TradeWind Travels: Life on the 17° Parallel

Down Deep

2007-08-01T12:18:00.000-04:00

I've been taking loads of pictures, but I just don't make the time to post them.

Yesterday my brother told me he sent my blog to a bunch of people, so I figure I better get some new pics up. This is a picture of a friend diving.

Night Sky

2006-10-07T09:35:00.000-04:00

Brimstone Hill

2006-10-04T17:22:00.000-04:00

Pseudosphinx Tetrio

2006-10-03T09:21:00.000-04:00

Cruising along.

Papaya

2006-10-02T19:38:00.000-04:00

St. Kitts Kat

2006-09-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

This beauty was spotted on the way up to Brimstone Hill.

Goat-ees!

2006-09-30T14:44:00.000-04:00

I love goats and they are in great abundance on the island. This is a herd I passed the other day on the road. Whenever I see goats, I impulsively stick my head out the window and scream "Goat-ees!" because they make me so happy. I know, it's weird. Unfortunately for the goats (and non-goat-eaters like myself), they are a main food source on the island. No one uses them for cheese or milk. These fine goats right here are being raised for slaughter.

Blue Skies

2006-09-28T18:22:00.000-04:00

Looking up at the cliffs on North Friar.

North Friar Beach, St. Kitts

2006-09-27T19:20:00.000-04:00

I go to this beach in the morning with my friend Barry, who has spent every morning of the last 8 years cleaning it. Now he has help.

Gamma Ray at Half Moon Bay

2006-09-25T21:33:00.000-04:00

Boats

2006-09-24T18:54:00.000-04:00

Pinney Beach, Nevis

2006-09-23T23:35:00.000-04:00

I discreetly shot this without waking the gentleman in the green pants.

Four Seasons, Nevis

2006-09-23T19:54:00.000-04:00

Massage, anyone?

Sunset, St. Kitts

2006-09-22T19:46:00.000-04:00

This was taken from our veranda tonight.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem, Mon!

2006-09-08T12:43:00.001-04:00

That's what the sign says at the Shiggidy Shack, I noticed last night.

We didn't exactly lime. The bar was crazy busy, and while waiting in line, I was accidentally punched in the face by a wildly gesticulating inebriated Scotsman (is that redundant?). I did have one pina colada with dinner, and it was really good! Halfway through dinner, the one-man band began to play - I was wrong about the iPod DJ. He's a local with a keyboard and a passion for 1980s Top 40, which he rearranges with a calypso/reggae rhythm, making it very difficult for listeners to figure out what 80s Top 40 he's singing. It's sort of like a drinking game. He played some Foreigner, some Mister Mister, and some Rod Stewart (it took me almost the entire song to identify "Some Guys Have All the Luck"). I've been assured that his repetoire is limited, and I'll have the pleasure of hearing him every Thursday night that we're here.

After we ate and after I was socked in the nose, we moved over to the semi-circle of chaise lounges set up around the bonfire. The stars were out, and I realized that I couldn't identify a single constellation. I'll have to start studying my star books again. Everything looks different from down here.

The singer soon introduced Fire Man, a fire-eating, fire-bathing, fire-breathing man who performs every Thursday for about 10 minutes. He was really good. What was really great about it, though, was the one-man band dude - he played an accompanying Fire song to the tune of Bob Marley's "Could You Be Loved," with fantastic lyrics like, "He loves to eat fire, he bathes in the fire, he even drinks fire! How does he do it? He is the Fire Man!" The performance was great, but I was partial to the accompaniment.

Around 9:30, my back was 100% completely out, so we head back home. Tonight we're headed back to the Shack for dinner with some friends. No Fire Man tonight, though. No bonfire, either.

So we're off to the beach for the afternoon.

First, here are some pictures of the yard I took at 7:15am this morning.

This is the Caribbean Sea view.

This is the Atlantic view. It's closer as the crow flies (or frigate bird, as the case may be), but because of the Marriot Golf Course, it's faster to walk or drive to the Caribbean.

This little fellow tried to sell me car insurance!

I haven't figured out what these trees are called yet, but we have several. They're pretty!

I call this the petunia bush, though I'm sure it has another name. Don't they look like petunias, though? There's a white one in the front yard.

Notice that Gamma Ray is OFF LEASH - this is maybe the greatest thing about the move. The dogs were rarely off leash in Maine.

That's our veranda on top.

It's nice, right? So book your ticket and get down here!

Liming

2006-09-07T18:30:00.000-04:00

There's a restaurant here called Mr. X's Shiggidy Shack. It actually is a shack; actually, it's more of a bamboo hut with some plywood. It's right on Timothy Beach, about a 3 minute drive from the house, and it's composed of several small out buildings. The biggest building is the kitchen, then there's a small hut for the bartender, there's another small hut for gifts - though the Shiggidy Shop was closed the other night, there's a portico area (not enclosed) for dining and then more dining without a roof, and there's a small hut where the owner, Mr. X (aka Sylveter Phipps, an astoundly beautiful Kittitian man), hangs out and does the books.

Anyway, it's fantastic. We went a couple nights ago, and we're going again tonight. Apparently, Thursday is bonfire night there, and when we were snorkeling this afternoon, we watched the guys set up the bonfire area. They make great pina coladas, I've discovered. They have mahi mahi for $15 US, and it's served with a salad, plantains, johnnycakes (think Indian fry bread only denser and with coconut), and baked macaroni pie (basically mac and cheese like my mother used to make). It's a huge portion of food, and it's the best deal I've seen so far on the island.

I guess it's the tradition to go there on Thursdays, eat dinner, and then sit by the bonfire, listen to the iPod reggae DJ, and lime.

Let me explain: evidently, back when the British regiment was still stationed here, they would get scurvy, so once a week, they were told to drink rum to disinfect the gut and to eat limes to keep their teeth from falling out and ward off scurvy. Nowadays, the medicinal benefit is out the window. To go liming means to go out drinking, and that's what we're off to do right now!

First, here's a picture of tonight's moon from the veranda. It's basically the same view as yesterday's picture, but I'm certainly not sick of it yet!

You CAN Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too.

2006-09-06T17:15:00.000-04:00

At least that's what I think, right now.

I arrived late Saturday night after a nightmarish plane adventure, and Sunday afternoon, I drove into Basseterre in search of food. Not much was open except a small Rastafarian bakery joint called Sweet Temptations, and I got myself a big 'ol piece of Rasta chocolate cake. I came home, set myself up on the veranda, and I had my cake and ate it, too.

Here was my view.

Life is good.

Farewell Portland!

2006-08-31T13:36:00.000-04:00

Last post from Gritty Portland.

We've finished packing up our stuff and either sticking it in storage or shipping it to St. Kitts. We packed up all of our stuff by ourselves without any help whatsoever. All 4000 pounds of it.

We will not shed any tears over leaving this town.

As we've always said, it was not just a place to live; it was a bad place to live.

All Systems Go

2006-08-16T11:20:00.000-04:00

So we got the USDA health certificate from the head vet in Augusta, and then we got the import permissions from the head vet in St. Kitts, and now we just have to load all of our stuff into the UHaul garage and hop on a plane.

There's actually a couple other things we have to take care of, but the big worrisome stuff is done.

R arrives Friday afternoon in Boston, and then she'll take the train/bus up here in time for dinner, and I'm thinking she's going to want sushi or Indian or Thai, so I'm preparing for that. Saturday morning we head down to PA with the dogs and cat to bring Paco to his new abode, and then we'll visit my aunt and uncle in Mass on the way back up to Maine. It should be a fun weekend, except the part about leaving the cat behind. That will be sad!

I'm living on Advil these days b/c of my back, and I know that it's so bad for me, but I have to get this stuff packed up by Friday. It's insane how heavy these books are. My OED alone weighs about 7000lbs!

On today's TO DO list:

Drop off online course creation form at SMCC

Have tires rotated

Schedule auto detailing

Get food at grocery store! No food in house!

Have new ID tags made for the dogs and Paco

Look for a new shower curtain for Carib

Look for hair clippers

Get cat food and supplies to bring down with cat

Photocopy cat records

Verify Sept 1 final vet appt for travel health certificate

Laundry

Mail books to my mother

Set up UAF online classes (they start a week from tomorrow!)

There's more to do, but I'm not even sure I can handle doing all of this.

Upward and onward, as they say.

mid-August update!

2006-08-13T19:13:00.000-04:00

So the Time Warner Cable thing worked out, thanks to this blog! My lawyer forwarded TWC my January 31 post, and they backed down. I only have to pay $95 of the $2000 international long distance charges. Yahoo!

My goal yesterday was for every book in the house to be boxed by bedtime.

Then that was my goal for today. I did one complete side of the library today - about 800 books or so? My back is killing me. Now it's my goal for Tuesday, as I know there's no way I'll be able to accomplish it tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to drive up to Augusta to meet with the USDA vet, so it will be a busy day of running about, not box-packing.

Tuesday it is.

It might be time to start adding Rescue Remedy to the animals' water bowl. And to my water as well! The stress level is rising.

I had a delightful conversation with my aunt in southern Mass. today. We were talking about Hezbollah and Israel and what a mess that whole part of the world is, and what a mess this country is in, too, and then we were talking about what we think will happen next. We decided that if women ran the world, we wouldn't have problems like this. There would probably be more gossip going around about what leader wore what to what summit, and some general cattiness - "Did you see that country's flag? It's so 1776!" -- but other than that, the world would probably be pretty well run and much less violent, except for a couple days a month.

After we got off the phone, it occurred to me that another change would probably be "flag fashion." Each country would constantly be updating its nation's flag every season.

"Did you see Libya's Spring '07 flag? It was just released, and let me tell you, it's to die for!"

The US would have the 50 State Flag Fashion Show during NY's fall fashion week. A top US designer would be nominated each year - kind of like the poet laureate - to moderninze last season's designs for the all the states. There'd be columns about it in the Village Voice. Coin and stamp collecting would go out the window - it would be all about the flags.

Then there'd be an Oprah-style Talk of the Nation program on every afternoon geared towards women. C-SPAN would be cancelled. The new Oprah-host would invite special guests affected by different issues. Mainstream America would become more involved in politics thru this show. Instead of the C-SPAN crawl at the bottom of the screen, there'd be the phone numbers of the involved senators and congresspeople so viewers could text them with their cell phones. Wouldn't that be great?

Enough silly talk. Women don't even get paid as much as men yet, so that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

I'm actually thinking of stepping out for dinner right now. I'm not feeling like cooking, and the kitchen is in a horrible half-packed state. It's not fun to be in there. That's moving, though. Not much to be done about it! The whole apartment is sort of un-fun right now. I'm craving the company of my fellow humans. I don't have many friends in town, and the ones I have haven't been around very much lately. I think my exodus from Maine will go unnoticed by many, but alas -- that's the reason I hate this place, right?

Caribbean Move Update

2006-08-05T12:27:00.000-04:00

This is Ali, as in Mohammed Ali, or Ali Baba. He's a little island mutt that Raf is fostering right now and most likely adopting because, well, because she has fallen head over heels in love with this guy.

I am not thrilled at the idea of having a 3rd dog, but I'll survive.

So the move is coming up. Raf gets to town on August 18, and then we bring Paco the Love Taco down to Pennsylvania to be with his Auntie Maggie, and after being there for a day or two, we come back up to Portland to deal with everything left to be dealt with. We're hoping to stop in southern Mass and visit my aunt and uncle, too. I'm working my buns off trying to make sure that there isn't too too much to deal with as far as packing goes, but there's a ton of stuff still to do, and a bunch of stuff that we need to get that we won't be able to get on the island.

We fly out of Boston at the crack of dawn on Sept 2, and I arranged it with our landlord that we can spend the night of August 31 here in the apartment, so we'll just need to either pull an all-nighter, or get a hotel for half a night by Logan Airport. We'll do whatever is best for the dogs. The animals are starting to get stressed out by all the boxes that litter the apartment, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm doping there water with Rescue Remedy, though.

I sold the car to a student, so that was easy, and a friend said that he is very likely going to buy the bed, though I need to track him down this week and confirm. I certainly don't want to get stuck with storing it. I don't want to lift anything I don't have to lift!

I still need to sell Cathy's (our dearly departed rat friend) old cage, a big and beautiful mirror we have, and that's about it. Everything else is either being gifted away, stored away, thrown away, or making the trip along with us!

