The cost

The house my family moved into in February is amazing--brand new, nice location, great comforts, amazing mountain views. I love it.

But I've never been quite so aware of the cost that has been paid by the environment for a home that I'm living in. The house is right next to wild desert, so recently settled that the scars of new construction are right up in your face every single day. This is what it looks like a block away:

I'm no raving environmentalist, but this is ugly. Seeing this every day I wonder, what the hell are we doing here, bulldozing the desert for middle-class comforts? Do we have the right?

No milk in the house means I can't have my usual breakfast of cereal with milk. So I'm eating marshmallows for breakfast instead. It's just like Lucky Charms, only without the annoying cereal bits, ha ha.

I've never had a job before that required sitting at a desk for so long. Who knew a desk job could be so exhausting? My neck is stiff and my lower back hurts a little. My mouse hand is ache-y. My eyes are rebelling at the idea of more time staring at a computer monitor...yet here I am on my day off, you can't keep me away. I need to go outside and get some fresh air.

Rain

Rain has been falling hard for hours this morning and it won't let up. There's a lake forming behind my house. I'm really worried.

Update: The rain stopped over an hour ago, but the clouds are still here. I don't think we've seen the last of Dolly here in EP.

I was so sad to hear on the radio that CS professor Randy Pausch died. His Last Lecture is something you need to hear, if you haven't already. Keep some Kleenex handy.

July = Storms

From Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather:

In New Mexico he always awoke a young man; not until he rose and began to shave did he realize that he was growing older. His first consciousness was a sense of the light dry wind blowing in through the windows, with the fragrance of hot sun and sagebrush and sweet clover; a wind that made one's body feel light and one's heart cry, "To-day, to-day," like a child's.

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry aromatic odour. The moisture of the plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert.

That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!

Upon reflection, these are the eight I'd choose. Don't ask me why.
"Moonlight Sonata" by Beethoven
"Ballade in G Minor" by Chopin
"You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals
"Four Seasons" by Vivaldi
"Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cindy Lauper
"Porcelain" by Moby
"Mickey" by Toni Basil

In the comments for my post on Friday, Stu provided a link to the Wikipedia page for the BBC program Desert Island Discs: "Guests are invited to imagine themselves castaways on a desert island, and to choose eight pieces of music to take with them; discussion of their choices permits a review of their life. Aside from music, they are permitted one book, excluding the Bible or other religious work and the complete works of Shakespeare, which are already present on the island to force more original choices. They also choose one luxury which must be inanimate and of no survival value, though large supplies of champagne seem to be allowed."

Very interesting. Here is the list of what guests have chosen for the past six years (I like the more practical book choices, i.e. a book to identify tropical fish. I can't understand why anyone would take a blank book.) I think I would pick an educational book, like how to speak and write Italian, and for my luxury item I'd pick a piano. I'll have to think about my eight pieces of music.

Review: Woman: An Intimate Geography

In Woman: An Intimate Geography, published in 1999, Natalie Angier takes on a complex and often misunderstood subject: the biology of a woman's body. Angier goes over the basic machinery of the female body as well as the role of hormones in influencing female behavior. In the latter half of the book, she discusses society and evolution's influence on women's behavior. It's complicated stuff, but Angier does a fantastic job of condensing the information and conveying it in an entertaining way, with some really vivid prose.

The author has really done her homework for this book, referencing study after study on human female behavior as well as female behavior in primates and other types of animals. However, this is definitely not a textbook; Angier calls the book a "celebration of the female body." She does have a feminist agenda in the book, though it's an agenda I happen to agree with, so you won't find many complaints from me.

Angier takes on female stereotypes with a vengeance, complicating them time after time with examples from scientific studies. She succeeds in painting a more far-reaching picture of female behavior than most would imagine, particularly through her exploration of aggression in females. Angier also holds her ground well in refuting evolutionary psychologists who seem to traffic in gender stereotypes (the Madonna and whore dichotomy, the women as passive and monogamous and men as philanderers theory).

I'll admit that it took me over a year to finish reading this book. Why so long? I compare this book to chocolate truffle cake: delicious and rich for all the reasons mentioned above, but best in small servings. Angier's prose does get convoluted at times; what bothers me is that I can't imagine anyone talking the way Angier writes ("membranes ruffle up like petticoats" and "eggs pop apart like poked soap bubbles" and I don't think anyone in the history of the English language has used the phrase "a mutinous crew of mad-haired Valkyries"). It's clever but not very natural-sounding. Also, the book is quite dense in information, so a little time to digest each chapter is needed. Finally, the feminist agenda comes on strong at times, though Angier carefully bases her arguments in research.

Still, I loved this book almost as much as I love chocolate cake (which is saying a lot). Angier does an amazing job of unraveling some of the mysteries of biology and behavior. Also, Angier's celebratory tone is refreshing. I really liked that this is not just a factual book with health tips, which has been done, and is often done badly. Angier's research smashed so many of my previously held ideas about femininity to bits, and I love books that can challenge your ideas to that extent. This book is guaranteed to make any reader rethink her ideas of what it means to be a woman.

More blog neglect. I spent about four hours today reading Robinson Crusoe for a book club I belong to. That sounds odd. Why in the world would a book club choose Robinson Crusoe? Did you know it was published in 1719? Anyway, I spent my day off from work trying to catch up and meanwhile neglecting the blog. It's an interesting book--being stranded alone on a desert island seems like it would be sad, but in some ways it would be pretty awesome. I think it would be cool to have an island you could escape to whenever you want.

In the garden

I now have access to a digital camera--very exciting. I took these pictures in my backyard on Saturday.

I've missed journaling this whole past week. I get home from work tired and lacking the motivation to make a few notes about what happened that day. I should, since some funny/interesting/important things happen every day that I will want to remember later. Funny how when I didn't have a job I would write about the most inane things: Went to the store. Went to the library. Watched a movie. Now more interesting things are happening and I write nothing.


Yesterday was a monster day. I got out of work at 7. Then I went to my Spanish class for an hour. After that, I planned to meet a friend for her birthday dinner at a sushi restaurant across town. I was overbooked--class ended at 8:15 and the party had started at 7:30. I knew I wouldn't have time to stop at home, so after class I changed out of my work clothes into my "party clothes" (a skirt!) in the car.


The restaurant was crowded and club-like with loud dance music pumping out from the speakers. I said "Happy Birthday" to the birthday girl, a former classmate, and introduced myself to the other dinner guests, two girls and a guy, none of whom I'd previously met. I watched enviously as they finished eating plates of chicken teriyaki and rice. I had been too busy to eat dinner that day and I was starving. My dinner companions allowed me to pilfer off their plates while I waited for a tuna roll I ordered to arrive.

Talk centered around Brazil, where some members of the group had recently gone on vacation. I was out of the loop there, but my friend was good about including me in the conversation, which I was grateful for. We gave the obligatory updates about what we were doing for work and school.


Oh, food, how yummy. I devoured the tuna roll when it arrived and then ordered dessert, a cappuccino mousse, which was sadly disappointing for the calories. The idea of going dancing afterwards was floated around briefly, but by that time it was 10:00 and the consensus was that we were all too tired for it. I was admittedly glad the day was over. I drove home tired but satisfied, feeling sort of bad-ass for working AND studying AND somehow getting invited to a cool party, all in one day.


I know I overdid it a little that day, and the party was a roll of the dice, given I only knew one person there, but it turned out I had a good time, so all was well. Another exciting day in my glamorous life...

Drove home yesterday on wet, wet streets. Rain scares me after the floods of '06. Hours and hours of watching the rain fall, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. A reminder that weather is ultimately unpredictable, and powerful. I pray that it doesn't happen again.

