Things that are hard to believe

So about time slowing to a crawl -- it sped back up again on Friday and continued to move at Mach 2 until I finally finished teaching today. Holy SMOOK, as my mother would say (rhymes with book because she has a slight accent, which is really cute). When we were driving my car to Little U. on the Prairie a little over a year and a half ago, we got passed by a semi, which startled her and elicited said phrase.

My students are done with their first papers, after much last-minute consultation. I was a wee bit cranky after office hours yesterday because I had students sending me drafts to look at, less than 24 hours before the final versions were due (I sent them back, telling their owners that it would be impossible for me to provide reasonable feedback in time for them to revise). I also had students dropping in asking me to tell them if their work was "good enough yet." I make no grade wagers, people! One student, after I began reviewing his draft with him and making suggestions, even had the nerve to ask me to write down what I was saying. I was so incensed that I didn't respond -- nothing good would have come out of my mouth at that point -- and merely underlined a word or two as a reminder of what we'd focused on (also to keep me from launching into a diatribe on Kids These Days and Their Issues of Entitlement). I'm still reeling from my disbelief. I'm not that much older than they are -- how is it that I (and my peers of similar age) inherently understood when we were undergrads that this is a completely inappropriate request?

Okay, enough of that; I hate saying things that put my students in a poor light, but this one was just too much.

I turned in my own essay on Wednesday (cannot believe I got it done in the midst of all the paper craziness). So now I can finally think about packing! And indeed there's quite a bit -- D and I have more or less decided that I'll do most of the boxing for the move in May as it will save us a lot of money. I'd like to transport what I can in the next few visits so there's less to deal with in the middle of finals week. Clothing seems like a good idea. Also all the foods I can't eat but don't want to waste. We have friends coming to visit from Idaho during part of my spring break who will love the Honey Bunches of Oats and cinnamon streusel Frosted Mini-Wheats I've stashed away.

I'll leave you with this series of photos from a tulip plant a friend of mine brought me when I had her over for brunch last weekend. I took these over the last four days as they bloomed just to mark the progress of something else besides my essay. Here's to a quick end to winter!

Guess what time it is?

Well, actually, now I don't have to.

Lately, I've been especially busy working on a research paper for one class, writing my essay for the other, and grading. Most often, I do all of that on my laptop, and it's easy to forget to look at the clock -- well, less so for that last item, but I do occasionally get mired down trying to understand what some of my students are trying to say in their papers. So I'll miss the specific time after eating a meal when I'm supposed to check my blood sugar to make sure it hasn't done something bad.

Enter the desktop alarm clock gadget (above) from the Windows Live Gallery. D found it for me yesterday, and I'm completely smitten. You can choose what music it plays when the alarm goes off, and you can put it anywhere on your screen. So now I have the perfect little reminder, and I don't have to worry about forgetting to test -- or be preoccupied with remembering while I'm supposed to be concentrating on work.

Also on the subject of time and distractions: I will be packing to go to Seattle again in exactly one week, and it feels like the earth's rotation has suddenly hit a very slow crawl. I got home today after teaching and felt enormously blah thinking about the wait. Maybe it's because of the weather (freezing with no end in sight); maybe it's because I experimented with another soup recipe that I ended up liking only marginally (but I don't want to waste food, so I've been eating it for dinner over the last three days). Either way, I'm cranky and want a change. Tonight, I did make some improvements on the soup -- it's another cauliflower-based one that was supposed to be seasoned with curry powder, but since I realized at the last minute that I didn't have any, I went with celery seed as well as ginger and garlic powders instead. The ginger didn't quite work out (I thought it might be all right since there were carrots puréed into the mix). Anyway, it turns out that a generous grating of parmesan cheese cuts the ginger flavor down to size. And tomorrow, I can move on at last to something different.

Sigh -- I want to take the night off but I can't even think of anything I'd rather be doing (besides the impossible, curling up on the couch with D after dinner to talk or just sit in happy silence). Arrgh.

On endurance

I know it's been a while since I last mentioned the house hunt D and I started this past summer. We've been watching sales in our area since the economy took its nosedive after September, and it's been unclear what the local market is doing. Sales are generally slower in the winter, yet homes are still selling at more than 95 percent of their list price in the neighborhoods we're considering.

Of course, the percentages are fudged a bit as they're calculated on what the most recent price was -- not what it was before it was lowered and relisted. So we're still trying to get a handle on how much negotiating room we have. It is a buyer's market, but if there's something we like, we don't want to lowball our offer so much that we get shut out and end up losing to someone else's bid. Supposedly, if we come back too quickly with a higher offer, we'll be setting ourselves up for tougher negotiations. Says my dad: "Just don't blink." Sounds like a game of chicken to me.

We've been checking in on the market every few weeks, by which I mean that one of us sets up a time to look at properties with the realtor from the listings she's been sending us, and then we evaluate what seems to be available at the price we're considering. What you get for your dollar seems to be improving somewhat, but it's not ideal yet. I went out during my Thanksgiving break while I was in town and saw seven places in about five hours. A bit tiring, trying to remember floorplans and construction quality, etc., for each site. Or so I thought. This past Saturday, D went out again and saw eighteen homes in eight hours. And then he reported everything he saw to me in amazing detail, drawing maps and diagrams to boot! "I think I wore her out," D said (referring to our realtor). This is a first -- she's a dynamo. He was unfazed, though, and went looking at seven more places on his own on Sunday. The plan is to go back to our top picks when I'm in town at the end of the month.

It's been a couple days of digging deep for willpower on many fronts. I'm working on an essay that's due in a week, one I'm actually excited about for the first time in many months, but it's slow going. My workshop is being led by a really excellent visiting professor, which is helping a lot with the motivation. She's been terrific at guiding discussion on other essays so far, which wasn't my experience during the fall under someone else (and I wasn't alone in that). I'm glad to have a fresh start this semester and a sense of hope for this particular piece -- I just wish I could see the structure for it more clearly. For now, the work is more of a meditation. I guess that's all right as long it finds some sort of ending point.

I also knocked out comments and grades on my students' latest writing assignment over the weekend. Thank goodness for enrollment caps! It's definitely more work having two sections, but it does mean I get to teach my lessons twice. Since I see my classes back to back, I get to figure out what worked well and what I need to tweak after the first run. It's nice to have the chance to do that, especially when you can see marked improvement in how students respond the second time around.

