Category: life

There’s a duck in the dishwasher.

These are words I spoke soon after arriving home last night. “There’s a duck in the dishwasher.” And as is a common curse with those working in linguistics, I (sometimes) actually listen to the words that come out of my mouth. “There’s an unlikely sentence,” I said to John. And googling “duck in the dishwasher” in fact brings up only one (two if you count the archive of the same) hit, with the following line: “…and so before I clean the duck (in the dishwasher) I first have to squeeze the water out.”

So I bring to you this duck in the dishwasher. My own duck in the dishwasher. (Thus increasing the frequency of the sequence of words “duck in the dishwasher” on the web.) And I hope to start a collection of highly improbable-sounding, but spontaneously and appropriately contextually-oriented, sentences. So if you have any to share with me, please do so. (Before you duck in the dishwasher.) (Did I mention I need to nap? Haven’t done that yet.)

duck.jpg

And by the way, this post is largely an excuse to set up my Technorati Profile.

(occasionally) going through the motions

Breaking news! I got a bit of exercise today.

John and I have some exercise equipment in the basement. An elliptical machine and some weights. Believe it or not, we’ve actually gotten a lot of use out of them. And not just for hanging laundry. For several years, we’ve had a tradition of heading down to the basement in the evening, 4 or 5 nights a week, to work out. We’d largely alternate doing weights and using the elliptical. And part of our tradition is to watch episodes of Buffy as we work out. We have the whole series on DVD. And we’ve watched them through a number of times. We’ll sometimes put in other DVDs once we get to the end of the series. But usually, we just watch Buffy. It helps to have something familiar on in the background, so we don’t need to pay too much attention. And the show, with its blend of suspense, comedy and action, tends to suit our mood. Part of our motivation for comes from looking forward to the good episodes. (Because, let’s face it, some episodes are better than others.)

We’ve had periodic lapses over the years, sometimes of several months, even. But more often than not, we’ve managed to keep the schedule going. I even kept up a pretty decent workout schedule through my pregnancy, albeit less rigorous. But last February, something happened. Our lives were totally turned upside-down. And we haven’t been down to the basement too often. (Actually, we even lost a DVD player due to our inactivity. We must have left the disc in with the menu screen on, which meant that the disc was spinning. When we went back down to the basement, a month or so later, the motor was burned out. And then there was the time we discovered mold growing on the equipment, inspiring us to find even more excuses to avoid going back down to the basement.) Anyhow, I’ve been trying to get back to the workout schedule once more, even if slowly. And tonight, I got rewarded with one of my favorite Buffy episodes: Once More With Feeling. Hurray!

subway tokens

I have a long commute. I work and go to school in Boston, and neighboring Cambridge, Massachusetts. But I live out in the boonies. I’ve been dealing with this commute since I started grad school. Until fairly recently, I would pretty much always take public transportation. I would drive to the nearest train station, take the commuter rail into Boston, and then ride the T, Boston’s combined subway and above-ground transit system. The whole commute would take about 2 to 2 and half hours from door to door. Each way. I’d only do this about 2 or 3 times a week, piling up my Boston/Cambridge commitments into crazy-long days. I’d usually be gone from home between 12 and 15 hours on one of my commute days.

Sometime last year, say around February, I stopped commuting so often. I’ve been largely busy with another project, and have been working from home, telecommuting, etc. And days when I’ve gone into work for meetings, I’ve driven. While it has plenty of downsides (traffic delays, parking hassles and environmental impact), driving is also usually a bit faster: 2 to 3 hours total. Plus with more flexible times. So, in order to be able to have that extra time with the other project, I’ve been driving a lot more. But I decided to start taking the train in again, at least some days.

So here I am, taking public transportation again. (And today I got my first Charlie Card. I guess I’ll write about that later.) Sitting on the train and the subway, I have time to sit and think. So I’ve been thinking about subways, and subway scenes.

Subway scenes seem quite popular in movies and TV shows, especially in the action genre. There’s something compelling about the seedy, dark atmosphere of a subway station for a fight scene, with the tension of possible oncoming trains. Or about slipping into a subway car as the doors shut in a chase scene. And let’s not forget the claustrophobic fight scenes inside a subway car.

