Conference Photos--A Long Good Weekend

This past weekend I was away at a conference. Not strictly in my area of specialization, but I drove down with the Lama, who is one of the founding members of the conference, and who was presenting a paper. The third member of the party was a Chinese grad student who's doing a one year foreign exchange study, whom I shall call E.T. (not her real initials). The conference was at a really pretty campus in the middle of nowhere.

We got off to a bad start up in Chicago because the Lama had reserved a car from Enterprise, but when we showed up at the Enterprise, there were no cars to be had. There were other people in the waiting room who had been waiting already for some time. Time dragged on. The Enterprise people made some calls but we were mostly waiting on returns. All told, we waited over two hours. It was nice getting a chance to chat with the Lama and all, but not nice to preface a five hour drive with a two hour session of sitting and fuming.

In the end the first thing we could get was an SUV. We complained because of the gas mileage, and eventually the Lama got them to throw in a free tank of gas. That was pretty decent compensation given that the gas tank held $60 worth (!) at current gas prices. But if it had been essential for us to get to the conference's first night dinner on time, we would have been sorely disappointed. Oddly, the last time I rented a car it was also from Enterprise, and we also had to wait for cars, over half an hour I think, but in some ways that was worse because we had to stand up in a parking garage rather than sitting comfortably in air-conditioned room. I conclude from two such experiences in row: next time I'm taking my business elsewhere.

I gave E.T. the front seat, assuming rightly as it turned out that she would have more trouble with car-sickness. The Lama drove. We had a sort of three-corner conversation. E.T. is a bit sullen about her experiences here and it shows. I am much more forgiving than I would have been before I was a foreign exchange student myself but she's still somewhat of a difficult person. At left is a picture of the Lama and E.T. after we were finally underway, sitting in traffic on Lake Shore Drive.

The drive was actually a very pretty one. We were going south, and it turns out that in that direction spring had already come. Everything was a brilliant vivid green. We came across a rest area with a wind-mill. I was impressed with it. The wind there was very fierce, and the windmill was going extremely fast, its blades loudly slicing the air. E.T. was using my camera and taking a lot of pictures but she doesn't have the knack of holding the camera straight. The Lama has started smoking again. What a tough addiction.

I graded a lot of papers, spreading everything out in the back seat. That was a good thing. Here is a picture from the road of a funny billboard.

No need for a blow-by-blow on the conference I suppose. The first night dinner was fun. I concentrated on getting to know the two female graduate students with whom E.T. and I were staying (we were divided up, one per graduate student; it was a nice break). It was really great of them to put us up. The one I got to stay with had two lively young cats. She lived far from campus and so I had to follow her schedule, but that was fine. I had made up my mind in advance to be really easy-going. Both of the grad students were part of the conference organizing team, meaning they were responsible for getting the bagels and coffee in the morning, ordering the bag lunches, carrying the cooler with cold drinks, and so forth. I helped as much as I could and they seemed glad for it.

My hostess and I were extremely pleased upon discovering that we were both really fond of tea in the morning. She made a nice pot of tea the first morning and told me I should help myself. While pouring I admired her teapot--it had a pretty blue pattern on it. She said it was her mother's. Just then the lid of the teapot went skidding off into the sink and broke!!! I felt so bad. The next day, though, I fixed it with some superglue that I found in her house and she said it looked as good as new. Still--boo, what a butterfingers I am.

I very much enjoyed listening the papers. Being focused on Chinese philosophy, it was not exactly my field or discipline. Still, there was enough relevance that it was stimulating, and of course it was more useful data on how to give an effective presentation. On Saturday night after a horrendously caloric dinner, many of the cool interesting people were going to a bar--including my hostess--so I went too. I had been pessimistic about my staying-power, but we were actually there until one in the morning. Pocket of Bolts always says that going to bars is actually part of a philosopher's work, and this was certainly true here. A lot of work got done in one-on-one objections and rebuttals and general constructive discussion. I had not given a paper of course, but I listened and contributed when I could. I hope I made a good impression.

The weather was beautiful and we ate our lunches and dinner outside. The seating area most convenient to where we were having the conference was a round brick area which had some benches. One one of the benches was a bronze statue of long-time president of the university we were at. (Hint--see the movie Kinsey?) It's a funny statue. HW's hand is apparently raised in benediction. Here is a picture of me sitting by him.

