The boy too, but he doesn't care nearly as much that I'm gone as the two girls do. The boy...he only really notices when HIS girl is gone. (He thinks she hung the moon.)
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Fuzzies
The boy too, but he doesn't care nearly as much that I'm gone as the two girls do. The boy...he only really notices when HIS girl is gone. (He thinks she hung the moon.)
Friday, November 11, 2011
Celebrity Blogging
You know how, when celebrity bloggers go out of town on vacation and they re-post old blogs while they're gone? Wouldn't that be funny here....if I re-posted, say, last Wednesday's blog? Right, not nearly as exciting.
I'm in Atlanta this weekend, visiting my cousin and her family. Mom and I were supposed to come down together, to stay with my cousin and her mom (who has a separate in-law suite) but my aunt went out of town....so just I came!
It's been years since I've been in Atlanta (probably 10, when I was in Grad School) and I think this was the first time I'd ever walked through the whole airport as an adult. When I made it almost the whole way to baggage claim...which felt like walking all the way back to Ohio...I realized I could have taken the train. Lessons learned.
The flight down was pretty awesome, though. Mom hadn't cancelled her flight since we weren't going to get anything back from it and she didn't want them to just sell it and make double the money. When we were getting ready to board, I looked up and saw Sean, our old Graduate Student from 07-08. We realized at once that we were on the same flight and figured Sean could just take my mom's seat....
....until they told us that they'd oversold the flight and had people flying stand-by, so someone had been given her seat already. They were super nice about it, though, and as a consolation prize, gave me a voucher for the cost of Mom's ticket....since it was ALMOST like she'd given her seat up for someone flying stand-by.
The woman sitting next to me offered to take Sean's seat, so we were able to chat the whole flight!!
I didn't know how the whole blog-a-day thing would work on vacation, but there's a computer just outside my bedroom...I can't promise they'll be interesting....but they'll happen.
Not every day can be a rant about tampons I suppose. (Thank goodness for that.)
I'm in Atlanta this weekend, visiting my cousin and her family. Mom and I were supposed to come down together, to stay with my cousin and her mom (who has a separate in-law suite) but my aunt went out of town....so just I came!
It's been years since I've been in Atlanta (probably 10, when I was in Grad School) and I think this was the first time I'd ever walked through the whole airport as an adult. When I made it almost the whole way to baggage claim...which felt like walking all the way back to Ohio...I realized I could have taken the train. Lessons learned.
The flight down was pretty awesome, though. Mom hadn't cancelled her flight since we weren't going to get anything back from it and she didn't want them to just sell it and make double the money. When we were getting ready to board, I looked up and saw Sean, our old Graduate Student from 07-08. We realized at once that we were on the same flight and figured Sean could just take my mom's seat....
....until they told us that they'd oversold the flight and had people flying stand-by, so someone had been given her seat already. They were super nice about it, though, and as a consolation prize, gave me a voucher for the cost of Mom's ticket....since it was ALMOST like she'd given her seat up for someone flying stand-by.
The woman sitting next to me offered to take Sean's seat, so we were able to chat the whole flight!!
I didn't know how the whole blog-a-day thing would work on vacation, but there's a computer just outside my bedroom...I can't promise they'll be interesting....but they'll happen.
Not every day can be a rant about tampons I suppose. (Thank goodness for that.)
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Gentle Guide Thoughts
Since we're on the topic of tampons
...okay, I know we weren't talking about tampons...but I'm sure someone, somewhere was...so I'm just going to piggyback on that converstaion....work with me here.
People have heard me mention before that I cannot BELIEVE that there is such a thing as a scented tampon...as though our insides need to absorb a smell. This blows me away.
What I haven't mentioned yet (but oh I'm going there right now) is that I'm pretty much aghast at the different "volumes" of tampons that are available. They are:
Light (thank God they don't spell it "lite")
Regular
Super
Super Plus
Ultra
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to you that I'm a woman who doesn't notice anything on top of the refrigerator unless I know that I need something up there, and then I look. This also translates into tampon usage -- I don't look for what I don't need. So when my needs changed (hey ladies, times change, so do our needs)....I looked.
I apologize right now to the woman in the aisle with me...because I was "that woman" who had to be audibly surprised at the tampons.
I can understand Light, Regular and Super those are pretty much no-brainers. After that, though, it seems to me that they didn't quite think the "higher volume" and "naming" part through, because the "Super Plus and Ultra" just seem like "Big, Really Big, and Woah."