Subway Scenes

  • Buffy, season 5 “Fool for Love”
    This is the episode where Spike tells how he killed 2 slayers back in the day. The second one involved a fight scene in a New York subway car.
  • The Fugitive (1993)
    This one has an L train (elevated train) rather than a subway. Harrison Ford has a fight scene with the one-armed man in a train car.
  • Daredevil (2003)
    There’s that vengence fight scene in the subway station at the beginning with Ben Affleck, followed by that whole flaming “DD” insignia on the platform in the scene with Joe Pantoliano.
  • The Matrix (1999)
    Keanu (dude) Reeves has a big showdown with Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) in a subway station.
  • V for Vendetta (2005)
    V (Hugo Weaving, again), with some help from Evey (Natalie Portman), uses a subway train to deliver a message. (“Boom.”)
  • Run Lola Run/Lola rennt (1998)
    Lola’s run started because her boyfriend left a bag of money on the subway.
  • Strange Days (1995)
    The movie starts off with a chase scene where a woman (Brigitte Bako) escapes by running into a subway car just as the doors close.
  • Sliding Doors (1998)
    This movie’s alternate outcomes hinge upon whether or not Gwyneth Paltrow makes it onto a subway car before the door slides shut.
  • Crocodile Dundee (1986)
    End of movie. Declarations of love shouted across a crowded subway station.
  • Hellboy (2004)
    Hellboy (Ron Perlman) chases down demons in the subway tunnels, gets hits in the head with a train. (Don’t worry, he’s fine.)
  • The Italian Job (2003)
    Minis get driven down into a subway station, and race down the subway tunnels.

    • elated

    I am so happy today. I have a brand new nibling! I got the news early this morning that my nephew has arrived. A bit earlier than planned, but he and my sister are both doing well. I laughed, I wept, and I danced a happy dance. (Lots of happy dancing, not much weeping.) And all this before 8:00 a.m.

    back to school

    So I started class again today. It’s been over a year since I last took a class. (Though not that long ago since I actually finished the work for that class….) I think I’m getting too old for this. 35 years old. Rushing off to a class where the average age of the students is probably 20. (My face, perhaps in an effort to make me feel younger, has graced me with a nice red zit on my nose. Just in time for the first day of school. It’s like high school revisited.) And can I just say that I didn’t quite feel prepared? As I was rushing around the house trying to get my essentials together for the ride in (car key, wallet, iPod…), I said to myself, “I should bring a pen. I think students use those.” So I grabbed a pen, and hoped that whatever papers were left in my backpack would serve for any note-taking purposes. (I did bring my laptop, though. So, here I sit in class, pretending to take notes. Just kidding! I’m really in the car driving home!)

    So I rushed around this afternoon dealing with registering for class (which I should’ve done weeks ago). And I sat in class with 40+ other students. And I felt almost like I was back in a previous life. And I had various flashbacks to other days in the classroom. Other classes I’d taken, as a grad student, as an undergrad, and even back in high school. And oddly, I had flashbacks to the movie Back to School. Mind you, I’ve never seen more than a few minutes of this movie starring, and apparently largely written by, Rodney Dangerfield. Nor do I want to see any more. (Really not a big fan of Rodney Dangerfield.) But I could somewhat identify with the premise: an old guy goes back to college, where he stands out for being such an old guy. (Also for being loud-mouthed, lewd and crude. Hopefully I didn’t come off as such an oaf.)

    I was going to put together a list of other movies of older folks going back to school. I mean, there must be others I’ve seen or know of. There’s that whole genre of parent/kid body swapping (like Freaky Friday and Vice Versa) that must have some misadventures of adults going to school with a bunch of youngsters. But I really should get to bed instead.

    Oh yeah, and I still owe some pants. I ran off to class earlier with my pants only half- way up. I mean, my pants post. It’ll have to be tomorrow.

    back in 5

    out_to_lunch.jpgJust thought I’d post a note to say that I have not been abducted by aliens, nor have I been buried under an avalanche of plush toys. (Both of those sound somewhat appealing, though.) Much like a few nights ago, my stress levels are high, and concentration levels low. So I can’t really write much now, beyond blah blah blah. Perhaps I will be able to write tonight, when I should be doing work.

    approaching level orange

    rings300.jpg I have to say that my stress levels are not great tonight. Due to a variety of factors good (my mother is visiting) and bad (we are renegotiating Phoebe’s terms of sleep), my time and concentration have been reduced to critically low levels.

    Please note that it is almost 1:00 a.m., and that rather than going to sleep I have chosen to: a) spend time writing, re-writing, re-re-writing (etc.) this largely incoherent rant due to stress-induced cognitive deficits and b) use a picture for which I had to 1) go on a scavenger hunt around the living room to locate a set of rings 2) set up said rings for a photo 3) upload pictures to my laptop 4) determine what application to use to put an arrow on a picture and 5) look up appropriate image-spacing html tags. And I wonder where my time goes.

    New Year’s resolutions for 2006

    It’s been quite a few years since I’ve made a list of New Year’s resolutions. And here it is, the beginning of another new year, and it seems like a wonderful opportunity to set some goals. Having a new baby can lead to difficulties in getting many things done, so I’ve decided to set some goals that I know can be achieved. Namely, some that I’ve already reached.