Sunday afternoon and I'm listening to The Police. It has been a long time since I listened to "the classics", i.e. "Roxanne", "Can't Stand Losing You", "Message in a Bottle", etc. My '91 Honda's tape player ate my tape of The Police's greatest hits five or six years ago. Now I have a 2-CD anthology I bought with some birthday money. Woo hoo, exciting.

I've spent the weekend trying to digest everything that happened this week at my new job. Upon reflection I feel equally tired and energized, which I see as a good thing. We'll see what next week holds.

Cool "subway slide show" in the NY Times. When I visited NYC I remember being surprised by how quiet it was on the subway. Like an unspoken rule of subway etiquette--don't talk. But alas, pictures can't bring you the damp, mildly gross smells of NYC's underground.

Interesting profile of Shigeru Miyamoto, inventor of Nintendo games like Mario and Donkey Kong (and now Wii Fit), in USA Weekend:

After a series of odd jobs, including playing the guitar in a bluegrass band ("which is not," he says, "a terribly popular brand of music in Japan"), he was hired by Nintendo in 1977.

At the time, Nintendo was looking for new ventures and badly overestimated the appeal of a coin-operated arcade game machine called Radarscope. The company wound up with a warehouse full of them in Redmond, Wash. "For some reason, I was assigned the task of figuring out what to do with the machines," Miyamoto recalls. He came up with a simple game featuring a character scaling a set of girders while avoiding barrels tossed by an oversize ape. That game, of course, was "Donkey Kong," and by 1982 its hero, Jumpman (later rechristened "Mario" in honor of the warehouse's portly manager), would appear on everything from cereal boxes to neck ties.

My lack of interviewing skills notwithstanding, voila, I have a new job. I won't divulge all the details, since this is a public blog, but I will say it is a job that involves news. It's a great job, really, a job I'm lucky to have been offered.

I am very excited about the new direction, but I'm also a little sad to think of what I'm giving up, mainly the placid life of an academic. Today was my first day and I think I'm still shaking all the cobwebs off my brain since I'm still in summer mode. I'm not used to any of it--dressing up, getting up early, dealing with co-workers. Time to relearn how to deal.

So much can change in a little over a week. I think right now I'm just in shock. Now that I've gotten what I said I wanted, what am I going to do with it?

- Yesterday morning I went to a casino. I was doing well with a video poker machine at one point, but then moved to the slots and it was all downhill from there. I left the casino $20 poorer. Yeah, I'm a big gambler. I don't think I'll ever understand how people can just sit at slot machines and feed money into them all day. Isn't it just darn depressing to be in a dark room losing all your money? There's an occasional payout, but come on, can't people realize the general trend, that gambling is a habit where you lose money nearly all the time?

- In my continuing quest to learn Spanish, I was trying out listening to some Spanish-language stations and I found a really cool one: Orbita 106.7. The station plays a wickedly awesome mix of rock en español and alternative rock in English. Quite rare that you find a station that plays music in two languages. Unfortunately, the station doesn't have a website, so you can only listen if you're in the El Paso area.

I'm liking Aimee Mann's new album @#%&*! Smilers. The lyrics are up to the usual standards of cleverness: "You love me like a dollar bill/You roll me up and trade me in/And if you had the chance, you will/And if you get the chance again..." on "Phoenix." Also, the special edition CD comes with an awesome little book with the song lyrics and funny illustrations.

Border fence

TIME's cover story this week is about the new U.S.-Mexico border fence:

The fence is not likely to win any architecture awards. It's a hodgepodge of designs. The best--sections of tall, concrete-filled steel poles deeply rooted, closely spaced and solidly linked at the top--are blatantly functional. The worst--rusting, graffiti-covered, Vietnam-era surplus--are just skeevy walls of welded junk. Whether you think it's a sad necessity of a crude brutality, the fence is not a sight that stirs pride. The operative question, however, is not, What does it look like? but How does it work?

The article goes on to detail the effects of the wall on immigration border areas such as Yuma, Tucson, and San Diego. Living in El Paso, it's interesting to see how other areas deal with immigration and "the fence." TIME's general conclusion is that the fence is a deterrent, but only in combination with other enforcement strategies, like more border patrol agents.

One thing the article fails to cover in detail is the controversies involved in actually building the fence. Congress has allowed the Department of Homeland Security to waive all sorts of laws in order to build the fence quickly. The DHS is planning to build a new section of fence nearby, and of course, it's a big issue here. People in El Paso are generally opposed to the fence and the hasty manner in which it is being put up. The city of El Paso, El Paso County, and the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (which represents the Tigua Native American tribe) filed a lawsuit against the federal government last month to slow down the fence's construction. Reports the El Paso Times:

The department wants to build 670 miles of border fencing this year, and Chertoff has said he would use authority Congress gave him to waive more than 30 laws that could get in the way.
...
[El Paso County Attorney] Rodriguez said the waivers allow Chertoff to bypass federal, state and local laws that leave the county wondering which laws it can and cannot enforce.
...
Tom Diamond, lawyer for the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo, said the Tigua tribe joined the lawsuit because the fence would impede access to parts of the Rio Grande where they have conducted religious ceremonies for centuries.

The U.S. government has the right to build the fence, but they need to do it the right way, with respect for local laws, Native American tribes, and the environment.

- VH1 rolls out the series "I Love the Millennium" starting tonight. Um, isn't it a little early for this? Not that it will stop me from watching and having a delicious time reminiscing about the last eight years of pop culture.
- MySpace for Hercules and Love Affair, a disco-influenced band that was raved about in the NY Times. This seems like it would be awesome music to work out to.
- Nice review by El Paso Times writer Doug Pullen of Tom Waits' concert in El Paso. According to Pullen, Friday's concert involved "A cop on stage. A key to the city from a councilwoman in a black dress. A startled singer in a bowler hat at a piano." He writes, "Friday's performance play[ed] out like some twisted journey through a house of broken mirrors that reveal the ugly truths of man's most primal instincts, and the ragged beauty of the species' most tender, vulnerable moments." Wow.

Job interviews, lack of posting, etc.

Sorry for the lack of posting. I think I need to follow some advice from this article (lol, the cat picture).

In a strange turn of events, this week I actually managed to be halfway-busy. I ended up going on three job interviews. I don't generally like job interviews (who does, really?), but considering the circumstances lately, it kind of gave me a boost to be put to the test.

The first interview was a total bust. I ended up handing back my application and walking out. It did not seem like a good place to work. On Friday I went on two job interviews. As I was parking my car before the earlier interview, I ran over an empty beer bottle with my right front tire. A horrible popping noise resulted, and about a hundred jagged brown glass pieces exploded all around the sidewalk. Maybe it was the first sign that this interview wasn't going to go well. Yeah, I don't think I'll be called back anytime soon. But the interview after that one went OK, I think. *crosses fingers*

After I got back from the interviews, my sister called and we dissected the whole process. My sister just landed a great job, so she felt compelled to offer me some interview advice. I slapped my forehead just thinking about all the things I did wrong. I hate to think of interviewing as a skill. I like to think I can just be myself and let my qualifications speak for themselves, so that I'm OK just winging it, but "winging it" rarely works out for me. Even on the last interview that I thought went fairly well, I ended up rambling or not knowing what to say at times because I was so nervous. Hopefully I'll be better prepared next time.

Anyway, so the summer and the HOT weather continue. Temperatures have been in the 100s all this week. I can't say I love the weather, but it's better than cold. Yesterday was the first day of summer. This actually makes me sad in a way, because from now on the days will get shorter and shorter until December.

More posts soon, I promise. It's weird how at times when I'm reading, things will stand out to me, like, you must blog this. But sometimes stretches go by where that doesn't happen, and I don't want to post about things that are not that noteworthy, that no one is going to care about, so the blog lies dormant. I suppose the more you read, and the more diverse things you read, the greater the chances are of finding things worth posting. I'll work on it.