Another amusing thing was that I got to see one of my grad school classmates, now in a tt position at the university where the conference was being held. Not someone I'd known too terribly well, but it was fun to see him anyway and gossip and reconnect. This is the way connections get strengthened, the vagaries of where conferences are and who happens to be there. He's the guy on the left in this photo. The girl in the center is a grad student who does some Chinese stuff.

On the last day everyone was exhausted, naturally, but I MOSTLY managed to stay awake. I had a really good conversation with one of the professors on how to negotiate spousal hire. I felt in general that the people at the conference were warm and friendly and welcoming. The questions were all quite constructive rather than snarky. It was just a good environment. I had to point out something someone had wrong, but I tried to do so in a really nice way too.

I made three new Facebook friends. :D

It was of course a long ride home (I did more grading), but I got back feeling really inspired to work on my dissertation. Though of course there's a ton of stuff involved with the last week of classes. Both Pocket of Bolts and I feel like we have been limping along just trying to get through to finals week where it's all on the students instead of on us....

Elevators

I have had two mildly odd elevator incidents in the past two days.

Yesterday morning, I was getting into the elevator to go up to my office. I got in and I was standing facing out like one always does, waiting for the door to close. Some other people were getting in, including a woman in high heels. For no reason at all that I could see, the woman in high heels suddenly fell down just outside the threshold of the elevator. It wasn't an especially bad fall, but she'd had her keys in her hand, and as she caught herself on that hand, the keys flew out, skittered away, and fell straight down the gap into the elevator shaft. That big bunch of keys was just--gone. Vanished. She was okay but rode up the elevator with us in great bemusement, trying to figure out what to do about the keys. I hope she ended up getting them back!

Then today I was running a language table meeting in one of the university's buildings. I serve tea at the meetings, and so I periodically have to go out and fetch more water to refresh the tea. I was doing that, and noticed a big man with a bright orange vest from our local grocery store. He was complaining loudly that the elevator wasn't working. I ignored him and kept on with what I was doing. But I could hear his voice echoing down the hall and he searched with increasing desperation for someone responsible who could do something about it.

On the way back from getting the water I was really starting to feel sorry for him. I have a soft spot in my heart for the grocery store maybe or something. And the guy was just trying to do his job, which was deliver bottles of water and soda to one of the lounges. But whoever the responsible person for that was, they weren't around now. So I went back with him and his partner to have a look at the elevator. It was stuck on the third floor and the doors wouldn't close. They had their dolly and were presumably still just in the middle of the delivery, unsure what to do. I shoved at the doors but couldn't budge them. Then I tried pressing the down button. The doors clashed a bit, trying to move and close. I went in. The two delivery men came in too, with their dolly. I pushed some buttons. Pocket of Bolts had just told me that elevators' "Door Close" buttons are usually just a fake to make you feel like you have more control than you do, so I didn't set too much store by that one. But I pushed the 2 button, all the time chattering soothingly to the delivery men. Suddenly the doors closed and the elevator moved smoothly down. Oops! I hadn't meant to be in there too! I got off at the second floor and walked back up the stairs to my language table. I hope they finished their delivery okay!

Pocket of Bolts also told me about a man he read about in the news, who was trapped in an elevator for most of a weekend. A bad scene! Elevators are like an alien species; they're like potentially evil-natured robots. Who knows what they'll do next?

Dentist

Yesterday I went to the dentist for the first time in more than two years. I feel bad about that, but first I was in China and just felt nervous about the idea of trying to find a non-sketchy dentist there. Then I was here but have no dental insurance, and so put it off a lot. Lately, though, it has occurred to me that I had really ought to get my teeth cleaned before getting married, even though it will be much cheaper to do so afterwards. After all, it's probably going to be the most visible high-profile day of my life, and it's probably worthwhile not having yellow teeth! So I shelled out the nearly $200 for a self-pay dentist visit. Apparently this was a rare and shocking thing to do--I was faced with great confusion and blank looks all 'round. I guess if you're poor enough not to have dental insurance you're poor enough to consider dentistry a non-essential expense.

Anyway, the dentist said repeatedly that I had the cleanest teeth she'd seen in a long time. (I get this reaction a lot from dentists. I have lousy soft teeth and not very good gums either, but I do floss and brush absolutely every day.) But she said I obviously grind my teeth in a bad way, to the extent that "the molars are practically worn flat." She wants to sell me a $200 night guard. I am trying pre-bed-time affirmations instead. ("I will keep my jaw relaxed all night. I will keep my jaw relaxed all night.") I of course am completely unaware of grinding my teeth at all, and Pocket of Bolts sleeps like a log and has no clue if I do or not. Last night, though, I did catch myself doing it once, possibly because of the extra message to my unconscious mind.

