BATTLE OF THE ANTS

Pullman is a small town—something like 28,000 residents of which 20,000 are students, or something like that. In other words, Pullman isn't San Jose, where there were probably 28,000 people just in my neighborhood. So, when I see a naked man at the laundromat in Pullman, it's Big News or a Curiosity. In San Jose it would just be a case of "get the hell out of dodge because who knows what's going to happen next."

In Pullman, my gym is located across the street from a laundromat. All the bikes/elliptical machines/treadmills face the street/laundromat, and both storefronts (gym and laundromat) are all windows. I remember when I first came to Pullman and was at the gym regularly, one fellow who always showed up at the same time as I did (v. early) would put his clothes in the washer, run across the street and do the treadmill for 20 minutes, then run back across the street and put his clothes in the dryer, then run back again and lift weights for 60 minutes until his clothes were dry. I admired his efficiency.

Today, I got to the gym at 5:30 and a woman was on the elliptical and as soon as I got inside she said "look at that, isn't that strange?" I thought she was pointing to the TV which was playing some sort of cartoonish music video—I don't know what it was because I don't watch videos or know anything about popular music—but she said "no, across the street." I looked over in time to see a guy in boxer shorts turn over on his side, like he was trying to sleep on the washers.

I said, "huh. looks like he's trying to sleep on the washing machine. at least he's clothed." The woman said he had been there at least as long as she had, and previously had been sitting on the washing machine just sort of rocking back and forth. We debated whether to call the cops—more for the guy's own safety than anything else, because we figured there was a good chance he was coming off some bad trip or had vomited all over his clothes and needed to wash them immediately, or...who knows. We didn't call anyone, though, and went back to our workouts.

Half an hour later the cops ended up over there—don't know who called or if they were just driving by. Four cops were there, and the guy put his clothes on and left without apparent incident. But four cops! At 6 in the morning! Big news. In a couple days the police activity log will be online and I'll see what the official complaint was, if anything.

But yeah, that's what passes for news around here. Then again, I'd rather hear about mostly-naked men in laundromats than the 20% budget cut on campus.

Labels: misc life

I have a lot of blog about. None of it is political. At least not in the whole "someone new is running the country, thank fsm" kind of way. So, it would be kind of dumb to write anything here at this moment, because I run the risk of looking like I'm ignoring the inauguration or am just otherwise clueless. I assure you I am neither.

Labels: misc life

But...Happy New Year everyone.

I am working a lot on work-for-money right now, trying to counteract the naturally light-on-the-billing-hours month of December which was exacerbated by my decision to run off to SF after all. It'll all work out—it always does.

I had a really good time at MLA—probably because I wasn't presenting, wasn't interviewing—and at some point I'll write in more detail about why it was a good time. I did spend some chunks of time talking to Bev (who has a funny post about how we met up) and Billie, which was very cool. Except, and this is for Billie, I feel the need to mention very clearly that I am doing a literature PhD and not rhet/comp. :) Although lord knows I love my rhet/comp peeps.

Ok, back to work.

Labels: grad school, misc life

so you can imagine that dec 23 until now was kind of a blur...from the time grades were turned in until now i've been one big bundle of indecision. for example, i DID go to san francisco, DID go to MLA (had a wonderful time, too), had my birthday dinner with my friends at la bodeguita del medio per usual (i'm pretty consistent...i either go there or seven), and am now halfway home (i'm in the portland airport). i have a ton of work waiting for me when i get home—for my job, absolutely, but also for my scholarly life. one of these days i'd really like to have one life and not two, but given my conversation with my mortgage company, that ain't gonna happen anytime in the next 3-5 years. oh well. at least i know and can plan. plan to be really freaking busy.

Labels: misc life

seminar papers have been turned in, grades for 2 classes have been turned in, grades for 1 class will be turned in today as well as accompanying paperwork and blah blah. am trying to work a lot of hours to make up for the ones I didn't work at the beginning of december. and I am not going to SF/MLA because we have a bazillion inches of snow and who knows if I'd be able to get out or get back in...plus I don't have anyone to check on my cats. so, that trip is out. oh well. more later.

Labels: misc life

1) I am going to be 35 in a month and 5 days. Thirty fucking five. I'm kinda having a hard time with it. It could be because I spend a lot of time with people 10+ years younger than I am and, as much as I adore some of them, it's really difficult for me to communicate in meaningful ways. I need to figure that out or forget about it. But right now I'm just pretty wigged out that I'm going to be 35 in a month and 5 days (yes, my birthday is during MLA, so any of you who will be at MLA on the 30th, come drink cool refreshing beverages with me in a town I know pretty darn well).