I spent about a month working on getting quotes from cargo companies, and boy! It's expensive - more than we could have ever imagined - to ship our stuff down there. All we wanted to bring was about 10 book boxes, 5 33-gallon tubs full of clothes and shoes and stuff, the computer and printer, and the stereo. Alas, just that would cost almost $6000. Crazy, right? So we've quickly reevaluated, and we've decided that no, I will not DJ on the island, and the stereo unfortunately will have to stay behind. This is the worst part of all! The iPod will have to suffice. Another rough part is that we will not be bringing many books - just what we can shove in our bags. There is no bookstore on the island (I rack my brain at night wondering how that can be) and even worse, NO LIBRARY. Apparently, it burned down and there's no money to rebuild. I'll be counting on friends to bring stuff down to me on visits. That will be your guest fee! We're Fed Ex-ing the computer (which will cost about $300), and it will take about a week to get there. I called the airlines about excess baggage costs, and in addition to our 2 free bags, we can pay $100 for each additional bags, with a limit of 3 additional bags per person, so we're going to go that route. That's $600 in excess baggage fees, and we think that it's a whole lot better than $6000 to ship very little stuff! Also, R gets a moving allowance, so we'll be reimbursed for all of this, which is WAY COOL. I had already rented a storage garage, but it isn't big enough now with this change of plans, so I am going to have to give in and rent the big $150/month UHaul. Man, I hate being poor. We can't afford to ship everything, we can't afford to sell our whole library (it's mostly books that we have), so we have to afford $150 a month, which when one adds it up - who can really afford that? Alas. Maybe one day we'll own a house just for storing stuff. That's what the plan originally was when we moved to Maine, but for those of you that remember what we went through then with our friend, the money we had saved for a down payment went down the proverbial drain, so to speak. Anyway, that was long ago. We're starting over now.

Other news....
I gave my notice at SMCC, where I've enjoyed teaching for the last couple years, and the departments head said it would be great if I could continue teaching for them online, so I'm teaching a lit class this fall! They don't pay well - not nearly as well as UAF - but I enjoy teaching lit more than comp, and I could never turn down a lit class. It's not very time consuming and it's very enjoyable, so I'm looking forward to that. I am teaching 2 comp classes for UAF, so I'll have a bit of income coming in, but not much. I can take free classes at UAF b/c I teach there, and I'm planning on signing up for an Intro to Marine Biology class this fall. I've never taken anything like it, but I loved loved loved my high school biology classes. It was the math in chemistry that dragged me down. I've never had any math teachers who could get algebraic concepts to make sense to me.

I have about 17 writing projects I'm eager to work on in the Caribbean, too, so needless to say, I should be pretty busy down there. I actually have been writing quite a bit this summer, too, though I'm not completing anything. I'm bouncing from project to project, and it suits me just fine. I'm not focused enough to finish something right now.

We truly hope that we start getting emails that people want to come visit. Right now, we only know for sure of 3 friends who are coming, and they are coming in June of next year. Other people have been talking about coming in 2008, but we're not sure we'll be there after December 2007 when R's contract ends. That won't be decided until next fall, I'm sure, when the contract renewal comes up. So plan on visiting either this fall of winter or next year. We have PLENTY of room, and we figure we can sleep up to 10 people at a time.

Once I'm there, I'll be changing the name of this blog, and making it more a travelogue of our Mind-Boggling Adventures in the Caribbean. I hope that I will have much more time than now to keep the thing updated.

OK - I need to bust a move. I have 101 things to do today, so I should get going!

Ugh

2006-07-07T12:39:00.000-04:00

Those 3 letters best express my general state of being today.

I'm sorry I haven't been updating with any regularity, but life has changed dramatically the past few months, and I just haven't had time. I don't think I'll be updating with regularity again until the summer is over, but the blog was becoming an obituary column, with just the reports of dead friends, so I wanted to write something different.

Here are some updates on my life in general in no particular order of importance:

1) My teaching stint at Andover College is over - thank God. I had two 8-week classes. One was fine, but the other was a nightmare. Never before in all my years of teaching have I encountered such hostility and aggressiveness from my students. I had a student follow me out to my car in the parking lot and yell at me! Anyway, it's over. I survived. I don't think I'd teach there again, though I've been asked.

2) I'm teaching a delightful speech class at SMCC. I have 9 really fantastic students. I'm really enjoying myself with that class.

3) Raf has moved into a new villa on St. Kitts and is ready for guests, so get your tickets. Of course, I still haven't been down to visit, and it doesn't look I will be visiting before September. The villa sounds beautiful. It's in Frigates Bay on the corner of Atlantic View and Sea Breeze Drive. Sounds nice, huh? She says we can sleep several people (10, if we're creative). There's a huge veranda for me and a big, fenced-in yard for the dogs, too! From the solarium, she can see the Atlantic to the left and the Caribbean to the right. There's a nice area for me to have a big garden. Sounds lovely. Hope to get there ONE DAY!!!!

4)Time Warner Cable. The bane of my existence. Remember in January how I told you that TWC wasn't charging me for international calls, so I called to complain about my low phone bill, and the customer service rep said that if the calls didn't show up I wouldn't be charged? Remember how I figured calling R's cell phone must be covered under my $39.95 unlimited national calling b/c the cell phone calls weren't showing up under international billing, and also when she visited this blog from her computer (same company that does cell phone), the ISP was showing up as Florida? Remember how I told you that the TWC rep said that the calls won't aggregate - if they're not showing up, they won't? Well, she was wrong - Poorly trained or misinformed or new or something. Whatever the reason, she gave me incorrect information. Now I'm looking at a huge bill because the cell phone calls apparently DO aggregate, I was told for the first time last week. They are now showing up, and TWC sent me the whopping bill I feared that prompted me to call them in the first place in January. Yep. Half a year later, I'm getting billed. I find this very unfair, as I acted on the info that their rep gave me. She said to me in January, "Don't worry." So I didn't. I've talked to some really nice people in the last couple weeks from TWC, and one said that he'd have the issue resolved by the end of last week, but I haven't heard back from him. Now that the big holiday weekend is over, I called again today and I'm waiting to hear back. They just have to make this right. I would have exclusively used Skype over the past 6 months if the rep had told me that cell phone calls are aggregated. I would have changed my behavior. I'm not irresponsible, and I don't live beyond my means. Now I'm looking at a huge bill.

This is why I'm not visiting St. Kitts as planned next week. I was supposed to meet R in PR while she's there for a conference, and then we'd go back to St. Kitts together for a few days, and then I'd come back here, but now I can't buy a ticket for hundreds of dollars and then spend hundreds more to board the dogs if I don't know what's happening with this stupid bill. Even if they drop it, all the cheap flights are gone. I'm hoping TWC will make this disappear. My friends here all agree that that is probably what will happen, but you know me - I'm stressing out big time. It's there fault, and the guy last week said that the January rep shouldn't have told me that incorrect information. He apologized for her, but now I'm waiting to see just how sorry they are. I'm afraid I'm going to have to hire a lawyer, another expense I can't really swing right now.

5)Haven't found a quote yet for the international move. Ugh.

6)Haven't heard back yet from the vet on the dogs' 2nd rabies titre tests. Ugh.
I can't really move forward with anything (securing storage, picking a mover, buying boxes, selling the Jeep, etc) until I KNOW FOR SURE that the dogs are all set. If they need another rabies test, then I'm not able to go anywhere for another 3 months, which means I'll stay and teach for the fall semester (not at Andover, though!) b/c I'll need income to afford living here. The vet was supposed to let me know on Monday, but I called yesterday, and they still hadn't heard back from the lab in Kansas. They said they hope to tell me today or NEXT WEEK.

7)I'm working on going vegan. I know, I know. You probably think I'm nuts. That's ok. I'll never be 100% vegan, but I'm working on cutting dairy out of my life as much as possible. My reasons are nutritional and ethical. Pizza and milk chocolate will be the two things I'll have a tough time quitting. Did you know that wool and honey and white sugar and pearls and coral are not vegan? Yep. Any product that comes from an animal is not considered vegan. I don't know how far I can go with that. At a certain point, it gets crazy, trying to live harm free. So if I moved back to Alaska, and I didn't wear wool in the winter (or fur, obviously), I'm restricted to petroleum-based materials. They harm animals, too, because oil fields displace animals. I think I'll focus on being a dietary vegan as much as I can.

It's tricky, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm just going to make the sacrifices that feel right to me, and if my heart is in the right place, I should be ok.

Interestingly enough, I've realized that this is some weird form of hedonism. The end goal is for me to feel ok about the way in which I'm treading upon this earth. Hedonism is about feeling good, right? Pleasure is the greatest good. Epicureansim, a form of hedonism, says that the greatest good is to seek pleasure in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear as well as an absence of pain. Eating meat always has made me feel bad and guilty, so I've always known that I need to avoid that, but the dairy thing is something different. It never occurred to me until recently what horrible lives dairy animals live. Since I realized this back in AK, I started buying cage-free eggs and small dairy farm milk, but I'm learning more now, like that even these small, family-owned farms don't put the non-producing cows out to pasture. They can't afford to keep them alive. Cows can live a really long time. Dairy cows are destined to become beef. Ergo, taking my self out of the demand-supply equation for dairy, I'm not sending cows to the slaughteryard. I'm not likely saving any either, but I have less guilt. So it's all about me, basically.

8)I'm really grossed out by everything in the news. Aren't you? Nothing new there.

9) This Portland summer has been pretty rainy and crappy. This week has been ok, but overall, we've had way too much rain. I was really hoping to do a bunch of neat outdoor stuff, but it hasn't happened yet.

10)I'm working on a career change. The Andover experience cut me to the core. I didn't go to graduate school to take that kind of abuse. I could go work at Burger King for that kind of treatment. So I'm looking into two different fields: naturopathic medicine/nutrition and marine biology/ecology/geology/whatever.

I've spent the summer reading, reading, reading. I've looked at degree programs in each of these fields, and I've found syllabi on the web, and I've interlibrary loaned over 50 texts. I'm just reading like crazy. R is worried that I'll become another boring scientist. Turns out, she only has like 5 scientist friends (Hans, Julie and Stacy are 3 of them) b/c she finds most scientists dullsville. I promised I'll never be dullsville, and that I'll continue reading literature and watching film and writing, writing, writing. If I start to sound dull, please let me know! Here's the deal - I never went for my PhD in lit. If I had, everything might be different, but I didn't, so I'm relegated to teaching mostly comp, which I'm not that interested in. At SMCC, I get lots of lit classes, but they don't pay enough to make a good living on, plus, I don't want to stay in Maine forever without a good paying job (with bennies). At this point, I'm not real interested in going for my PhD in lit anyway, so I'm opting toward a career change. I'll keep you posted on that. So far, though, the reading is delightful.

11) I've been a bad friend lately, so sorry. I've been horrible about calling people, emailing people, visiting people (that's you I'm talking about, Aunt Annie!). Sorry everyone. I know. I'm lame-O. What can I say? I'm very self-involved right now.

12) Writing. My friend Ellen and I have a writing group. Sort of. Mostly we take her darling baby, Lazlo, to the beach and watch him do cute stuff like crawl on the sand and laugh when the waves roll over him. We are talking about writing, though, and that's good. I'm starting to work on a play I had shelved 3 years ago back in Fairbanks after the writing group there gave it a poor review. I know what I need to do to fix it now, so that's the one really exciting thing in life right now.

13) Hurricanes. I'm terrified. I just want you to know. I'm so afraid that on the day we fly down with the dogs, the island will be hit, and our plane will be washed into the sea and never recovered. There. I've said it. Once we're there, I'm not as worried. R's villa is up on a hill, and it's an evacuation point for other faculty members, so people will stay with her when there's a hurricane. The house has survived SEVERAL with little damage over the years.

Ok. I was hoping that in the time it took to write this, TWC would have called me back, but alas - they have not. I'm wasting a perfectly good (and rare) day of sunshine waiting by the phone, but I need a resolution. If all works out as I hope, I'll have plenty of days of sunshine ahead of me soon enough.

R.I.P. Donatella- 2000 - June 1, 2006

2006-06-01T15:04:00.000-04:00

Donatella, one of our birdies, died today. We are all very sad, especially Felice, her mate.

She was a great friend, and we will all miss her beautiful singing every day.

R.I.P. Cathy Love Nimh- Summer 2004 - April 20, 2006

2006-04-20T22:04:00.000-04:00

Cathy Love Nimh died tonight. She was loved greatly in our house and will be missed. We'll never forget you, Cathy.

A Very Taliban Easter

2006-04-17T10:38:00.000-04:00

When Ellen and Garrick invited me over for Easter egg decorating, I was very excited. Whether it be Halloween costumes, Christmas gingerbread houses, or Easter eggs, I'm all about holiday crafts. Not in the Martha Stewart way, though.