Equally shared parenting

There's an interesting article in this week's New York Times Magazine about "equally shared parenting." Writer Lisa Ekdahl provides some statistics on the typical distribution of labor in the home:

The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin's National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 — a ratio of slightly more than two to one.

But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.

She quotes University of Buffalo professor Sampson Lee Blair, who finds the "sadly comic" result that even "in married couples 'where she has a job and he doesn’t, and where you would anticipate a complete reversal, even then you find the wife doing the majority of the housework.'" Wow. How unfair can you get?

Ekdahl then profiles several couples who are committed to the idea of equally shared parenting. Most seem to arrange approximately equal work hours for both partners, for example, each parent arranging a four-day work week or working opposite part-time schedules. Then each parent will have certain designated times for child care. Household responsibilities are also roughly equally divided (though in all the profiled couples, it seems the wife still tends to do more of the chores and have more of a manager role in the household). One couple even tracks their time commitments with a color-coded chart.

It's a great article in that it's lengthy enough to give readers a look at how this really plays out in practice, rather than an airbrushed view of what some might dismiss as a "cute" idea. I'm struck by how, even in the profiled couples who seem to represent the (I'm guessing) very small percentage of Americans who make equally shared parenting a top priority, there is still a strong tendency for childcare and chores to default to the woman. The arrangement involves a lot of compromise and constant struggle against societal expectations. But despite the imperfections, I think if more couples did this, it would be nothing short of revolutionary--for women, of course, in countless ways, but also for men. Why shouldn't work and personal time be more balanced for all individuals, regardless of gender? It's an ideal that I think is very much worth striving for.

Some lovely words of advice from Alex the Girl:

Let go of the snark, your worries, your anger and fear and give into possibility, action, joy and life. Do. Do some more. Stop thinking about you. Stop blogging about just you and your kid and your pet. There's a world out there to connect to, really connect to. Being of use is more important than being popular. Think about the lady down the street, the person at the drive through, the man fallen in the street, about politics, the environment, healthcare, another country and then do something about it. Never stop at thinking.

Summer update

I don't have a job this summer. This means three months of trying to occupy myself until the fall semester starts. Is it good or bad to not work for three months? Ask me at the end of the summer. Here's what I've been doing lately:

• One of my goals for the summer is to learn more Spanish. I signed up for a continuing ed Spanish class only to get a call a few hours before the first class that the class was cancelled due to low enrollment. This sucks. I guess I'm stuck learning Spanish on my own. My latest tactic is to read articles in Spanish-language magazines and look up every unfamiliar word in an Spanish-English dictionary. It kind of works, though I still can't speak Spanish worth anything.
• Also on the agenda: brushing up on my web design and computer programming skills, in the hopes that these might be useful in a future career. I feel like I've forgotten everything I've ever learned. It's frustrating.
• I've been reading a lot lately: novels by James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, short stories by Alice Munro. I tend to read mostly nonfiction, but this summer I'm reading a ton of fiction. Books are good, especially when you've got the time.
• Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to be working on my thesis. It's a stop-and-go process--one week I'll get a lot done on it, and others I won't work on it at all.

So I've got some stuff going, and yet on these hot days I have the urge to dissolve into a puddle of laziness, stay in bed all day, watch TV non-stop or be glued to the Internet all day. Sometimes I give in, but most of the time I try to do something productive.

It must be hard to live like this all the time. It would seem like this type of life is easier than going to a regular job every day, and it is, in some ways, but in other ways it's more difficult. Mentally, mostly, and socially in not having people around to talk to every day. It will be a relief to go back to work, I think.

TIME's Josh Tyrangiel sums up perfectly my aversion to Coldplay: "Get past the obscenities, and the criticism amounts to this: lead singer Chris Martin is a cornball solipsist, the melodies all have the same mass-produced 'character' as a Pottery Barn table, and Coldplay's albums sound like crib-safe versions of Radiohead--a band that, while commercially less successful, is infinitely more hip and worthy of adulation."

Contact lenses

For a week I have been trying out contact lenses. I briefly wore contact lenses seven years ago but I stopped wearing them for reasons I only vaguely remember. This week I remembered the reason: because they irritate the hell out of my eyes. They don't hurt, really, they just dry out my eyes a lot. I've gotten more used to wearing them in the past few days, so I can wear them for about three or four hours now, but then I take them out and there is such relief to go back to wearing my glasses.

I admit I like the way I look without glasses, but is it worth the discomfort? With all the cleaning with solution and application of eye drops, contacts are just as bothersome as glasses, plus there's the irritation of having plastic in your eyes all day. I don't know how people get used to it. I think I'm giving up on contact lenses. Maybe LASIK is the answer, someday when I can afford it? I don't know.

I finally sat down and watched Season 1, Disc 1 of The Wire. Not a show for the faint of heart, given that a) it's super gritty and violent, and b) you really have to pay attention to understand the intricate plotlines. So far I'm impressed. I'm not quite ready to crown this the greatest show of all time, but I do recognize that this is a more ambitious kind of TV crime drama than what came before. This is light years away from a Law and Order-type series, where basically the police and the attorneys are always good and the criminals are always evil. The series shows similarities between the criminal and the law enforcement hierarchies, which I think is pretty daring. Also, the glamour factor is reduced, and you can see how cops and drug dealers alike face politics and incompetence and hassles, just like in any other job. If you want to understand the criminal justice system, this seems like the drama that gets closest to what it's really like. On to Disc 2 then...

Pictures

Spring at the UTEP Library:

Sunset views:

The new season of 30 Days starts tonight. I love this show.

Brian Greene writes an eloquent argument on why you need to "Put a Little Science in Your Life":

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

The whole thing is worth reading, especially if you're science-phobic.

If you have HBO, Recount is definitely worth watching. The film is about the chaotic aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, aka, the era of the chad. This is a well-crafted political thriller--twists and turns abound, even if we already know the ending. The film strikes the right balance of pointing out the absurdities of that election in a serious way and also incorporating many humorous elements. The writers and actors have some fun impersonating the individuals involved, especially Laura Dern with an over-the-top Katherine Harris, yet the film doesn't devolve into caricature. Kevin Spacey excellently captures the mix of cynicism and idealism of Ron Klain, leader of Al Gore's post-election fight. Gore and George W. Bush are portrayed only in passing and in voice impersonations; they aren't central characters, which I think was a wise decision. I was surprised at how many times I was left in suspense as I was watching this, my memory of 2000 getting a little spotty, which just goes to show why films like these are necessary. Recount is a well-executed and relevant analysis that never gets boring.

- The NY Times reports on a "miracle fruit" that "rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy." I don't know, I think I'd be scared to try this.

- In another Times article, David Byrne outfits an abandoned building with an "architectural organ":

Besides being fitted with several motors, which produce the bass sounds by vibrating a set of girders that once supported a stained-glass skylight in the 40-foot-high ceiling, the organ is attached to a pump that blows air through a tangle of hoses. These hoses snake into the huge room’s old water and heating pipes and conduits, making primitive flute sounds. And then there are more than a dozen spring-loaded solenoids, attached like woodpeckers to the columns and even to a linebacker-size radiator that emits a surprisingly sonorous tone when struck in just the right place with a metal rod.

There's a video of it with the article. Way cool and makes me wish I were a New Yorker so I could go see it.

Change is good

I decided it was about time to change the blog template. What do you think?

Birthday dinner

Thanks to my three regular readers for the birthday wishes. You all are very kind.

For my birthday gift, my dad took me, a few family members, and a friend to one of the trendiest/most expensive restaurants in El Paso. I'm generally not a food or restaurant snob. I don't mind eating at cheap places. But just once, I wanted to see what the "best" was, and possibly relive a tiny bit of the restaurant experience I had in New York City.