Sleep is a strange realm of the unconscious yet mysteriously quasi-controllable. I suppose probably I should shell out for the night guard... but it seems not very romantic...

My Sick Day

I am staying home from school today. I feel kind of bad about this because I am the teacher. However, I don't think any of the kids mind. I told them they should use the time to work on their final projects. Hah. Like I would, if I were them. But I have to say that.

Actually, I don't feel that bad. I don't feel as sick as I did yesterday, when I did teach the class. But my voice is almost totally gone, so today seemed best spent resting, mostly in bed.

Yesterday Pocket of Bolts and I went and set up our wedding registry. How odd that was! As others of our friends have reported, though, it was also extremely fun. I'm shy about what other people will think of the china pattern, but PoB and I both liked it very much. We agree really easily on aesthetic decisions a lot of the time, even though we're both really stubborn and opinionated (it's not like one of us is a pushover and one of us always wins or anything like that). I mean, when we don't agree there are fireworks to be sure but we agree quite often, and the plates was one of the things we had no trouble choosing or agreeing on. Funny!

It's strange to think about what our life would look like with nice stuff as opposed to dumpster salvage in our kitchen. I still have a hard time seeing it, but wandering around the Crate and Barrel yesterday started to bring it in to focus a bit!

Not much else to be said about today. I am in the grip of this nasty chest cold and I have mostly been either sleeping or sitting on the couch taking care of small tasks.

After reading Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter over spring break, I decided to learn to knit. Why, you might ask, did I start reading a book like that in the first place if I don't even know how to knit? I mean, it's chock-full of knitting technicalia, which was just babble in foreign language to me mostly. But I was impressed by the Yarn Harlot's diatribe against crochet. I am a long-time crocheter, though not an especially expert one. I've got a bit tired of the way crocheted things look though and of the process of doing it. Also I wanted to try to learn something I can do when the light is not too good. With crocheting, you have to be able to see to figure out into which loop you need to insert the hook, but given that with knitting the loops are all strung on a pole, it ought to be possible to do it when, say, you're watching a movie or riding in a car in the evening. Don't blind people knit? So anyway, I thought I'd try.

You might wonder how I have time for that. But what I need to do is find something that is soothing and comforting but not quite as addictive or time-thieving as video games. So far I think knitting has been doing that pretty well. I am taking it slow, but have about 6 inches of a scarf going. It's fun, and (at the simple low level where I am now) especially good for days like this when my brain is totally thrashed and not firing on all cylinders.

It Must Be Spring

Yesterday afternoon I went out the door in my down coat as usual. I walked two steps, stopped and thought, something isn't right here. I went back up the stairs, dumped the down coat, and came back down with my lightest jacket over my hoodie. And you know what? I was still a bit warm. All the restaurants are starting to open up their outdoor seating. And get this, on the walk back home I actually stopped and had an ice-cream like dessert while walking back. It was nonfat froyo, not actually ice-cream, but same feeling. Funny, I'm such a stick in the mud. It stays one season long enough and I get to thinking it will always continue that way.

Pocket of Bolts was at a conference this weekend and I was bacheloretting it. That means about what it would mean in the gender reversed situation: I lived on boca burgers and English muffins, stayed up late, slept in, and played video games. However, I also made some serious inroads on my to-do list and cleaned the entire house (badly needed). I even got a little grading done, though I'm still sadly behind.

I've been doing a lot of wedding planning lately (most of the above to-do list items are about that). I haven't blogged about it. It seems...I don't know, like it would be too weird and shallow. It only SEEMS shallow, though. Behind each and every petty decision there is a big underwater iceberg of emotional weightiness. Yes, each and every one, down to what color the buffet linens are and how many corsages we order. A centimeter of space on the invitation. A plastic or a wooden chair. How many appetizers there will be. Whether the ceremony starts at one time or half an hour later. Ordinarily these things aren't very important, but even if I don't care about them other people do. But it's I who have to make the decisions.

I guess (I hope) I'm not a bridezilla. I suppose a bridezilla is someone who actually cares about those things too, who actually believes what the whole scene is trying to convince her (that it's all terribly, terribly important). I don't think I'm that far gone, but I empathize with bridezillas from the very bottom of my heart. It's a strange situation. There's so much to learn, but most of it won't be of any possible use later. (C'mon, when am I going to engage the services of a caterer again anytime in the next 20 years?) You only get one shot, hopefully, and there's no way to do everything right. One decision rests on another, and if you regret one of the early unchangeable ones, you still have to keep on with it.