As for things health related, I'm making some progress there too. I used to do 45 minutes of cardio at a pretty decent clip each day on the elliptical machine, with intervals of high resistance to make it more challenging. Needless to say, after the switch to low-carb foods, that wasn't something I could maintain anymore (no quick energy available). It was frustrating -- I had to cut my workouts to 30 minutes on low resistance the whole time (and even that was tough to get through). But in the last week, I've been able to raise the resistance by one level, which means my body is adjusting. Perhaps another notch up in a few weeks? We'll see.

Okay, break time's over. Time to get back to the essay.

Quotes for the day

End of the week at last. It's been a particularly tiring one since I've been holding extra office hours for my students, who are consulting with me on their first formal papers for the semester. The time spent will be worth it, I know, as I've already helped a good number of them focus their work (which will mean better papers in the end and a nicer grading experience for all involved). But now I'm exhausted!

After I got home today, I did manage to schedule a survey of my apartment for next week with a moving company, which is very exciting. One little bit closer to being back with D! The person doing the assessment will be here Wednesday morning to see what I've got at my place and to run some estimates on the cost -- with or without packing services, with or without shipping my car, etc. The ballpark quote the company gave me isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and if I can save money by packing things myself (all but the really fragile stuff), that will be good. I don't mind that part; I just hate the heavy lifting.

I think we've decided that I won't be driving the car back unless I can find someone to do it with me. It's very tempting to go it alone anyway, though. There's something attractively symbolic about the idea of that journey back to Seattle through the mountains and across the Continental Divide. The picture I've had of this homecoming for the last year and a half is an earthbound one, an arrival that allows me to pass beneath the sentinel gaze of the Cascades -- not the airport's TSA. The image at left is one that D took about 80 miles east of home as the crow flies (it's more like 120 miles by highway). How lovely a welcome that would be, to be shepherded home in the end by the firs I've missed. As much as I've enjoyed seeing Seattle from the window of a plane, I'm not especially taken with the idea of a reunion at Sea-Tac. It feels too transient: everyone there is going somewhere else and the jets momentarily on the tarmac are really denizens of the air. The trees, though, are rooted -- willingly.

D and I have had what feels like too many years of wandering from one corner of the U.S. to another, with career shifts to match. I'm ready for an end to that, especially when it comes to choosing a profession to stick with for more than 24 months. At the same time, I think the work it took to get us to where we are is important, and I don't want to negate that. I'd probably be much less certain about my job interests without having had the graduate school experience and the chance to take another crack at teaching. The first attempt (seventh graders in the Bronx) was a near disaster, and I ran away into editing (at a newspaper in Texas) but didn't feel challenged enough. So here I am.

I had to read Mary Catherine Bateson's Peripheral Visions for one of my classes this semester, and there's a really great passage in it that addresses the idea of indirect and broken trajectories. I'll end with it here, just because it makes these last few years feel like they've had purpose, even if they've been hard.

In my recent work on the ways women combine commitments to career and family, I have been struck by how commonly women zigzag from stage to stage without a long-term plan, improvising along the way, building the future from "something old and something new." For men and women, résumés full of change show resiliency and creativity, the strength to welcome new learning, yet personnel directors often discriminate against anyone whose résumé does not show a clear progression. Quite a common question in job interviews is "What do you want to be doing in five years?" "Something I cannot now imagine" is not yet a winning answer. Accepting that logic, young people worry about getting "on track," yet their years of experimentation and short-term jobs are becoming longer. If only to offer an alternative, we need to tell the other stories, the stories of shifting identities and interrupted paths, and to celebrate the triumphs of adaptation.

On the elasticity of time

Mmmm good visit. It was over too soon, but we filled it with so much that the weekend actually seemed longer by the end than we expected it to be. Definitely a positive thing, but talk about messing with your body clock (and never mind the jet lag)!

There were several new things to see. First, the latest addition to our living/dining area:


This is an original scroll painting that a good friend of mine brought back after she visited China last year. We took it to the local frame store (the same one that provided something fun for one of our other decorating projects back in January) and had it mounted in a shadow box. This is the first piece of large-scale original art we've ever owned, so it was exciting to have it finally ready for proper display. Apparently, D had to borrow a coworker (and the coworker's truck) to get the painting back to our place and up on the wall. Now our space really is starting to look like a home and not a temporary residence!

Next, the birthday project, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Back when we were getting the painting mounted, we also ordered a frame to use for a jewelry board, which D offered to help make as a gift to me. The frame I chose arrived last week, so we went shopping for fabric to cover the foam insert that goes inside. (The idea is to stick sturdy pins into the board so you can hang necklaces, bracelets, etc., on them instead of having everything get tangled in a jewelry box.) We found a wonderful store that specializes in material for home decorating and quilting, so the fabrics were really luxe and just the thing to use as a background for displaying pretty baubles. There were so many options at such good prices (especially what we pulled from the scrap pile) that we ended up picking out several swatches. So now the jewelry board has its own wardrobe:


The fabric currently in the frame is brocade and the other samples are dupioni silk, the majority of which were D's finds. I think D was almost having more fun than I was digging through the offerings -- it's the artist in him that I love.

There were new things to taste as well over the weekend. D and I hadn't had Indian food for a long time, so after he picked me up from the airport on Friday, we went out for lunch at a place D discovered not far from his office. To my delight, it seems that most curries are not a problem for my new diet (have to watch the rice and naan, though).

In our own kitchen, we tested out a cornish hen recipe on Saturday and a Hungarian goulash on Sunday; both were excellent. They also require significant cooking time! The hen has to be slow roasted and the goulash requires a lot of simmering. Maybe this is why we felt like we had a longer weekend than we'd anticipated -- watched pots and all that. But we were certainly never bored, so it was a good sort of time stretch.

