update

Alas, the charger was not found and I had to buy a new one. But it came quickly and my phone is now charged and back in action. Yay!

For my secret admirer Ellen: I feel we have not been cooking as much since we moved. The kitchen is smaller, and I am busier. Who knows? We did have a very good dinner this week. R gets the Weeknight Kitchen e-newsletter from The Splendid Table. One recipe we received in August was for "Fettuccine with Tomatoes, Basil and Crisp Bread Crumbs". We have made it twice now, most recently a few days ago, and it is super good. I can't find the recipe online, but it is really easy and we don't usually follow it exactly anyway. Basically you make a balsamic vinaigrette, drop some red and yellow cherry tomatoes in it (or just red, or chopped up full size tomatoes) and let it all sit together for awhile. Cook some pasta (I think we've actually always used linguine) and toast some coarse, fresh bread crumbs. Chop about a half cup of fresh basil into long, thin strips. When your pasta is done put it in a serving bowl, pour the tomatoes and vinaigrette over it and stir it up. Then top with the bread crumbs and basil. Yum yum yum.

The second tasty thing we have made lately is the most tasty ice cream ever. This Roasted Plumricot Ice Cream from the Chicago Tribune magazine. If you have the means of making ice cream, make this. It is the most tasty, flavorful ice cream ever. Also, double the recipe. This is not enough! I didn't bake the ginger wafers that go with it, but I did buy some crispy ginger cookies which we ate with the ice cream and it was all sooooo good. I am so sad there is only like 1 serving left.

The other fun thing we did lately was go to a jazz festival yesterday. It was free! It was in the neighborhood! We saw a jazz quartet that was pretty good, some Latin jazz which is always fun, but the most awesome was this guy, Orbert Davis, and his quintet. Soooooo good. Orbert is a trumpet player and he had a great saxophonist and pianist too. It was amazing. R called it one of the top random live music performances he has seen. After that we walked slowly home, stopped for some egg rolls, and then ate the aforementioned best ice cream ever. It was a great Saturday.

Blogging the lost

There's this idea floating around the internets that if you blog about something you've lost, it will turn up. I lost my phone charger. Where are you phone charger? I thought I packed it for the conference I was at over the weekend, but it is in none of my bags, nor is it anywhere in the house. Phone charger, please return. My battery is dead and I have no ability to talk to people....

Good readin'

Sarahlynn has up two great posts about the presidential candidates and their stands on disability issues. Read them here and here.

The rain and my neighbor, Barack

People! It has been raining here nonstop for a million days. It is out of control. I have only experienced this much humidity before in the rain forest. Our couch feels damp because of all the moisture in the air. We are going to attempt to foil our cabin fever by venturing out later to see Burn After Reading. We might not go, except we already bought tickets online. I am excited! I love the Coen brothers and the previews look good!

In other news, have I mentioned how we live mere blocks away from Barack Obama? We found his exact address recently and walked over to have a look. His block is blocked off with concrete barricades, and it looks like you have to pass a checkpoint to get through. There are Chicago Police all over the place, although we did not spy any obvious secret service people. Also interestingly, R and I stood right on the sidewalk in front of Obama's house a month earlier, and had no idea he lived there. All the security did not go up until he was the official nominee.

I also walk by Obama's barber to get to the public library. It is pretty cool being neighbors with a presidential candidate. It also encapsulates the contradictions of our neighborhood. We have a prestigious university, Obama's $1.6 million house, Farrakhan's very fancy house, other super fancy houses, and also are not far from some of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago. So if you hear people complaining about Obama being out of touch with regular people, I don't see how he can be and live here and go to the barbershop he goes to, unless none of the rest of us here are "regular people". Unlike many other people with big houses, his is not in a rich-people only compound, walled off from everyone else around.

books

65. Carrot Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke
This is part of a murder mystery series involving a baker in Minnesota, complete with recipes! It was a fun little read and I enjoyed the Minnesota setting, but if you enjoy this genre of mystery, I think Diane Mott Davidson is a better writer. There is some intriguing back story about the main characters love life (she can't decide between two men!) that I want to know more about, so I might read more in the series, although the writing did get on my nerves sometimes.

66. Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner
The sequel to Weiner's earlier book, Good in Bed. I read it hoping to join a bookclub and make friends, but then found the book club met somewhere too hard for me to get to on the public transportation. Alas. Anyway, I have kind of mixed feelings about the book. It meets Cannie Shapiro and her daughter, Joy, 10 years or so after the earlier book ends. I was disappointed in some of the issue Cannie had, like she hadn't grown much since the earlier book. Cannie's husband was not portrayed very fully at all, he was kind of a shadow character. I did like the depictions of Cannie's relationship with her daughter and the preteen angst her daughter had. I thought those parts were well done. Overall, though, this was not up to the standard I expect from Weiner who I usually think is a very very good writer. It just didn't suck me in the way her books usually do. Also, I don't want to give anything away but I thought the end was terrible. I don't know if I will ever forgive Weiner for writing it.

67. 4% Famous by Deborah Schoeneman
This is a kind of fun book about gossip columnists and the famous and nearly famous in New York. It was interesting for all the glitz and glamor and desperation, but also exhausted me. All these young people running around with high pressure jobs staying out all night at clubs and snorting coke. Exhausting. It was ok, but got kind of repetitive, and I never related to the main character like I think I was supposed to.

Settling in: Chicago style

So we've been in Chicago for over a month now. It is weird, we both talk about how unreal it seems. To be honest, it seems like we don't live in any one particular city. I would say we are pretty settled in, in that most of the boxes are unpacked (the ones that aren't are totally my fault! Sorry!), R has been going to school, I have started teaching, we both have awesome automatically re-filling transit cards, we know where the grocery store is, and we recognize some of the interesting characters in our neighborhood (like the guy who bikes up the middle of the street yelling "so many white motherf***ers to kill!" but he is really harmless, don't worry!).

But still, I have no real feeling of *Chicago*, whatever that is. We keep being surprised by it. Like I go downtown to teach and see the skyline and say to myself, "wow, that's the Sears Tower! I live in Chicago!" or on the way back from Minnesota we kept saying, "huh, all the signs say to Chicago, that's where we live." I don't know why this is. I don't know if it is because being back in the midwest seems familiar to us both. I keep saying Chicago seems like what would happen if St. Louis and New York had a baby. Or maybe it is because we had both been here a number of times before, so it is not totally unknown. Or maybe it is the comparison with coming from New York City, where so many people are so *in* to it being NYC. So often people there say, "That's New York for you" or "New Yorkers are like this" or whatever, which I haven't heard as much anywhere else. I also haven't gotten out at all to meet people, so I don't talk to many people other than R and my students and faculty/staff at the schools I teach at.

I guess I feel like we're settling in, but also that there is still so much we don't know. I spend all my time in one of two neighborhoods. When I got to New York I was more into exploring, but here I am so focused on my dissertation writing and teaching, that I haven't taken the time to go look around. Also, R's school will take anywhere from 5-7 years, so we also know we are connected to here for a long time. Maybe that makes us feel less urgent to get to know it all?

I am enjoying it, though. It is nice to know friends and family are so close, even if I don't have time to visit much right now. I will one day soon. It is nice to get lettuce for HALF THE PRICE we did in New York, and tomatoes for like a third of the price. Our apartment is awesome. Our neighborhood is very nice, and I know that one day when I get out there to make new friends I will find good people to be friends with. So that is the story of settling in in Chicago.

Returned

R and I had an awesome time in Minnesota. We ate many tasty treats. We saw Matt and Laura and Shannon and the baby. The baby is a very cute baby, top 1% of babies I have met. Definitely.

On the way home we stopped at the Mustard Museum in Mt. Horeb, WI which was super fun and we got many tasty mustards.

Unfortunately I also returned home with a sore throat and was bed-ridden all day yesterday. My first class starts tomorrow and I do not have the syllabus finished AND there is still that pesky dissertation to write, so I will be a little busy for the foreseeable future.

Reader's choice update!

