Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark writes, "Baseball and soccer have Aztec antecedents. Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human. Lacrosse is an ancient Native American game, and hockey is related to it. But basketball is new. We've been making movies longer than we've been playing basketball...basketball has become - at its best - the paramount synthesis in sport of intelligence, precision, courage, audacity, anticipation, artifice, teamwork, elegance, and grace". He obviously never saw a bunch of English PhD students trying to play the game!

But we have a lot of fun, and we've actually gotten a bit better over the last month of playing. I suppose that isn't saying a whole lot since most of us had a lot of improving to do, but we have gotten a bit better. We keep picking up extras who are much better than most of us (one of our players is very good at the game - he's also tall - so his skill and height really dominate the rest of us, but he's also great at pulling up and giving those of us who aren't so good a chance to shoot, or pass etc.).

Intelligence? Off the court, sure...on, hmmm, I don't know about that. Precision? Those of us who can shoot, sure. Courage? Definitely! Just showing up and playing in public parks shows courage! Audacity? (See courage) Anticipation? See, there's another of those skills that we need to work on...some of us (myself included) still are a bit surprised when the ball ends up in our hands! Artifice? Nope, not good enough for that yet. Teamwork? Yeah, you bet! Best part of the game as far as I'm concerned. Elegance and grace? Nope, at least not for me...at this point, I've managed to fall and/or injure myself at almost every game - But I'm probably the least coordinated of those on the court. Of course Sagan was talking about NBA play, not the kind of game we play, but his point that the game is the most modern of the major games we play and that because of this, it is a game of skill and intelligence is well taken.

Massachusetts, or at least this part of it, has very loud crickets. Even with the windows shut, you can clearly hear them at night.

They certainly sound like crickets, though I'm thinking they might be some kind of cicada or something since they sound so much louder than I'm used to hearing (and I grew up on the prairies!)

I was going to blog about the fact that I hate August since - as a student - I never have any money left that month, but after talking to a friend, I realized what I really wanted to talk about was child custody and visitation rights.

For most of this year I've been able to get on with life and just concentrate on what I have to do and what the girls need from me. They've called their dad quite a few times, though since he and his girlfriend split in March, they have only been able to leave messages and hope he calls back when they're at home (since he doesn't have his own phone). The girls were frustrated many times by this system, but there wasn't much we could do about it and I always said to feel free to call whenever they wanted to - I seldom had to cut an excessively long call short because they seldom talked for very long. Aside from all the frustrations intendent in this, I think things went okay over the year. I know they missed him, but they also had the chance to get to know their stepdad a bit more, and I've been told by other adults who have talked to them about it, that they are feeling pretty comfortable with our new family arrangement.

When we left, I made it clear that I was willing to split the costs of transporting them to see him, but that I expected him to be the first to shell out money (since I'm usually the one doing it). He promised at Christmas, and then during their term break in February to fly them back, but didn't...hence some of the disappointment on the girls' part. What is so frustrating is trying to stay fair and keep my nose out of it, when all I feel like doing is ranting about how unfair it feels when I (with my parents helping for one child) spend money I really don't have (i.e. student loan money that accrues interest as I'm in school) to send them back for a visit to their grandparents, and he gets to waltz in and play daddy as if nothing has ever happened.

I've tried to say that it doesn't matter, that my kids are smart & they'll figure it out on their own, or that I don't need his money - I knew I wasn't going to get anything out of him and I've accepted that I'm the one who provides all. And I know that access and support are supposed to be two entirely separate things, but sometimes I just want to scream about how unfair it feels to be the one providing, and disciplining, and all the other hard things, while he does god knows what and waltzes in like a white knight on a horse.

DAMN!

The thing is, he'll always be their dad, even if they get angry and disappointed at his behaviour and it's really hard to be a grown-up and not care that you get the same level of consideration (and Dwayne of course gets less) as he does even though you do ten times the work. It's always been that way.

One of the most shocking things for me when he left was how little my relationship with the girls, and our lives, seemed to change. I really had been carrying most of the family work anyway, and I didn't feel like my work load (physical, emotional support, social convener etc.) in raising the girls increased. I was still doing the same things, not more, and maybe even less because I had less bs to deal with at the same time. I knew from the start that I wouldn't get much from him either - he paid support for a couple of months, but as soon as it was clear that I wasn't taking him back, it stopped pretty abruptly. And I don't expect to get anything from him in the future. He knows better than to tell me where he lives or works because he knows I can pass that on to MEP, so he trys to stay below their radar.

The whole rant started when I realized that I have a friend who is moving too, but visits will be much more frequent, and they have a much more collaborative arrangement. He cares for his children and it shows. My ex? I really do not understand what goes through his head.

Saw Freddy vs. Jason last night & it was worth it!

I was thoroughly amused by the movie and enjoyed it, even if there were plenty of places where the dialogue dragged a bit. They exploited every Nightmare and Friday movie, and the conjunction of the two provided us with an amusing night.

By far the best part of the experience was the opening night crowd! We went to one of the theatres downtown, so the audience was young (and largely non-caucasian). The audience was really into the movie, with cheers when Freddy & Jason first meet to applause at the end of the final fight scene. The hoots from the guys in the audience when the requisite half-naked co-ed gets axed set the stage, but one of the funniest moments was when the girls behind us said, "oooh, that girl gonna get killed" just when, of course, you knew she was gonna get killed.

Best line? I don't think it's a spoiler... Requisite stoner: "Man! That goalie was pissed!"

Of course, the movie went down much better since we had met friends for drinks before the movie! Not high class, but interesting and even provided some interesting points of analysis for us eggheads (questions of sexuality, politics etc.). If you aren't a fan of the movies or the genre, don't bother going, but if you liked all the previous movies and want to see Freddy go up against Jason, by all means go to it on a cheap night!

The paper is finally finished! Yeah! Nice not to have it hanging over my head. I am never requesting an incomplete mark again - I hate how last term just dragged all the way into the summer.

Now it feels like my summer is rapidly coming to a close.

Actually was able to stay awake till midnight last night after a bball game - usually it wipes me out & I go to bed early. Though we did only play two games yesterday.

The car quit working last week again. Now it is working. How long this will last will be up to the car gods.

Life moves on - I just try to get by.

Like the new look? Thanks Duncan!

Html is one language I certainly do NOT know...though I was wondering if I could make the case with the department that it is a language that would do me just as much good to know as say German, or Latin, or French and they should let me write my language test in it. Then I'd at least feel like I had learned a useful language for the PhD requirements!

I do think I finally figured out how to change the time to EST instead of MST though...not hard, but I'm pretty proud of being able to do it. Did you know that the list I chose from had Swift Current listed? Along with Antigua, Belize, Michigan etc. I thought it rather impressive - Speedy Creek makes the map!

Promised myself I wouldn't do anything enjoyable (including blogging) till I got to 14 pages in this paper, which is about 3/4 of the way through. I did however supervise the children at the pool (the sacrifices one makes as a mother!) before I got to this point, simply because it would've been dark if I'd waited! Sometimes I really am not at all interested in writing something intelligent and it's usually only the impending sense of time passing that motivates me...in other words, the end of the semester approaches. (Speaking of which, it will be fabulous to go back to the semester system - I'm sure the pace will feel much more like what I'm used to than this past year has!) Every time I sit down to write a paper, I do wonder what I'm going to do after I finish my degree, when the expectation is that I write to publish, but I don't have a deadline hanging over my head. What will motivate me then? I'll have to find something that will sufficiently excite me to get over the dread of beginning a project. Maybe the dissertation experience will help me find it...

Speaking of which - congratulations Shea on completing (except for that one paragraph!) your thesis! Yeah!
I think I have a good idea how relieved you feel! Congratuations!

I've been bothered over the last couple of days by something that I did, oh, probably about a month ago without thinking. I said something very off-hand - I didn't even recall saying it until I was told about it by a friend - that really was unthinkingly stereotypical and offensive. And I can't stop thinking about it. I was absolutely shocked to hear that I had done that, and what's more, it has led me to question whether my own self-view is really accurate.

I have always considered myself a unprejudiced and accepting person - I worked at VC and the CFB with all sorts of international students, and even on the one occasion where I didn't handle things too well, it was my temper and frustration, and not a prejudice that got me in trouble. Plus, I knew exactly what I had done wrong the moment I lost it and yelled and apologized to everyone who I had offended right away. And then at CIAS, I was very conscious of diversity and modified the interview questions we used as well as the way I evaluated a candidate's answers to take into account ethnic differences. After all, the way that we interview, and what is considered the appropriate answer to an interview question in North America is very different than the hiring process in other areas of the world. Here we rely heavily on the candidate's responses in the interview and expect them to toot their own horn. In other areas of the world, the recommendation of a former boss, or the employee's resume listing achievements are far more important, and candidates often do not put their best foot forward because what we call 'selling yourself' they see as bragging and bad form.

So what's happened? Why did I say something so horribly unthinking? I've always thought that I'm someone fairly sensitive to my use of language and respect for other people (okay, yes, I know I swear way too much for some people's comfort level, and it's something I've recognized and been trying to change - 'specially when I drive!), so why? I really respect these friends and consider them good friends, but if I am such a bonehead about something like this, how good a friend am I?

