WE'RE GETTING A DOG!

Ashlea and I have been in the dog-looking mood for a while, but only seriously started to go around and visit places last week. Today, we went back to the same shelter, where we walked a husky/shepherd mix whom Ashlea loved, but who would have been very sad to be so big in our very small place. I could tell Ashlea was sad, because she loved the dog, but really, it wasn't a good fit.

The guy helping us said, well, there's only one other really little dog, a schnauzer/scottie mix, do you want to look at her? And we shrugged and said, eh, sure, why not?

And we fell in love.

Here's our girl! The first thing she did when she met us was put her paws on my knees (which is about as high as they'll go) and try to lick my hand to death. Then we went on a little walk with her and sat down on a stone bench, and she proceeded to squirm around between the two of us until she was sitting on both our laps. She then exposed her belly, demanded rubs, and settled down for a nap. And that, as they say, was that.

We've put in the application, and need to talk to our landlord and find a vet, but if all goes well, she should be with us soon! In the meantime, we need to get a crate and a doggie bed and some food and a good leash and a dog blanket for the couch and some dog shampoo (she was a bit stinky) and some treats....

Of course, we are not going to continue calling her 'Precious', which is the name she had at the shelter -- that's absurd. She's got a little white mark on her chest and seems to love her mommies, though, so we're thinking of calling her St. Macrina, and 'Mac' for short.

And we're gonna be a family.

Painting the Pink Thing

But first: my new address!

1030 Lancaster Ave., Unit #309
Rosemont, PA 19010

...Now, the tale of my craftiness! Note: All pictures (except Exhibit B) were taken with my camera phone, which is a very nice phone, but which does not always capture colours correctly or have the best resolution.

Exhibit A: The Rug

This rug is amazing. Nearly two and a half years ago, Ashlea and I were in a little shop on Canyon Road (a strip in Santa Fe lined with galleries), and they had fantastic rugs. As soon as we settled on the new place, she said, we have to go back and get one of those rugs! So we went last week, re-located the shop, and settled on this gorgeous monstrosity. (The first picture is better for scale; the second gets the colours better.)

Upon acquiring the rug, we swore that it would be our center decorating piece. After all, most of our furniture is wood, or grey metal, or white K-Mart bookshelf -- all of which go mighty well with a rug like that. We've acquired two bathmats, both in similar shades of red, and want to get a futon cover that matches the light blue in the weave.

Unfortunately, we had one more thing -- something so big it couldn't be ignored, something so useful it couldn't be disposed of, something we wanted holding up our TV, front and center, less than a foot from where the rug would make its final resting home. We called it:

Exhibit B: The Pink Thing

You can see it there, at the far left of the image. This picture doesn't really capture the weirdness that was the colour, though. It was called 'mauve blush', but it looked like someone had mixed grey and pink together, heavy on the grey. In another situation, I'm sure someone could have put together a very muted decor that made it fit in just fine, except that someone is not we.

D's Grandpa Al, God rest his wonderful soul, was responsible for the creation of that beast, and when she moved to Baltimore, it was bestowed upon me. I love it dearly, and it's great for holding DVDs and video games, but is it ever unattractive.

Faced with this decorating dilemma, Ashlea said, why not just paint the Pink Thing?

Exhibits C-G:
The side you see when you walk in the door (so it's important for it to be cute)
The front (plain-er, so you don't spend all your time looking at the butterflies and not watching the television that's now on top of it)
The side away from the door (my slightly more experimental side, which explains the red ribbons going nowhere)
Signed by the artist, limited edition, 1/1
And with the rug!

We have also, since landing here, acquired: a beat-up old chest of drawers from a thrift shop, a table and chairs from Ikea, a futon frame from Ikea, a bookshelf from K-Mart, and various smaller impliments from various places. Still on the list of things to acquire: more bookshelves!, a little chest of drawers, a no-stick pad for the aforementioned rug, and maybe some other things? I don't know; Ashlea's the decorating guru around here. Those last things to acquire are on the low end of the priority list, so we may just wait until the thrift stores re-stock, then go back and see what they have.

More pictures forthcoming as we continue to move in!

I was warned...

...but warning didn't quite do it justice.