So off we went to enjoy an amazing meal. For my first and second courses, I had fried crab with a sauce that had bacon and avocado in it and a fillet of toothfish (whatever that is) with spinach and red seaweed tendrils on top of it. It was good, though the portion size of the fish was a bit large and the flavors were really strong, so I could only finish half of it. Two of my dinner companions ordered a salad that was placed on a bowl with several live goldfish in it. Whoa, now that's not something you see at Red Lobster. One relative ordered a "lobstertini," like a shrimp cocktail but with lobster, that came with a tiny bottle of vodka on the side. For me, though, the highlight of the meal was dessert, an amaretto creme brulee. The waitress had to show me how to puncture the top of it and pour the amaretto sauce in it. It was sooooo yummy. I also ordered a cup of coffee with dessert and it honestly was the most perfect cup of coffee I've ever tasted. It came with two biscotti, a tiny white ceramic creamer, and a long white tray with sugar cubes and tiny stirring spoons.

It was definitely a memorable experience, but as I remarked to my friend who came with me on this food adventure, I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon. The bill was, predictably, huge, and in the end it seemed ridiculous to spend that much on one meal. The pretentiousness of it all got to me, too. Do I really need an army of waiters to present my food? Do I need these exotic ingredients I've never heard of? Mostly I think we all felt sort of out of place there; my family members and friend and I all acted sort of hushed and different from our usual loud and lively selves just because we were at that particular restaurant. Still, it was good to try something new on my b-day, and if I was judging purely on the food, it's certainly the best restaurant I've been to in this city.

Today really should be a national holiday

Or at least a blog holiday--it's my birthday today! I'm 26.

In the Shadow of the Moon is an excellent documentary about Apollo astronauts' journeys to the moon, narrated by the astronauts themselves. The footage is amazing, clearer than I've ever seen it, and I like how the documentary focuses mainly on these men's experiences rather than on technical or historical details of the moon landings, which have been covered in a lot of other documentaries. It's fascinating to hear the astronauts reflect on a truly unique and awe-inspiring experience, how it changed them and made them see our world in a new way. Watch it and you will surely look at the moon and the earth a little differently afterwards.

Weird article in yesterday's NY Times: "Serge Hefez, a practicing psychiatrist, has identified a new mental illness among the French: obsessive Sarkosis, an unhealthy fascination with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy." Seems pretty silly to me, but it is interesting to consider how celebrities can reflect/affect the public psyche. The accompanying photos, which originally appeared in the French newspaper Liberation, are also a trip.

Happiness is a new pair of running shoes.

One week into summer break and I'm already itching to work again. I have goals and projects for the summer, but ah, whatever, every day still lasts forever. The perils of unemployment. Plus the heat is stifling, even in May.

Yesterday I assembled a barbecue grill for my mom. It was kind of fun screwing things together and attaching the little wheels. I was so proud of myself for assembling the thing, until I realized I attached the top of the grill the wrong way. Whoops.

My birthday is less than a week away. Maybe I'm childish for caring at the almost-age of 26. Still, I'm excited and I'm cooking up some plans for the day.

Some great tips for moving on Hygge House. I like "2. When packing use no peanuts." and "6. Don’t ask friends unless you are broke ass. I say this because moving is no fun." True. I hate moving.

Local anchorman Gary Warner retires. I always thought he was the most professional local news anchor. I like what he says about his job in the El Paso Times article:

"I like the feeling that, at the end of the day, I've given people information they should know in a professional manner," he said. "The copy was written well, and it had an impact on the viewers.

"It's like any other profession, such as a lawyer or doctor. If a doctor writes a wrong prescription, someone can get hurt. If we mess up and give the wrong information, there's the possibility that someone can get hurt."

Now there's an attitude I think some others in the news business need to adopt.

M. LeBlanc on Bitch Ph.D. gives a right-on assessment of Sex and the City:

You know what? I think Sex and the City actually has a few redeeming qualities. Cinematically it's awful, especially with the whole "Carrie-typing-and-wondering-aloud-punny-questions" theme that appears in every single episode. Several of the characters (esp. Samantha) are pretty flat. It's an odd show, because at times it's clear that some of the characters aren't at all realistic (again, see Samantha), but then it tries to present problems of love, sex, relationship, fertility, illness, careers in a nuanced way. The show's a bit schizophrenicconfused in that way, like it's not sure whether it's a comedy or a drama, realism or high-exaggeration kabuki.

Recommended

Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni. It edges into chick lit territory, but it's still pretty magical.

On Teaching

Reflections on the end of two semesters of teaching freshman composition:

First of all, "teaching" is a misnomer. It implies that I can make students learn, that teaching is a process of transmitting my knowledge directly into my students' minds." I wish that were the case, but you can't make people do anything, learning included. I define teaching as "influencing students to learn on their own." My job as a teacher is to influence, and it's not easy considering how much competition I have for students' attention. I'm competing for their attention with other professors, families, friends, jobs, cell phones, video games, etc., but to be a good teacher I must wield that tiny sliver of influence I have in the most effective way possible to get students to take responsibility for their own learning.

It surprised me over and over how inefficient the process of teaching is. How, of the many things I would say in front of the class, I would guess-timate that students remember about 10% of it. The "good" students would remember a little more, the "bad" students would remember less. I'm sure someone has done a real study on this, but my estimate comes from realizing that if you want students to remember something, you'd better say it ten times. And then have them practice it ten times. Then they'll remember it. Maybe.

As a teacher, I got used to disappointment. I would grade quizzes only to discover that only one person read the assignment. Editing student drafts, I would find out that my lesson on commas taught them absolutely nothing. The girl who sits in the back is absent again? I sighed whenever second drafts of essays were identical to the first ones. In those moments I felt like a failure. You put a lot of effort into teaching and it feels like you have made no difference. You want to give up. But you just have to forgive yourself for not being Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers. Some students you will never reach. And you just have to accept it. Like I said before, your influence as a teacher only goes so far.

But then, just when you want to give up, something amazing happens. You're reading a student's essay, and it's so much better than the first draft. He read my comments! You read on--wow, this kid's got good ideas! He cited his sources correctly. Some of the comma errors are still there, but they're not too bad. This kid, the kid who sits in the back texting while you're lecturing, the kid who you thought never paid attention, this kid can write a college paper! *Choirs of angels sing hallelujah* It worked! I "taught" them something! As a teacher you live for those moments. As satisfying moments go, those rank right up there.

In a way, this job has made me understand a little better what it must be like to be a parent, another job where you influence rather than control. Now I understand how frustrating it must be when your child doesn't listen to you and makes a wrong decision. Why don't they get it? You want to tear out your hair. But then there's the other side of the coin, the good side that almost makes up for the frustration: when your child does something well and your heart overflows with pride and you want to brag to everyone who will listen that you had something to do with it.

I did grow attached to my students in a way I would describe as maternal. Not a day of teaching would go by when these (mostly) sweet and goofy and interesting people wouldn't surprise me. I'd laugh at the things they'd say and sometimes think all day about things they said during class. I found it odd and flattering how they put me on a pedestal. The teacher-student relationship is pretty interesting: it's strange and amazing how each of my students has a little of my knowledge (along with my sparkling personality) resonating inside their minds, and vice versa.

Overall, I would say this was a rewarding learning experience, but somehow I don't think this is the career for me. The frustrations are too high. Teaching is part popularity contest, and I don't have the charisma that makes for a teacher that students love. And to be completely honest, there are things I want to figure out besides how to make that 10% number go up. As a teacher, I think that's your constant goal. How can you extend your influence? It's an uphill battle.

Still, I'll never forget this. It has really changed my view of myself knowing that I can stand up in front of room of people and command some of their attention for an hour. I still think if you showed me a videotape of myself teaching, I wouldn't believe it was me. I never though of myself as a leader, but being a teacher has shown me that I can be bossy and authoritative and make some tiny bit of difference in these students' lives. Of course, there were things I could have done better, but I gave it my best and I think I influenced some students to learn how to write better, and for that I'm really, really happy.