There were some old things I got to revisit on this trip too, several of which I hadn't seen in years. I flew on United this time because I had a voucher I had to use -- it was from last March's flight fiasco -- so that meant connecting through a completely different terminal in O'Hare. When I was little, my family did most of its traveling on United, and often this required us to use the underground passage to get from one concourse to another. If you've ever been through this tunnel, you'll recognize it now:


I used to love the rainbow of neon lights zipping along the ceiling with the moving walkways below (I thought those were as much fun as the rides at Disney World). Going through the passage this time was a reminder of that. In Seattle, too, I got a little nostalgia jolt -- I landed at a gate that requires you to take an underground train to get to the main airport building. I had completely forgotten that I had been there before until I saw the waiting area. Something about the floor tile pattern (strange, I know) and the dim lighting dredged up the memory: my family had come through this part of the airport en route to Vancouver when I was thirteen. Funny to look back and see myself then, a kid with no idea she'd be returning to Seattle years later, married and hoping to settle there for a long time.

All this because of a travel voucher ...

My return trip didn't evoke such old memories, but it did have a surprise for me and D when we stepped outside this morning: snow. We knew it was in the forecast, but it wasn't supposed to arrive until Monday evening. So the blanket of white on our mountain was a bit unexpected (though certainly not unfamiliar to me this winter on campus). I guess you might call this an old experience in a new context? It's the first time I got to see a fresh snowfall there, and with the lightly coated branches of the trees arching over the back roads we took to the airport, it was quite lovely. I thought I was sick of frozen precipitation -- enough to believe I didn't want to see it anywhere at any time for the remainder of the winter -- but I guess I was wrong.


So anyway, I'm safely back in my other place of residence. It's after 11 p.m. in Seattle, which means it's way past my bedtime here. If only I could make the next few hours of sleep feel like more than they'll be ...

An early valentine

Four years ago, D and I got engaged in a little stone pavilion overlooking Central Park. The day was warm, so the weekend crowds were out in force and the snow on the ground was turning to slush. D still bemoans the latter effect -- he wanted to kneel when he proposed -- but I'm very glad he didn't. I'm shy, and we would have had quite the audience.

Romantic that he is, D had managed to acquire a rose (he still hasn't told me from where), which he then concealed in his jacket while we were out and about in Manhattan. When the moment was right, he pulled the flower from its hiding place. I think I was so distracted by the magic trick that I didn't realize D had tied the engagement ring he'd chosen to the stem. (And there was also the whole "Will you marry me?" bit that had me slightly giddy!)

Since then, oddly enough, we haven't really had this day together to commemorate -- after I finished teaching that June, I moved to Texas and worked on the night desk of a newspaper for two years, during which D and I never had a day off in common (his job was Monday to Friday; mine was Friday to Tuesday). Then I got into graduate school, D got his job offer, and here we are. Fortunately, I'll be on a plane in a few hours for a long weekend in Seattle, which will make up for having to give up today. I think a celebratory date is in the works for Saturday. Whether it's a night out or a night in, I have no preference; it will just be nice to have the uninterrupted 24 hours together. How I've forgotten until now those awful seven-day work weeks in Texas. Compared to that option, I think this commute is actually more manageable, which is saying something.

Packing calls. More from Seattle (or after it)!

Process vs. outcome

Just to show that personality tests can be a source of interesting contradictions, let me direct you to these results from another quiz I came across. Apparently, on the spectrum of famous female icons, I rate as a Marilyn Monroe. I won't quote at length about what that entails -- see the profile for all the specifics -- but I will say that despite my more "masculine" brain, I definitely experience the "constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind" and "procrastinating because of fear of failure" that they mention. More often than I'd like! Well, I guess the previous quiz wasn't testing for how I came to my decisions ...

Speaking of choices, if you're ever wondering whether to use low-fat cheese instead of the full-fat kind in soups that call for them, don't skimp. I had my first not-so-great results from a recipe I tried last night for a cauliflower-cheddar soup. After you've puréed the cauliflower (enhanced with onions and fresh garlic), you're supposed to add the cheese and let it melt into the broth and vegetables. Low-fat cheese -- as recommended by the cookbook I got this out of -- doesn't quite melt into those gooey ribbons of comforting deliciousness you expect. It curdles, or something like it. Don't get me wrong; it's entirely edible and tastes absolutely fine. But it looks a lot less palatable. Oh well, something to remember for next time.

Four days and then Seattle! D and I are trying to make plans for our little weekend. We have a Netflix movie all lined up for delivery and a small craft project we want to work on -- we're making something that's a combination Christmas and birthday gift for me, and the first part we need has arrived. Pictures to come, of course.

Decisions, decisions

I got an e-mail a week or two ago from someone I'm mentoring -- she's considering various graduate programs in a number of related fields (education, literature, social science, or something interdisciplinary, as she puts it), and she wanted to know if she should (a) "apply to places that loosely make sense" for her particular interests because she's "sure about wanting to go into academia/teaching at the collegiate level" or (b) "put off applying to places until [she's] found the 'perfect' program to apply to ..."

Hmmm. I don't think either of those scenarios is the better option. The idea of applying to something that "loosely makes sense" raises a big red flag for me -- when I was shopping around for graduate schools, I saw an enormous range of programs within my field alone, and I know that some would not have suited me at all because of my particular interests and the interests of the faculty I wanted to work with. The other option of waiting to find the "perfect" program sounds all right -- but I have a distinct feeling that my mentee hasn't determined what she wants out of a graduate program. Until she sits down and really figures out what she's going after in terms of the whole experience and outcome, I'm thinking she won't be able to assess whether a program is the "perfect" fit for her (or if such a thing exists for her).

I've also talked to way too many disillusioned graduate students who are working on a second graduate degree because the first program they entered didn't end up letting them do what they had hoped or believed it would, even after much investigation -- only now, they've discovered that the next program is no better for other reasons. Clearly, what may look "perfect" may turn out to have substantial flaws. But I guess that information really can't help my mentee with her decision beyond serving as a precaution when she's doing her preliminary shopping.

My mentee also asked me, "What's the academic world really like? Do you feel super-competitive in your field ... ?" I think I smiled a little ruefully when I got to these questions. To be "competitive," I'm going to need more than an MFA (I was told this in no uncertain terms by the first-year advisor of my program within the first month of my arrival). It's funny to look back at how I was feeling over the summer about that situation. I think finding a home in teaching has made a huge difference -- I know now that working with students is in itself exciting for me. Will it be community colleges for me, then? Quite possibly, if they'll take me. We'll just have to see what's out there when I finish here and hope that the economy decides to play nicely. If there isn't anything viable, well, D and I will figure out our options then, but I think we've earned the right to say we'll wait it out in the same city.

