like behavior.
5. Got my Human Paladin to Level 24.
6. The BigFishGame for today looks like Tetris with Power-ups. I have to be up early tomorrow, so the game'll have to do better than that for me to download and play it.
6. Carried the perma-presses (hereinafter referred to as "permies") to the laundry area. The Co-Vivant washed three loads (she does something with vinegar I don't understand, so she's in charge of the washer). I took two of the three loads from the washer to the dryer and then restarted the dryer until they were dry. Cleared the lint tray each time, making sure the lint went into the trash can and not onto the little shelf beside the trash can. Hung up the permies. Put all laundry away.
Slow news day; I have to go to bed now for a stupidly early meeting.
The Fellas had redone their back yard. It is now really lovely. They have some unspecified number of chihuahuas (might be four or five or six or seven; sometimes it feels like 20), and it was neat to see them running around and playing.
2. Read a little in a magazine and the book about Paul. Not a big reading day.
3. Watched Bill Moyers' Journal; he interviewed Jon Stewart and the bloggers who helped break the U.S. Attorney-firing story. This was really good.
We also watched this week's episode of The Riches. This is a really fascinating show with a breathtakingly dark sense of humor. Tonight's episode has the family returning home for the funeral of Dahlia's uncle, the leader of their group of Travelers. In one really astonishing sequence, Dahlia had her murdering cousin Dale at gunpoint, Wayne was being held at gunpoint by clowns Dale had hired to kill him, and Didi was trying to prevent her own wedding to a half-wit with an evil sister. I don't know where the three actors who play the children come from, but they're remarkable. (They also all manage to look like children Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver could have together.)
I'm not good at watching television. I don't mean that I don't "read" television well, or that I don't get nuance, because I do. But I can't just sit and watch without doing something else; I lack the gene. My mother never used to be able to; she used to grade papers. I don't bring papers home, but I usually play Pogo or read magazines or do sudoku or find something to do; for me, just sitting and watching television is difficult. It makes me feel lazy and useless. (I can do it if I'm sick or if I think I deserve some special treat, but it's a guilty pleasure.)
Before we started watching The Whales of August the other night, the Co-Vivant said, "You'll probably just want to watch this one; it's very visual." Yes, it was very visual--but I'd have done just fine doing something else. I felt very restless throughout. At the end, she asked me if I didn't agree, and I said, "I didn't do anything else because you asked me not to, but I could have. I have never, ever seen a movie in which I had to see every single frame."
Yesterday after she'd read this blog, she said, "Now you yourself said that the style was reminiscent of silents; how can you say you don't have to watch every frame?"
"I don't have to watch every frame of silent movies. You can tell from the music when you need to look up."
She doesn't quite buy this, and she may be right, but I just can't do it. I can do it in a movie theater because it's too dark to do anything else, but we don't do that very often.
Have I mentioned that I'm not very visual?
4. Worked a little on my Pogo badges. The Co-Vivant worked a long time today and got me halfway towards the dumb Pool badge, which I think is definitely non-shrew-like behavior.
5. Got my Human Paladin to Level 24.
6. The BigFishGame for today looks like Tetris with Power-ups. I have to be up early tomorrow, so the game'll have to do better than that for me to download and play it.
6. Carried the perma-presses (hereinafter referred to as "permies") to the laundry area. The Co-Vivant washed three loads (she does something with vinegar I don't understand, so she's in charge of the washer). I took two of the three loads from the washer to the dryer and then restarted the dryer until they were dry. Cleared the lint tray each time, making sure the lint went into the trash can and not onto the little shelf beside the trash can. Hung up the permies. Put all laundry away.
Slow news day; I have to go to bed now for a stupidly early meeting.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
4/28: What I Accomplished Today
1. I was awakened today by, "I don't want to be a shrew." I, of course, groaned something that was probably supposed to be, "Good" and tried to go back to sleep. But the Co-Vivant said, "I caught up on your blog, and I'm concerned that I sound like a shrew."
Okay, this is apparently going to be a real conversation for which I must be awake.
"You're not a shrew. I've been with you ten years. Why would I stay ten years with a shrew?"
"You spent quite a log of time trying to demonstrate how much you do around the house (which, incidentally, didn't prove your case at all because it was bubkes), and I just seem to watch TV and not help you."
"Oh, those were funny stories! I think they make you look cute, sweet, and charming!" (This was probably a mistake, as none of these are goals of hers.)
"I look like a shrew."
So I thought about this for awhile, and later in the day, I said, "You know, we have a hundred times a day when we have a good time and laugh together, but I didn't post those because I'm trying to preserve privacy and anonymity; did you notice I'm using no names? Our good times are not the internet's business; they're personal and private."