Finals Week

I had my very last class today and cleaned out my desk :=(. Is this really the end? Well, not technically, since I'm not graduating, but the only "class" I have left to take for my degree plan is my thesis. It's stunning, really. No more syllabi and books to buy, no more lectures. Actually, maybe it's more like :=), now that I think about it.

The past week has been nonstop deadlines: projects, seminar papers, and grading, all converging in one crazy week. I haven't slept well or eaten well. Piles of journal articles and books are all around me. I complain to everyone that I'm exhausted, but I think I secretly love the chaos and the constant motion. In all honesty I haven't felt so alive in a long while.

New York photos

Check 'em out, on Flickr:

www.flickr.com

Apologies for not posting for awhile. I've been (and still am) swamped. Part of what has kept me busy for the past week was a 20-page report mostly on the subject of blogs. The more I think about blogs, the more I don't know what to make of them. Empowering explorations of identity or inconsequential exercises in narcissism? I guess it depends. I think the main thing I've discovered is that I'm no good at theorizing.

It's the end of school and I'm getting emotional about it. It's all too much to think about right now. Despite my often saying I'm so sick and tired of school, I know I am going to miss it like crazy. It's going to be such a shock going from working nonstop to having nothing but free time this summer.

More later when there's time...

Bored

Today is the first Saturday in a long time (weeks? months?) that I can actually say I am bored. I have no essays to grade, I have another week to work on seminar papers, and I'm fairly caught up with housework. Ack, what to do? There's My So-Called Life Disc 3 (oh so good with "Life of Brian") and a couple of books I could read. Maybe I could even listen to one of my CDs that I haven't listened to in ages. I guess. For some reason I have the urge to buy a large Slurpee and just stare into space.

Randomness

So I've got a cold again. I tried to deny it for awhile and tell myself it was just bad allergies, but alas, it is not. I'm generally a healthy person, so I freak out a little when I get a cold and its accompanying fever and headaches and grogginess. I also hate to think how I might be infecting someone else with this affliction every time I breathe and/or touch something. Tomorrow is going to be an especially bad day to have a cold, since I'm scheduled to be talking for literally hours. Great.

Only a few more weeks until school is out. The weather already feels like summer. I turned the A/C on today and just basked in its coolness for awhile. Somehow hot weather doesn't appeal to me as much as it once did. I used to love everything about summer, but now I feel like I'd just as soon stay with the 80-degree weather we've been having than move on into the 90- and 100-degree weather I know is coming up.

Lately I've come down with a case of insecurity. Last night I gave a presentation and stared out at my classmates and saw no reaction whatsoever to what I was saying. I wondered if they thought I was speaking nonsense or if they were just tired. Just tired, I hope. Maybe this is why I'm a writer--so I don't have to see my audience face-to-face.

New York!

So it has taken me long enough to get my pictures back from New York. I was waiting to post this recap until I got them back. Anyway, I wrote most of the following a few days after I got back from my fabulous New York adventure:




New York, New York. Maybe like all of us, before I went there I had a sense of what kind of city it was, a pastiche of everything I had ever seen on TV or in movies or read about (actually, now that I look at it, mostly on TV). The New York of Friends, Law and Order, Sex and the City, Saturday Night Live, When Harry Met Sally, The New York Times, Felicity, Project Runway, reruns of Taxi, and even the first book I ever read that was set in New York, a special installment of the Baby-Sitters Club. Etc., etc., of course. My sense of the city was trendy and artsy, fast-paced and exciting, a little mean and unforgiving with a cozy cafe on every corner and yellow taxis roaming up and down the streets. When I thought of New York, it was always night, and the background music was always jazz.



You almost forget that the city is a physical place and not a concept, a narrow island conveniently gridded out into numbered streets. There's a big park in the middle of it, trains running under it, and water surrounding it. And the sun shines there; it's not always night. Surprise. It was kind of fun to see which of my conceptions held up and which were illusions.

One of the first things I noticed was that life does move a little faster in New York. People in NY don't kid around when it comes to going places. My first impression of New Yorkers was taking a taxi from the airport and being rushed through a line for taxis by a woman with a thick New York accent. Walking the sidewalks with my sister, I noticed how people walk way faster on the streets of New York than they do in El Paso. They don't ever wait for the "WALK" sign to come on; a second after traffic comes to a stop, they're rushing across the street. If you're waiting in a line for a museum or a restaurant, you'd better know exactly what you want when you get to the counter. Sauntering around aimlessly is not the New York way. Either keep up or get out of the way.

In many ways the city was less glamorous than I expected. Take the subways, first of all. I thought the stations all smelled like a public restroom. I kept asking my sister why the city didn't clean them or upgrade them, spray them with Clorox occasionally, at least. She shrugged. "Well, they're always open, so I guess they really don't have time for that." Makes sense, but still, in a city with so much money, why can't they come up with some kind of solution? At the same time, street performers perform astoundly professional live music at the subway stations (yes, jazz, but one day I even heard some opera down there). It's strange.

The museums also surprised me: the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Museum of Natural History (outside of which the picture above was taken). Well, first of all, because they are so grand and so huge. You start seeing works by the big-name artists, the Picassos, the Warhols, the Van Goghs, the Monets, and your jaw drops, but even more surprising to me was how out in the open these pieces of art were. The museums were swarmed with people, but the pieces weren't roped off or otherwise restricted, for the most part (though a couple of pieces did have sheets of glass in front them). Museum monitors were stationed in every corner, but they only intervened if a person got way too close. Non-flash photography was allowed. I thought that was cool. These museums really are for the "masses," not just for art snobs.

Really, the openness of the city to anyone and everyone is what suprised me the most, in the museums and elsewhere. There were so many different types of people in the city. Everywhere we went, we would encounter people speaking different languages--French, Chinese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, German--and it seemed like everyone belonged there equally. There were really no "outsiders" in New York; it's a true cosmopolitan city.

The food in New York was, of course, amazing. There are a huge number of restaurants. A Starbucks is located on every corner, which is kind of unfortunate, but there were thankfully few McDonald's or Burger Kings in the city. Bagel shops are plentiful. My sister and I ordered eggs on a roll a couple of times. The rolls were fresh and covered with poppy seeds and absolutely delicious.

Apparently my sister V. is a bit of an expert on restaurants. It seems this is her "thing" in NYC: trying out new restaurants every weekend. One night she gave me a tiny taste of the trendier side of New York by taking me to a restaurant called Rayuela, where we ordered dishes like red snapper ceviche topped with what looked like kiwi seeds; chicken sweetbreads with bacon; fried shrimp, octopus, and potatoes in a spicy mustard-type sauce; a papaya stuffed with duck; and a platter of three custards (lemon, caramel, and cinnamon), each in a tiny ceramic cup. Yeah, I know, these sound weird, but believe me, they were delicious. I had never had food as artful as this before. This, to me, seemed very "New York."

On my final day of touring the city, V. and I went on the NBC Studio Tour at Rockefeller Center (the outside of which is pictured above). OK, so as I mentioned earlier, I like my TV, maybe a little too much, and I was really excited to see where the Today show, the NBC Nightly News, Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien were filmed. On the tour, our group got to stand in the actual studio where Brian Williams reads the news most nights. We got to see the control room where the NBC signal is monitored. We saw where Saturday Night Live is performed. Wow. But, of course, it was Conan's set that I couldn't believe I was actually seeing. I couldn't believe I was actually sitting where the audience sits when watching the show.

After we sat down, the tour guide asked the group, what's the first thing you notice? "It's so small," is what most of us responded. Indeed it was. Conan's monologue is performed in a very small cube of space. It amazed me that the band could all fit on the stage, much less the wall of space they play in. And finally, Conan's wooden desk, the blue seats the guests sat in, and the round coffee table looked so small I almost had to laugh. They seemed almost child-sized. Our guide told us the reason Conan never sits with his legs under the desk when interviewing guests is because he literally can't comfortably fit into it. I actually felt sorry for Conan for having to use this studio for 14 years. Even for average people, this space seems small, but for a tall person, it must seem hobbit-sized.