I need to ask you guys more questions to get more comments! (I am a comment ho!)

Here is what I am committing to write about for you sometime before Oct 1:
1) settling in in Chicago (not settling for it. It was my first choice! Way better than SoCal)
2) Writing from a distance
3) THE OLYMPICS!!! (including shout outs to my bf, Raj, how the body of a beach volleyball player is my ideal body, and deep thoughts on the differences between men and women's gymnastics)
4) post-diss plans
5) after the 1st: THE STATE FAIR, including a catalog of which stick bearing foods were eaten by me, and which 4H projects were most impressive.

Here is what I will write if I can find the creativity: haiku inspired by Raj Bhavsar (I can't get the syllables right. Seriously, I've been trying. I'm not sure haiku is my medium. Shall I try a different type of formal poetry? A rondel?) and a summary of my and Topher's reality show, "So you think you can science?" Maybe we can collaborate on that, Topher?

books!

63. The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble
Nice, light read about a group of British women who form a reading group. Most of them don't really know each other before the group and they are of different ages and classes, but they become close as the group goes on throughout the year and they all go through different life stages. I liked the characters and the book was a good read. I might have gotten more out of it if I had read more of the books the group read, as they seemed to parallel somewhat the events in the women's lives.

64. The Man I Should Have Married by Pamela Redmond Satran
This was a kind of romance novel. A woman in suburban New Jersey gets divorced and runs into a man she'd kind of had a thing with in the past. Basically the woman has to decide if her old love changed from who he was, if she wants security or excitement. It was on ok book but not really well written and although I read it recently it didn't make a big impression on me.

Reader's choice

First, I have been wanting a new header for a long time. I don't think it is totally right yet, but I will work on it. I am hoping to change the look of the blog a little, hopefully I won't wreck everything.

Second, I am not feeling blogging inspired lately. I have been doing a lot of writing for he dissertation, so I think that is where my dissertation energy goes. So here is my offer to you: tell me what to write about! Leave a comment telling me what you want to read about and I will pick at least 4 (if I get that many responses) to write on. Maybe I will pick more if this lack of inspiration continues!

edit: looks like I changed the whole template! Hope you like it.

books

I am really behind, so here is an attempt to catch up some.

60. Turning Thirty by Mike Gayle
This is a kind of men's chick lit. That is, the audience is clearly women but the author is a man, the main character is a man and the book is about his romantic travails as he turns thirty. The cover even looks like standard chick lit. I heard that this was part of a foray into "lad lit" that maybe didn't quite take off? Anyway, the main character was engaging and it was a fun, light read. I would definitely read more by this author.

61. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
I have not totally bought into the Obama hype. I have not drank the Obama kool-aid. For me, all Democrats are too conservative and I don't like the two party system. The beginning of this book almost sucked me in, though. I found Obama's honesty about the problems in our political system/country refreshing. I also really like his self-awareness of how becoming a senator can lead into this cycle of only hanging out with the rich and powerful, and how that is easy to get sucked into. I found the first part of the book inspiring, but the latter part let me down a little. In the second half (ish) Obama talks about the main issues facing America and how to fix them. I appreciate that he seems comfortable with recommending new ideas that might go against general Democratic ideas (he is for federal funding for faith-based programs, for example) and also says we need to be willing to experiment to figure out how to solve problems. He also often says he does not have a pat solution to these problems. I think this is good as it is probably more realistic -- why should any one guy be able to solve the country's problems with education? But sometimes feels like a cop-out. This book is definitely worth a read to figure out more about where Obama is coming from, and it made me happier to vote for him (despite my problems with the dems, I definitely like them more than republicans!) but still left me wanting a little more. Oh, at the very least, though, people should read the section on race which I think treats the issue in a really smart and nuanced way, similar to Obama's speech after the whole Reverend Wright thing.

62. Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America by Andrew F. Smith
R got me this book (it was on clearance for $1!) due to my insane love of popcorn. It was full of interesting trivia, although not at all well-written. I really don't recommend this book unless you want a lot of random popcorn trivia and to be made very hungry.

