Chicago Beijing

Tri-lingual Fun

2010-10-23T14:46:00.004-05:00

For complicated reasons, I am currently learning a bit of Korean. The teacher is very good. The students are also an interesting bunch. A funny thing happened the other day in class. It might one of those you had to be there things, but I laughed SO hard.

The teacher was doing some rapid-fire vocabulary drill with flashcards. Her flashcards are in English, and students have to produce the Korean.

Teacher: (holds up a flashcard that says "dictionary" and calls on one of the students, one who also happens to know Japanese)
Student: 사전
Teacher: Korean dictionary.
Student: 한국말 사전
Teacher: Japanese dictionary.
Student: じしょ
Me: (bursts out laughing)
Other students: Huh?

That one's for you, dad. ^_^

A Little Story (anonymous guest post)

2010-07-21T23:24:00.002-05:00

(The following is a little story about yours truly as a very little girl, told me by someone who knew me sort of ... peripherally, as I was growing up. I should add that I have no memory of this incident, but at the same time, it rings very true. I won't say it is to my credit in any way, but I thought that it might amuse.--Z)

Once upon a time, not long ago and not far away, there lived a pleasant little girl on a pleasant little farm on a pleasant little hill.

She ran out in the fields and she played with the chickens, and in the mornings when the long yellow bus labored up her little hill, she hopped in at the appointed time and rode down the hill to school.

She was a smart little girl; everyone could see it. Whatever she set her mind to, she could do. Any task her teachers gave her was dispatched without much effort, so they sent her to the class for people like that on the far side of the playground.

The smart little girl was perhaps a bit distracted on the day that she was told what she should do. She should research a little project and provide an oral report, not much more than just a sentence or two. The subject she was given, something about a Martin Luther, was perhaps not at the center of her interest. Or perhaps she felt rebellious and refused to do her homework. I'm pretty sure we will never know.

The intelligence of children is not the wisdom of the innocent. These ideas live on separate planes.

On the day of the assignment, she began to have second thoughts, as the other students gave their talks about their subjects. It had not occurred to her that public humiliation lay in store for the unmotivated as far as speaking assignments were concerned. And she became more than a little nervous.

What could one say about Martin Luther King, given that one had researched not a whit? No problem - she was smart - surely there were a few morsels of fact that could be gleaned from that name. Or at least a sentence? Right?

Well, finally her turn came; she stood up and cleared her throat. And she began:

"Martin Luther King ... was a _very_ good King. He ruled his country well and wisely..."

Shedd Aquarium

2010-07-14T19:54:00.003-05:00

I had only been to the aquarium in Chicago once, and it was four years ago. Pocket of Bolts tried to go about a week ago, but the line was so long and the day so hot that he and our visitors decided not to go after all. We still have so many other friends coming this summer that finally we decided it would be good to get a membership. Then we wouldn't have to wait in line and we'd also be able to get our guests in free.

So I went today with my visiting friend Baka Sensei (yeah, I know what baka means in Japanese; he's not really baka, it's just a silly nickname they gave him in Japan), and got a membership. I really only have to go once or twice more this year to make it pay for itself. And now that it's walking distance, why not?

I think my iphone takes pretty neat pictures here: lets a lot of light in, and no flash to reflect off the glass. The creatures in the above photo are lungfish, which have both lungs and gills. The spotted one has been in the Shedd Aquarium since 1933. That means he's nearly 80 years old!! I could hardly believe it. How many people he must have seen.

We were looking at the big central reef tank and a diver came out to do some feeding. Immediately the big floppy rays started dive-bombing him. They looked like big straw hats. I was trying to imagine what it must feel like to have the strong fishy flaps flap all over your head.

The diver is still in the picture directly above. He is just being swarmed by so many things you can hardly see him. Meanwhile, a big ray is flapping gracefully toward me. They are really cool and wonderful.

Another thing I was very impressed by was the nautilus.

They were in a nighttime tank downstairs. But, I had no idea they were so full of ... stuff. And they moved surprisingly fast. I guess somehow I thought they were like snails, but they were not like snails. They were like... I don't know, little flying saucers or something.

Anyway, it looks like it's going to be a hot summer, and the aquarium is a cool and soothing place to visit. So, there's definitely going to be more of that coming up...

Pocket of Bolts, Strongman

2010-07-03T00:19:00.002-05:00

Okay, almost no one reads this blog who doesn't read facebook, except perhaps for my parents. But, parents, this one is not to be missed. Also, it just makes me exceedingly happy. I have watched it about 10 times already.

Mama in Chicago

2010-07-01T14:29:00.016-05:00

Mama came to visit me in Chicago. I rode the train to O'Hare to go meet her. But, O'Hare is big, and she got in a little earlier than expected. We both had cell phones, but still it took us a while to identify a unique place we could both find our way to.

The above picture is us on the train back downtown. Mama had some blueberries from Oregon. She had packed a lot in her lunch, and had some leftover. I ate them all up while we rode the train. Some people say we look alike. Some people say we don't.

We are only 24 years apart in age, which seems like a smaller gap with every passing year!

The first thing we did, the next day, was a midday excursion to the Field Museum.

Mom liked the elephants. I like them too. We saw the Mammoths and Mastedons exhibit, and the thing I liked best was their molars.

Just one big molar on each side. They lived about as long as we do (now), and ground through all three sets of molars. It's strange how we usually have our third molars surgically removed. It's too bad we can't save them for when we're old and our teeth start falling out, making room for them.

That night we went to Tapas Valencia for dinner. It was very crowded, so we sat on one of the front tables by the bar. Not quite as comfortable as the dine room, but we had our own little alcove. We got too much food, but it was really good: gazpacho, scallops with couscous, sliced duck breast, lamb on wild mushrooms, shrimp with garlic and lemon, stuffed portabello, sliced ham with a salsa-like relish, paella, sangria...

The next day we were having a potluck in the evening. We got some lettuce and cherries at the farmer's market, then the rest of the supplies at the grocery. We cleaned and cooked in the morning, then Pocket of Bolts and I watched the US get crushed by Ghana in soccer. Mom took a funny series of pictures of us. This is the last one, when the defeat is starting to seem inevitable.

At least the party cheered us up some. It was a good party!

On Sunday, we went to Ikea, always a treat! Mom and Dad were buying us a house-warming gift, and we were pretty keen on getting a new dining room table. Our old one is very nice, but just doesn't fit our place very well stylistically. Here's the new one. It will look better when we get the detritus from the old table out of the way, but this is a first look. We also got the chairs. They are surprisingly comfortable, and we thought they looked really cool. The effect in general is to make our dining area look much bigger and brighter.

(If I look a bit gloomy in the above picture, it has nothing to do with the table... just a hard day at work on Monday!)

As you can imagine, getting the table and all the chairs, plus other purchases, into the back of the rented Honda Element was quite the challenge. Here's me holding up many pounds of glass and metal while things get slid under it.

The other thing we got at Ikea, long overdue, was some storage solutions for our lousy master bedroom closet. We were thinking about replacing the whole thing, but I convinced Pocket of Bolts that we should first try a less radical solution. I wish I had before-after pictures to show what a hideous mess it was initially... But in any case, so far our new (and quite cheap) solution is working very well. Pocket of Bolts gets the bins on top, which only he can reach, and I get the bins on the bottom, because I am lower to the ground.

We had dinner with our neighbors in the building, but both Pocket of Bolts and mom were feeling a little under the weather. Also, our neighbor talks like crazy!! It's strange, the feeling that someone is really not all that interested in anything you have to say, just mostly in talking at you. I felt unusually frustrated with it. Often, it's kind of relaxing (so little expected of you, you can just kind of sit back and listen). But there's a certain emptiness in such unidirectional communication. It makes you feel like you might as well be watching TV or something.

Monday I went to work all day. I felt bad about it, but it was the end of the fiscal year, and there was a bunch of stuff I had to take care of. Mama is so self-sufficient, though--she got herself to Millennium Park to look at the Bean, and then went on the Chicago Architecture Foundation boat tour. She seemed to have had a good time--a better time than I had stuck in my office, for sure!

I stopped and got steaks on the way home. Mom went to a yoga class one of my other friends had invited her to. If she lived here, she would make friends a lot more quickly than I have! I have so many opportunities to make friends--just not even a fraction of her level of social energy.

Tuesday we went to the Art Institute. It was lovely as always. Pocket of Bolts and I are *both* members now, so I got mom in free and we also had coffee in the Member Lounge when we got tired. We looked at the Chinese collection, which is like an old friend to me now, and then at the impressionists and other modern-ish stuff. Here's a picture of mama with Ganesh:

I also particularly liked the "Beggar with Oysters (Philosopher)." I must have seen it before, but it made much more of an impression on me since I've been wanting so much to eat oysters lately!

Tuesday night we saw a very lovely movie at the Siskel, The Secret of Kells. It was hand-animated and so beautiful. It made our eyes all starry, so that everything we saw afterward looked especially wonderful.

On the way to dinner, we happened to encounter the Chagall mosaic. Mom liked it a lot.

Pocket of Bolts doesn't like Chagall, but consented to have a photo taken in front of it anyway, ha ha.

We had dinner at a venerable old restaurant called Italian Village. Maybe objectively a little cheesey, but on that particular night really quite charming. The food was very tasty too, fried calamari, salad, canneloni with cream sauce, shrimp on angelhair pasta, and chicken stuffed with prosciutto. For dessert, a cannolo, a tiramiso, and some spumoni (for me, because I was way too full for anything solid!). Here's what the restaurant looked like, just a cell phone picture, but you kind of get the idea.

Wednesday, mama's last full day in Chicago, we dropped by school so I could show her my office, then went off the Willis Tower (Sears Tower). I had never been on the glass ledges before. I was not at all scared, really more like thrilled.

Mama looking out over the city.

Later we went to the zoo. A thing we saw that I had never seen before was the pygmy hippo! Usually it just looks like a tank full of fish! The pygmy hippo was very cute but it did something extremely rude in the water shortly after these pictures were taken. The crowd scattered, shrieking.

The giraffe was stretching its neck up as high as it could get and still not reaching the lowest branches. Not an accident, I assume, since all the ones it could reach had already been eaten. Still, it looked neat.

After the hectic zoo experience, we spent a little time relaxing in the conservatory. I love going to the zoo, but it always makes me deeply tired. I think it's the vast number of moving parts all moving in one's visual field. The plants were very still and nice.

Last picture, of mom chilling with the Bard.

It was really fun having her visit, not least because it motivated me to go out and see a bunch of stuff I would not ordinarily have seen. But now I am extra tired!!

New-Minted

2010-05-29T21:34:00.003-05:00

We flew to my grad school town on Thursday. This picture was taken on the plane.

This is what the flight attendant saw, and yet still she asked me, "Do you have any trash you want to get rid of sir?" And no, she wasn't talking about Pocket of Bolts, because when I looked up she got flustered and said, "I mean, ma'am." I think it's hopeless.

We picked up a rental car (which had awesome satellite radio!) and drove down to just outside of grad school town where we had Pricelined a very basic motel room. It was clean and cute, though. Dinner at Ruby Tuesday's, where I had steak and lobster because, why not?

And then I spent some time very reluctantly working on my "dissertation spiel." Everyone says that defenses start with the defender talking for a bit, so I had to be ready. I decided against trying to memorize. I have to go either all extemporaneous or talk from notes. And under that much stress, I figure they'd rather have to forgive me for using notes than for floundering around and getting tongue-tied.

We woke up early and went to breakfast at what used to be our favorite diner back when we lived there. Here's me looking pretty stressed out and fragile!

Better with sunglasses, I think!

Just post-defense, when I'd been told that I would pass. Off to the left, the champagne is being poured. Everyone is moving and I am still. Pocket of Bolts didn't quite feel comfortable to use the flash!

The defense was fine, I should add. The 'questions' were mostly of the form, "When you turn this into a book, you might consider adding a section about..." There was also some really interesting discussion. I did not feel under-prepared, though I didn't prepare much! I felt nervous and tense but in an alert way.

Also, many of my younger classmates were there. Here is a reunion-type class-photo. We have one beloved picture of us all together in this professor's class, and whenever any of us are together we try to retake some form of that picture. This is the closest we have had to a full reunion as yet, I think, and one person is still missing (currently in Taiwan), hence the black and white headshot.

Afterwards, my adviser and another member of the committee took me and Pocket of Bolts out to a very fancy lunch, at a restaurant neither PoB nor I had ever been able to afford eating at when we actually lived there. They were really kind to me. It felt like a rite of passage thing, like a switch had been made between treating me like a grad student and treating me like a junior colleague. There was much discussion about the book project, next career moves, and so forth. Very old boyish in a way, but not a gendered way--if that makes any sense!

Then, there was a lot of paperwork to take care of. Pocket of Bolts was an amazing husband dashing hither and thither to produce massive quantities of cash, blank CDs, and brute strength. (The four bound volumes had to be hand-carried over to the archive...!)

Then there was a bar, and post-bar drinking, and this marvelous picture was taken somewhere in there. This is the grad student lounge in Pocket of Bolts' department where he and I hung out for the first time, when he had just started his dissertation and mine was barely a twinkle in my eye. But in this picture, we are both "Doctors"! (Only one of us is drunk, though.)

Zapaper: You and my dissertation have been in my life for exactly the same length of time.
PoB: But I'm still here and the dissertation is gone. I WIN!!!

A New Five Year Plan

2010-05-13T22:38:00.005-05:00

Almost exactly five years ago, I defended my dissertation prospectus. This morning, I sent the completed document to the bindery. Defense is in two weeks.

And now it seems like it's time for a new five year plan. The last five years were... pretty interesting, but--yeah. Time for something new.

It's amazing what mixed feelings I have, but most of them are positive. (I already discovered the first of the typos, but I am trying to put that out of my mind.) Now I can read novels, and work on other projects, and write long helpful e-mails to people who are barely acquaintances, and generally breathe a bit.

Above/left are some peonies that Pocket of Bolts got for me. I painted them to relieve my mixed feelings.

Sleep Talk

2010-05-12T22:45:00.003-05:00

One of us was asleep during this conversation. See if you can figure out which one.

Pocket of Bolts: ...And the oil spill.
Zapaper: What?
POB: That’s what we’ve been talking about the entire time.
Z: But we haven’t talked about that all day.
POB: But it’s all about the Gulf. The oil spill in the Gulf.
Z: The Gulf of Mexico.
POB: Of course the Gulf of Mexico. What are you some kind of racist?
Z: Just making sure you were clear.
POB: I’m clear about tacos and burritos and--...If only someone would figure out what drinks they were serving at the conference and then everyone could just put them in a blender.
Z: What conference?
POB: It’s just a general rule for conferences.
Z: What is?
POB: Everyone says, this paper would be so much more interesting if we weren’t drunk.
Z: No one EVER says that at conferences.
POB: Ssshhhh.
Z: What happens after the conference?
POB: The giraffe goes home.
Z: Where does he go home to?
POB: Bluh bluh Park.
Z: Wicker Park?
POB: No-—Lincoln Park. He’s not a hipster giraffe with big sunglasses and short skirts.
Z: Clearly not. Was the giraffe at the conference?
POB: Let me tell you about the conference.
Z: Please do.
POB: There was an explosion of creative energy, and someone put it in their paper. Bluh bluh bluh bluh.

(For fun I have included a photo I took of a non-hipster giraffe that lives in Lincoln Park.)

Long Time No Blog

2010-05-10T19:44:00.003-05:00

Sorry to have dropped out of sight. It's been a hell of a semester. I just submitted final grades today. As in, just now. I procrastinated it all day.

Pocket of Bolts: Z, why are you procrastinating putting in your final grades? You finished calculating them all this morning, didn't you?
Zapaper: Yeah.
PoB: Then why don't you just put them in?
Z: ...
PoB: You know, even after you put them in, you can still change them until five o'clock tomorrow.
Z: ...I can?
PoB: I thought that might be what you were worried about.
Z: ...Maybe.

Of course, I had to deal with my very first crying student today. If *only* I would make an exception, he wouldn't get kicked out of school! I held firm but it was very hard to do. Pocket of Bolts says, "Any given student like that thinks they have special extraordinary circumstances. But actually, they *all* have extraordinary circumstances in their lives. Most of them deal with it. Some of them fail. No doubt if you made special exceptions for all the ones that failed, they could almost all avoid failing. But it wouldn't be fair to anyone." I know this is right, and I was annoyed to be made to feel so guilty for ruining someone's life. (I mean, of course he ruined his own life... and only some small part of it too...) But that doesn't mean I didn't feel guilty.

Another amusing thing that happened today was that a water main flooded. I arrived at campus to be greeted with an interesting new lake where there used to be a sidewalk.

I will try to post more.

The Last Storm?

2010-03-21T20:35:00.003-05:00

We all knew there was going to be one more big nasty snow, and yesterday it arrived. The fact that it happened on a weekend when I had to be working anyway somehow made it better. I mean, if it were beautiful sunny weather and I had to be inside working, that would be actually more depressing.

Of course I trudged into my office. All my books are there.

I wore the "thinking cap." It's an old tradition. It's actually an enormous, Pocket of Bolts sized hat that someone made for him a long time ago. I wore it while I was studying for my generals, and periodically since then. It's just kind of comforting.

Driving snow and icy trees outside one of the classroom buildings. I was on my way to the library, tracking down references for those last pesky footnotes.

Pocket of Bolts and I have decided that since this is my spring break, it's important to both work hard and try to do something a little bit fun each day. So, after I put in more or less a full day's work, we went out to see a movie. We went to Brew and View, the crazy Chicago theater where they sell beer as well as popcorn. It's in a really old building, and actual theater I think. I took some pictures with my iPhone, and although they came out dark, they're kind of interesting.

We saw Sherlock Holmes. The sound in Brew and View was impressively bad, so some of the dialogue--especially given the medley of partially artificial British-type accents--was lost on us. But, clearly the main point of the movie was the action, which came through just fine.

Dragon Kite

2010-03-21T11:43:00.003-05:00

Pocket of Bolts got a dragon kite for his birthday, so on Friday evening we decided to go out and fly it. We'd had several days of spring weather, temperatures in the 60s and sunshine. But there was a cold front coming in, meaning a good strong wind. We rode an articulated bus down to Northerly Island. Articulated buses are so interesting.

Here is Pocket of Bolts assembling the kite, although it kind of looks like he's trying to slay the dragon.

Here is the dragon in flight. There are also two little birds up in the corner. All these pictures are taken with my iPhone, which means the resolution isn't all that great. On the other hand, with all the running around and grabbing strings and such, it was much more convenient than having to lug the big camera around.

The dragon kite swoops down over the city of Chicago. Pocket of Bolts flying it is the small black shape in the middle.

Close up of me and the dragon kite. It was getting dark, which is why it looks grainy.

The road home. By the time night fell, it was getting really cold. Since we were dressed more for spring than for winter, we got quite chilled! But we made it okay in the end.

Happy B-Day, Pocket of Bolts!

2010-02-28T22:10:00.002-06:00

Today was Pocket of Bolts' birthday. He is 31!

We went ice-skating. Here he is waiting for the zamboni to get done. The little girl got into the picture randomly, but made it much awesomer, I'd say.

We had dinner at The Publican. We had never been there before. It was great!

We both felt uncharacteristically interested in having oysters. We don't usually like oysters, but these were absolutely delicious!

Instead of birthday cake, Pocket of Bolts wanted a lemon meringue pie. It came out pretty well, I thought. And certainly it looked the part. :)

Also part of the birthday present... ...