In the end, I think it's that kind shattering of illusions that sums up my experience in New York. It's strange how the real New York is smaller than it is on TV and movies, but not in a disappointing way. In fact, it's a relief that anyone, even a person as un-trendy as me, can go right up and touch it. There's nothing mythical about New York. The streets are definitely not made of gold; the people aren't gods and goddesses. In fact, the best thing about New York is that anyone can go there and partake of world-class art, music, food, and entertainment for a relatively low price. Anyone can ride the subway and walk the streets. Anyone can pass by skyscrapers and stroll through Central Park. It's truly a city for everyone, and that's what I loved about it.

John Mayer, "From the Heart....":

This is about a level of self consciousness so high in my generation, that it's actually toxic...For as badass and unaffected as we try to come off, we're all just one sentence away from being brought to the edge of tears, if only it was worded right...

We were spoken to by name through a television. We were promised we could be anything that we wanted to be, if only we believed it and then, faster than we saw coming, we were set loose into the world to shake hands with the millions of other people who were told the exact same thing.

And really? Really? It turns out we're just not all that special, when you break it down. Beautifully unspectacular, actually. And that truth is going to catch up with us whether we want to run from it or not.

Damn, that is some insightful stuff.

I've been meaning to link to this story by Pico Iyer about the Dalai Lama that was published in TIME several weeks ago. Iyer gives an insightful report on a man he apparently knows personally:

As soon as you start talking to the Dalai Lama, as I have been doing for 33 years, you notice that his favorite adjectives are logical and realistic and the verbs he returns to are investigate, analyze and explore. The Buddha was a "scientist," he said the last time I saw him, which means that a true Buddhist should follow the course of reason (recalling, perhaps, that anger most harms the person who feels it)....

Always stressing that the Buddha's own words should be thrown out if they are shown by scientific inquiry to be flawed, the Dalai Lama is the rare religious figure who tells people not to get needlessly confused or distracted by religion ("Even without a religion, we can become a good human being"). No believer in absolute truth—he eagerly seeks out Catholics, neuroscientists, even regular travelers to Tibet who can instruct him—he is also the rare Tibetan who will suggest that old Tibet may have contributed in part to its current predicament, the rare Buddhist to tell foreigners not to take up Buddhism but to study within their own traditions, where their roots are deepest.

I think I'm officially out of inspiration. I'm doing a million things at once at the moment, none well.

Poptext is back. Interesting blog about music and other stuff. I've added it to the sidebar.

Michael Kinsley essay in TIME about the economy:

We don't need a conversation about race. At least not now. What we need is a conversation about money...This time we start with a huge government deficit and record private debt, all run up when times were good and we should have been storing up acorns. This is one that begins with people losing their homes, which is usually the last act of the drama. This is one that is bringing back stagflation--that poisonous combination of economic slowdown and eroding currency we cured at a terrible cost back in 1981. When that red phone rings in the middle of the night, it probably won't be the National Security Adviser saying Osama bin Laden has struck again. It will be the Treasury Secretary reporting that markets have opened in the Far East and the dollar has become worthless.

Venting

I don't get "no-shows." Maybe because I'm a person who, when she says she'll meet a person at a specific time, will be there on time down to the minute. Maybe because my life has largely been governed by the word "should." Being stood up is frustrating, but I guess it doesn't surprise me much anymore. Unfortunately.

Spent the afternoon/evening visiting relatives. I felt bad since I didn't get to see them on Easter due to being in New York. This was the first Easter I haven't spent with family, cracking cascarones and eating Easter candy.

School starts again on Tuesday. I've had such a good break I don't know how I'm going to go back...

Seven sins

Gandhi's seven social sins:

• politics without principles
• wealth without work
• pleasure without conscience
• knowledge without character
• commerce without morality
• science without humanity
• worship without sacrifice

Back home

I'm back from New York today. It was AWESOME. Life-changing, even. Every day brought new wonders and amazements, and I'm still pretty shocked that I saw the things I did. I will post pictures and a lengthy recap of what I did as soon as I can.

EP is home, though, always. I'll be happy to sleep in my own bed tonight, and after the chilly weather of NYC, I am enjoying the heck out of the 80-degree weather here on my return.

More later. Yay for spring break. I finally have time to do some real writing here. My fingers are just itching to produce some lengthy posts...

This has to be one of the most interesting things I've read in grad school. All I can say is Donna Haraway combines feminist theory, socialist theory, technology, and biology in an amazing way: "Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." Wow.

There's an interview with Tina Fey in this month's Reader's Digest. A couple of excerpts:
RD: How do you deal with it if you must write some comedy material and you're just not feeling funny?
Fey: I put on an I Love Lucy costume [laughs].

RD: Today's comics seem a little more type A, a little less self-destructive, than the previous generation. Why do you think that is?
Fey: There have always been different types of people if you look at great comedians. You have John Belushi and Richard Pryor, who lived dangerously. Then you have Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Newhart, who are happily married, mild-mannered guys. And their humor doesn't come from a place where they need to almost die to make comedy.
RD: It seems like you fit in the latter category, that you're well-adjusted.
Fey: Yeah, I think so. Jerry Seinfeld once said you don't have to be crazy to make comedy. To make comedy, maybe you just have to work hard and be funny.

Can I do it? Can I grade all the essays, finish my paper, and do all the stuff I need to do before I leave for NYC on Thursday? It's going to be a close call.

I found out today that my car has a major oil leak. I got home and it was leaking drops of oil like big drops of blood. The engine was smoking below the hood. Not good.

I started looking at maps of New York today. Eerie how I can actually see a picture of my sister's apartment building using Google maps. It's funny, but somehow I don't even think of New York as a real place. It's almost like a fantasy to me, I guess because it's so different from here. The farthest east I've been is Chicago, and that was certainly shocking to me. I have a feeling I'll be very surprised at what I find when I get there. You can try to imagine what a place is like, but it's not like actually being there.

I recommend...

- If you hadn't noticed, I recently added Tales from the Lake Shore to my sidebar. The blog is updated with one thought-provoking and/or visually interesting and/or funny photo per day from Chicago, a city that is endlessly photographable. Ooh, Chicago, I want to go back. Cool idea and great photos.

- A blog I've rediscovered recently is Intersections, which I would say is about 200 percent more rad now that its author Daniel Hernandez is based in Mexico City rather than Los Angeles. It's a fascinating look at a culture I've always been curious about, complete with awesome photos and stories that make me wish my life were that exciting.

- And I can't not mention my blog friend Stu's Mystery Music March on feeling listless. He has pledged to "churn out thirty odd pieces of writing about music" this month, of which he's nearly halfway through. The musical works written about so far have been very eclectic, ranging from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to the American Graffiti soundtrack to Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird," and the posts themselves are, as always, a delightful mix of critical and personal reflections.

Monday night report

I don't know what it is about Monday nights that inspires me to blog. It's my longest day of the week: teach from 11:30-1:30, drive home and read like mad from 1:30-4, then go back to class from 4:30-9 p.m. But here I am, bleary-eyed and fairly exhausted, typing something.

Reading for today was a book called Maus II. It was amazing. It makes me realize how little I know about art. That's not how I usually look at the world. I'm not inspired to draw very often. Sometimes I wonder if I had more training or education in it, it would come more naturally to me. I don't know.

There's a student in my class who draws at every free moment. While he's listening to me lecture on how to write research papers, he's drawing. When he's supposed to be doing group work, he's drawing. And these aren't just doodles; they're really good drawings. Realistic human forms, mostly. On one hand I'm annoyed because, well, he's not paying attention to a word I'm saying. On the other hand, I wish everyone could find something they're that passionate about. Who am I to discourage that? Maybe I'm too lenient and I should tell him to put it away. But I don't.