2) I could sit down right now and write my dissertation prospectus. I really could. That would be great if today was November 25 of 2009. If I didn't have two seminar papers to write and ~200 pieces of student work to comment on in some way, I'd probably do it. Maybe over break.

It's kind of been a weird day.

Labels: grad school, misc life

That's what I said on July 28, 2004, when I said I'd move to Illinois just to vote for Barack Obama for the US Senate.

/looks around

Nope, not a lunatic. And it doesn't suck. I, of course, look like a genius.

Ok, granted, thinking "Obama is awesome" after he spoke at the DNC in '04 was not a thought limited to my pea brain, but it still is pretty cool that everything worked out...

Labels: misc life

...for obvious reasons.

Tonight we are hosting a showing of V for Vendetta for our students (also for obvious reasons, hence the title of this post).

We are very, very happy we don't actually have to go blow shit up afterward.

Labels: misc life, teacher-like

So, it looks like CA prop 8 will pass (and AZ prop 102, and AR initiative 1, and FL amendment 2).

While I am thrilled, and I mean thoroughly and utterly thrilled, that Obama won, I am finding it extremely difficult to muster a happy face. I didn't expect that to be the case.

It's hard to still be happy when you have actual numbers staring you in the face—numbers of people who specifically do not want you to have something they have.

Labels: misc life

I've had this image in my saved mail since 10/22/2004. Figured it was time to bust it out.

Labels: misc life

I have this friend who refers to herself as the manchurian grad student because she is freakishly obedient when told to do something a certain way—usually having to do with the actual mechanical processes of academia and not the content she works with, thank god. I, on the other hand, am almost willfully disobedient. The quickest way to get me to do something? Tell me to do the opposite of what you want me to do. I swear it's (not always) a conscious effort to be a jerk or anything. I am just not very good at being told what to do. At all.

But sometimes I do what I'm told and it works out. For example, the early 2000s were kind of crappy for me. In 2003 I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. Why yes, that was the year I turned 30. Anyway, as you can imagine, conversations between my best friend and myself went something like this (ad infinitum): "What am I doing? This doesn't seem like enough. Is this it? Shouldn't I be doing more?" Ok, that's not so much a conversation as it was the stuff that I was stuck on and would repeat over and over because there was no real answer (because really? What do you say to that?)

Finally, one day she sent me an e-mail, and at the beginning it said "I think you should read this email, keep it and refer back to it when needed." I have done that—and it's kind of amazing that I haven't mangled the file in the last five years—and today was one of those days I had to refer back to it, as needed. This is one of the only things I've done because I was told to do it—unlike my manchurian grad student friend.

The e-mail has a quotation in it, and it's actually one of those quotations from The Big Book of Quotations for All Times or some such—in other words, not somewhere I'd typically go for some life-affirming piece of text (I usually get those from Emerson). Anyway, we were talking about understanding where and how you fit in the world and just making peace with it. The quotation goes like this: "The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make a difference that you lived at all."

So that's how I try to live. I don't evaluate happy vs sad or anything like that. At least I try not to. In fact, I pretty much screwed some stuff up recently when I reached a point when I looked around and thought to myself "hey, this makes me happy." What happened next was I realized that I wasn't doing any of the things I needed to be doing to matter, to be productive, to be useful, or to make a difference. I was living for happy and not for useful and productive, and that really screwed me up.

I know a lot of people will say something like "um, you have to be happy" and I get that. I'm not saying I want to be unhappy or anything. But when "happy" is my main focus, I'm not...rightly oriented, I guess is what I mean. Off-kilter. Screwed up. So I've had to regain my focus, my plans, my productivity, and my path—both in school and in the job I still have to pay for the other life I am not actually living in. I've had to look my friends in the eye and then turn around and walk away, leaving the pure happy on the side and getting back on the track that leads me toward useful and productive. There are some times when I get to do both—be useful and productive and matter to people, and get some happy out of it, but it's really kind of messed up, I get that.

I just want to make a difference, I guess. That would be nice.

Labels: misc life

Seriously? It was JUST September, right? And now it's the end of week 10 and I somehow missed all of October. Wow.

Labels: grad school, misc life

I would like this to turn out better than last time I took a picture of my ballot.

Labels: misc life

My life is work, then more work, then more work. Then a little sleep.

Repeat.

At some point perhaps I'll talk about all of this work, and maybe the teaching. But right now I have a really large book to finish reading and a class to prep.