When I went first to visit the PA Lindamood-Bell Center, I gaped. Wow! said I. This place is huge and lovely! There's plenty of room, there's lots of awesome little offices, it's easy to get to, and it's in the middle of everything! I mean, it's near a lot of little places to eat, it's about a mile walk from our place, I could take the train if I were feeling really lazy, and there's employee parking if I feel like driving! They've got a student load comparable to ours in Morristown (30-35 students), but with literally twice the space! This will be sweet!

Then the place caught on fire, and, long story short, they moved out, first to temporary space, then never to return. Instead, they moved to space in a private preparatory school for special needs students. Now, my director told me, it's small and uncarpeted, and also unairconditioned, and at least four people have already quit over this, and did I mention they have spiders? So I can't say I wasn't warned.

The new center is literally three rooms -- two for student instruction, one for three offices and a receptionist. The clinician room is a closet, where each clinician has a hook on which to put stuff. There's a single file cabinet for student files, which works out well, since they can only handle twelve students. There's a refrigerator in the hallway, with a bunch of snacks piled on top. The air-conditioning units are self-contained things that, I swear, look like boxy Daleks. Everybody has to fill out timesheets because the IT guys can't get the card reader networked. And it's all up in a school complex on top of a hill, tucked back in a bunch of woods, pretty far removed from everything, including mass transportation.

I don't say this as a means of complaining. I say it because I'm just thinking, these poor guys! And they've even been settling into this for a month or so -- I mean, I'm coming in after the major crises have been resolved. At least everything is somewhat stable now.

And I start Monday. This is definitely going to be an adventure. Time to put on my best optimistic face!

More pictures!

Please, take a camera phone pictoral tour of our new home!



Ashlea welcomes you to our humble home! Apartment #309, as you can see, though you can't see in the picture that the frame surrounding the peephole is a little off-kilter. Behind her is the main room, a large bank of windows, and a whole buncha crap. The white mattress to the right is where the futon will go, as soon as we get a decent frame.


Said main room, a little bit clearer. Hooray for already-installed air-conditioning units! We're going to put a table and chairs under that light fixture, and hopefully a painting by on the far wall, of which you can see here only a sliver.


The kitchen area, taken standing about where the a/c was in the previous picture. Gas range, lots of cabinet space, dishwasher, very swank. You can see atop the Ikea shelving unit our little wax Mantorok, the Sheep Who Stank, Destroyer of Worlds and Wearer of Scarves. He smells like linen.


The main room again, taken from the same place as the previous picture, only rotated slightly to the right. Ashlea indicates where the bedroom and bathroom are located, while her father supervises. Note the box labeled 'Books'. We would have had better luck marking the ones that were not books.


The master (and only) bedroom, with our computers happily chugging away. What you can't see, against the opposite wall, is a medium-sized closet with two sliding mirror doors. Note also second large bank of windows and air-conditioning unit. And it's carpeted!


And the bathroom! I took a shower last night, and am pleased to report: water pressure? not a problem! I really like the glass shower enclosure, too.

As you can see, we have a fair amount of room! ...Though it'll be less once we get everything out of boxes, but what can you do? Since most of our stuff has been in storage in a dank basement for 6-12 months, I've been Febreezing things within an inch of their lives, and it seems to help.

When we come back, we'll do a big load of laundry, but for now, we'd better pack up and head to Texas!

....yeah, I knew I'd be bad at this

So, hi, guys! Long time no hear from! ...Yeah.

Ashlea's dad is here, and we packed up all our stuff into a U-Haul yesterday. It's actually perilously easy to pack after house-sitting, since we never really unpacked any of our major stuff (dishes, appliances, the bed).

Here's the truck before we really got started packing ... and the truck after! Life in 725 cubic feet, plus whatever fits in my station wagon.

Now today we're going to light out on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, head to Bryn Mawr, arrive at the new place, unload the truck, unpack a little, spend the night there, and go to Texas in the morning! Because my life isn't busy enough.

It's the Blue Screen of Death for me!

This morning, my laptop sang a little song to me. It went like this:

*thunk* *thunk* *THUNK THUNK* *bluescreen*

Huh, I said to my computer, which is nearly four years old and has been giving me fits since the day it landed in my hands, that's a funny little song to sing to me! You must be in something of a mood this morning. Let me reboot you and see what that does! ...It makes you sing the little song again! Isn't that charming?