After apologizing I was told to forget it - but I can't.
And nothing I can do or say now can take the hurt I caused back.
All I can do is remember.
And know that I'm not as good as I think I am.
I guess that's what regret is for.
But I'm still having problems forgiving myself.

Played basketball again. Enjoyed myself very much, even if my team-mates weren't wowed by my (lack of) prowess. Am starting to wonder however if I am too old/out of shape to start doing this now. I can tell I am going to ache all over tomorrow...at one point I dived and rolled, and now my right hip feels like it belongs to an eighty year old. Maybe I should give it back - somewhere there's a grandmother who's missing a body part!

I do get out and run on a regular basis and I can leg press about 280 lbs., but I seem to get absolutely wiped out by playing basketball. I think I will give it a few more goes before I decide for sure whether I can cut this or not....but I may change my mind after I wake up tomorrow!

The children are home again... I breathe a contented sigh of happiness seeing them again. Didn't realize how much I had missed them till I was eagerly waiting for them to disembark off the plane!

You know you're children are home again when you have to fight for the telephone to make a call!

But it's all good.

I am desperately trying to finish off a paper from last term. I am now down to about ten days, and I've had over two months to do it - long live procrastination! I am just starting to pull myself out of that place where (if you've done this before yourself, you'll know what I mean) you are reading and reading and reading, justifying to yourself that you need to gather more research before beginning to write, but really all you are doing is avoiding sitting down and writing the damn thing. I have to stop reading and start writing. After all, if I write and then find I still need more, then that's the time to head off to the library, not now when I don't need more material, I just need to put that material down on paper.

At least I have finished the biggest part of the marking for class until the end of the term (which, conveniently, is three days after I have to hand my own paper in!) - thank goodness for that!

Saw Macbeth on Boston Common. There were about a dozen of us who met to watch the play. Overall it was an enjoyable experience, though it started getting coldly damp as the evening drew on, and I felt quite chilled by the end of the final act.

Such experiences invite comparison to similar experiences, and I was reminded of other Shakespeare's I've seen recently. Although Shakespeare on the Common was much more professional than the Shakespeare in the Park at Prince's Island, I actually enjoyed my experiences at the latter more. The size of the population here, and the fact that there is obviously much more money poured into the production here than in Calgary meant that the crowd was huge! We arrived in good time, but even then, we were quite far from the stage and missed many of the nuances of the play. I was much closer to the stage the last time I was at Prince's Island, and even though the acting was a bit more amateur (though one of the actor's in the last play I saw also worked for us at ATP), the performance was enjoyable because it was so intimate. When we were groundlings at the Globe (newly rebuilt and only reopened the year before we were there) watching King Lear, I also enjoyed it more because we were experiencing the play much the same way as it would have been enjoyed during its original producation. [Yes, I know there are many differences ranging from the lighting to the attitude of the crowd, but overall, it was faithful in its minimalization of sets, props and costuming]

The setting for this production was war-time, so Macbeth was in uniform as were the rest of the Scotsmen, and Lady Macbeth wore either short or long full skirts; the witches were characterized by long black shawls - to look like gypsies perhaps? The gunshot echoes (yes, some of the sword scenes were updated, though there was still plenty of sword play) made interesting echoes off the surrounding skyscrapers. Made me wonder if they could be confused for the real thing. And the strange man who wandered by sounding like the back-up sound of a large truck adding a sense of the surreal to the play - appropos, I think.

I have come to the conclusion that I like my Shakespeare either utterly groundbreaking (whether it works or not) like the Pericles we saw a few months ago, or intimate like the Mount Royal players in Prince's Island or the Globe in London (as a groundling, having to stand the whole time with actor's making their entrances from among the crowd).

Played basketball yesterday in a game that was much more intense than the moving day one - now I ache all over. Some of the places I ache are places where I want to develop the muscles more, so that's good, but the bizarre ache (which actually started yesterday) is the right bicep...likely from shooting (or the game of frisbee before basketball - another sport I'm not so good at). A few bruises - again, probably from the frisbee more than anything, but we also picked up a sixth player in the park to even out our numbers, and this guy was big! Felt like I just didn't exist a few times when trying to guard him and there was one point where I literally bounced offa him and into one of the other players!

Enjoyed myself thoroughly, but need to get better at the game to really make it interesting.

A year ago today I entered this country, so I thought today might be good day to blog about the experience since at the time, I did not have a blog, and I was in no state to even comment on the process.

A year ago, about this time of day, I was viewing the fantastic beauty of Niagara Falls, but I wasn't as impressed with the spectacle as I think I might have been in a different situation since I was very focused on the big step we were going to take in crossing the border. While I've crossed the Canada-U.S. border many times as a tourist, this would be the first time I had taken a more permanent (yet still of course temporary) step of crossing with the purpose of living here for four or five years. And I was nervous about whether we had all the proper papers etc. Part of that nervousness no doubt had to do with the fact that the reason we had the time to view the falls, and do all the touristy things people do in Niagara, was because we were waiting that morning for our visas to arrive by fedex at the B&B we had stayed at the night before. We were cutting it close! We had also heard horror stories about trucks being ripped apart (I had a complete and extensive inventory of every box inside ours), and of course I was moving with my children, who although I have sole custody, were still going to be leaving one parent behind, and I wasn't sure if that would be a problem. It wasn't at that time, but the next time we went home for a visit, the agent at the New Brunswick/Maine border had a problem with us all having different last names.

Come to think of it, the last time I needed a visa to travel, we did much the same kind of waiting thing. When my family went to Brasil in the seventies, we spent three or four days in a Toronto hotel room waiting for visas from the consulate and hopped on a plane pretty much as soon as we got them (that was a long flight - Toronto to Rio!). Another similarity that hadn't ocurred to me till now was that we arrived in Sao Paulo the night before my dad had to go to work. We arrived in the Boston area the day before Dwayne started classes too.

By the end of the afternoon a year ago, we had waited and been cleared by the INS office and were on our way through upstate New York. We camped along the highway that night, and the next day, I spent much of it on the phone calling places whose ads I had downloaded from craigslist at the public library in Niagara the day before. I drove and dialled while Sandy read out phone numbers and wrote down answers and/or directions. I soon realized what the housing market was like as we drove since many of the places that had advertised the day before, were already taken by the time I was calling the next day. And I imagine the 403 area code of my cell phone put off most of the others who I left messages for. By the time we arrive in Eastern Mass late afternoon of the 31st, we were down to two places - the one we just moved out of, and one out in another community that the landlord said had someone looking at it that evening. Knowing the communities a bit better now, I'm glad we didn't even bother looking at the other place - not only did they likely rent it that night, but it also isn't a great area to live in.

We arrived in Watertown around 5 pm having gotten directions from the landlord, and pieced together those directions with the map. [Rush hour is never a good time to drive a moving truck in an unfamiliar city that has incredibly narrow streets!] We looked at the place, went to the local mall to look for a paper or additional ads, drove back, told them we'd like to take it, pulled out our references, credit report, traveller's cheques, and when they said it all looked good, asked them if we could bunk there for the night (even though the 1st wasn't till the next day). At the time, my predominant feeling was exhaustion and stress, but now that I look back, it must have seemed amusing to the landlord with these crazy Canadians showing up with a moving van full of stuff and landing on their doorstep. He tells me that he loves telling the story of how we, their first tenants (they had just bought the building a couple of months before) arrived. Now that those bad days are over, I enjoy telling the story of how we arrived too, dialing up potential landlords saying 'I'll arrive in town in about three hours, can I come and see the apartment then?' , but it didn't seem funny at the time.

A lot has happened since then, and I can say that I now, finally, feel (mostly) comfortable here.

Was trying to explain to someone ten years younger than me what a 'pigeonhole' was because she had never seen that piece of office equipment/furniture.

Of course this reminded me again of the rate of change in society over the last few decades. Yes, yes, I know it's just the disappearance of pigeonholes that we're talking about here, after all, pigeonholes aren't what you could really call obsolete technology, but it still amazes me that a colleague who's only ten years younger than me has in many ways had a very different experience of the workplace. And my students have an even different view - they grew up with voicemail and e-mail - handwritten phone messages are a thing of the past - even at home!

Makes me feel older than I really am... or maybe I've just been obsessing over passing the 'early thirties' mark into the 'late thirties' one... and my career really has yet to begin. [My inability to accept additional employment/experience outside of my home institution doesn't help make me feel better about getting older and older with fewer and fewer opportunities].

Enought of that - I promise not to talk about age for at least a week!

Life still doesn't feel quite normal yet - and while this move is not a joltingly disturbing as the last one - it certainly has been more disruptive than I would have imagined before it began. Having said that, things are starting to look a little more normal and the box/furniture ratio is decreasing...there are parts of the house that almost look their normal chaotic selves! This move is certainly going to benefit the kids the most. They are the ones who really win out as far as space goes...but all of us will feel like we have a bit more elbow room. Just the fact that you can go to another level where there might only be one other person will help give the impression that you have more room, and that will help a lot when we're trying to study in the middle of winter and you can't escape outside so easily.