In other news, let me tell you how awesome this whole "team teaching" thing is. Well, it's not really team teaching in that we are not always in the classroom together and our classes aren't merged except for certain days when we have the one class in the big room together because they're at the same time (or when we have activities like movies in the dorm)...BUT. Although sometimes a little rough around the edges, the days when one of us teaches all the sections usually works out pretty well for the other as far as personal workloads are concerned. Yesterday, I had a plan and (for better or worse) executed the plan such that my teaching partner just had to play the part of scribe. Since she had a lot of other work on her plate, this worked out well. Tomorrow she'll be in charge (for it is Sartre day, and she hearts Sartre), which is good because I have a ton of stuff to do in my seminar on Weds that is of the utmost importance to me. Friday we'll return to our normal positions. On any other day, our coordination happens via email or IM or on the ride up to campus. Thank god we trust each other with this stuff, otherwise it would be a serious clusterfuck. I actually think it's going well. Teaching the freshmen here is very different than the teaching of freshmen that I've done before. There is a significant amount of "herding cats" that happens. It's tiring. Glad I have a buddy to help!

Labels: misc life, teacher-like

That's what I am. What I've always been. And then as soon as I said that (in my head/out my fingers with the typing) I figured I'd better look up "antsy" to make sure I wasn't a total dork who labeled herself incorrectly. I may be a geek, but I try to avoid "dork." Jury's still out on that.

So, antsy. Def. 1: "unable to sit or stand still." Totally true. I just spent one of my precious hours driving around. Sure, I was thinking and thinking and thinking, but I was still on the move. Always moving. It's why I don't sleep well. It's why I always sit in the back, never in front of people if I can help it. I'm also kind of shifty-eyed. If I met myself in a dark alley, I'd be afraid of me. If I'm not paying attention and trying not to, it always looks like I'm scowling. Def. 2. "apprehensive or uneasy" I am inherently uneasy. Distrustful. Not fearful, though. Discerning. Or perceptive. I'll buy that. I don't know if it's just my nature, or my time in California, or the nature of academia. Probably a little bit of everything.

I thought for a moment that great philosopher (Yoda) could easily have said this about me: "Always looking to the future you are...never looking at where you are...what you are doing." But that's not really true. I'm looking at all three at once, and managing myself and others, and I'm very tired. But I'm happy enough. Just sometimes I wish I could legitimately need to be supported instead of being the supporter or the manager or the problem solver. Instead I just get antsy. I drive around, figure my own shit out. Return to help others. Continue. I have everything planned, and nothing. It's tiring.

Labels: misc life

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (thanks, BitchPhd), 16% of U.S. homeowners owe more on a mortgage than the home is worth.

I am totally one of those people.

However, with the combination of my TA stipend, book royalties, my happy-to-have-still-have-it job with my company in California, and rental income from the lovely tenant in said home, I am able just about to break even each month—or only get myself a couple hundred bucks in the hole. I consider that a win.

Just for the sake of presenting some real life numbers, here's my particular part of the housing crisis story.

* Bought my condo in San Jose, CA in April 2002 for 205K. My mortgage was for 211K because I had no money to put down. Yes, I was one of those people.
* In 2004 I refinanced to get a slightly lower interest rate and also to move around some debt. The new mortgage was for 250K, basically.
* By late 2006, condos in my complex/zip code were selling around 300-325K. I thought I was in a good position to be able to sell it when I came up to Pullman in Summer 2007.
* Between Feb 2007 and January 2008, exactly two condos sold in my complex/zip code, and they were short sales for something like 250K. The entire market froze.
* I got a renter. My renter pays 40% of my monthly mortgage + HOA dues.
* I pay property taxes in the amount of 2900/yr. The value of my property according to Santa Clara County is 233K.
* Listings in my complex/zip code have condos like mine going for 185-195K, which is 10K less than I paid six years ago and 125K less than some condos sold for just eighteen months ago.
* I owe 243K.

I can make the payments, now. I can write off some of the loss on my taxes. What I can't do is refinance because technically now it's a rental property and the LTV is all messed up. Thankfully I am in a better position than many many many people in similar "under water" situations. But it's still painful.

Labels: misc life

...for all the nice words about Max. Luckily (I guess?) I've been so freaking busy that I haven't had time to really decompress and deal with it, but hey, that's what the weekend is for I suppose.

thanks again.

Labels: misc life

Many of you already know this, but yesterday my cat Max went to the great catnip field in the sky. The thing about Max is that he wasn't a big fluffy cat like Mini or a cute little tuxedo cat like Deuce—he was a big black cat who never photographed well. But he was a wonderful boy. A big baby, actually, who never outgrew some of his kitten traits such as sucking on my shirt collar when he was tired or scared.

Max was born on the side of a road in Durham, NC on April 24, 1993. I know this because the side of the road happened to be pretty damn near a veterinary clinic and Max (and his litter of brothers and sisters) was taken in immediately by the people at the clinic. Through chance—since I didn't have any animals of my own at the time—I was in that vet's waiting room when Max was approximately six weeks old and he was the first kitten who jumped up against the side of the cage and wanted to be held. I found myself back there a few weeks later and he was the only one of his litter that hadn't been adopted out. I took him home the next day. Toby, my orange cat who died in Feb of '05, joined us a few weeks later. They were best pals.