PhD Comics

What you know vs how much you know about it

Tales of the Bus

So I get to ride the bus two days a week for my teaching jobs. It is actually not bad although I will confess to being a transit snob and enjoying the subway/train more than the bus in general. I have to walk about 10 minutes to this bus stop, but once there I have two express buses to choose from. I took the bus Wednesday which started well, it was not crowded, I had a seat next to a non-smelly person and we were on our way. Until we stopped at a bus stop and did not go again. Slowly, passengers started to notice the lack of engine noises and that the driver seemed to be turning the key again and again with nothing happening. Then she got on her phone and left the bus to look at something under the hood. At about this point we all started getting off the bus. Everyone was quite chipper, despite the inconvenience and the driver was super friendly and said she would put us on the next bus, but that it was small. She also complained about how she asked at the garage "for a good bus" and clearly was not given one. The new bus came and some people got on, but it was already small and full. I had no schedule so I waited around for another bus, which came soon after and was spacious. I also learned from this experience that if your bus breaks down the bus driver has pre-printed passes she can sign for you to take to work to prove you are late because of the bus. Awesome!

The second bus was empty so I got a seat again. There was a crazy woman on this bus, who kept screaming "Drew Pearson is dead!" in a scary exorcist voice, but other than that she was very friendly and smiled at everyone. She also spoke about how she was altruistic, but I didn't catch most of that sentence. In the end I made it to my destination just 10 minutes later than planned and I was super impressed with the friendliness and cheerfulness of my fellow bus riders in the face of the bus breakdown and the crazy lady. I think I'll leave extra early on days I teach, though, in case of further delays.

books

59. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
This is another Young Adult novel by James Patterson. You may remember that about a year ago I read another YA book by Patterson, Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. I liked Daniel X more than the other book as it was much more well-written. This book is basically the story of Daniel X, a 15 year old boy who goes around hunting dangerous aliens living here on earth. Like I mentioned in my review of Maximum Ride, though, there were a lot of pop-culture references that bothered me. I am really wary of this in books, as I think it is unlikely that in 10 or even 5 years a reader will know who Shia LeBouef is. I just think references like that become dated quickly, and stick out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, back to the book. A lot of the promotional stuff for this book talks about how boys read less than girls, and boys don't read because they find it "too boring". Patterson states that the purpose of this series is to get boys interested in reading and to this end the book is action-packed and has short chapters. That is all true. The book is very action packed, the main character is really likable and the story moves fast. I didn't particularly notice the short chapters, but as I mostly grab my reading time now in short spurts, I do love a short chapter. The book itself is fun and worth a read for anyone.

That all said, there were two things that troubled me here. The first issue has to do with the book itself and don't worry, it's on the back so it is not a spoiler. Daniel's parents are killed very early in a very violent way and this made me uncomfortable. I know Daniel needed to be alone in order for the story to work, but I think the violence of it went overboard. Also, Daniel says it bothers him, of course, but I never feel that emotion. Maybe this will come out more in later books, but I felt the trauma of the parents' death was alluded to and mentioned, but never dealt with.

My second issue has to do with the boys don't read because books are boring message put out by the promotional stuff. I think it is a good thing that Patterson wants to interest boys in reading. However I am not sure the boringness of books is really the problem. I feel like there are plenty of action oriented books out there. Also I did an informal poll of my male friends who read to see if they had read as kids, and if the boringness or not of books was a factor. All my male friends read as kids, but they felt like they learned to appreciate reading from their families. That is, reading was valued by their parents and/or siblings and so they did it too. This book might get a few non-readers to try reading, but I am not sure it will solve the problem on its own. It seems to me like a band-aid for a deeper issue.

Anyway, that is my thoughts on that. Go ahead and read this book for a fun read with aliens and alien-hunting. I think any young adult aged reader would probably enjoy this book, boy or girl. But I don't think it is suddenly going to start all (or many, or most) male non-readers reading.

This is a MotherTalk sponsored review (that means I got a free copy of the book).

Return

Hey! We got the internet! We are in Chicago! I love exclamation points!