I don't think I'll ever be able to buy Super Plus....mostly because of that last part. I think we've been conditioned to read "Plus" part and think there's a little extra magic added to it. Like Puffs Plus (lotion! hey!) Since I don't even like the idea of scents being all up in there, co-mingling....I certainly don't want lotion or other magic added either.
Also, Ultra? Knowing how big a Super tampon is...I absolutely cannot imagine how big an Ultra tampon would be. I'm going to stop there....it hurts me.
...okay, I know we weren't talking about tampons...but I'm sure someone, somewhere was...so I'm just going to piggyback on that converstaion....work with me here.
People have heard me mention before that I cannot BELIEVE that there is such a thing as a scented tampon...as though our insides need to absorb a smell. This blows me away.
What I haven't mentioned yet (but oh I'm going there right now) is that I'm pretty much aghast at the different "volumes" of tampons that are available. They are:
Light (thank God they don't spell it "lite")
Regular
Super
Super Plus
Ultra
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to you that I'm a woman who doesn't notice anything on top of the refrigerator unless I know that I need something up there, and then I look. This also translates into tampon usage -- I don't look for what I don't need. So when my needs changed (hey ladies, times change, so do our needs)....I looked.
I apologize right now to the woman in the aisle with me...because I was "that woman" who had to be audibly surprised at the tampons.
I can understand Light, Regular and Super those are pretty much no-brainers. After that, though, it seems to me that they didn't quite think the "higher volume" and "naming" part through, because the "Super Plus and Ultra" just seem like "Big, Really Big, and Woah."
I don't think I'll ever be able to buy Super Plus....mostly because of that last part. I think we've been conditioned to read "Plus" part and think there's a little extra magic added to it. Like Puffs Plus (lotion! hey!) Since I don't even like the idea of scents being all up in there, co-mingling....I certainly don't want lotion or other magic added either.
Also, Ultra? Knowing how big a Super tampon is...I absolutely cannot imagine how big an Ultra tampon would be. I'm going to stop there....it hurts me.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
In lieu of thoughts, my favorite poem.
A Night Without Stars (Nancy Eimers)
And the lake was a dark spot
on a lung.
Some part of its peace was dead; the rest was temporary. Sleeping
ducks and geese,
gooseshit underfoot
and wet gray blades of grass.
The fingerlings like sleeping bullets
hung deep in the troughs of the hatchery
and cold traveled each one end to end,
such cold,
such distances.
We lay down in the grass on our backs--
beyond the hatchery the streetlights were mired in fog and so
there were no stars,
or stars would say there was no earth.
Just a single homesick firefly lit on a grass blade.
Just our fingers
curled and clutching grass,
this dark our outmost hide, and under it
true skin.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
An Elevation Change
After a few months off, I had an awesome massage tonight. Because the weather was so nice I choose to ride my scooter up to my appointment, and then run to Target and the store immediately after. To lengthen the ride, I opted go to the stores farther north, rather than the ones closer to our house.
There's this.....elevation change, a dip down, in the road that goes on for about four city blocks before it comes up again. The trees are more dense, the houses sparse. It's my favorite spot to ride through because of the way it smells. Sure, you can tell you're getting closer because the temperature drops, but then you can tell you're there...when you can smell the woods.
I know that many people are nostalgic for childhood smells, and I'm no different. Dryer sheets, cut grass, baked goods....they don't do the trick for me, though. The woods? Absolutely.
It's the woody, damp smell. The layers of dirt and moss and leaves. It's thicker, heavier air to smell.
My Great-Grandparents lived in a little house on the side of a county road with the woods behind them. I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid and the woods started out pretty scary to me. My Great-Grandpa Faudree would take me on walks though, down, past the trash burning bin and little house, to show me where the opening to the woods was, how to follow the path. Way in the back, there was a stream that had mostly dried up, but clearly used to be much more and he'd built a bridge to cross it. In no time I was out, exploring on my own.
Grandpa Faudree told me to keep an eye out for ignis fatuus...and even though he explained to me what it was, I will always define it as the word that cost him the spelling bee championship. (He thought it started with an "e" but he was wrong.) He collected the exoskeletons of cicadas while I was gone and kept them for me, until I visited the next time, hanging on the railing to the front porch. He taught me how to fire his BB gun at old cans...but made me first promise to find all of the BBs after we were done, so we could reuse them. (I only bought that one once.)
