first efforts

5 signs of spring

1. Open windows.
2. Open windows with a kitty in them.
3. Afternoon porch reading.
4. Neighborhood nun sightings. (Like most of our neighbors, the nuns were pretty reclusive this winter.)
5. The Barefoot Contessa's spring risotto for dinner. Tasty!

Tavern rhetoric

Dear U of I students: Midterms are coming up next week. I really don't recommend mind erasers.

Facebook for the over 35 crowd

It starts with current friends, friendly professional contacts, and people you like but don't know very well or only know virtually. Then it extends to college friends and a family member or two (the younger ones). Soon old neighbors and high school friends appear; did you know there's a Facebook group for your high school graduating class? Yikes! This bunch of folks is particularly wonderful (fun to catch up) but also particularly dangerous (they have lots of embarrassing photos of you from the 1980s). Over time more family members appear, and then before you know it even your mom is on Facebook. Hi Mom! Finally, all it takes for the last shoe to fall is one link to the grade school friends. At that point we are talking about kids you took first communion with, girlfriends who were there for your first (failed) experiments with eye makeup, and fellow fans of A Flock of Seagulls.

Congratulations! Now your whole life is on Facebook.

Enjoy.

post-/pre-

Finnfam xmas circa 2008 was great fun as usual. We whacked the pinata (cathartically, a republican elephant), ate too much,  and laughed a lot. While I didn't get a Nuns Having Fun calendar in the gift exchange, one of us did get a movie that goes to eleven. Most excellent!

We drove home yesterday in snow, freezing rain, rain, and fog, but were still grateful nobody had to get on an airplane. And as I write this it's 64 degrees and raining, with tornado warnings nearby. Weird to say the least.

The weather hasn't been able to make up its mind, but we have. This coming week we'll cook, eat, read, write, hang out with beasties, and generally slack our way into the new year. If Cecil cat is lucky, maybe I'll even play a few games of "I hate you! Do it again!" with him - always a feline favorite. And we may even work a little bit. But mostly we'll enjoy some time for ourselves - post-Christmas/pre-New Year only comes once a year, after all.

Dear Santa...a professorchick's holiday wish list

Dear Santa,

I know you're really busy trying to fit all those iPhones and Wiis into your sleigh, but I hope you can give me at least a few things on my holiday wish list...

1. Greater patience for students, colleagues, administrators, store clerks, and others who are, as my great-grandmother used to say as she fleeced everybody at bridge, "still learning." It's more than okay to be still learning, but sometimes I forget that people are still learning and then I get grumpus-y. Which makes me feel bad after.

2. Increased recognition that I, too, am still learning. And greater patience with myself for that.

3. A bigger recipe box to contain all the great new recipes I've had fun cooking this year. (I think oa may have this one covered already, but in case not, I'll list it here. I really need a new recipe box).

4. A rechargeable snow blower. Because you think shoveling snow isn't going to be that bad, but then it is and your new house has an even wider and longer driveway than the one at the old house and you're stuck with only a lame shovel and that stinks. I don't know if these things even exist (all I can find are gas and corded ones) but if they do, Santa, getting one would be really awesome.

5. The chance to spend time with frolleagues over the winter break. I'm truly ashamed of what a bad friend I've been this semester. This is what too much work and traveling-for-work can do to a gal. It would be great if you could make the schedules work so that I could invite friends over during break for a nice evening of drinks, or games, or just general rumpusing in our basement rumpus room.

6. A snow-and-ice-free Christmas week drive to and from Minnesota via interstates 74, 39, and 94. Especially 94. Dry Wisconsin roads would be especially welcome, Santa!

7. I don't know if it's cool to ask NOT to get stuff, but I would like to receive fewer essays to review by people who want to "unpack" ideas or "interrogate" them. Personally, I find unpacking pretty easy and not all that interesting - you just take whatever's dirty and dump it down the laundry chute. And I'm more than a little afraid of interrogators, you know, since that whole prisoner torture thing...

8. Or maybe to put a more positive spin on the above, I could just ask to receive more essays to review by people who use words like "history" and "archive" and "contingency" and who aren't feeling particularly interrogative today.

9. I would also ask for an awesome finnfam holiday celebration, Santa, except I know that's a given. And I'm very much looking forward to it.

Book rec

Just finished Kate Christensen's The Great Man. Liked it very much.

8 for 08.08.08

1. My sister-in-law's nephew is in Beijing right now, rowing (in the glamour boat!) for the U.S. Olympic team; read about Matt here.

2. Obama visited the Copper Dome in St. Small yesterday and asked a baby about his voting plans.

3. Last night was quite possibly the nicest evening of the whole summer: pleasant, unusually cool weather, good friends visiting, hang-out time on the back porch, lots of tasty food from the farmer's market and CSAs, and grilled eggplant rolls that served as the perfect delivery system for goat cheese.

4. This Chronicle story about having your syllabus plagiarized by a colleague brought back fond memories of a former professor who plagiarized mine. Right down to leaving my home phone number on it. Although I won't name names, I am pretty sure it's okay to blog about this because he willingly shares this "hilarious" story in public as his representative anecdote of our relationship.

5. Attention grads and undergrads alike! Today I stocked up on brand-new Pilot Precise Rolling Ball V7 pens (blue). And I'm not afraid to use them.

6. When you invent the name of a television show in a short story that you started writing over a year ago, and then discover that there is now a new show with this name, does this mean that you can get residuals? Or should you just be satisfied that you are that super-tuned-in to the pop-cultural zeitgeist?

7. Today's NYT has a piece on a wildernessy place very near here that I'm embarrassed I've never visited. We will rectify that this fall.

8. I saw a hummingbird in our backyard yesterday.

The birthday countdown

Every night, at the top of his show, Keith Olbermann tells me how many days until my birthday.

And if everybody works together and does the right thing, all of America can get me a really great present.

A match made in Montreal...

While the rhetoric folks were RSA-ing in Seattle, our other communication colleagues were ICA-ing in Montreal. Where they were encountering places like this:

 

Somehow I don't think this is a law firm...

(cellphone images courtesy Professor D. O'Keefe)

Things I was told today during a 15 minute ride with the old guy who drives the shuttle for the car dealer repair shop

Driving the shuttle is the perfect old guy job.

Hollyhocks can grow to six feet tall.

I do not sound like I am from Minnesota.

Some southerners think they won the war.