"And I appreciate that, but the stories that are left make me look like a stupid nag."
"You're neither stupid nor a nag."
2. The lady came to clean the house, so we went to Costco. When she was done, we took her home.
At this point, more or less, I asked my Co-Vivant, "If you're not happy with your depiction, would you like me to stop blogging?"
"No. That would be shrewish of me."
"I'm also noticing that you're not commenting on whether or not you enjoyed the blog."
Beat. Beat. Uh oh.
"I don't know. I haven't read many blogs before, so I don't really know much about the form. You have some interesting points, but you don't seem to come to any conclusions."
"I don't think anything's ever done."
Whenever I introduce the research paper, I specifically have to say, "No, you're not writing me a biography of Napoleon or Henry Rollins or anyone at all. As far as I'm concerned, biographies don't qualify as college-level research papers because Lives Don't Have Thesis Sentences. Sometimes, over the course of learning someone's life, you see patterns, but that's only when observing the life as a whole, which, to be frank, you can't do adequately with a week and a half of research."
She and I both consider each other good writers, I think, but we both like our own writing better (sensibly enough; we each write in the style we chose to practice and develop). I tend to write for character and plot, and she tends to write for description and word use. I am not at all visual, so I don't tend to describe things; as I read, I'm making a movie in my head, and it infuriates me when the writer says the dress is blue when I can see perfectly well that my movie works best if the dress is red or green or chartreuse. I want the dialogue; I learn things by hearing them, and I usually write good dialogue. But I don't care what the room looks like or what color people's eyes are or how the couch is upholstered. And yes, I agree that my division of "character and plot" and "description and word use" is arbitrary and artificial, but I also think it's accurate.
3. We enjoyed The Whales of August so much last night that tonight we were inspired to watch our other NetFlix movie, Little Miss Sunshine. This was a wonderful movie; yet again, it falls into the Devil Wears Prada/Ugly Betty theme of being true to the self. Interesting twist on the quest motif; it's a series of failed quests, which is unusual, and it's even more unusual that most of the main characters manage growth, and certainly the family coheres, through these "botched missions." A few little twists we didn't see coming, which is fun.
Both of these NetFlix films worked just fine in our player, so the first DVD must have been defective. I went to the website and marked it accordingly.
Let's think. Then we watched Best Week Ever and Acceptable TV. The problem with the latter is that it's difficult to decide what to vote for, the funniest ideas or the most sustainable concepts. Several of the sketches (like the Joke Investigation thing from the first episode) were hysterically funny, but I wasn't sure how they were going to be able to produce one of those every week. Why do people keep voting for Mr. What's-his-name, the Cat-in-the-Hat gone awry? It was an interesting idea, but I don't think it's holding up well.
Then we watched a lot of The World Stands Up, a BBC show with 5-10 minute snippets of several comics. We'd seen most of these before, so we cleared them quickly.
4. Read the last 50 pages or so of the Oppenheimer. I didn't see the St. John portion as that controversial (except for one cranky neighbor story), so I wasn't sure what the deal was. Sad life. Started the Norton Critical Edition of The Writings of St. Paul, which I got as an exam copy for my Bible as Lit class. I don't foresee assigning it in the class, but it should be useful for me to read it nonetheless.
Two magazines came today, Nutrition Newsletters or some such and something called Reason. I have no idea where the latter came from, and I have no recollection of having seen it before or ordered it, but the mailing label says I have a year's subscription, so I must have. It seems to be libertarian, which is okay by me; I think it's an interesting viewpoint even if I don't always agree with it. It had a really interesting profile of the Wikipedia guy and a run-down of what each of the current major presidential candidates of either party would mean from a Libertarian point of view which was actually a very good summary of where each candidate stands on various issues. (Again, my point of view isn't a strictly Libertarian point of view, but I'm highly in favor of discussions of candidates that discuss their actual views on important issues.)
The magazine was published by a non-profit so it didn't have ads per se, but it had several public-service-announcementy looking pages, more than one of which expounded the virtues of an economist named Hayek. Judging from the pictures, Selma doesn't seem to be involved. I have never formally studied economics, and my suspicion is that this isn't necessarily the sort of economist studied in book; seeing these pages felt a little spy-like to me, like glimpsing a Unification Church ad extolling Reverend Moon. (Again, I don't know who this Hayek is, and this comment may be very inappropriate, but that's what it looked like from one issue of a magazine I don't believe I've ever seen before.)
I wonder where they got my name.
5. Finished four Pogo badges, the two for the week and two Mix-and-Match badges. Still working on the pool personal challenge.