Summer hours stretched out for me there. The heat fell away to the damp, cool air....and the smell of the woods was ubiquitous.
Even though those woods are 2+ hours away, whenever I drive through that stretch and can smell the woods, I can feel the slope of the back yard towards the woods under my feet, hear him whistle as clear as a bell, and talk to the birds like old friends. Summers sure don't stretch on like they used to...but that smell and the incredible ways my Grandpa showed me his love has never left me.
There's this.....elevation change, a dip down, in the road that goes on for about four city blocks before it comes up again. The trees are more dense, the houses sparse. It's my favorite spot to ride through because of the way it smells. Sure, you can tell you're getting closer because the temperature drops, but then you can tell you're there...when you can smell the woods.
I know that many people are nostalgic for childhood smells, and I'm no different. Dryer sheets, cut grass, baked goods....they don't do the trick for me, though. The woods? Absolutely.
It's the woody, damp smell. The layers of dirt and moss and leaves. It's thicker, heavier air to smell.
My Great-Grandparents lived in a little house on the side of a county road with the woods behind them. I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid and the woods started out pretty scary to me. My Great-Grandpa Faudree would take me on walks though, down, past the trash burning bin and little house, to show me where the opening to the woods was, how to follow the path. Way in the back, there was a stream that had mostly dried up, but clearly used to be much more and he'd built a bridge to cross it. In no time I was out, exploring on my own.
Grandpa Faudree told me to keep an eye out for ignis fatuus...and even though he explained to me what it was, I will always define it as the word that cost him the spelling bee championship. (He thought it started with an "e" but he was wrong.) He collected the exoskeletons of cicadas while I was gone and kept them for me, until I visited the next time, hanging on the railing to the front porch. He taught me how to fire his BB gun at old cans...but made me first promise to find all of the BBs after we were done, so we could reuse them. (I only bought that one once.)
Summer hours stretched out for me there. The heat fell away to the damp, cool air....and the smell of the woods was ubiquitous.
Even though those woods are 2+ hours away, whenever I drive through that stretch and can smell the woods, I can feel the slope of the back yard towards the woods under my feet, hear him whistle as clear as a bell, and talk to the birds like old friends. Summers sure don't stretch on like they used to...but that smell and the incredible ways my Grandpa showed me his love has never left me.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Really, Spam?
I'm not sure I understand technology, but the good news is that I don't have to in order to use it. What baffles me, though, is how we've managed to single-out certain strains of the flu, tetanus, and other diseases and also administer prophylaxis for them........but we still can't come up with a way to keep a REAL email message out of the SPAM folder.
Sorting through spam is about as high on my list of priorities at work as vacuuming behind the refrigerator is for me at home. Sure, I tend to my spam more frequently, but it's not really something I can devote set time in my day (or frankly week) to do.
Sorting through, though, it is a necessary evil, since we can't manage to make a computer program that is smart enough to keep the emails that say "Hi Jennifer I need your help with my academic issue" from co-mingling with ones that encourage me to click to "the humongous bouncing boobies*." Nevertheless, I try to sort through them about every week to 10 days.
I have a spam system, though, so I don't have to click through individual messages and delete one-by-one. Instead, I do keyword searches in my folder for the usual spammy words (viagra, rolex, pills, etc..), selecting-all in the results, then delete. It's fairly effective, given that a search for a gentleman's sausage takes care of between 30-40% of the load. After all of my words are searched, I've trimmed the 2500+ emails down to usually less than 200 in just a few minutes, which is absolutely manageable.
Since I don't have that on a set schedule, I do it when I realize I need to. Interestingly enough, that was today. I was about half-way through my list when a student walked in to see me, so of course I abandoned my search and worked on his issue.
We worked for a while and it wasn't a particularly conversation....all of which he had full view of my screen....but that was okay because there wasn't any student names or issues visible to him...
....until he left...and I turned around to see that the results of my last search had populated while we were working together....and every email with the word "COCKZILLA" in it was there, listed on my screen.
Here I thought the SpongeBob SquarePants sticker a mom affixed to a letter she mailed to me a few weeks ago was the low point of my professionalism.....clearly I hadn't set my sights low enough.
Check and clean your spam kids!! After hours!!!
* I swear I picked that email title randomly, I just scrolled and found it.
EDIT: as a follow-up I should note a few things.
