Category: me

more than one way to shovel a driveway

It was snowing heavily when I woke up this morning. I’m not sure how many inches accumulated before things turned to rain. Then the sun came out. The result was that by late afternoon, everything was covered with about an inch of very wet, very dense slush-snow. Since John has been sick for the last couple of days with a fever, it was up to me to get the driveway cleared before the inevitable night-time freeze.

If you have ever shoveled slush, you will know that it is very heavy, and slides off the shovel pretty easily. Which made it pretty hard to throw as you might do when shovelling fluffy snow. So I spent a lot of time scraping up a shovel-load of snow, and walking it to the side of the drive to dump it. It was very slow going. After clearing the area in front of our garage, I was mightily bored. So as I worked towards clearing the way up to the street, I got a bit more creative.

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Ok, I had a bit of reason for doing this. Namely, I wanted to get up to the mailbox without traipsing through the snow, which can lead to harder shovelling. The side paths were to walk over my shovelfuls. Of course, once I’d started a pattern, I felt like going a bit further with that.

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And since I’d bothered to go inside to get my camera, why not go all out?

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As I was working on that last bit, a couple of people out for a walk strolled by and said “hello.” I can only wonder what they thought of me.

(Just so you know, I did actually finish clearing the driveway.)

What’s your point?

I found this punctuation mark quiz at raincoaster‘s earlier this week. I was going to post this as part of a bigger list today, but my list was getting out of hand. So decided to pop it up now. (From the train. Hah! My commuter train now has free wireless.)

I am a question mark.


You Are a Question Mark


You seek knowledge and insight in every form possible. You love learning.
And while you know a lot, you don’t act like a know it all. You’re open to learning you’re wrong.

You ask a lot of questions, collect a lot of data, and always dig deep to find out more.
You’re naturally curious and inquisitive. You jump to ask a question when the opportunity arises.

Your friends see you as interesting, insightful, and thought provoking.
(But they’re not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!)

You excel in: Higher education

You get along best with: The Comma

I’m quite amused to see that I excel in higher education. I wonder if such excellence is measured in terms of years spent pursuing degrees. ‘Cause I’m getting quite a few years under my belt. The bit about collecting lots o’ data is…um…right on the mark.

So, do you dare to try the quiz? Who will get the dreaded colon?

Marvin: a short tale of a small rat

One the first pets I had as a child was a pet rat. (The first ever pets were some goldfish.) I was quite young when we got him, perhaps 5, so I may have some of the details muddled in my brain. But this is Marvin’s story as I remember it.

Marvin was a rat that had been a class pet in my sister’s first grade or second grade class. When Marvin needed a home, we got to keep him.

An important thing to know about this circumstance is that Marvin was our pet at our father’s house. Certainly not at our mother’s house. You see, our parents separated when I was three years old, and we spent the next few years living part-time with each of our parents. My sister and I were always together, but some of the time we lived with our daddy, and some of the time with our mother.

Marvin was a white rat with brown spots. He was small as rats go, definitely a domesticated variety of rat, and not your big scary urban rat. He had a pink tail, with a thin fuzz of white fur. He was quite cute and gentle, with very soft fur and dainty pink paws. He got to live on a coffee table in our living room, a circular sort of a tray of a table with a shallow rim, perhaps 10 or 12 inches off the ground. He wasn’t enclosed at all, as for some reason, he hadn’t figured out how to climb off this table. (There was at least one incident when he escaped from his table. He managed to stain the same couch cushion that my sister and I had damaged, with a small burn mark, while testing the Christmas tree lights a few months before. So that cushion ended up with a burn on one side, and a rat poop stain on the other. Which side to offer up for company?)

I was fond of Marvin in my way, and enjoyed occasionally picking him up and petting him. Mostly I observed him going about his business on his disc-shaped island. But I never actually talked to him. At some point, a TV crew came to follow our father around for a morning to observe him in his role as daddy and caregiver to two small children, an unusual role for a man in the 1970s. (There’s more of a story here, which I hope to share at some point.) I remember one of the crew prompting me to talk to Marvin, to get some footage. I was a bit baffled by this request. Talk to him? But he was a rat! He wouldn’t understand. I’d no sooner talk to my toys.