Getting near the end of term - which, as usual, is good and bad. Good in that I will soon have a couple of weeks in which I only have to prep for fall, and bad in that I have much to do; lots of student papers to read, and my own paper that I've been putting off with the excuse of the move. I'll have to plan some workdays this week.

Feeling kinda homesick today and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe just because so much is up in the air with the moving, maybe just 'cause I'm missing the girls some, maybe 'cause I talked to my sister yesterday...I just don't know.

All I know is that I keep thinking about home today. When one of the students in my class who is doing a project on nuclear energy asked me whether there was the same level of fear in Canada as the U.S. about nuclear energy, I of course thought of home. And then when I went to get some lunch and realized that I would get both change and bills back after paying the bill, I missed loonies & toonies (and it sure didn't take me long to get used to change again when we were Nova Scotia earlier). But neither of these things in and of themselves should make me homesick - I have people ask me all the time about Canada, and I've certainly gotten used to dollar bills again (at least I'm old enough to have remembered them in Canada).

Don't know why I'm missing home, but I am. Maybe 'cause I haven't heard from any friends for a long time... I wonder if they still think of me....

Maybe I'm just starting to feel like I'm not going to get ahead here - what with the setbacks I've had in trying to get some extra employment. I applied for a scholarship a month ago - Dwayne heard back from them (unfortuntely he didn't get the scholarship), but they haven't even bothered contacting me. Don't I at least rate a PFO letter?

Big, fat raspberry -

Whew! Moving is almost complete... just the cleanup and a last car load of stuff....and then of course all the unpacking stuff.

Today I am feeling exhausted and sore - mostly from the weekend - I could barely move on Saturday! The computer printer at home decided to stop working (not because it was moved (at least I hope not) but because none of the ink cartridges seem to be working correctly) so I showed up at school almost six hours ago to print out a huge pile of things I needed. I still have another three hours here to put in here with student conferences and then unpacking to do at home. Ugh!

Yesterday was nice though - we took the day off of moving/packing/unpacking things because it was our anniversary and spent the day together exploring more of our new environment - yes, it still feels new and sometimes still a bit strange - topped off with a relaxing meal together...and then went home to find that the printer didn't work! Oh well... it was nice anyway.

The actual day that we set for moving was unbelievably ill-timed and plagued with bad luck. The plan was to pick up the truck late morning, drive out to the warehouse where the piano was stored, pick it up, meet friends at the house to unload that piano (2 and 1/2 hours), meet other friends at the old house to load up all the rest of the furniture, unload at the new house. Sounds simple doesn't it? And I thought we had it fairly well timed....

The problems started on Thursday when we found out we would have to go down to Dwayne's school to sign some papers Friday morning. We allowed an hour and a half for the travel to conduct this ten minute business. We barely made it out in time. We were still on schedule though and actually arrived at the truck rental ten minutes early. Unfortunately for us, there was only one staff member present and a simple pre-booked pick up took forty minutes. I hopped in the truck to drive out to the warehouse only to find that the quarter tank of gas that was supposedly in the truck was something closer to just above empty, and it was a diesel truck so I wasted time trying to find a station with diesel before I ran out of fuel.

Then when I got to the warehouse, there was one guy who was going to load the piano into the truck...which shouldn't have been a problem. But, the truck I was given didn't have an emergency brake, so it would roll away from the platform just enough that the ramp barely extended into the truck and the process now required two guys...and the first guy to go and find another one to offer help. So the loading took longer than expected as well.

And then the piano didn't quite fit through the door - it was a bit too long to take the corner (we're talking an inch or two at the most!).

As we were standing (in the pouring rain - only rain we've had for a week before or since then) with the piano impossibly wedged in the door, the guys who were supposed to deliver the fridge four hours later pulled up. And the laws of physics on this planet just do not allow a piano and a refrigerator through the same door at the same time....'specially when one is wedged in tight. Meanwhile, the second set of friends are waiting at the other house....

I need to be very, very nice to my moving friends for the next little while!

Good karma to the one refrigerator delivery guy (the young one, not the grouchy old guy who just sat in the truck and glared) who actually helped us lift the piano over the stair rail so that we could get it into the house and out of their way - wherever you are, you're a saint!

I even had enough energy left for a game of 21 with two of my mover friends (though my score was PATHETIC! they were both very nice about it).

The hassles were mostly from a businesses I had to deal with - the friends who helped us move made it one of the nicest moving days I have ever had - I think when it comes to moving, as long as you have a few cold ones around for the lull times, it's always a case of the more the merrier and not too many cooks spoiling the soup! Here's to our new home!

We're neck deep in moving, so I will only periodically have access to this site, but rest assured, I'm too busy to get into too much trouble!

Move over Rosie the Riveter - Michele is here & she and her wonderful husband sucessfully replaced the alternator in their car!

I'm rather proud of the accomplishment! Unfortunately the celebration of our first foray into the wonderful world of do-it-yourself [major] automotive repair was diluted by the fact that the alternator appears to not have been the only problem with the car since you can't run the A/C without losing power and stalling - and that's not a pretty prospect for a New England summer. But the good news is that the car should get us around town to work, play, and most importantly, for the move that's to take place this week. In older cars, you could just adjust the idle screw, but by the time our car was built in the early 90s the control of idle speed is mostly electronic and is influenced by the proper performance of no less than four separate sensors and three additional components - which of course is just the car company's way of getting you into their shop since you need a plethora of specialized equipment (and knowledge) to diagnose & fix such problems. I console myself in at least being mobile....

Good effort, but the beast has still got us stumped.

This has certainly been the kind of day that you would avoid if you knew it was coming ahead of time. It started out not too bad - I had a job interview first thing in the morning and would've been really psyched about it if it wasn't for the head cold that I'm still suffering through. But even though I didn't sleep well, I was pretty upbeat about the interview. I even managed to find the place with only one wrong turn!...which is admirable for me because I often miss turns more than once in a single trip to a new place, especially without a navigator.

The interview went really well - I didn't have a single coughing attack, and my nose only starting really getting stuffy at the very end of it (since I had heavily drugged myself before attending it - all the more reason to be surprised by how impressed the interviewer was). The interviewer said my resume was really impressive, that I seemed very energetic (one of his first questions was whether my HR position was full-time while completing my masters, which it was), and that he liked the cover letter and thought you could tell a lot about a person by the type of cover letter they write. After all the bad cover letters I've read, I should think I would be able to write a pretty good one!

He offered me a job on the spot - teaching a course that would be very similar to one of the courses that I taught last year, and I could even use the same textbook - talk about minimal prep! The campus of the college was gorgeous - a series of beautiful brick buildings nestled in the woods - very picturesque. I was delighted!

As I drove home I noticed that the battery light was on the whole way back... which wasn't a good sign since it was a brand new battery and it had been coming on periodically at low speeds or at an idle, but it would not go off - clearly I was running on battery power only and the alternator was not recharging it. Not a good sign. But I was heartened by the fact that the course I had just been offered would not only pay for the repair of the alternator, but the other $2000 we've spent fixing the damn car in the last few months...god! I wish we were still close to my brother in law! I barely made it home - I actually had to push the car the last couple of feet into the driveway 'cause it conked out with no juice whatsoever to restart it

[tell me how it is that the annoying reminder ping that you've left the door open and the keys in the ignition can still operate when there seems to be no electricity available to run anything else? mysterious, I say]

So why did I say that I would've avoided today if I could have? Because of what happened next...

As I was leaving the interview, I realized that we had spent over an hour together and that I would have no time to drive to school to meet with the International Student advisor about getting the visa I would need to accept this job. I was going to just drive to school, but the flickering battery light prompted me to decide to head home first and call to reschedule, which turned out to be a good decision since I would have otherwise been stranded somewhere in Newton instead of making it home. I had intended to meet with her yesterday, but when I showed up for the appointment, I was told it had been booked in error and I would have to come today (and make a special trip just for this meeting). The long and the short of that meeting was that I was told I could not accept the job I had just been offered without giving up my TA appointment. This was a new development and would not have been a problem in the days before SEVIS, but since the 9/11 terrorists came into the country on student visas, students are now evil creatures who must be strictly monitored and controlled.

The kicker of the afternoon is that if I had met with this woman yesterday as I was supposed to, I would not have gone to the interview, and the car would also not be dead.
(I'm trying strenuously to avoid swearing on my blog, but some days....)

To top it off, I got a lovely call from the warehouse where our piano has been stored for the last year (since we couldn't get it into our place) telling me that according to their records, I have not paid the handling fee for bringing the piano back out of storage, even though my receipt says that I have. So now I will have to argue with them when I go pick up the piano. I'm not looking forward to the extra hassle. I have had nothing but problems with these people - deal or no deal, they don't run a very good business.

I wonder what will happen in the next few hours before I finally make it to bed?