So, as I said before all is well and our apartment is great. We had an ok drive here, although I do not recommend driving 500 miles the day after you pack a big truck in the July heat. The NJ-OH day was a little tough. The cats did really well, even Pass who on the last move apparently gave up on life and just awaited his death. This time he was definitely angry, but I think he knew he was not in danger of death. We still do not have a dresser but two IKEA shelves are filling in well. We also still do not have a couch but my brother provided use with a recliner so now we have two comfy chairs, buying us time to stalk craigslist for the perfect $50 couch.

Other than unpacking and exploring I've been busy with dissertating. I am really hoping to have a complete draft by Sept. 1, but it may be an impossible dream. I've also been digging up teaching jobs. I have two, at two different schools that are luckily not far from each other and accessible by the bus. I would love one more and the CVs are out, but we will see.

It Lives!

I am alive, R is alive, the cats are alive. We made it to Chicago and took possession of an AWESOME apartment. All it lacks is a dresser, a couch and the internet. Indeed, we will not get the internets until Aug 11 at the earliest. So, dear readers, you will have to soldier on mostly without me. I plan on hitting our local wifi coffee shop daily (our new neighborhood is even more awesome than our apartment) but I need to use the time for job hunting and mapquesting of furniture stores, so don't expect too much for awhile.

Ta Ta for Now

So our internet is leaving in the morning, and this is the last post you will have from me for a bit. Monday we begin our great journey back to the middle west. Send good vibes that R and I, our stuff, and the cats all make it one piece.

I'll hopefully report back early in August with tales of driving through New Jersey, Ohio, and whatever other states are between here and Chicago.

See you on the flip side.

Lazy

Crikey! I just had a terrible scare when I thought I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died... You would not believe how terribly tardy the Victorian internet can be. Stupid Global Warming!.

I am absolutely consumed with a weight-lifting regime, being distracted by the shiny, just generally being Snow White to anyone unfortunate to cross my path, my day starts with the dawn patrol from the light through yonder window breaks to 11pm at which point I fall asleep on the couch. I am beyond drunk most of the time. it will be fun fun fun till they take my TBird away.

I swear on the bones of my ancestors think of me as I battle mine enemies. Well, I'll try. Unless of course the pool with the cocktail bar is heated!

Courtesy The Lazy Blogger's Post Generator.

(as seen at Kristen's)

Grown Up

So I have done various grown up things in life. I am married, I'm 31, I take care of two cats, I buy my own insurance, I have various bank accounts, I teach college students, I almost have a PhD, etc. But today I did something that I felt truly marked my passage into adulthood. I got rid of nearly all my cassette tapes. It was really sad and hard, but in the end I needed the case for my dissertation tapes (how sad is that?) and I faced up to the cold, hard fact I no longer owned any sort of tape player, and that I had not listened to any of the tapes since probably 2000. In fact, the last time I remember listening to any of them was when I lived in DC with Melinda and we popped Into the Woods on and proceeding to sing along with the whole thing. I believe a friend of ours who I was dating was with us at the time, and may have been mildly alarmed.

The tapes were mostly soundtracks from musicals, which I spent a lot of time checking out of the library and dubbing. I also had all of They Might Be Giants' stuff until about 1994 (John Henry was the last album I had on tape). More than anything, these tapes represented high school to me. Me listening over and over to musicals, hearing non top-40 bands like TMBG and realizing there was so much more out there than what I had experienced so far. Anyway, I'm thinking that when I am moved I need to spend some serious time getting musicals from the library again and burning them, to recreate a little of that old vibe in a 21st century kind of way.

I did keep a few tapes. And I know you are dying to know what they are. I kept: Newsies (look at Christian Bale sing and dance!), Oliver and Company (no one remembers this one! Songs by Billy Joel!), a tape of a Collegium Musicum concert from college in which I dressed in medieval garb and played the crumhorn and finally a mix-tape from my high school friend Valerie.

Heat Wave

pass
Originally uploaded by mnkgrl

Here is the poor cat, suffering in the heat wave. He wishes we had central air (or a more powerful window unit). I say he should get a job.