When my father died later that year, we had to give up Marvin as a pet. My mother had a zero tolerance policy for rodents, and wasn’t going to have a rat living under her roof. (Remarkably, she later allowed my sister to bring home a tarantula for a weekend, when that was her class pet. But that was only for one weekend.)

From what I understand, some friends of my father’s either took Marvin or found a home for him. At least that’s what I was told. I never saw nor heard news of him again. I thought about him from time to time over the years, sometime wondered if he really was given a home. I guess I didn’t want to know the answer if it wasn’t the case.

butterflies

My violin recital¹ was today. I tend not to think of myself as having a lot of performance anxiety, but I guess I have my share.

I’ve been playing the violin for 4 years, now. Learning more than playing, really. I have a lot of other things going on in my life, so I haven’t yet achieved a level that would merit the statement “I play the violin.” But I keep at it. I enjoy it. I have a wonderful teacher, who is very patient and encouraging.

I wanted to take part in the recital in large part because I knew that it would motivate me to push myself. I like working on a piece for an extended period of time, as I can really feel that I’m making progress. And the piece that I played, by Leopold Mozart (as in father to Wolfgang Amadeus) was, no doubt, the hardest piece I’ve played so far. One particular challenge for me is that it calls for lots of double stops, the violin equivalent of a chord, where two strings are bowed at the same time. It involved very careful fingering and bowing, and I managed to achieve some things that I had not yet managed. I got to know the piece quite well. In fact, I memorized it, without actually meaning to. I discovered that I could play it with my eyes closed. (In fact, I did a couple of times when I had to practice but was too tired to focus on the sheet music.)

But the trouble is, even though I could play the piece, I never managed to play it consistently well. The hardest part was always the beginning, as in just starting. (I could play the same section much better the second time around when it was repeated for the end of the piece.) Sometimes it would sound good, but not always.

I tried recording myself so I could listen to it, thinking that I was judging myself too harshly. But the recording only confirmed for me that I just didn’t sound so great. I would offer to share with you the recording, but seriously, I’m embarrassed by it.

In spite of this, I hadn’t been stressing terribly about the recital. For one thing, most of the other participants are also not so great. (My violin teacher once told me that I’m her best adult student. Of course, most of her students are kids, and there are a couple of teenagers who are really good. And I mean really good.) For another thing, I knew that very few people would actually see me playing, as the audience typically consists of a few family members of the students. Usually their parents. I would have John and Phoebe in the audience, but they already know all too well what I sound like. So I knew that even if I messed up, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But a big reason I hadn’t been stressing too much was that, quite honestly, there have been quite a lot of other things on my mind and on my metaphorical plate.

So I was caught off guard when I woke up this morning with what’s often known as butterflies in my stomach. The sounds coming from my stomach reminded me more of early 80s arcade games (Space Invaders, anyone?) than the fluttering of lepidoptera wings. But what the hell. Butterflies.

I practiced a bit before we left, and was determined to keep my hands warm. I play clumsily when my fingers are cold. The trouble is, it’s December, and I tend to get cold hands and feet. So sitting around before the recital started, I worked at warming my hands up. And was startled to discover that my hands were sweaty, even though they were still cold. And I’m not even prone to sweating.

I was second in the program, and the teenage girl who played ahead of me was good. As in, why-the-hell-am-I-playing-right-after-her good. Then it was my turn. I went on the little stage, put my sheet music on the stand, took a deep breath, and started in. It was a duet with my teacher, and we got off to a pretty good start. But then my arm started shaking. Not a huge amount, but enough to mess up my bowing. The result, while not devastatingly awful, was that I messed up more than usual. And, well, it didn’t sound great.

recital.jpgWe stayed for a bit after I played, and listened to a few of the kids who played after me. (Because it turned out there were only kids. The recital was split into two times, and apparently the 3 or 4 other adult students were all going in the second.) Most of the kids we heard were actually playing piano, since my teacher also teaches piano. But I did get to hear a couple of violins after me. And I’m happy to say that they sounded pretty bad, and with much less complex pieces. Of course, they were under 8. But I must take my comfort where I can find it. Even if it means mocking a cute little six-year-old behind her back.