Exactly one week till central air conditioning! Yeah! I'm having a terrible time getting used to the combination of heat & humidity. I'm used to temps in the 30s, 'specially in Saskatchewan, but the high humidity here kills me!

I was sent an amusing article about scamming the scammers - three cheers for giving it back to those who pester us!

I'm enjoying teaching this new class - most of the student are in their third year or beyond, so they tend to be more organized and far more motivated than the freshmen that I've been teaching so far. The workload for the course is pretty heavy though - once you put together a syllabus, the prep work is done, which usually is the most stressful part of the course, but I'm finding that the amount of feedback the students need regarding their papers is also a lot more intensive than in the freshmen classes since they are each working on a different project. I'm not looking forward to reading their twenty page drafts - that will be an intensive couple of days when I'm not going to get any work of my own done!

They're all business students and the course is a project-based course in that they pick a topic, research it, and present a series of recommendations to the person they've identified who could effect the changes they are recommending. Most of the students write about a problem they observed during one of their co-op terms (since every undergrad at NEU does a co-op program) and address the project to their former supervisor, or, if they worked for the government or an NGO, to the appropriate member of government. Most of them have chosen good topics, but there are a few who are having problems at this point and I'm trying to help them get back on track.

It's really quite amusing - I have one student who is particularly disorganized and whose topic has changed a few times in the last couple of weeks. But he's also a bit of a problem - last day, he came 20 minutes late and then publicly complained that he didn't get anything out of the class! And I think it was the second or third class, he said he didn't think I would be able to understand what his paper was about because he was going to be discussing gaming and chaos theory in relation to securities. I'd been told that this frequently happens and was prepared for it, but before I could even respond to him, one of the other students at the other side of the room spoke up saying "She's a PhD student for goodness sake - she'll understand". God bless him! I continued on, reassuring the student that I am familiar with the world outside of literature, I did pass my calculus classes for my science degree, and what I was here for was to evaluate the calibre of his writing, which I'm more than capable of doing. But it was really great to have a defence come from another student as well - seems more valid that way.

I'm also enjoying the fact that I have a lot of international students in the class - probably a third of the class are exchange students and four of them are from Ireland, so I feel a certain kinship with them - and they don't laugh at my pronounciation of 'project'! (and the student who defended my intelligence was one of them) A couple of them are writing reports aimed at the Minister of Education or the Minister of Health, and are using Royal Commission reports and such to support their research. Now that all makes sense to me! I'm still fuzzy about parts of the American government bureaucracy - but I don't feel bad, since there seem to be a great number of Americans who are confused about it as well! It certainly makes for an interesting class.

I am developing a head cold after being exposed to coughing children for the last week. I've also discovered that it is the ephedra or ephedra-like substance that I don't like in cold medicine. I've never taken just ephedra before for a cold, so I thought I'd try it 'cause I thought it might be less nasty than a full blown cold medicine. And although my nose is clear, my ears feel stuffed with cotton, I feel like I'm dehydrated and my scalp tingles - I particularly hate that last feeling! It's creepy.

What a way to start my time alone with Dwayne!

Back home again - very nice to be in comfortable surroundings, but I'm also sorry that our vacation is over!

The girls are off to Saskatchewan and should be landing in about three hours - it's their first time flying, so they were a bit nervous, but the airline was pretty good about explaining everything to them, and having someone walk them through the entire trip was well worth the money. 'Specially for their first time.

Nova Scotia was nice - the weather was a pleasant mixture of rain and warmth and the countryside was beautiful! It was nice to see at least part of the Maritimes in a season other than winter. It was also nice to be in Canada for a while. It's not that I dislike being here, it's just nice to be somewhere where I know the rules, the expectations; I don't have to calculate temperature, distance or speed - it's what I've grown up with and I know exactly what's what. There really isn't much of a difference between the countries except for those little unconscious things - and I was surprised at how easily I got used to getting coins as change instead of just bills - though the first purchase I made caused me a bit of a jolt when I got the change back. Nice to have some color in my purchases!

We had another hassle coming over the border. It's beginning to get frustrating travelling between the countries on a visa - far easier to be a tourist, that's for sure. They've changed the visa tracking system, so we had the privilege of paying for our departure records all over again. I was a little disturbed today when they tried to take them away as the girls were leaving the country, since that we mean they would have to pay yet again when the come back home. It feels a bit punative - I have to pay every time I go home for a visit. Is that to discourage me from leaving? I thought the problem was that too many people are staying!

I'm not quite used to the idea of not having the kids around again - I suppose by the time I do get used to it, they'll be back!

Long ago Shea, Dwayne and I decided that children don't understand simple physics... you know, if you let go of something in mid-air it will fall to the earth, letting go of an object while spinning will cause it to fly off and hit anything in its way. gravity works, etc. My children are verifying that observation by having difficulty grasping the concept of 'everything' and 'nothing' as well... as in 'you need to pack everything' and 'nothing' should be left in this room'!

The last move was the most stressful one I have ever experienced and while I don't blame them - they were just being who they are - I think much of the stress that pushed me over the top was the behaviour of the kids. It will be interesting to see how this move might be different with them not around for the actual move date.

Sometimes I think I would be beautiful if it wasn't for my kids... wrinkle and grey hair-free... *sigh*

Happy Canada Day!

Unfortunately, I'm not in the right country to celebrate - but I intend on being there by tomorrow night - just in time to be out of the U.S. for the 4th of July. So I guess I'll miss both holidays... too bad.

Had a friend message me saying "I'm having blogger block" and my first impulse was to provide potential topics to blog about...one of which was the relative merits/pitfalls of blogging while drunk (the topic of another friend's blog recently). How exactly does mood (in all its manifestations) affect the construction of a blog?

On second thought, I started wondering what the difference between writer's block and blogger's block might be - after all, they are different kinds of writing, aren't they? Shouldn't the kind of 'blocks' for each be of a different nature? After all, you don't hear about journalists suffering from writer's block as often as fiction writers, do you? A journalist is supposed to be writing about stuff that's going on in the world, and I have the sense that more frequently, the problem has to do with the way in which you want to construct the article less so than what material you will cover. At least, when I did the little bit of journalistic writing that I did for SPARK at U of C, I had a clear idea of my topic and what I wanted to say, it was the way I wanted to construct the article (and that evil word limit!) that was the biggest problem. When you're writing fiction, it seems that the block more frequently refers to a lack of ideas.

Though I understand her desire to find something to blog about if she hasn't blogged in a while - I know there are days when I think I should write something, but don't know what to write.

Stone Reader - good movie. Unfortunately it's only playing in a few venues, and I can't find any listing for the ones outside the U.S. though I do know it was screened in Perth, so it's out there. A docudrama about reading... well, mostly about one guy's obsession with one book and his search for what happened to its author after a well-reviewed but poorly circulated novel. If you love books, you will feel a kinship with the director/editor of the movie as he embarks on a quest that asks not only why this book is the only one produced by its author, but what is the relationship between authors and books, especially when they only write one. I certainly am curious now about the book he is obsessed with - The Stones of Summer - B&N are re-releasing it in September... though I don't know that I'll be curious enough to read all 552 pages of it!

And my first reason for saying I might not read the whole thing? I don't have enough time. But I think that might not be entirely accurate.

The one thought that kept recurring as I was watching the movie was that I was jealous of these men who seemed to have all the time in the world to read. I used to read all the time too - I read voraciously when I was younger. But when I started having kids, reading seemed to be something that there just wasn't any time for during the day, and then at night, no matter how interesting the book, the act of sitting still signalled my body that it was time to go to sleep - if I wasn't running after a child, my body assumed that the child was not conscious and it should follow the golden rule of 'sleep when the baby sleeps'. And so I did. This is why I read very little after the mid-eighties.

And so my first thought was, 'oh sure, that's fine for you guys - you aren't the ones running around after children all day'... and the fact that Moskowitz (the director) says at one point that autumn is his busiest season when he does nothing but work, and his wife and children understand, and reading is the only thing that keeps him sane made me think that reading is a luxury only available to the male, not the reproducing female. But then I realized that there is nothing (but lots of work) that would stop me from engaging in reading voraciously again - I have just gotten out of the habit... and developed a sense that reading for pleasure is a guilty pleasure when there are others around who might need my attention. So if I want to read more, then I just need to do it - if I could start with a goal of say four or five pleasure books a year: one or two that are in my extensive collection of books bought and never read, the one that wins the Booker, the one that wins the Governor General's award, and maybe, big maybe, the one that wins the Orange...but that last one would be only if I think the book is worth it 'cause I don't necessarily agree with the need for a separate award.

Since it's the end of June, should I count that as a resolution for 2003, or 2004?

It's amazing the capacity of our memory for trivial detail - particularly when that detail is associated with music. We spent a good part of yesterday sorting through old cassettes, most of which originated in the 80s. Bands like Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Men without Hats, Rick Springfield, Honeymoon Suite, Led Zeppelin all mixed together and it was amazing that you could play a tape of a song you haven't heard in 10 or 15 years, and still remember all the lyrics. We even found a copy of Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Take Off" on one of the compilation albums!

