Category: life

crunchy bits and squeezy bits and cranky bits

I started this post a week ago. I have a lot of drafts of posts lying around collecting dust. Seriously, I must have well over a hundred draft posts in various stages of completion. And seriously, I think they are dusty. Some of them even have cobwebs.

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Life has been hectic again (when hasn’t it?) and I’m trying to fit all the bits and pieces together.

A large item that’s been on my mind is that I’m finally going to try to make a push to finish my degree. Sadly, I am really not all that close, even to being ABD. I finished my coursework ages ago. But coursework was the easy part, what with the structure and the regular, manageable assignments with regular, manageable deadlines. My other requirements are larger and more nebulous, with typically much fuzzier deadlines. I have this bad tendency to push off my own research until I’ve worked my way through my other obligations. The trouble is that my other obligations manage quite easily to fill up all of my available time.

Since May, Phoebe and Theo have been in childcare 5 days a week, an increase from the 3 or 4 days they had been going. This gives me more available time. In theory. In practice, there have been more weeks than not during which there was at least one holiday, vacation day, or sick day. Since May I have travelled to a conference in Chicago for work, visited my family in California, visited my in-laws in New York several times, had a short trip to New Hampshire, a visit to New York City for BlogHer, and then most recently another trip to Chicago for a funeral. My job has kept me busy with deadlines for conferences and papers, plus meetings and running subjects. Our house continues to kick my butt, with its demands for upkeep. My head has been full of concern for family and friends.

Each time I have gone back to my own research, I have had to regroup, and remind myself of what I was doing, what I’d done last, and what I was about to do. (I’m working on figuring out better systems for keeping myself on track and moving forward, but I will probably save that for another post.)

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I know that I can do better than this. I feel like I’ve just been making excuses. I used to be an effective and productive person. I’m trying to get there again, and right now it feels a lot like crunching. I’m trying to squeeze everything tighter to make room for my research. Honestly, all this compression has made me cranky.

One of the few places I can find time to squeeze is my time spent online. Since I rarely get to see friends in person, I’ve been clinging to my online world, the interactions with friends I see in blogland and on Facebook. But I have to cut back. I have started cutting back. (In the last couple of months or so, I’ve had several unhappy exchanges and experiences that have soured my online world and that has helped me pull back. Though, again with the cranky.)

Since I started blogging several years ago, I have spent a lot of my time offline (such as while I’m driving or doing laundry or dealing with other largely thoughtless tasks) thinking about my life online. Often thinking about posts I’ve read, or posts I’d like to write. I somehow need to shift my focus so that I spend that time thinking about articles I’ve read and papers I should be writing.

I’m not saying I’m going to quit blogging, but I can’t participate as much I have in the past. I probably will start leaving even fewer comments, even though I intend to keep reading posts.

I still hope to post here from time to time. Maybe even a couple of times a week if I can do so in a constrained amount of time. I hope to dust off some of the drafts that have been piling up for the past several years, and maybe I’ll still manage to get out some of the ones that have been cluttering up my head.

I’ve been sticking with Project 365, taking and posting at least one picture a day, and that will probably continue to be my main creative outlet. Taking pictures is something I can do in a few minutes if I need to, or that I can do during my time spent with Phoebe and Theo.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this post, but it feels like I’ve been leaving my blog hanging.


This photo doesn’t really have anything to do with anything in this post, but I like it.

running around

I’ve realized that, once again, I’ve let more than a week go by between posts. I’ve had a lot going on, in my head as well as my life, and I can’t quite manage to get my thoughts together enough for a real post. So I will fall back once more on posting some photos. Here a few from last weekend, when we went for a picnic and walk along a trail that runs beside canal by one of the old mills in a neighboring town.

always late to the party

Theo turned two a couple of weeks ago. Not only did I not manage to post anything here about it on the day itself, but we didn’t manage to have a celebration. Our reasons were many and varied:

    a) It was a weekday
    b) We didn’t want to have the kids sugared up and and excited over new toys right before bedtime
    c) Theo is still too young to understand what a birthday is.
    d) We didn’t have our act together.

We would have done something with the family (as in “just the four of us,” seeing as we have no nearby family members) the following weekend, but that weekend had back-to-back parties: Phoebe’s karate school summer party on the Friday, a baby shower for some friends on the Saturday, and Phoebe’s preschool beach party on the Sunday. Not only were we totally zonked, but reasons b through d were applied once more.

So it came to be that it wasn’t until this past Saturday that we managed to get our act together. Not only did Theo get to open his presents, but Phoebe and I baked and decorated a very festive cake.


Phoebe comes in for a smooch.


Theo is intrigued by the colorful circle.


Theo is uneasy about the flaming things.


Phoebe steps in and shows Theo what to do with the candles, thus sparing him the need to get closer to them.