(I finally got around to buying some boots...)

In the Living Room

2010-01-17T20:26:00.003-06:00

Roller-blading in the living room to demonstrate a point of ice-skating theory to Pocket of Bolts. Hey, got to de-stress somehow.

Survived the first week of the term... barely. My new opinion about writing lectures is: they are not as *hard* to write as I feared, but they take much much much longer than I'd hoped.

On Friday my estimate was, if I worked every day of the three day weekend, I *might* be able to get my head above water. Somewhat. Two days in, I'm thinking that was a little optimistic. I mean, I have worked pretty diligently both yesterday and today (minus short breaks for ice-skating and such), but my head is not quite above the water. Sigh.

Condiment Plate

2010-01-10T22:01:00.003-06:00

One of Pocket of Bolts' favorite dinners is Asian Beef Wraps. It is steak grilled and then cut into strips and briefly marinated in a spicy Southeast Asian style sauce (fish sauce, lime juice, siracha, etc.). These are wrapped in lettuce leaves together with various vegetatious condiments (pictured here). We usually have it with rice as well. It's a Southeast Asian variant of a common Korean meal we had often when I was little... I think of it as a summer thing, but for PoB it's comfort food any time of year. He usually is in charge of making it, but I often sous-chef, and the carrot curls in this picture are all me. :-)

Last day of "freedom" before the term starts back up in earnest. I spent the day in my office trying to get stuff ready. The way my procrastination works, it's always easiest to make myself work on the lowest priority things, the stuff farthest out. So, for once, that was my dissertation. Got a little course planning in too, though, since I *had* to.

Heat Lamps on the El

2010-01-08T21:27:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I had to do an errand somewhere in the city I don't usually go. I took the brown line to get there, and then I got lost because I had never been there on the brown line before. It was snowing really hard. I called Pocket of Bolts but he didn't pick up. I thought about calling someone else, but then I wandered around and found my own way.

This is the platform of the brown line on the way back, after sunset. I really like how the heat lamps had melted the snow.

Yesterday we also went to see Where the Wild Things Are at the Siskel Center. A lot of it was very good but it was ... somehow more sad than I wanted it to be. The sense of wonder potentially inherent in the story and concept was definitely there ... but, did it also have to get so badly smashed so often. I felt it was definitely more an allegory for adults than a fun film for kids. But I don't have a problem with that.

School starts on Monday. I feel worried and not ready, even though I have worked really hard this week. Too slow.

Black-Hearted Red Carnations

2010-01-07T14:00:00.002-06:00

Painted free-hand. I have almost never tried that. Pocket of Bolts got me the flowers yesterday to try cheer me up. I sat at the kitchen island and made a picture of them while he made dinner.

ZP: "The ones in the picture look anemic."
PoB: "They don't look anemic. They just seem that way to you because you are sad in your heart."

We both like the vase best. PoB said it looked like a comic-book picture. I kinda like that.

Clammy

2010-01-04T23:17:00.002-06:00

These long clams, I thought were pretty amazing looking. This is only a cell phone picture, but even so. We saw them in Chinatown, when we went down there for dim sum on Saturday. The dim sum was decent, though not spectacular. We chose a place pretty much at random, because ... well, Chinatown is just around the corner. Why should we make a rare and special occasion of it? Why shouldn't we be going down there all the time, any time, exploring and getting to know all the various restaurants?

After dim sum, we went to the grocery store where we saw these clams. We were getting stuff for hot-pot, which we made in honor of Pocket of Bolts' friend coming over for dinner. We also got stuff to make kimchee, but I haven't gotten around to making it yet. It's reasonably easy, but seems like such a ... process. Haven't quite had the energy.

Went back to work today. I was just about the only one. None of my colleagues were back yet... classes not starting for a week. But I have plenty more than a week's worth of work to get through. I made a somewhat decent start on it today. Hopefully at least did enough that I won't be staying up until 2 AM (for the 6th night in a row) worrying about it.

Ice Skating

2010-01-03T22:34:00.004-06:00

Pocket of Bolts goes ice-skating for the very first time. We went yesterday and bought ice-skates. It was this kind of calculation: skate rental is $10 a pair and the wait in line was running about an hour. Pocket of Bolts values an hour of his time at about $50; I tend toward a more modest $15-20, but still... given that skates cost about $45 with tax... we'd only have to go twice at most to make it worthwhile. Not to mention avoiding having to stand in line (outside) in 20 degree weather. Pocket of Bolts was very nervous about skating for the first time. We went yesterday and he most clung to the rail and made his slow way around. When other slower beginners were monopolizing the rail, I took his hand and helped him go around. He is big and I am small, but I was amazed how effectively I managed to support his tottering self. Haven't ice-skated in a long time, but still... felt rock-steady. We only stayed about half an hour, until the resurfacing machine started up. That was enough. As with the Art Institute: when it's free, you can go for a short time and not feel under pressure to get your money's worth.

We went again today. It was amazing how much progress Pocket of Bolts had made. He could mostly go around just holding my hand, only grabbing for the rail now and then. He seems to be starting to intuit the means of propulsion. Watching him make progress makes it even more fun to go skating because it's something he never thought he would be able to do and now he is starting to be able to do it. Millennium Park is also a very neat place to skate, with the Bean (Cloud Gate) looming over and endless potential people-watching. So hey, despite the frigid weather, Chicago winter's not all bad.

New Years Day Walk

2010-01-02T15:24:00.004-06:00

A very cold day yesterday, but we felt like going for a walk. This is a bridge in Grant Park.

It had a great tree by it, and the tiny person near the tree is me.

Pocket of Bolts in a field of snow and trees.

Us reflected in the new modern wing of the Art Institute.

Pocket of Bolts contemplates how those people's camera-flash has just ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time.

We saw lots of people with ice-skates. Coming down to the free outdoor skating rink that it turns out they have in Millennium Park, we saw a bunch of people there, waiting out the resurfacing.

I said: "*I* want to go ice-skating!"

Direction of Travel

2010-01-01T21:35:00.002-06:00

Yesterday we went up to the roof. In this patch of frozen snow, right near the door, there were the strange patterned tracks of all these birds. No human footprints mixed in: it was extremely cold and icy, really too cold to be up there. Still, looking out over the city in all four directions gives me such a feeling of expansiveness. On the cusp of old year and new year, wondering about the direction that life will take next. Just now it's hard to feel eager or excited about it. But maybe... soon...

Giant Rat!

2009-12-31T19:48:00.002-06:00

It was odd walking out of my building yesterday and suddenly seeing a giant rat. I mean, a GIANT rat, taller than us. It turns out that the giant rat is a Chicago union tradition, signaling a strike, and perhaps in particular a strike where there are or may be scabs involved.

As an object and a symbol, it is really effectively threatening looking, I think. It was a pretty quiet day yesterday. Had breakfast in the Caribou coffeeshop downstairs because we were too low on supplies and too tired to get to the grocery store. Then went to the grocery store. Later we ventured to Target to spend our holiday gift cards on various small stuff. In the evening I worked on dissertation revisions and such. For some reason I couldn't get to sleep until very late. Jet-lag plus traditional winter break worrying.

Castle Gate

2009-12-30T17:00:00.003-06:00

Seattle (Sea-Tac) Airport. We arrive at our gate for the flight to Chicago. And the gate is a castle. I have no idea why. There was a long explanation in small print, but it was located right at the jet-way door, a place where they don't tend to let you loiter. So... whatever the point of the display was, it was lost on me. But I will say, it sure was different. The airline people working the flight kept having to duck behind the banner/curtain thing on the right to get... "back-stage". What was back-stage? I have no idea.

Unlike flight out, where we got got stuck in Salt Lake City for 10 hours, the way back went very smoothly. On the Seattle-Chicago flight, we were seated in the "nursery" section of the plane. Quite literally, there was a child under three in every row, diagonals included. Clearly my bio-clock is going, because I thought that they were all really cute, even when they were fussing about the pressure, boredom, etc. When I was coming back from the bathroom and about to climb back into my row, the little boy (about a year old I think?) in the row across from us grabbed my elbow. I looked down at him and he gave me a thousand watt grin. Awwww.....

Fear of the Ocean

2009-11-14T21:35:00.003-06:00

Pocket of Bolts and I are in Miami for the weekend: a college friend of his is getting married. The wedding wasn't until three, and being on our customary schedule, we had time to kill. Although I have a bad cold just now, around noon or so I finally decided that, what with the place we're staying being steps away from Miami Beach, it would be silly not to go swimming. I mean, how often do you get to swim outside in November!? Well, maybe very often if you actually *live* in Miami, or Hawaii... but for me it's a rare experience.

Interesting to say, I find swimming in the ocean very terrifying. When I was a little kid, we went to Huntington Beach in California, and somehow I didn't get properly instructed as to how to deal with breakers. Somehow or other, I got tossed around by a rough wave, and have been a bit phobic about them ever since. This, although I know *now* how to duck under waves if they are too big. And besides, this was an Atlantic Beach and the waves were fairly modest. No ocean features named after Satan, as Pocket of Bolts would say (unlike in Oregon).

Pocket of Bolts plunges into the ocean. He loves swimming in it. He is so strong, and it is so strong against him; it's like clashing of titans. I went in more cautiously, catching my breath whenever a big wave seemed to be forming. But--it is so no difficult to grab a breath and slip under. The roar of the water is instantly muted into a sandy trickling noise, and the threatening white thundercloud of wave disappears into mild bubbly swaying feeling that just passes over your body and then leaves you behind.

Not mind you that I am the picture of elegance diving under wave or anything. I tend to plug my nose and leave my ankles up in the air. Pocket of Bolts said, If you don't plug your nose, it's like saline nasal rinse. Good point!

Hero

2009-10-16T18:58:00.002-05:00

Grading is pretty unpleasant, but now and then there's something really sweet. I was reading essays written by my first year Chinese students on the theme of "my hero". Their vocabulary is still very basic--they really can't say very much at all. But here's one that was... just... awww...

"My hero is my mom. She is fifty years old. She is a college student."
我的英雄是我妈妈。她五十岁。她是大学生。

Sister of My Heart

2009-10-11T15:06:00.002-05:00

Last week I had a sudden and unexpected visit, almost completely without warning, from this dear girl whom I had thought lost to me. Thinking her lost, I wrote her a letter... sort of to say goodbye. She was my brother's girlfriend for many years, and she and I were particularly close, at least for some of that time--when geography permitted. The three of us were roommates off and on one year, and there were visits and travels... But then they broke up and she was gone.

There was no answer to my letter, but I didn't really expect one. It was like a message in a bottle--why does anyone put a message in a bottle? It is written for the writer, not for some unimaginable reader.

Then suddenly, at 1 AM one day, she sends me an e-mail: she will be in Chicago for 24 hours. I wrote back to her at 5 AM. Amazingly, at 3 in the afternoon, my phone rang and it was she (calling from a payphone--she has no cell). I rode the bus to Union Station where she was waiting. She was standing on a shoulder high wall holding an accordion in her arms. The wind was gusting so hard and her red hair was long again--I'd last seen it cropped short. Despite the stormy wind, as she threw herself into my arms, the sun came out, I kid you not. I got us a taxi and took her home.

I had been worried it would be too urban or too alienating or something for her... but a person changes so much between her early 20s and her late 20s, no? Besides, who knows how much all of those old misunderstandings were ... just misunderstandings. Related to other things than what they seemed to be about.

She had been going to sleep in the airport--she was so afraid of being trouble to us--but it was so easy to treat her like family. She felt it. She wasn't a guest, but the sister of my heart.

We took her up on the roof and showed her the vast blue of the lake, the complex lines and curves and colors of the skyline. We brought her down and abandoned her because we had an unbreakable dinner engagement. Well, at least it was a perfect reassurance that she was not putting us out at all! When we got back, she was repacking her backpack (she's en route to a year of roughing it in Europe, something I was already too old for at her age!), making it lighter, still lighter. She gave us a funny assortment of things to find a home for--my favorite was a pair of pale blue wool socks, which I just had to wear, the very next day.

She slept in the guest bed, that isn't much to look at but no guest ever complains... it is outrageously comfortable for a grad school futon. In the morning, I woke her up at her request for my usual early breakfast-time and she wrapped her arms around my neck like a child. Such sweetness. We fed her mooncakes, and she walked me partway to work, promising ... nothing, but ... open heart to open heart--I feel that I will see her again, somehow or other.

She will spend the winter in Spain picking olives. She will spend half of each day drawing. She will observe the cultural differences in the treatment of young misfits in school. She will practice her accordion in wild windy places. I like to think of her, without any desire to hold on, even in my thoughts. I feel happy to know her, to have found her again.

Ph's Mini-Me

2009-09-28T04:57:00.002-05:00

Pocket of Bolts' dept. chair, Ph, is an interesting person. We used to live very near him and his partner (also in the dept.) and so we kind of developed a nice social relationship despite obvious barriers of age and status. I always get the feeling they think we are lively and fun... which is really about all we have going for us, socially awkward and anxious as we both are... but it seems like maybe enough.

The amusing thing is that now my new job gives me a lot more in common with Ph. It's like he's president of the US and I'm president of... Luxembourg, or Andorra, or something. Presidents still have certain things in common, though. Dinner party on Saturday--I had had a bit of champagne--I characterized myself as his "mini-me", which he said was cool.

He said something about my situation which was very comforting, though you might not think so on the surface. He said, "Really it's a job more properly done by someone with more experience. But on the other hand, they are extremely lucky to have you." (Ph thinks--also hopes, because of PoB too--that the institution will make an effort to keep me as well, to make my job more permanent after the three years are up.) The reason, anyway, that Ph's proclamation was comforting was that it effectively explains my feeling of being overwhelmed and ignorant about everything. Well of course!--it's a job for an old hand, not someone brand new. And yet on the other hand, enthusiasm and dedication can make up for much of that lack of experience, especially when everyone's pretty much on my side. I have encountered no opposition to anything I have wanted to do, quite the contrary. My only enemies so far are inertia and my own fears.

Another funny thing that Ph said, that there are three rules for guys:
1) Never play cards with a man called 'Doc'.
2) Never eat at a place called 'Mum's'.
3) And never sleep with a girl whose problems are worse than yours.

I just had to pass that on because it seems like such fantastic advice.

On Sitting at the Bar

2009-09-23T20:18:00.003-05:00

Last Sunday Pocket of Bolts and I had dinner with my Korean cousin Ae. This was actually a very new experience for me. She was in Chicago with some girlfriends of hers from high school, visiting another of their friends who has settled here. She made a very particular effort to schedule a visit with me as well. I was puzzled but intrigued. I remember her fondly even from childhood--incoherent impressions, but just a feeling that she was very older sisterly, kindly, safe. I was never especially close to any of my cousins though. I think the major impression she must have had of me was that I was "very shy."

We met her at her hotel and walked down to Quartino, a really nice Italian restaurant. It was raining hard. I had never been to Quartino before, but Pocket of Bolts, who did all the research for this particular outing, had very nice things to say about it. It was all family-style, meant for sharing, but not the kind of portions you associate with that. It was more like an Italian version of tapas. We got an a la carte antipasto plate (PoB chose the stuff--it was SO GOOD), fried polenta sticks, arugula pizza, grilled octopus, and shrimp risotto. A nice bottle of not expensive wine to top it off. I was nervous. We kept Ae talking about her career--being a CPA for a major firm, switching to startups in SF for a while, not hitting the business cycle right, getting married and having kids, going back to a steadier job again with another major company. It was interesting. I hadn't really been aware of any of it. Not indifference, just general obliviousness. It reminds me that I have through most of my life been weirdly oblivious of many other people's lives, even other people that it would make sense to care about. It's like the bandwidth for my gossiping ability is really really narrow...

We chatted about other stuff--advice from her about starting a family, stuff about her kids, about other cousins. She told us that if we were going to have kids, we needed my parents to live closer by. Also, she told Pocket of Bolts he would absolutely have to help out around the house and do his share of the cooking. Pocket of Bolts, who does 90% of the cooking and about 75% of the other housework (especially lately) bit his tongue and nodded politely. It was very funny. I don't think Ae (a rather traditional sort of gal, I think) can even conceive of what a degenerate wife I am. Oh well, PoB seems to like me okay this way. I have the best will in the world to do things... I just get oblivious....

Ae really wanted to have coffee or something afterwards. I was teaching in the morning, so a drink wasn't really in the cards. I was also nervous at having probably exhausted everything I could think of to say to her. But a Korean gal tends to get her way, when she gets her mind set on something. It was still raining. We wandered around looking for someplace that was open and looked interesting--ended up sitting at the bar at Ruth's Chris because why not. Ae and I split a bread pudding and had decaf cappuccinos. PoB had a martini. I am not accustomed to sitting at a bar--it seems so ... exposed ... but Ae promptly made friends with the bartender, who turned out to be (as I suppose bartenders often are) a very gregarious, interesting, friendly sort. He seemed quite happy to talk and chat with us.

Ae gave us a long and kind of adorable disquisition on how one should always sit at the bar because it's more fun and you can still get most or all of the menu but with less formality. She clearly has such different associations with it than I do (well, I have next to none), memories of courting her now-husband, good times in the pre-child-rearing days. That, plus another nice experience I had recently, and after all I may come 'round to it after all. I mean, the bartender was so nice he didn't even mind that Ae and I weren't drinking.

We parted with the assurance that we would try to hang out again at Christmas. Ae and her husband, like PoB and I, alternate Christmases with the different families, but it seems like we're on a convergent cycle. Perhaps, if I'm not too much in a state of post-dissertational collapse, I'll actually try to make it happen. Certainly Facebook makes things much easier to organize...

Comparing People

2009-09-20T13:30:00.002-05:00

There is some very interesting way of comparing people. There's a Facebook application called "Comparing People", but it isn't very interesting. Who's hotter, A or B. Whom would you rather marry, A or B. Who's funnier, A or B. That's not comparing, that's simply rating. In the Six Dynasties period (in China), there was a really sophisticated discourse of character analysis and comparison, preserved to some extent in the anecdote collection _A New Account of Tales of the World_. The thing about that text is that it's not, for the most part, Who's smarter, A or B. Who's more virtuous, A or B. Comparing people is pointless unless it gives you some kind of insight, and the insights there are delivered through narrative.

Comparing people seems like a very touchy subject in our society today. The more serious the comparison, the less comfortable people are with it. In my world, Who's hotter is just--whatever. Whose book or idea is better? Who is the better scholar or thinker? We hardly dare to say. I was thinking about this during and after a long talk I had yesterday with my friend and colleague S-dot.

It is a difficulty with blogging these days that I really want to write very specific things about very specific people, and don't want to bother with pseudonyms and anonymizing... but I have to.

S-dot said, about himself, that he had high self-esteem but high levels of insecurity, but that a nightmare ex of his had low self-esteem but low levels of insecurity. It seems strange that these things could even come apart. I hadn't even considered that, but having done so, I think it's true. Furthermore I can theorize about why they do: you get self-esteem through your parents' love and approval, but you get insecurity or lack thereof from early interactions with peers. If your parents love you too much and your peers too little, you end up like S-dot--or me, as well. If your peers love you too much and your parents too little, you end up like "nightmare ex"--which I suppose is much worse.

I do think I much more like S-dot in this way, though I alienate people slightly less. Without a point of comparison (nightmare ex), it never would have occurred to me, though. In fact, I am like S-dot in many ways, but none of them superficial. S-dot is like a brother to me: underlying commonalities and wildly divergent surface traits. I am never nervous to arrange a meeting with S-dot, or even to talk to him on the phone (although I am generally very nervous to talk to anyone on the phone). I care about him quite a lot, but on the other hand, he also irritates me deeply about 20-30% of the time. That's 70-80% less than he irritates any of our other colleagues, who have urged me to "teach him some manners."