Well anyway, one advantage of hiring all these people to do things is that once we're done hiring them, hopefully they'll do things more or less okay and we can sit back and actually enjoy it. Mostly what we wanted was a good party, and I hope it will be that. Just a few more things left on the list--photographer, music, registry.

I get high-strung when Pocket of Bolts is not around and get all tired without barely even doing anything. I had a very quiet weekend but still managed to come down with the plague that everyone at work has been suffering from. So far it's just a sore throat and a fever (100.1), but that's unusual for me. Yes mom I've been taking lots of vitamins and resting and drinking a lot of water. I'll probably manage to get rid of it pretty quick. But it's irritating.

I am going to try to post on this blog more now. Maybe not such long posts as this, but at least more often. I think if I don't put pictures on it will be psychologically easier, no mucking around with the camera and photoshop and the blogger uploader and such. And there's actually plenty to say.

Ice Forms

Well, February is over. It's still below freezing and we had a bit more snow last night, but I think winter is finally starting to lose its grip. I haven't been up to blogging lately. It turns out that planning a wedding, finishing a dissertation, teaching a class, and trying to prepare a talk that I'm supposed to give next week but really just want to avoid thinking about ... takes a lot of time and mental energy.

But I will post a couple pictures. One of the days last month during a really cold snap we went down to look at the lake. We hadn't been in some time because of the icy icy wind, but it certainly was interesting down there. The wind and waves had piled up plates of ice all along the shore. It wasn't cold enough for the whole lake to freeze, but cold enough for there to be quite a lot of these things, which looked to me like broken dishes.



It was getting a little too dark to photograph them well, but I thought they were really neat. Here is a close-up just in case you're curious about the details.

It was quite an interesting walk. When we got around to the harbor there were some other people walking in front of us, taking pictures like we were. One of them dropped her camera in the snow, and I only noticed it because I'm always looking at the ground for interesting stuff (habit from childhood). That was interesting all right. She was very glad to have it back.

We also saw three white swans swimming around in the ice. Don't they get cold?

Here are two more pictures I took. Can you tell from the quality of the light how cold it was?!

How I Feel About Winter

Don't have time to write much right now. My whirling schedule is kicking my butt. But I just had to post this picture that Pocket of Bolts took one morning a short while ago when the weather was being particularly nasty. I think it just says it all as far as my feelings about winter are concerned.

Really, I shouldn't complain though. Today although still cold was bright and sunny. We went to a new cafe we really like, not very near where we live but in a cool neighborhood just west of us. The place is called Cafe Avanti, and they have bottomless coffee, lots of tables and outlets, and their pastries are not horrifically delicious looking like the ones at Bourgeois Pig (and therefore aren't an insurmountable temptation). I didn't feel much like working, but I banged out a page or two of dissertation...

Skinny Bitches

I've stopped posting weekly menus for now on account of their basic repetitiveness. Got to say, though, that the new system continues to work, if slowly. I have lost 13 pounds since New Years, and Pocket of Bolts has lost even more. In the marvelous words of my dear dad, we're going to be a couple of skinny bitches by June. I've never been especially fond of the word bitch, but "skinny bitches" has quite become our rallying cry on this project as both praise and encouragement.

I meant to make a little post about our Valentines Day. We weren't up for the feeding frenzy of restaurant reservations and decided to have our traditional home-cooked but special meal. Pocket of Bolts brought me some flowers and made delicious pasta with asparagus and grape tomatoes and olives. I had a bad cold, but after the third day of spending ALL afternoon resting, I felt sufficiently recovered to be a bit romantic and also to make Almond Cloud Cookies, which Pocket of Bolts ended up liking a lot (somewhat to my surprise, as he hasn't much of a sweet tooth). We ate them with some really sweet ripe blueberries, quite a treat for February.

Just to be fair, I also have to include a picture of Pocket of Bolts also looking like quite the skinny bitch. That was I think from the day before St.V.Day when we were sitting at the table having a student paper grading marathon. I think he looks very snobbish but in a humorous good way! (I purposely made him put on that supercilious sort of look.)

So that's us, slogging through winter, wishing grading weren't so much of a drag, and slowly shrinking down our appetites.