Once Phoebe blew them out, Theo was even more freaked out by the smoke.


“Daddy, save me!”


A piece of cake.


Theo makes his peace with the cake.

One last thing to share: at dinner time on Theo’s actual birthday, Phoebe said, “I’m so glad Theo is 2 now, because that means he won’t argue as much.”

I must have missed the fork in the road.

A friend from the 365 Project group commented on a recent photo: “Lots of inspiration on the morning commute, eh?” To which I thought, “I should take more photos from the afternoon commute!”

So it was that yesterday I found myself taking a lot of photos on the train ride home. It was raining, and I was having fun with the water drops beading on the window. As the train moved, the patterns behind the drops changed. Much of the ride was just a blur of green, as we sped past trees and undergrowth, but as we slowed coming into stations, the patterns would get more varied.

As I’ve mentioned several times¹, I’ve started taking the train into work more often. I really like taking the train, and in some ways it is more relaxing than driving: I can read (or even nap) during a big chunk of the commute, and don’t have to worry about city parking or traffic. On the other hand, it takes longer. When I drive, my commute is about one hour each way to get to work. When I take the train, it takes a bit more than 2 hours each way. A good hour of this each way is spent sitting on the train, the rest is spent driving to and parking at the train station one end, and taking the T and walking on the other end.

Yesterday’s homebound commute took 3 hours and 15 minutes. Because of a tree.

At the station 2 before mine, the train started to pull out of the station, and then stopped again. After a few minutes, the conductors came through to announce that there was a large fallen tree on the tracks ahead, and that it was too large for the train to push through. It apparently fell from one side of the tracks, where the root ball was still intact and partially buried, across both tracks, and smashed into the fence on the other side. We were told that a track crew had to be called to cut through the tree to let the train pass. There were murmurs of passengers volunteering to help move the tree, but the conductors believed the tree was too big², and the passengers were told they weren’t allowed to, anyhow. (I’m sure it was a liability issue.) We were told it would be only about a 20 minute wait. I translated that in my head to mean at least half an hour. Since we were still at a station, passengers were allowed to get off the train, and some probably called to get picked up there. Others waited out on the platform.

I was comfortable sitting on the train, and had my camera, phone and various electronic devices handy to keep me busy. John had already picked up Phoebe and Theo, so I didn’t have to worry about being late. I relaxed and took many more shots of raindrops on the window and rain splashing on the platform.

After about 45 minutes, the official track crew had still not arrived. But suddenly all the passengers hurried back onto the train, and we were told we were leaving. Apparently, the group of volunteers had moved the tree, after all. We got moving again, towards the next stop. Rather than continuing all the way to the end of the line, our train was going to let everyone off at the penultimate stop, and head back to Boston. So, I had an extra 15 minutes waiting for another train at a different stop. Just as the next train was pulling into the station, I spied this along side the curb where I was waiting:

Sometimes, in life, you come to a fork in the road. It is a rare occasion when you come to a spoon.

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¹ Perhaps I’m trying to drive the point home?
² Did I mention that the tree was big? It was, from all accounts, a big tree. Also large.³
³ I should also say that I was glad that the tree, which was quite large, did not fall on the train.

sleeping around

I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. I realized that I have been in and out of an alarming number of beds the past 10 days.

Two Thursdays ago I headed down to New York City for BlogHer. I stayed in a hotel with one friend the first night, and with another in another hotel the second. Then I headed home for one night before we went as a family to New Hampshire for a couple of nights. We got home so late on Tuesday night that I ended up sleeping in Phoebe’s bed with her. The next night was back to my own bed, and the following night we hit the road again to visit my in-laws, where we stayed for 3 nights. That makes 6 beds in 10 nights.

Our daycare was closed for vacation last week, which somewhat prompted the trip to New Hampshire. We had lots of fun visiting Storyland on Monday and Tuesday, a theme park that is geared towards younger kids. We even met up with some friends there. Wednesday I managed to get Phoebe off to preschool, and Theo and I mostly hung out and napped for the day until it was suddenly time to pick up Phoebe. On Thursday, Phoebe went into work with John, and Theo and I spent another day together doing largely nothing, while I tried to do laundry, get ready for the next trip, and squeeze in some emails. (Who are these stay-at-home parents who actually manage fun projects with the kids? I think they are myth to make me strive to behave better. Like Santa. But they don’t bring me chocolate.) And then we headed down to the in-laws, where John’s two sisters were also visiting for a celebration of John’s dad’s 84th birthday. The trips and visits were all lovely, but our schedules have been completely whackadoo. And I’m really zonked now.