But I really shouldn't say more about that.

Last observation about comparing people--all the most interesting things one could say, the narratives one could relate, are unanonymizable specifics! I give up.

Treeless Mountain

2009-09-17T12:04:00.005-05:00

A week ago, Pocket of Bolts and I went to see a movie called Treeless Mountain at the Siskel Center. It's a Korean movie about two little girls. The girls' father is absent, and their mother is unable to take care of them. They are shuffled off, first to their father's sister, and then to their grandparents. Left very much to themselves, they look for ways to try to fill the empty place in their lives where others have family.

The striking thing about the movie to me was how with only very minimal dialogue, it succeeded nonetheless in being intensely psychological. The camera was almost invariably very close in to the girls' faces, and was an incredibly realistic portrait of childhood unhappiness and discomfort. The little girls, especially the older one, Jin, are not always sympathetic in their unhappiness. They whine and fight and cheat and do bad things. But it is all against such a stark background of dislocation and neglect that the viewer is drawn into the dramatic condition of childhood, where seemingly small things assume tremendous psychological significance. The little plastic piggy bank (pictured above), a central object in the story, teaches the girls that there is no magic in the world. And while the kindly halmuni (grandmother) in the end is, I think, supposed to be a ray of hope, Pocket of Bolts walked out of the movie saying it was about the most depressing thing he'd ever seen.

I walked out babbling my long-forgotten childhood Korean.

The dialogue of almost the entire movie was just at the level of the Korean I must once have known: language used by, with, and for little kids. They're words I couldn't spell to write them out in this blog, but they sprang fully formed into my comprehension and even production. Hey you, get over here. I'm hungry. Yum. It's okay. Thank you. Grandmother, grandfather. One two three four five. It's already been a week and I am forgetting again, but man, it was amazing. All that stuff's still in there somewhere, primary linguistic data. The film was sad, of course it was. But I felt weirdly exhilarated.

Also, the blue princess dress that the younger girl clings to throughout--I had a dress very much like that, at very much the same age. And I wore it about like the girl did. "What can't you PLAY like a princess too?" her aunt scolds her, while scrubbing at the dirt stains. But what good is it being a princess if you can't climb to the top of the dirt-pile, or scramble around in the field trapping grasshoppers to roast and eat? No doubt being an actual princess is no fun at all, but the idea of being a princess is to feel glamorous and special at every single moment, no matter what you are doing.

Dolorous Tuber

2009-08-22T23:04:00.002-05:00

Moving madness continues... with Pocket of Bolts on crutches: a mystery foot ailment periodically brought on by something vaguely definable as "overdoing it". It is showing the four signs of inflammation (hot, red, painful, swollen), which I gloss as "cauldron of rhubarb and dolorous tuber." In fact, PoB's foot looks like a dolorous tuber. To his credit, he has done absolutely as much of the unpacking as he can while standing in one place and/or on one foot. But in an unfortunate role reversal, I have done most of the heavy lifting!

Also, as it happens, I have been going to work in my new office every day. I am excited and intimidated in equal parts. Classes start Monday...!

I am currently writing form the study in our new place. We had barely gone into it at all because it was so full of disorderly furniture and boxes still waiting to be unpacked. Last night PoB and I sat down and did a lot of measuring and head-scratching, trying to figure out how to fit all the furniture we want in here. So many constraints! One full wall of closets is all very well, but closet doors have to be able to open. One part of one wall is curved. The futon has to be able to open easily into a bed. The file drawers have to open. My desk is insanely long and big. The hermit crabs also need a place for their home.... etc. It took us all evening, but we finally got a configuration that's not only workable but cozy and pleasing.

Now I am dead tired and ready for bed. Will try to post pictures soon!

A Done Deal

2009-08-16T11:08:00.001-05:00

Last night we slept at our new place for the first time. It was fantastic. There are small quirks and problems, but this just makes me all the more grateful for my handy husband, who has set to work right away. (He has already unclogged the garbage disposal, figured out how to work the built-in espresso machine, and was working on replacing the toilet seat when I left.) Now I am back at the old place to finish up the last bits of packing. Life is good. The actual move will be on Tuesday!

Summer All At Once

2009-08-09T01:38:00.002-05:00

Apparently, Chicago is trying to cram two and a half months worth of heat and humidity into one weekend. Hitherto, we have had the coolest, most pleasant, moderate summer I have ever experienced. Now all of a sudden, 90 with 90% humidity, hotter tomorrow. We camped out in the bedroom most of the day (it has our one window-unit AC), with the rest of the time being spent in air-conditioned public spaces--the coffee shop, the community center. Boy the central air in that condo is going to be great.

In between bouts of more or less productive work time, we got into a long happy conversation about furniture upgrades--when, to what, etc. In the course of this, I decided we needed to measure how many books we have in linear feet. I reasoned that this would help us decide on what kind of bookshelves we'd need and where they could go and so on. In case anyone is curious, we have approximately 88 linear feet of books, of which I'm hoping 20-24 linear feet can be moved to my office. (Forgot to measure those bookshelves.) The wonderful built-in bookshelves we have now--on either side of the fireplace, so vintage-y!--hold a whopping 30 linear feet, for loss of which we're going to have to compensate. With the Ikea catalog and a lot of calculator work, we think we can do it affordably enough...!

A Note to Luddites

2009-08-07T21:13:00.003-05:00

I went running today, in the rain. I don't go running too often, since I don't like it much, but I'm temporarily between gyms, and was feeling unusually virtuous. Anyway, I'm going along the lake-shore path and suddenly I see, oncoming, a guy with no legs. Running. Fast. I mean, the guy did not even have any knees. He had an impressive pair of prosthetics with curious, long, flexible feet. His gate was slightly odd but he didn't seem in the slightest danger of falling. And as I said, he was very fast. (Faster than me.) I mean, and it was even raining and everything. He also looked really happy. It was one of more inspiring sights I have ever seen.

So here's the thing. You can say that technology has its dark side. You can even say that medical technology may have its dark side. But this guy's legs? That's the bright side, and the existence of things like that, which give a guy that kind of freedom--I guess I just think it's worth a lot.

Fifteen Minute Clean

2009-07-20T20:40:00.002-05:00

Pocket of Bolts and I are not the tidiest persons that ever lived. We have different tolerances and intolerances. PoB hates clutter and I hate filth. He's pretty tolerant of filth, and I generate clutter somehow everywhere I go; it's my natural habitat. We have got along on this issue with only minor friction over the course of our nearly five year relationship--mostly because PoB doesn't hate clutter THAT much, and I am willing to take action regarding filth that really bothers me. Also because PoB is a valiant dishwasher, and I don't mind doing all the toilet-cleaning.

We both always wish that the place were clean all the time, but neither of us care about it THAT much. So we live in congenial semi-squalor. Just like most people, I think.

Recently, though, we got a notice from our landlord about people being in and out to look at the apartment. If we can get the apartment rented early we can get out of our lease and save an entire month's rent. I mean--assuming the real estate thing works out. Which is looking pretty likely. SO. We are highly motivated to, as the landlord's letter delicately puts it, keep the place in a clean and tidy condition.

So I proposed a plan which has proved strikingly and incredibly effective. Every morning after breakfast, we both simultaneously spend fifteen minutes cleaning the apartment. That usually involves doing a few dishes, making the bed, picking up migratory clutter and scholarly detritus... all of which takes between five and ten minutes. The rest of the time can be spent on limited but in depth projects. Pocket of Bolts cleaned the pantry the other day. Once day I mopped the kitchen, dining room, and living room floors. Quickly, but quite effectively. Another day I did the toilet and the sink. Another day I cleaned the front closet.

Not only is the apartment now in a constant state of "ready to be viewed" and even "ready to have friends over"... but the fifteen minutes of vigorous activity (accompanied, of course, by energetic music) wakes us up and gets our blood flowing, makes us ready for the day. And we have actually succeeded in doing it every single day for ... over a week I think. It turns out that half a man hour is a lot. And now we neither have to live with a messy place nor do we have to spend any significant amount of time on cleaning the rest of the day. Hurray for good habits.

(We'll see if it lasts...)

The Biggest Purchase

2009-07-11T14:28:00.002-05:00

Pocket of Bolts and I are contemplating the biggest purchase of our lives to date, a condo in the South Loop. After a hectic and fascinating few weeks of shopping, we've found one that has just about everything we're looking for. The people living there now have it decorated in a style that is very "not us", but at the same time gets us both thinking about a different kind of lifestyle. Less cluttered. Cleaner and more elegant. Stylish even.

If the deal goes through, I'm sure we'll change a lot of things--just the presence of us and the basic necessities of our lives will change the feeling of the place. For example, there's currently not a single bookshelf in it!!! But maybe it will change us too. Maybe even in a direction we're both a tiny bit interested in going.

China! Day 4: The Tourist Experience

2009-06-01T11:03:00.006-05:00

I could say that I signed us up for the "east line" tour to, hmm, be ironic or something. I could say I did it because the guidebook kind of implied that everyone did. Or, best yet, because I wanted to act as a clear-eyed investigator of what these tours were really up to. Honestly, though, it was just because I was a little overwhelmed by CHINA, that whole-body whole-mind immersion into the wholly other. I hadn't quite got my China legs, and didn't feel up to negotiating with a taxi driver and doing the research about where to tell him to go.... I just kind of wanted things to be easy.

The day was rainy. We went in a small van with various other tourists, mostly European. They were a pleasingly low-key group in fact. One young woman had very beautiful dredlocks, which of course I noticed.

We went first to Big Goose Pagoda. It was pleasant.

There was a Buddhist temple there also. I did obeisance to the buddha of prosperity. I've decided to make a habit of this, a little as a joke, but also because it can't hurt. On the synchronicity principle, you see. Make clear what you want, and it will come to you somehow or other.

After that, we went to Banpo village. This was the actual site of the village. They had excavated it and built a big building over it, that had been turned into a museum. Pocket of Bolts and I agreed that it was rather a melancholy sight. The Banpo people were excellent potters, and made some very distinctive pots. But it was sad to see the erstwhile residents lying exposed in their opened graves under plates of glass.

Saddest of all were the many many "jar coffins", large, deliberately broken pottery jars into which were placed those who had died as infants. These were not buried in the main cemetery area but near the houses. For reasons unknown, although some theorists make theories. It is easy to make theories when nothing can be proved either way.

After the Banpo village, an unannounced visit to (ugh) the factory where they make high quality reproductions of terra cotta warriors.

Whatever man. We were left there longer than I would have liked. Pocket of Bolts and I listened to the explanation of the making with some interest--they were made by hand, and that was kind of interesting to see--but when we were given "free time to look around and shop for high quality objets d'art and furniture", PoB and I both bolted for the door and sat on the back step, watching the rain.

After this, we were taken to lunch at an establishment that clearly specialized in tourist lunches for tourists being dragged around to the factory and then to the site for the warriors. Sigh. Unremarkable Chinese food served ostentatiously banquet style. I couldn't help thinking of the real banquets I had been treated to in Beijing and Wuhan...

I was being an English speaker on this particular day, pretending to know no Chinese for the fun of eavesdropping or just so as not to be singled out. But one incident occurred during which I could not keep silent. As we were finishing up lunch (strangers sitting awkwardly together at a round table for eight), the server came around with a comment card asking us to write comments and suggestions. She gave it to the person nearest her, a French girl. The girl shrugged and started to write on it. But then the server, a cutesy young Chinese woman with a girlish haircut and flinty eyes, stationed herself inches away from the would-be critic and peered down at what she was writing.

I found this extremely irritating for some reason and suffered some modulated form of China rage. I caught the server's eye and said conversationally in Chinese, "You know, where we come from one doesn't ask someone for a written evaluation and then look over their shoulders while they are providing it. Doing that makes them feel uncomfortable." The server looked startled and averted her eyes, maybe pretending to ignore me? maybe actually not having comprehended what I said. I think I may have said one or two more sentences elaborating on the theme. The French girl finished her comment, and the server snatched up the card and disappeared.

Then of course I felt a little bad. Was she peeking on her own initiative or had she been ordered to by her doubtless extremely sleazy bosses? One never knows if one is doing wrong, lashing out like that. There's always an excuse for something that seems idiotic or unjust or is just plain irritating. Sometimes it's even a good excuse. Other times, people are just putting one over on you because you are a dumb tourist.

We were given lots more free time to shop around in the hall of crappy but expensive souvenirs. Pocket of Bolts and I took pictures of sodden fireworks and a cracked fountain. There's a certain poetry in the run-downness even of tourist traps like this one.

The hotel agent in the CITS office had sworn we'd be given 120 minutes of free time to wander around and look at the terra cotta warriors. I'm not sure what our guide would have done if we'd actually tried to go off on our own. As it was, though, we were herded pretty effectively through the halls, roughly at the tour guide's pace. Although in the last hall, with its half excavated broken figures (which I found far more wonderful than the assembled ones) and really interesting informational displays, I lagged considerably.

These are the views I liked best. The whole warriors have a kind of sameness to them, all carefully reconstructed and replaced in their trenches. The ones half excavated and abandoned in their original configurations seem much more real, much more true to the realities of war. Aren't they more like the ravages of time, from which not even the best-preserved, best-protected can really emerge whole?

My falling behind caused Pocket of Bolts a lot of anxiety. I kept thinking, who cares if they have to wait for me? It's their own fault. But PoB didn't want to get lost. I can't blame him. I can blame CITS though, the liars. I was still more or less forgiving, however, until at the end we were herded into yet another souvenir hall. I saw it coming and started to turn tail. Thoughts of sneaking back into the museum to see some real stuff. Certainly the time allotted to shopping on whatever schedule our guide was following would be generous. However, one of the dressed up souvenir-supervisors spotted me and called out to our guide, who was chatting with pals outside the hall. He came bustling over and herded me back into the shopping area, chattering volubly. He had good English, I'll give him that. I looked at fake bronzes for a while. One good way to discourage overeager salesgirls to tell them in Chinese that you are not going to buy anything at all today and that you are just looking at these *reproductions* because you are actually interested in history.

I wandered around a bit looking at all the crappy things, and then I sat out back and contemplated the world. Joined after not too long by the rest of the group as well. When we had waited the requisite time, we set off.

On the walk back to the parking lot, there were a lot of elderly women trying to sell peaches to us. They were somewhat furtive, and of quite a different class from the middle-aged sellers of post-cards or the youngsters working in shops. I suppose that they were just trying to get in on some sliver of the tourist market by selling what they had to sell. They were very elderly. In pre-industrial China I would have bought those peaches, but god knows where they were grown and under what conditions, and anyway buying things here is pretty traumatic for me. I only summon up the nerve if it's something I really really want.

On the van-ride back, the guide let his patter trail off. I slept some and watched the rain some. The guide tried to drum up interest in a dinner song and dance theater show. Yeah right. Proposal met with dead silence. Then he chatted in Chinese to the driver and I listened. He said something to the effect that we were a bum group of tourists, not spending any money. Ha, so much the better.

Actually it was an interesting day. It was interesting to see what your average tourist get treated to and the ways in which it doesn't suit me anymore. I caught several errors in the guide's explanation of the tomb (well, it is part of my field of expertise). And although he was fairly amusing and witty, he would periodically lose track of which parts of his spiel he had recited, and repeat himself in identical words. I guess too I prefer to think my own thoughts rather than being talked at, go at my own pace instead of feeling obliged to calibrate with a group. In short, no more guided tours for me. If I hadn't been so lazy I would have done the calculation and realized that for us to hire a taxi for a day would probably have come out cheaper, even with my usual ineptitude as regards bargaining.

On the other hand, it was interesting seeing the pagoda and Banpo village, neither of which would I probably have gone to on my own. The factory on the other hand... eminently skippable. Due to my mulishness and what was, in fact, a reasonably generous allowance for photograph taking, I did get a fair amount of time to look at the terra cotta warriors. Plenty, in fact. They were interesting. But if you think harder, they are not the happiest of cultural symbols. Conquered and conscripted, unique faces perhaps but stuck onto mass-produced bodies.

I found this display in the museum to be particularly telling therefore:

Giant marionette warrior and slightly less giant marionette stereotypical little Chinese girl. I heard they danced at the Olympics. The intended message was CULTURAL CONTINUITY, I'm pretty certain. The subtext may be something else? Cultural conformity? Or was I overreading because of who and where I was?

China! Day 3: Beilin (Xi'an)

2009-05-30T09:21:00.004-05:00

The Beilin (Forest of Stele) really deserves its own post.

We went there in the grey and drizzly later afternoon. We had to wander around in scholar street again to find it, which was quite a pleasure in itself.

First there was a garden with little pavilions, mostly closed up.

I guess these housed the less exciting steles.

Then outside the main buildings there was a block with carving from the Classic of Filial Piety. Here is a kid looking seriously up at it while his mother looked on.

Here is a detail view of some characters on it, including the characters for "filial child".

Inside the hall were the remnants of the Tang dynasty "stone classics." I was a bit blase at first, then I got more and more excited.

Here's me looking quite unstable in front of the Classic of Changes stones.

We saw stones having to do with Xuanzang, the historical basis for the monk in Journey to the West. We saw a Nestorian Christian stone carving, which is historically important... at least to people who are interested in the history of Christianity. I had worried that Pocket of Bolts would be pretty bored, but he had charge of the camera and seemed to enjoy taking pictures of things and of me looking at things. Here is a picture he took playing with reflections.

There were also a lot of pictures that came about because I said, "Hey Pocket of Bolts! Come here and take a picture of this one!" Here is one that PoB found all on his own though. He doesn't know very many Chinese characters, but he can recognize many of the numbers. This is the so-called "autobiography of Confucius": "When I was 15, I set my heart on study" and so forth.

By the last hall I was really worked up. That hall was thick with the smell of ink, and there was a team of people making rubbings.

They also had stele with pictures on them, which I liked a lot. In the end, I even had to buy a rubbing of this one. It's the God of Literature pointing at the Big Dipper (with his foot). He's all made of Chinese characters.

The whole Beilin experience made me quite excited and overwrought! Pocket of Bolts was highly amused, but also pleased.

China! Day 3: Xi'an

2009-05-29T08:41:00.005-05:00

As the price of our hotel in Xi'an did not include breakfast, we decided to go out in search of some. It was seven in the morning, but it does not seem an especially early-rising sort of town. The Starbucks was still closed. We rambled around the Drum Tower. Some shops were just starting to open, but nothing food-related. Pocket of Bolts saw a woman eating something as we walked by. He said, Whatever she has looks really good. I hadn't seen it clearly, so I decided to go back and ask her. She was not a young woman, and not a wealthy one. She grinned at me with very bad teeth and said something of which I understood barely a word. By her gestures, though, I gathered that one could buy the kind of thing she was eating in the alley behind the Drum Tower: go straight down there and turn left, something like that. She seemed tickled that we had so much interest in her breakfast.

The narrow streets behind the Drum Tower did indeed turn out wonderful. We ended up with two youtiao ("oil-sticks", rather like deep-fried croissants), two of the things the woman had been eating, which proved to be jiabing (kind of like a pita sandwich but deep-fried, and containing vegetables and meat and glass noodles), a cup of sour plum juice, a sticky rice ball that was not all the way warm so I ate part of it and threw it away, and a large bag of peanuts fried with red peppers. When we were buying the youtiao, I asked in Chinese for "two sticks" and the guy selling them laughed. I said "two pieces?" and he laughed more. The woman standing by considered the question seriously and pronounced: either one is fine.

