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.

FEEEEEEEAAAST!!!

If you've seen this Snickers ad campaign, you know what I'm talking about.

Today, D got our photos from Thanksgiving onto a server, so I was able to download all of them in minimal time. Hooray for online storage space! The shots he took during our morning of cooking were intermittent as we had our hands quite full, but here are some highlights from our culinary adventures.

We brined and roasted our turkey according to this recipe, which we tested last year with nice results. This year's bird worked out well too -- the breast meat was juicy, and the legs and thighs were tender to the point of pulling away from the body at the joints. If prepping a turkey were less messy, I'd cook one way more often. Note the operative word if -- when I was butterflying the bird for roasting, I managed to cover the front of the dishwasher with raw meat juices (we don't have a lot of space in our kitchen, so when food messes reach the edge of the counter, as they often do, they plunge off to wreak havoc on whatever surfaces are below). I was also not tall enough to apply sufficient force to the breast bone in order to crack the turkey open, so I had to get up on a chair to put all my weight into it. Oddly reminiscent of CPR training! I think it took about five or six compressions to do the job -- and then a lot of paper towels and soap to get rid of the fluids that squirted everywhere. Yum, yum. Good thing D had us eat breakfast before going at all the cooking -- he got up early to make bran muffins and cornbread, which powered us through.

Once everything was cleaned up, we were in good shape for the rest of the food prep. I have to say that even with four cooks in our tiny kitchen, we did an incredible job of not running into one another. My best friend from college and his longtime girlfriend came up from Portland to spend Wednesday night and most of Thursday with us for the holiday, and they brought an entire cooler of ingredients for the dishes they planned to make. So wonderful to have people I love living nearby again! (They moved to Oregon a little over a year ago and are the same friends we visited in May.) The occasions for seeing such friends have been otherwise infrequent since our own move west -- most of our group from school stayed in New York and Massachusetts.

We made Brie en croûte with dried cherries, honey, pecans, and rosemary as an appetizer, served with croccantini from a local grocery, then for side dishes to accompany the turkey, we prepared cranberry relish; pan gravy; oven-roasted new potatoes with pearled onions, rosemary, and paprika; and green beans sautéed with fresh garlic. Matt and Gaby made sausage stuffing, oven-roasted apples and root vegetables (sweet potatoes, parsnips, and beets), and an Elizabethan pot pie that contained Jerusalem artichokes, hard-boiled eggs, grapes, and dates with a drizzling of heavy cream. Quite an amazing spread once we were done! Add to that the whole-wheat loaf that D baked the night before, as well as several bottles of wine, and it was a true feast. I think we were all a bit stunned that everything turned out so well. "Did we do that?" Matt said once the table was set.


We were quite full by the time we finished our main course(s), so we went for a walk around the neighborhood. Then we had a round of cards to liven us up, and D and I baked our mini molten chocolate cakes. Half of them -- the ones that were made with powdered Splenda -- turned out beautifully. The other two did not want to solidify on the outside and remained more like bread pudding. I'm guessing it's because we didn't have confectioner's sugar (we substituted the granular stuff, which didn't grind well with our mortar and pestle). In any case, the cakes still tasted fine, and they went really nicely with the loganberry dessert wine our friends brought -- Vinotaboo, which is made in Oregon. A pomegranate was a good palate cleanser that finished off the day.

After a few more rounds of cards, we decided to take Matt and Gaby to D's office, where we played foosball (another favorite activity we haven't had since college). And then we had to say our goodbyes since I had my flight at the crack of dawn and they had a three-hour drive back home so they could be at work the next day. I was sad to see them go so soon -- but there's always January. I think another reunion is very much in order.

So that, in large part, was Thanksgiving '08 chez nous! Now go eat something. I know I'm hungry again after thinking about all that food.

There and back again

So I expected that I would have MORE time to blog while in Seattle for Thanksgiving break, but it was exactly the opposite. Some of that was the product of catch-up time with D, of course, but while he was at work, there was just that much stuff to do -- Christmas shopping, prepping for dinner guests, taking advantage of the free laundry, and working on the holiday newsletter to go out with the cards to friends and family. That last item is sort of becoming a tradition. I had hoped to get it finished before leaving so I could print off the copies from our color printer, but I couldn't manage it. Oh well. I'll write the rest of it tonight, and D will print it. Hopefully his version of Word won't scramble the document like it did last year after I sent it to him! Coordinating a repair job over e-mail took some creativity, to say the least.