Not much else to report except that I got a new computer bag. After some initial uncertainly, I decided that I LOVE it. I'd been wanting a new bag for a while, since the backpack I had in China has been slowly disintegrating, and looks too student-y anyway. It's really hard to find a good bag out there though. Then I remembered that my friend Robin had mentioned on his blog way back when a type of bag he really liked. So I went and looked it up; it was Timbuk2. Then the day I started looking into it, I met another person who happened to have one, and raved about how although it might seem like a pretty expensive bag, it had lasted him seven years and was worth every cent. I was a little concerned about the fit with my laptop, so I went to a local retailer and tried out various bags, finally settling on this one, a black on black commute. It has less room than the Laptop Messenger, but given how much my back has been hurting lately, I think I just need to learn to haul around less stuff. And it has been working fine so far, but then I only got it on Friday. We'll see how it withstands the test of a full work-week.

Cheers!

It's Been Wintry

You might wonder why I haven't been posting recently. It's because it's been wintry. The alternation between bone-aching cold and driving snow is tiring in its own way. By the end of the day (by the beginning of the day) I'm so wrung out I can barely do what I'm supposed to do, let alone extras. But just so you can see a bit of what it's like, here are some pictures from one of our recent snowstorms.

Me bundled up like a ball in our snow-spattered courtyard.



The driving snow on a street near our house:



"Windy City Times"--I guess that's what these are:



And this is what campus looks like, which means just trudging from office to classroom is a major undertaking:



That's it for now. I'll try to have some cheerier pictures soon.

Collegiality and Other Excitements

The new semester and a variety of small but interesting events have prevented me from posting lately. I have some new students in the class (though most are continuing from last term) and they take up extra time. In teaching I have been alternating between being TOO lackadaisical and not doing such a good job, and over-preparing which does not always lead to things being successful either. Maybe because the material is more complicated, I have had a harder time finding interesting ways to teach it.

Meanwhile, I have been very inspired on my dissertation since trip back to grad school town. I met a first-year student in my field while I was there and we have been corresponding. It is great to exchange ideas with someone who is worrying about all the same problems I have worried about! I just hope he will think me interesting enough to be worth the e-mail time! I certainly think his work is promising. Anyway, I have been writing away, slowly but with a little more confidence.

Another development on the collegiality front is that I have joined a classical reading group put together by the Lama. We have only met once so far, and I was a little over-prepared, but enjoyed it. Again, it's fun and inspiring to talk to real people about this stuff rather than JUST sitting alone with my computer. When it comes to talking shop and career-related stuff, I surprise myself by being more brave than about other things. I would expect to be more anxious and scared because it matters so much. Well, it does matter, but for the most part I feel like I just about have the skills now to pull it off, to do stuff right, to end up having satisfying interactions. This bodes well!

Finally, Saturday was quite an amazingly full day. In the morning I went down to U of C for a symposium. I was mostly interested in the morning session, which was more or less related to my field. It was a presentation by four grad students from the department there. It was not all that well attended, but I thought what they were doing was interesting and worthwhile even if I could not always agree with it. While there I also ran into one of grad school classmates who has a job there. He introduced me to everyone after that talk, including the grad students and a scary U of C professor who I only knew by reputation. There were all surprisingly pleasant and welcoming, and the grad students even invited me to go to lunch with them! I went, and enjoyed it so much. I hope to be in touch with them soon. In fact, I must remember to write some follow-up e-mails... maybe tonight, if I can stay awake...

I stayed for a couple of afternoon talks, but didn't find it quite as worthwhile as the morning. Then I had to race home (and I was a long way from home, causing myself great CTA stress), because we were having the head of Pocket of Bolts' department and his partner (also in the department) over for dinner at our place! Fortunately PoB was a prince and had prepared most of the dinner and done most of the cleaning. So when I came home there was only a manageable amount of racing around and fussing left to be done. And I do think the dinner went well, though it wrecked havoc on our diet. Well, you can't serve guests diet food, after all! I ate a lot less than I would have otherwise, but still used many flex points... Among other things, got rather tipsy which, combined with the exhilaration of the day, made me uncharacteristically chatty. But PoB said I was fine, fun and bubbly.

Well, I must go. It's a school night and there's plenty still left to do. Sorry no pictures! My camera battery has been dead and I just haven't even had time to recharge it. Which shows how little time I've had; working out, among other things, is a surprisingly large time commitment, but nothing even comes near how much time I spend teaching...