    A New Mother’s Retroactive Resolutions for 2006

    1. Personal appearance: Lose 10 pounds
      Physical appearance is important to so many people, and I think weight loss often tops people’s New Year’s resolution lists. I can honestly boast that I lost at least 10 pounds in a single night! While the process wasn’t exactly painless, it sure was quicker than dieting.
    2. Health and fitness: Exercise more
      Another common goal is to improve one’s fitness levels. And I did indeed “exercise more” in 2006. The trick to this one is to take advantage of the inherent ambiguity of the term more. Since it is necessarily a relative or comparative term (i.e. something can be/have/do/etc. more XXX than some other thing), I choose to leave out the specifics of the comparison. For example, if I wanted to say “I plan to exercise more than I have been exercising” my resolution would have failed. However, if I consider my resolution to mean something like “I plan to exercise more than various people who are a) comatose b) dead or c) of a more extreme couch potato nature than even myself,” I have achieved this goal in spades.
    3. Fine arts: Write a song
      Let’s not leave out creative and artistic growth. I actually wrote several original compositions, complete with lyrics. My greatest hits include “The Diaper Song” (We’re changing the diaper, and we’ll put a new diaper on…put a new, put a new, put a new, put a new diaper on.) and “The Bouncy Song” (I have a little girl, her name is Phoebe Lenore, and she likes to bouncy bouncy…bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy bouncy Phoebe…)
    4. Feeding the mind: Read some books
      It’s always important to strive for intellectual breadth and depth. I’m happy to say that I’ve read quite a few books this year. Many of them quite thick ones. Well, with thick pages, at least. And I’ve even gone as far as to nearly memorize several of them, including: Goodnight Moon (Brown), Bear Snores On (Wilson), The Foot Book (Seuss), Quiet Loud (Patricelli) and The Going to Bed Book (Boynton).
    5. Home improvements: redecorate the house
      Let’s not forget the home. I can quite honestly say that there have been many changes to the appearance of our home. Not a single room looks the same. The new look is definitely more colorful than ever! The new palette includes a shift from earthy tones (mostly muted browns and grays, typically represented by wood and stone) to an array of chartreuse, tangerine, fuchsia, cerulean and lemon yellow. Mostly represented in plastic and some plush.
    6. Productivity and daily routine: Wake up earlier in the morning
      Who doesn’t want to feel more productive? I used to frequently waste the day away by sleeping until 8:00 a.m., or even snoozing in past 10:00 on weekends. I now always wake up before 7:00 a.m. There are even many days when I wake up before dawn: by 6:00, or 5:00, and sometimes even 4:00! And I don’t even need to set the alarm clock.
    7. Etiquette: write and mail thank you notes in a timely manner
      This one is for real, actually. Though the interpretation of “timely manner” may be subject to my own somewhat lax standards. I determined that I should finish writing thank you notes for the presents given for my daughter’s birth (in February 2006) within the same calendar year as her birth. I am bound and determined to achieve this goal. (Don’t quibble with me over today’s date. I will have those letters written in 2006.)
        8. our new living room decor
        Our new living room decor.

    anniversary present, anniversaries past

    Today is John’s and my 7th wedding anniversary. A couple of months ago, on October 24th, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Let me explain. John and I have been married twice. To each other.

    John and I started dating (or whatever you want to call it) on New Year’s of 1992. We got engaged on December 31st (New Year’s Eve) of 1993. Then for several years, we talked about planning the wedding, but each time we started the plans, there was some sort of obstacle. Work schedules were hectic. Money was tight. Crucial family members were planning to be away on long trips. We once got as far as picking a date, only to find that John’s niece had just announced her own wedding the same weekend across the country. We didn’t want to compete for family members to attend, so we opted not to schedule for that date. For several years, when someone would ask when we were ever going to get married, we’d say, more or less jokingly, “some time before the year 2000.” We weren’t really in a hurry to get married.

    At the end of 1999, I was planning to quit my job soon to have a bit of time off before starting grad school. Which meant, among other things, I’d be losing my health insurance benefits. We’d talked about maybe having a civil ceremony, in part so that I could get on John’s health insurance plan, and then later schedule the party wedding where we’d be able to include family and friends. But we hadn’t acted on this plan. Then the last week of December, we decided to make good on our threat to get married before the year 2000. We thought we’d wait till the last possible day to squeak in our wedding before 2000. (Which also coincided with the anniversary of our engagement.) We found a Justice of the Peace in a nearby town who was available to marry us in her home on December 31st. We applied for our marriage license in our Town Hall, and duly went for our blood tests. And so the morning of December 31, 1999, John and I were married. The only ones there were John, myself, and the Justice of the Peace. In her living room. No other witnesses. (Massachusetts doesn’t require them.)

    We told close family members, but the plan was to schedule the more ceremonial wedding before we made a wide announcement. We expected to do this within the year. But. Time passed. As it is wont to do. In fact, several years passed. And we more or less casually told people about our marriage along the way. People pretty much no longer expected us to have the “big” wedding. But I was determined. I wanted my party. A ceremony. Food. Music. And I wanted to have our loved ones with us to share in our celebration.

    So, on October 24th, 2004, John and I got married again. This time with our friends and family with us.

    This past October 24th was, therefore, our second wedding anniversary. It was both the anniversary of our second wedding, and the second anniversary of that wedding. (A nice little example of syntactic ambiguity where both parses apply…)

    second wedding anniversary tree