I wish I could have stayed in Seattle through Sunday morning, but in order to get there using mileage awards, I had to come back today. D and I will see each other in three weeks, which will also mark the beginning of winter break for me (can't wait!). This little week off was wonderful -- a taste of what we'll have over December and January. We had a dinner date on Friday after I landed, and then we had a very lazy Saturday -- lots of lounging and talking and just being in the same home with the prospect of another five days together instead of only one. D made his special waffles for breakfast and we tested a molten chocolate cake recipe (part of the menu for Thanksgiving). On Sunday, we went marketing for Christmas gift ideas and I got reacquainted with the irises. Ralph has what seems to be a bud! Silly plant -- it's not time for that yet!

Things really started picking up on Monday. While D was at work, I met up with our realtor again to look at more houses. The market has definitely changed a bit with the economy. I'm glad we didn't jump into making an offer on anything this summer as there are larger places for better prices now. We looked at seven homes, two of which felt like they had good potential (with room for us to grow so we wouldn't have to move out again for several years). Appreciation rates have slowed, so being able to stay put for longer is important to us.

Tuesday, we did the last of the pre-Thanksgiving grocery shopping and D made a delicious white bean and ground turkey chili for dinner while I was whittling away at grading and the newsletter. It sounds almost mundane, doesn't it? Trying to write about why all of this was so good is difficult -- how do you explain how extraordinary ordinariness is when you never have it?

Our guests arrived Wednesday, and their visit deserves its own post, so I'll stop here for the moment. But yes, it was lovely just to be back where I could see the mountains, even if it's dark at 3:30 now because we're so far north. My plane followed the sunset on the way out to Seattle, which was a little treat. Here's a shot of the last of it and the north star somewhere over Montana.

On loss, mostly

Today was all over the place.

Today actually started in the middle of the night -- I woke up with the sensation that something bad was about to occur. You know that feeling where your heart starts pounding because there's some imminent threat you can't identify? Pulled me out of a dead sleep. So I lay under the blankets, holding my breath, listening. Then the earth started to roll, as it did during the earthquake last April, and like last time, I froze, even though I should have gotten up to stand in a doorway. It was the strangest sensation, feeling the mattress bucking underneath me and hearing things fall elsewhere in the apartment. Then the rolling stopped, and for the rest of the time before my alarm went off, I was semiconscious, body tensed, waiting for aftershocks.

When I woke up to the radio, though, there was no mention of any tremors (unlike last April, when they were the first item on the news). That's right, I was dreaming the whole time -- a dream of being awake in the here and now when I was actually unconscious in some parallel universe. Disturbing if not plain eerie. So that was an unsettling start to the day.

Things got better once I was up -- I breakfasted, read the news online, worked out, showered, did some reading and figured out what spring classes to register for. Talked to D briefly. I've missed him more than usual in the last week (I think the three-week stretches between visits have been getting tougher since the fall semester hasn't had any big breaks before Thanksgiving). We've been planning what to do while I'm in Seattle. Maybe some house hunting just to explore the market now that the economy has changed so much. Definitely a meeting with an attorney to set up our wills. We should have done this right when we got married, but I was applying to school, and he was looking for a job, and then we were moving me and then moving him and then commuting for two semesters and then cramming five weddings into our summer and now here we are. I know, no excuses. The plan is to start the paperwork over this vacation (we have an appointment in place) and finish it during winter break. Not that we have huge amounts of property to divvy up, but we would like to make sure it goes to the people we want it to go to instead of having the state make those decisions.

It's always a little weird talking about wills and such. The idea that one of us won't always be around is a strange and familiar thing at the same time. We've been apart for so much of our relationship that we're used to functioning without the other person there. But the idea of losing that person for good is still, of course, terrible -- and feared even more, on some levels, because the life we've wanted to begin together hasn't quite begun yet either. Hence the extra urgency to get the wills in place. We've talked about where and how we want to be buried, we know each other's favorite flower. I know it sounds morbid, but it's really not. We've just had enough time apart to know that time together is never long enough, so having all this out in the open kind of gets it settled and out of the way. Which means we can get on with enjoying our lives with each other.