Ellen said she wanted to have a theme. She was thinking "Sean Preston," an homage to Britney Spear's baby recently dropped on his head. "Hit Me Baby One More Time" had a whole new meaning. I came up with the Very Taliban Easter ideas, as I had just heard some story on Air America about women's rights in Afghanistan. I told Ellen I wanted her to knit my egg a burka.

We decided to save the theme decision until Easter itself. Of course, we didn't realize that in Portland, practically all the grocery stores close for Easter. My neighborhood is Jewish. Several of my students are Muslim. Why is Portland shutting down for Easter? Anyway, the only store open was Whole Grocer, the organic store, so we could only get brown eggs. This got Ellen thinking - why not do World Religions, or even hybrids of religions (Divine Fusion). So we got going. Ellen knit a burka.

We then remembered that women in the Taliban cannot travel alone for fear of punishment by death. They must always be accompanied by their husband or a male relative. We need a male. Ellen got some more yarn out.

I made an Amish man, but I goofed up with the hair, so he somehow transformed into an Indian woman.

I also made an eskimo with a harpoon and a Hari Krishna.

We had loads of other ideas, but there was only so much time that could be dedicated to egg decorating.

Mrs. Magoo

2006-04-13T11:34:00.000-04:00

I just came back from the eye doctor.

The bill was $792.00.

I'm thinking that a seeing eye dog would have been cheaper.

Back from Florida

2006-04-05T13:29:00.000-04:00

I'm back from Florida and I wish I were still there. Right now, though, I'm swamped with research paper drafts, so the blog will probably be neglected a while longer yet!

3 Years Ago Today

2006-03-20T09:03:00.000-05:00

Maxwell, my cat, died after a long battle with cancer. He was a great companion for several years, and I will never forget him.

Fun for Teachers

2006-03-14T17:10:00.000-05:00

Every so often, freeze in midsentence and stare off into space for several minutes. After a long, awkward silence, resume your sentence and proceed normally.

This is from that teacher's daily calendar my mother gave to me for Christmas. I'm off to class now; I'll have to try it out tonight!

Midterms

2006-03-09T13:09:00.000-05:00

I haven't updated since before my uncle's funeral - I know.

The two days I was gone have left me so far behind and I've been struggling to make up those 16 hours ever since. Anyway, it's midterms now, so I'm supposed to be swamped with grading.

I'll update again when I'm able to keep my head above water for a little while! I have Oscars comments to make, anyway.

February 21

2006-02-22T08:44:00.000-05:00

My Uncle Paul died yesterday. I hadn't seen in him in a very long time, but I have good memories of him when we vacationed on the Cape. He's my mother's brother - 1 of her 5 brothers. My brother was named after him. Her other 4 brothers are still alive. All but the youngest of the siblings are in their 70s. The oldest might even be 80- I'm not sure.

Uncle Paul is the first to die.

Don't Be a Hater

2006-02-20T11:02:00.000-05:00

There have been a slew of articles lately proclaiming that the Blog Days are coming to an end.

The Financial Times decries the obsolescence of blogging , and even Slate, one of my favorite blogs, predicts that the end is nigh.

Then there's William Safire in the NY Times, complaining that bloggers have stolen the language of literati. Excuse me, are you really compaing about words being stolen, Safire? I mean, come on! You write in English, don't you? Where do you think all these words came from? Gifts from abroad?

Anyway, whatever.

I like blogs. I like being on the web. I like reading different stuff that hasn't been cranked through some media conglomerate's idea of what is news.

Sure, I read the NY Times every day, and thanks to RSS feeds, I also read the top stories from the Chicago Tribune, CNN, Reuters, BBC, The Guardian, and Washington Post, among others. However, I also read some less corporate news blogs, likeDaily Kos, Tom Paine, Slate, and Cursor for news, as well as about 20 other blog sites encompassing a variety of subjects such as science, technology, education, and entertainment.

I think that if I had to rely on JUST the NY Times, or just watching my local news affiliate on TV, I'd know a fraction of what's going on today.

I love the Internet. It's democracy in it's purest form (as long as you have computer access, that is).

Another Blog to Check

2006-02-19T19:59:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. You're being a good friend and reading my blog - I shouldn't push it, right?

Well, I have to a little. R has finally started HER OWN BLOG, writing about her observations of St. Kitts.

It's called Straight to de Soul; she picked the title because apparently she saw a rum advertisement with the same slogan, and it spoke to her. The URL is lifeinstkitts.blogspot.com, so bookmark it now.

She's only written a few posts so far, but be sure to visit her site and support her.

I, of course, will be giving each post a thorough grammar check for your reading pleasure.

Once I Was Here

2006-02-18T12:31:00.000-05:00

Once I was here, in Bodrum, Turkey, on the Datka Peninsula.

I hope one day I can return because yeah, it really is this beautiful.

Redecorating

2006-02-18T11:44:00.000-05:00

Today I changed the background color to this beautiful blue.

Winter is still upon us in Portland, and that old light blue background looked too much like the Portland skies.

I want to be in a place where the sky is this color! St. Kitts, maybe?

Anyway, hope you like the new color. Change is good, right?

I used to have a silk blazer this color - maybe about 13 years ago when I worked at Kemper - but it mysteriously disappeared out my closet. My sister has never owned up to it, but I know it was her. What did you do with that blazer, Colleen?

Hanging out with Charlie

2006-02-16T22:46:00.000-05:00

My sister complained that I don't have enough pictures of her dog on here, so here's another. I have no idea why he's wearing a hanger around his neck. . . . It is cute, though, how puppies get into stuff!

Cheney and His Bad Day

2006-02-16T08:54:00.000-05:00

Cheney finally took responsibility for the shooting of 78-year-old lawyer Harry Whittington.

"The image of (Harry) falling is something I'll never be able get out of my mind…It was one of the worst days of my life, at that moment."

Here's my question, Mr. Veep: What about the image of the 2271 Americans fallen over in Iraq and the approximately 30 thousand fallen Iraqis - all of whom have fallen based on your faulty intelligence? I'd think that THAT might be something you can't get out of your mind.

I know I can't.

Happy Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T11:53:00.000-05:00

Thanks for reading!

Cheney Jokes

2006-02-14T10:24:00.000-05:00

Did you catch the Jon Stewart last night?

"Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."

To see what the other late night shows did with the Cheney shooting, click here, and check out Wonkette, too, as they did some great stuff with this. Actually, make sure you go to the home page - this is just one of many good jokes about the shooting on Wonkette.

Olympic Fever

2006-02-14T09:43:00.000-05:00

See Lars Bystoel.

See Lars Bystoel jump.

See Lars Bystoel win gold medal.

I like to watch the Olympics. Really, I do.

However, it makes me very aware that I have never really focused on anything.

Fever

2006-02-12T12:38:00.000-05:00

My temp is down to 99.8 today, but it's been up and over the 100F mark for the last two days. Hopefully my brain didn't get too fried.

Needless to say, I feel lousy, crummy, wretched.

I've got the full blown flu: slightly nauseated, achy, congested, dizzy, feverish with sweats and chills, loss of appetite (moi? then you know I'm really sick), runny noise, hacking cough.

It has been a truly unpleasant last couple of days, and though I would surely benefit from a 3rd day in bed, I need to do a bunch of online grading of stuff I've promised to return.

So I'm off. I'll post more when I'm back to my old self.

By the way, R in St. Kitts has bronchitis, and she's on antibiotics. I don't think I caught this from her over Skype (more likely the virus was passed into me on a student paper), but it's been lovely to have someone to share my aches and pains with over the phone.

Huh?

2006-02-12T12:35:00.000-05:00

Found this on Boing Boing today:

I don't claim to understand this; I just thought it was bizarre and somewhat thought provoking, but that could be because I am still feverish today.

Happy Birthday!

2006-02-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

I just realized that Mind Boggling Trivia of Gritty Portland's 1st birthday flew by unnoticed on January 29.

Thanks to everyone who has been a regular reader for the last year, all 15 of you!

I'm going to celebrate by running to the bank, going to the PO, and maybe doing a load of laundry!

Yahoo!

Oh, and Happy Belated Birthday to Pat and DA, who both had actual cake-filled celebrations on February 7!

No One Is Cuter

2006-02-08T08:17:00.000-05:00

Oh, Charlie! How did you get so cute?

Mr. Potatohead?

2006-02-07T12:46:00.000-05:00

R and I love Mr. Potatohead, as our friends all know, so imagine how tickled I was to find these:

R2PotaTOO

Darth Tater

Spud Trooper

I was alerted to the wonderful existence of these Star Wars/Potato Hybrid gems by a post on the fabulous Boing Boing.

R Is Online

2006-02-07T11:06:00.000-05:00

She's been in the Caribbean a month, but it wasn't until this morning that R was able to get hooked up on the web. The good folks from cable and wireless finally made it out to her place and fixed whatever problem has been plaguing her for the past month! So if you want to talk to her but don't want a crazy phone bill, now is the time to download Skype, sign up for a free account, and get chatting!

Moisturize!

2006-02-07T09:26:00.000-05:00

People who have been to my house can attest to the fact that I have a sign on the fridge that says Guide to Good Living:

1. Exercise daily
2. Take Supplements & Vitamins
3. Love my animals
4. Moisturize
5. Stretch
6. Compliment Someone
7. Stay in Touch
8. Learn Something New
9. Have a good meal

These were last 2005's NY Resolutions. You'll notice that #4 is a call to moisturize, and while I did a good job of remembering to slab on the lotion each night before bed in 2005, this year I've upped the anti.

Lately, I've been conducting a few experiments on myself when it comes to different products, trying to see if the claims on the packaging are true.

I've been doing this with lotion, specifically. I have a bottle of Vasline for Healthy Hands, and the bottle says that the product will

immediately hydrate skin

in 2 weeks, strengthen nails and cuticles

in 4 weeks, diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

I'm 36, so I'm starting to get those lines, you know. It also says that for best results, "use regularly, several times per day."

How many times is several? 4? 7? 18?

Anyway, ask anyone who's been hanging out with me lately - I am constantly moisturizing my hands. Last night I went to the movies with my friend Bethany, and I moisturized at the restaurant before the movie and then again during the movie. I also had moisturized before I left the house, and then I did again when I came home, again after walking the dogs, and finally one last time before lights out. Each night, I put on little moisture-trapping gloves and sleep with them on all night.

I've been doing this with pretty fierce intensity for about 3 weeks. No sign of little lines disappearing, either. Here's the other thing: I have a blister on my hand now (from the dog leash) that I didn't have BEFORE I started this process. Also, while I feel that the backs of my hands are definitely softer, the cuticles are drying out more quickly.

I've been equally obsessive with my feet, which I decided were looking really gnarly in December. For my feet, I'm using Earth Therapeutics Foot Repair Balm. Its label claims that it "soothes, deodorizes, and repairs dry, damaged skin."

I don't have a stinky feet issue, so I'm not caring about the deodorizing claim, and as far as soothing goes, what does that mean? Of course it feels good to put lotion on my feet. Does that fulfill the claim? It also would feel good to stick my feet in a vat of jelly, probably. Anyway, I'm more concerned with the last part - I have some rough patches on the balls of the feet, to the side of the big toes, and of course, the heels. My heels are nasty.

So I'm using the stuff after I shower and before bed (wearing special moisture-trapping socks to sleep and everything), and every time I change my socks, which happens on teaching days or during the rare times that I go out with friends. The results? Blisters. Blisters, blisters, blisters. Yes, the rough patches are softening. Yes, my feet are feeling babyish, but babies don't walk or wear shoes. I now have blisters on both heels and on the balls of each foot. What's up with that?

Could it be that all of this moisturizing is actually a bad thing? That we need the protective hardening of the skin to get through daily life unscathed?

To moisturize or not moisturize?

It seems there's a choice: ugly and unflattering dry skin or ugly and unflattering soft skin that easily blisters.

Which would you choose?

Handsome Seamus

2006-02-06T13:57:00.000-05:00

I was asking R about what the dogs look like on the island (there a bunch of loose island dogs). I sent a picture I found on the web of a stray in Trinidad and asked if the Kittitian strays looked the same. She said no, and went in search of another picture.

The next email I got was totally unrelated to island dogs. It was a picture of this champion Borzoi.

R sent it because the dog looks so much like our handsome boy, Seamus, a sled dog (which is a mix of husky for durability, border collie for the homing sense, and Borzoi/Greyhound for speed). Do you see the similarity?

Seamus is amazing, don't you think?