Later in the morning, we went up the city wall of Xi'an.

It was a grey, windy day, pleasantly cool. We thought we'd just walk a bit, take in the sights, not worry about going all the way around.

After a while, though, we were tempted by one of the bike rental places. It was interesting biking on the rough cobbly wall. Pocket of Bolts, who was a little too big for his bicycle, complained of a sore ass. Meanwhile I, who have been suffering a bit of tendonitis in my wrists, started to get itchy all over my arms from the vibration. Peculiar.

Nonetheless, it was really fun and we saw many interesting sites.

One of these was a lone half-demolished house in a field of rubble. In front of the house, there was a man taking a dump.

We made it all the way around the wall in the 100 minutes for which we'd rented the bikes. Then we headed down. We were heading for a lunch place recommended by the guidebook, First Noodle Under the Sun. On the way, we happened to stumble on a wonderful little street, which Pocket of Bolts dubbed "Scholar Street"--or perhaps "Culture Alley." It was a marvelous place.

Here are some birdcages hanging up near there.

A grave, dignified fellow doing calligraphy.

I was quite distracted from my hunger. Scholar Street eventually petered out into a more ordinary little street. Ordinary people walking along it. One man dropped a pack of cigarettes on the ground. We and an old woman saw it at the same time. I picked it up. It was empty. "It's empty," I told her in Chinese, showing her the pack. "Too bad!" She laughed and said, "I think so too!" It was a random interaction but amusing somehow.

We had a very noodly lunch at First Noodle Under the Sun. The starch o.d. made us sleepy and we went back to the hotel for an afternoon nap--on vacation after all...

China! Day 2: Shanghai --> Xi'an

2009-05-27T15:38:00.005-05:00

We were tired enough to sleep most of the night: woke up briefly at 2 AM or so, but went back to sleep and slept until 6. Then we uploaded pictures onto the computer and looked at them, drank tea, did various small things. Around 7 we went down to a sumptuous breakfast buffet in a sumptuous hall. Dumplings (both baozi and jiaozi), cooked vegetables, rice porridge, soy milk, cereal, pastries, fruits (including dragon fruit and dried kiwis), bacon and sausage, toast, cheese, hot chocolate, noodles, interesting breads, carrot/apple/orange juices. We ate many helpings until we were quite stuffed full.

Then we took off for a walk down East Nanjing Road, a nifty pedestrian zone that people have begun using in particularly wonderful and ebullient ways.

There was a long row of signs with cartoons on how to be "wenming" (civilized and polite) for the upcoming Expo.

Many were very funny.

Just as funny was this fellow who was gravely examining them.

Here is me hugging a magnolia flower.

After this nice walk, we headed back, checked out of the hotel, and went to the airport for the flight to Xi'an. As before, I was impressed by how even on a short two-hour flight, we got served a sumptuous lunch. Chinese domestic flights are so much more awesome than their US counterparts.

In Xi'an, a bus took us straight to our hotel. We had paid a bit extra for a room with a view, and it does not disappoint.

The Bell Tower, with its ring of flowers, is a magnet for swooping swallows by day and fluttering bats by night. When I am awake at 2 AM (as seems to be a regular occurrence, unfortunately), I like to look at the taxis going around and around the rotary. Actually, they are probably not going around and around, but because all taxis look the same, that's the impression I got.

We checked in and rested a little, then headed down to Lao Sun Jia restaurant for a Xi'an specialty dish called Yangrou paomo. Aside from some little cold dishes, that's the only thing the restaurant serves. First we each got a bowl and two dense white breads. We were instructed to tear this up "small small." We started in, rather naturally, tearing them in halves, then quarters, then smaller.

We had scraps about the size of pennies by the time a guy at the neighboring table (pictured in the background above) peered over and scolded (in Chinese): "Too big!" I said, "Still too big?" And he said grumpily, "It won't taste good that way!" He held up his bowl which had bread pieces about the size of crumbs. His dinner companion, whom he seemed to have brought along to help with the bread-tearing, since she was working on his breads too, was scraping minute pieces off a mostly intact half-bread. Hmm. Pocket of Bolts and I had a lot more work to do.

We were down to about the size of peas when PoB voted for quitting. He said the people at the table behind ME were less perfectionistic about the whole thing, and they seemed to be enjoying it fine. Actually, they were a boyfriend and girlfriend having a big fight. (I couldn't see them, but I could hear them.)

When the bread was torn up enough, we took the bowls up to the front counter and they filled up the rest with a kind of stew, lamb and glass noodles. We had condiments we could add ourselves: chopped cilantro, red pepper sauce, and pickled garlic. The overall effect was surprisingly successful. It tasted like a comfort food, so warm and starchy.

After eating it, though, we were deeply full. We walked around the neighborhood a little bit, trying to drum up some interest in dessert, but not succeeding. Pocket of Bolts: "My stomach is like, 'What? Did you just eat a loaf of bread?'" Incidentally, so far our stomachs have been just fine.

Around 8 I got deeply deeply sleepy again, so we headed back to the hotel where I could barely summon the energy to brush my teeth and get into bed before I was out cold.

By the way, blogger access is blocked here. I can only post this by logging on to the VPN from school. I am curious whether the e-mail-to-post option would work, but a bit too busy right now to find out.

Pictures from the Bund

2009-05-26T19:44:00.002-05:00

Chairman Mao surveying the skyline.

I encounter a lion.

Man making leaf animals. The snakes were particularly wonderful.

China! Day 1: Shanghai

2009-05-25T20:00:00.003-05:00

...And we're off to China. Both Pocket of Bolts and I have been very ready for a vacation, and here it is. It's fun going to China not to learn anything in particular or to do any difficult things, just to have fun.

Our flight from Chicago to Shanghai was very comfortable. We got to sit in a two-seat row by the window, and there were little personal TVs with a variety of movies and TV shows. We got fed quite regularly, and when I felt sleepy I curled up and slept. I sleep curled up anyway, and it's singularly handy for plane rides. I didn't even touch my computer or the novel I had brought, just watched TV, read travel guides, and slept.

The first thing that happened in Shanghai was that some health inspectors came onto the plane (we were sternly enjoyed to stay in our seats) and took everyone's temperature with an infrared guy pointed at the forehead. They were ludicrously shielded from exposure, white-clad from top to toe and even wearing funny masks. Happily, our plane was declared healthy, and we were allowed to get off. Another line to turn in our special health declaration forms, and more infrared temperature taking.

That was the only unusual bit. The rest was as always, immigration, baggage claim, customs. From the airport, we took the very fancy new Maglev train. What fun! Its speed peaked at 420 km/h, pretty respectable. It was very quiet and fast. From there, a taxi into the city.

We stayed at the Astor House hotel, one of the oldest in the city if not the oldest. It was really nice though, renovated and all. Our room was not the typical boring little box, but odd-shaped, with nooks and crannies.

We took much-needed showers, then successfully resisted the temptation to nap. Instead, we went for a walk across the Waibai bridge and down along the Bund. The skyline over the river was a fine sight.

The entire area along the Bund was being renovated for the 2010 Expo, which will be held here. Bad luck. But I'm sure it will look cool when it's done.

Welcome to the Groove

2009-05-06T19:52:00.002-05:00

Everything I normally care about is let fall. I eat at random and don't exercise at all, let fun daily projects lapse. Dishes pile up and the bathroom gets filthy. The husband does more housework than he should be made to do. The hermit crabs don't get fresh produce. E-mails lie in my inbox unanswered, classes go unattended, plans go unplanned, other deadlines approach. None of it matters. When the work flows, it flows. I run with it.

Colors

2009-05-05T12:38:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I think that feelings are a little like colors. We all use the same words for them: happiness, melancholy, excitement, irritation, and so on. We all generally agree on what these words describe, just like we all generally agree on that the grass is green, the sky is blue, the tulips are red. But just because we agree, does that mean we actually see the same colors? do we actually feel the same happiness? Of course colors have a wavelength and are objectively determined in that way, at least as I understand it. Maybe feelings have a wavelength too? but I suppose it would be hard to measure.

Also, feelings are like colors in that happiness is spring green and sky blue and tulip red. I have been so ready for winter to be over.

Dream Neighborhood

2009-05-04T09:20:00.003-05:00

When a person at my stage of life finally manages to secure a decent job, the first thing they seem to want to do is start house-hunting--at least with the market like it is. Pocket of Bolts and I are no exception. We have been checking out neighborhoods on the weekend, which is exceptionally pleasant given that spring has finally arrived. All the trees are in flower. The air is pleasingly warm. And yesterday we suddenly found the perfect neighborhood. Compared to all the other places we've walked around in, which were okay but seemed like a compromise in one way or another, this one just clicked. Both of us, we just knew right away: yes! this is exactly where we belong. Of course, it would have to be a neighborhood where most things are just slightly above our price range, even in this market... but that's good right? Aren't you supposed to buy the humblest house in a gorgeous block rather than the most gorgeous house on a humble block? Suddenly, I am full of impatience. I want to get started. Now. But Pocket of Bolts points out that we are about to be gone for a month, and it makes much better sense to start in late June, after we get back. He has a point, but I am filled with impatience.

Transformation

2009-04-24T09:27:00.002-05:00

I have neglected my blog because there has been too much to say, not too little. I may try to do catch-up posts soon. But the necessity of filling in the gaps when there is so much to fill them with has had the effect of making me put off starting--not good blogging strategy.

In the past week I feel like my life has turned right side up. I mean it just exactly like that, as if things were opposite how they should have been before and I didn't even know it. Briefly, I got and accepted a job offer; went to a conference where my work was praised and critiqued and appreciated (I'd totally forgotten what that felt like--I realize I had especially missed receiving well-considered criticism); formed new friendships and strengthened old ones... and suddenly I feel about 300% more connected to life and the world.

Suddenly I feel like I can actually do things. Maybe even write this dissertation.

It makes me think that life might work as evolution is hypothesized to, by a process of punctuated equilibrium. If so, this is the moment of punctuation!

Great Things are Afoot

2009-04-11T21:11:00.004-05:00

...in hermit-crab land. It was back in July that I first acquired Intrepid and Pokey. Pokey unfortunately never emerged from his molt. Intrepid did, but became a most unsatisfying pet, exceedingly timid (ironically), and mostly staying holed up in hiding all the time. His unsatisfactory petitude caused me to hesitate about throwing good money after bad, so to speak, and replacing Pokey. Also the weather has been so cold that it's hard to transport the little guys. However, a few days ago, I finally decided to get another crab.

They had some really big ones at the pet store. As usual, I asked for the smallest one, figuring that it would be least likely to be suffering from delayed molting problems. It came in a garish orange painted shell. When I put it in the tank, it was exceedingly cautious and didn't move at all for quite some time. Because of the cautiousness and the diamond pattern on the shell, I decided to name it Confucius.

Little did I know that that very night Confucius was going to shake up the whole hermit crab world!

I had put a little pile of cut-up pear core in the food dish. When I came back in the morning, the pear was all scattered, and the orange patterned shell was lying vacant!! Confucius had changed his shell for a much larger one.

You can just barely see his little claw sticking out of it in the above photo (front center). The discarded shell is lying in the background.

Furthermore, this big shell was not the first one Confucius had tried. Another, somewhat smaller, shell was sitting in the middle of the water dish. If Confucius didn't put it there, I don't see who did.

Finally, while I watched, Confucius attempted to drag a large chunk of pear down the whole length of the tank into a hole he had dug for himself. I must say intrepid never did anything nearly this interesting!

I am now more enthusiastic about hermit crab ownership than I have been in a really long time.

Easter Hat and Scarf

2009-04-10T16:48:00.004-05:00

My mama sent me and Pocket of Bolts an Easter box which contained many amusing things. Among them, this Easter hat and scarf. I'm not used to wearing scarves. I have trouble doing the folding--or draping, or whatever--correctly. Still, this one I found quite appealing, and in addition to wearing it for this photo, I wore it all day yesterday! Pocket of Bolts pronounced it "jaunty and pretty." I think there's something about this picture that makes me look a tiny bit like my maternal grandmother. Whether it's the hat or something else, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just that when Pocket of Bolts takes pictures of me, I always look short. My grandmother was short too, shorter than me. Almost everyone else in my family is taller than average.

March Trip to China 7: Huanggang Sights

2009-04-05T23:48:00.004-05:00

Here are some more photos from the small city of Huanggang, all taken near the Su Shi museum, on the others side of the wall. First, directly across the wall, a little patch of garden, completely invisible from the amusement park side.

Not far from that, a building I found particularly interesting because of the looseness of its bricks.

Finally, just a slightly melancholy street scene. There's some kind of beauty in these kinds of images, I think, although it's hard to say just what that beauty is.

March Trip to China 6: Su Shi Red Cliff Museum

2009-04-03T14:47:00.002-05:00

Su Shi was a famous poet of the Song dynasty. In Huanggang (right next the amusement part) there's a museum dedicated to him. It was, rare for China, almost totally deserted. Also in fairly bad repair, but still an interesting place to visit.

Just a few small images from the place.

There was a room with many stone carved poems and paintings. This is a "longevity window" in the wall, together with the reflections on the protective glass.

A sealed door; probably the complex used to be even bigger but the rest is sealed off. Falling into complete disrepair, I suppose.

A table and chairs being slowly uprooted by the nearby tree...

March Trip to China 5: Huanggang Amusement Park

2009-04-01T21:52:00.004-05:00

This is the view from above of an amusement park in the small city of Huanggang. There was a swaying "Viking boat" ride, an inflatable funhouse, archery practice, roller-skating and much much more.

One of more ingenious and unfamiliar parts of the amusement park: some pedal horses that inch along when pedaled. Very cool.

March Trip to China 4: Back Courtyard

2009-03-31T20:34:00.003-05:00

These pictures were taken in the back courtyard of a "Simple Food Restaurant" we went to in the town of Huanggang. I should add that the simple food was very tasty, but then we did not order the bullfrog(!), pictured below in a tank with other edibles, just waiting around to be popped in the pot.

The woman's bathroom shown in the photo below looks pretty grim, but it was by no means the worst bathroom I have encountered in China. Indeed, I thought the way the mops were lined up against the wall looked kind of picturesque.

March Trip to China 3: Returning to Origins Temple

2009-03-30T10:54:00.002-05:00

Here are a couple of photos from Returning to Origins Temple (Guiyuan si). The first one is a huge pile of turtles on a lotus structure in one of the temple ponds. Turtles are great. I was not the only one interested in starting at them, as you can see in the reflection if you look closely!

The temple had five hundred golden statues of Luohans (like Buddhist saints), made sometime in the Republican period, I think. Here are just a few of them. They were used as a sort of fortune-telling device. You started in a certain direction and counted off a certain number, according to your own superstitions. The one you got to was supposed to be your sort of patron saint for the year. The next year you could come back. Of course, to get proper information about your saint, you had to pay 10 RMB and you got a little golden pilgrim card. Of course I had to get one, 10 RMB being peanuts for me. I got #230. If I get a chance, I will scan the card and translate it here a bit later.

Out Like a Lion

2009-03-29T21:13:00.002-05:00

This photo was taken from our living room window looking out into the courtyard, and it was taken today, March 29. The snow has mostly melted by now, but it was really coming down hard all morning, generating huge puddles of icy slush around all the curbs and a general miserable wet winter's-not-through-with-us-yet feeling.

The good news, though, is that my beloved husband is finally home from his travels and so am I, so after nearly a whole month of comings and goings, we can finally settle down again to our comforting and much longed-for routine. The conference for my field was in Chicago this year, and today was the last day of it. I actually did manage to drag myself out for an 8:30 AM panel, and went to another at 10:45, but I can't say I remained conscious the whole time. I was exhausted.

I went home pretty much directly after the second panel. Climbing the stairs to our apartment, I smelled a wonderful smell, which actually turned out to be emanating from OUR place. Pocket of Bolts, who has been in Ireland, had brought back black and white puddings. To go with these, he made eggs, grilled tomatoes, and--get this--even Irish soda bread. Homemade, by him. Dinner was bubbling in the crock-pot, and he had even made stock. It was amazing. We finally got a chance to relax over a big "Irish breakfast" lunch, and start in on all the things we had to talk about it. Since there's nowhere we'd want to go, let it snow!

March Trip to China 2: At Yellow Crane Tower

2009-03-17T06:53:00.003-05:00

Sweeping bamboos over the ticket line. For some reason, I just thought this picture oddly charming.

A grassy little path leading up to a half-hidden pavilion. Not one of the more famous sight here but again the picture really captures a moment and a memory for me.

The cliche typical view of Yellow Crane Tower. Rebuilt in the Qing dynasty, but on the same site as the old Yellow Crane Tower, celebrated because of a farewell poem written by the great Tang poet Li Bo:

"At Yellow Crane Tower, Seeing off Meng Haoran on his Way to Guangling"
My old friend is heading west
we part at Yellow Crane Tower.
In the mist and flowers of the third month,
he goes down to Yangzhou.
His lonely sail just a shadow in the distance,
Then disappearing in the blue void,
And I see only the Yangzi
Flowing to the edge of heaven.

(Translation is mine, but rough and impromptu.)

March Trip to China 1: Shanghai Airport

2009-03-14T22:35:00.002-05:00

Here is me, Zapaper, in the Shanghai Pudong airport. I am about 15 hours into a 20 hour journey, sleepy and surrounded by my carry-on luggage. But Shanghai was warm and sunny. The airport had freely available drinking water, Western toilets with toilet paper supplied, places to plug in your computer, and even free wireless. So the four-hour layover there I had passed quite comfortably, no complaints at all.

Birthday Surprise

2009-03-02T22:47:00.005-06:00

This weekend was one of the long-awaited events I have not hitherto been able to blog about, namely: Pocket of Bolts father and sister, who each live pretty far from Chicago, in different states from us and from each other, had contacted me about two months ago. They wanted to surprised PoB by flying in for his birthday, and wanted to know if I thought it would be all right. It was not a hard decision to make: of course one says yes. The consequence of saying no if I should have said yes are so much worse than the consequences of saying yes if I should have said no--obviously. But the whole thing cost me a certain amount of mental anguish, believe it or not. I'm not one for surprise parties, either getting or giving them. And lying to my husband, even if it's mostly by omission, does not come easily.

In the event, however, the whole thing worked out so well and smoothly that he was a bit disturbed at how effectively "sneaky" I was. I attribute our success merely to the fact that he is not of a suspicious nature, and we had some good luck. Friday night I lured him into a nearby pub. The surprise guests came in and sneaked up behind him. The look of pure astonishment on his face was quite comical, and for a moment I almost appreciated why people like to plan surprise parties. I still think, though, that he might have enjoyed it more if he could have had longer to look forward to it.

On his actual birthday, Saturday, we had brunch at Ann Sather, and then the three of them went off to see the sights. I stayed home to work and also made a cake. For dinner we went to a nice tapas place, which was delicious, and came back to our place for cake (so many candles!) and drinking and chatting. The whole evening went really well, I thought.

This is a picture of the Pocket of Bolts family having a characteristically lazy and mellow Sunday morning. I was madly translating some medieval poems for a meeting I had later in the afternoon. When the three of them get together I am definitely the odd one out, but I don't mind it. It is fun to see PoB amidst his nearest relations. It was fun to do something unusual for the birthday weekend.