So I did what any rational person would have done, backed up the last two months' worth of data (mostly music files), and took it to the help desk people at Drew. As luck would have it, I bought a computer with a four-year warranty for a three-year academic program, so even though I'm graduated like a graduated thing, my computer is still covered. This has come in handy, since it has had to go in no fewer than three times since my graduation, and in fact, the warranty is the major thing keeping me from sucking up and buying a new laptop, since I'm loathe to ignore a few more months of free fixins.

It's a bad thing when the people behind the technology help desk know you on sight. I did my impression of the little song for them, trying my hardest to explain that I have heard the click of death before, and this was not the click of death, this was a Wagnerian computer death song. The hooves of the horses of the apocalypse sound less dire than this hollow, heavy, case-rattling strike did. But! said I, I have backed up everything on my hard drive, so you may erase and replace as you will! I think I saw tears of joy in their eyes.

I do believe no part of this computer was originally part of this computer (creating a very that's the same ax that slayed me! problem). It is on screen #2, case #2, keyboard #2, CD drive #2, motherboard #3, video card #2, and I do believe this is going to be hard drive #4. I don't know if the moral of the story is 'never buy IBM' or 'never let me around computers'.

Fortunately, Ashlea has hooked me up with her old desktop, so I may be inconvenienced, but I won't be completely cut off from the internet. I know you'll all sleep easier tonight knowing that.

Depending on how well the tech desk overhauls my laptop -- or, really, how much longer duct tape and prayer can keep it going -- a new computer may soon become a real consideration. Unfortunately, with the upcoming move, I'm not looking forward to spending too much money on any single purchase, especially not one that big. So I suppose me and my machine will toddle on together for at least a little while longer. Until the wheels fall off or the warranty runs out, whichever comes first.

(Also, happy 23rd birthday to Mallory! On Monday, I told a couple of my kids that it was my little sister's birthday. When I told them how old she was, the response was invariably, 'That's not little!' Oh, my children, everything is relative.)

Day of Silence

Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discriminaton. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.

Today is the 11th annual Day of Silence, 'an annual event held to bring attention to anti-LGBT bullying, harassment and discrimination in schools. Students and teachers nationwide will observe the day in silence to echo the silence that LGBT and ally students face everyday.'

It's a great event for middle and high schoolers, as its aim is to get persons at a tender, formative age together in visible (if inaudible) solidarity behind the idea that you shouldn't discriminate against queer people for being queer. Being visibly supportive during structured events like these is a great way to establish yourself as open-minded and supportive for future reference, especially if you're straight. It's sometimes hard to find opportunities to come out specifically as an ally, but it's desperately important, especially if you have friends and/or students who won't approach you unless they know you're safe.

I wish my job were structured in such a way that I could participate in this in good conscience and/or to any real effect, but it's hard to participate in an silence-based event to foster awareness when I spent a great deal of time every day saying important phrases like 'stop hitting him' and 'don't eat that', statements which are far more immediately relevant to the lives of my students than the abstract concept of justice for persons of all genders and sexual orientations. Nonetheless, rest assured that the use of 'gay' as a perjorative term will be met with the sternest disapproval possible.

('What do you picture for gay rights?' I would say, and then it would be all over.)

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered-ish

The two-hour drive between Madison and Bryn Mawr is some hard driving, no matter which way you go. I don't think we've done it the same way twice, and I don't think I can find a way that's less than two hours, regardless.

But that's not the point! The point is that we've signed a lease! Mom saved the day and agreed to co-sign for us, since I have a good income but bad/nonexistent credit, while Ashlea has stellar credit but no fixed income past our leaving NJ. The least starts on the 10th of June, so moving in may be a semi-gradual process.

We had dinner here, which is one of Ashlea's favourite restaurants, and got to check out the area a little more. There's a really nifty little comic store along the main drag, too, which makes me feel a little better about the move -- one of the things in Madison I'm going to miss most is, in fact, our little comic store, which has been such a friendly and loving place.

Is it bedtime yet?

Hard Rock

Climbin' with my sea star!

For the few of you who don't know her, I'd point her out by saying she's the one who looks like me, except that's sort of patently untrue, so suffice it to say that she's the one of the two with the lighter hair and the skinny nose. She got all the skinny nose genes in the family.