(I say this with conviction now, but believe me, underneath it there's still fear that we'll be forced to return to some form of commuting again. Gaaah. For some really excellent thoughts on that aspect of career development, check out the conversation in the comments over at Medieval Woman's place in response to this post.)

Somehow, I don't think these were the answers my mentee was looking for.

Okay, let's end this on a lighter note -- so around the same time that my mentee e-mailed me, I found this little quiz online. It tells you where you fall on the "male-female brain continuum" based on your ability to perform certain mental tasks, and I'm amused to report that my gray matter is apparently quite masculine:


Does this mean that I make good decisions? No clue. But at least I know this quiz thinks they're ballsy ones ...

Matters of (low-carb) taste

So January has essentially been a month of recipe testing, and it's yielded some yummy results that both D and I can eat. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you're suddenly not allowed to eat most bread products, it's very exciting.


One of the first things we tried was a chicken and mushroom casserole (above) that contains no pasta and uses only a little whole-grain bread as a bottom crust to sop up the delicious juices that come out during baking. I do have to say that the recipe, which came out of Martha Stewart Living, is more time consuming than I'd like (mainly because pan-frying very thick chicken breasts isn't a quick process), but I imagine that chicken leftovers could be recycled here to speed things up considerably. Speaking of recycling, the casserole gets even tastier the day after you make it because the flavors have had time to soak into the bread. Mmmm comfort food -- and one less meal to cook.

Fondue is one of D's favorite meals (he lived for several years in Switzerland, where he had his share of the authentic stuff), so we had one night of that while I was home during break. Alas, what to substitute for all the bread? Cauliflower. Cooked until just al dente, it holds up when you dip it into the cheese and it's actually good for you. Well, okay, fondue is not good for you no matter how you look at it, but at least the vegetable component makes up somewhat for the damage, no?

Now that I'm back at school and eating by myself, I'm doing more large-batch prep for consumption over several days. Soup is a staple still -- the canned versions I used to use for convenience are no longer okay for me since most contain thickeners, but the ones I make on my own are perfectly fine. I discovered a soy milk that is really low in sugar (unlike most regular kinds of soy or cow's milk), so this week's menu has included a cream of broccoli soup as well as a crab and scallop chowder. Very nice when the wind chill is -25.

The world of products made with sugar substitutes has also become a realm for exploration, although we try not to eat too much of the stuff that comes from there just because we don't know what the long-term effects of sucralose and aspartame will be. For an occasional treat, there's this nonalcoholic sparkling drink:


The orange mango taste is incredible -- especially for the fruit-deprived -- and reminds me of the Nantucket Nectars I used to drink when I was living out east. Unfortunately, this stuff, produced by a label called Talking Rain, is only available to me in Washington. Another reason to be the one doing the traveling this semester! D can't bring this to me in his carry-on luggage since such liquids are on TSA's no-fly list (unless you buy them for ridiculous prices from inside the airport). And checking carbonated beverages just seems like a really bad idea, between rough baggage handling and non-pressurized cargo holds.

Okay, time to grade the quiz I gave on Tuesday. Can't believe the week will be over for me tomorrow -- at this rate, this semester may be over even sooner than I thought.

One week down, fifteen to go

It seems that the end of vacation is always hectic -- in the few days before I had to return to campus again, D and I crammed in eye appointments, our will signing, and rumba lessons(!). Fortunately, all had good outcomes.

The eye appointment for me was important as we don't know how long I've been prediabetic, so getting my retinas looked at was something we didn't want to put off until spring break. (That's when I get to meet my new endocrinologist; for now, my regular doctor is going to keep tabs on me.) As for the will signing, that was something we'd had planned -- we finally got the draft process underway during my Thanksgiving break, after much delay -- so it was good to cross that one off our to-do list as well. And the rumba lessons? Impromptu and entirely for fun. We haven't done any ballroom dancing since our wedding, and the inexpensive group lessons we found at a club downtown looked like an easy way to get started again (they do cha-cha, salsa, foxtrot, waltz, and several other types of dance too). We may do it again next time I'm in town.

The one thing that was truly unplanned during vacation happened the night before I had to leave. For some reason, the fire alarm in our apartment building went off in the middle of the evening and had to be shut off by the fire department. No explanation as to what set it off -- normally, someone's smoke detector within a single unit has to be tripped before the building-wide system goes into effect.

D and I had no idea whether there was actually a fire or not, so we grabbed the most important things we had -- largely, irreplaceable data stored on our laptops and backup CDs! Oh, the embarrassing value on (and faith in) technology we have. Here we are, waiting for the all-clear signal from the firemen in the parking lot. You can see D's shadow next to mine, which is the one holding the camera up.


The trip back was uneventful. The sky was clear as we headed for the airport -- unusual for this time of year -- which gave me a glimpse of the moon before sunrise over the foothills we live in. They mark the gateway to the larger mountain ranges east of us.


I also got a full shot of Mount Rainier from the airport at dawn -- also unusual for this time of year since its peak is usually wreathed in mist.


And once we were in the air, just before I fell asleep for the rest of the flight, I took a picture of the Cascades below us. I can't wait to be heading in the opposite direction over them again (less than two weeks until the next trip!).


Speaking of countdowns, I am now officially through my first week of the spring semester, which means there are fifteen left until the much-anticipated end (for the foreseeable future) of long-distancing. Oh yes, we're definitely marking off the days. Not because I don't like teaching -- I was actually way more excited about what I was going to do with my students on the first day of the semester than I was about my own classes. I'm just very much ready to be moved out of here, for obvious reasons, and also to be done with regular coursework. I haven't been able to focus on the bigger picture of the thesis because of all the nitty-gritty hoops I've had to jump through in these last three semesters. I think getting away from all the distractions will help a lot. If I can just nail down that prospectus ...

How sweet!

While I was on my way back to Little U. on the Prairie, Medieval Woman gave me an Inspiration Award! What a lovely surprise -- thank you!

Of course, there are a few rules I must post with it.

The obligations upon accepting the award are to extend the compliment by doing the following:

1) Put the logo of the award (above) on your blog if you can make it work with your format.

2) Link to the person from whom you received the award.

3) Nominate seven or more blogs.

4) Put the links of those blogs on your blog.

5) Leave a message on their blogs to tell them.