After talking with D, I packed up to head to class. My students had their papers due today, so I knew attendance would be fairly high (part of the reason why I scheduled my teaching observation for today). I wasn't nervous about that, but I was a little worried when only half of the class had shown up by the time we were supposed to start. Almost everyone else got there within five minutes, though, so things looked like they were going to be fine. Then one of my girls arrived but only stuck her head in the doorway as we were getting discussion moving. She beckoned with her hand, asking me to go out into the hall with her.

I knew, before I left my seat, what she was going to tell me. This was the student whose family member was in a car accident not quite three weeks ago. I knew his condition was poor (he was thrown through his windshield when a driver rear-ended him on the highway, the student told me), and I was guessing that, since he hadn't woken up within the first week of the accident, his prognosis wasn't good. But it was still a shock, like getting all the air forcefully evacuated from my lungs, when she told me he was dead. He was her twin.

She handed me her paper at this point. I must have looked bewildered -- I couldn't believe she had come all the way to class just to turn it in (my policy is that written work has to be handed to me in person unless there are extenuating circumstances). I told her I was sorry and that we could talk privately in office hours tomorrow, if she was up to it, to determine what kind of arrangements she would need for the rest of the semester. I asked her if it was okay to give her a hug, and she said yes.

And then I had to go back into my classroom and pretend that everything was fine.

I know I never knew her brother, but the complete and utterly meaningless destruction of his life is the same sort of thing I've feared most for the people in my own life, especially now that they're scattered across the country. I can't say that I know what her loss feels like, but I've imagined it a thousand times over, every time I've left D at the airport, even though I've tried not to let my mind go there. So I wanted to feel sadness for her -- to honor her loss within my physical body, to recognize its weight in the pit of my stomach. But I had to stifle myself, cut the feeling off after my initial reactions (those can't be controlled). Doing that -- even if only temporarily, for the sake of my student's privacy and for the sake of conducting a productive class for fifteen other people -- felt wrong in some way. To be able to shut down instantaneously. Not to allow some molecule of grief to hover in my consciousness. It was almost inhuman. But it was either-or.

So now I'm putting all of that here, just to feel it at last. Enough from the universe, please. Enough for now.

Speak, Mnemosyne?

Apparently this is what Nabokov had originally intended to name his memoir but "was told that 'little old ladies would not want to ask for a book whose title they could not pronounce' " (per the foreword in said work). I suppose from a marketing perspective that it was a valid criticism, but beyond that, I think Speak, Memory just falls more rhythmically on the ear and makes the idea of a writer exploring recollections of his childhood more accessible to the common reader. There's something about invoking a Greek muse that just feels more highflown. Of course, there's a place for that too, but when talking about the self? Let's not take ourselves too seriously ...

Nabokov is, as you may have guessed, the author of the week in my seminar. So far, so good, but his prose requires concentration. The end of a sentence often reaches places far from its beginnings, and any kind of distraction that draws your attention from its progress leaves you wondering a few words later, "Wait, how did we get here?"

I guess that's the underlying question in writing memoir too. "Neither in environment nor in heredity," writes Nabokov, "can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap." That pretty much describes what the last few weeks of writing have proved to me! The quest, perhaps, is to find the path the watermark traces -- the revisiting of all the pressures that have left their prints upon us, nudging us forward into the present. But how to organize all that into a coherent narrative?

I have to wonder what this man, who was an avid collector of butterflies, thought of the butterfly effect.

I'm playing around with structure as I'm writing but it's still unclear what's working best. The response to the essay on Thursday from workshop was encouraging enough that I sent the work to my thesis advisor -- we'll see what suggestions she has. Hopefully over Thanksgiving, I'll have time just to sit and think. That's partially what today is for too, but several days like this without interruption will be helpful. If holiday shopping and cooking don't take over, that is ...

You just never know

Unpredictable -- I think that describes the general tenor of life at the moment.

D sent me an interesting e-mail this morning about some recent tech news. Midway Games, a company he interviewed with during his last job search, made some notable staff cuts this week. We had initially hoped, before the move to Seattle, that D would get a position at Midway since it's driving distance from Little U. on the Prairie. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that he was turned down. Who knows whether the job he applied for was one of those that got hit. Apparently, the company's stock shares are also taking a beating.