6. Got my World of Warlock Human Paladin to level 23.
7. Today's BigFishGame is based on Spongebob. I gave this a try the last time I saw a game based on Spongebob, the Diner Dash adaptation. It was ear-bleedingly slow, so I won't be downloading this one.
8. Today I helped shop. (I do most of the heavy lifting at Costco, which included nine five-gallon boxes of water this month; it's usually 12. This also involves getting them onto the cart, getting them into the car if we can't get a loader, and getting them into the house.) I also put water in the frig and on the counter. I stayed out of the way of the lady who cleans the house.
I also injured myself at Costco today; getting a carton of copy paper, my pinky got jammed into my hand. Doesn't really hurt; feels odd if I think about it, but I haven't all day. Co-vivant made me ice it when we got home, and now the swelling's down. I was trying to downplay it, but she said, "Look at your hand. Your pinky is swollen. This is going to be a bruise here on the wrist. This is a Palmer bruise; you're going to have a problem with your thumb's opposibility for a while." As I said before, I'm not particularly visual, and I didn't see any of these mystically invisible bruises (I don't know what a Palmer bruise is; my guess is that it has something to do with penmanship), but I tend to do what she says medically. I apparently did it wrong, because it wouldn't numb. It was fine this evening, though.
Because of my Co-Vivant's comments, I've been thinking about consequences today. I obviously didn't write anything thinking, "This will make her look mean" or "This will make her feel foolish." Actually, most of the house stuff I put because I thought she'd think it was funny in a "lady-doth-protest-too-much" sort of way. Oh, well. Since she's brought up the concern, I can see how the representation isn't balanced because I mentioned almost none of the good or fun times we had because, not to be mean or anything, but I fail to see how they're your business. I don't know you. (Even if I do know you, I can't imagine that you're all that interested in what goes on in this house on a moment-by-moment basis.)
Twelve or thirteen years ago, my ex and I lived with her brother and sister-in-law-to-be in a very nice in a very nice neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. As you do, we just went about our lives reading and watching television and eating meals and just living. As you do. And one night, my ex and I were sitting at the dining room table eating dinner, and we noticed that the man across the street had binoculars and was watching us through the front windows as we ate our spaghetti.
I went a little ballistic and wanted to march across the street and confront him. "Jeeze, people can't sit and enjoy their spaghetti in peace? Does he think lesbians have some mystical way in which we eat spaghetti differently than other people? What kind of crappy mental illness is this?"
And my ex's brother and future sister-in-law said, "Don't take this personally, and this isn't sexual-orientation related; he does it to us, too."
Now this is obviously different, because this isn't precisely the equivalent of sitting in the dining room that happens to have a picture window facing the street and eating a private dinner that is violated by some sad, pathetic little person with no life. This is my opening the curtains and windows and inviting you to watch portions of the day. I understand that.
But I can also see that some of the scene selections I've made, or rather the combination of selections I've made, may have made a very smart, funny person look like a shrew. (We've been having fun with Taming of the Shrew jokes all day. "Would this make you Elizabeth Taylor? You know, there are worse things to be than Elizabeth Taylor.")
This is, by definition, self-indulgent. I'm working under the incredibly arrogant assumption that some human being on planet earth other than my mother and my Co-Vivant might find parts of what goes on in my head interesting. Probably not; I'll probably just type to myself and maybe my Co-Vivant forever. I still think this may be worthwhile.
Other possible consequences, too. I've made it pretty clear that I didn't enjoy either a particular book or a presentation about it, and if someone were really interested (which I doubt anyone is), it would not be hard at all to find the authors and the giver of that presentation, about whom I heard nothing but wonderful, delightful things as a person.
I also made a rather rash statement that the people who subjected our returning veterans to shameful medical conditions should be forced to undergo that same treatment themselves, and I've felt bad about that all day. Forcing other people to undergo wretched treatment themselves would solve no problems and would be mere vindictiveness. That would serve no purpose, and I'm sorry I said that. I wish no ill on people; I would find it hard to believe that their actions were intentional or malicious.
I said earlier that Lives have no Thesis Sentences, and I believe that to be true. As I also said, however, sometimes pattern emerge, but the formation of accurate patterns requires both extensive data and a very long perspective.
That may be at least part of the overriding project here. I don't know yet. But it might be.
Okay, this is apparently going to be a real conversation for which I must be awake.
"You're not a shrew. I've been with you ten years. Why would I stay ten years with a shrew?"
"You spent quite a log of time trying to demonstrate how much you do around the house (which, incidentally, didn't prove your case at all because it was bubkes), and I just seem to watch TV and not help you."