A few hours ago, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. Now? It's snowing. I'm serious -- big fluffy flakes wandering their way past the window, sometimes just a few, and then flurries with a lot. It won't stick to the ground, of course, since there's not enough of it and it's not really that kind of snow anyway. But just seeing it is disconcerting enough. Snow on Easter? This isn't even a particularly early Easter! (An early Easter, by my count, is one that occurs when Ash Wednesday falls substantially before my birthday -- this year, it preceded my turning 26 only by a few days.)

Look at this weather forecast. Does this look like spring to you?

The picture may be dopey....

...but I hope the new haircut is cute!

You can see a bit of the kitchen in the background. I was taking a picture with one hand and stirring veggies and soy sausages with the other, so I think the mood here can be best described as 'fashionable multitasking'.

Bad Reactions

Growing up, I never had allergies. Sure, South Texas has its share of terrible histamine-tempting substances -- mold, dust, weeds -- and bats, as poor Owen will attest -- but none of them ever got to me. (There were the sinus infections every time we got a coldfront, but that's neither here nor there.) Cats, dogs, small critters, Easter lilies, all fine by me. I can't even recall a food allergy I've had ever since two-year-old me reconciled her differences with pineapples.

Four years in Massachusetts passed uneventufully as far as my respiratory system was concerned. The snow melted, everything burst into bloom, and my attention stayed focused largely on the wonder and glory of that phenomenon of seasons (there's four of 'em! who knew?). My first New Jersey spring, too, came and went merrily, if a bit earlier in the year.

The second spring here, however, I noticed that a cute little clover across the ground had pushed up white buds. I also noticed I was coming down with a cold -- only no cold ever came. For a week I was suspended, head muffled, throat itching, muscles aching, caught in some sort of grim pre-illness limbo, wondering what terrible sin(s) I had committed to land me here.

Gosh, said Ashlea, that sounds like you have allergies!

...Come again? said I.

After a couple weeks of misery, I got my reprieve, unexpectedly as the initial onslaught. I dodged all manner of infirmities last year right up until June, when I spent most of the first two weeks' worth of my job training sniffling and croaking and abusing my tissue privileges, fearing all the while I was getting sick right up until the symptoms disappeared on their own.

I mention all this because I am home sick from work today, partly because I took a friend of mine to the airport at 4:45 this morning (then came home and slept until noon), but partly because I feel like I'm getting a cold. Except I've felt like I've been getting a cold since Monday, with a perpetually stuffy head and sore body, which has neither gotten better nor necessarily gotten worse. I'm hoping against all hope that this is just a cold I've been successful in fighting, and not the first onset of allergies. I can't tell! I haven't had allergies for enough of my life to know reliably what they feel like! But I do know that spring's barely started up here -- there aren't even many green sprouts on the ground, to say nothing of buds on the trees -- and if this is the beginning of a trend that's going to continue for the next three-odd months, July can't get here fast enough.

Accoutrements of Modern Living

One of the things I'll miss when we move out of this lovely place that we're house-sitting is easy access to laundry. There are of course laundry facilities in the building we're looking to move into (nothing's definite yet, so I'm trying not to jinx it), an elevator's ride down into the basement, but I've grown fond of Jody's little space-saving washer/dryer -- the latter stacked atop the former. It requires less planning and gets me in less trouble on those oh-so-frequent occasions when I get distracted by something shiny and forget I've been doing laundry until two days later when I can't find the socks I want to wear.

What it does have, however, is a dishwasher, which is intensely nice. Living three years in dorm rooms without dishwashers but with reasonable-sized sinks was a thing that could be managed, but our Morristown apartment had a sink that was about the size of my laptop screen -- in other words, insufficient to the job. I now have a metric for calling a kitchen sink 'too small,' to be defined as when a standard dinner plate, lowered horizontally, will not fit in because it is wider across than the basin.

My point is: Dishwashers are nice! And I have it on good authority that they're more energy- and water-efficient in the long run than washing dishes by hand.

Fun fact: Once upon a time, Ashlea cooked and I did the dishes. Then she got really sick for a while and didn't have the energy to do it, and I owned up to my lifelong hatred of washing dishes (wet food! icky!), so we switched. ...I can't actually cook, of course, but that's why God gave us Trader Joe's.

