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Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
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10:01 am - Am I less than totally psyched...
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...to be heading out to Conorado in a few hours?
No. No, I am not.
Had a nice 4th of July weekend with C and R, who came in from England on Wednesday, stayed through Sunday and then went on to visit C's parents in Florida. For the holiday itself, most of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) phragmites' family came here for a cookout and to watch the parade (comprising three fire trucks, every kid in town with a bicycle, and every political candidate appearing on the July 15 primary ballot) and fireworks.
The landlady had a new fridge delivered for us on Thursday, just in time to cool itself down enough to be useful for the cookout. In moving the old one out, I managed to crimp and rupture the water-supply line to the ice maker, so I was on the hook for getting that repaired; fortunately the landlady's handyman was able to do it for $40. The new fridge is, I think, not as good as the old one (when it was in working order): it's incredibly noisy and the energy-efficiency rating is the pits. I'm glad we'll be leaving it behind soon.
House-buying stuff continues apace. After our loan officer's failing to return our calls over the holiday week and weekend, we're finally in contact and getting things in order. An inspection is scheduled while I'm at Con, but Phragmites may be able to show up for it. Stuff is happening.
And did I mention I'm about to go to Con? Yay!
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
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4:16 pm - Not sure I'm ready for this
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| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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12:06 pm - Another new icon, or, what was that again about when it rains?
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| Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
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12:59 pm - I've been saving this icon...
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10:55 am
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One of the students in a class I taught recently just referred to me in an e-mail as "Dr. [slight misspelling of my last name]". Er, no.
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(comment on this)
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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4:49 pm
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| Monday, June 9th, 2008
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1:21 pm - Sometimes literacy is a good thing.
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I just bought a crystal decanter on eBay. (We won't go into the chain of events and thoughts that led to this purchase.) My winning bid price was significantly less than the closing price on many similar item auctions. I couldn't guarantee it, but I think it was because of the auction's title: "1960 WATERFORD CUT CHRYSTAL DECANTER FER WHISKEY HOOCH". Note to seller: including common misspellings will increase your hit count only if you also include the correct spelling. Otherwise, people who actually know how to spell "crystal" will never see your offering. Luckily for me, I was searching on "waterford" and "decanter".
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| Friday, June 6th, 2008
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10:44 am - Someone else's loss is my chocolatey goodness
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Just back from a gig at Tulane. Going to New Orleans on business is like kissing your sister. My hotel was just outside the French Quarter, and I spent a couple hours walking around and seeing the sights—but I refrained from staying out late, I didn't go to any of the several shows I would so totally have gone to if I'd been at leisure, and I didn't get myself schnockered. I did have a good dinner, take some nice pictures, and treat myself to beignets and café au lait at Café du Monde.
And, in a rush of brains to the head, I bought some gel insoles. Past few trips I've come back with sore feet from teaching all day. I've been thinking for a while that maybe some insoles would help, so I picked up a pair. They may have worked—my feet weren't nearly as sore at the end of the class, but there were mitigating circumstances. The class was severely under-attended, with just three people, so I took a much more informal style and actually pulled up a chair for much of the session.
At the airport for my return trip, the gate agent announced that the flight was severely overbooked and called for volunteers to give up their seat. (The flight was going from New Orleans to Atlanta to New York, and I think they'd sold the same seats over for both the Atlanta and the New York travelers.) I did not volunteer, as I'd been delayed getting home a couple times in a row and didn't want to extend the streak. But then they announced that we Atlanta-bound folks could transfer to a different flight that was actually scheduled to get us there a bit sooner than the other one would have, so I jumped at that chance.
Good for me, not so good for the people on that other flight. Turns out it had originally been a flight from Austin to Atlanta, scheduled to leave Austin at 11 that morning. The flight had been delayed something like 3 hours to start with, and then as soon as they got up in the air one of the passengers started having chest pains. They diverted to New Orleans to get the passenger to medical care, and then sat for another few hours while they recharged the oxygen bottle that had been used, and filled out various paperwork. By six pm when they let us board, the passengers had been trapped on that plane for about seven hours. There were something like forty of them (smaller plane, CRJ70), and two bathrooms. And they'd been pacified with free booze.
Fortunately, by the time we got on board, they'd swabbed out the heads. For "weight and balance" reasons, they seated us N'awlns passengers in the very back, but that wasn't too bad on this small and half-empty plane, and I got into conversations with the flight attendant and the guy sitting across the aisle. The pilot really poured on the speed, and we got into Atlanta about a half hour ahead of when I would have on the other flight, despite our leaving at about the same time.
It would've really, really sucked to be one of the Austin passengers. Yet at the same time, I'm happy to have been able to take advantage of their misfortune.
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| Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
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9:24 am
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I seem to have missed a step. The paper and radio this morning were trumpeting Obama's victory in the Democratic primary race, but I didn't run across any mention of how that came to pass. I can infer that some critical mass of superdelegates threw in with him yesterday—but for whatever reason, the news sources I usually depend on have been coy on exactly what happened.
For a broader value of "what happened," there's nothing I can say that tablesaw hasn't said better, so go read his two cents.
