End of an era (updated!)

Children of the 70s, mourn with me... When I was a kid, we had one of the motorcycle toys that you could launch. How many skinned knees and elbows were a result of his inspiration?

eta: This is the toy we had!

Buck up, little camper

The post title is in honor of my blog-buddy, Seeking Solace, who had a case of the Mondays yesterday! I'm sure she will get the movie reference, too.  I wanted to make sure she is cheered up.  

I also wanted to blog about my relaxing weekend.

Wednesday: We went out to lunch and ran some errands, since D was off that day, too.

Thursday: Lounging at home, then to a friend's house (my new female colleague) for dinner. It was mostly graduate students and and lots of fun. D was the the only kid, but was a really good sport. After dinner, we played Trivial Pursuit 80s Edition and my team won! Of course, most of the grad students are too young to remember the 80s, so those of us in our (late) 30s were at a real advantage.

Friday: We went the the Major City Museum Center with another family. Our daughters are in the same class and I know the father from work, so we had made plans to go together. It was very fun and a nice chance to get to know them better. We were there all afternoon and visited all three museums. On the way home, we bought a HD-DVD player at Costco (for only $160), had dinner, stopped by CompUSA, Caribou Coffee, then came home.

Saturday: D had piano stuff in the afternoon, then we went to dinner in Major City with my sister-in-law.

Sunday: More relaxing at home and D had a friend over in the afternoon.

I am so not in work-mode now. I think I mentioned before that we are trying to get pregnant now (now that we are going to get tenure!). I have a friend who is already due in April and found out about another one due in July! I am trying really hard not get too worked up about this, because it may not happen. It's been over 8 years since D and I am 37 now. I am also excited about the prospects, though. I don't want to turn into Caroline from "Tell Me You Love Me". I have to be OK with either outcome. I'll keep you posted if there are any developments- otherwise I don't plan to blog much about it. 

Lastly, please take note of my word meter, which has moved a bit today. I am working on a new version of the proposal that never got funded and need to write a one-page summary for potential collaborators. Tonight, I will be watching Dancing with the Stars, so I will work on it more tomorrow...

Appeal from a vegetarian on Thanksgiving, aka my annual rant

If you are eating turkey today, you have probably already stuck it in the oven, so it's a bit late for me to appeal to skip the turkey this year. BUT, you should know that birds are not covered by the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act that (supposedly) protects other livestock animals from a painful and cruel death. If you can't live without poultry, please at least support proper and humane treatment for the animals that are slaughtered. You can find out how here. 

How I am not completely sucking, even though my status bar hasn't moved yet.

I had such good intentions for today. I was going write and finish that paper. Instead, I realized that I need to gather up some new references to add to my lit review section. I also decided that I might submit to a different journal. I went to said journal to find recent articles relevant to my paper and found one VERY relevant paper, and emailed the author (since my U has no form of the journal). This was all very exciting, because I didn't think anyone else was doing related work on this subject in this place. The author replied very promptly with a pdf and I got a reply from the the other author who was interested my in press/forthcoming paper, too. Very cool. 

I cleaned off my desk and organized the files for the paper, took a shower, played a little Scrabulous, took some notes about the articles that I need to find and ate lunch. I decided to go to school after lunch, since it was going to be completely dead around there. I stopped at Starbuck's on the way there, went in to the office, did a bunch of file organization on my office computer, etc. Got a second request for an article review in two days (and I haven't reviewed anything in a while) and came home in time for D to arrive from school.

So the day was not wasted, but I did not technically write anything. The main portion of the paper is there already- I just have some holes to fill in- and these require some more literature. I also need to get my tables and figures sorted out. I still want to finish this thing before 2007 is over, but I don't think I'll be able to meet that 2500 word goal. What can I say? I'm lazy, I suck, BUT I am 99% sure that I am getting tenure! I'll try not to beat myself up too much, but this paper really does need to be written, dammit.

Who knew?

(As seen at comebacknikki's)

I plan to make that progress meter on the right move tomorrow, I swear! I have no classes until next week and even then it's all student presentations and student-led discussions. D will be in school, H will be teaching, and I plan to spend the day writing. I'll let you know how it goes...

Random Bullets of Crabbiness

• I got a parking ticket last night at the Small Town parking garage. I went to dinner with a visiting speaker and parked in the garage which has meters. Meters on the street are free after 6:00, so I didn't even check the meter. Apparently, these are NOT free. Damn them!
• I am having some sinus issue today. It may be a cold, but this is not how I usually start colds- sneezing and having watery eyes. It's been cold, so there's no pollen left.
• Our internet is only working intermittently. I thought it was affecting everyone, but since I am able to connect through a neighbor, I guess not. 
• We would usually go out to lunch and do some shopping this afternoon, but since I am feeling so yucky, I guess I'll just sit here- H took D to her swimming lesson this morning.
• I am still having problems with my new Mac Book. I love it- and I am successfully running my XP programs with Parallels, but Mac Office had been a royal pain. I unsuccessfully installed it (and uninstalled it) several times before I finally got it working on Tuesday. Then I updated my OS on Thursday night and it won't work now. I have removed it and tried to reinstall, but even the installation programs "close unexpectedly". Our IT guy is going to look at it Monday, but arrgghhh!
  

Ha! I love it...

Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory Addy N. at me.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

Mission not accomplished

I did do a few things yesterday, but didn't really spend the day working as I had hoped. I am still updating some lectures and debating whether I should just cart my Mac Book back and forth to work every day and just use it for teaching. Right now, I am doing all of the updating here, so it might work better to just use this computer, too. I guess I'll try it out and see. 