PoB's dad left Sunday afternoon, and his sister stayed on another day. They'd been in a hotel but his sister spent Sunday night with us. That was really nice. PoB is very close to his sister, and they don't have nearly enough chances to really talk. We all had dinner together and then I went into the study to do some writing and the two of them talked. I could hear the edges of their conversation, but I mostly stayed in the study and did my own thing. Brothers and sisters should have some alone time when they see each other so rarely--I think.

Dinner with M2

2009-02-27T19:33:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday I had dinner with my sister. She is my second older sister--in Chinese, Er Jie--, I will call her M2. It does not sound like such a remarkable event, but upon reflection I realized that she and I have not had an extensive one-on-one interaction in years, maybe as much as a decade? We have lived in different places, and led busy lives. When we have seen each other it's mostly been at big family get-togethers where there are always many distractions...

I have vivid memories of M2 from when I was a child. She is nine years older than me, actually my half sister. When my age was still in the single digits, she was the coolest person ever born (as far as I was concerned). Everything that belonged to her was the coolest thing in the world. Everything she was interested in, I was interested in too. I try to imagine how annoying I must have been! But I didn't see it that way at the time of course. Later I developed a feeling of diffidence toward her, though I couldn't say exactly why.

Anyway, a conference brought M2 to Chicago this week and she called me up out of blue. I went and met her near where she was staying and we had dinner. I still felt some of that former mystique, a sense of great privilege to be in the exclusive presence of my childhood idol. At the same time, I am an adult now; well, we both are. The childhood strangeness that I think formerly interfered with our ability to develop a real sisterly relationship has been to some extent overcome, perhaps?

We had a really pleasant conversation, at least I thought so. We had more in common than I would have expected, personality-wise. We do such different work, and I have always imagined that we would have formed our respective identities around very different sorts of things. And yet there is something quite similar about our personality styles, our experiences of certain things.

In any case, I was really glad we did it. It was a good start. It is strange to talk of "starting" a sibling relationship in one's 30s, but there you have it. That's still how it feels.

Butterfly: Peacock Pansy

2009-02-24T16:37:00.004-06:00

These are some pictures of the third painted origami butterfly I made. (The other two are here and here.)

I finally felt satisfied with this one. It is what I had in mind when I started thinking about making them. That's a satisfying feeling.

This butterfly is modeled on one called Junonia almana, or peacock pansy butterfly. Of course origami wings are not the same shape as real wings, so it is a little altered in proportions.

Still, I fooled Pocket of Bolts when I first showed it to him (from across the room). He thought I had somehow caught a real butterfly. A proud moment. Here's the not-folded version.

Now I have been resting on my laurels. I started another one, but satisfaction is not as good a spur for art as dissatisfaction. Or maybe it's just that I've been doing other things... you know, like the things I'm actually supposed to be doing.

Random Walk: Harold Washington Library

2009-02-19T14:18:00.002-06:00

I have long been fascinated by randomness. I'm not sure why. Ever since I was little, though, I have liked the idea of it. It seems impersonal but also vast, inexhaustible, like an undiscovered country all its own. Of course it's also potentially disappointing and frustrating. I'm sure all explorers have their share of disappointments though. Borges pays marvelous tribute to the idea in "The Library of Babel." In a world of pure randomness, the ratio of sense to nonsense is terribly low.

Fortunately, the Harold Washington Library is not a world of pure randomness. Given the contents and the target population, there's not even all that much chance of my coming across a book in a language I can't read. So since I'm working here for the day, I used my Excel random number generator to choose a random floor (4), a random number of turns (9), what the turns--or non-turns--should be (left, left, right, left, straight, right, left, straight, straight), a number of steps to walk (8), and a side to reach my hand (left). This resulted in the following book:

4000 Years of Service: The Story of the Wholesale Tobacco Industry and its Pioneers, by Joseph Kolodny, copyright 1953.

The date is key. No sign of health risks, or addiction, or anything at all troubling about tobacco. Tobacco is just plain good business in 1953.

I was quite struck by the number "4000 years." In my field (ancient history), we might occasionally run into a number that large, but mostly things 4000 years ago are the province of archeologists. In China at least we're not even talking oracle bones or bronzes, but rather painted pots, bit of jade-work. Well, 4000 years is not the length of time that people have been using tobacco, or if so only incidentally to the subject matter of this book.

It turns out that the National Association of Tobacco Distributors (NATD), which figures most prominently in this particular publication, established a "Half-Century Club" to honor those tobacco industry figures who had been in the business for fifty years or more. I guess the club had about 80 members. Anyway, it's a bit astonishing that this book came to be. It's a whole lot of dross. Some history of the tobacco industry and its importance to America, an address delivered by the author at the inaugural meeting of the half-century club, and an bunch of nice black and white portraits: pioneers of the tobacco industry. Lastly, some essays on the future of the tobacco industry. A whole lot of stuff those guys didn't see coming.

It's odd that this book is taking up space in the library's reference section. On the other hand, since the inaugural meeting of the NATD Half-Century club took place at the Palmer House here in Chicago, I suppose it's a little piece of Chicago history. It is fairly disturbing nonetheless.

Self-Portraits

2009-02-19T12:44:00.003-06:00

It's amazingly and amusingly difficult to take a standard passport picture of yourself, especially if you don't have a tripod and if most of the walls in your apartment aren't white. At right is one of my many failed attempts before I finally gave up and asked Pocket of Bolts to take it for me. I would have done that to begin with except that old PoB has been working unusually hard--which, workaholic that he is, is very very hard--ever since his colleague has been here visiting with us.

Anyway, I liked this picture even though it's a total failure for standard passport photo composition. I'm trying to grow my hair out a bit--I think the end goal is shoulder-length or a bit longer, but with bangs? maybe? Right now though it's pretty silly, tufts sticking straight out by my ears unless I kind of plaster them down. On the other hand, that's also kind of cute sometimes.

It's not that my life has been uneventful lately, but there are various things I don't quite feel like putting up on the blog just yet. Possibilities that have not yet come to fruition and might not--things like that. I did put up a new post on Book Draft though. And if I owe you an e-mail, I'm sorry--I'm really behind right now!!

How I Know We are Healthy

2009-02-13T11:01:00.002-06:00

Both Pocket of Bolts and I have been feeling under the weather all week. There were no particular symptoms, just a general feeling of what PoB describes as "assy-ness," feeling like ass. Occasional moments of scratchy throat, runny nose, headache or stomachache, but everything come and gone almost before we noticed. Mostly a general feeling of tiredness, like the kind you'd be tempted to ascribe to depression except for that we're both extremely happy at the moment. If we got excited about something, we could easily shake off the malaise, although it would be waiting for us again when we came back down.

We both took it easy on the exercise, took naps and extra vitamins, and generally babied ourselves a bit. Today, I at least am finally feeling back to normal.

It's funny to say that this feeling mildly sick is proof of our robust good health, but I'm pretty sure that what happened is we have been fighting off some really nasty bug, just fighting it off quite successfully. I should add that we haven't been sick the entire year, at all. This is the first time, if this even counts. For myself, I put it down to the virtues of spending every other day in my pajamas. For Pocket of Bolts, who goes in to work all day and gets coughed on by students, it must be something else. Probably it's because, as he announced to me early on in our relationship, he has "the immune system of a Panzer tank column." He's a tough one all right. One of his many good qualities.

Warm Front//A Date

2009-02-06T22:36:00.003-06:00

I put on my wool socks and then I pulled on my leg-warmers up over them. I readjusted my pants legs, buttoned up my wool sweater, shrugged into my down coat. I checked to make sure my Polartec gloves were in my coat pockets. I reached for hat and scarf. Pocket of Bolts was sitting on the couch with his computer. "Could you check the weather for me?" I asked him. I don't typically wear hat and scarf for short excursions unless the weather is in the teens or single digits.

"Sure thing," Pocket of Bolts said. "... Right now it's 38 with a high of--"

"You're shitting me. What did you say?"

"Thirty-eight, as in, above-freezing 38. Melting-snow 38."

Neither of us could quite believe it. I looked out into the courtyard. It was an expanse of thick white buttercream, with only the two paths carefully cleared. "It doesn't look like it's melting," I said skeptically.

"Well, it's a glacier out there," Pocket of Bolts said. The sun was shining through the windows. It did feel, well, almost a little bit warm.

I dropped the hat and scarf, shucked off my down coat and leg-warmers, and shimmied into my wool coat instead. After weeks of looking like a black puff-ball every time I walked out the door, I felt quite dashing with my figure almost visible in the slim charcoal lines of my medium-weight coat.

Fancy that, I thought as I stepped out into the courtyard. The feeling of the air on my face, which had of late varied only along the limited spectrum between "cringe-inducing" and "agonizing" could now be characterized as merely "bracing." Out on the sidewalks, the dog-shit encrusted snow-banks were shrinking a little. The sun was doing its best to be warm. It was actually enjoyable to walk along.

Later when I got home from my reading group, Pocket of Bolts and I went for a run. An actual run, outside.

We weren't the only ones to have this idea. Along the lake-shore path in the last hour before sunset, it was almost as lively as it was last June, although everyone was a lot more heavily bundled. The atmosphere was downright cheery. The harbor was so frozen up, but the path was quite clear and clean.

This evening we decided we deserved some fun, so we went out to dinner at Miller's Pub (which turned out to be an awesome restaurant--we hadn't been there before) and saw a strange but interesting film, Fear(s) of the Dark, at the Gene Siskal Film Center. We love going on dates, and never fail to have a good time. This one was no exception!

The Four Winds

2009-02-05T23:02:00.002-06:00

The paleography class yesterday was really interesting. For some reason I was really aesthetically fascinated by the material we were studying. I kept wanting to copy the text instead of analyze it. It was so beautiful. I guess that means it's time I should make another butterfly. Instead, though, I came home and copied out the text with my watercolor brush. (Somehow I've misplaced my calligraphy brush. That's okay; the original is carved in bone, not painted.) This inscription is a chart of the four winds and four directions, just their names. The left part has been broken off, though the content can be supplied from other inscriptions. The especially hairy character third from the bottom is the character for wind, a borrowing from the character we now translate as phoenix... but which looks an awful lot like a peacock when you look carefully at its development.

I'm not going to post the original picture because it makes my clumsy painting look pretty bad, but it is a marvelous picture. Pocket of Bolts said that oracle bone script looks savage and disconcerting--as if they're trying to depict something but it has become detached in an uncanny way from the things they are trying to depict. Actually, that is just about right. It is far more pictographic and less differentiated than modern Chinese script, but it is already much stylized and simplified. They are, and aren't, pictures of things.

The Breathing Sandwich//Dreadlocks

2009-02-04T21:12:00.003-06:00

It was COLD today. This is how cold: I packed myself a sandwich before I left the house this morning. We're not talking a hot sandwich here, just some bread, some deli sliced turkey and lettuce and mustard. I walked to the El, and, having just missed a train, decided to sit down and eat my sandwich. You know how when you exhale in cold weather and you can see your breath? Well, while I was eating I noticed that I could see my sandwich's breath as well. Honestly. I even held my breath to double check that it wasn't from me. My sandwich was faintly but perceptibly exhaling white mist. I pondered this phenomenon, and concluded that it must be from the moist, room-temperature bread (since the other ingredients had been refrigerated). I'm just saying, that is some cold weather.

Elsewhere in the news, I yielded to my fascination with dreadlocks yesterday to the extent of photoshopping some dreadlocks onto myself to see how I'd look. These particular dreadlocks happen to belong to Tracy Chapman (thanks Tracy). Pocket of Bolts called the results "disconcerting." The thing that surprised me, as well, was the extent to which I look like my brother! I guess dreadlocks would not be effective in making me look more feminine, although I still think they'd be pretty cool. I've had it with being mistaken for a boy, though. I want to look like a woman.

At right is a picture of my brother for comparison. It was taken some years ago. He's much leaner and handsomer now. But you can kinda see it, can't you?

Butterfly: Malachite

2009-02-03T16:08:00.003-06:00

Here is my next draft butterfly. It is still not perfect, less symmetrical than I meant it to be, and I have to think some more about the underside and how to deal with the fact that the origami pattern is far from anatomically correct. Still, I felt fairly pleased with it.

It's interesting to note that the undersides of the wings have a quite different tone, a sky-blue color that doesn't appear at all on the top. After thinking about it for a long time I decided that this must be because when seen from the top by predators it would camouflaged against leaves and soil, but when seen from underneath by predators it would be camouflaged against the sky.

This is the unfolded paper. This butterfly pattern was modeled on Siproeta stelenes. Some of the web photos I looked at are here and here. Also here.

By the way, new Book Draft post here.

Superbowl Sunday

2009-02-02T12:50:00.002-06:00

If you can believe it, Pocket of Bolts and I spent yesterday evening watching the Superbowl. I told this to my mom and she said, "Where did you go?" See, we have TV but no cable, and we only get one channel. Exactly which channel varies depending on what happens to be plugged in to the TV. It turns out that with our new DVD player, the channel we get is NBC (a bit fuzzy), and that happened to be where the Superbowl was playing.

Now neither Pocket of Bolts nor I are great sports fans, but we'd had a tough week, and the Superbowl seemed like a good excuse to eat our favorite sinful meal (pizza and beer) and kick back for four hours. We thought, if we got bored with the game we could always switch over to one of our Netflix. But as it turned out, the game was incredibly exciting!

We had no personal stake in the result at all. Pocket of Bolts was nominally rooting for the Steelers (the Stillers, if you're from Pittsburgh) because he's from the East Coast. I can't maintain any constant loyalties and always tend to be rooting for the offense or the underdog, whichever seems more appropriate. Oh, and for anyone who has long black hair coming out from under their helmet. The Stillers were a classy team, but those Cardinals were really scrappy. We howled and jumped up and down. It was especially humiliating that the Stillers got safetied, but on the other hand, they shouldn't have thrown so many punches at the guys on the other team. Unnecessary roughness indeed! It was a marvelous thing, seeing Harrison's end-zone interception followed by the lumbering hundred yard run for the touchdown. All in all, it was not the slightest bit boring (except for all the ads).

I've noticed this before about football: it works a lot better if you follow the entire game closely from the beginning, because a lot of the pleasure is in the narrative arc. This is unlike continuously played games like basketball or soccer where reverses can and do occur instantaneously. In football, they generally happen in a slower and more formal way, but they are correspondingly more momentous. And of course instantaneous reverse (like fumbles and interceptions) are downright shocking.

Anyway, it's not something I'd want to watch every day or even every week, but it might well become an annual tradition.

Three Men on a Bus

2009-01-24T19:40:00.002-06:00

On Wednesday last I went to my ancient texts class as usual. Now that it starts at noon, it has burst all restraint and tends to last about five hours. For me it requires a significant amount of psychological preparation merely to face a five-hour long class, but I managed to sit it out this time at least.

An interesting thing happened while I was on my way there, though. I was at the Garfield red line stop, and crossing the street to the bus stop. It's a bit of a sketchy place, so I always extra alert to those around me whenever I pass through there. That's why I noticed three men drinking Monster energy drinks, crossing the street ahead of me. Their movements and physical bearing seemed somehow very violent, though they didn't do anything out of the ordinary. They just seemed... thuggish. Like there was some wild energy in them just on the point of bursting out. I would have been more nervous except that they were a mixed race group, two white men and a black man. For some reason, it's easy to see being mugged by all black men or by all white men, but not by a mixture of the two, not sure why. Also, it was only 11 AM, and there were lots of other people around. Anyway, I kept my eye on them as we all waited for the bus.

When the bus came, it was reasonably crowded. The three men were sitting near the back, and it happened that the only empty seat was in the back too. So I sat there, staring at the window, thinking of nothing. I was tired. I was gearing up for five hours of paleography.

One of the men leaned over and said to me: "Is there a college around here or something?" I owned that there was. He said, "How is it that I just took one look at you and knew there was a college around here somewhere?"

I laughed. He had a kind of rough working class way of talking but I actually got no bad vibe from him, just that odd suppressed energy. I said, "It's probably because I've been in college for half my life."

He nodded, impressed. "It will surely pay off," he said.

"We'll see," I said. "Hasn't yet."

"It will," he said. "I chose not to go to school myself. And now here I am going to the museum when I should be working."

"Is that so?" I said. "Which museum?"

"Science and Industry," he said.

"That's a fun one," I said. "Very hands on. It's not just looking at stuff in cases. There are things for you to do."

"I like that," one of the other guys said. He looked a lot like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.

"...So do you guys all work together?" I asked, trying to envision museum-going as--some kind of corporate field-trip?

They laughed in an awkward way. It turned out that they were in AA together. They were going to the museum to "better themselves." To think about things they could do for fun while staying sober. The Monster drinks were, I inferred, to fill part of the psychological need or habit associated with drinking. Like non-nicotine cigarettes when you're trying to quit smoking. The two who were talking seemed slightly defiant (the African-American guy was listening to his I-pod in the corner, totally withdrawn), a thin cover over a world of insecurity. As for me, I felt pleased and satisfied, because now their thuggish energy made perfect sense. You're approaching a potentially hostile world in a whole new way, without the false confidence of your life-destroying addiction. Of course you are wary and hyper-prepared for trouble.

I wasn't sure about the proper things to say in such a situation, but I was extra-motivated to continue the conversation, given that they had gone out on a limb to tell me. So I said something to the effect that I thought what they were doing was great and really hoped it worked out for them, and they told me about some of the things that were really hard about not drinking--like that it was hard to interact with people sober when your courage used to have an artificial source. I said I could totally see it, which I can, being pretty nervous about certain types of social interactions myself.

We talked for some time, also about other museums around, and the Shedd Aquarium. "They have a komodo dragon," I said, and, rather carried away by enthusiasm, told them how komodo dragons have a nasty germy slime dripping from their mouth and take down their prey by biting them and waiting until they die of infection. The one guy had seen something about it on TV; the Matt Damon guy was pretty impressed. I thought how the world is big and full of interesting things.

When I got off the bus, I told them I hoped that they had great time at the museum, and the guy who had first talked to me said with great sincerity that he hoped I would have a good day. I am not sure if I said the right kinds of things but I hope so. The interaction left me feeling extremely optimistic somehow. And I felt like I'd made someone's day better just by taking the time to chat a little. In itself not so meaningful, but maybe it would help give them more confidence the next time they faced a social interaction. Maybe it would help in some way. I wonder how they are doing and if they did have an okay time at the museum and if they're still on the wagon. I hope so. Also I realized that they made my day better by taking the time to chat with me. Life can be so interesting.

Rough Draft Butterfly

2009-01-20T16:09:00.003-06:00

I suddenly realized this afternoon that a lot of the restless dissatisfied feeling I've been having lately is the desire to make art. Artistic impulses are something I usually try to discourage or at least minimize in myself these days. If I missed a calling as an artist, I accept the fact that I did just that--missed it. Fiddling around with art is absorbing and fun, but really distracting. I try to think of my dissertation as the real creative endeavor, and funnel my energy into that. But face it, there are times when a dissertation just isn't art. There are times when it can be of course. But not all the time. There's just some part of me that is left totally unsatisfied by it right now.

I know, I know. The desire to make art is itself probably just a displaced message from my biological clock, telling me to reproduce. It's all a tangle. But what makes it simpler is origami butterflies. I made an origami butterfly on plain white paper and then unfolded and painted the parts I thought would show. Then I folded it back up again. This is just a rough draft; I used ordinary printer paper. This is bad for origami, which wants something thicker, and also for watercolor, which wants something thinner. I know the perfect solution, which is moistened rice paper. But I wanted to try it out and see how it would work and whether I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed doing it A LOT. So next time I'll try with rice paper.