"Oh, those were funny stories! I think they make you look cute, sweet, and charming!" (This was probably a mistake, as none of these are goals of hers.)
"I look like a shrew."
So I thought about this for awhile, and later in the day, I said, "You know, we have a hundred times a day when we have a good time and laugh together, but I didn't post those because I'm trying to preserve privacy and anonymity; did you notice I'm using no names? Our good times are not the internet's business; they're personal and private."
"And I appreciate that, but the stories that are left make me look like a stupid nag."
"You're neither stupid nor a nag."
2. The lady came to clean the house, so we went to Costco. When she was done, we took her home.
At this point, more or less, I asked my Co-Vivant, "If you're not happy with your depiction, would you like me to stop blogging?"
"No. That would be shrewish of me."
"I'm also noticing that you're not commenting on whether or not you enjoyed the blog."
Beat. Beat. Uh oh.
"I don't know. I haven't read many blogs before, so I don't really know much about the form. You have some interesting points, but you don't seem to come to any conclusions."
"I don't think anything's ever done."
Whenever I introduce the research paper, I specifically have to say, "No, you're not writing me a biography of Napoleon or Henry Rollins or anyone at all. As far as I'm concerned, biographies don't qualify as college-level research papers because Lives Don't Have Thesis Sentences. Sometimes, over the course of learning someone's life, you see patterns, but that's only when observing the life as a whole, which, to be frank, you can't do adequately with a week and a half of research."
She and I both consider each other good writers, I think, but we both like our own writing better (sensibly enough; we each write in the style we chose to practice and develop). I tend to write for character and plot, and she tends to write for description and word use. I am not at all visual, so I don't tend to describe things; as I read, I'm making a movie in my head, and it infuriates me when the writer says the dress is blue when I can see perfectly well that my movie works best if the dress is red or green or chartreuse. I want the dialogue; I learn things by hearing them, and I usually write good dialogue. But I don't care what the room looks like or what color people's eyes are or how the couch is upholstered. And yes, I agree that my division of "character and plot" and "description and word use" is arbitrary and artificial, but I also think it's accurate.
3. We enjoyed The Whales of August so much last night that tonight we were inspired to watch our other NetFlix movie, Little Miss Sunshine. This was a wonderful movie; yet again, it falls into the Devil Wears Prada/Ugly Betty theme of being true to the self. Interesting twist on the quest motif; it's a series of failed quests, which is unusual, and it's even more unusual that most of the main characters manage growth, and certainly the family coheres, through these "botched missions." A few little twists we didn't see coming, which is fun.
Both of these NetFlix films worked just fine in our player, so the first DVD must have been defective. I went to the website and marked it accordingly.
Let's think. Then we watched Best Week Ever and Acceptable TV. The problem with the latter is that it's difficult to decide what to vote for, the funniest ideas or the most sustainable concepts. Several of the sketches (like the Joke Investigation thing from the first episode) were hysterically funny, but I wasn't sure how they were going to be able to produce one of those every week. Why do people keep voting for Mr. What's-his-name, the Cat-in-the-Hat gone awry? It was an interesting idea, but I don't think it's holding up well.
Then we watched a lot of The World Stands Up, a BBC show with 5-10 minute snippets of several comics. We'd seen most of these before, so we cleared them quickly.
4. Read the last 50 pages or so of the Oppenheimer. I didn't see the St. John portion as that controversial (except for one cranky neighbor story), so I wasn't sure what the deal was. Sad life. Started the Norton Critical Edition of The Writings of St. Paul, which I got as an exam copy for my Bible as Lit class. I don't foresee assigning it in the class, but it should be useful for me to read it nonetheless.
Two magazines came today, Nutrition Newsletters or some such and something called Reason. I have no idea where the latter came from, and I have no recollection of having seen it before or ordered it, but the mailing label says I have a year's subscription, so I must have. It seems to be libertarian, which is okay by me; I think it's an interesting viewpoint even if I don't always agree with it. It had a really interesting profile of the Wikipedia guy and a run-down of what each of the current major presidential candidates of either party would mean from a Libertarian point of view which was actually a very good summary of where each candidate stands on various issues. (Again, my point of view isn't a strictly Libertarian point of view, but I'm highly in favor of discussions of candidates that discuss their actual views on important issues.)
The magazine was published by a non-profit so it didn't have ads per se, but it had several public-service-announcementy looking pages, more than one of which expounded the virtues of an economist named Hayek. Judging from the pictures, Selma doesn't seem to be involved. I have never formally studied economics, and my suspicion is that this isn't necessarily the sort of economist studied in book; seeing these pages felt a little spy-like to me, like glimpsing a Unification Church ad extolling Reverend Moon. (Again, I don't know who this Hayek is, and this comment may be very inappropriate, but that's what it looked like from one issue of a magazine I don't believe I've ever seen before.)