The Truant Returns

Last Thursday and Friday I went back to grad school town to have a meeting with PhD adviser. Since I haven't been there in over a year and a half, needless to say it was a bit of a shock. Most of the people I had known were out of the country or on the job market. It was especially disturbing when I first arrived. The department secretary didn't recognize me, and I couldn't connect to the wireless. I went about like a lost soul, half regretting that I wasn't meeting up with anyone I knew and half dreading meeting anyone I knew--especially professors I had failed to particularly cultivate. Also, there were almost no unassigned carrels in the library, and all the people up there were strangers.

I did this that and the other for a while. Felt a lot better after naughtily wolfing down a substantial snack of sushi. For dinner, I went out with three of Pocket of Bolts' friends. It was a little awkward, given that PoB hadn't actually come with me, but they were all friendly and kind, and we did our best to make conversation. After dinner (I had a small beer; hadn't had one in ages because of they points and it was SO good!), I tagged along with DBake, with whom I was stay. DBake's girlfriend is going to be one of my bridesmaids, which is why I felt okay about crashing in their spare room. But she was out of town.... It was a little awkward, but not so awkward as to warrant a $200 hotel room...

Actually I got a lot of work done in their house, an exact copy of the house PoB and I used to live in. I felt so nostalgic, despite having become spoiled by the pleasures of proper heating and insulation. The place was COLD! I curled up under my coat and banged out several pages of dissertation, sitting in the old red velvet chair that PoB had bequeathed to DBake, as it had been bequeathed to him. The persistence of grad school furniture!

I slept in a sleeping bag on the futon in their study and had dreams about running away from bad guys, a standard thesis anxiety trope, don't ask me why.

The next morning, I slept in, had an incredibly decadent bagel for breakfast--with butter! (OMG, delicious) In the cafe, I did run into someone I knew, one of my younger classmates. She was very surprised to see me. I was surprised by how beautiful she had become! Truly, a flower in blossom. We agreed to meet for lunch, with a number of other people I knew slightly or not at all. Then I went on a bibliographic wild goose chase in the library.

The lunch was amazingly fun. More people kept arriving! I felt like the queen for a day, or the general reviewing the troops. I dispensed advice and reassurance about qualifying exams to someone who was about to start them, talked about China to the Chinese students, met the new ones, the first and second years. It filled me with great happiness. I MISS them, even the ones I don't know! It is my natural community. On a wave of good fellowship we all went to get tea at the department, and chattered away about everything. I felt quite sad to go, but of course I had the momentous meeting with adviser to prepare for.

The meeting went surprisingly well. The upshot of it was, keep doing what you're doing. You'll have to condense, and take out the sloppy bits, redoing them rigorously in the introduction. But don't worry about that now. Just keep on. Though we did discuss the problematic issues some. I felt very on, like I had worthwhile things to say, like I knew enough to have a substantial discussion. Adviser knew enough too. He's made progress in the last few years, an awful thing to say but true. In this field, the wholes in a person's knowledge are quite apparent, and in past years I had been especially critical of his. But he has been filling them in. Education is an unending pursuit, and that's a good thing about it.

Contrary to my fears, I left the meeting feeling encouraged about the work. The sun was going down and it was time for me to head to the airport. It's sad that a person can't be in two places at once, because I really wished I could work all day in at grad school and come home to PoB in Chicago at night. Grad school provides all kinds of small supports and encouragements that it's hard to even notice when you're in the middle of it, but when you don't have them anymore...

Well, nothing lasts forever. I will graduate eventually and be pushed all the way out into the mean old real world. The main thing is to write a good dissertation and get a job somewhere that has an actual department in what I do, colleagues to talk to, and try to get back some of that community feeling.

Last picture is the campus train station at dusk. Journey of a thousand miles...

Photos from the Holidays at Home

Just some pictures from Christmas break with the family. First, some food! My mom greeted my arrival at home with a gorgeous fancy soup and salad meal.


My bro and I made quiche for dinner on Christmas eve. We were quite willing and happy to make something all fancy, but quiche was what dad decided on, and we were all quite happy with how it turned out. I made the pattern on the top (it was a little more symmetrical before it went in the oven), with a lot of critique from my art professor bro. :D


Here we are in our various Christmas morning attitudes. Mom in her new Christmas shawl:


Me under my new Christmas coat:


My dad and bro putting together new Christmas toys:




For some reason it was an especially pleasant Christmas morning for me. I can't say exactly what about it. It was low-key and fun, not overly extravagant--we only got a few presents each--but very full of love and joy.

In the evening my sister and her two boys, and my niece and her two girls came and filled up the house with playing and chattering. My nephew Twintree is getting to be such a teenager! but somehow after shyness to start we always find something in common. This time around, he taught me how to make a Jacob's Ladder!