What do you think about this?

2006-02-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

This is February's cover of Rolling Stone:

Apology Accepted?

2006-02-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

I was made aware of this by my friend in Fbx who does the Mind Boggling Trivia of the Far North newsletter.

I found the jpg on Snopes:

Memory Stick?

2006-02-06T13:41:00.000-05:00

R found this photo somehere. . .

Something funny

2006-02-04T13:04:00.000-05:00

This was sent to me by Gina, but it's copyrighted here:

Browsing with Opera

2006-02-04T12:25:00.000-05:00

I still use Safari, which is why this page looks funky on Explorer or Netscape. I hate those browsers.

When we were last in NYC visiting our friend Hans, he asked why I was still using Safari.

"Because you told me to switch from Explorer to Safari last year."

He did. And he was right. I defer to Hans on all things techie.

"Now you need Firefox. It's so much better than Safari."

He proceeded to list a bunch of attributes that I don't remember, but I remembered that I needed to get Firefox.

Unfortunately, when we got back to Portland, I was quickly caught up in the whirlwind of the semester, with no time to install and customize a new browser. Safari would have to do for a few more months.

Now it's the beginning of a new semester, and I have some extra time on my hands, so I downloaded Firefox. I can't get it to do half the stuff Safari does, although Hans swears that it does it all. I'm waiting for further instructions from him, but in the meantime, I downloaded Opera, just for kicks.

I had read reviews about Opera years ago, about how this was the world's greatest browser. The only problem, though, was that it cost bucks. Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Safari, Mozilla - all of these can be downloaded for free. Why pay for a browser that might be a little better when perfectly good ones exist at no cost?

Opera is now available for free downloads. You can still give them money for round the clock support, but the tutorials and forum are free and seem to provide good enough help, so I'll save my $30.

So far, I'm very happy. I can't get my RSS feeds to work, but I've got a question into the forum, and hopefully they'll spout out an easy fix soon enough. If it turns out that Opera can't read my feeds, then I'll go back to Safari, at least until I hear from Hans how to make the feeds work in Firefox!

Anyway, on the Opera main page, there's a link to download Opera Mini, and the text says "Surf the entire Internet with Opera Mini - the new and revolutionary browser for nearly any mobile phone." Fine. But the picture next to the link is what bugs me.

The juxtaposition of a woman in a bikini with washboard abs and a big FREE sign sends a bad image.

How many people notice this stuff consciously? Not many, I'm sure, and while I understand that sex sells, this is saying that this is yours for the taking, folks. Bugs me lots. I like the browser; it's lovely and elegant and I feel like I'm doing something different and special. It's a more refined browser than Safari, which seemed lighter and less clunky than Explorer when I first started using it. Going back to Safari (or Firefox) now would be hard. It would be like wearing heavy work boots after frolicking around in a sexy pair of Manolos.

However, the advertising is crass and inelegant, and if Opera doesn't have the RSS feed ability that Safari has, I'll have to wear those work boots a while longer.

This Too Shall Pass

2006-02-03T17:38:00.000-05:00

When I was reading some different blogs I have bookmarked, I came across this disgusting yet intriguing photo of a pile of doggie doo with a flag bearing the President's image stuck into it.

I thought this was a somewhat brilliant and socially conscious idea, and I was curious as to the origins, so I Googled "Bush poo," and found the leader in what appears to be a worldwide movement.

Instructions on how to make your own flags can be found here, too!

Fascism, Anyone?

2006-02-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

I listen to Randi Rhodes, the radio talk show host, on Air America every day that I'm in the car between 3pm - 7pm. She's smart, provocative, and hysterical in her breakdowns of what's going on at Capitol Hill. I also subscribe to her newsletter, and today she sent a diatribe about fascism.

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, wrote an article in 2003 for Free Inquiry (Vol. 23. No. 2), a journal put out by the Council of Secular Humanism. In the article, Britt examines several fascist regimes, including that of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), and Pinochet (Chile). You can read the entire article here, but this is the abbreviated version of 14 defining characteristics of fascism common to each that I found in my Inbox this morning:

Here it is:

Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

I love it. It's like a David Letterman Top 10 List for Things America Has in Common with Fascist Regimes.

Now for a scoop of irony!

In doing a little research on Britt, I found that his background lies in the executive offices of coorporate America, specifically in mega-companies like Xerox, Exxon and Allied Chemical. He found these companies to be ethical, and he says that "Capitalism works well in creating prosperity for the most people and providing them the most freedom."

Does anyone else find that difficult to swallow?

State of the Union comments

2006-02-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

Ugh.

That's my main comment. I'm too sick too form words.

In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country. The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child, and job skills that bring upward mobility, and more opportunities to own a home and start a business.

This part really grossed me out. He spent two sentences talking about Katrina (not nearly enough in my opinion, and notice how he says "felt," not "been"), and then he moved right on to how we need to better educate the people there. Did you know that hurricanes looked at the average level of education of a city before picking a place to hit? I did not. Nor did I know that upwardly mobile folk are safe from hurricanes or other natural disasters.

He then went on to talk about the AIDS problem in America and how 50% of everyone in America with AIDS is black. It's not so much what he says here, it's the order he put things together, asking people to make associations. I teach writing; I know about these things. They are planned and conscious.

My Translation:

They are dumb, poor, and dying.

He didn't talk about rebuilding.

Did anyone else hear what I did? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sticking with Kanye West's original statement at the NBC fundraiser after the hurricane.

Anyway, it grossed me out, but I realize that I have an inability to take what he says at face value, especially when he speaks so smoothly. There weren't many grammatical gaffes during the speech, which means it was well practiced, and not off the cuff. Don't tell me that the speechwriters were not aware of the sequiturs.

Another thing that had me gagging on my popcorn was the "addicted to oil" bit. If he really believes we're addicted to oil, then why has he been so pro drilling in ANWR? People who are trying to help heroine addicts don't do so by trying to find another dealer, do they? No, they give them methadone.

What's the methadone for oil? Alternative energy sources. Let's hear about that, Mr. Prez.

What a joke.

Nauseating!

2006-01-31T21:28:00.000-05:00

Listening to the State of the Union Address.

It's horrifying. Stay tuned for my take tomorrow. Excuse me while I gag.

American Flatbread

2006-01-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

Today I heated up some frozen pizza for lunch because on nights that I teach, I sometimes get too flustered to cook.

What I had was American Flatbread, a natural pizza baked ina wood-fired earthen oven. We have one of the company's restaurants here in Portland, and when I want pizza, that's where I go.

Anyway, this was my first time getting one of their frozen pizzas, and I wanted to tell you about the cooking instructions on the box. They give normal ones for using an oven (Coventional Method), but then there is the Neolithic Method:

Heat a flat rock with a wood or charcoal fire (or light your grill). Push fire, coals, and ash to one side and place flatbread on hot rock (or grill) for 5-8 minutes. Rotate side facing fire several times to heat evenly. Remove from heat, slicke, serve & enjoy.

I used the conventional method, and it was really good.

Time Warner Cable in Maine

2006-01-31T10:22:00.000-05:00

Before R left for the Caribbean, we investigated what it was going to cost to talk long distance.

We currently have a great plan from Time Warner Cable - $39.95 a month for unlimited long distance in the US and Canada - as many of our friends around the country know.

However, St. Kitts is a foreign country, so we called to find out the price.

$.49 a minute.

Isn't that insane? Even calling Germany, which is much farther away, is only $.08 a minute. I guess it has more to do with infrastructure, though, and less to do with distance.

When we got that price quote, we quickly went online to Speedy Pin, which is a terrific site with super cheap calling cards. We were disheartened to find that no matter what, talk isn't cheap when it's someone in St. Kitts you want to talk to.

So the first phone bill came on Friday, and I was having a mild freak out before I opened it. We talk every day. Usually for about 20-40 minutes. Ugh. This was going to be a doozy.

I opened the bill, and low and behold, nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

In fact, my bill was $30 lower than normal because of a promotion I signed up for in the fall through my school that I had completely forgotten about.

I knew it couldn't be right, so I logged onto the website, and went to my account page that would show me all of my calls.

There, under unbilled charges, were $17 of calls to St. Kitts. Just $17. Under $20.

Hmmm. I was suspicious.

I noticed two things:

First, the calls all took place between January 16-January 20

Second, the calls were all to R's landline, not her cell.

The bill date ended January 20. R didn't get her landline working until January 16.

I had been calling the cell phone since January 5, when she got it. Between January 2-5, I had been calling her friend's cell phone, yet none of these calls were showing up online.

R said to just wait - we're going to get slammed with the mother of all phone bills come February.

I let it go at that and decided to wait in dread, too.

Then, this morning, I was checking my statcounter, as I do every so often to see how many hits per day this site is getting. I also like to keep a list of the countries that people who visit my site are from. Today I saw St. Kitts for the first time, and I laughed because R is very good about checking on the blog, since it was supposed to be a dual project originally (although it has morphed into me doing 99% of everything, and she only does the occasional post). So I clicked on the St. Kitts link to find more about my visitor (I can get the time visited, where the visitor came from, the browser used, screen resolution, IP address, etc.), and it said that this person had only visited for 1 minute and 14 seconds. Now that is strange - there is no way she could have read everything in under two minutes. I clicked back to see if there were more visits from St. Kitts that I missed, and I noticed that there was one for Antigua/Barbuda just 3 hours earlier. Hmmm.

Another thing that I noticed that while it indicated the visitor was in St. Kitts, the ISP was in Miami, Florida.

Huh? My mind started immediately thinking about the phone bill and the fact that the cell phone charges weren't showing up. The company that provides her with the cell phone is also the company that does her Internet.

At 8:30 am, she'd be on campus. That is the time of the Antigua/Barbuda visitor, who has the exact same browser version and screen resolution as R. I need to ask R if she remembers checking the blog from school Sunday morning. That's the only way to clear this up. I also think that it was R because I can check the referring link (the site someone came from), and if it says No Referring Link, that means that the person knew the URL or had it bookmarked, usually indicating I know the person or it's a regular reader. I don't have any regular readers in Antigua or Barbuda; in fact, I've never had a visitor from anywhere in the Caribbean before except for some island off the coast of Venezuela.

So I called Time Warned Cable. I got Marjorie, a nice lady, who happens to be from Park Ridge, IL, near where I grew up. She mentioned this when she noted a call to Libertyville, IL, on my transcript. She was looking at my transcript of January phone calls because I wanted to see if more showed up for her than what I was seeing online. TWC has no record of me calling R's cell phone at all for the month of January. Only the land line. It doesn't show up under international or domestic charges. I felt dumb complaining; it's not that I want an exorbitant phone bill or anything. I just want to be prepared.

I asked if it was a possiblity that it's a US number with a St. Kitts area code.
Marjorie seemed perplexed.

I asked if that's why maybe R's mom in Germany couldn't call the cell phone (she wasn't using the US pre-dial numbers).
Again, Marjorie didn't know.

I asked if it were possible that these phone calls would later turn up in a bill down the line. She said she no. I asked if it was possible. Again, she said no. She also said that I shouldn't worry.

Uh...ok. I re-explained my theory about the ISP being in Florida. She said it was possible, but the calls weren't showing up anywhere.

We eneded the phone call with her asking me if I'm sure that I called that number from this line.

Oh, I'm pretty sure! R and I have already had two major international fights over the phone about the forthcoming bill.

She said don't worry because according to their records, I haven't made any calls from my phone to that number. I again asked if I was going to get slammed with a bill later on, and she said no, that TWC can't charge me for calls that they have no record of. In retrospect, I should have asked her to put that in writing, but TWC has been good to me since I've been with Maine.

I'm not trying to get away with something, but why spend a bunch of money on calling cards if calling R is actually a free Florida call? That must be it.

So what do I do now? Do I relax? Or do I call with wild abandon?

What would you do?

Groundhog Day

2006-01-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Gina for finding this gem on J-Walk:

This year, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fall on the same day.

As Air America Radio pointed out, "It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

It's brilliant, and that might be why you've seen it elsewhere as it is quickly making its way around the blogosphere, including
La Voice, Code Pink, Philly Blog, Voices from Catland , and countelss others. Here's the kicker: it looks like the original quote comes from a post on Slashdot last year when the two events were actually on the same day.

The State of Union is tomorrow, and Groundhog Day is February 2.

Best Blonde Joke Ever

2006-01-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

I'm not a huge fan of email jokes, but earlier I saw the best blonde joke ever on Thought Torrent, and I had to share it with you.