Personal time

On Thursday I took some "personal time" after I completed my office hours. Having spent the previous three days grading essays like a machine, I felt like I deserved it. I went to the mall and dropped into a hair salon to make an appointment to cut my hair, since it had started feeling like frayed rope at the ends. So much for growing out my hair. I felt like it was overtaking my face. While I waited for my appointment at 1 p.m., I decided to buy a sandwich at a nearby cafe.

The woman taking orders was busy preparing something behind a metal counter off to the side of the main counter. "Can I help you?" she asked. She was an older woman, in her mid-40s about, and she seemed like a foreigner, from Germany, maybe, from the way she spoke. I went over there and placed my order for a turkey panini. I wasn't sure that she heard me, so I stood around and gave her a puzzled look until she finally said, "I am preparing it." The only other people in the cafe were a couple of Asian guys. It looked like they were waiting, too, and were in line ahead of me. From the woman's slow demeanor, I had a feeling it was going to take a looong time to get my food.

It was 12:35 when I sat down at an aluminum cafe table. The cafe had glass walls and so you could see out into pink-tiled mall. Two teenage couples with babies passed by. A woman in white pants, a white sweater, and black sunglasses passed by, looked at the cafe hopefully for a second, then walked past in a rush. I looked up at the white beams converging in the center of the ceiling, sunlight coming through in between the beams through translucent white glass. Ah, sunshine. But I felt bummed. Can I ever not be grumpy? I thought to myself. Finally, I was free. No work to do, no homework looming ahead. Here I was sitting idly in a nice cafe, but I still felt like a grumpy old lady. Maybe I still felt machine-like from the activity of the past few days. Maybe I was annoyed at having to wait for an overpriced sandwich. Maybe I was ashamed of sitting in a restaurant alone. Again. This happens all too often.

A family came in for gelato, further distrupting my sandwich getting made. I considered cancelling my order, but then the two Asian guys finally got their orders, also paninis, a hopeful sign. Finally, the lady delivered it to me: a turkey panini on round focaccia bread, marked with brown waffle-like marks from the griller. It turned out to be delicious, with two round slices of smoked turkey, feta cheese, and roasted red peppers. A side salad consisted of leafy greens, croutons, cheese, and spicy dressing. Everything seemed to be fresh. Thank God--if I had waited 20 minutes for a bad sandwich, I was really going to be angry. By this time it was 12:55, so I ate in a bit of a rush to meet my hair appointment.

Summary of the rest of the afternoon: I got my hair shampooed, cut, and styled by a guy that I am going to guess is gay. I bought three shirts at Sears, and the total price was $16 (what a steal, really). I went to Wal-Mart to buy candy and some personal items.

It was a pleasant afternoon, after which I felt less like a grumpy old lady and more like my usual occasionally grumpy but cautiously optimistic self. I think this is one of the things I like most about my job, being able to spend an occasional Thursday afternoon on myself when I find it necessary. True happiness may not be tied directly to pleasure, but it sure is nice to take a break to go out and buy a bunch of stuff for myself once in a while.

Nerd basketball

Caltech's basketball team is really bad, according to this article in TIME:

The team just finished 1-24 and, for the 23rd straight season, failed to win a game in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
...
There are signs of improvement, if not a quantum leap. Four years ago, the team lost by an average of 60 points, dropping games with scores like 108-16 and 127-32. This season Caltech lost by 29 points per game, took two league opponents into overtime and, for the second consecutive year, won a nonleague game (the team bounced Gallaudet in December).

My nomination for quote of the week:

"We've had two straight winning seasons," brags Haussler, before correcting himself. "O.K., two seasons with a win." He laughs. "The paradigm is just different around here."

For more, rent Quantum Hoops.

It seems I was wrong.

I Voted

After a long internal debate, my vote in the Democratic presidential primary went to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I like her plan on health care better than her opponent's, I think she is better prepared for the job than her opponent, and I like her pragmatic approach to passing bills in the Senate. Also, the fact that she's a woman and would be a powerful advocate for women's equality doesn't hurt. Too bad her loss in the primaries is pretty much a foregone conclusion...

I made it through February! Woo hoo! And I bought my plane ticket to NYC! Even more good news.

Used books

It's funny sometimes to see the notes of a previous owner of a book. I love to see things highlighted with corresponding notes in the margin: "Wow!" or "Exactly" or even "Duh", or better yet a brilliant pointing out of something that was obviously overlooked in the text, i.e. "What about Native American women?" in a paragraph about women's voting rights. However, I would say most of the used books I've bought have been unmarked (perhaps with the intention of selling it after the class is over), or marked at the beginning but sparsely later on, evidence of early good intentions.

On my latest round of book-buying, I found a book whose previous owner was apparently annoyingly neat and organized. Witness the following note on the title page, which looks like a note you'd find in a textbook explaining how to study for a test. Additionally, it seems like every other line in the book is highlighted in yellow, with many less-than-brilliant summary notes in the margin. Overkill. Still, you have to admire the effort. I didn't know students like these actually existed.

I spent a few hours this weekend preparing a presentation for today only to have it postponed until next week. I don't know whether to feel irritated or relieved. Both, I guess. I have enough work to keep me busy for the foreseeable future, with stacks of student essays to read and more articles about postmodernism to decipher, not to mention preparing lesson plans. And I'm supposed to be writing a thesis somewhere in there, too, but let's be honest, that's not happening. My life is turning into a plate-spinning act.

Interesting comment thread on 19-year-old college student/entrepreneur Ben Casnocha's blog post about not wanting kids. I would say I share his view--having children has never been a life goal of mine. Parenting requires sacrifices that I'm not sure I'd be willing to make, a true giving up of the self, if you're a good parent. But then again, never say never.

Merit-based pay for teachers?

This TIME cover story by Claudia Wallis looks at performance-based pay for teachers:

Before ProComp, Betz had reached the top of the district's pay scale at $53,500 and, despite high marks from her bosses, was looking at nothing more than an annual cost-of-living raise (currently $260) for the rest of her career. "I've worked in hard-to-serve schools my entire career," says Betz. "I make home visits. I make phone calls. I'm looking at ProComp as compensation for the things that are above and beyond." Betz didn't expect performance pay to change anything about how she does her job but says it has made her even more driven. "Now I refuse to let kids fail," she says. "I'm going to bulldoze whatever the problem is and solve it." The bonus money is simply a just reward. "I'm not a money grubber. Most teachers aren't. But people in other professions get raises," she says. "Why shouldn't we?"
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It's a good goal for an entire nation in need of better-quality teaching. As U.S. school districts embark on hundreds of separate experiments involving merit pay, some lessons seem clear. If the country wants to pay teachers like professionals—according to their performance, rather than like factory workers logging time on the job—it has to provide them with other professional opportunities, like the chance to grow in the job, learn from the best of their peers, show leadership and have a voice in decision-making, including how their work is judged. Making such changes would require a serious investment by school districts and their taxpayers. But it would reinvigorate a noble profession.

This seems like a good idea to me, if done well. "Like factory workers logging time on the job"--I think that describes pretty well the current state of how America treats teachers. Which is sad, considering that teaching actually takes a lot of time and effort to master. According to the article, "It takes at least two years to master the basics of classroom management and six to seven years to become a fully proficient teacher."

Also interesting is the sidebar article describing the teaching profession in other countries.

All teacher candidates in Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, for example, receive two to three years of graduate-level preparation for teaching, at government expense, plus a living stipend. Unlike the U.S., where teachers either go into debt to prepare for a profession that will pay them poorly or enter with little or no training, these countries made the decision to invest in a uniformly well-prepared teaching force by recruiting top candidates and paying them while they receive extensive training.