Here is a picture of Dad putting together a puzzle I got him from the Art Institute. It's Frank Lloyd Wright's Seguaro window, and was very different from your average puzzle. I thought it kind of easy, but Dad found it hard! It was definitely pretty.


The last big set of pictures I can't post here but let's just say that I finally found that expensive white dress I've been looking for--and NOT at David's Bridal, but at a really nice little shop that got driven out beyond the city limits when the David's Bridal came in. We went there by recommendation and found just the thing.

All in all it was a very happy holiday, and if it hadn't been for missing my dear husband to be so much, I would have been very sorry to leave. But the parents can't complain of my filiality this year, as I've enriched the airlines considerably with my jetting back and forth on wedding business.

New Year Stuff

Here I am in 2008. I won't say that Pocket of Bolts and I made New Years resolutions, per se, because those have kind of a bad name. New Years resolutions seem made to be broken. Let's just say we decided to makes some changes, starting on January 1. Probably the most dramatic change is a more concerted effort to lose some weight, or at least stop gaining so much. Neither of us had ever been on an actual diet before, probably for very similar reasons--the feeling of indignity, disgust with popular culture's obsession with them, and of course pure and joyful enjoyment of self-indulgent eating. But all good things come to an end, and I guess this years is the year we lose our dieting innocence and learn that a bagel is six times more fattening than a pita, and a serving of pork chop should be the size of our palm, etc. Self-indulgent eating had been starting to become a long slippery downhill slope.

Now we are one week and one day into it, and already I look upon a picture like this one with considerable nostalgia. We made these cookies (Pocket of Bolts' mother's family recipe) for a December cookie and cocktail party we went to, where we consumed probably 3000 joyfully sugary and alcoholish calories. Now I haven't had a cookie of eight days. It's not that I COULDN'T have one, but it doesn't seem worth it... Oh well, I still get to enjoy what I call Pocket of Bolts' Jude Law face, a hilarious mock-haughty supercilious look, ha ha. Actually in this particular picture he looks more like an angry butler, but take my word for it, sometimes he looks very much like Jude Law.

Here's me turning over a new leaf in the form of an enormous Asian pear. I actually bought this in East Lansing, at a little Asian grocery by the train station. The guy in the store said that the big ones are most sweet, but my dad said they're all water and don't have very much flavor. I'm not a very good judge right now, being that I'm so hungry everything I eat has a lot of flavor, even things I normally wouldn't touch like skim milk, cabbage, and (shudder) Splenda. Okay, I still think Splenda's incredibly gross, and hoard up my points so that at the end of the day I can have one little piece of real chocolate...

Photos From East Lansing

I really fell down on the job of finishing this post about my trip to East Lansing. The upshot of it was that Y and I went to the library and worked and talked a lot. It does not seem momentous, but it did somehow change things in my mental landscape. It made me feel worthwhile and appreciated.

At about mid-afternoon, Y went home to take care of her daughter. I stayed on at the library, working very hard. I did, however, seize my one opportunity to walk around and look at things. Below are pictures I took during a half-hour walking around break I decided to take. I was worried about getting lost in the town-sized campus, so I decided just to make a circuit around the library (clock-wise).

One of the most noticeable land-marks was a big tower:



Here is a picture of the library, which was spacious and new-feeling, and had pretty reflective windows:



As I went around the corner, my attention was immediately captured by a river that was flowing by behind the library. It was a good-sized river!



There was a bridge over it, whence I took this picture. On the other side of the bridge was a stadium I think.



Back to the back-side of the library, where there was an awesome botanical garden. It was all under snow of course, but it must be really gorgeous in the summer:



Two plants from the botanical garden, some winter-hardy collard-type green, and something with white fluff.





Finally, on the far side of the library from where I'd started, ornamental grasses:



And a dry fountain, in which the snow had been shaped (raked? stamped down? shoveled?) into an impressively clean spiral pattern. It was quite startling and very nice really, like a zen garden.



It was pretty cold, so after one circuit around the library I was quite happy to get back inside. I worked really hard, both that evening and the next morning. Y came to the hotel again, and we discussed some questions I had as well as chatting more generally about the field we are both in. And then the shuttle driver took me back to the train station.

The trip was really worthwhile, even if the hotel was a bit pricey. (It WAS very comfortable anyway, good place to work.) I came back feeling a lot more confident.