I had my workshop today, which was very helpful. Very tough, though, because of what was on the table. The essay I submitted was the first in which I think I really, really put myself out there naked -- not writing in the voice or character of the person I wanted my audience to see me as, but as the person I am underneath all the carefully wrought word-armor. I realized, in some earlier attempts to pull together this piece, that my problems writing it stemmed largely from trying not to reveal parts of myself that I'd rather keep under wraps. This is not to say that what I ultimately turned in was an exercise in self-flagellation, but I did let all the embarrassing, uncomfortable awkwardness of childhood appear. And that was hard.

What really caught me off guard, though, was the sadness I felt as the workshop got at the heart of what was in the essay -- the entanglement in certain family issues (I won't get more specific than this here) that still cause powerful grief. The sadness isn't even explicit in the essay, but people began plumbing the family dynamics driving the action in the work, and then as the explanations came out, all the awfulness of the aftermath from the experience I wrote about bubbled up like acid. I was tearing up liberally by the time we finished (also much cause for embarrassment), and I couldn't do a thing about it. I think the people who noticed probably figured it was because the subject matter was painful, not because I was upset by what people were saying about the piece -- it was all very constructive -- but ouch. I think I've had enough surprises for one day. I feel bad because I was too choked up to thank everyone at the end. Maybe an e-mail? But that seems so impersonal. Perhaps a quick thanks at the beginning of next Thursday's class. That'll be better.

So now I'm wiped out (more so than usual). But at least this weekend, I have no grading, which means I can do some more writing. I haven't had that luxury in what feels like months.

A happy note to end on: our irises are still doing well out in Seattle -- D sent me update photos. The plants will winter on our apartment balcony and should bloom just in time for my arrival at the end of the spring semester. We thought up names for them a few days ago (they're pets, so why not, right?). D has chosen Ralph and Tessa for his two, which will be deep red and tawny gold, respectively. For mine, I picked Carmen (indigo) and Lolita (pale pink). Yes, yes, think what you will! But if you could have seen what their predecessors looked like at the farm we visited, you'd understand how the names just fit.

Anyway, we're hoping all the plants will keep thriving as they have been -- I think one of D's bulbs may need its own pot already.

Procrastiblogging

What, you've never heard of that before? Surely, you jest!

I'm supposed to be grading some student exercises that I should have finished this past weekend, but I was too fried to face them -- and they're short ones too. Ah, grading burnout. Fortunately, the teaching is still good. In fact, I get energy from doing it (and there's not much of that to go around these days). This week has been terrific so far, which made up a bit for the funk I was in on Sunday, missing D mainly.

I have to say that my students are a fun bunch as they're willing to entertain some of the sillier activities I have them do to warm up for class discussion. Yesterday, I introduced them to "Monday Mingling," which is an adaptation of something another teacher showed me while I was teaching junior high. We had read a short story over the weekend with some guiding questions, so to get people out of their seats and energized, I copied the questions onto individual index cards and had each person choose one. Then all the students had to "mingle," asking their questions of different people as they walked around the room. "Pretend you're at a party," I said, which got me some amused looks, but I know everyone had a good time with it. Some people even got into the act, asking their questions like pick-up lines at a bar! I also distinctly heard one student say, "I'll meet you by the fruit punch" as she was chatting up a classmate. Whatever it takes ...

After we'd mingled for about five minutes, we sat down again and shared out the answers each student had collected. Pretty effective for getting people talking.

We're going to start looking at poetry tomorrow, which will be a real change of pace. I think I'm going to have my students close their eyes and do some guided meditation just to slow their brains down before we start examining some verses -- poetry really does have its own time scale. For a little icebreaker, we'll be looking at Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, which turns conventional beauty on its ear (hopefully, students will figure that out after they try to draw what's being described). I bought crayons for the occasion -- a box of 48, although the set of 64 was tempting. That should be plenty, in addition to the markers I already have, for them to use to create some entertaining illustrations. And there's nothing like a brand-new box of crayons to inspire creativity. (If you remember this video from Sesame Street, you know what I'm talking about.)

Arrrrrrrrgh, grading calls. I'd better get to it before I start procrasticleaning or something worse. It's been known to happen.