Anyhow, it’s over. The butterflies (or aliens) departed quite unceremoniously from my stomach. And even though I’m not thrilled with how I did during the recital, I’m very glad I did it.

————
¹ Have you ever noticed that recital is one letter off from rectal?

I am not an accountant

Sometimes I forget to tell myself that. I’ve never been an accountant. Nor have I ever planned to be one. (Not that there’s anything wrong with accounting. I can see the appeal of putting things in order.) But this lack of accountancy in my life is usually not at the forefront of my mind.

Day after day I can go about my non-accounting-related business without once thinking, “hey, I’m not an accountant.”

But just a few days ago, I became truly aware of this. “I’m not in accounting!” I loudly proclaimed. And I realized how true a statement that was. And I have Blogger to thank for this epiphany.

You see, Blogger has made some changes to their comment forms. Now, instead of being able to type in my name and the URL for this blog when I leave a comment, I must choose between logging in with my Blogger ID, using a “nickname” (Should I have a nickname? What about Snake?), or being anonymous. So I’ve been using my Blogger ID more often lately. And on a whim, I decided to check out my minimalist Blogger profile. After all, someone might follow the link from a comment I leave here or there. (Well, not here. But there.) And imagine my surprise when I saw that my profile said I was in the field of accounting.

I quickly went to edit my profile, and select “not specified” for my field, since, shockingly, “linguistics” was not listed on the drop-down menu. When viewing the profile next, I was relieved to see that I was no longer masquerading as a grad student of accounting. But then I thought to myself, “maybe I should say a bit more about myself.” So I added a bit of stuff. And saved my profile. And lo and behold, I was once more in accounting. I went back in, changed the field. Saved the profile. All was well. But, oh crap, there was a typo in my link. Fixed it. Saved. Dammit, there was the frickin’ “accounting” thing again.

“I am not an accountant!” I cried. I felt I needed to affirm this. It’s been good to have this reminder.

I have a lot of trouble defining my identity. When asked for a description, I tend to give a list: student, wife, mother, friend, blah, blah, blah. It varies how many items I put on that list. But I have never once in my life listed “accountant” as an identity.

Of course, I have never listed “not an accountant,” either. And this opens up a whole realm of possible identities. I am also not a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, chiropractor, dancer, mime, mugger, jogger, juggler, or provost. The possibilities are staggering. But for now, at least, I can just remind myself that indeed, I am not an accountant.

have you ever?

I made it through November with my 30 posts for 30 days. (40, if you want to add in those I did for the Ministry of Silly Blogs.) It wasn’t particularly hard for me to come up with topics for daily posts (though it was sometimes hard to work up the motiviation to post at all.) I didn’t manage to do too well on the list of my intended topics.¹

Another thought I’d had was to do a meme I’d seen at Stretched to the Limit, which had a big old checklist of things done in one’s life. Many of the things I’ve done on the list have some sort of story behind them, and I thought I’d work my way through some of them. In fact, I still might do that. But probably not for last month.

The instructions are to bold the “done” things. I’ve also gone and italicized things that I haven’t quite done, but where I have a story related to that thing. (It’s kind of a weird list of things, and it makes me curious about the origins. It reminds me a bit of the drinking game “I never,” or a related game where people state something they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done.)

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg [I’m assuming this doesn’t mean the lettuce]
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper [duh]
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity [possibly]
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope [probably]
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse [maybe]
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach [may not have been actually midnight]
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain [probably]
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents [not taking this literally]
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children [I don’t think quite yet]
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach [possibly]
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey [just the Odyssey]
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

So it looks like I’ve done 56 things on the list. How many have you done?

I’d love to take requests for stories or details on any of the above listed items. You could just pick a number, or several. At random, even. And I may even treat you to the tale of how I once ate sushi when I had dyed hair.