Also brought back lots of other (particularly) 80s memories. You know, I'm not even old enough yet to start a sentence with "In my lifetime...", but, in my lifetime - as short as it has been - I remember my parents first buying a microwave (one of those ones that was the size of a small dishwasher!), VCR, and computer, which was a Commodore 64 of course. My father purchased it when I was in grade 10 I think and I remember him coming home from buying it (at Zellers of all places if I remember correctly) and saying "I paid $200 for this computer, so you'd better use it!" And I of course felt quite intimidated at the time since I had no idea how I would fulfill that imperative since I had no idea what to do with the thing! But man! What a feeling of accomplishment when I learnt Basic and wrote my first simple program. Sorting through our cassettes reminded me of my first computers class in high school since we actually stored our data on cassette - we didn't have floppy drives till my second year. Computers seemed a lot simpler then, even if I did struggle to avoid looping in the program I tried to write for my final project.

But then I had kids and I really didn't come back to computers until I went back to school, and by then, the things they could do were mind boggling and still confuse me at many turns... (as anyone in my address book discovered this week - I'm still pretty embarassed about being caught on that one)

I also remember buying my first CD player - first anniversary present to ourselves (first marriage), and first cell phone - yeah, one of those ones that was the size of a small dog! Let alone laptops and the internet....both of which I don't think I could imagine living without...anymore than I could imagine life without a TV or a microwave.

But the pace of change in just the last thirty years is nothing compared to what I'm sure my children will see in the same amount of time.

I wonder what the ever accelerating pace of change will do to us... some people just don't respond well to change... and even those who handle it better than others still like things to remain stable for a time. There are a few things that you'd like to be able to count on in your life. Other than of course death and taxes. Will we adapt to such changes, or will it continue to alienate people from each other? Will things become more gray, or will we revert into some kind of dystopian image of the future in which white becomes whiter and black blacker and there is no middle ground? Maybe I've just read too many apocalyptic books.

9 am and its 85/29 outside already! Our second floor apartment just traps all the heat that rises up to it - it was actually nice around 1 am, but other than that...

But I can handle it 'cause I just keep thinking about the central air in our new place! Yes, we found a new place to live - yeah! It's officially a two bedroom townhouse, but there's a finished basement that we'll be using as a third bedroom. It's set up a bit like the two bedrooms in Varsity Courts, though a bit smaller. The cool parts are the georgous hardwood floors, mouldings, dishwasher, central air and the fact that there's a ground level access that a piano will be easy to get through. The condo includes access to an outdoor pool during the summer as well - the kids will really like that one! We still don't have a huge amount of space, but we can spread out a bit more in this place. Hopefully keep out of each other's hair better that way!

Finished a good book - "The Bone People" by Keri Hulme. It won the Booker award in 1985 - yeah, I'm almost two decades behind - but I wouldn't have likely enjoyed this book in '85 - I was reading Orwell, Lewis, re-reading Tolkien, and lots of sf - Asimov's Foundation books, Herbert's Dune books, oh, and a series by Stephen R. Donaldson called "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever"...though the last one isn't sf (which Donaldson is best known for) but a fantasy about a man with leprosy who travels to another world to fight the evil Lord Foul. It wasn't a particularly brilliant series, though the leprosy angle was interesting - it was recommended to me by a customer at the coffee shop I worked at - I don't know that I'd be as excited about it today if I reread the series.

But back to The Bone People - it is not only a well constructed tale, that incorporates Maori phrasing into the text (there's a glossary at the back) and thus becoming an interesting intersection of the postcolonial, but it also is an engaging story - I found myself caught up in the lives of the characters. In a book about abuse, I found it refreshing that the book avoids black and white categorizations, mostly through the characters' introspective passages, but also through some scenes that can only be described as magical realist. The narrative shifts from third to first person narration as well as from character to character. The character shifts can be disconcerting since it is occasionally difficult to tell at first glance who's narrating, but it's always possible to identify the speaker within a couple of paragraphs, unlike, say a book like "All the Pretty Horses" where you could be confused for pages at a time about who was speaking. In that case, the confusion was compounded by the fact that all his characters sounded the same.

The Bone People - good book if you're looking for an interesting summer read that makes you think.

Part of a conversation with a friend: ... she's a teeneager. I'd rather nail jello to a tree then argue with a teenager. I'd actually even prefer to reason for my life with a terrorist than rationalize with a teenager.

I loved the metaphor! feels very right...can you visualize the tree and the jello?

What a blah kinda day! Raining here, not as cold as back home, but dull & chilly nonetheless.

I finally got a call from the landlord of one place we were considering and he was asking for not only a credit report, but proof of income. He seems to think that we cannot live on the amount of money we are living on. Yet we do so. His biggest concern is 'whether we can pay the rent' - believe me, that's one of my biggest concerns too! I'm not real comfortable with having to share this information, especially for a place like this one (it's not the most fabulous place we've seen, but it's cheap and in a good town), but it seems I have little choice if I want the apartment. The place is a little odd - the kitchen is easily identifiable as such, but the other rooms are just rooms with doors of varying sizes (the rooms, not the doors!) and can be used for almost anything you want them to be used for.

I'm having difficulty adjusting to the rental climate here, and part of me resents having to share my income information with a landlord...but you just won't get a place if you don't. It really feels like an invasion of privacy, and to me it doesn't make much sense that landlords are that helpless here when it comes to evicting tenants. I'm used to a system where if you don't pay your rent within the first week of the month, you can be evicted and the police will help move you out if you refuse to comply. Here, that apparently isn't the case and you can end up with people squatting for months or years without paying. I don't get it - this is supposed to the the land of cut-throat capitalism.

Maybe I'm just naive. All I know is that it makes me uncomfortable.

The frustrations of this week are really starting to get to me.

Read an article in the Globe & Mail the other day that says American 20-somethings are becoming more conservative while Canadian 20-somethings are more liberal. Made me think...and I'd love the time to read the book that some of the research is based on.

I wonder what this kind of trend it going to produce? What will it mean for each country? Will these trends bring success? or problems?

No easy answers, just interesting questions.

Haven't blogged for a while...mostly because I've been spending most of my time wondering what heinous crimes I committed in another life that I'm paying for in this one - frankly, I thought being married to a compulsive liar who financially ruined me and continues to disappoint his children would've been enough penance for one life. For most of the week, I've felt like I must have done something really bad in a past life since I've been taking hits from almost every quarter in the past few days. With a little time, I realize that some of it maybe isn't all that bad, and I probably wouldn't have reacted so badly to each thing individually if they hadn't fallen one right on top of the other...so I've given up on wondering what evils I have committed in the past and am just trying to deal with the now.

Since most of the stuff that's been going on is out of my hands, my only option is to learn to deal with it and get on with other things. So in that spirit, I'm trying not to take it personally that my oldest daughter's nose is out of joint because I booked her a flight (with her sisters) to see her grandparents this summer, even though she's been talking about nothing else for the last few months, and it's money I really can't afford to spend. Apparently I didn't consult the princess on the 'when' of the flight, even though it was up to her grandparents 'when' they were willing/able to have them come up.

I'm also trying not to take it personally that my supervisor, even though I have discussed with her how desperate I am for funds and the limits to my employability in this country, hands a job that I had requested back in March to a couple of other students. The reason? I'm really not sure...though I suspect part of it may be because I got my s*** together and trained to teach a new class and she thought it might be overwhelming for me to do both. Ha! I'm used to being overworked...in fact, I usually don't know what to do with myself when I have extra time. My entire post-secondary education has been as a parent of 3 kids - part of it as a single parent - and last year I was working 30 hours a week downtown, TA-ing, AND writing my Master's thesis. I would prefer to be the one to decide how much work I can handle. If that's that case, it doesn't seem fair that my efforts to make myself as useful as possible in the department (to get a summer position) have come back to bite me on the ass.

And I know it's not personal when landlords repeatedly refuse to rent to a family of five...it's just really frustrating! The last one was especially annoying because I called the phone number listed for a place, and it turned out to be a real estate agent. Now normally I'm a little leery of agents because I've had ones that have been entirely unhelpful - either showing you places that are totally unsuitable, or ignoring you - but in this case, the place sounded nice enough that I thought I'd give it a try. Now I also know that many landlords have limits on the number of people, so one of the first things I mention is that I'm looking for five of us. Well, I played telephone tag with this guy for a few days, but finally we set up an appointment to meet the owner at the place. We toured the apartment (very nice apartment - palacial compared to what we're in now), figure out where all the cable hookups were, how to get the piano in etc. when the conversation turned to occupants and the landlord was horrified when I said there were five of us! She turned to the agent and said "I thought you said there were three roomates - I don't want more than three people in here" and he turns to me and echoes the same thing! What a jerk! I told him I had three children, not three roomates - what a waste of all of our time! And then on the drive home, we were both heading the same direction and he cut me off! So, needless to say, I am still leery of agents!

On top of all that are all the other usual complaints from the family, trying to teach that new course, and trying to finish a paper from last term. And now today I have a wicked headache, which not only hurts (of course!) but also makes me hesitant to go for a stress-relieving run in case the activity makes it feel worse!