A butterfly's wings are an appealing combination of copying from nature and improvisation. I can look at National Geographic pictures to get ideas, but in mapping it onto the disconnected segments of folded butterfly wing, of course there is a great deal of artistic license involved. Next time I will paint the whole paper on both sides (using a paper that reacts more happily to water) so that there won't be white edges showing. Still, the rough draft butterfly looks very jaunty and pleasing from across the room.

By the way, new entry on Book Draft here.

Nostril-Chunking Cold

2009-01-15T23:36:00.002-06:00

It's about 8 below right now, and it's been "bitterly cold" all day. A good day to stay home in pajamas, which is pretty much what I did. According to weather reports, it's the coldest it's been here since 1999. Although our apartment is well-heated, even in here I can feel the cold creeping unless I'm sitting very close to one of the radiators or am very bundled up. It's scary when the forecast for tomorrow is "MUCH WARMER": high of 7, low of 5. Yeah. Much warmer. By my calculations, tomorrow will still be "nostril-chunking cold," which means that when you breath in your nose hairs start to freeze into chunks of ice. It tends to happen anytime the temperature is in the single digits or lower.

Pocket of Bolts is out of town this weekend and I've been even more sluggish than I usually am when he's gone. Not even any of my little projects appeal to me, let alone my work. I did manage to put in a couple hours on the dissertation over the course of the day, write an e-mail or two, but not a whole lot of progress. Mostly I want to sit around and watch movies online, or read novels. I really have to shake off this lassitude. Maybe tomorrow.

I did make it out to the gym, though I almost froze my buns off. And note, the gym is right next door, less than five minutes walk. I decided I wasn't up for going to the grocery store to get anything special for dinner, so made do with what we had: fried up some diced yukon gold potatoes in olive oil, with coarse salt and pepper; sauteed peppers and onions to put over a boca burger, melted cheese on top. Sort of like a burger and fries, but healthier. Actually, it felt like a rather princely feast--I mean, as far as cooking for one is concerned.

Keep meaning to write a bit about my most recent trip to the East Coast, and about the Book of Changes, but it hasn't been happening. Yeah, again, maybe tomorrow.

My Barbarian Husband

2009-01-12T21:07:00.003-06:00

I have a fondness for Portmeirion botanic garden dishes. It's something that Pocket of Bolts indulges me in. I can't say I really approve of myself in this regard; I'm not even sure I approve of the design. But there's something about each different dish having a different picture--and anyway I'm really fond of botanical prints, which is their style. Naturally the dishes are a bit girly but Pocket of Bolts consents to use them (we have a set of two of most basic things); he says botanical prints cross out of the realm of TOO girly.

Now PoB usually drinks his morning coffee from a Starbucks Chicago mug, but that was unavailable for some reason. So he grabbed a Portmeirion daisy coffee mug to go with his dog rose plate (picture at right). Sitting at the breakfast table with him I had to giggle. "You look like such a big barbarian, eating with those dainty flowery dishes," I said.

He laughed too and lifted up his big fist over the plate. "Oog, bee, smash!" he said in caveman intonations. (I guess the bee is kind of prominent.) Pocket of Bolts is fun. There is a lot of stress and uncertainty right now, but we still manage to have our good times.

Bedhead

2009-01-12T08:17:00.002-06:00

Yesterday for no reason at all, I woke up with the craziest bedhead. I mean, I didn't go to sleep with wet hair or anything. It just happened that half my hair was sticking straight up and all the hair in the back was totally matted. I had done a lot of cooking the night before, so maybe somehow my hair had gotten a bit greasy and I tossed while I slept or something. Who knows. Anyway, I thought I'd share it with you all!

Changes: January 1

2009-01-11T13:43:00.004-06:00

I am much behind in blogging, which I regret. The last week has been much-needed recovery time, during which I have made gestures at trying to work, but have mostly had a lot of down time and recreating (re-creating). It works too. The creative energy is returning, but slowly.

Although I am playing catch-up, I think I'm still going to go with my new idea about using the Book of Changes. I have decided to continue my study of the Changes by casting one every day, and studying both the original text and a Han dynasty elaboration on it called Master Jiao's Forest of Changes. Master Jiao's Forest of Changes has never been translated, though there are some hobbyists on little fjord of the world wide web who are interested in the project. I'm doing my own thing though. Master Jiao's principle is this: for each potential hexagram, and for each potential change from one hexagram to another, he wrote a little poem. Yes, that's 4096 poems, though there are some repeats. I don't find them quite as uncannily enlightening as the actual hexagram and line statements, but they are interesting in their own right as part of Han dynasty intellectual activity. Maybe I'll get paper out of it someday, but for now it's fun to just dabble.

Without further ado, then, I will give the hexagrams that I encountered (coin toss method), the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the hexagram and line statements (which I got from here), and the Forest of Changes poem with commentary. Eventually I'll catch up but for now I'm starting with:

January 1, 2009
Bi / Holding Together [Union]
Above KAN THE ABYSMAL, WATER
Below KUN THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH

The Judgment
HOLDING TOGETHER brings good fortune.
Inquire of the oracle once again
Whether you possess sublimity, constancy, and perseverance;
Then there is no blame.
Those who are uncertain gradually join.
Whoever come too late
Meets with misfortune.

The Image
On the earth is water:
The image of HOLDING TOGETHER.
Thus the kings of antiquity
Bestowed the different states as fiefs
And cultivated friendly relations
With the feudal lords.

Fifth line
Nine in the fifth place means:
Manifestation of holding together.
In the hunt the king uses beaters on three sides only
And forgoes game that runs off in front.
The citizens need no warning.
Good fortune.

Kun / The Receptive
Above KUN THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH
Below KUN THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH

The Judgment
THE RECEPTIVE brings about sublime success,
Furthering through the perseverance of a mare.
If the superior man undertakes something and tries to lead,
He goes astray;
But if he follows, he finds guidance.
It is favorable to find friends in the west and south,
To forego friends in the east and north.
Quiet perseverance brings good fortune.

The Image
The earth's condition is receptive devotion.
Thus the superior man who has breadth of character
Carries the outer world.

Master Jiao's Forest of Changes (my translation)

Holding Together Changing to The Receptive
A unicorn filly, a fledgling phoenix cock
Born and reared in a fine state,
Their spirit in harmony with where they reside,
Healthy and happy in the warmth of benevolence.
The country has many wise men.

Commentary (by Shang Binghe, my translation):
Kun is pattern (wen), the female unicorn and the phoenix, the state, and the country. When encountering the hexagram "Holding Together": Kan [Water, the Abysmal, the upper trigram of "Holding Together"] is harmony and enlightened wisdom; Gen (Mountain, Keeping Still, the first inner trigram] is fiery and thus it says "the warmth of benevolence." For "the warmth of benevolence", I rely on the Song and Yuan editions. The Jigu edition has it as "without cares."

My comments:
It is an oracle not just for the day but for the year. As such, it has its appropriateness. Holding together with Pocket of Bolts--at least this is what I would hope. Being receptive to whatever happens. The changing line image of some game getting away could easily refer to the job market where there are always missed opportunities, but there is nothing wrong in this.

I should add the obligatory note that I am not a believer in any supernatural power of the Changes. The Changes are a mirror of the mind, as a long-ago Chinese scholar once said. It's an interpretive exercise which sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. You see if you can make meaning of something. To what end? Perhaps I will gain some insight from the practice. Anyway, a fun experiment.

Master Jiao's poem about the unicorn and the phoenix was particularly delightful to me. I like to think of myself and Pocket of Bolts in this way, healthy and happy, well-liked, and surrounded by wise people (philosophers). Most of the poems are much darker.

The First Day

2009-01-01T22:36:00.002-06:00

Hello 2009. New Years day is usually a holiday I'm rather fond of. I try to make it a model day, usually, the sort of day I'd want to have all year. This year though--well, I'm leaving again very early tomorrow morning. All this traveling reminds me of the time when I was a consultant... I'm even bringing along a suit, although this time it's purely an interview suit.

I've spent most of the day in preparations, or avoiding preparations. It's really hard putting together syllabi, but I really am doing the best I can. The dissertation spiel is even harder. I finally raised the courage to perform it in front of Pocket of Bolts, which did help.

We threw the Yijing today. I got 比之坤, "Holding Together" changing to "The Receptive." I stick with my man and take what he gives me? Or I become a professor but maintain a humble attitude? The Yijing is merely a mirror of the mind; it knows no more than I do, and I am in profound ignorance about the future. Pocket of Bolts got 升之蠱, "Pushing Upward" changing to "Work on What Has Been Spoiled." His is more obviously interpretable than mine: he is ambitious and has a lot of work ahead of him, but mustn't expend effort blindly, and must repair past damage.

There is more I could write but there's still much left to do before I sleep so I'll sign off for now. Happy New Year everyone.

Conference Spouse Day

2008-12-28T22:11:00.002-06:00

I've spent a lot of the day working on syllabi. Making hypothetical syllabi is like writing hypothetical novels. The idea is so clear and substantial, but when you go to actually put words on paper you realize how thin it was, how little you know, how much more you need to know. I can't put any of my hypothetical course titles in this blog because that will make me a google-magnet, but let's just say they're all over the place, and in various skeletal states.

Working in a hotel room is nice, although the wireless is extremely weak. I have to sit in one particular chair by the window to get it at all. I worked most of the morning and them went out shopping--catching after-Christmas sales at Macy's. Things were impressively marked down. I ended up with two $35 sweaters, variously marked down from $70 and $170. It's a tremendous indulgence (I rarely spend as much as $20 on a single item of clothing), but it just felt really fun. Then I wandered around a little nearby market and eventually got myself some lunch. I also made a squished penny (pardon me, elongated coin) with a pig on it. And ate a cupcake. I am about ready to decide that cupcakes are overrated and over-priced. Except there was that one incredible red velvet cupcake from Bourgeois Pig (coffeeshop in Chicago) that makes me hesitate to say this definitively. Probably it depends on how much or little fat one has been eating lately.

Meanwhile Pocket of Bolts had two job interviews today. On the one hand, I feel for him--all that stress!--but on the other hand, at least by tomorrow night it'll be all over, whereas my ordeal is still ahead.

I napped and wasted time in the afternoon, then got back to working around 7. I was still full from lunch, so I didn't eat dinner. It's so funny when PoB and I are on different schedules; I feel like I'm off the leash! I'll probably have to have a midnight snack. Now I guess I'll go work out in the 24 hour exercise facility at this fine establishment.

Family and Family Dogs

2008-12-27T20:16:00.002-06:00

At last, a quiet hotel room in East Coast City where Pocket of Bolts is having his convention interviews. I am just along for the ride on this one, though my own trial by fire is fast approaching. For now... just time to unwind.

I have been in a state which I tend to characterize as "over-socialized." Too many people (and dogs), too much thinking about how to interact with them, and who they are, and why. It's like even after I am not with them anymore I keep thinking about them because their lives are so novel to me. However, it is difficult to stop thinking about them and that makes me feel overwrought.

It has not been an especially productive day but I have been sitting quietly with my computer, sometimes doing work, sometimes playing games, sometimes just tidying things up. Tomorrow I am going to be a tiger.

About the last few days...

I was a little sad on Christmas because PoB's mom's family does all the festivities on Christmas Eve, so by Christmas it seemed like everything was over already. We sat at the rarely used dining room table in PoB's mom's house and did work. I polished up my syllabus some more... So yes, I worked on Christmas Day. Anytime I am tempted to accuse myself of laziness, I should probably remember that.

In the afternoon we went to PoB's maternal aunt's "open house," a fairly laid back holiday hanging out. I met one person I liked very much, the aunt's eleven-year-old step-daughter. She was a shy little adolescent but she did seem interested in interacting with PoB and me. I talked to her about this and that, and we ended up playing Trivial Pursuit, which was one of the things she had gotten for Christmas. We taught her how to play our own simplified "more fun" version. Trivial Pursuit is a bit rough for an eleven-year-old but she was game. She also let us play with her new electronic rubik's cube. It was pretty fun (internet comparisons between it and the original tend to miss the point--it's a totally different thing, more like Simon Says than anything). Later when PoB and I were talking to the grownups again, the step-daughter got a large paperback (complete Chronicles of Narnia in one vol.) and sat by, half listening half reading. She reminded me so much of me!

We had a quiet night after we got back. I stayed up late doing who knows what. Reading web comics. Poking around. Playing games. We also finished watching the first season of Deadwood. One of the main characters, Seth Bullock, is such a dead ringer for someone we know that it's downright funny. It's not just in looks: in personality, ethical make-up, temper, you name it. It makes the show about ten times funnier and more interesting.

PoB's mom and step-father left early the next morning, that was yesterday morning, and we were left to take care of the little dog and slowly pack our stuff. More on little dog: we decided that part of her problem is over-sensitivity, though the cause is unclear. She has an overdeveloped flinch response: you reach out to pet her, she flinches. It's like her first assumption is that you're going to attack her. Part of her barking problem seems to be over-excitement. I tried not only ignoring her while she was barking but also standing stock still. Then when she stopped barking I moved very slowly and quietly. That helped some. PoB and I both worked on petting and praising her only when she wasn't barking. And a lot of the barking subsided. Still, though... really a strange dog.

I confess my encounter with the step-daughter caused me to have a strong desire to make a friendship bracelet. Who knows why THAT particular throw-back to my adolescent days, but it was one of the things the girl was quietly doing on the edge of things, making a friendship bracelet or rather learning to make one. It's funny to know that girls are still doing that, and making the very same ones too. So I made PoB take me to the Walmart and got the materials for this activity. It is much faster and easier than I remembered, ha. I think as an adolescent I was probably prone to a certain impatience and dreaminess which made the projects take longer and often not get finished at all. Of course, I still am; projects on the order of a friendship bracelet seem doable however. I finished one and got about halfway through another on the three hour drive. I was thinking I might send one to the step-daughter with a little note. I'll put a picture up when I get around to it.

Anyway, we arrived at the next stop on our journey, PoB's paternal uncle's house. He's married to an Italian-American gal and they have two kids (ages 9 and 11) adopted from Korea. Also two dogs, a young male golden retriever and a slightly more mature shiba inu. (The latter was exceedingly adorable; it looked like a teddy bear crossed with a fox, somewhat like this.) And a cat. In addition to this crowd an Italian uncle who lives nearby was visiting with his two kids, not sure their exact ages, maybe 5 and 7? As you can imagine, there was a lot of chaos. Everyone talking a mile a minute, Christmas presents flying. Stilts! a weird roller-skate type of scooter! video games! Ipods!

The golden retriever was so strong it was tearing open chew toys and gutting them of their stuffing. Then he'd poke disinterestedly at the rope and squeaker and dead little cover. If he got his mouth around something that the shiba inu was also chewing on, a massive and hilarious snarling match would ensue. Meanwhile we all tried the stilts. Also some big semi-automatic nerf guns.

I would write more but it makes me tired just thinking about it all. PoB's aunt (by marriage) talks a mile a minute and had a lot on her mind. I think we heard a goodly proportion of it. We also saw a documentary on adoption made by one of her nieces. This was about the last thing we did before going to bed, dropping with tiredness. Once in bed though I couldn't sleep at all. Adoption is disturbing. I kept thinking about it. The older kid has Tourette's syndrome and I kept thinking about that too, especially since we were sleeping in his (extremely handsome and immaculate) room. I finally got to sleep but didn't sleep too terribly well. Had many "escaping from bad guys" dreams.

It was not a long drive from there to here and as I said, I've just been chilling out. Eating inexpensive but reasonably healthy food. May even go have a short workout in a bit.

I have been thinking about how I may change this blog in the new year. I was thinking I might try to do something more fun and systematic, maybe something to do with a new Yijing project I've been contemplating. We'll see.

Ordeal Upon Ordeal

2008-12-23T22:35:00.003-06:00

Trip to grad school town: fairly disastrous!

Plane out of Chicago was much delayed; didn't arrive in grad school town until after 1 AM. Fortunately the friends I was staying with were able to just leave their porch light on and door unlocked. I slipped in quietly and fell into bed.

Slept in some and then got to work preparing for the convention interview advice meeting and mock interview, all of which were starting at 3. I did do my best to prepare, but ...

Went to the meeting, having changed into my new suit. On the up side, the suit was praised as being absolutely appropriate. Hurray! On the down side, at least the dissertation spiel part of my mock interview was disastrous. I REALLY need to work on that. Our profs can be really scary when they try. I mean, they're scary even when they don't try, so ...

Although there were people I hadn't seen in a long time, and it was a real joy to see them, I also felt the mass accumulation of stress in the area to be far too much for me. I think we got each other more wound up rather than being able to give each other any real comfort.

So I opted for dinner with some other friends who are not on the market. We went to a restaurant I have always been rather fond of and considered reliable. My food didn't taste so great. I figured I'd just mis-ordered and ate it anyway. It was fun chatting with my friends, but I was increasingly distracted by strange feelings of discomfort and hot and cold. I thought it was just residual stress and tiredness, so we didn't linger much and went our separate ways (fortunately opposite directions).

Then I walked half a block and was very sick in a convenient garbage can. It was very surprising because I hadn't been sick like that since I was a kid. I have a strong stomach and even in China I got off pretty lightly, with only the occasional "spicy tummy" (diarrhea).

I walked around a little bit to calm down, but felt fine so I went back to the place I was staying. I didn't feel like eating anything at all, though those friends were having a late dinner of pizza. I hung out with them, drank some hot water. But pretty soon I was feeling pretty bad again. Anyone who's had food poisoning can guess at the gory details ... Fortunately they're good friends and I made it to the bathroom every time.

Originally I had planned to walk to small trunk station to catch the first train out for my early morning flight (about a twenty minute walk). But as the night progressed I realized that that plan was getting increasingly unrealistic, even if there weren't my bags to contend with. So around 2 AM I called to reserve a taxi to the bigger station. No, he couldn't come at 4:30, he was already booked up. Stupid small towns. He could do 3:30. Whatever. I wasn't sleeping anyway.

It turned out to be a van, a sort of shared ride thing. We had to pick up a lot of people, everywhere. He went around corners fast. I made it all the way to the train station, and even managed to pick up my bags before walking over to throw up discreetly in the bushes. By this time nothing but water. The taxi man walked over and looked at me with concern and distaste. I told him I wasn't drunk, just food poisoning and asked what I owed him. He said $20, which for a shared ride on a route that should take 10 minutes, was an extreme rip-off. I wasn't exactly in any shape to debate it though.

The train ride was better than I feared. Mostly I was just really thirsty. Security at the airport was much worse, a 40 minute wait in a crawling line. I hate flying United. I was so weak that moving my bags a few inches forward every minute or two was a major trial. Occasionally I sat down right on the floor and just inched forward on my ass. But I was worried that I would do something suspicious and make them think I was too sick to fly. Probably I was, but I just desperately wanted to get home.

The security guy when I walked through the metal detector did look rather suspicious. He said, Are you all right? I summoned my haughtiest, bitchiest manner and said, Yeah, I'm just totally exhausted!--with an accusing tone, as if it was his fault security was so slow etc. He lost interest fast.

After that things improved. I bought a bottle of sprite and drank it in small sips, which made me feel a lot better. The flight went fine although again much delayed. (Ground stop on the Chicago side due to nasty ice-storm.) When I finally got there, the train/bus ride home wore me out completely. But Pocket of Bolts was there (in a frenzy of worry) to take my bags from me and put me to bed and ply me with sprite and chicken soup.