——–

¹ I guess this is my NaBloPoMo Post Mortem. My NaBloPoMoPoMo, if you will. It’s probably not post modern enough to be a PoMoNaBloPoMoPoMo, though.

sulking

I’m just feeling down today.

The memorial service for Elizabeth was last night. We drove up from New York so that we could be back in time to make it there. It made for a long day, and a lot of time in the car. Poor Phoebe was not happy to have to get back in the car after only an hour back home, following close to 5 hours in the car. John ended up needing to take Phoebe out to the vestibule before the service began, as we were heading into a meltdown.

It was a nice service, if long. It was the first time I’ve been in a temple, as far as I can remember. I haven’t been to many religious ceremonies at all, and felt a bit like a visiting anthropologist. (I feel much the same way when I’ve been in a church.) I appreciated the ritual and the music. Though I did find myself craving to hear more about my friend. There was a 3-page paper of thoughts about Elizabeth from her family, but I found I couldn’t read it there without risk of excessive blubbering. The service included some words from a college friend of Elizabeth’s, and a poem written and read by her aunt. I found the poem particulary moving, as it spoke of the Elizabeth I knew. Her wit, her quirks and her complexity.

Some of my other friends who also used to work with Elizabeth also went, and I was glad to see them, and to be able to sit with them during the service. A couple more friends couldn’t make it, due to travelling for Thanksgiving.

There were a lot of people there, overall. It was moving in some ways. But in other ways it made me feel small and insignificant. I felt an outsider. I was glad to meet some friends of Elizabeth’s whose names I had heard, but had never met. I saw her parents, met a sister-in-law. But mostly there was a crowd of strangers.

The friend who spoke said that Elizabeth made everyone she knew feel like they were her best friend. And for some reason, this made me feel sadder. I wonder how often people feel this way at memorial services. Peripheral. One of many. It made me feel a bit like I wanted to stake out my claim in the grief. Declare that I had known her for 12 years. Proclaim that I had shared in the pain of witnessing her illness. Announce that I felt her loss deeply.

At the same time, I feel like I didn’t do enough. Or maybe that I really was a bit of an outsider.

I feel bad that I didn’t visit her more often. I didn’t know about her other hospital stays till after the fact. But maybe I should have known. Maybe I should have called more. When I’d call she’d often be too tired to talk, or on her way out the door. So I didn’t call much. I took her to her chemo treatments twice, and would gladly have gone with her more. Maybe I should have offered more.

And I feel bad that I hadn’t told some friends about her illness. And I feel bad that I still haven’t contacted a couple of other friends I’ve lost track of.

Mostly I just feel bad today. And I find myself missing my friend all the more.

Is sulking a stage of grief? What about crabbiness?

how do I plead?

Erika of the fabulously-titled mmmm, brains has tagged me with a meme that intrigued me. (As usual, though, it’s taken me over a week to get to it.) The meme in question is on the topic of “guilty pleasures,” and was abbreviated from a longer assignment. The full thing, which I won’t indulge in, was as follows:

  • Name six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage to indulge.
  • Name six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now either abandoned or made peace with.
  • Name six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having.

Erika just did the last one I listed. So I thought I could do that one. The trick is, who is this “no one?” I think most of my guilty pleasures are pretty public. So I’ll modify the task a bit further and name 6 pleasures that I feel guilty (or embarrassed) about, and that have been known to surprise people.