Teaching

2006-01-30T09:51:00.000-05:00

School is going really well so far. I have some terrific students, and my online classes are not filled to the brim, which means I'll have more time to spend on each student.

I'm trying out some new technologies this semester. For the Maine classes, I'm incorporating WebCT, which is a platform similar to Blackboard but not as nice. On there, I can keep all the course materials, such as handouts and quizzes. I'm using it as an accessible storage box for students and nothing else. Usually when the typical student misses a class, he or she returns the following week completely unprepared because he or she didn't know what to do. Even though I give them a syllabus at the beginning of the semester with a schedule of the readings and assignments, and even though I give all writing assignments out weeks in advance to avoid this problem, it still happens. With WebCT, the excuse "I didn't know what was due" is effectively taken away. Students who miss a class can log in, check the syllabus and find any missed assignments, quizzes or handouts.

Of course I am not naive enough to think I'll really be eliminating all the excuses. This semester, it will be "I couldn't log into the site because my computer crashed."

When students don't want to do something, they aren't going to do it, no matter how easy I try and make it for them.

For my online classes, I'm introducing podcast lectures. This way, the students will be able to hear my voice, and maybe the natural benevolence of my dulcet tones will calm their fears of writing. Yeah, right. Hopefully, though it will better personalize the student-teacher connection. Also, I'm going to try out podcast grading, giving students an mp3 file of oral feedback. I'll be able to explain comments better in less time, so it should be a beneficial change for both students and me.

It's snowing again

2006-01-30T09:31:00.000-05:00

Mother Nature is going through some severe mood swings, if the weather in Portland is any indication.

We've gone from beautiful spring-like weather in the 50s to no-visibility blizzards to ice pellets to fog, sleet, rain, and snow.

All in a matter of days. It's kind of cool in a way, but my foyer is sure crowded as I have out about 5 different styles of coats and footwear ready to be donned depending on what I see out the window.

I thought it was a global warming thing, but my friends here say it has always been like that, and the constant variation has to do with being on the coast.

I'm not complaining; the variety in conditions is enjoyable. In Fairbanks, there's not much variety. From friends and students I've heart that the -40s and -50s of last week are giving way to the -30s this week, but it's still DAMN COLD! For once I can safely say I'd rather be in Maine, if for no other reason than the weather.

What a Wookie!

2006-01-30T09:28:00.000-05:00

If you're a Star Wars fan, then you'll for sure want to check out this blog I just found out about this morning.

The link was sent to me by our friend Hans in Norway, a big Star Wars fan. In fact, his DJ name is Hans Solo.

Get it?

Swimming

2006-01-29T16:16:00.000-05:00

The pool at the Frigate Bay Resort (from which R lives less than 5 minutes) is free for use by all the faculty at the school. They just have to show their picture id. She goes swimming here every day. Jealous? Yeah, me, too!

The little shack at the end is a bar IN THE POOL. It's in the water. My question is this: Where do you keep your money?

Favorite Movies

2006-01-29T15:14:00.000-05:00

Not that I don't have anything else to do, but I spent too much time making this list of favorite movies not to post it. The amount of musicals is huge. I was somewhat surprised by that. There are many more movies that I love, but I wasn't willing to give more of my life towards the senseless task.

I did this at Hot Free Layouts, which I discovered when I was investigating My Space, which 2 friends in 3 days have told me about.

St. Kitts Update

2006-01-28T14:17:00.000-05:00

I can't imagine sitting on my porch and having a male monkey pull back his gums and show me his fangs, but apparently a male monkey did just this to R yesterday, as his female monkey sat in a nearby tree in the yard having some breakfast.

R retreated into the house. Wise move, I say.

Still, it's pretty cool that she has monkeys that come eat in her yard (These are not her pics; I found them on Google Image search, where I find most of the pics for this blog).

She keeps talking about little lizards on the porch and how cute they are. I did a Google Image search for St. Kitts and lizard, and found this guy. Yikes. Not so cute, eh? Not so little, either.

Maybe once you get to know them, and once you get to appreciate how they deal with the mosquitoes (R sleeps under mosquito netting, by the way), you don't mind having them around. Can't imagine what Paco or Gamma or Seamus will think, though. Lunch?

Goats and their Birds

2006-01-28T13:56:00.000-05:00

If you ask me, this goat seems to be loving his bird.

R says that whenever you see these white egrets on this island, there is sure to be a herd of cows or goats nearby.

Apparently, they hang out together, and the goats eat the bugs off the larger animal. And by the look of the goat's expression, friendship ensues, perhaps.

R is under the impression that a bird sticks with the same host animal, day after day. Sweet, huh?

No Cuba Visit for Me!

2006-01-28T13:40:00.000-05:00

This little fuzzball of sweetness is the Cuban Tody, and earlier today when R and I were Skypeing, we came across his picture and fell in love. He's a teeny little bird, smaller than your first, who is completely insectivorous and he nests in the ground. How cute is that? Some brief research on the web told us that he's only found in Cuba, but he has 4 different types of Caribbean cousins, including the Jamaican Tody and the Puerto Rican Tody, neither not quite as cute as Mr. Cuban Tody. The others have the green and the red, but only the Cuban Tody has the splash of pink, making him absolutely the cutest little bird ever, don't you think?

"See? This is why we have to visit Cuba!"

I told R I don't think as an American that I can, that it's illegal for me, unfortunately.

She said that I should look into it, that maybe it won't matter if I'm visiting from a country other than the US. That didn't make much sense to me, though, as my passport is still US no matter my trip origin.

Anyway, I looked it up, and found this horrifying article about the woman who was fined over $7500 for buying $18 worth of souvenirs during a day trip to Cuba. So it's legal for me to go to Cuba, but illegal for me to spend any money there (including visa fees). Not loving our government. Not feeling like I live in the land of the free. Not feeling like I have freedom of anything these days. Will probably have FBI wiretap because of this blogpost.

Are there other places I cannot go?

I just want to see a Cuban Tody.

Updates!

2006-01-21T15:17:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I last updated the blog, so here goes!

R is settling nicely in the Caribe. She is the proud owner of a 1990 Toyota Corolla. It's old, but it drives great. She no longer has to bum rides from her colleagues, and is once again in the driver's seat of her destiny. Moreover, it's an automatic, which is a great relief to me, as I was not relishing learning to drive a stick at the same time I'd be learning to drive on the other side of the road!

She likes the school, the island and the people. She seems very at peace.

She has a cell phone and a landline - email me if you want her numbers! Soon she will have internet at home and you can Skype her to your hearts content. While she was at school last week, we Skyped and played Internet Scrabble simultaneously. It was the next best thing to being in the same room!

My classes all started this past week. Everything is going really well, and I'm excited about the new semester.

So far, I'm keeping up with the New Years resolutions, so we'll see how long that lasts.

Maine Lobster?

2006-01-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

R said her skin resembles this now.

Of course, she did travel to the Caribbean without sunblock. Duh.

Today she is on a day long catamaran cruise with the school. Hopefully she has found some sunblock in the meantime!

Everyone has been emailing asking how she is liking it so far, so I thought I'd do a general post here.

She loves it.

The island is so beautiful, the people she's met are really friendly, and she thinks that she'll like her job quite a bit. She lives in a really beautiful area called Frigate Bay where all the resorts are. Classes start on Monday, so she will be busy preparing this weekend. In a recent email, she said, "The sun is glorious and I saw lots of awesome birds today and yesterday. The ecologist's heart is frolicking."

At the grocery store, she found canned octopus, which she apparently loves, and she bought 10 cans. I hope they sell other things to eat there because I will not eat octopus, canned or not!

Ramen is expensive there - twice as much as in Maine! It's $.25 for a single pack! She said food in general is twice as much or three times as much what we pay for here. She said it's like buying all organic, except it isn't organic. She hasn't found anything organic there yet.

Driving on the other side of the road has been uneventful, which is a good thing, but she is having difficulty finding the turn signal, as it is located where the windshield wipers would be on an American car, and vice versa. She says that every time she makes a turn, she cleans the windows, too. The school procured her a rental car for the first few days, but she'll need to buy a car of her own ASAP. Apparently, they are all beaters and exorbitantly expensive ($3k - $7k for a dilapidated, rusted-out, fender-bended, run-down, ripped-seats with the stuffing showing, stained-interior, junkyard-looking vehicle from the early 90s). Of course, it is cheaper to buy a used car than to pay the VAT tax on an imported new car, so we'll make do. I just told her to make sure she finds a car that run, has working seatbelts, a steering wheel, and 4 tires. Everything after that is considered a luxury, apparently. She wants something with 4-wheel drive, too, because evidently there are Alaska-style dirt roads on the islands that one needs to be able to navigate if one wants to ever get off the beaten path and do some hiking, which we most definitely do.

The weather today is 84 and clear, as it is most every day, I hear.

For those of you anxious to Skype her, you'll have to wait a bit longer. She won't have an Internet connection for the next two weeks. She does have a cell phone now, but the calling rates to the island are higher for the cell phone than they are for a land line for some reason, and she'll get the land line with the cell phone. Two weeks is fast, from what I gather. Another couple had to wait four months. The calling rates are absurd. It costs about $.49 to call her cell, so we aren't doing much talking as you can imagine. She emails from school, but Skype is not allowed on campus (something to do with bandwidth, I believe).

In a few weeks, she should be settled and ready for visitors. Who will be the first to go? Flights are $350 from Boston right now!

If You Teach School. . .

2006-01-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

"You annoy your family, friends and perfect strangers by correcting their grammar."

How true is that?

This is today's entry on a page-a-day calendar that my mother gave me for Christmas, called "Tips for Teachers," filled with tips, inspirational quotes, and words of wisdom for educators.

I do my best to proof the blog (there's no spell check option), and I do a good job, but every once in a while I'll reread something from weeks ago, and find a typo, and I freak out! R (as English is her 2nd language) is no longer aloud to post without sending it through me first. I know, I know. I'm a b*tch.

2006: Phase I

2006-01-02T06:15:00.000-05:00

I dropped R off at the airport earlier this morning. The great thing about early morning flights is that you're too tired to be emotional about anything, which makes stuff like this easier.

We had a terrific holiday season, and we're both looking forward to this next step in our lives, although this first year will have trials of the intercontinental variety. At least we're in the same time zone. That will make things easier.

We found an online Scrabble site, and we tested it while using Skype, so we think that our exciting nightlife might not have to change too much despite the 1700 miles between us, as we can virtually play Scrabble at 10 pm every night as normal. From what we can gather, phone rates are outrageous. Even SpeedyPin, the cheapest phone cards available, can't give us anything lower than $0.55/minute. Ouch! For those of you who want to talk to R for free (or at all), download Skype today!

We didn't really do the gift thing over the holidays, as we decided we didn't want anything else to pack and ship, so we pooled what we would have spent on gifts and went out to eat a few times. It was fun. I am quite the sushi connoisseur now, eating things like unagi (eel) and sashimi (raw fish, no rice). Mind you, this was stuff that made me want to barf just a year ago. Unfortunately, when you eat more energy than you spend, you pack on the pounds, and this is true even with sushi. The weather has been rainy and generally unpleasant, and we had planned to do several winter hikes before her departure, but Mother Nature didn't make that possible.

That brings me to my next topic:

New Year's Resolutions

On New Year's Eve, our friend Garrick was asking everyone about NY resolutions. I was surprised to hear that most of our friends don't put much stock into them. I, on the other hand, am a resolution junkie. I think that they are the greatest thing in the world if one wants to really make a change. Sure, they can be predictable, but that just means that some struggles in life are more common than others. I'll share ours with you.

1. Lose Winter Weight before Winter Ends

This one falls under the "predictable" category. Anyone who saw us over the summer or fall knows that we were looking slim and trim and toned. However, when times got really tough in the financial arena, we had to say goodbye to our $230 monthly bill to our yoga studio. We had rationalized spending the money for it for so long, arguing that by staying healthy we were saving money down the road in preventing illness. However, after one 3 week Ramen noodle bout, we cracked! And we said goodbye to yoga, along with Netflix, bottled water, store-bought bread, and organic vegetables (we stayed with organic meat all the way b/c that also involves humane animal treatment). In the early fall, the weather was great and we were able to take long walks and still go on hikes, but as the semester progressed, so did my grading workload, and time was as scarce as cash! We still maintained our waistlines, though, because we were fairly active (running here and there and not being able to afford to go out to eat. However, once the job offer came, we went a little overboard. I guess you could say that we over-indulged. Now it needs to come off again. Because my knees got so messed up this year while doing yoga (I don't blame yoga, but I'm not anxious to find a reason to), I'm not going to go back to the studio. My plan is simple: keep healthy eating habits, walk 4 miles a day with one of the dogs around the back cove, daily stretching and weight training routine, and my favorite - intermittent dance breaks (crank the stereo 4 times a day and dance for 10 minutes. Raf is unsure what her routine will be (although we are going to do one of the dance breaks together over Skype), but she hopes it includes snorkeling, beach walking, and volcano climbing.