Sunday night is a good time to do laundry.

Keep your fingers crossed...

...because the place we looked at (listing here, map here) looks awesome. We'll be sending off an application first thing tomorrow morning, since the very nice realtor told us she works on a first-come, first-serve basis. Insert cliche here about birds and worm-catching.

The Philadelphia Center is also very, very nice -- much bigger than where I am now -- and they seemed a very friendly sort! Here's hoping they have a place for Ashlea as well; I'd like to get it in writing that they've got a spot for me, but I've had solid assurances from people I trust, and that's more than enough to basis getting an awesome apartment on.

And we could get a puppy! Or, really, an adult dog, since puppies are a pain in the tuckus. But all dogs are puppies at heart.

As good of a place to start as any....

reposted from the contents of a recently sent-out email

Dear friends, family, advisors, caretakers, and the what-not:

Communication has admittedly been sparse (and frequently unreturned) lately from your (step-)daughter/(step-)sister/former student/friend/advisee/that girl you met once ( i.e., me), leaving what I'm certain is a nearly non-existent amount of gossip floating about concerning me. Even so, that's how rumours get started, so let's recap a little.

Applied to six graduate schools. Didn't get into any of them. No, you may not ask why; most of the time, I don't know, and in the one case where I do have an idea, I'm still not telling you about it.

For those of you playing along at home, that means I'm /not/ going back to school in September, but will be waiting another year for the application process to cycle back around and give me another chance. Now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing and what I'm up against, I'm hoping that in this coming year, I will have a better shot at it. Doing 40 hours a week of intensive tutoring of kids with learning disabilities (I've been working for Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes since the summer) is no longer a shock to the system that saps my will to live and leaves me a broken shell of a human being at the end of every weekday -- it's sort of like training for a marathon; with practice, even the impossible begins to seem easy -- and maybe this time I'll even manage to budget my schedule to go visit some of these places. There's a metaphor about horses kicking you off here, but I'm too tired to expand on it.

But what does this mean for the interim year? Well, Ashlea's still working on her Ph.D at Drew, hoping to finish up in May of 2008, but she's in the stage where she's mostly writing on her own and meeting occasionally with professor-type people, so she's pretty free to pick up and go. And I personally would like to get out of New Jersey, as everything here costs too much and is rather surly. I've done my four years here, and I think it's time to go see somewhere else.

Where else? Bryn Mawr. No, Texans, I'm not just making up words, it's a real place -- just west of Philadelphia, in a pretty part of Pennsylvania. There's another Lindamood-Bell office there, and my boss has already been on the phone with them, so there's definitely a job for me, and possibly a receptionist-type position for Ashlea (who could also find gainful employment in one of the many fine libraries in the area). Also, Ashlea spent a great deal of her growing-up years in that part of the country, which means that for her it'll be not unlike going back home (except that her parents have now moved away, so mine don't have to get jealous).

We're going in on tomorrow to look at one (and possibly two?) apartment(s) less than a mile away from the Lindamood-Bell center. Hopefully we will be cute and nonthreatening enough, and also that the place will be awesome enough. Assuming everything works out, we will leave here (the townhouse we are house-sitting for Ashlea's boss) and head to PA in mid- to late June.

We are looking specifically for places that will let us have dogs. Mallory, discharging faithfully her duties as my little sister, said, 'You know, I have to say I'd never imagined you'd be moving to Pennsylvania, buying a puppy, and teaching children.' Thank you for putting things into perspective, Woogs.

Anyway, that's about the state of the me. If you'd like to save face, family, please feel free to tell curious well-wishers that I did not get into the grad school I wanted, and that it's due to a whole confluence of factors, many of which I cannot control, and that I'm just taking another year off and earning money at a job I honestly like in the hopes that next year's effort will be moderately more successful. All of these statements are entirely truthful.

Many thanks and much love to all of you who have helped me in this process, as well as those of you who have convinced me to stop fretting over my internal academic clock that tells me I'm a complete failure if I don't have a Ph.D by the time I'm 30. (hey, some women want babies....) Seriously, I'm not only pretty much completely fine by now, I'm actually looking forward to the move and the change of pace.

And who knows where I'll go next year?

FIRST POST!

I suppose this deserves something more auspicious, but this'll do for a placeholder.

Hello!