  1. I have a weakness for certain types of junk food. I like to eat healthily, and to eat good quality fresh food. But I have rarely turned down Nacho cheese Doritos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups or donuts.
  2. Action movies. This is not a surprise to anyone who reads this blog, seeing as I have a whole project related to these. But I am a peace-loving academic who studies language. Why do I enjoy watching a good fight scene?
  3. Tuna. I stopped eating red meat and poultry over 18 years ago, but I can’t quite manage to give up all seafood. Most seafood and fish I could take or leave. Mostly leave, actually. Canned tuna doesn’t excite me. But a seared tuna? Or tuna sushi? I realize that it’s wrong on many counts. Over-fishing and all. To some extent I have the same guilt liking for salmon, especially smoked salmon.
  4. I like some music that I feel somewhat embarrassed about. Specifically some 80s music with boppy synthesized beats: Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, early Depeche Mode. What can I say? I was a teenager in the 80s.
  5. Checking my blog stats. It’s a sickness, really. It’s not so much the numbers as seeing what people look at and where they came from. Since most of my traffic is due to search engine hits by people who probably barely stop to look, I like it when I see signs that someone looked around, such as visits to my “about” page or some of my favorite posts. (Comments are, of course, the best. Those get emailed to me. Not too surprisingly, I always check my email eagerly, too.)
  6. I like memes. I know I should be scornful of them. But I think they are fun. And I find it fascinating to see what different people do with them.

It looks like this memage involves tagging 6 people. This is the part of meming that I find the trickiest. Some people tolerate memes. Others loudly protest them. Others welcome them. I once had a good experience tagging a couple of random people: one I found through the WordPress “pants” tag, and one who I found using the WordPress “next” button. I had no luck getting Kevin Smith to participate. (Kevin, if you read this, you’re tagged, dammit. Or for that matter, I suppose I could tag this other Kevin Smith.)

So, I’m going to go all random again. I will tag the folks at these 6 blogs I found totally randomly through the NaBloPoMo randomizer. (Okay, it wasn’t totally, totally randomly. I did skip a few blogs where music played automatically, and a couple of very topic-specific blogs, like a birding blog and a chocolate blog.)

If anyone else out there would like to indulge in this meme, please consider yourself tagged.

I do doodle. Do you?

I doodled today. I do like to doodle. (I also like to say the word doodle. Also noodle. I may well have to doodle a noodle just so I can talk about it.) Anyhow, here is what I did doodle.

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My doodle, as photographed by John.

Today we went into Boston (John, Phoebe and me) to go to a computational linguistics meeting. We (that is John and I, not Phoebe) were part of the group’s foundation almost 6 years ago, and were very active in the group for several years. But for that past few months, the group has been largely hibernating. (Not the people so much. They’ve been largely awake. But busy.) We’ve decided to reanimate the group, though. Which is great. I did, however, volunteer to do actual work for said group, before my mind had a chance to catch up with my mouth. And as such, I have given myself even more metaphorical bagel over which to spread my figurative cream cheese.

After the meeting, John wanted to go to a camera shop in Cambridge. This seemed fair, especially since all during the meeting, John had been pretty tied up with Phoebe. (Don’t worry, not literally tied up. We used duct tape, not rope. No, no, no, I mean John was busy keeping Phoebe occupied.) We’d brought a few toys, but they didn’t hold interest her for long. John and Phoebe went wandering for a bit, and came back with, among other items, a new box of crayons and a pad of drawing paper.

By the time the meeting finished, over an hour past Phoebe’s usual naptime, Phoebe was both wired and tired. Within a few minutes of being back in the car, though, she was out. (As in asleep. But still in the car.) So when we stopped at the camera store, I decided to just hang out in the car with Phoebe so she could nap. I figured I had my laptop to keep me busy, anyhow, and I could even do some work. However, my laptop ran out of battery within a few minutes. And I found myself with no reading material other than a sort of sad little board book we’d gotten from the pediatrician’s office.

So I decided to take advantage of the crayons.

Here’s what I doodled while waiting in the car. (I did a bit of the coloring after we were moving, but discovered that I get carsick when drawing in the car. Not something I’d known. I can’t read in the car, but I didn’t realize doodling would be a problem.)

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I added a bit more to it while John was giving Phoebe a bath.
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Then I finished it up once Phoebe was in bed.

I also fiddled a bit with the levels in iPhoto, since I had trouble getting the color right in the picture. (These 4 photos are ones I took, by the way.) And I stumbled across this weird effect: when I boosted the saturation and the contrast, there was a point in the levels adjustment where the white paper appeared black, and the opaque crayon bits came out white. Nifty, huh?
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