I personally have been quietly pro-Obama ever since Edwards left the race, though I'd've been only too glad to pull the Clinton lever if the game had played out that way. Basically I'm just glad to see that we seem to have gotten over the national reluctance to appoint ourselves a leader who's at least as smart as we are.
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| Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
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11:12 am - Better post this stuff before other stuff comes up to drive it out of my brain
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Gah, seems impossible to catch up.
My crazy period of overcommitment at work has just about wound down—this is the week I had unoffficially pegged as the end of it. I got back last night from a gig in Berea, Kentucky, and I'm off tomorrow afternoon for New Orleans. After that I don't travel again for three weeks, though I have some classes to teach online. I've finished preparing all the new or new-to-me classes for a while, as well as several other time-eating commitments that were sending me frantic.
Memorial Day weekend was the first time in many weeks that I felt I had any breathing space at all, so phragmites and I took a hastily-planned trip to the mountains. We found a "cabin" (with full kitchen, hot tub and satellite TV) that was surprisingly available, and headed for the northeast Alabama hills. Saturday we did a little driving around and looking at Olde Touriste Shoppes, and Sunday we hit the real tourist traps of Rock City, the Incline Railway, and Ruby Falls, all on Lookout Mountain on the Georgia/Tennessee border. It's been a long time since I did something that was so blatantly touristy-kitschy; it was a terrific break for me, just what I needed. You can see waaaay too many pictures over at Flickr if you're so inclined.
We've started the process of looking to buy a house. We have an agent who's shown us a small heap of properties; I had to call a temporary halt to deal with my work craziness, but we'll be picking that up again soon. My folks have given us a substantial chunk of cash and stock for a down payment; I'm not quite sure how to express to them how grateful we are for that. We figure we could afford to live in a house we don't quite want in the area we're in now, or a house we do want in an area that isn't quite up to the one we're in now; the latter seems by far the more reasonable option. Housing prices in the Atlanta area haven't dropped, at least not in the market sector we're looking at, so we're just going to have to bite the bullet. My next life goal may be to outlive my mortgage.
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
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12:24 pm
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| Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
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11:04 am - Don't wanna be sick
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This has been the Crazy Week O' Classes™ for me; I've been teaching online (i.e. talking a blue streak) four hours each on Monday and Tuesday, two hours yesterday and another two coming up this afternoon. Around noon Monday I got that tickle at the back of the sinuses that says "You're about to get a cold, you lucky thing!" This is so not the week for that. So I've gone on an intensive regimen of zinc lozenges (M-T), lemon-honey-echinacea cough drops (T-Th) and hot drinks with lemon and honey (throughout). It's kinda working. I did get a cold, but it seems to be speed-marching through its various stages: three quarters of a day in the nose, a day in the throat, and today I feel like I'm on the tail end of the throat thing. I'll sound like a bass-baritone buzz-saw for this afternoon's class, but I'll survive.
And I will be feeling better by Saturday, d____t, 'cos we're going on VACATION!
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| Saturday, May 17th, 2008
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11:09 am - Neither rain nor heat nor...incompetence?
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Our local letter carrier is not likely to make employee of the month anytime soon. She makes her delivery round any time between 3 and about 8 p.m. with no discernable pattern, and we'll often find mail for 806 in our box (we live at 808). Today our neighbor from 814 came over with a certified letter for us. You know, the kind you're supposed to sign for, at the time of delivery? So it was delivered un-signed for, and to the wrong house. I'm thinking this warrants a call to the postmaster.
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
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11:11 am - I had to get this out of my head.
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I'm way swamped at work these days, and don't have time for this. But it was hammering at the back of my brain and distracting me, so I needed to let it escape. A fragment of a balade:
Som knaves be who wolde a maiden faire
Betake and wrappe aparte from worldes view
So that ne folke, ne licht, ne songes aire
But walles derke were al she ever knew.
Such maneere nevir made no mayden trewe:
I wolde in sonnes beeme my way avaunce,
For maidens longen onlie for plesaunce.
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| Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
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11:22 am
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So this is the first time I've actually managed to get through National Poetry Month while actually posting a poem every day. My next goal: surviving May with my sanity intact.
( Eating Poetry )
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
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11:07 am - A rumination
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Someone I know on LJ, under eighteen but old enough to have opinions, has expressed a determination never to have children, and also averred that that determination will not change in the future. A lot of the reactions this person has gotten have been of the "dear, you'll feel different when you're older" variety. This seems disrespectful to me. Lots of people have made decisions not to breed and stuck with them. There are many and varied reasons one might make such a decision, and the mindset leading up to the decision may be well determined before adulthood. But the other thing is, this person hasn't given us the full background. Nor do we have a right to ask it. There may be serious factors at play here that are None Of Our Business.
Yes, never is a long time. But how many people have set the course of their lives early on? Lots. Why should this decision be any less binding than another?
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(16 comments | comment on this)
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10:21 am
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| Monday, April 28th, 2008
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8:54 pm - Hey, a book meme! Count me in.
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Shamelessly nabbed from ophymirage and capricious_k.
What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.
And as did Ophy, I'm starring the ones sitting unread on my shelf.
( 106 lines follow, of course. )
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(comment on this)
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1:27 pm
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| Sunday, April 27th, 2008
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11:38 am
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