So here are my nominations:

• French Fancy, the namesake blog of a Londoner who now lives in Brittany, France, and writes about life on the other side of the English Channel -- including her progress toward her B.A. in Humanities from the Open University. I admire anyone who takes it upon himself/herself to pursue education through distance learning. It's not easy to be your own motivator, and Ms. FF does a terrific job.


• A Lady Scientist, the blog of a fourth-year Ph.D. student in biochemistry who is, in her words, "navigating the so-called 'Two Body Problem.'"


• Hypoglycemiagirl, the blog of another fellow commuter currently living in Sweden while juggling what she calls "an academic four-body problem"(!).


• The Firefly Photo Files, the blog of a photography enthusiast from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, that features his beautiful travel and nature shots with personal commentary. There's nothing like looking at other people's art to make you want to do more yourself.


• Making This Home, written by an American blogger living in Berlin, Germany, while she and her husband remodel parts of their 480-square-foot apartment with do-it-yourself aplomb.

These last two are actually links to collections of blogs on specific topics. I couldn't choose just one from each place -- it's the community each site represents, perhaps, that is inspiring ...

• Diabetes Daily, a forum with feeds from people living with the disease that's become particularly relevant to me in the last few weeks. While I'm not fully diabetic yet (and hope not to be), I'm learning how to handle many of the same things these bloggers are dealing with, and reading their posts on day-to-day life has been really helpful.


• Authors' Blogs, a forum with links to the blogs of aspiring and published writers.

Now, time to go home and start grading. And so it begins again ...

Frames of reference

We've been busy this week! D seems to have caught some of my enthusiasm, and he's joined me in the quest to make his office turned walk-in closet back into an office. All the random papers formerly piled up on the desk, chairs, and floor have been filed away; the actual closet's contents have been rearranged and consolidated so the door can be opened and closed; D's art has been framed and mounted on the walls; and a floor lamp has been moved in so the room can have more light. Now D can't help walking in every day after work just to enjoy his new space. There are a few last things that need different homes, but beyond that, the office is complete. Unbelievable.

Our reorganization unearthed some items that have turned into fun little additions elsewhere in our apartment. First, our former Texas license plate (I've blurred out the identifying information):


I work out on this elliptical every day when I'm here -- I originally bought it when I moved to the Lone Star State to be with D back in 2005. Seemed like an appropriate place to display our old plate with all the mileage this machine has racked up since then. It practically needs a name now that it has its own tags.

Next, something a bit naughtier but hopefully amusing. The background: a local frame shop was having a sale (buy one frame, get the second of equal or lesser value for a penny), so we picked up this little cream model when we were getting others for D's art. We had no plans for it -- I just thought it was cute. Then D found a coaster in the office that he'd brought back from a conference a while ago. It was a perfect fit.


Now where to hang it? Well, our guests inevitably have to ask us where the bathroom is as it's not obvious from the long hallway that comes off our living room. What better place to put a sign that says this?


Okay, no more bad jokes today, I promise. Our next exhibit on the tour brings us to the bedroom:


What, you don't know what you're supposed to be looking at? Good! We took a giant piece of whiteboard from the office (no room for it) and turned the white side to the wall, leaving the conveniently mahogany colored backing facing out. It's now our trompe l'oeil headboard until we're ready to buy real bedroom furniture.


Lastly, my favorite project, which was finally made possible once I could access the printer in the office: pictures for our photo coasters. You may recognize some of them from earlier posts or the slideshow in the sidebar.



We took all of the shots ourselves, and they can be changed to suit the season. For now, we have the Seattle and Puget Sound set (top) and the botanical garden flowers set (bottom).

We've also been hard at work in the kitchen testing some new recipes, but I'll save that for another post. Time to add more miles to the Texas steed ...

Time to get creative

For those of you wondering where the pretty card in my last post came from, it's actually handmade. My sister (the one heading into her last semester of college) is amazing with scissors and paper, and she put together all of the cards she gave to the family. A few more examples of her work:




I think my favorite is the snowman, but the scarf, hat, and mittens on the card below it run a close second.

D's side of the family was hard at work on an art project too during the week before Christmas. As I mentioned while writing from his parents' place, D engineered a gingerbread cathedral -- one that took almost an entire week to construct. The results were quite solid:




There wasn't enough time to decorate the walls completely, but D and his brothers did manage to create the "stained glass" by melting down crushed bits of Jolly Rancher candy in greased cookie molds. Lighted from inside the cathedral, the windows really do suggest the real thing. The roof shingles are made from cut-up Twizzlers.

Before we took off on our road trip, D's brothers planned to finish off the decor with gargoyles made from gummy bears and Swedish Fish. Guess I'll find out how far the project got when I return to pick up my car in a little over a week. I suspect many of the would-be adornments will have met a different fate!

So where have I been applying my creative energies, you ask? Well, most of it has gone primarily toward sprucing up our apartment in the last day or two, by which I mean finding more storage and organizational space than truly exists. Goodwill, here we come! I'm giving up on selling much more on Amazon and Craigslist (another project from last summer that yielded a few successes but not enough to help us reclaim that much square footage). I think I'm trying to prepare for what may be a stay of indeterminate length in our sweet but small place while we wait for the housing market to turn up a potential home for us. Prices are looking better, but they're still ridiculously high compared to what people paid five years ago. In this economy, we're not biting. Yet.

The rest of my creativity is being channeled toward the kitchen -- namely, how to rework my diet. No, this is not one of those "new year, new you" fads. I finally got some answers as to why I was so tired last semester: I'm prediabetic. This is such a weird term -- "So you're not diabetic, what's the big deal?" you might ask. Well, it means my body can't handle sugar well, and if I don't make changes in my diet, full-blown diabetes will be right around the corner. (There's more to it than that, obviously, but I'll leave the scientific explanation to my other sister, the one in medical school.) It's especially frustrating because I exercise every day, eat balanced meals most of the time, and maintain a healthful weight. There's no arguing with genetics sometimes, though, the main culprit in this instance.

The good news is that since cutting out refined sugars from my diet, I've been feeling much, much better. I'm also getting pretty adept at doing finger sticks to test my blood glucose levels. The one thing I haven't figured out, however, is how to work fresh fruits into meals. They cause my readings to skyrocket, even in tiny portions, and I miss them terribly.