Morning in East Lansing

It's not so often that I see the sun rise anymore. When I first met Pocket of Bolts, our apartments both had east-facing views (we were practically neighbors!), so we saw the sunrise very often, nearly every morning. None of the places we've lived in since have been like that though.

East Lansing must be very far north, because I had showered and dressed and gone downstairs to an expensive "continental" breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and come back to my room--and only then was it rising. Lazybones winter sun, early to bed, late to rise.

Here's another picture of the sunrise, with me in it because of the reflection. Pity about the window frame, but oh well. Still it gives a sense of the colors involved.

I must say I'm quite fond of this little hotel room. Everything here seems very solid. The wood is actually wood. It feels solid, like it was built to last. The walls feel solid too, and the wallpaper is a tasteful fibrous sort of textured stuff that reminds me of expensive writing paper. I have yet to turn on the flat, wide-screen TV, but it certainly minimizes the amount of space the TV takes up.

Oh and I forgot to mention the shower thing--it worked a lot better than I would have expected. It turns out that a wrap-around shower-curtain pretty much keeps all the water it. A separated-off shower stall turns out to be an unnecessary luxury. Despite my trepidations, the process went pretty much as usual, without a hitch.

But of course what you really want to know about is Y, my friend and professor from Beijing whom I was here to meet. She came to my room sometime after nine. I was a little nervous, but as soon as I saw her again, we both were very warm and friendly. Fortunately, the room was tidy enough and we each perched on one the beds and had quite a long chat. I bit the bullet and described my dissertation project to her. She seemed to think it was interesting, though she remarked on what a departure it was from what we had been talking about before. But not in a bad way.

She described the way she feels here surrounded by an academic culture very different from her own. It's such a shock, she said, and makes her doubt the worth of her own work. How well I understood that feeling!! I had felt exactly the same way in Beijing. Having at least some sense of both sides, I talked with her for some time about just how those differences in academic culture played out, some of the ways I had found of conceptualizing them, and how she might reconcile what she's doing to "our" way of doing things. We talked about her current research (I thought it was fascinating, and totally beyond anything I'd be able to do in half a lifetime, probably!), and how she might present that to a Western audience.

Finally, we got to talking about the project at hand, the translation/book proposal I had come here to help her with. But here I must leave you for now, because I want to do put in some more work on it before I get too tired. I leave you with just this picture of me lounging around in the hotel room. Many more pictures and thoughts from this afternoon still to come in the next post.

I Go to East Lansing

Suddenly things came together for me to make a trip to East Lansing to meet with a professor I had known in Beijing. In general I am timid about arranging things, and deeply reluctant to disrupt my familiar routines. But suddenly I found myself taking the initiative, making all the arrangements, and hopping on an Amtrak, all within a 48 hour time frame. Sometimes you feel like the universe is pointing a finger at you and saying, Okay, now or never. Go to it!

I had given my final exam this morning, and left for the train straight from school (after a few hours of errand-running and general bustle). Here are some pictures I made out the train window. It was a dreary drizzly day, and got dark very early. Of course none of the pictures are entirely in focus, but there's always something wonderful about catching a tiny moment of landscape as it hurtles past.





It's like a story-book world. The photo quality isn't good, but somehow they seem to have more feeling and interest in them than photos of things that are still. No?

The hotel sent a little shuttle to come pick me up at the train station. The driver was very nice and told me things about MSU, such as that it is practically self-sufficient and like a town unto itself. I had forgotten that MSU is the gargantuan one! I hope things work out all right with meeting my professor tomorrow. Clearly there's no just "wandering over to the library" the way I had kind of envisioned. I mean I had downloaded a campus map. I just hadn't realized the scale...

Here is a picture of my little hotel room for Pocket of Bolts. It is not a very good picture, but I will try to take some more interesting ones tomorrow. It is a small room but comfortable. It has the feeling of being nice quality but spartan. I suppose that's appropriate given the mascot of MSU (the spartan, ha ha). There are two interesting things about it: it has a flat screen TV, and there is no bathtub. The shower is just a corner of the bathroom that has a drain in the floor, and divided off just by a curtain, not even by a glass wall. So everything in the bathroom is quite water-proof. But I'm not complaining. It's comfortable. The sheets are soft. There's a little desk and nice-smelling soap, and wireless of course.

I miss Pocket of Bolts! But aside from that, I am doing pretty well. My professor called me a while ago, and we arranged to meet here at 9 tomorrow, so I had better turn in. I didn't get much sleep last night, and I am quite weary!

But stay tuned for my further adventures.