2. QUIT SMOKING

This is for R. She doesn't know it's a resolution yet, but she will when she reads this! She needs to quit. She's cut down dramatically, but she needs to stop altogether. It's gross. It stinks. It's costly. It looks stupid. It causes wrinkles and stained teeth. It can lead to cancer and stroke and heart disease and asthma. It's socially un-hip. It does not make one live longer. It does not make one more likeable. It does not increase intelligence. It does not improve memory. It does not make one more productive. It does not make one thinner. It does not lead to wealth and fortune. It has no redeeming qualities. Please quit, R!

3. Continuing Education Syllabus

This one if more for me than R, although she does it in her own way. I did this one last year, and it was a great success. I wrote a year-long syllabus to help me relearn (or in some cases, just learn) world history. I didn't stick to the syllabus I created for myself, but I stuck to the basic plan. Originally, I was focusing on eras and places all over the boards. Eventually, I began to focus on the last 100 years in Latin America, which is funny because my focus shifted even before R applied for the West Indies gig. I just finished a book on Venezueala before Christmas, in fact. So I am going to do a repeat of this resolution, and I'll try to remember that flexibility is a good thing. One thing I want to learn more about this year is the Caribbean (that's a no-brainer), and I want to continue studying marine biology, specificially tidal zone ecology. I am also renewing my committment to German and Italian, which was going very strong in 2004, but waned in 2005.

4. Learn New Skills

This year, I want to learn Dreamweaver and Final Draft and Flash. We both want to learn Final Cut Pro. I want to explore the boundaries of podcasting, especially in relation to my teaching. I want to design better web pages.

5. Make Revision and Editing a Priority

We've gotten pretty good at being prolific when it comes to art and writing, but now we need to get better at the next stage: getting it ready to send out.

6. Send Out at Least One Piece a Month

This can be plays, scripts, query letters, articles, academic abstracts, animation shorts, whatever. I'm sending out a play today, so January is taken care of, at least. Raf did one yesterday for January, so she's good to go, too. I need to scour the web for deadlines and submissions, and line up projects for the rest of the year.

7. Moisturize and Find Other Ways to Slow the Ageing Process

This is the year we both turned gray. It is disgruntling. R is light, so her hair dyes nicely, but my hair doesn't. I'm salt and pepper, even after dyeing. It's time for drastic measures. Perhaps henna? It's also time to deal with the sad fact that the texture of my hair has changed with age, and there's no reason to keep it long anymore. Alas. One needs to deal with these realities.

8. Stop Biting My Nails

This has been on the list every year since I was old enough to make resolutions (1976?). Sometimes I have periods of fantastic success (1992-1994; June-August 2005), but mainly I am a biter. So is R. It's gross. It looks stupid. No redeeming qualities. Time to quit. This could be the year. I'm going to treat myself to a manicure this week to help me get started.

9. Continue with the Bread Baking

...and other money-saving techniques. We won't be broke anymore, but maintaining two households will be pricey, so now is not the time to splurge. Also, I enjoyed many of the cost-efficient habits we developed, as many were also ecologically sound. However, NO MORE RAMEN! (Unless I really have a craving for it.)

10. Be a Better Human Being

Like #8, this goes on the list every year, and like anyone else, sometimes I do better than other times. Of course, if this weren't the ultimate noble goal of all of us, then there would be no reason for writing resolutions out every January, would there?

What are your resolutions, gentle reader? Please post them here and inspire us all!

A Very Gogoshire Christmas Podcast

2005-12-23T16:40:00.000-05:00

We are so cool. No, really. We are.

When I was little, my grandfather used to sing songs and tell stories to us, and when we moved from Massachusetts to Chicago, he sent us cassette tapes of songs and stories, and we'd flip the tape and record songs on the other side and mail it back to him.

Of course, the cassette has gone the way of the 8-track, and the CD is rapidly following. We thought it would be really cool to make an audio Xmas card, recording it digitally on our computer, and spamming all of our friends with our audio cards. It was not as easy as we thought it would be - the 15 minute card we made was HUGE (about 250MB), and we only know about 2 people who could handle a file that size via email, so we had to rethink everything.

This morning, I thought that there must be a free or at least cheap place to store audio files on the web. After all, I use Flickr to store my photos for the blog, and I don't pay anything for that. We found Audioblog, owned by Google, who also owns Blogger, which hosts this blog for free. Audioblog isn't free, but it's cheap - just $5 a month for 100MB of storage.

We've been working on this all week. We did most of the recording over the weekend, and the editing process began. We were playing around with several softwares, including Garageband, Audacity, and iMovie. The final MP3 is 16MB - quite a decrease from the whopping 246MB monster we orignially compressed, but still too big to send through email. Every time we thought we were done, we'd listen to the whopper, and we weren't happy - something had gone haywire with the sound, or we had missed something in the edits, so we kept working and working and working on it, until today iMovie crashed on me about 4 times and I had a momentary meltdown. We decided it was going out today NO MATTER WHAT, so here it is, flaws and all.

We used Audacity to create most of the segments, then we converted them into WAV files, imported them into iTunes, converted them into MP3s (which are much smaller), and imported all of the MP3s into iMovie for editing and adding background music and effects. Once we finished the iMovie production part, we exported it as a Quicktime AIF file (humongously big!), and then imported that back into iTunes, where we converted it to an MP3, which we've uploaded to Audioblog, and you can download here and enjoy.

We'd love your comments. This is our first attempt, and while it sounds NPR-perfect in iMovie, a good deal of the sound formatting was lost during the AIF conversion, though we don't understand why. There are some really bad volume fluctuations that I fixed in the editing process that have resurfaced - for those of you who have heard me DJ, you know that I know how to mix and fade, so please know when you hear crazy volume shifts that we're aware of the problem. The problem with being cutting edge sometimes is that there aren't too many people who can tell you what went wrong, and we just aren't techie enough to figure it out, but we'll get there. Anyway, we hope that the superior content overrides the unpleasantness of the sound quality!

Hoping you all have a terrific holiday!

Click on the play button to hear our podcast!

X-Files Alive and Well

2005-12-19T20:10:00.000-05:00

Have you ever asked yourself what on earth has happened to SARS and why it is that ASIA has been the center of origin for SARS and birdflu? If you have not asked any of these questions, don't fret. The Southend, the student voice of Wayne State University, has asked the question and is ready to give the topic an explorative whirl.

Alaskan Fairy Tale

2005-12-16T20:53:00.000-05:00

ONCE there was a senator from Alaska that had to go and speak to the President, and in order to make himself appear important, he said to him, "I have the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and when you drill, it you will find all the black gold in the world."

The President said to the senator, "That is a resource which pleases me well. If your Arctic Wildlife Refuge is as rich as you make it to be, let me drill it and I will exploit it."

For many a year, twenty-five to be exact, the senator did his best to get the President the promised gift. But year after year passed by without success, until one day in 2005 when the senator from Alaska had an idea that pleased him mightily. That night many a visitor reported seeing a strange scene up there on CAPITOL HILL, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night. There in front of a big house, a fire was burning, and round about the fire, quite a ridiculous little man was jumping. He hopped upon one leg, and shouted -

Today I fake, tomorrow brew,
I stick the exploration bill for drilling
to my military billing
And without much ado
I'll finally have me this important
bill go through.
I will it, and I'll drill it.

On the day of the important vote in 2005, the little man came in, and asked his republican senators, "What is YOUR vote?" At first they said, maybe, then probably, and then somewhere from within the crowd, one heard loud and clear the awful word “FILIBUSTER" being said. Now that word made the little man very mad.

"The democrats have told you that! The democrats have told you that," cried the little man, and in his anger, he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in rage, he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.

One can only wish that fairy tales do come true.

Nanook in BIG TROUBLE

2005-12-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

Polar bears + seals + walruss depend on sea ice
climate change = changing sea ice
_________________________
changing sea ice = ?

After you have solved the ClimateChange equation come up with your own example of CC-Math made simple.

It's fun and it's real.
:> The other cool guys from the Antarctic:>

Let it Snow!

2005-12-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

We're getting dumped on today to the tune of 6-10 inches. The school I teach at closed down (surprise, surprise), and I'm thrilled as I have plenty of online grading to keep me busy.

It's our first official snow of the winter - the dusting we received Thanksgiving morn was gone by dinner.

During the morning dog walk, we couldn't help but notice how happy Gamma Ray and Seamus were as they romped in the snow. One must ask herself if it's right to take these husky mutts to the Caribbean. They love playing on the beach, too, but they seem to like rolling in the snow even more.

EH for the Neighbors in the North

2005-12-08T19:43:00.000-05:00

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin: "To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say this: there is such a thing as a global conscience.... And now is the time to listen to it."

HAPPY ST. NIKOLAUS from MAINE LAND

2005-12-06T16:05:00.000-05:00

WE HOPE EVERYBODY GOT SOMETHING IN THEIR SOCK, SHOE, AND BURLAP BAG.

"Many small voices can make a loud noise… " Sheila Watt Cloutier, Inuit Circumpolar Conference

2005-12-06T15:52:00.000-05:00

Roundtable: Building Connections between the Arctic and Small Island Developing States

Representatives of Arctic Indigenous Peoples, the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will take part in an Arctic Day roundtable to deliver a strong message: as the Arctic warms up and ice melts, many cultures and indeed entire countries are threatened with inundation.

The roundtable launches a new project to support the efforts of people in the Arctic and Small Island Developing States to adapt to climate change. UNEP’s Key Polar Centre GRID-Arendal will run the project.

WHEN: Tuesday 6 December 1:00 – 1:45 p.m.
WHERE: Guy Favreau Complex, Salle Mousseau
PARTICIPANTS: Klaus Töpfer
Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme
Sheila Watt Cloutier,
International Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference
Taito Nakalevu,
Climate Change Adaptation Officer, South Pacific Regional Environment Programme
MODERATOR: Karen Kraft Sloan
Canada’s Ambassador for the Environment

"Who struggles can fail. Who doesn’t struggle has already failed" Berthold Brecht

2005-12-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

"The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge." Tony Blair (UK)

The Season Is Upon Us

2005-11-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

This is my "nephew," Charlie, dressed up like a mini Santa.

Cute or Abuse? You be the judge.

I'll go with cute. Here are some dog fashions of my own:

When I put this t-shirt on Gamma, she promptly went to hide under the computer desk as I was trying to snap her photo. R reprimanded me and I took the shirt off quickly. She only wore it for 5 minutes tops.

Seamus doesn't like to go for walks in the rain, so I tried to fashion a rain coat for him out of a plastic bag. He wasn't happy and as you can imagine, it was not too effective. He looks sort of ashamed, doesn't he?

Martha Stewart: Perfect Turkey 101

2005-11-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

I've been carrying around this Martha Stewart recipe for years. The trick to the gorgeous color is soaking some cheesecloth in a mixutre of white wine and melted butter, and then laying the cheesecloth over the bird for the first few hours of cooking.

It was really good and moist.

Everyone liked it.

Everyone.

What I'm Thankful For

2005-11-26T15:51:00.000-05:00

Maybe you didn't know this.

Portland has quite a few homeless people.

Portland also has recycling centers everywhere.

In fact, Portland has a unique way of taxing for garbage pick-up. Residents are taxed by the bag. It's called the PAYT system, or Pay As You Throw. We can't just buy Hefty or Glad garbage bags - the trash collectors will only pick up the blue city-issued garbage bags that say "Portland" on them. They cost about $1 each.

How many garbage bags do you put out each week?

It adds up, right?

It's a great idea because people correlate waste with cost, which is a good thing. Also, since you also have to pay for anything you bring to the dump, people are encouraged to separate their trash and recycle everything possible. Portland has curbside recycling, so residents use it in order to curb their use of blue city bags. The recycling trucks will pick up paper, plastic (several kinds), glass, cardboard, and aluminum.

Also in Maine, we pay deposits on cans and bottles, so if you collect these and return them to a recycling center, you get that deposit back. We go every Sunday and trade our empties for cash.

Many people are lazy, however, and leave their bottles and cans on the curb for the trucks to pick up. Homeless people take carts from the grocery store and prowl Portland all day long, looking for others' empties.