D has been great about all of this. In a sort of ironic fashion, he's a reactive hypoglycemic (at the opposite end of the sugar-problem spectrum), so he's familiar with the testing and diet restrictions. We're working on finding low-carb recipes to try out before I go back to school. Any suggestions are very, very welcome! The more, the better. I'd like some variety in my new regimen of eggs, nuts, and meats ...

A sprint to the finish

Hello, Seattle, it's good to be back.

Yes, we made it out of Texas on the original flights we booked -- though for a few moments along the way, it wasn't clear that it was going to work out. More travel drama? But of course. Fortunately, this is the last of it as all our airport-hopping is done (until I return to school in two weeks), and the ending to the story includes a pleasant surprise, so I figure it's worth mentioning.

D and I had a fine week at my parents' place. The weather in the panhandle is pretty capricious (as the locals say, if you don't like it, just wait five minutes), so we enjoyed brisk temperatures and balmy ones all within a few days. When my sister left about 36 hours before we did, it was 75 degrees out. On the morning of our departure, it was just above freezing.

The crew at the airport didn't know it had gotten into the 20s the night before, so the electrical system had to be warmed up, which delayed our flight to Dallas. We had a tight connection to our Seattle flight to begin with, so D and I were more than a little antsy when we landed. Then, our plane had to wait for another to pull out from a neighboring gate -- it never did, but we lost about ten minutes sitting on the tarmac. By the time we got into the terminal, we had less than 15 minutes to get from one concourse to another.

We made a dash for it and got to our connecting gate just as the agent closed the flight in her computer. "It's gone," she said with that all-too-familiar sorry-but-I-can't-help-you look we've seen more and more in the last year of travel snafus. At that moment, though, another agent at the counter spoke up. "We're delayed for mechanical problems," he said. "We've got seats for you."

As it turns out, they were in first-class.

D and I have never flown anything but coach together -- not even for our honeymoon -- so this was a first in more ways than one. We had no idea how our names got put in for upgrades on our original tickets, but after all the craziness in the last two weeks of cancellations, we weren't about to say no. Once the mechanical issue was resolved, we were on our way. And that, if you're still reading, is how we finally made it home.

An unexpected detour

So we were supposed to leave D's parents' place last Friday to visit my family in the Texas panhandle. Unfortunately, our travel plans were thwarted again (are we beginning to notice a pattern here?). What follows is an account of an odyssey that still boggles my mind. Normally, I wouldn't provide such a ridiculous blow-by-blow, but for the sake of illustrating how absurd the whole experience was, here's the tale. Feel free to skip down to the photo if you'd rather not hear about the journey.

Weather was the primary culprit this time -- not on our day of departure in question but in the days preceding it. Because of ice and fog, lots of planes were grounded, and the one that was intended to take us to Chicago for our connections to Dallas and then the panhandle never made it to our city. About an hour before we planned to head to the airport, American Airlines' automated system called us with the news that our 1 p.m. flight was a no-go.

Given D's success with the bus on his way down, we decided to cancel the tickets for the Chicago flight and hop the charter coach again to get back to O'Hare -- a four-hour ride, but one that would get us there in time to take a later flight to Dallas, with some hustling through security. We also got ourselves rebooked on Saturday's first flight out to the panhandle (the last plane for Friday evening that we were originally going to take would be long gone). Sounds good, right? At least, better than the new itinerary we were given by AA's automated system, which would get us to my parents' place late the next night.

Well, about two hours into our bus ride, the driver announced that our arrival at O'Hare would be delayed by 45 minutes. Normally, the bus line splits its passengers at a halfway point, transferring everyone going to Midway (Chicago's other major airport) to another coach. But because of the unusually high volume of passengers from all the canceled flights, the company was short on buses and ours would have to be rerouted to Midway and O'Hare -- which meant that we wouldn't be able to make our new flight to Dallas.

A quick call to AA revealed that there were no seats available on future Dallas flights until Saturday evening, which would mean getting to the panhandle another day late. But then, at the last minute, two slots opened up on an early morning flight, so we grabbed them and then found ourselves a hotel near the airport. Once we finally reached O'Hare, we got ourselves a good dinner, set our cell phone alarms, and promptly conked out.

One hour later: D's cell phone rings. Yep, our new new Dallas flight was canceled.

At this point, we realized that our chances of getting out of Chicago in time to spend any part of our vacation with my family were looking bad -- the AA agent D got connected to spent nearly an hour and a half searching for flights that would get us to the panhandle by Saturday, but the best he could come up with was a flight leaving Sunday for Indianapolis, connecting to a flight to Dallas, and finally getting us to my parents' place that evening. A quick peek at the weather forecast revealed an ice storm on its way to the Midwest for Sunday as well. Time to consider a new form of transportation? We thought so.

The pickings were slim, but we did find a car rental company with vehicles left (at a premium price, of course). So at 1:30 a.m., we made our reservation and finally had a guaranteed way to Texas. Because of the cost, it meant deciding to make the 1,050-mile drive all in one day, but it was a good thing we jumped on the option when we did. By 7 a.m., there was nothing available to rent within a five-mile radius of O'Hare.

Saturday was long, but we made good time, despite a tornado warning as we passed through St. Louis and torrential rains further south in Missouri. Here's a view of the Gateway Arch as we crossed the state line out of Illinois:


We reached my parents' place around midnight after 16 hours in a little red Prius we named Pepe. I don't think we really believed that we had made it until after the first full day of our stay -- what does it say about the state of the airline industry when you can drive a thousand miles in less time than you can fly the same distance?

The clincher: the flight we were booked on out of Indianapolis to Dallas ended up being delayed 11 hours, which would have forced us to miss our Sunday flight to the panhandle. I think we can say for certain now that the road trip was justified -- I just hope we won't be driving back to Seattle after this weekend!!! I'm fresh out of extended-travel stamina.

Chipping in

I have discovered a new skill I never knew I possessed.

Some backstory: As I wrote earlier, there was some serious precipitation heading our way when I checked the weather the night before the final I was supposed to give. So I wasn't sure when I would be leaving for D's parents' house. The skies were clear, though, on Friday morning, and the roads looked decent -- just some slush on the local streets and even bare concrete on the highway through town. So as soon as I got back from turning in my grades on campus that afternoon, I chucked everything I needed into my little suitcase and decided to head out in the last hour of daylight.