The sprite and chicken soup were handy to have on hand, because PoB was himself coming down with something flu-like, and of course I caught it due to my weakened state. We basically stayed in bed for the next two days subsisting on saltines and soup, sprite, water, and advil. I even had a fever over a hundred. We did a lot of sleeping.

By the time we recovered, we barely had time to do our last minute Christmas shopping and packing before hitting the road again (yesterday), this time to fly out and have Christmas with PoB's mom's family. Travel and sickness have effectively eaten up the best hours of the past week and my interviews are looming.

It's all right here, at least reasonably relaxing. But today we were again pretty wiped out from the trip. We still had a bit more shopping to do and in the afternoon we tried to do some work. But it was an uphill battle, since we were a bit still headachy and bodyachy from the flu thing. Or maybe just from travel. We are both nervous about our interviews but too shaken out of our normal calm routines to do much in the way of preparation. Sometimes I think we should have just skipped Christmas altogether, just stayed home and got ourselves physically and mentally prepared ... but I guess that would have been sad.

Anyway, at least we went running today, offsetting some of our rather unvirtuous eating. We managed 25 minutes at a decent clip. Those gym-honed muscles are good for something after all. It's below freezing here, but at least not below zero as it is in Chicago. Even PoB did admit to being cold though ...

PoB's mom has a weird neurotic little dog, a year old now, who's a bit of a holy terror. Furious barking anytime anyone moves around in the house. She was very displeased at our arrival, barking and growling despite repeated reassurances. Now, we have been told, she has gotten used to us and is mostly treating us like she treats everyone else, barking loudly at the slightest relocation.

The only thing that stops her barking is picking her up and carrying her like a baby, which she of course very much enjoys. (I have resisted doing this, but PoB's mom is a pretty reliable vehicle.) Barking is an almost infallible way to attain this goal, so the conditioning's pretty well set. She is alternately fawned upon and scolded so much that neither reward nor punishment have any discernible effect on her. So, it is frustrating to try to interact with her. Any attempt to play with her (chew toys, tug of war, fetch) just leads to furious barking. She finds the activity more upsetting than interesting. Ugh. Both Pocket of Bolts and I have decided to try my parents' strategy of ignoring her barking so she'll know it won't work. Some success, pretty limited though; her patterns are pretty well set. Tomorrow we're going to try taking her running though. Supposedly exercise has a good effect on her. The whole thing reminds me of Nanny 911. They need Dog-Nanny 911.

Post-Midnight Oil and Snow

2008-12-17T01:09:00.002-06:00

I have been up late working again. It's after 1 AM, and the apartment is very quiet. I am listening to soft piano music on Pandora. Pocket of Bolts has been asleep for hours.

Today all day it snowed, with heavy accumulation starting around noon. Snow plows and snow blowing machines and shapeless men with shovels have all been struggling against it, but they mostly gave up around midnight.

In the early evening I took the train down to the nearest post office, sending Christmas presents to the dear ones I will not be able to see this holiday. The sun (I assume) had already set, but the twilight sky was an improbable shade of purple. Snow was swirling through the high intensity lights over Wrigley Field, bright and silver like cold flying sparks. The world seemed strange and quiet. The sound of the train when it came was muted too.

I hope the snow does not prevent me from flying tomorrow. I am going back to grad school town for a practice interview. I am in no sense prepared for this, and have been putting off the preparation very assiduously. Given that my greatest fear is being unprepared, why don't I take steps to ensure that I am properly prepared? I have no idea.

In any case, I've spent the last two hours working on a syllabus. It's not easy making a syllabus. Clearly potential tinkering is endless. I have to come up with a dissertation spiel as well, a five minute summary/description. I haven't done that yet, probably because it's the thing I'm most anxious and insecure about. Or maybe second most--the job talk really takes the cake, but it's hard to say if I'll even need one of those. I know for sure I'll need the dissertation spiel.

Well, enough babbling. Back to work I think, or perhaps to sleep.

'Tis the Season

2008-12-16T08:38:00.002-06:00

I spent yesterday in a tremendous editing fervor. It is as my mom says: though I complain about stress, when it's coming down to the wire I can work with great intensity. I had promised a revision for my adviser by yesterday and managed to deliver, writing about 2000 words (probably more) of new stuff in the process. That's all in one day mind you.

Around three, I finished that up and headed down to meet Pocket of Bolts in his office. There we finally took care of my airline ticket problem. After exploring all the options, we decided that the best (and cheapest!) one was actually a THIRD trip to the East Coast for me--i.e., three trips in less than three weeks, but at least I get to have the comforts of home for a few days in between each trip. I am getting to be pretty good with plane tickets on Priceline.

In the late afternoon we went downtown to do some X-mas shopping. I had a bit more stamina for this than Pocket of Bolts did, perhaps because I won't have much chance to do it any other time, while he has the stretch of time I'll be gone this week, time to kill. He went home and made dinner, with the result that there was a lovely Portuguese sausage and kale soup waiting for me when I got back.

I was very tired from the stressful morning and afternoon of shopping, so I took a postprandial nap, something I usually try to avoid... I woke up really groggy, and Pocket of Bolts had to prod me and half drag me to the gym. I'm glad I went though. Late night workouts give me so much energy. I felt great by the end.

Today I have two big, time-consuming and anxiety-producing tasks to do. What I really want to do is go back to bed, but there's no help for it.

Suitable?

2008-12-13T22:11:00.004-06:00

Have fallen down on the blogging lately. Things have been hectic. There is a lot of preparation to do for this interview. It makes me feel less ready than ever for real adulthood.

Let's see, Wednesday I spent almost the entire day shopping for a suit. Untellable trials and tribulations. Settled on this one. Hope it's okay. Hours and hours lost that I'll never be getting back...

After that I stayed up half the night finishing up the presentation for Prof. Blue-eyes' class Thursday. Not that I had to do the presentation, mind you, but he had encouraged me to and I wanted to look good. He had also told me to come in half an hour early so he could give me some interview advice. Between that, catching a few hours sleep, and putting the finishing touches on the presentation, I never even got any lunch. Life is that kind of hectic. It pleased me to get his advice though. The presentation went fine. We ended up running out of time, so mine was condensed to only about 10 minutes. That was okay; it made me look better than it would have if I hadn't been rushed (and everyone had realized how little thought I'd put into it). As it was, I just seemed rushed.

After the class, I had drinks with an old grad school classmate of mine who got a job at U of C. One of those things--we should get together more often but somehow don't. I was pleased that we finally managed it though. It was fun. I'd grabbed a Leanpocket in between class and drinks, but still I got pretty tipsy with two beers on a relatively empty stomach.

Then I went home to Pocket of Bolts and we had delicious relaxation time in our cozy warm house, chattering together and watching Deadwood, an HBO show we've been getting from Netflix. It's about a gold-rush town in a state of semi-anarchy, the wild old West. After we watch it, we both talk like hicks. I guess it brings out our rural upbringing.

Yesterday I spent most of the day working peacefully, then went in the afternoon to get a haircut and do a bit of X-mas shopping. From there I met PoB at his office and we grabbed a quick dinner (Greek fast food) in Greektown. Then we got some supplies and headed over to my former office-mate's apartment for one of his movie nights. It was a night of "lasts": The Last Dragon, the Last Starfighter, The Last Unicorn, and Fern Gully (the Last Rainforest). PoB got extremely sleepy halfway through The Last Unicorn, so we took a taxi home. I have very nostalgic memories about the Last Unicorn, I should add, though I notice the animation lacked the majestic brilliance that I had somehow remembered it having. Animation has come a long way since the 80s!

Today was a pretty lazy day. Slept in, did a fair amount of work, interspersed with lazing around the house and a little cleaning. Nothing much else to say. It's been quite a week.

Holiday Spirits and Work Worries

2008-12-08T00:07:00.005-06:00

It's late and I'm very tired, but I didn't want to let another day slip by unrecorded. I succeeded in posting every day in November, but lately morale has fallen off a bit... I will mention only a few things briefly...

First, I got us a miniature Christmas tree and decorated it with miniature lights, as well as various small knick-knacks I had lying around or in boxes. If I ever get a spare moment at the same time I have an ounce of leftover creative energy I'll make some origami ornaments...but that hasn't really happened yet. Anyway, this is the picture of me in my birthday cozies beside the tiny tree.

Second, we were sad when we finished off the Thanksgiving leftovers, and decided to make another Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. I'm not kidding. We made a whole second roast turkey with stuffing (wild rice and sausage this time rather than cornbread and celery), as well as homemade rolls and gravy. Pocket of Bolts also made a small cake. It was a hilariously elaborate meal just for two, but extremely jolly. I guess it's just that we had so much to be thankful for it couldn't be contained in just one Thanksgiving. Alternatively, we were just greedy for turkey, take your pick. We drank several glasses of wine each and got very jolly and lazy.

The result was I didn't do any work yesterday afternoon or evening and then had an awful anxiety dream about not being prepared for my interview. I had to get up at 6 AM (on a Sunday, mind you... though all days are reasonably alike to me), and drink some hot water, write down my dream, update my to do list, and do a few other tasks before falling back asleep.

Today was fairly productive, at least in a sense. I did some concentrated preparation for my language exchange meeting with the Reporter. He had asked me to proofread a short paper he had to write for his class, which I did. It was quite interesting, actually, all about the inner workings of the newspaper he had been with before changing careers, the ways it which it was less than ideal and how it could be improved.

In turn, I had asked the Reporter to help me write a good e-mail to YHz, my teacher in Beijing. It has been so long since I have been in touch with her that, first, I needed a deadline, and second, I have fallen terribly out of practice with writing in Chinese. Most reluctantly, I forced myself to produce a draft this morning, and brought it to the meeting. As you might expect from someone who had spent a large part of his life as a journalist, the Reporter was superb at helping me improve the letter. We both left very satisfied I think.

Then I went to work out, which I hadn't managed in a whole week!! My face and figure definitely show this neglect, and also I was not able to do my usual hour of hard cardio but could only manage a little over thirty minutes. It is disheartening, how fast you lose all your progress if you don't keep at it. Guess that's true of everything, but how finite my energy is, compared to my multifarious ambitions.

Speaking of ambitions, over the course of the day I did do some very rudimentary preparation for my interview, but felt deeply terrified. Sticking to my "slow band-aid" approach, I am planning to try to do a little each day.

After dinner (leftover turkey!), I succeeded in forcing myself to put in a couple more hours work on this and that. Much less focused than in the morning, but it's important to keep one's hand it.

Well, I'm tired. Pocket of Bolts has been asleep for hours. Bedtime for now, maybe a sleeping pill to head off further anxiety dreams. :P

Cold Day/Surprise/Pandora

2008-12-06T00:31:00.002-06:00

Today it was incredibly cold--16 degrees. I gave it almost everything I had in the bundling up department: wool socks, wools slack, a wool sweater, my down coat, a scarf, a hat, gloves, and the hood of the coat. I was still cold, but only a little bit!

I went down to U of C today for a talk. It was by someone I did not know, but talking about the text my dissertation is on. At first I listened very politely. Gradually I thought to myself, they should have hired me instead of this guy. Still polite, though, I raised my objections in a gentle manner. The guy himself was also disarmingly humble. Afterward, I went up to talk to him... and it turned out that he was not faculty as I had thought, but a first year graduate student! Then I was really really glad I hadn't been meaner with my objections. I talked to him for a long time, and gave him as much advice as I could think of.

Got good news today: my application for a dissertation writing support grant was accepted so I have a little extra money with which to arrange my interview (logistics are nightmare due to my unwarranted pessimism) and do things like: buy a suit. (Eeek.)

I have been playing with Pandora. It is online radio that learns your preferences and it is incredibly fun. You start by giving it a song or an artist, and then it gives you songs that it thinks are similar. You can give them the thumbs up or thumbs down, and gradually it learns your taste. I love it. Who needs to even own music anymore? But it's also a good way to get to know new music. I used to like listening to the radio in my car back when I drove. This is better though, no ads.

News

2008-12-04T23:47:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I only posted about food instead of about my day because the only noteworthy thing that happened was that I got some interesting news. I was still "digesting" it, however, and wasn't quite ready to write about it here.

I suddenly found out that I got a job interview.

Having already made up my mind that I was going to be unemployed for another year, it was very startling, and at first almost unpleasant. I will have to work, and face things that make me anxious. Floating along the way I am, with work and new friends down at U of C and my wonderful husband, spending every other day at home in pajamas--frankly, it's really great. I feel like I could happily do it for another year.

Now twenty-four hours after getting the news, though, I am starting to work up courage and a little enthusiasm. Who knows what my chances are, but someone's giving me a chance, and that's actually pretty cool.

I won't say anymore for now, but I feel like a fire is lit under me. Whether it will just energize me or burn me too, I guess we'll just find out.

Omnivorous

2008-12-03T10:48:00.002-06:00

I interrupt my steady stream of fairly mundane every-day posts for a list break. Stole this list from here. I just thought it was kind of fun, though the selection principle strikes me as a bit mysterious. All the foods that person could think of that might strike anyone as at least slightly unconventional, together with some highly conventional ones? Anyway, things I have eaten are in bold.

If I have not miscounted, my score is a pathetic 69/100. Got to work on that.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle (a bit underwhelming)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (roadside blackberries in Oregon)
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters (not a fan of raw ones, though smoked ones are tasty)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (disgusting)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (have had each separately, but not together)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail (Oxtail soup, a mainstay of my grandfather's winter cooking)
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk (easy to digest!)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone (chewy!)
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (the only kind of martini that counts)
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (tastes the way medicated band-aids smell)
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I don't keep track of stars, so not sure)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Grown Up and Tired

2008-12-02T22:48:00.005-06:00

Pocket of Bolts and I stayed up really late last night for no particular reason. PoB was worked up about writing a response to some listserv message he got, and I was trying to figure out how to "borrow" Chinese electronic books from this site that my grad school has subscribed to. It's an interesting concept. I crashed the reader a lot of times. We didn't get to bed until half past one.

I had to submit my chapter this morning by eleven, so I was under a lot of pressure. Life must be pretty good, though, because even in the midst of my stress I still felt that there was a lot to be happy about and thankful for. In any case, I submitted the chapter. There were a LOT of footnotes missing, but I'm betting they won't mind too much. If they do, oh well.

After lunch I headed off to U of C. I felt extremely tired, on account of the midnight oil I'd been burning, and let-down from the stress. Still, I learned some interesting things, such as that the character for "love" (a very late character) is closely related to one that originally meant "to have trouble breathing due to excessive eating or drinking." Go figure, huh?

It's very cold now. The snow has melted and refrozen in a cruddy slick on the sidewalk. I have been thinking about growing up, what it means to be an adult, why I don't quite feel that I am one, how it happened that I'm in this strange liminal state. I guess it's because I had a birthday and feel like I ought to be more grown up at 33. Of course, maybe this comic is right about the matter...

Update: anonymous reader suggests this comic too, on the same theme. It's pretty funny, even though 27 is so... 6 years ago. Guess the repo man is behind schedule.

Snow and Chai and Klok

2008-12-01T23:44:00.000-06:00

We woke up to a few inches of snow outside; that was different. I imagine we'll get used to it before long. Then I'll say: we woke up and there was no snow; that was different.

Today is my half-sister's birthday, two days after mine. I never remember until the day of, but I never forget either. When my mom was pregnant with me, her due date was today, 12/1. My half-sister, I'll call her M2, was very worried and unhappy at the thought that I would be born on her exact birthday. Imagine having to share a birthday, as well as a dad, with your nine years younger half sister. I came two days early. I can't recall the last time that M2 has acknowledged my birthday, nor for that matter the last time I have acknowledged hers. Lately I have realized that I have complicated feelings about her, left over from very young childhood long ago. Though it is hard to see that thinking about them has any purpose.

I don't have too much to say for myself today.

Five PM, Pocket of Bolts comes home. Zapaper is sitting on the couch in her bathrobe, exactly in the same spot where she was sitting when he left at 7 AM. "Zapaper, did you get dressed today?" "No."

That was the day. I spent it in a long work coma. I succeeded in getting an extension on the "dissertation writing support" application, until tomorrow. I wrote most of the application. I did some editing. Then I succeeded in wasting a lot of time.

A bright spot was that I brewed up a big pot of the homemade chai that my brother gave me for my birthday. It was a nice thing to sip on all day.

Another bright spot is that same brother sent me a link to a completely awesome time-tracking program called Klok. It is a free download and incredibly easy to use. I've been using it a little over 24 hours, and according to Klok I have logged almost 9 hours of dissertation work, 2 hours of solitaire, 4 hours of Gemcraft (tower defense game) and about half an hour total of e-mail and blog posting. So folks, it turns out that that's where my time goes. Or at least that's where it has gone in the past 24 hours.

Outside the snow turned to slush and then refroze. Despite some fairly sinful eating, I did not succeed in getting to the gym. All I can say is, I'm going to try to be better tomorrow.

Wintry Mix

2008-11-30T23:48:00.001-06:00

I woke up this morning full of determination, and made the trek down to U of C to track down some books I needed and hopefully have a good work day. As often happens when I go down there, I didn't need the books quite as much as I thought I did, but I guess that's a good thing to find out.

Sometimes I catch every bus and train just as it's arriving. Today I missed every single one. It was cold, too, especially waiting on the Garfield overpass. There's something of a covering, but snow was being blown straight in. Fortunately I was bundled up--the new sweater mom gave me, warm socks and boots, hat and gloves, wool coat. The weather is supposed to get worse, lots of "wintry mix" (rain and slush and snow), maybe even some accumulation tomorrow.

I got distracted a lot at the library, looking at this thing and that thing. Also, I am starting to come down with a cold, so I had many sneezes.

Back at home, I did manage a workout though. There has been the best TV lately, back to back Star Wars trilogy (4-6, the good ones) and Lord of the Rings trilogy going on both at the same time so you can flip back and forth during commercials. Why can't there be good stuff like that all the time?

We are still dining happily on leftovers and some various thrown-together soups for variety. Looking forward to seeing how long this can last! We decided that making whole roast turkey is a really cost-effective way of getting protein and we're going to do it more often. :)

Pocket of Bolts went to bed much earlier than me. I have been staying up trying to work on my draft. It is rough going. I hate editing so much, and I am nearly out of time.

The wind is rattling against the windows. Tiredness is thick in my chest. I guess it is really time for me to get some rest.

Birthday

2008-11-29T22:17:00.000-06:00

Today is my 33rd birthday.

I have been so happy all day. You'd think I wouldn't be happy; you'd think I'd be worried about getting older or something. However, I can't help comparing this birthday to my 22nd birthday. My life is so much better now. Things are so right.

This is how the day went: I woke up and had some leftover carrot cake for breakfast. Then I did some work (still editing that draft...) and played my game some.

Our gym is having a special temporary free multi-club deal, where we can go to any of the clubs for free. So my plan was that we could go play racquetball at the one club that has a court. Pocket of Bolts called and reserved the court for 2 o'clock. I grabbed a turkey sandwich and we headed down there. We used to play so much racquetball, and now I remember why. It is SO MUCH fun! We are in better shape now. We played for something like an hour and a half. No one can accuse Pocket of Bolts of going easy on me because it's my birthday. He beat me four games in a row, including one that I had decided was "my game." Sometimes I can do that and psych him out. It almost worked, but then he beat me 16-14. It didn't matter; it was such a great time. Leaping and twisting and dashing like a couple of strong young animals.