So if you’ve wondered about the stretch of silence around here, it’s because I’ve been all over the place and haven’t had much time to myself. My “spare” moments have been eaten up largely by work stuff. I’m happy to say that I have managed to keep up with Project 365, though, so if you want to see some of what I’ve been up to, you can see some of it in my Flickr photo stream.

I’ve got more stuff to say (when do I not?), but will have to get to it later. (Yeah, “later.” We know what that means…) For now, I am hoping to get to my bed before I fall asleep here on the couch.

By the way, please check out the July Just Posts, which Holly and I finally got up today. I ended up throwing up my post in a hurry before packing up my laptop at my in-laws. I learned later that all the links were broken. (Throwing up a post, indeed…) The links are fixed now.

Worms are overrated.

The early bird catches the worm. But sometimes, the night owl catches the early bird for a tasty midnight snack.

For the past several years, after reading all sorts of hoopla and general excitement over BlogHer, the big annual blogging conference, I have really wanted to go. But the timing has never worked out for me to make the big trip. This year the conference is scheduled for New York City. That’s practically next door to me here in Massachusetts. I was sure I would go.

But then, as it usually does, life interfered. Other stuff distracted. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to manage the trip, so I put things off. By the time I got around to realizing that I really wanted to attend, the conference was sold out. I put my name on the waitlist, but months later I still heard nothing.

Then a couple of days ago, I really got a bee in my bonnet about going. So I decided to look into it, and found a message board of people who’d registered, but couldn’t attend, and were selling their tickets. I emailed a few people. In the end, I scored a ticket, and managed to get the registration transfered over to my name yesterday, the last possible day to do so.

I am going to BlogHer.

Take that, early birds.

The stack of 'business' cards I made to bring with me to BlogHer. (Calling cards? Blogging cards?)

(Of course, I am still trying to work out the details of where I’ll be staying. The early birds are all now peacefully slumbering in the knowledge that they have already figured out their travel plans. I squawk in their general direction.)

a day at the zoo

Saturday was the sort of summer day that could make me like summer. It was warm and sunny, not too hot, and with no trace of the stifling mugginess that we get all too often these days. It was just the right sort of day for spending a lot of time outside. Almost on a whim, we decided to make a trip to the zoo.

A bunch more photos are in the slideshow below.

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Thanks to my participation in Project 365, I really made an effort to take photos. John even convinced me to switch lenses and use my zoom telephoto, something that in my laziness, I have almost never done. What’s more, I used manual focus a lot. Manual. Focus. I felt so frickin’ badass. Except that, you know, I was at the zoo. Do badasses go to the zoo?

Holding myself accountable (Petroleum junkie, part 3)

A view from the train on one of my recent commutes.

The deal with resolutions is that we tend to start off full speed, full of enthusiasm and, well, resolve. Before long, however, both enthusiasm and resolve tend to wane.

Last month, in large part in reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and my increasing awareness of abuses perpetuated by the petroleum industry, I resolved to decrease my own personal dependence on petroleum. I followed up with a list of specific actions, and specific goals. Among other things, I had committed to tracking much of our fuel consumption.

Part of why I am sharing these details here is to maintain my resolve. I will cut down on my fossil fuel consumption. But the will may need continued prodding.

Electricity

Tracking electricity usage was painless, thanks to my electric company listing kilowatt hour usage by month for the past 12 months. Tracking was painless, but the results were painful. I thought we were more moderate electricity users, but we are on the high end for our region. Our usage for the last 12 months averaged 921 kwh per month. While the average US household uses 920 per month, our state only averages between 500 and 618 kwh. (The second number is from a spreadsheet available from this site with usage by state.)

While I haven’t yet measured the electricity usage of specific items, I have rounded up the following suspects: lights and fans left on unnecessarily, and electronics. I think our past tendency to leave our stereo/home theater receiver on was a drain. We also have a lot of computers, including one large one that has been acting as a server, for a while for John’s work, but mostly as our electronic media repository. We have now gotten into the habit of turning off stereo and video equipment when not listening/watching, and John has set the server to power down at night. We have become more vigilant about turning off lights, fans and air conditioners when we leave rooms, as well.

The good news is that our usage is showing a downward trend. Our July statement showed 854 kwh compared to last July’s 946, a decrease of over 9%. June showed a 20% decrease over last year. (I have no idea why our usage was particularly high last June. 1063 kwh. It wasn’t air conditioning, as that was a cold and rainy month. What on earth were we doing? Giving each other electric shocks?)

I finally got around to signing up for one of my electric company’s renewable energy options. I have yet to get a bill showing the new rates. The cost by wattage will increase, but I’m hoping that our efforts to reduce usage will offset this. We shall see…

Heating oil

Tracking heating oil was more annoying, as I had to go through my bills month by month. (There’s no summary of deliveries.) Deliveries are also somewhat irregular, in both timing and amount, so when I found that I was missing a statement, I couldn’t really guess how much oil was delivered that month, or be certain that oil was even delivered that month. I finally came across the missing bill (helpfully mixed in with phoebe’s art papers), so have added that to my spreadsheet.