And then I discovered that my car was entombed in ice.

Yep, that wintry mix did fall Thursday evening, and it left at least half an inch of frozen stuff from hood to trunk on my poor little Honda. When I opened the door to the driver's seat, shards the size of dinner plates cracked off and clattered to the ground.

I decided in that instant that there was no way I was going to spend another night in my apartment, even if it meant having to take a sledgehammer to the mess in front of me, so I pulled out my scraper and started whacking away. While the defrosters were warming up the front and rear windshields, I took some good swings at the ice on the side windows. Anyone walking by would have seen a crazed-looking woman apparently hell-bent on beating her car to death -- that's how hard I had to hit the ice to make any progress. But once I got going, I was quite effective, if I say so myself. Total excavation time: 45 minutes.

The sun was completely gone by the time I got done, and I hate driving in the dark (not fun with an astigmatism). But because of the reflective snow along the sides of the interstate, it was actually much easier to see the road. The fringe benefits of winter weather! Who knew ...

I got to D's parents' house with no trouble. It was a good thing I left when I did too -- the next day, the snowstorm we were expecting arrived and the weather's been dicey ever since. We came prepared with warm clothing, so we were able to provide extra manpower for chipping ice off the front walk before the holiday party D's parents hosted last night (if you thought half an inch on one car was difficult, try more than two inches of hard-packed glaze over hundreds of square feet of cement). Quite the workout!

Today promises to be warmer (a good ten degrees above freezing, if you can believe it), so the winter wonderland we've been living in will melt quickly in the next few hours. Fortunately, D braved the sub-zero temperatures a few days ago to get some shots of the iced-over backyard and its wildlife with his dad's telephoto lens. Here are the results -- pretty magical, especially if you've never seen what an ice storm can do:








It is nearly time for lunch, and D is about to assemble a gingerbread cathedral, so I'm off to help. Pictures of that to come soon! Until then, safe travels and a lovely holiday to everyone.

Be careful what you wish for

About a week ago, D was commenting about how he missed snow and wanted some to make it feel more like Christmas was on its way (Seattle proper doesn't get much of the white stuff, if any, in the winter). Well, this morning, he kind of got his wish.

Actually, last weekend, he had a little taste of it -- just enough to give the trees a pretty dusting:


Fast-forward, though, to Wednesday night. A rather large weather system was predicted to dump about 10 inches of snow on the city by Thursday morning. Sweet, D thought, except for the fact that he was supposed to fly out Thursday afternoon. Hmmm.

So we hatched a plan. He'd get a ride to the airport in time for the first flight out to Chicago and try to go stand-by. His friend, who also had a flight scheduled for the afternoon, agreed to drive him. "You should just stick around and try to get out early," D told him. But his friend wasn't keen on the idea and went back home to sleep some more after dropping D off. D says the stars were still out, the sky perfectly clear, without a hint of any approaching weather.

A few hours later, his friend woke up to 6 inches of snow on the ground with more coming down without any sign of stopping. And the highways were closed.

Pan over on your imaginary map to the Midwest. At the moment, we're getting that fun phenomenon known as "wintry mix" -- sleet, snow, freezing rain -- which will glaze most of the area over the next 12 hours and make driving a big no-no. Flying too. D's connecting flight was already canceled hours before it was supposed to take off this evening. Fortunately, he managed to get a bus ticket to his final destination before the slippery stuff started accumulating, so he's safely at his parents' house now. Imagine, though, if he hadn't hopped that early flight ...

So the weather system that blanketed Washington and brought the first snowfall in 30 years to Las Vegas is scheduled to roll through the Midwest on Saturday. I'm now stuck deciding whether to brave iced-over roads tomorrow afternoon, once I turn in my grades, or to wait till Saturday to venture out in snow showers. Neither sounds good. Sunday has potential (still snowy, though less so), and Monday looks best (clear). But Monday's a loooooooooooooong way from this weekend.

I suppose more reading is in order ...

A fish out of water

Let's see. Graded all papers? Check. Finished writing final exam? Double check. Acquired test booklets for students? Check, check, check. What's left?

Absolutely nothing until Thursday, the day of the exam. I'm out of things to do -- for the next four days.

Okay, it's not really that bad. I have Christmas cards to write, packages to mail, friends to catch up with, books to devour, and, oh, a little thing called a thesis prospectus to consider working on, but even with all of this, my eyes are constantly roaming toward the clock. I can't wait to see D again. CANNOT WAIT. And the feeling is mutual -- it's been such a long semester of spreading visits out as much as we can that even as we've been talking on the phone in the last few days, we've been running out of things to say beyond, "Can next Saturday get here any sooner???"

Teaching was a really nice responsibility for the last three and a half months, and now that I'm no longer forced to keep my mind completely focused on the job, I have a four-year-old's attention span. Nothing is compelling enough to keep me occupied. I can't even pack yet because the majority of the things I plan to take with me have to be used. Well, I suppose I can put the last few Christmas gifts I've acquired with the stash in my closet so they'll be ready to go. The little cloisonné fish in the photo above is one of the items I brought back after Thanksgiving and will go to D's parents. We got one for ourselves as well -- each Christmas, we buy one new ornament for our tree to mark the year. The fish caught our eye because each row of scales is a separate piece, allowing it to flex as if it were actually swimming. Lots of fun.

All right, that's with the rest of the presents now. What next? D, stop laughing (I know you are). It's the Type A in me coming out again just like it did at the beginning of the summer. "Just enjoy the vacation," D kept telling me, "and stop trying to find things to do."

He's right. Even the books I've been reading have been books that I'm considering for my thesis bibliography. Time to find something completely unrelated. Yes.

Wine and tattoos

Yes, it's nearing the end of the semester at last, and we're all going a little stir-crazy here at Little U. on the Prairie. No, I didn't invest in a new form of self-expression while inebriated. But there is an explanation for the title above -- hey, where are you going? Hang on and hang in there! Man, I can tell some of you are as impatient as I am.

So, shortly before Thanksgiving, D told me that he'd dreamed that I'd gotten a tattoo. A strange dream, for sure, as I'm too chicken as it is to get my ears pierced, much less endure the pain of a tattoo needle. But we all have random dreams now and then, and I assumed this was just one of them for D.