For dinner I decided I wanted pizza and beer. We hardly ever have pizza and beer because it is so unhealthy, but why not--it's my birthday after all. Went to a cute little place called Pizza Rustica, which we had never been to before. It was really good, and BYOB, so we could get whatever kind of beer we wanted. (I decided on Fat Tire amber ale.)

After dinner we came home and at the cake that Pocket of Bolts had made for me. It was Red Velvet (at my request). Yum! I also opened presents, which were all related to keeping me warm and cozy. Then we lazed away the evening, because that seemed like a birthday sort of thing to do. It was a really special day and I was so happy all the way through it.

This is a turtle hat. That's the head in front, and the tail is behind. (From my mother-in-law, who definitely understands my taste in hats. I also got warm pants and a sweater from my mom, as well as some socks that are wool on the outside and terry on the inside. Mmmmm.... My bro sent me a big box of chai tea mix that he had made himself. Can hardly wait to try it. And Pocket of Bolts made me a fine new mixed CD, which has become a yearly tradition. He makes the best mixes of anyone I know.

No Shopping for Us (+Pix)

2008-11-28T23:49:00.000-06:00

We didn't get out of bed until eleven this morning. We were hungover and still full, but in a really great mood! There's nothing like a holiday. Our fridge was full of delicious leftovers, we didn't have to worry anymore about the party, and it was a brilliant sunny day. I mean, not that we went outside or anything. We lazed around the house, got dribs and drabs of work done, but also played and were mellow.

Having gone for the environmentally reprehensible plastic plate option for the party, we weren't awash in a sea of dirty china. Still, there were a good number of serving dishes and pans clogging up the kitchen. Pocket of Bolts washed them all! He is amazing. We agreed that the party had been a success.

We had had a very modest brunch when we got out of bed. When it was dinnertime we weren't at all hungry. We went and worked out instead, then came back and had some soup for dinner--around 10 PM. Now it feels like the evening is just starting, but if we're going to get back on track, we have to go to bed really soon. We're going to see how long we can go without grocery shopping, just eating up leftovers. Our leftovers are SO tasty.

Now, as promised, some Thanksgiving pictures (starting with me mopping the floor in preparation):

Jolly Holiday

2008-11-27T22:41:00.001-06:00

It's true what Pocket of Bolts says, that Thanksgiving is pretty much the best holiday. I admit it was a lot of work putting everything together. In total, we made: one roast turkey with stuffing, Parkerhouse rolls (from scratch), a quiche, mushrooms and other vegetables stuffed with a spinach/artichoke heart mix, a (small) pecan pie, two types of cranberry sauce, and gravy. We had been planning to make mashed potatoes, but the luck of the potluck brought some with one of the guests, so it was one last minute thing we didn't have to do. We were also brought three kinds of cookies, a carrot cake, and many sorts of beers and wines. I didn't taste the vegetarian stuff, but it seemed decent. The turkey was good though a little overdone. The gravy came out so delicious, though, that it didn't matter.

From nine AM, when I started the day by sticking my hand inside a big partially thawed dead bird cavity, to noon when I was kneading bread dough and making pie crusts, to two PM, when I was mopping all the floors--it was already a full day's work by the time the guests showed up at three. The last of them left at 10:30 or so, which shows that we managed to give a fun party and/or had a good combination of people. I mean, no one stays in a place for seven and a half hours unless they're having a reasonably good time, right? To me, that is success enough. But boy am I beat.

At least I am well-fortified. I probably consumed an entire week's worth of calories. Whatever. Good motivation to eat sensibly and start getting the gym back into my schedule. I feel approximately like I never need to eat ever again. I will try to post some pictures tomorrow.

Tower Defense

2008-11-27T00:03:00.000-06:00

I confess that I stayed up until 3 AM playing a type of game that Pocket of Bolts calls "tower defense." In this particular version, you create gems and install them in your towers. The towers then shoot at an endless stream of nasty and varied bug-monsters. It's lamentably addictive. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever grow up. Also, I am in a vicious cycle of being too worried to sleep, then to sleepy to do things very well during the day, then worried again about the things I didn't do.

That being said, I did do some very good editing work on my chapter this morning. It's very slow going, but makes me feel better about the final product. Writing footnotes is an equivocal art, but when it succeeds, it has a certain elegance all its own.

In the afternoon, Pocket of Bolts and I got the I-Go (car-sharing car) and went to Target, where we spent one of our wedding gift cards on (among a tremendous miscellany of useful things) a new DVD player. We realized that we have been using our current DVD player almost every day, and almost every day it freezes and skips at least once, even on discs that aren't that damaged. The irritation this causes seems really to justify the purchase of a new one. After all, the one we had came from the thrift store and cost about $5.

We also got things for our Thanksgiving potlock--decided to go with classy-ish disposable plates rather than the wedding china due. For one thing, we want people to feel all mellow and relaxed rather than all formal. For another, it's enough work to do all that cooking let alone dishes for seven! That's the kind of volume where not having a dishwasher actually becomes a serious disadvantage.

So I guess we're mostly set for tomorrow. I'll try to take pictures some of the feast!

Turkeys are Intimidating

2008-11-25T23:48:00.000-06:00

I have been too anxious lately, bad sleeping and waking up in the middle of the night. Making a Thanksgiving dinner is really stressful for me, even though it is going to be a low-key deal, just a potluck with a few friends. Still, I have to make the turkey. Turkeys are intimidating. Added to that, I have a chapter due on December 1--due in the sense that I can get some extra funding if I get it in by then. I can, but it will be tight. And, foolishly, I have been spending more mental energy than I ought on the hexagram presentation.

The U of C classes are 100% worth it, though. I went down there today and enjoyed it so much that I felt a strong wave of gratitude that they allowed me to be there and participate just as if I really belonged. There's not reason for them to, necessarily; it is just the goodness of their hearts. I learn so much, but more than that, it cheers me and reminds me that it's possible to finish graduate school.

After dinner, we went shopping for Thanksgiving dinner stuff. I have now become worried about turkey defrosting (the package says thaw for 3-4 days!). Is it too late? Pocket of Bolts says we can thaw the rest of the way in the sink on Thursday morning if necessary. I'm hoping so. How was I supposed to know it would take 3-4 days. It is only the second time I have made a turkey, sigh. I should make extra ones just to practice. It's funny, it's such a Thanksgiving-only type of food, but PoB loves it. Now that I think of it, that sounds pretty fun. ...But first this one.

Tomorrow I am going to do good work. I am NOT going to stay around the house all day in my pajamas. I am at the editing stage. I'm going to take my computer somewhere that has no internet and work on editing.

Cooking for One

2008-11-24T22:13:00.001-06:00

Today it was the old Lean-pocket and Milky Way routine. Is there something contradictory in that? Well, rob Peter to pay Paul. They say that all that really matters is the total number of calories. Oh and the pajamas, that's part of the routine. Today an especially absurd red bathrobe, the kind that has not a single natural fiber in all its fluffy thickness.

I did some work, but also I just kind of slacked off. Outside there was a freezing slush falling. I never left the house. One thing I did work on was the hexagram project I am supposed to do for Professor Blue-eyes' class. After several days of waking up before dawn in meaningless anxiety about it, I finally chose one: Zhun, difficulty in the beginning. It's a nice sexy one.

Pocket of Bolts had a talk to go to and a dinner afterwards, so I cooked just for myself. I tossed some chopped up vegetables (turnips, parsnips, carrots, a sweet-potato, and some baby red potatoes) with maple syrup, soy sauce, olive oil, and chopped ginger root, then roasted them in a hot oven. To go with it, I had a simple but delicious dal (Indian lentil soup). It is the kind of food PoB is not keen on, so kind of fun to have when he's away. I actually was inspired by regular lunch special from the student union of the university where I got my MA. I remember always craving the roast veg and lentil soup, but it was some ungodly expensive thing, like $7 or something, so I only got it once or twice. Very much cheaper to make it myself.

That's about it. Perhaps something more lively will happen tomorrow.

Progress of a Sort

2008-11-23T22:32:00.001-06:00

Today was a momentous day. I'm not kidding. It started innocuously enough, with Pocket of Bolts and me going to good Caribou before breakfast. This is a way to really maximize the morning productivity burst, because the morning caffeine happens at the same time as the beginning of work, rather than taking a half-hour or so away froom it. Pocket of Bolts was still full from last night, and I had a piece of gingerbread cake (with frosting).

Research wasn't going especially well, though. I mean, I was doing the work very diligently, but I was just feeling overwhelmed. Walking back from the coffeeshop, I was talking about this with Pocket of Bolts. The problem was, I had written about 70 pages of a chapter, and had only covered the first thirteen hundred years. There were six hundred or so more years to go. Then suddenly I said, Maybe I should just scrap the final six hundred years. (This would make a lot more sense if I gave the details, but I'd rather this blog not be googleable!) It amounts to roughly a third of my project, but that third all lies in the half that I haven't done yet. Pocket of Bolts said: That's a great idea.

It is a great idea. The more I thought about it, the more wrought up I got. It's a strange confusion of feelings, guilt (it's like cheating), disappointment (in myself, because the project turned out to be beyond my strength after all), intense relief (because what's left seems orders of magnitude more doable), and general nervous energy. When I got home, I wrote to my adviser about it. He wrote back almost instantly, as is his wont, that it's a great idea, adding various additional arguments in favor and suggesting that my hypothetical obstacles to the plan weren't so important.

So it seems almost like a done deal. I feel really strange, almost (but not quite) more upset than glad. However, on the up-side, you could say I finished two chapters today (in the sense that I eliminated them from the plan). As Pocket of Bolts says, If you keep on at this rate you'll be ready to defend by the end of the week.

In the afternoon, I went out to chat with the Reporter. He gave me a present (at right), a silk table-runner made in his home town. Chinese people, in my experience, tend to be really good at giving thoughtful interesting presents. I am not so good at it. For one thing, I am really unclear as to when one should give presents. For another, it's typical in China to give presents that come from your hometown, the specialties of the place so to speak. Almost every place has some kind of specialty. But I'm not sure what my place is, that is to say, where I'm really from. Is it where my parents live? where I went to graduate school? Chicago? To Chinese people, I suppose it's where my parents live, but even my roots there are loosening considerably. Then there's the problem of what that place specializes in, and how to get some, and whether the recipient would like it even if I did manage to get hold of something. It's all very tricky. Anyway, my general policy is to thank the person with sincere appreciation but not reciprocate in any material way. Instead, I try to be as helpful as I can with my, ha ha, intellectual capital, as it's the only resource I actually possess.

It was fun talking with the reporter. The piece of paper also visible in this picture is a cool thing--we got to talking about a very famous Chinese fiction-writer, who has written a great number of books. It turns out, someone made a poetic couplet in which each character is taken from the title of a different one of his books. It's actually a pretty good couplet, having the proper parallelism and such. As usual with Chinese poetry, it's difficult to translate, and of course the whole game is lost in translation. But it goes something like:

Driving snow day after day. He shoots a white deer--
That warrior god of comedy, beside the jade green mandarin drake.

Recreations

2008-11-22T23:52:00.001-06:00

Today was a tremendously lazy kind of day. I confess that I spent the greater part of it playing computer games, which reminds me of my wasted youth. I think the problem is that the big burst of diligence and creativity yesterday wore me out completely. It was pretty much time for a day off.

We had Japanese food for lunch: miso soup, rice triangles wrapped in nori, and edamame. It's a surprisingly satisfying lunch for how low in calories it is. Also, it reminds me of the very early days of my relationship with Pocket of Bolts: it was a healthy vegetarian meal that I could make and he appreciated as an interesting novelty. As I recall, I made it rather often!

After lunch we tried to go out to a coffee-shop and work, but it being Saturday afternoon, all the coffee-shops were really full! Because one day is just like another to me, I was shocked and irritated. We ended up working in the Borders cafe for a while, but their bathrooms were not working and anyway it was a bit too bustling to be a good place for working.

On the way home we wandered through the sporting goods store looking at dumb-bells (we are considering getting some) and through Linens and Things, which is going out of business but didn't have anything we couldn't live without. We went to two different grocery stores to pick up various things, and by the time we got home it felt like we'd been walking half the day, and not much to show for it.

The one nice, fun, and productive thing I did was read a draft of a paper that the Lama sent me, and sent it back to him with comments. I really like reading other people's drafts. Collegiality in general is one of my favorite parts of the whole endeavor, even though I'm not especially good it at. It just gives me a warm and happy feeling.

Coq au Vin

2008-11-21T23:37:00.000-06:00

It has been a difficult week for blogging. This is mostly because nothing much has happened externally. Aside from going to the gym twice and down to U of C once, I have mostly been sitting at my desk in my pajamas working on my dissertation.

We went out to a bar tonight, celebrating with a friend and former neighbor who just had her dissertation defense. (I'm hoping that a year from now it'll be mine we're celebrating.) They asked how I've been doing, and I said the thing about the pajamas, and Pocket of Bolts chimed in that he comes home and finds the house strewn with Leanpocket boxes and Milky Way wrappers. I think they thought he was joking, but he wasn't!

Professor Blue-Eyes' class yesterday was pretty fun. We went through a Song dynasty description of how to do an actual divination, which we proceeded to act out with handfuls of plastic coffee stirring straws. That is a lot more work than flipping three coins six times. It was interesting though and amusing.

I should also mention that after the class I came home and Pocket of Bolts made coq au vin. He claimed it was inspired by this strikingly appropriate Married to the Sea comic. I thought it was really funny, though he had to first explain the allusion to the following lines from Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice":

Now, that, I got me some Seagram's gin
Everybody got they cups, but they ain't chipped in
Now this types of shit, happens all the time
You got to get yours but fool I gotta get mine

I suppose that's about all there is to say. I wrote seven pages today, but was robbed of satisfaction by the conviction that it should really have been two pages and I was just waxing inappropriately long-winded. At least I have safely met my November goal.

Also, there is a cold snap here. I got out my down jacket for the walk to the bar, and wore leg-warmers under my jeans. It's going to be a cold winter.

Lamest Post this Month

2008-11-20T23:07:00.000-06:00

It is too late at night. I am too sleepy. This is a blog post in name only. Sorry! Better one tomorrow!

A Favor

2008-11-19T22:08:00.001-06:00

Pocket of Bolts dragged me out of the house yesterday morning, since I hadn't been outside in more than 36 hours! We went to Caribou and did a bit of work. In the afternoon, I worked also, because my usual Tuesday class was canceled--the teacher was sick. The classes do me very good, as I realize when the routine gets interrupted. I get very stale without them. In the evening Pocket of Bolts made us Asian beef wraps, one of our favorite quick and healthy dinners: beef seared, sliced, and marinated in siracha, fish sauce, and lime juice, then wrapped in lettuce leaves with strips of carrot, red onion, cilantro, and hot peppers. Rice on the side. A great dinner. After dinner, I got an e-mail from a grad school classmate. I'd promised him I'd send him a certain document some time ago, then realized I needed to put more work into it then I thought--so put it off. In the e-mail he said, never mind if it was too much trouble, so of course I was galvanized into action. Pocket of Bolts has been having a hard time writing his job talk. He came to talk to me about it when I was several hours into preparing this document. I said: Write it as if you're doing a favor for someone else. Later he said that turned out to be really good advice!

I've had so little to say lately that I'll make up for it by posting this silly picture of my bedhead, taken very early in the morning.

Soup and Study

2008-11-18T23:44:00.000-06:00

There is nothing to say about yesterday. The whole day, I never left the house! I sat and worked, mostly the research stage. I took a nap in the afternoon.

For dinner, I made an extremely miscellaneous soup for Pocket of Bolts and myself. It consisted of: barley, white beans, turnips, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, broccoli, kale, and nice chicken stock, together with fresh thyme and oregano. For dessert I made apple pie.

While the pie was baking I happened to open the back door, and noticed that a thin layer of snow had covered our back porch. But I didn't step out and make any footprints in it.

I planned to work out in the evening, but I got on a roll with researching and ended up just staying at my desk. A very quiet day.

First Snow

2008-11-17T22:22:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I slept in late as usual on Sunday. I had arranged to meet the Lama for coffee in the early afternoon. Somehow or other, I actually managed to write two pages of my dissertation in between breakfast and heading up there. The power of routine!

Actually, I think it has to do with the phase I was in. I have to gather materials, make translations, figure out basically what I'm going to say and in what order. This is a really frustrating process for me because I always feel that I am going too slowly, running in place, not making progress. Once I have done that step correctly, however, I can write quite a decent amount. Not to say "effortlessly", but at least the process isn't painful. I guess it's good to take things apart like this and figure out which parts are hardest and why.

Lunch kind of fell by the wayside. I had an apple and a soyjoy bar before leaving, and a scone at the coffeeshop where I met the Lama. We had a really fun conversation. It reminded me very much of our friendly meetings in Beijing. We talked mostly shop, but with some personal chatter thrown in. It made me realize how much time had passed since we'd actually sat down like that, informally, outside his campus, and really just hung out. I hope we get a chance to do that sort of thing more often.

It was a very very cold day. The wind, in particular, was quite bitter.

Four years ago, in Grad School town, it was not nearly so cold. Four years ago, I was on my way to a reading group. I was late. I almost decided not to go. But because I went, I met Pocket of Bolts. We talked a lot during the informal discussion after the group proper. Then he invited me to the lounge in his department where they tended to hang out and party. It turned out we lived in the same building, so he offered me a ride home, asked me in, gave me a beer. We sat talking, looking at his books. I won't say it was "love at first sight" but the interest and attraction were definitely there. Four years! Has it really been that long?

Last night, to celebrate the anniversary of our first "date", we decided to go out for sushi. We've never properly eaten sushi together, since Pocket of Bolts was a vegetarian until recently. As we walked out into the cold night, big flakes of snow started falling. It was romantic and beautiful. We sat inside the rustic, wood-paneled restaurant and drank hot sake. The sushi was delicious, and we were full of smiles, proposed many toasts. Sake is good for toasting, since the cups are so small. The whole evening was really charming, and snow was still coming down as we walked back to our cozy little home.

Flowers of the Day

2008-11-16T21:56:00.000-06:00

This is kale, the middle of the kale "flower" after we had used the rest of it to make a totally delicious baked kale and gruyere dish. That was a few days ago, but I only just got around to going through the pictures.

Yesterday we slept in, had a leisurely breakfast. But a routine has set in for me now, quite a pleasant routine. After breakfast, I go into my study, put on a little music, play a couple games of solitaire (until I win), and then I'm set to go, dissertation writing time. It has started to work surprisingly well for me, this little routine--to the point where I want to do it, feel unhappy if something prevents me. We'll see how long that lasts, but for now...

In the afternoon, I met the Reporter at close Caribou. It is fun practicing my Chinese with him. We talked for a while about a Song poet we both like, and then about a text he was reading for one of his classes. It was in English, but it was written in 1856. Even I had a hard time understanding it, but in the end I did manage. It was all about railroads. Actually, it was fairly enjoyable explaining it to him. I also heard about his wife and daughter--she is five years old. I did not know he was married, but I'm pleased that he is. He explained to me very carefully about his daughter's name, which is an allusion to the Book of Songs, the ancient poetry Classic of China. It was pleasing.

Had a fairly short workout at the gym, and then home to a nice dinner of broccoli and tofu stirfry over black rice. It was another nice day. In the evening I got some things done--e-mails, etc. Then I read a chapter from a book that the Reporter loaned me, a book in English written by a Chinese person, a biography of the poet we both like. It was relaxing to read, and I slept really really well.