1) I've been working with this student for 3 years, so we have a good rapport.
2) When I called him about 5 minutes after he left my office, I asked if he'd seen my screen, apologized for what was on it, and explained that I was cleaning out my spam folder.
3) He said he didn't see anything but would have pointed it out to me within about 3 seconds of seeing it, laughing anyway.
4) I told him he could lie and say he did, it'd be a funny story.
Sorting through spam is about as high on my list of priorities at work as vacuuming behind the refrigerator is for me at home. Sure, I tend to my spam more frequently, but it's not really something I can devote set time in my day (or frankly week) to do.
Sorting through, though, it is a necessary evil, since we can't manage to make a computer program that is smart enough to keep the emails that say "Hi Jennifer I need your help with my academic issue" from co-mingling with ones that encourage me to click to "the humongous bouncing boobies*." Nevertheless, I try to sort through them about every week to 10 days.
I have a spam system, though, so I don't have to click through individual messages and delete one-by-one. Instead, I do keyword searches in my folder for the usual spammy words (viagra, rolex, pills, etc..), selecting-all in the results, then delete. It's fairly effective, given that a search for a gentleman's sausage takes care of between 30-40% of the load. After all of my words are searched, I've trimmed the 2500+ emails down to usually less than 200 in just a few minutes, which is absolutely manageable.
Since I don't have that on a set schedule, I do it when I realize I need to. Interestingly enough, that was today. I was about half-way through my list when a student walked in to see me, so of course I abandoned my search and worked on his issue.
We worked for a while and it wasn't a particularly conversation....all of which he had full view of my screen....but that was okay because there wasn't any student names or issues visible to him...
....until he left...and I turned around to see that the results of my last search had populated while we were working together....and every email with the word "COCKZILLA" in it was there, listed on my screen.
Here I thought the SpongeBob SquarePants sticker a mom affixed to a letter she mailed to me a few weeks ago was the low point of my professionalism.....clearly I hadn't set my sights low enough.
Check and clean your spam kids!! After hours!!!
* I swear I picked that email title randomly, I just scrolled and found it.
EDIT: as a follow-up I should note a few things.
1) I've been working with this student for 3 years, so we have a good rapport.
2) When I called him about 5 minutes after he left my office, I asked if he'd seen my screen, apologized for what was on it, and explained that I was cleaning out my spam folder.
3) He said he didn't see anything but would have pointed it out to me within about 3 seconds of seeing it, laughing anyway.
4) I told him he could lie and say he did, it'd be a funny story.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Sunday Seven
We spent the day up north at my Love's parents' house, cleaning their
carpets for them...and we've miles to go (an hour west to Sandusky to
drop off a new buffet for my parents, then 2.5 hours back to the CBus.)
Not sure how I'd be able to fit in a blog on-time again tonight, or my
interest in doing so after spending nearly 6.5 hours on the road
today...so I'm mashing on my blackberry en route.
In lieu of an intentionally written, more thoughtful post, I've been thinking I'd do a list on Sundays instead. It worked for me in grad school...so we could even write this off as a "throwback," you never know!
So here's my Sunday Seven (things that have made me happy today:)
In lieu of an intentionally written, more thoughtful post, I've been thinking I'd do a list on Sundays instead. It worked for me in grad school...so we could even write this off as a "throwback," you never know!
So here's my Sunday Seven (things that have made me happy today:)
- An extra hour of sleep. Duh, what a gimme.
- Watching and appreciating my church family as we took communion this morning. I always sit in the front row and get a bit teary as everyone walks past. I always appreciate that Keeny looks directly at each person...a very intentional, and intimate moment.
- "The gluten-free Body of Christ for you" -- it helps when your best friend is also a pastor. I don't think I got enough of the Cup, though...I started choking during the Lord's prayer.
- "Johnny(Angel" - as I've been calling him) ... our new renter. While rarely being there so far, he is a thoughtful and kind roommate who has a great personality and also likes Indian food...huge bonus!
- I put on a pair of freshly washed jeans today and they were comically large on me. (Think: clown pants.) I pulled them off without unbuttoning them and put them with the 5 bags of clothes to donate.
- The 70 mph speed limit on the Turnpike. (Though I'm not driving currently, Love is.)
- My love's dad, who graciously changed our front brakes and rotors today, while we were doing the carpets...in exchange for two 12 packs of Great Lakes beer. Yay improved stoppage!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)