I sure hope tomorrow goes better!

Saw a swan during my run today. Reminded me of two things. The first, was the swan that got rather annoyed at us on the upper Thames when we didn't have anything to give to it. We had been wandering around Oxford one afternoon, when we turned down a publicway that followed the river upstream. Unlike the annoyed swan, we found a friendly innkeeper at the end, who gladly served us a couple of pints at an inn/pub in the middle of nowhere (you couldn't actually see any other buildings from the pub lawn) and we played a game of lawn chess...that Dwayne won of course! It was one of those cool in-the-moment kind of things that happens sometimes when you travel...no specific destination, no sight that you're determined to see, but just taking things as they come.

After I had passed the swan, it also occurred to me that it was only a stone's throw across the river that Dwayne & I saw a fox the week before. We had both been to the Mount Auburn cemetary separately, and I at least, hadn't really been through much of it, but we walked over the other afternoon and looked around. The place is huge..over 100 acres...and there are maps that show you where all the famous people are buried. We checked out Harriet Jacobs and Longfellow's tombs...Longfellow's was of course much fancier...though Jacobs was nicer than B.F. Skinner's (behavioral psychologist). We were trying to find Skinner's grave, but the area it was supposed to be in was one that only had the small ground level markers...Dwayne kept insisting that it must be somewhere else, 'cause this was B.F. Skinner, he was important, and he should have a big headstone. I told him I figured we were in the right place, where the smallest memorials were, since Skinner was, after all, an academic. Sure enough, it was a rather unimpressive marker! And this is what I'm getting myself into! There were plenty of other notables, including Buckminster Fuller (physicist) and Colonel Shaw (the one who was played by Matthew Broderick in Glory), but we limited outselves only to a few since we wanted to spend time at the tower.

In the center of the graveyard lies a tall hill, and on the crest of the hill is a tower. From it's height, you can see probably half (the north half) or the greater Boston area, and although you can't actually see the harbour, you can see structures that lie right next to it. It's a really neat view.

And the river's really neat...and none of the places we've looked at, except for the one we really couldn't afford, are anywhere near the Charles. Which means when we move, I'll have to find new running places also. *sigh* Oh well.

I have temporarily suspended househunting for today since I've seen lots of places over the last week and have applications for many of them - I'm just waiting to hear back from one of them.

Besides, I still have to finish the syllabus for the class I begin teaching on Wednesday...and if we do take a place for July 1st, we'll want to be out of here in the next two weeks so that we can potentially sublet the place for the last month while the lease runs out. Too much work to do & not enough fun as far as I'm concerned!

I hate househunting! It's just a huge exercise in frustration in this place! The places that I love are way out of my price range, and the ones that I can afford are smaller/as small/grungier than the place we're currently in. And we missed out on a great one yesterday in Watertown by about a half hour. It would've been perfect except for the fact that it was going for July 1st instead of August 1st and in the time it took us to decide that we were willing to potentially lose a months rent to take it (about the length of the 10 minute car ride home) we lost the opportunity. Damn! I won't make that same mistake twice. I'm heading out to a couple of open houses in a couple of hours, and although these places are at the high end of our budget, they sound like they might be worth it... it would be nice to get this nailed down soon!

Interesting melange of activities & experiences in the last couple of days.

Yesterday, I lost my major league baseball virginity to the Sox vs. Cards at Fenway Park. As in many other "first" experiences I've had, this one was made really great by having some good friends who were very knowledgeable and willing to share their expertise with me. We went as a group and the two expert friends were cheering for opposing teams, so it was interesting to see their reactions...but what was almost as interesting as the game experience were the fans - some people take the game very very seriously.

The game certainly is supreme. As you approach the Fenway, you start to see signs advertising parking for the game and once you arrive at the nearest subway station, the crowds start to grow - once you actually arrive on one of the streets surrounding the park, the pedestrians outnumber the vehicles by about 50 to 1 and the pubs are absolutely packed. Even out on the street there's a sense of festivity that extends from the sausage vendors to the fans to the ticket hawkers. Only those who have to travel through the area aren't enthused. The security screen at the gate is a bit of a damper... but at least I went through a turnstile that only had men 'manning' it, so they didn't frisk me...but they were frisking the men. I wondered about the need for such intense security - was there always a need for heightened security, or is it a more recent phenomena? I thought of asking the question, but it was in the middle of a play, and I didn't want to interrupt. And then by the time the inning changed, I was thinking about other stuff. I do wonder what specifically they were so concerned about...I know you're not allowed to bring bags etc. into the park, but I assumed that was because they didn't want you to bring food and instead be forced to pay their prices for a snack.

Fenway park is at least 70 years old, and has quite the interesting history. Though hearing much of this information from friends between innings while you're actually in the park, is far more interesting and I had a great time! And we got great tickets too - thanks Amy! (and thanks to my other 'informant' Kurt!) The only downside was the trip home 'cause I was doing the transit thing. Even the people who got ejected from the stands for fighting were interesting - in that sociological-observing-weird-things-that-people-do kind of way. There was one guy who really hated J.D. Drew of the Cardinals - for a while, you could almost set your watch to his shouts of "Drew, you suck!" every time Drew took to the outfield (since we were sitting in the right-field bleachers). Amusing! So, I had a really good time.

Then tonight, I had the joy of watching an absolutely fabulous portrayal of the wicked witch of the west in the Wizard of Oz! Angela was really, really good in the part! Many of her lines were commands to the flying monkeys...and she was very, very convincing! As she said later, she's had lots of practice bossing people around! She was really good, and even her minor flub worked out because it looked like it was supposed to be that way to add some humor. Of course I'm biased when it comes to my kids, but she really does have a flair for the dramatic, and it showed tonight. Kudos to her!

And in transnational news..the winner of the 'biggest loser dad' goes to you know who...called tonight to wish Sandy happy birthday...her birthday was on the 4th!
There are just no words adequate...and I know some pretty choice words!

And on the late night news...this just made me giggle: According to UPN, ground squirrels are dangerous because they come from 'exotic' places! I could not stop laughing! For a girl who grew up in Saskatchewan and used to get 25 cents a tail from my uncle, the idea that they are exotic was just too much! I know, I know, I realize that the monkey pox that they suspect the ground squirrels are carrying is fairly serious, but to say that ground squirrels come from exotic places just made me giggle!

Melange, as promised...

Frustrating day - spent most of it running around doing errands - grocery shopping, other shopping, looking at an apartment (which was depressing), getting temporarily lost...

This place is really weird 'cause when you look at listings and such, there seem to be oodles and oodles of places, but even if you call the same day, there's some reason why you can't have the place. And it's difficult to get anyone to show you a place if they know you're not desperate to be in within a couple of weeks. If you're planning ahead (or trying to) it's just an exercise in frustration. And on top of that, lots of the good places have really long waiting lists (i.e. a couple of years). We're on some of them, but it's really a moot point. I don't know if I have the energy to persevere and find a great place - it's just depressing so far playing telephone tag, having people freak out about lead contents (until I tell them how old the kids are), or tell you they don't even want to show the place if you're not looking for the 1st of the next month. What a pain in the ass!

At least the car is working (knock on wood) right now! This would be a real pain in the ass if I had to do it all on transit!

This is really amusing - this page will generate poetry off of any url. This is what I got when I punched in the address for this site:

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while.

I'm highly amused!

First weekend in ages that I haven't had way too many things to do...just marking student papers and even that has been relatively painless. Maybe because the students really liked the last sequence we did on madness and death. Maybe just my attitude.

Most of yesterday was a wash out in more than one way - first, because it poured most of the day, and second because I was feeling pretty nasty. Self-inflicted unfortunately. I haven't celebrated the end of a school year in quite such an excessive manner since the year that I snuck a mickey into MacHall duing BSD....that whole year was an interesting one! Now I remember why I don't drink to excess - it's not the fact that I might make an idiot out of myself that night ('cause that happens just too easily anyway!) but it's the fact that the next day is pretty much a wash out that discourages me from getting really drunk. But this weekend I did. I'm not going to feel guilty about it either - just need to do this once in a while.

The yellow menace died yesterday too - what the hell is the use of having a rain coat that only works in dry weather? I was really annoyed when I got home yesterday after walking to the grocery store in the pouring rain to get birthday supplies ('cause of course the car is still/yet/eternally in the shop), took off my raincoat only to discover that the little bit of water that leaked in through the collar and cuffs caused the dye in the lining to transfer itself onto the white shirt I was wearing! Errgghhh! So yellow menace went into the garbage can! I'm sorry that it's gone - I did like the idea that the coat stood for the power of student activism - the raincoat got its name from Jan Finney who, upon seeing it, described me as a yellow menace! Heh! Makes me feel like I at least was able to do some good during that time. At least we got the playground put in - I'm proud of that!

Two days after the exam and I still feel like I'm in a bit of a haze - it must have taken more out of me than I originally thought...or maybe it's just the fact that I'm really tired of being intelligent and can't wait for this term to be over - I can't stand the thought of finishing the current paper I'm working on or the one that I've requested an extension on.