This is what we saw from our window early on Thanksgiving morning.

No matter how broke we've been, it hasn't come to that, and for that, I'm thankful.

Leaving the Maine-land.

2005-11-25T13:26:00.000-05:00

Contest Announcement:

Rename the blog!

We're moving to the island of St. Kitts where Raf will be the new Assistant Professor of Histology at Ross School of Veterinary Medicine!

Hooray!

I doubt there will be anything "gritty" about it, but I'm sure there will still be Mind-Boggling Trivia to report.

R leaves right after Xmas, and I'll follow in the summer with the animals. Meanwhile, I need to figure out a way to work down there. They don't give visas out to Americans easily.

I'll be starting a new column on the blog with travel info to St. Kitts. The expensive part of visiting the island is the hotel, but now our friends and family will have access to the New GoGoshire Hotel and Beach Resort, so check for cheap flight deals!

St. Kitts

2005-11-17T12:29:00.000-05:00

R is in St. Kitts interviewing, and she says it's really beautiful.

Click here to see where she's staying. Do the photo tour and turn green with envy.

If you don't know where St. Kitts is, here's a map.

I wonder how much it would cost to travel to Venezuela. I've always wanted to go there. Brazil, too.

Here's a link to the school.

When I spoke to her last night, she had only been there for a few hours, and she had spent the entire time meeting faculty members and various deans over a dinner at an Indian restaurant in Basseterre, the city. She said that Basseterre reminds her of Nairobi, and she loved living in Nairobi. The school is on a different part of the island.

Her luggage didn't make it to the island - it was still in Puerto Rico, but she was hoping that it would arrive before this morning.

I'll speak to her again tonight and post an update tomorrow.

Agriculture and tourism are the two big industries down there. Agriculture used to lead, but the island is trying to increase the tourism industry with a focus on eco-tourism.

Natural disasters? Can you say hurricane alley? But have no fear - there's a giant mountain to climb in case of a hurricane. Oh, wait! That's a volcanoe. Hopefully there is never a volcanic eruption during a hurricane. That would be bad. Actually, they have only been hit badly by 2 hurricanes in the last 9 years, so those are good odds, I suppose.

IF she gets the job (this is still just an interview), the big trick will be getting me a work permit to live down there. If I can't get one, I don't know what will happen.

More maps:

I think the school is in the to of the southeast peninsula near the Great Salt Pond, but I'm not positive.

I'm a map fanatic, so here's another. Aren't maps so beautiful?

Here are a bunch of pictures nabbed from the web.

This is called Half Moon Bay. I wonder why?

Downtown Basseterre, the big city.

Basseterre at night.

More Basseterre.

This is the Southeast Peninsula. I think the school is located here.

Paradise, anyone?

Ready to go? I am!

Speechless.

Surf's up. Raf says there are lots of sharks, though, so I wouldn't be surfing.

This is an area where many people live. Rents are about $2K a month for a small 2 bedroom. Gulp.

This is the port for the ferry in Nevis, the other island in the country. The ferry between the 2 islands is 45 minutes, or there is a 6 minute flight. From what I have gathered in my research, several people live on one island and commute to the other for work. There are worse commutes, I'm sure.

Another view of the ferry port - though this might be the St. Kitts' side - I'm not sure.

This is Nevis.

Excuses, excuses.

2005-11-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

Normally, I'm pretty relaxed after class. I don't ever yell at students. I don't get emotional about stuff that happens in class.

I walk into the classroom, I teach a well-prepared lesson, and I go home and grade, grade, grade. That's basically my life.

Today, however, went a little differently. My students in my lit class had to turn in a take-home exam that I gave them last Monday. I cancelled class Wednesday to give them time to work on the exam, and the school was closed on Friday for Veteran's Day. Of course, there will always be those who don't show up or don't get the work done; I've been teaching since 1994, so this is old hat. Today, though, I let it get to me.

The exam I gave them was very difficult. It was based on the fiction and poetry sections of the class. There were 20 multiple choice questions, 30 short answer questions, and three 500 word essays. The exam had to be typed and stapled in order for me to accept it, and it had to be turned in at the beginning of class - no exceptions.

After class, a small crowd of students gathered around me. "Mrs. Sullivan, I need to talk to you" (they sometimes call me "Miss," "Ms." or "Mrs." as they have no clue of my marital status. I introduce myself as Maureen Sullivan). Each had a horrible, pathetic excuse for having no work to turn in or incomplete work, and I'm not sure what they wanted from me, as my class policy on the syllabus states that in case of an emergency, arrangements needed to be made before class time.
For instance, one student was hit by a drunk driver last week. He broke his shoulder and arm, yet he contacted me, explained his situation, and asked for an extension, which I happily gave.

Here are the excuses in no particular order of lameness:

1) I was out of town last week.
So? I wasn't. You had a take home exam. I left a copy in my mailbox for you to pick up. You didn't.
I didn't know.
It's your responsibility to know, though, isn't it? You have a syllabus, don't you? Why didn't you call and make alternate arrangements with me?
You don't put your phone number on the syllabus.
That's right. I don't. I have 150 students. I do put my email on there --
--But I don't have a computer.
That's fine. There are computers at the library, though, and you have a phone, right? You could have easily left a message for me at the English department.
They never answer the phone.
Did you even try to call?
No.
Did you stop by and leave a note for me?
No.
Then what would you like me to do for you? This is your problem, not mine. You have a responsibility to get all of your work when you miss class.

2)My computer lost power on Saturday and I lost everything.
Uh-huh. What would you like me to do about it?
Uhh..
I can't give you more power. I don't have another computer to give you. What do you want from me?
Well, I wanted to know what your policy is on late work.
If you look at the syllabus AND the assignment, you'll see that I clearly state that I don't take late work.
So what should I do?
About what?
About my exam.
What do you want to do about it?
Can I turn it in on Friday?
No. You can email it tonight, but I won't accept it after midnight.
But that's not enough time!
You should have backed up your work. You had a week to take this exam.

3)This was really hard. And really long.
Yes?
Well, I didn't finish everything.
Ok.
So what should I do?
Turn in what you have.
But it's not done.
I understand that. You don't have to turn in anything if you'd rather not.
Can I fix it up and turn it in later?
No. It's due today.
But it was really hard!
It should be. You're in college now, not high school. If you were having trouble, you should have contacted me for help right away.

4) I didn't have enough time to finish.
I gave you a week. It was a take-home.
Yeah, but Friday was a holiday.
You had the same amount of time as everyone else.
But I had to work.
I think you need to learn to schedule your time better.

Ok. So that's my experience. I feel like a meany jerko. After class, instead of bolting home as I usually do, I head to the English department to seek consolation from my fellow adjuncts - they've been through it all before, too. "Don't feel bad. You did the right thing," was the basic gist of what they said. The general feeling was that students have to learn to be accountable, and if I give in to every lame excuse, I'm not teaching them anything.

I still feel bad, though. I feel like I've somehow failed at teaching time management skills, a skill at which I excel. I mean, I have written over eleven thousand words on my novel in addition to my normal activities this past week. In the time that they had to write a 6 page exam, I graded for over 45 hours AND wrote over 30 pages on my book. I didn't miss One Life to Live a single time (I'm not necessarily proud of that, mind you). And I didn't have to stay up all night to do it, either. I'm in bed by 11 and up at 7:30. I didn't skip any dog walks or call in sick or let the house become a pigsty or stop exercising or skimp on cooking and eat fast food (Oh, wait! Yes, I did eat fast food once in the last two weeks, but that was not a time-related phenomena - scroll down and read for yourself). My point is that with focus of my goals and good time management, I can get my work done, even if it means letting the old blog go without an update.

This isn't too say that extenuating circumstances don't happen, but none of the above students had them. There were no deaths in the family or car accidents or electrocutions by cell phone concurred in saving the life of a girlfriend whose car has gone off a bridge into the icy depths (this is an excuse one of my fellow adjuncts was recently given by a student. Funny that it didn't make the paper at all, we thought!). My students had the run-of-the-mill lame-O excuses. I'm surprised no one tried the classic, "My dog ate it."

Thanks for listening to me vent.
I feel better now.

Car Update

2005-11-14T10:56:00.000-05:00

I logged onto the autobody's website today to check on the status of my Jeep (remember that the rental car insurance is adding up!), and my jaw dropped when I saw these pictures.

What are they doing to my car?

I thought they would just have to replace the bumper and the light. Apparently, it's a much bigger ordeal than that.

Not only have they removed the bumper, but the back window is gone. and I don't know what they're doing to the back door.
Where is the silver Jeep logo and my license plate?

I'm sort of freaked out now.

I want my Jeep back.

You can see more pictures here.

Nanowrimo 2005 Update

2005-11-12T10:53:00.000-05:00

What was I thinking? Sure, I can write a 50,000 word novel in a month while teaching 5 classes. Yeah, right.

Clearly, I was not thinking when I signed on for this.

I'm under 4000 words. Today, if I were on schedule, I should have about 20,000 words under my belt (that's writing about 1667 words a day). I need to catch up this weekend if I don't want to pass the point of no return. This is my 4th year doing this, and I've always finished. I don't want to break that record.

Of course, I just got the new Harry Potter out of the library - I was going to write all last night, but the laptop wasn't charged (I novel on the laptop, not the big computer). It was chilly in the apartment, so we built a fire, and as I waited for the laptop to charge, I started Harry Potter. Needless to say, I sat on the sheepskin in front of the fire and Harry Pottered all night long (or Potted, as R likes to say), forgetting the novelling altogether.

It's 11am now, and I've announced to R that I'm writing for 12 hours today. No Potting (or Pottering), no baking, no leaving the house, no grading any of the papers that need attention, no emailing, no bathing, no cooking. She left the house 10 minutes ago to give me some quiet so I could get started, and, as you can see, I'm blogging. I never said no blogging. Or no emailing.

I wish I had said those things. I could say them now, I guess.

Seriously. I think I have a decent story. I'd like to get it done. It's eventually going to be a screenplay that I submit to a competition. I need to get the story out. This is just a rough draft, as I always tell my students. It doesn't need to be perfect. No one will read it but me. I'm never going to get to the point of turning this idea I've had for years into a screenplay if I don't write a draft first, right? Ok. I best get started.

So no more blogging until after the weekend.

Bye y'all. I've got to get novelling! Next time I write, my word count will be over 20,000!

Crash!

2005-11-09T17:40:00.000-05:00

Don't you hate when you're waiting at a red light, and when the light turns green, some jerk across the way who's in such a big hurry comes accelerating out of nowhere like a bat out of hell, turning left into the lane you were turning right into?

Yeah. We hate them, too. A whole bunch.

So what can you do to avoid a major collision with jerko, who will most likely smash into your front driver's side wheel well or possibly the driver's door, but slam on the brakes? Nothing, really. There's nothing else you can do but slam on your brakes to prevent a major accident that could result in death or severe injury.

Of course, if the guy behind you isn't paying attention, then when you brake, he's going to slam into you, right?
It's the lesser of two evils, I suppose.

This happened noontime yesterday a block away from home. Luckily, no one was hurt. Also, since jerko never stopped, the guy who hit us (our neighbor) is responsible, so this goes on his insurance, not mine. We feel bad for him because we did stop suddenly, but not bad enough to claim responsibility. Also, he didn't have collision, and his car is in bad shape, so that really is terrible for him. We walked over to his house (just doors away from ours), and we sat with his cats while we talked about jerko, making sure we all agreed on what happened, and wondered if we should file a police report. Jerko was long gone, no witnesses stopped (this is Maine, remember. We're surrounded by cold, indifferent New Englanders, not friendly Chicagoans or helpful Fairbanksans). We decided to call his insurance company first (Allstate) and ask them if we needed to file a report. They said no.

Rich gave me his policy number and all his info, and then made his way to work while we, still very shaken up, head across the street home. I called State Farm, my insurance company, and my agent told me I'd have to pay my $500 deductible if I filed a claim through them, and I was freaking out a little as I don't have an extra $50, let alone $500! I relaxed, though, when he told me to call the other guy's company because they'd handle it, as it wasn't my fault. My State Farm guy walked me through the conversation of what I would be saying (I was still shaking from adrenalin at this point). I called, and Allstate was terrific - much better than my guy from State Farm, who at one point told me that my insurance might not be valid anyway since my car's in Maine (long boring story). Also, he told me to get a police report on file just in case Allstate messes up or something. His logic was unclear, but I said sure. When I hung up, I called Allstate, and my rep couldn't have been nicer. I even asked to speak to a manager at the end of the conversation so that I could compliment my rep's excellent service. She helped me pick an autobody that Allstate works with (she said I could pick any autobody I like, but if I pick one of theirs, they'll guarantee the work), and they set me up with a compatible rental car with Enterprise while mine is in the shop. Since I drive a Jeep, compatible means SUV. When I got Enterprise on the phone, they already had my stuff faxed to them from Allstate, and they were worried they wouldn't have an SUV for me. I said that I really could care less, but when they picked me up later that afternoon, it was in the mother of all SUVs. No, not a hummer, but almost. A Chevy Trailblazer. This thing is huge!