Got a minute?

I know, I know, I'm always talking about how I don't have time to write. But I came across this site on the Blogs of Note list and thought it was a neat idea. Read the prompt; write for 60 seconds. A great place to find writing "exercises," as they call them around here, when you've got writer's block.

Lots of good reading for my classes of late. Most recently, I finished Patricia Hampl's The Florist's Daughter. I can't say I loved the whole thing, but the frame that introduces and ends the work is lovely, poignant, and also disturbing: a daughter keeping vigil by her dying mother's bedside, holding her hand in one of hers while writing her mother's obituary on a legal pad with the other. The memoir is about a place and time that are no longer available to the writer in the present, but her attempts to look back and plumb what's contained in her memory of them are commendable. It's so hard to disentangle yourself so you can write about those things sometimes -- I think that's the problem I ran into in the last week and a half while working on my own essay. There's the problem of attachment that makes objectivity so impossible. As Hampl writes:

Nostalgia, someone will say. A sneer accompanies the word, meaning that to be fascinated by what is gone and lost is to be easily seduced by sentiment. A shameful undertaking. But nostalgia shares the shame of the other good sins, the way lust is shameful or drink or gluttony or sloth. It doesn't belong to the dessicated sins of the soul -- pride, envy. To the sweet sins of the body, add nostalgia. The sin of memory.

Nostalgia is really a kind of loyalty -- also a sin when misapplied, as it so often is. But it's the engine, not the enemy, of history. It feeds on detail, the protein of accuracy. Or maybe nostalgia is a form of longing. It aches for history. In its cloudy wistfulness, nostalgia fuels the spark of significance. My place. My people.

My essay gets workshopped on Thursday, so we'll see what people think. I sent a few drafts to D before I turned it in, and he was helpful in pointing out how to fix some things. It's nice to have a reader with fresh eyes -- not just eyes that haven't read this particular piece but eyes that haven't been looking at tons of other essays all semester and are getting a bit glazed over! (I don't blame them.)

I unwound from all the craziness of the week last night by talking to my sister, who is in the fall semester of her senior year in college (also the one involved in the Cork Incident that I mentioned last week). Talk about being nostalgic -- where has time gone? We've been scattered across the country, this sister, my other sister, and me. I miss being silly with them and finishing each other's reminiscences and speaking in the code that only we share. Perhaps another essay will come of that idea.

In the name of nostalgia for silly moments, here's one from a visit that one sister made to Seattle during our first summer there. Clearly, Midwestern girls do not see hills like this one very often. D's driving, Sis is shooting the video, and I'm in the back seat laughing.

Hirsute pursuits

Okay, it was a hairy week. Between holding extra office hours for students for paper-writing help and having my own essay due today, I was a bit overstretched, so now I must do some catching up here.

First off, the last "husband weekend" of 2008: D had fun showing off his costume at a Halloween bash while he was in town. He was a pirate, complete with puffy shirt, bandanna, hoop earrings, and beard. I must say, he wears the facial hair well! We took some glamour shots to zoom in on the fine detailing of the whole package.













Sadly, D was unable to bring his old-fashioned toy pistol (too much of a hassle to try to get that through airport security) -- that was what was in the picture I posted here. Alas, no winning guesses as to what it was! Here's the original picture.


Next, the election: Talk about a distraction! I voted on my way home from campus and then sat on tenterhooks all evening trying to do work but utterly failing. It didn't help that it was 75 degrees out (during the first week of November!), making it rather uncomfortable indoors while I was in office hours (the heat in the building was roaring). By the time I got back to my place, I was too tired to think straight. I refused to turn on the TV (still trying to write that pesky essay) but I couldn't help flipping over to The New York Times' online electoral map to check on the returns. I finally gave up after the results were called around 10:15 here and watched the acceptance speech -- very much worth it, of course. I don't think I fully decompressed from all the built-up tension until late Wednesday.

Finally, thesis committee progress: I now have two of my three people! The second person said yes this week -- we have to meet to talk about what role she'll play as a reader, but she's very enthusiastic about the project. Yay! Hopefully I'll have the third person figured out before next Friday. It would be so nice to have this set before Thanksgiving ...

All right, it's very much time for me to consider bed after this crazy couple of days. One more till the weekend.