So, instead of writing a paper, I'm going to blog, 'cause it's far more interesting. Speaking of interesting characters, I could tell you about this guy I saw on the bus.

I took a different bus than the one I usually take home, and even though it takes longer to get me back, I didn't feel like walking the extra half mile to get to the regular bus. About two stops along the route, this big guy gets on, youngish, but definitely past high school. He struck me as one of those guys who just kinda drifts for a while after high school until finding some kind of niche, but I found myself wondering if this guy would ever find a niche. When he first got on the bus, he was in the middle of a phone conversation, and as he sat down (on the seats reserved at the front for disabled/elderly I might note), he dumped his oversize bag onto the foot of the woman next to him. She obviously didn't appreciate it, since she winced when it landed on her, but he apparently didn't even notice. I did however, 'cause I was trying to read and his half of the conversation was loud enough to make that difficult.

As the bus emptied, he eventually took over three seats (him & the monster bag), but what kept my attention on him was the rather loud conversation.

I wondered how often this guy alienated people, got beat up, lost jobs, friends, money etc. 'cause he described half his life to the person listening on the other end of the phone. He told of how he thought that he was the only one this other guy (who knows) would never lie to, even though he lies to everyone else... as if he had such a high degree of integrity that no one would ever dream of lying to him. Now, that's not a really off-the-wall claim at face value, but as the conversation went on, I started to doubt his claim. He later described how he stayed up late at a friend's house watching loud movies just outside of the door of a roomate who was trying to sleep and how insulted he felt when the roomate was miffed the next morning! And then how he alienated another friend on a road trip by changing radio stations without asking other people in the car. Apparently the driver didn't care for the music he did, but he thought it was unecessary to ask his opinion since he was sure the other passenger liked the kind of music he did.

I was able to tune much of the rest of the conversation out, but from that sample, I found myself wondering just how clueless this guy could be about his effect on the people around him.

I certainly thought poorly of him, and I only shared a bus ride with him!

I also found myself wondering what kind of dream world this guy seemed to live in. His conversation indicated that he didn't see anything wrong with the way he was making his way through life, and yet his presence in the world negatively affected at least two of us on the bus, if only for a moment. I guess the thing that annoyed me the most was that he reminded me of a certain someone who I spent way too much time living with and HIS relative obliviousness to the effect of his actions on others around him. Why do these people exist in the world? Who raises these people to become the boors that they are? Did their parents just not care? Or was it out of their control? In the case of the bus-guy, I have no idea. For the other, well, there were many things that his parents could have done differently and in that case, the apple didn't seem to fall far from the tree. I guess I worry sometimes because I don't want to raise children who grow up to be such adults. And I feel like I'm doing my damnedest not to produce such people, but wonder if sometimes there's just nothing you can do.

The last thing the world needs is more boorish people!

For anyone with crossed fingers etc. I passed the oral exam - yeah!

WHAT A RELIEF!!!

I am still holding my fingers crossed for my classmates who still have to go through theirs, but I feel like I have been given a reprieve and at least my family knows where we will be next year (provided we get the student loans we need!) Many were happy for me, which also has been very nice - thanks!

Oh, and on a lighter note, I received this link from a friend. At least my oral exam wasn't this torturous!

I'm getting very tired of thinking about tests. And that doesn't even include the fact that I have to write papers as well. I'm starting to run out of initiative - not energy, because I'm not particularly tired, but I'm starting to run low on the motivation that urged me to begin this whole adventure, escapade, quest, embarkment, journey, whatever you want to call it, called graduate school. I still would like to follow through and get the doctorate, so I can teach, but I'm starting to wonder whether that just might not be in the cards.

When I first applied to PhD programs, I thought getting admitted would be the hard part. I realize that many people who begin doctoral programs don't complete them, and I realized that there was a possibility I might not complete mine, but I guess I always assumed that if I didn't complete the program, it would be of my own choosing, that I would have decided that I didn't need those extra three letters after my name to do the things I wanted to do. It never occurred to me that someone else might make that decision for me. It never occurred to me that I might not be smart enough to do it, just that I might decide that it wasn't worth what I'd have to do to get there. So the results last week were an incredible shock - I had to contemplate that whether or not I finish the degree might be out of my control. I'm trying not to think about the "if" and think about it as "when" since the former will just erode my confidence and the result of the test will be what it will be regardless of what I might think it will be. Confused by that last sentence? (So am I!)

I'm having to dig pretty deep these days to keep going - my family and the effect this will have on them is one of the biggest motivators - and also my biggest supporters which is good 'cause I have to admit, my confidence has taken a pretty good lickin' in the last week, and right now, I need to dredge up every iota of support for myself that I can find.

The conference was good, and I'm glad I took the advice of the colleagues who were urging me to go. It was a strange event, and if I feel I have the luxury of time to detail it, I will.

Madison, WI looked so much like home that it brought tears to me eyes, ...well, and then we hit the interstate, and the illusion passed, but it is a gorgeous city and so unlike New England. The weather there was gorgeous too - considering it rained here the whole weekend! Ugh! The only downside was that the forecast out there was for cloud, so I brought almost no warm weather clothing and sweltered for a couple of afternoons.

I am busy trying to figure out how to prepare for this oral exam and starting to get nervous about it - I've never had a good experience in an oral exam - I just hope this one is better than the last.

Okay, so oral committee for the exam is set up and new deadline will be June 2nd (if approved). Still feel really a bit stupid, but do feel better after talking to others who have had to take the oral exam.

I'm hoping that going to the conference this weekend will help me feel academic again and give my confidence a much needed boost.

Didn't pass the written exam with flying colors - I was one point short - now I have to take an oral exam.

I hate oral exams - I get very nervous

Feeling kinda stupid right now.

I never would have thought that moving to a new country would mean that I start drinking imported beer, but that's what's happened. I've developed a liking for Corona, Stella and Heineken that I never had back home, or at least, I've appreciated them that much more. There is, after all, no Big Rock around here - something I lament almost every time I order one.

There is a local brewer here of course, but I have yet to really fall in love with any one of the varieties it produces...though there is a New Hampshire brewery that produces a pretty good brew, if you're in the mood for a light beer - I have yet to find a good local dark. So I drink imports...German, Mexican, and English. And with the strong American dollar, it's actually cheaper to buy Labatt's here than the local brew!

Beer's on my mind today since it was a wonderfully hot day - almost too hot to have to drag books back and forth to school and the library. We seem to have jumped from some kind of mild winter/cold spring right into summer. I can't complain too much - the warmth is nice, but I'd much rather have the nice weather when I'm finished writing papers in another three weeks... *sigh* Can't wait for summer to actually arrive!

Nice day for a run - first day in a long time that it hasn't been raining or just plain cold.

One nice thing about this place is that there's lots of good running. We ten minutes from the Charles and the running paths along its edges run for over 30 miles. We're really close to the start of the path system, so I mostly head one way, but there's plenty of room to run. We're also near the Cambridge city reservoir, a huge graveyard (it's actually very nice) and a country club. The only problem is getting to them since the driver's here are crazy!

The other wonderful thing is how cool it sounds to say that I ran through three or four towns during an average run. We're so close to the edge of town, and it's small enough that it doesn't actually take much to run all the way over to the next one. A good cardio workout always lowers my stress.

I saw a man trying to fly today...but he didn't get off the ground. Too bad.

Interesting city I live in.

Most of my students (engineers) haven't heard of blogging. I thought that very weird...on second thought, maybe blogging is just lit-geek, whereas engineers have their own techno-geek things...maybe I just have an '80s definition of geek in mind....

speaking of geeks in the past, check out the telnet link on Duncan's site for Wednesday - wild!

Can you solve this riddle?

It is greater than God, more evil than the devil, poor people have it, rich people need it, and if you eat it, you'll die. What is it?

Apparently 80% of kindergarten children got this and only 17% of Stanford seniors did. Can you?

It's now something between a month and a biblical forty days since I began this thing, so a retrospective seems in order.

One of my misgivings about beginning this venture was that it was nothing more than an excuse to feed my ego. Is it? I would have to say yes - it's one place where I can say anything I want without being edited. On the other hand, if you look at many of the posts, they're usually similar to something that I'd say to friends over a drink...and yes, I'll admit they're probably more structured than a more verbatim transcript of the kind of thing I'd say over drinks, but that's because a) I have time to not only construct what I say, but edit it before posting, and b) I'm usually cold sober when I post. *grin* ...usually....

So yes, it's egotistical - I was right on that account. Does that mean I'll stop? Nope. It may be self-indulgent and narcissistic, but there are plenty of other activities centered on myself that I could be engaging in...they're just less public. So, the reality wouldn't change, just the appearance.