I prefer my Jeep and the Toyota 4-Runner I had before that. This thing is so big that there's an echo inside. And talk about headroom. I could wear a Dr. Seuss hat in this bad boy, and it wouldn't touch the ceiling. I'm a little nervous driving this boat around town (especially parking), but I'm managing ok so far.

Ok, here's where the story gets sad. State Farm (my insurance company) told me not to buy the rental insurance from Enterprise because I'm covered on my State Farm policy. Allstate said the same thing. So when I'm filling out the paperwork at Enterprise, I said, "I don't need the extra insurance because I'm covered by my own policy."

The Enterprise agent was smooth. "Insurance companies always tell you to say that. It's fine. You don't have to get it. But if you're in an accident or there's any damage to the car, it comes out of your deductible, even if it's not your fault." She must get commission.

Huh? I started freaking out. The accident was someone else's fault. If a similar thing were to happen to me in the rental car, I'd have to pay that deductible, and I don't have the deductible.

So I bought Enterprise's insurance. I can't really afford that, but $100 is better than $500, right?

Maybe I'm a sucker. Oh well.

So I called the police department after getting everything settled. I told the officer on the phone everything that happened. She didn't seem to care.

"Were there any witnesses?" the officer asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Did you get a license plate?"

"No, ma'am."

"Do you know the make and model of the car that cut you off?"

"Uh... no, ma'am."

"Where is the gentleman who hit you?"

"He went to work."

(Long pause)

"If you want to file a report, you need to come in here together and file it." Click.

At this point, I was so satisfied with everything, I decided I'd take Allstate's original advice and skip it.

Election Day Voting Party

2005-11-08T19:30:00.000-05:00

My friends Nathan and Glenn and I came up with the grand idea to have a voting party, so at 8:30 a.m., I picked everyone up and took us to our three separate polling places.

While one of us was performing his/her civic duties, the other two waited inside the school/church and cheered on the voter, erupting into applause once the voter stepped out of the booth. Election officials spied us suspiciously, but we didn't care. Who said this has to be done privately? Maybe that's why people don't care about elections anymore. Polite society discourages discussing religion and politics. Apparently, we are supposed to hone our ideas and opinions silently.

Nathan and Glenn and I think that's stupid. We like to talk about stuff.

When we were all done voting about 45 minutes later, we stopped at the Dunkin' Donuts near a bus stop, mourned the lack of a privately-owned bakery, gave our money to the man, split a victory corn muffin, and waited for the #4 bus to come and take Nathan to work.

Voting is more enjoyable when you have someone to share it with, we decided. We had a rousing discussion about the ballot measures at hand, and we truly felt like participants. As Martha would say, it's a good thing.

If Fox News Had Been There . . .

2005-11-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

I saw this on the web and wanted to share it with you all. It's funny for sure, no matter where you stand on the political divide!

They have so many more minutes in time they parody. For more like this, click here!

Broken Vows

2005-11-06T15:59:00.000-05:00

Or am I?

After a week of talking about it, thinking about it, and dreaming about it, I went to McDonald's.

So what, you say?

I haven't voluntarily eaten at McDonald's in YEARS. (I say "voluntarily" because the last two times I visited my parents, they fed me McDonalds. I did not go there of my own fruition).

It's sort of one of those things that I thought was a good idea, and now it's become a silent vow that I've taken to boycott the Golden Arches and everything wrong with their food and policies.

Only this week I really wanted a Big Mac.

You know how when you get something on your mind, it starts turning up everywhere?

For instance, this week, Pulp Fiction was on cable, and I tuned in at the scene where Jules and Verne (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson) are discussing how the Big Mac is called Le Big Mac in France.

Then, in my English composition class, my students read an excerpt from Fast Food Nation called "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good."

The discussion in both classes turned to the defects of an American society dependent on fast food for sustenance, and how we try to save time by eating fast food, and with that extra time we've gained, we work longer hours. The conclusion both classes reached (without any assistance from me) was that American values are in the toilet, and this has nothing to do with violence and sex on television; it all stems, they concurred, from the dissolution of the "family dinner hour" and the resulting disconnect. It all stems from there.

Yet still I craved that Big Mac.

I even called my mother to talk about it.

"Mum, I'm really craving McDonald's . . ." I started.

"Go get a burger, then." She wasn't offering the strength to resist that I had hoped. Of course, she's the one that fed me McDonald's the last times I've eaten it. Maybe I called for permission, not strength.

"I don't even know where a McDonald's is in Portland," was my only retort. A lame one, I know. "There's a Burger King across the street-"

"It's not the same," she interjected. "McDonald's fries are better," she insisted. "Anyway, you have a phone book, don't you? You should be able to find one there. Or just go driving and look for the Golden Arches."

So today, R and I did. I had a Big Mac, fries, and a coke.

How do I feel now?

Gross. Bloated. Yucky. Tired. Blah. Regretful.

At the time, though, it was delicious.

What's in the Oven?

2005-11-05T14:11:00.000-05:00

Mmmmm... Apples!

I bought a bag of apples at the store a little while ago, and I've been trying to decide what to do with them because after I got them home, I realized I really wasn't in the mood for apple pie.

Today was apple day - I needed to deal with them before they began to rot.

For lunch, I took an acorn squash and halved it, scooped out the seeds and set them aside to dry and toast later.

In a small bowl, I chopped up an apple, threw in a handful of raisins, a handful of walnuts, a 1/4 C of brown sugar, and a healthy dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. I mixed everything up and then loaded up the squash, added a few well-placed dabs of butter. Into the oven it went at 350F for about an hour.

That was lunch. Yum!

One apple down, the remaining 3 pounds to go!

While I was waiting for lunch, I went on-line and found a few recipes for apple crisp, and I came up with my own based on those. The crips is in the oven now - it smells so good in the apartment.

I'm feeling good about myself because I usually am so attached to recipes, and lately I've been trying to trust my instincts in the kitchen, and not obsess over following the recipes so closely. My mother always said that if a person can read, then she/he can cook. I've proven this is true; however, if I want to cook like my mother, I need to put the recipe aside. That's where the magic happens.

Nanowrimo 2005

2005-11-01T09:48:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again - National Novel Writing Month - where a bunch of crazies register online and agree to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

That's about 1,667 words per day. Absolutely nutso.

This will be my 4th year participating. I feel compelled to participate, although I don't expect to finish for the first time. I have more grading than I've ever had before this semester, so I'm not sure I'll have the necessary stamina to pump out 6 or 7 pages of writing each day.

But I'll try my best.

My plot? I don't really have one right now. R and I had outlined the idea for a screenplay a few years ago. It's a loose outline; we went through all the scenes but we never began writing. Of course, that outline only exists in memory; I went through every notebook in the apartment to no avail. It might not have left Alaska when we moved.

Anyway, I remember why I liked the story idea in the first place, although I'm not suited to write it. Why?
1) It's set outside Albuquerque, New Mexico - a city I've only driven through. I've spent maybe a week tops in New Mexico. I don't think R has ever visited.
2) The main characters live on/near a reservation. I've never been on a reservation.
3) The main characters speak Spanish. Uhm.... no comprende.
4) The main character is a young boy. I have no insight into the mind of a young boy.

I guess that's why they call it FICTION writing. Actually, most writing teachers these days say to write what you already know, so based on that, this will be really bad.

The universal themes, however, might save us. They have to do with self-identification, self-esteem and loss. We're all over that.

I'll start a little column on the right to keep you updated as to my daily word count.

Right now, it's a big fat 0.

Ready, set, write!

Happy Halloween

2005-10-31T20:46:00.000-05:00

Another Halloween comes and goes.

My friend Nathan called me earlier in the day and asked me if I wanted to roam around downtown Portland and look at the kiddies in their costumes. It sounded like a great idea, but as the day progressed, I wasn't feeling up for it.

Instead, I opted to stay home and greet the mini ghouls. I had only a handful of trick or treaters this year, to whom I dispensed some Strawberry Tom's of Maine toothpaste. They'll need it after all the toot-rotting gunk they'll be eating later this evening. No one else in my building or on our end of the street was giving out candy; there weren't too many pumpkins on the porches or orange lights signaling candy dispensing, so that's probably why the lame turn out.

Anyway, around 7, I took the dogs for a walk, and what usually is a short excursion turned into an hour long trek to FIND HALLOWEEN.

How do I explain this? Nostalgia set in. We took a different route in search of houses decorated with jack o'lanterns and cobwebs and black cats in the windows. Something about the crunch of the leaves under my shoes and the crisp pre-November air brought all those memories back of being a kid in the 70s in Libertyville, rushing home after school to put together a costume before trolling for my spoils, which I would inevitably hide in my closet, selecting a piece to eat every night. I usually had candy left until Easter.

My nostalgia, though, isn't for the candy. I can go to the store and buy that. My nostalgia, rather, is for the exhileration that comes from giving in to fear.

Fear is a delicious emotion when experienced in a controlled environment.

When a person is scared, adrenalin rushes through the veins and lifts the hair on the back of the neck. Fear makes the spine tingle. Fear is a forbidden emotion, often signaling danger is near.

On Halloween, fear is part of the excitement. I was looking for a little bit of that fear tonight, or at least signs of it around town. A few houses really did it up: cobwebs, bats, ghoulish screams coming from a skull on the porch. It was good. A band of trick or treaters passed by us; Gamma Ray and Seamus barked at them, which was odd because they love kids. I don't know what set them off. Was it the costumes? Maybe it was the extra bravado a group of little kids get, being alone in the dark and approaching the stranger's door. There was something that the dogs sensed -- and didn't like. They weren't ordinary children tonight.

I am craving the delectable combination of too much sugar and fear. There aren't even any good scary movies on television. Just gory movies. I think I'm going to run over to the gas station next door, buy a coke and a candy bar, climb into bed, and read some Edgar Allen Poe.

That should do it.

And if any real danger were to come my way, the dogs would alert me, so I'm free to luxuriate in fear all night!

Boo!

2005-10-30T09:51:00.000-05:00

Charlie had big dreams of becoming a pirate (or maybe my sister had big dreams of dressing her dog up like a pirate), but this is Charlie's Halloween costume.

The caption on the bib (yes, it's a baby bib) reads "My First Halloween."

When I talked to my sister yesterday, she said Charlie was wearing the bib.

"Are you taking him to a Halloween party tonight or something?"

"No, I'm making him wear it all weekend."

Of course, look at the stash of bones he's got in the bottom picture. I'd say Charlie's making out ok!

EGGSasperating!

2005-10-22T12:10:00.000-04:00

I had a craving, so I tried to make an omelet for breakfast today.

Phase 1: I chopped up some onion and mushrooms, I shred some cheddar, I added milk to the egg mixture to make the eggs fluffier, just like my mother used to do. I salted and peppered heartily.

However, Phase 2 didn't go nearly so well.

It went poorly, in fact.

I couldn't keep it together; I ended up having to scramble the eggs.

In my defense, I have the world's tiniest yet heaviest cast-iron frying pan, and I don't have a spatula. These obstacles might have done me in. Of course, the offense might point out that I have never successfuly made an omelet even when I did have a huge wok and a spatula.

Back in the day, when all three kids were working at Kemper, the whole family would sometimes go to the Kemper clubhouse for Sunday brunch.

They had an omelet bar.

I've seen it done so many times. Omelet chefs make it look so easy. Yet when the moment comes for the flip, things fall apart for me.

So I scramble.

Phase 3: In the end, it all tastes the same, I guess. It was an aesthetic thing, though, you know? Texture.

Strange Dream

2005-10-16T13:42:00.000-04:00

I was having dinner with some North Koreans in a US bomb shelter dugout with the US president and other high-ranking authorities. The North Koreans have taken over but are pretending to be friendly. They have prepared a meal for us. Name cards sit on different foods. I laugh because I read first one as "day old shit and peas," but I'm not sure if it's a delberate joke or not.

When I awake, I realize "piss" is funnier (day old shit and piss, pronounced "day old sheath and peese").

Did I pull one over on myself?