I wonder where they got my name.
5. Finished four Pogo badges, the two for the week and two Mix-and-Match badges. Still working on the pool personal challenge.
6. Got my World of Warlock Human Paladin to level 23.
7. Today's BigFishGame is based on Spongebob. I gave this a try the last time I saw a game based on Spongebob, the Diner Dash adaptation. It was ear-bleedingly slow, so I won't be downloading this one.
8. Today I helped shop. (I do most of the heavy lifting at Costco, which included nine five-gallon boxes of water this month; it's usually 12. This also involves getting them onto the cart, getting them into the car if we can't get a loader, and getting them into the house.) I also put water in the frig and on the counter. I stayed out of the way of the lady who cleans the house.
I also injured myself at Costco today; getting a carton of copy paper, my pinky got jammed into my hand. Doesn't really hurt; feels odd if I think about it, but I haven't all day. Co-vivant made me ice it when we got home, and now the swelling's down. I was trying to downplay it, but she said, "Look at your hand. Your pinky is swollen. This is going to be a bruise here on the wrist. This is a Palmer bruise; you're going to have a problem with your thumb's opposibility for a while." As I said before, I'm not particularly visual, and I didn't see any of these mystically invisible bruises (I don't know what a Palmer bruise is; my guess is that it has something to do with penmanship), but I tend to do what she says medically. I apparently did it wrong, because it wouldn't numb. It was fine this evening, though.
Because of my Co-Vivant's comments, I've been thinking about consequences today. I obviously didn't write anything thinking, "This will make her look mean" or "This will make her feel foolish." Actually, most of the house stuff I put because I thought she'd think it was funny in a "lady-doth-protest-too-much" sort of way. Oh, well. Since she's brought up the concern, I can see how the representation isn't balanced because I mentioned almost none of the good or fun times we had because, not to be mean or anything, but I fail to see how they're your business. I don't know you. (Even if I do know you, I can't imagine that you're all that interested in what goes on in this house on a moment-by-moment basis.)
Twelve or thirteen years ago, my ex and I lived with her brother and sister-in-law-to-be in a very nice in a very nice neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. As you do, we just went about our lives reading and watching television and eating meals and just living. As you do. And one night, my ex and I were sitting at the dining room table eating dinner, and we noticed that the man across the street had binoculars and was watching us through the front windows as we ate our spaghetti.
I went a little ballistic and wanted to march across the street and confront him. "Jeeze, people can't sit and enjoy their spaghetti in peace? Does he think lesbians have some mystical way in which we eat spaghetti differently than other people? What kind of crappy mental illness is this?"
And my ex's brother and future sister-in-law said, "Don't take this personally, and this isn't sexual-orientation related; he does it to us, too."
Now this is obviously different, because this isn't precisely the equivalent of sitting in the dining room that happens to have a picture window facing the street and eating a private dinner that is violated by some sad, pathetic little person with no life. This is my opening the curtains and windows and inviting you to watch portions of the day. I understand that.
But I can also see that some of the scene selections I've made, or rather the combination of selections I've made, may have made a very smart, funny person look like a shrew. (We've been having fun with Taming of the Shrew jokes all day. "Would this make you Elizabeth Taylor? You know, there are worse things to be than Elizabeth Taylor.")
This is, by definition, self-indulgent. I'm working under the incredibly arrogant assumption that some human being on planet earth other than my mother and my Co-Vivant might find parts of what goes on in my head interesting. Probably not; I'll probably just type to myself and maybe my Co-Vivant forever. I still think this may be worthwhile.
Other possible consequences, too. I've made it pretty clear that I didn't enjoy either a particular book or a presentation about it, and if someone were really interested (which I doubt anyone is), it would not be hard at all to find the authors and the giver of that presentation, about whom I heard nothing but wonderful, delightful things as a person.
I also made a rather rash statement that the people who subjected our returning veterans to shameful medical conditions should be forced to undergo that same treatment themselves, and I've felt bad about that all day. Forcing other people to undergo wretched treatment themselves would solve no problems and would be mere vindictiveness. That would serve no purpose, and I'm sorry I said that. I wish no ill on people; I would find it hard to believe that their actions were intentional or malicious.
I said earlier that Lives have no Thesis Sentences, and I believe that to be true. As I also said, however, sometimes pattern emerge, but the formation of accurate patterns requires both extensive data and a very long perspective.
That may be at least part of the overriding project here. I don't know yet. But it might be.
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