- The weather today is cold, cloudy, and windy. Yuck, something to further deepen my already bad mood. Then I got to my office and my co-worker started singing quotes from the "Marge vs. the Monorail" episode of The Simpsons, which forced me to laugh.
- It's decided: I'm going to New York City next month. Anyone have any ideas on what to do there? I've got the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, museums, etc., of course, but any ideas on some more out-of-the-way places?

Celebrating the Semicolon. I like semicolons.

Our house/Is a very, very, very fine house

A little over a month ago my mom came home on a Sunday afternoon and said, "Guess what?"
"What?" I said, although I knew what the answer might be, given her big, mischievous smile.
"I bought a house!!" I knew she had been looking for houses, but I didn't know it would be this soon that she would find one that she liked, much less buy it, all in one day.

It has been a little over a month since that bomb was dropped. Things have happened fast, and as of this weekend my mom and sister and I are moved into the new house. It's a great house, really, a brand-new house on the "fancy pants" Westside of town. Moving back to the Westside from the Northeast part of town had been a lingering idea ever since we moved out to the Northeast three years ago to be closer to Mom's work. It's something my family talked about constantly. We missed our friends and our church and the neighborhoods we grew up in, as well as the perks that go with living in a nicer part of town. Not that the Northeast is so horrible, but, well, it is a little dingier than the Westside. A dollar store on every corner. Huge potholes in the Albertson's parking lot near our house. Homeless veterans wandering the streets. One Starbucks, when the Westside has three. The Northeast has about four decent restaurants, one of which is Chili's, and another of which is Applebee's. The Westside, on the other hand, has a huge number of really great restaurants: Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Southwest, breakfast, ice cream, etc., etc. Yum.

You'd think I'd be jumping up and down to be moving back, but I wasn't. It's funny how once Mom announced that we'd be moving back, I just wasn't that enthused. Maybe it was that the task of moving seemed arduous to me, but I think I had also gotten used to the Northeast and its little quirks. I grew to appreciate its more working-class nature. I also liked how it wasn't as congested as the Westside. I liked being near the baseball stadium and being able to walk up the side of the mountain whenever I felt like it. I guess it was always in my mind that I'd leave the Northeast eventually, but when the day actually came and I was finally going back to the Westside, I just felt sad and like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I did spend two and a half years of my life at that house. I had gotten used to the commute, gotten used to the Wal-Mart and the library branch, gotten used to coming home at night and seeing the church across the street from the house lit up at my return.

Maybe more central to my surprising discontent is that I thought that the next time I'd move would be the time that I moved into my own house. "When I have my own place..." is something I've thought about quite a few times. My house will be Downtown. My house will be warm. My house will have terra cotta tile. My house will have character. It'll be just like Friends! Sure, this is a sparkly, new, beautiful house, a sun-filled house with tan walls and new appliances, but it's not mine. I'm back on the Westside, but not on my own terms.

Boo hoo, I know I should count my blessings and not complain about things. I know the day will come soon when I'll be all grown up and out on my own and most likely living in much poorer conditions. What's a house, anyway? I'm still me, Mom's still Mom, the dog's still the dog. The more I move from house to house, the more I realize how arbitrary a house is. Like a hermit crab, it seems I can get used to living anywhere, given enough time.

I hate Valentine's Day. Actually, I think I hate the whole month of February.

I was there. Still don't know whom I'm going to vote for, though.

Woo hoo, the UTEP women's basketball team is in the AP Top 25 poll. They sure played an awesome game against East Carolina on Sunday, a game that was televised nationally on ESPN2.

Exhibits

There are a couple of interesting exhibits are now at the Centennial Museum (which I visited today)--Bracero Memories and the Border Film Project, both of which you can read about here.

For those who don't know, the bracero program was a guest worker program that brought Mexican workers to the United States from 1942-64. Some photos from the bracero exhibit can be viewed here. It's a nicely put-together exhibit about a program that I think is often overlooked in America's history. My grandfather once employed braceros on his farm, and my dad told me he used to hang around with them as they worked the fields. It was interesting to put a visual to some of the things my dad has told me about.

The Border Film Project is a project by a group in Arizona that put disposable cameras in the hands of both Minutemen (volunteer border patrol groups) and Mexican migrants. They provided address labels and mailers so that the cameras could be returned to them anonymously. The photos in the exhibit are not the most artful, as they are obviously not professional quality, yet you do get a good idea of the culture of both groups. It's an interesting contrast, the white (mostly) guys sitting in their trucks watching for migrants, and the migrants walking through the desert, water bottles in hand, or sometimes in hotel rooms or on buses. Predator and prey, I guess you could say.

If you're in El Paso, these are worth a visit to UTEP to see. I was very pleased to see both of these exhibits, since I think both are such great fits for a border city museum.

- It's a little past seven and I'm waiting for a pizza for dinner. Pizza for dinner, generally not a good thing.
- I'm torn: Clinton or Obama?
- Today I taught my students how to use colons properly. Is that really so useful? I think it is just a huge pet peeve of mine when people use colons wrong, i.e. "The primary colors are: red, yellow, and blue." Aagh. That makes me crazy.

Candy fix

From last night's pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Even the cardboard underneath the PB cups now has advertising. I thought it was cute, though.

My so-called blog post

I forgot that I had added "My So-Called Life" to my Netflix queue. I've already seen most of the episodes, but OK, I admit I watched them all the episodes on Disc 1 again anyway and enjoyed every second of Angela Chase and her rebellious ways yet surprisingly thoughtful voice-over remarks. Actually, when I first saw the series I was 13 or 14 and thought Angela was stupid to hang out with losers and that she should just listen to her parents and maybe she wouldn't be so tormented about things. No, Angela wasn't who I related to. Brian, now, there was a character I could relate to. Nerdy. Loner-ish. Didn't break the rules.

Ah, the teenage years. We sure did a lot of sitting around and standing around in those days. Sitting in class, waiting for time to pass by until you could finally go home. Standing in the hall, talking with your friends (or so-called friends). I say this because it seems like every other scene involves one of the former, and unfortunately, I think it's all too true of how high school really is.

Ironically, I relate more to Angela Chase's adolescent angst now at 25 than I did at 14. Call me a late bloomer, but now I get why someone would want to dye her hair bright red. I get why you'd want to do something exciting just to feel alive, even if it's stupid. I've had a few Jordan Catalano-scale crushes in my life. No, I will not elaborate. But I guess the point is that I still relate to the adolescent experience, even though I am quite a few years past the age for it now. Does some of the teenager remain inside a person, no matter how old he or she gets? I think so.

Advice/lyrics from Boston

Take a look ahead, take a look ahead, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Now everybody's got advice they just keep on givin'
Doesn't mean too much to me
Lot's of people out to make-believe they're livin'
Can't decide who they should be.

I understand about indecision
But I don't care if I get behind
People livin' in competition
All I want is to have my peace of mind.

Take a look ahead, take a look ahead. Look ahead.

"Peace of Mind" by Boston

So yesterday I'm sitting at Starbucks talking with some friends. I'm nervously fiddling with the remnants of an iced mocha (caffeine always makes me nervous). Suddenly I drop the container. It lands on its plastic dome-shaped lid. Darn. Luckily only a few drops of coffee get on my sweater and pants. Good thing, since the pants are light tan-colored. And no one I was sitting with got splashed with coffee, thank God. I was lucky. But I guess the most remarkable thing is how I didn't freak out. I saw that there wasn't too much of a mess, said "sorry," picked up the plastic container, sopped up the coffee drops with a napkin, and threw the container away. Then I sat down and kept talking. I don't get super-embarrassed when I occasionally drop things. Sign of maturity?

In Ireland, you have to pay a 33-cent tax for every plastic bag you use. "Within weeks [of the law's passage], plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog." via New York Times