While I haven’t found great sources it looks like the average US household using heating oil uses 730 gallons per year, and in the Northeast US is 822 gallons. It looks like we have had 785 gallons delivered to our home in the past 12 months, which puts us slightly lower than the average for our region.

I can’t tell yet how much our usage is changing, but I think I have reduced my hot water usage. The real chance to improve, though, will come in the winter. With that in mind, I have contacted a company that makes storm windows that may work for us, which should significantly reduce the winter draftiness of our house.

Gasoline

Gasoline was the hardest of the three to track, since we don’t tend to file our receipts. I did go through our credit card statements for the last year, and logged all gas station transactions. I only have dollar amounts, not gallon amounts, but this at least gives me a general sense of frequency of filling the tanks. My sense is that we have filled them frequently. I haven’t really worked out the estimates of how frequently yet.

I’m happy to say that I have taken the train to work much more often. This is easy to track, as I bought a 12-ride pass on June 8th, and have used all 12. Each of those saved me about 35 miles of driving. I’ve even gotten a second 12-ride pass. In fact, due to slower summer schedules, I’ve only needed to drive into work maybe 3 times in the last couple months. (Plus there have been a few trips for recreational reasons.)

Other stuff

I have been doing pretty well with buying local food. I found a place to buy eggs that is only a couple of miles from us, and finally found a farm stand within 10 miles of our house. (I just don’t understand how local produce can be so hard to find in such a rural area. Gah!) We also managed to go blueberry picking a few times at the place down the road…before they abruptly closed for the season. (No!)

I have been doing a good job with reducing our use of new plastic containers. I have used my stainless steel water bottle regularly, and (aside from when I was travelling) have only resorted to buying bottled water a couple of times.

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There. That’s the skinny on my recent efforts to reduce my fossil fuel gluttony. If anyone has actually read this far, you deserve a prize. Like maybe a big, fat virtual hug from me.

looking at cars in the driving rain

Last Saturday, the hourly forecast showed quick storms at 1:00 and then again later in the afternoon, but with otherwise sunny skies and relatively low chance of precipitation. Even with the chance of rain, we decided to motor on to get to Micro Mini Car Day.

As predicted, the morning was clear and hot. We’d hoped to leave around noon to make the start of the car show at 1:00, but with the typical challenges of getting everyone fed and otherwise ready to go, it was closer to 1 by the time we got the kids buckled into the car. As I ran back to the house to grab one last thing, John called out to me to also grab some umbrellas.

I don’t have many superstitions, but I know for certain that the best way to avoid rain is to bring an umbrella. In this respect, the umbrellas failed us. Which is not to say that we were sorry to have them with us.

The hourly forecast was partially correct. It did indeed rain around 1. But it then continued to rain. And rain. And rain hard. And then it rained harder, and it rained some more. And did I mention that it rained?

I did manage to get a few photos, though, as I huddled under my umbrella.

Here is Phoebe with a bigger Mini. (I have a photo of her with the same Mini from last year.)

As you can see, the attendees were still very enthusiastic about the event. Here is someone braving the rain to photograph a convertible Isetta along with some sort of matching toy version. (I was very curious about the sort of pod-like, three-wheeled gray thing on the right, but didn’t have much chance learn what it was. Note that there is also what appears to be a black pole sticking out of the roof of the museum. That was my umbrella strap.)

Here’s are a couple of bigger Isettas. They seat 4!

Here’s that gray pod thing again, which I think looks a lot like the end of a bullet train or monorail. But a whole lot smaller.

I took this photo from the gift shop, up in the museum building, where I’d gone to get a t-shirt for John. (John’s shirt had gotten completely soaked while he was pushing Theo in the stroller, while trying to keep his umbrella moderately covering Theo.)

We spent quite a while inside the museum waiting for the rain to lighten up. Um…it didn’t.

By 4:00, the scheduled end of the show, the rain finally started to slow. By the time we returned to our car, it was barely raining at all. Then the clouds parted, and the sun came back out.

This is all to say that we went to the car show, but it was very wet. This wetness was, further, the only period of such wetness the whole weekend.

I was not sorry that we went, but it wasn’t quite the experience I might have hoped for. For one thing, they weren’t able to have the rides in the cars, at least not after we arrived. The rain was torrential, for one thing. And the attendees were drenched. (Would you want soggy-bottomed strangers plopping themselves down in your car?) And then to top it all off, a retaining wall collapsed from the rain onto part of the circular driveway where the car rides typically passed. So, no ride in an Isetta for me after all.

But I did have some fun.