Well, it turns out that D liked what he saw. When I asked him what I'd chosen for a tattoo, he couldn't quite explain it. "It's those things on the front of a violin," he said. "You had one on each side above each hip."

Ahhhh -- I was pretty sure I knew what he was talking about but I didn't know the specific name for what he was picturing either. So I consulted one of my sisters, who plays the violin. "They're called f-holes," she said. For illustrative purposes, she and her boyfriend took pictures of the ones on her instrument. The results were quite pretty (see above).

Now I'm thoroughly curious about what planted this idea in D's head, even if it was subliminal. Dreams are supposed to be a kind of playback for things your brain stores up over the course of the day -- at least, that's one theory I've heard a few times.

I'm also curious about why I have crazily intense dreams whenever I've had red wine. They started a few years ago and have been pretty consistent (I can tell since I rarely drink reds). I don't always remember what I dream about, but the dreams tend to leave me feeling less than rested because my brain feels so exhausted in the morning. And no, it's not a hangover -- I drink barely enough to make a mouse tipsy.

Yesterday, I hosted a wine and cheese night at my place for a few of the girls in my program, and since they favor reds, I picked one up -- a Montecillo Crianza Rioja that looked decent but still reasonably priced for grad students on a budget. It turned out to be delicious, going nicely with smoked Gouda and baked Brie (I made another of the latter since the one at Thanksgiving was such a success). The best pairing, though, was with the blue cheese I'd chosen, especially when the cheese was eaten with dried dates.

So what did I dream about? I'm not sure. During Thanksgiving break, however, I also had a little taste of red wine with dinner, and I woke up that night to D asking me what was wrong. Apparently, he'd witnessed me pulling back my arm and then giving the mattress a solid wallop with my fist!

If I did anything violent last night, I have no proof. But I did notice that a large number of things that I'd left at the foot of the bed (socks, a magazine, and an envelope with papers I need to read) were scattered on the floor this morning. Considering that I'm known among my former college roommates as the girl who could stack library books on her mattress without disturbing them in my sleep, this suggests something out of the ordinary.

Chouette!

I woke up to a little surprise today. French Fancy, a blogger in Brittany, kindly nominated me for a blog award (see her post here). I've never received one of these before -- what an unexpected and welcome nod of encouragement.

The really fun part is that now I get to put up some nominations (that's the way these things seem to work, according to what the conditions are for said award). I'm also asked to post the rules for accepting the award, which are as follows:

• Copy and paste these rules/instructions in your post.


• When you post about receiving this award, include who gave you the award and link back to his/her blog.


• Post five winners and link back to them as well.


• Post five of your addictions.


• Add the award image.


• Let your winners know you gave them this award by leaving comments on their blogs.

So, without further ado, here are my nominees.

• The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, by Laurie Cinotto ~ One of my sisters introduced me to this darling site that covers the lives of foster kittens in Tacoma. I cannot wait to get back to Seattle for good -- D and I are hoping to adopt one (or two or three ...).


• Purring Prophecy, by Medieval Woman ~ While doing research on commuter relationships last summer, I came across this site by sheer chance. The author is, in her own words, "a medievalist beginning her first tenure-track position, working on her book, and commuting to see her long distance husband." She's also got a wicked sense of humor and manages to hang on to it through the travails of teaching.


• Cake Wrecks, by Jen ~ The name of this compendium says it all. A friend of mine who knew that I was doing research on footbinding for a Chinese history course last spring directed me to this blog for a look at a very relevant photo someone had sent in. Can you guess what the cake in the picture was made to resemble? I do have to say it was an excellent representation of the real thing, but whether or not it was in good taste -- sorry, I couldn't resist.


• Caramel Cook, by Brian Sharp ~ I found this blog when I was searching for a recipe for scones last winter. The food photography is wonderful, and the commentary is great for culinary inspiration.


• Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, by -- well, that's a little more complicated. This site was originally by the esteemed author of The Canterbury Tales, but it seems he's been ousted from his role as head scribe. There's a new order handling things at the moment, but no matter what, it's a hilarious read, especially if you like deliberate anachronisms with your Middle English.

All right. On to the addictions ...

• Soup. Of almost any kind. It is really, really cold at Little U. on the Prairie in the winter (which sometimes lasts six months), and making a huge pot of soul-warming goodness always makes it more bearable. I got started on a soup-making kick last year thanks to a cookbook called Soup: A Way of Life by Barbara Kafka, which I picked up before moving from Texas. I also grew up savoring my mother's incredible homemade stocks, which kind of sealed my fate before I was old enough to boil water.


• Mountains. If you followed this blog especially during the past summer, you know this already. I discovered my natural habitat -- didn't know I had one -- in the Pacific Northwest, where the pines and the peaks they decorate make me happy. I haven't yet figured out why. Maybe it's the solitude, or maybe it's the smell of the air. In any case, I've told D that we're not moving once I get back because I don't think I could bear to leave.


• Books. This one probably goes without saying. D says I eat books, which is pretty accurate. I wouldn't feel right without some kind of personal reading in my life -- titles of my own interest, not those assigned for class (though sometimes those lead me to other books, which is totally fine). I'm currently collecting copies of my favorite children's books so that someday, I'll have a library all ready for our kids.


• Stationery. Beautiful pens, beautiful paper, the kinds of things that give you pleasure when you write. Even as a little girl, I was obsessed with writing (both penmanship and the creative act), and the sensuous trails of colored inks gliding from beneath the perfect nib onto the creamy surface of a fresh page of a journal were like catnip to me. Now, I do most of my writing electronically (I compose better that way), but when I'm grading and commenting on student papers, I always choose a pen that feels good to write with.


• D's hugs. This is the worst addiction because I can't get a fix on a regular basis! Now, I don't mean this in the "I can't help saying this because I'm in love with him" sense. I've had hugs from various friends, male and female, in my life, and even before D and I knew we were attracted to each other, his hugs far outranked any I'd ever experienced. Not like those airy, squeamish, not-really-touching-you hugs. His platonic hugs were warm and enveloping, gentle but firm. They were meant. His hugs now (not so platonic, obviously) are the same. Only now I get to ask for them and I don't have to let go.

I think that does it for today. Thank you again, French Fancy, for the award. This was fun.