In his life, Max had been stepped on by a ballerina, drooled on by an unruly Chow, flown on an airplane from North Carolina to California, and logged approx 8,000 miles in the car as we moved together from California to Virginia to DC to California to Washington over the years. He was a hugger. He never complained. Well, sometimes he did but only for a few minutes just to register his disdain and then deal with it. I learned a lot from my cat.

In April or so of this year, I noticed a weird lump between his shoulder blades and took him in to the vet. Now, we have spectacular vets here, between the vets in private practice who are typically trained by the WSU vet school and then the WSU vet school itself. So I wasn't worried about getting quality care. Turns out that Max managed to get what's known as an injection site sarcoma, which is a particularly nasty and aggressive sort of thing. The weird part is that Max hadn't had an injection in that site for several years, so the stupid cells were just hanging around building strength all that time. There wouldn't have been anything to do about it though, because putting a geriatric cat through radiation and chemo for something with a very very very small chance of remission is just not cool. So we went on maintenance for the last several months. As long as he was acting normally—with the exception of a gnarly growing lump between his shoulder blades that we drained once a week—then so be it.

But the last week he was noticeably less-than-thrilled about his lump. He was alert and loving and all those things, but couldn't really get comfortable any more. So that's when it became time to relieve him of all this. It was sad, but the vet people are great and soon Max's little box will join Toby's on the shelf.

It's just me and the girls now—Deuce and Mini. They're asleep. I'm tired. It's business as usual. And I miss my boy.

Labels: misc life

Some of you might recall when Mini the Cat came to live with us (us = me and the two other cats). She has been here almost a year, so I figured it was time for an update on how this little ball of fluff spends her days.

First, though, I would like to note that this little cat is The Cat Who Makes All Cat-Haters Love Cats. Seriously. She's very special. Also, she is very small. She truly is all fur. She is also absolutely precious.

She is also rarely called by her given name, Mini. Instead, she is known in these parts as "Pants" because she sashays and is furry and it looks like she is wearing pantaloons.

Anyway, her days are spent thusly (click to embiggen):

	She spends most of her time hanging out with me on my table/desk. Like me, she loves Keen bags. But if I stand up or make any sort of move, she perks up: "What's that, human? You are up and walking toward...the bathroom, perhaps?"
	Mini loves the bathroom. It is her favorite place. She will race you to it. Here she has already run ahead of me and is waiting patiently for me to continue walking toward the bathroom.
	I've pissed her off a little bit because I am still standing in the hallway. But I wanted to get a picture that features her pantaloons.
	Once we get to the bathroom, this is what she does. She sticks her head under the faucet so that the water dribbles off her head and only then will she drink it. When she is finished drinking, she it typically soaking wet...well, her head is anyway. Apparently no one told her that cats are not big fans of water.
When she has had her fill, she returns to the table/desk and takes a nap. She naps and naps until she sees the human walking toward the bathroom again...

Repeat all day.

Labels: misc life

When Rhonda wrote a blog post in which she mentioned visiting friends in my fair state, I jumped at the chance to make a drive and have lunch. Actually, what I said was that the drive was "218 miles, which I consider 'not far'...let me know if you can carve out a coffee time or *gasp* even a lunch and I would be up there in a heartbeat." And she did! Make time for lunch, that is, and I did indeed drive on up there. This map shows all the driving I did on Sunday.

I learned a lot about Washington on my drive. I learned where a lot of fruit is grown, and I learned that Google Maps provides only one of several possible ways to drive between Pullman and Chelan. I drove a different way back to Pullman and it was essentially the same mileage/driving time. The sights were slightly different, but only slightly—there's a whole lot of nothingness on all sides no matter which way you go. As you can see on the map, I was driving all around what we call "The Blank." The Cascades are not part of the Blank. The Blank ends at the Cascades. Hooray for the Cascades.

But anyway, Rhonda is as lovely and funny and nice as her blog suggests, and her baby is just as adorable as she appears in pictures. It was break time from the fam, though, as Rhonda—without hesitation—got into a stranger's car (mine) and directed us to the town of Manson and the wonderful little restaurant/berry farm called Blueberry Hills. Rhonda had blintzes, I had waffles, and we sat there for three hours and blah blah blah'd about all sorts of stuff. Then I bought an insane amount of blueberries to take back with me, returned Rhonda to her family, and headed back through The Blank to my humble Pullman abode.

There's an xkcd comic about Google Map directions that funny (per usual) but especially funny because at one point in my journey I was driving on 8 miles of a gravel road in the middle of rangeland. Wasn't expecting that.

Labels: misc life