So then, what about my averred intent to keep in touch with friends who are far away? Well, to that one, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I've had friends who have e-mailed or chatted to say congrats on finishing the exam etc., so I know some people are reading. But others, I don't know. Maybe I need to change the format to insert comment boxes, though I'd really rather hear from friends on a more substantial level like an e-mail or a short chat; neither replace the great feeling of sitting down with a good friend face to face, but since I won't be seeing anyone in the near future (at least that I know about, though anyone planning a surprise visit would be welcome), electronic communication is the next best thing. Of course what I'd really love is to see the friend who bought a new car that she's proud of pull up to the coffee shop in it, or see how the friend who lost 5 pounds looks, or even see the expression on a friend's face to attains her own personal milestone that she's been working toward for months, but that's not a possibility. A hug, a touch, a smile, from a friend who's dearly missed would be the sweetest delight right now. But that isn't going to happen, and instead I send bits of energy out in the hopes that they reach the people I want to stay in touch with.

That may sound sappy, but, that's me too, and at times I miss my friends very much. I can't imagine being here without my family...how much more lonely that would be, I just can't fathom.

So, in the end, is this blogging what I expected it to be? Well, no. In my experience, not much that you attempt in your life is ever what you expected it to be, but yes, the effects of the blog and what it has allowed me to do and express has met my expectations. It is a highly versatile medium and my relationship with the activity has ranged from a near sublime, creative expression, to something more akin to my sister's response when I told her about it: "blog? what's that? sounds like something you do after a saturday night out!"...

So, all told, I guess I'll keep plugging along hoping that the people I care about read it, and know that I'm still out there and thinking about them, even when I don't have much to say!

Okay, mother's day report: My mother's day began without lustre...but then thanks to Dwayne, he got the girls to make breakfast, then we went to an early showing of X2 (maybe not traditional, but I still enjoyed it!)...later in the evening, I enjoyed a tasty dinner and watching The Godfather while getting a pedicure. Maybe not a traditional sounding mother's day, but I loved it!

Since I have not much else to say right now, I'll insert an amusing post from William Gibson's site. Very creative!

IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER

WASHINGTON POST STYLE has a contest in which readers submit instructions for doing various things, their choice, as written by famous authors. Jeff Brechlin of Potomac Falls recently won for the following, for wonderfully obvious reasons:

The Hokey Pokey (as written by W. Shakespeare)

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.

Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.

The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

Reminds me of a book I once purchased by Stephen R. Boyett called Treks not Taken with chapters like "The Trekking" not by Stephen King, "Trek of Darkness" not by Joseph Conrad and "Oh, the Treks You'll Take!" not by Dr. Seuss. The last one is particularly amusing as it begins:

The whole thing began
In the Transporter Room
When the Tranporter Chief
Beamed up a ZLAGOON!

It amused me during a long plane ride...if you have one of your own coming up, I'd highly recommend it.

First comps nightmare last night (yeah, I know, a week after the test!)...but this nightmare was about getting the results back. Since it was a nightmare, I guess it should be obvious that in my dream I failed the exam and was asked to withdraw from the program. The worst part was the sinking feeling I got when I tried to figure out just exactly how I would tell my family that I messed up all their plans as well.

On a positive note...and assuming I do pass the exam and am able to stay... I was at a meeting on Friday in which the head of the department assured us that there would be TAships available for anyone progressing well through the program for their entire degree - which might seem like a given, but there was a point where we weren't sure if we would have to compete for those positions (with of course the possibility of not getting one just because there aren't enough to go round). The bad news is that it doesn't make a big difference to my budget every year since the stipend only covers less than half our monthly living expenses. And while it's not quite Ichiban every night, it's not far off - there isn't much room for the extras. But this is my choice, so I'm trying to live with it.

On the academic front, I still feel a bit stunned from the test last week - I don't think I realized until after how stressed it had made me. Now the push is on to put together papers within the next three and a half weeks. At least I've got a definite okay on one paper topic, and a qualified okay on the other. Last term, for one class that I was taking, it was only the third paper proposal that was accepted, which was a bit frustrating to say the least! I also have to revise a paper I wrote last term, so that it's ready for the conference where I'm presenting it at the end of the month. It will be kinda neat to be at the conference, but the timing isn't the greatest, so I'm looking foward to it less than I'd like.

I continue to experience mixed feelings about being here. Some days, I really feel homesick and can't wait to get back - that usually happens after I've had to spend what I think is way too much money for something, or something weird has happened like having my mail opened.

But then there are days like today or last Saturday, when I'm happy to be here. I was surprised to see flurries forecast for Calgary, whereas here I was wearing shorts and a sleevless shirt all day catching a few rays...very nice weather. And last Saturday, we were invited to a post-comps BBQ at a colleagues house. The last time I was at a BBQ was last summer with a very good friend and her family and while it was nice to relax with people who are becoming friends, it also reminded me how much I miss my old friends. The weather was a little cool, but was nice to get out of our usual routine for the weekend (which usually involves way too much studying), and to get out of our town to drive over to another one. Their place is in a nice town, only a few miles away and since we're planning to move this summer to someplace a bit bigger, I was scoping it out.

Have I also mentioned how much I hate commenting on student papers? After the fourth or fifth paper that is talking about the same thing, and making the same mistakes, I start to feel like I've said this already and wonder how much effect it's really going to have on the student's subsequent papers...especially when I get the next draft of the paper and nothing's changed! Oh well, it's part of the job. But I'm obviously procrasting right now on finishing the task. And I'll have to do it all over again next week.... *sigh* Back to work!

Weird thing today on the local bus. For the first part of my ride (I get on about halfway along the route) I was the only woman in the ten passengers. Then another woman and a man got on...but she got off two stops later while another man got on. So then I was the only woman on a bus of twelve people.

It's not the first time that I've noticed many more men on the bus than women, but this was the most highly disproportionate and noticeable incident. So what's the deal with guys riding the bus in the middle of the day? One guy was pretty old, so maybe he was retired, and two seemed to be students because one was reading a library book without a dustjacket (usually means an academic book) and the other was reading a photocopy of a journal article (biology it looked like), but what about the rest of them?

Am I just perpetuating a sexist stereotype in even wondering about this? Am I wrong in thinking that there still are remnants of a culture that sees men working during the day while women rely on them? (After all, Watertown is a pretty blue collar, conservative community) I certainly don't think it's a good culture - I wouldn't be doing what I am if I thought women should be relying on men, but the biological reality is that women have babies, and when they're part of a heterosexual family, they usually take more time off of work etc. to care for those children than men do. Though, as an aside, employment law here is far less generous than in Canada and you're only guaranteed your job for 3 months of mat leave as opposed to the twelve I'm used to. But there must be a reason why I've seen more men on buses than women on more than one occasion. Do more women think that they're too good for public transit? Or do they take the train instead? Do men just go out more? I've noticed it before in the morning and the evening, though this middle of the day incident was the most unusual one.

Maybe it was just a weird blip in the usual fabric of coincidence, deja vu, statistical probability.... but it was weird.

Some words are probably in order for anyone wondering how the test went - and the short answer is, I'm still alive!

The long answer would mean that I would need to regale all with a complete and detailed summary of each question. I will not do so - suffice it to say that I performed I think very well on two of the questions, fairly well on one, and not so great on the fourth one. Part of my success and whether or not I will pass this test will depend on how my appraisal matches with the markers'. Last year, one of the students who took the test was marked by his three marker on one question with a Pass, Pass with Distinction (i.e. very well done) and a Fail! How that happens, I don't know, but I certainly hope I don't reprise that performance!

I'm already and desperately moving on to all those things I put on hold while studying for this test, but one of my colleagues held a BBQ yesterday, which was very nice, very relaxing, lots of great conversation, food, and beverages, so although I'm not crazy about the amount of work I have to catch up on, I at least had one day that I did not worry about watching the clock, or opening any books...and that hasn't happened in months!

Onward and upward....

It's done.

I cannot blog since I used up all my words on the test. My brain needs to recuperate.

Day of the test...right now the only thing I'm doing is trying to keep myself calm and focused.

No nightmares about it...though what scraps I do remember from last night were bizarre in other ways!

The temptation is there to scramble to try to learn one more thing or to memorize one more concept, but I know that won't do any good. What I know, I know. And what I don't know I will not learn in the next hour before leaving for the venue. Overall, I feel fairly confident in my preparation.

The only thing I feel a bit weak on is the special work. We're given the option of preparing to write about one of four 'special works' by knowing what they are ahead of time. In my case, I chose to read the Victorian novel Middlemarch. The idea behind this strategy is to allow you to prepare not only by reading that particular work, but also familiarizing yourself with all the criticism surrounding it so that you can answer a more detailed question. The catch of course is that you're expected to know so much more about the work and I don't know if I'll remember all the key theorists who have discussed the novel. The positive side is that, even though I've done all this work for it, I'm not committed to doing a question on the special work. It would feel like such a waste to have done all this preparation and then not use it, but if I'm not confident about the question, I'm not going to attempt it and try for something else.

I am a bit nervous, but I'm sure I'll do fine. And even if I don't, there's a possibility of a re-test (not that I'd want to go through all this preparation again!)

Off to the races!

Yeah! I got assigned a section for teaching this summer!

While it would be great to have the summer off, I can't afford it, so this is the next best thing - yeah! It's a course I've never taught before, so I'll have lots of prep to do....after Friday!