As for today, we're making a trip to Costco, then I'll come back here and try to get some grading done while doing laundry. Could that sound more thrilling? It's getting to that time of the semester where I want to hurry up and hand back assignments, so that they can get over being pissed off before they do evaluations. Of course, it's not as critical as before with the tenure decision looking good, but I still hate that feeling of reading bad evaluations. Even though I am laughing about the student last spring who wrote that I am "an embarrassment to Small Town U", it still pisses me off...

I hope you are all having a productive weekend if that is your goal, or a relaxing one if that is what you need.

Working Saturday

At least- that's the plan. I got up pretty early this morning after crashing out at 9:30 last night (I still don't know why I was so tired), so I walked for a pathetic 30 minutes on the treadmill. At least it was something, though. Then I took D for a swim lesson this morning and read an article for next week, while I watched. She is headed for her Saturday afternoon piano extravaganza (her teacher does a theory class & mini-recital every Saturday). Then- she is staying for a lesson afterward because she missed last week for being sick. She'll be gone from 12:30 until about 3:00, so I am hoping to get some work done during that time. H is upstairs writing a lab right now. It actually sounds much more appealing to curl up with a big cup of coffee and watch a movie, so we'll see how my motivation holds up! I'll try to post an update later. And yes- I am aware than my writing bar is totally immobile! I plan to change that in the next couple of weeks.

Recipe Request

OK- I had a couple of requests for this soup recipe, so I am posting it with credit given to the source: Sundays at Moosewood. I got this cookbook when I first became a vegetarian back in 1992 and it's remained one of my favorites. This is my version of the recipe- the original has some optional ingredients.

Addy’s Butternut Squash Soup 

(adapted from Indonesian Squash and Spinach Soup from Sundays at Moosewood)

1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon turmeric
cayenne pepper to taste
5 teaspoon sliced blanched almonds

1 onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon dried ginger
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups water
14-oz can coconut milk
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cut into cubes
1 small bunch kale, chopped

Grind the first list of ingredients in a spice mill or in a food processor or blender with ½ cup water. If you don’t have the seeds on hand, or are in a hurry, you can probably just substitute some good curry powder for the first list of ingredients. In a large pot, sauté the onion and garlic, adding the ginger and salt. Continue to sauté until the onion in translucent. Add the water and spice mixture and simmer for 5 minutes.

Stir in coconut milk and squash and simmer uncovered until the squash the tender- this time will vary depending on your squash and how small or large you cut it. I start checking it after 20 minutes. Once the squash is tender, stir in the kale and cover the pot. Check it after 5 minutes to see if kale is tender. Cook until kale is to desired tenderness- depending on how fresh it is, etc. Serve & enjoy!

Random Bullets of Crapola

Self explanatory...

• I'm glad Halloween is over. Around here, there are no less than THREE opportunities for children to trick-or-treat. There's the campus dorm trick-or-treat sometime the week before Halloween.  There is the Small Town business trick-or-treat and parade. Then there is the NORMAL October 31st deal. And this doesn't include the class party where other parents send in even MORE crap for them to rot their teeth with. Sheesh. I am also sick of these kids who show up at our door, don't say 'trick-or-treat' (or even 'hello') take some treats*, then don't say 'thank you' as they leave. No wonder we live in such a rude society.
• I am giving myself a crash course in Mac usage. I think I have figured out the most critical issues so far- such as the no-right-mouse-button issue. I also watched part of a tutorial on Leopard on the Mac website which showed me how to use Spaces (very cool!) and other fun Mac things. I am posting this using Safari (although I am still using FireFox mostly). My PCs may be sitting lonely! Later tonight I am going to use Parallels to migrate my fresh install of XP from the laptop that died the other day. I hope it works! ETA: I got an error trying to create the image on the old machine (twice), so I'm going to try my office machine tomorrow, which runs Vista. If that fails, I have to get an XP disk and just do a new install....
• It is so freakin' cold around here. I took D to lunch because they have Election Day off and every time we ran between the car and stores the wind was just awful. I was enjoying fall, but am NOT ready for winter yet!
• My classes are almost ready be on auto-pilot for the rest of the semester! I have presentations scheduled for BOTH classes for the last two weeks of the semester (right after Thanksgiving). This means I should be able to get some badly-needed research done. I first have some labs and other things to get organized, but it should be smooth-sailing after that.
• I am making my favorite Butternut Squash Soup right now- it has curry spices, coconut milk, and kale in it (thanks, Moosewood Cookbook!) It's such a fall recipe- I love it.

OK- time to go eat. I just wanted to check in. I hope you are all doing well and the semester isn't getting too crazy for you.

*I hand out healthy treats like fruit roll-ups and granola bars

InaDWriMo? What's InaDWriMo?

Ha! I'm off to a winning start here (note the status bar). I spent Day 1 grading, Day 2 on the field trip, and Day 3 I am doing more grading. I am not worried yet, since my goal is so modest, but I was feeling put to shame when I checked a few blogs this morning! I did write an abstract on Thursday and Friday- does that count? It's 230 words, or 9.2%? No- I won't count anything until I work on the paper or a proposal! Anyway- back to grading jail & jonesing for my new Mac Book Pro -looks like it won't arrive until Wednesday:( boo hoo for me. In a cruel twist, the Parallels software arrived yesterday.