fieldwork

I don't know what happened but I thought I just typed all this.  Maybe I was hallucinating.

Anyhoo, I might have posted this before but I've got another blog jsut for my fieldwork stuff and things are finally starting to happen so I'll finally start having things to say, and I'd be honored if you'd all follow along and offer any brilliant insights you (certainly) have:

http://saicfieldwork.blogspot.com/

Food... oh! and other stuff!

This is turning into a what-i-ate blog, but it'll serve a purpose.  G and I cook so much and so often sans recipes that it's worthwhile to at least note what we've made even if we aren't quite good enough to write down *how* we make it all.

So, since Wednesday:
Tuna casserole topped with BBQ Lays potato chips
Milk punch (which turned out to be basically eggnog, but milk. Milknog. Delicious)
Maple parmesan brussels sprouts
"Chicken" and root veggie pot pie (including salsify and roasted radishes, both new to me), with a sage and smoked gouda crust
Regular and sweet potato latkes with fresh homemade applesauce (using the last of the apples we picked back in October!)
Pumpkin pie topped with maple syrup roasted walnuts and a cinnamon crust
One giant turnover with the leftover sage crust, stuffed with orange-peach-mango cranberry sauce

And I think we're making greens and something Indian for dinner.

Having a farm share has really changed my culinary life, and I can't tell you often I think, "OMGILOVEBEINGVEGETARIAN!" 

Oh! Other news, as of last week, thanks to a serious error by someone inputting airfare rates to Europe and a totally radical boyfriend who finds those things, I'm going to Barcelona and Provence over Spring Break.  I'm simultaneously intensely stressed out and deeply relaxed by this fact (yes, it's very confusing), as it will be right in the midst of major thesis stress (yeah, now is nothing!).  But I'm mean, in the middle of such stress, what could be better than having many straight hours on a plane to write, plus activities like biking to wineries and eating cheese and baguettes in the country and saying, "Honh, honh, honh!" in response to everything? Not a whole heckuvalot, I think.

Also, I have an amazing idea that might actually give me some way to get paid after I graduate.  I'm starting it as a project for John's Eth/Ped class but it's been at a rolling boil in my brain almost nonstop for a week now.  Need to flesh it out before I go any further here, but... I mean... people can live off grant money if they have enough grants, right? At least kinda live... right?

lo siento, too

I wonder how it happened that I used to blahg excessively... I mean, every day, multiple times a day... before it was called blogging... and now, despite reading other people's blogs everyday, I so often just completely forget about my own.

But here we are!

So let's talk about Thanksgiving!

G and I spent Wednesday night visiting a friend of his in Champaign, then on Thursday we woke up and drove to St. Louis where it started snowing right as we got into town! Yay! Snow quickly turned to sleet but we were quickly tucked away in G's sister's kitchen cooking up a storm of our own.  We made pumpkin-walnut and sweet potato+walnut+goat cheese wonton things with a cranberry lemon sauce, a very savory leek and shitake bread pudding, maple brussels sprouts, bourbon candied sweet potatoes, pumpkin kugel, and pumpkin pie, all from scratch, then also this weird but very tasty hazelnut loaf thing we grabbed from Whole Foods (we were the only vegetarians in attendance so we needed our own protein!).  Y U M.  Seriously, it was all really good.  And we drank a lot of Great Lakes Christmas Ale (always a pleasure) and... wine... and... other stuff.  Lots of everything. Yay, Thanksgiving! Yay, 8-hour coma!

Friday morning we stopped at a market and then got outta town and headed south to a cabin we rented in the Ozarks.  I cannot recommend Big Spring Lodge and Cabins enough, and I can't wait to go back when it's greener and warmer (aaaand again when it's back to cold and sparse).  We got to spend two days and nights in a little cabin with just a fire place and a cozy living room and a bedroom that was toooo far from the fire and a teeeeny bathroom and a teeeeny "kitchen", all in the middle of the woods, well off the beaten track, in the mountains, wonderful.  There's something surprisingly awesome about waking up a few times through the night to tend the fire and throw on more laughably oversized logs.

We took a ton of pictures but right now I only have the few I snapped with my phone...

Cabin in the woods!

Cozy living room

Forest path

A CAVE!!!

The beginnings of cabin cranberry sauce

We made some really stellar food while we were there, mostly thanks to G's ambition and dedication.  Fancy greens each night, plus a potatoey cheesy bready savory thing, and the rest of our Thanksgiving roast, and a grilled cheese sandwich, and his special tofu with my cabin cranberries, and a weird but delicious lentil-based desert that G would not give up on. What a trooper.

So that's that. An epic Thanksgiving post! Theeeee end.

Paralyzed

How many existential crises can one (thesis) survive?


I feel crippled by the unknown unknowns.  I feel rundown and disheartened and it seems just entirely impossible to make any headway on anything.

Is this one of those things where it will all just suddenly come together?  I can't really count on that.  I don't know where to go from here, because I don't even know where here is.

Ugh. Aimless.  I don't mind being lost when I have nowhere to be, but May is closer and closer and I have no idea how to get there.

Sigh.

Somebody dial whine-one-one and get me a wah-mbulance.

The future:

Champaign, St. Louis, a cabin in the woods of southern Missouri, Houston, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico.

All between now and February.  I am so excited and uhhh...



Apropos or what?

My first comic ever

Yay comics!

Which is to say:
On Monday I went to the lecture that Bill Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner gave about To Teach: the journey, in comics.  Getting some behind-the-scenes info on the construction of this (wowza) book was really great, but the comic workshop that Ryan led for John's class (plus Lee) afterward really blew my mind.  I didn't want to stop drawing, despite my penchant for reminding people I'm not a draw-er.  (I'm also not a drawer.)  So here I present my first comic ever:

And if you're curious about the Exquisite Corpse-style comics we made as a class about Mr. John Ploof... well I'm gonna try to figure out how to post that PDF collection here, too.

Oh, like T H I S .

cat cam

http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/


the starting point. didn't buy it form here though.. think i found it on a geek website because it was sold out every where else.

some amazing photo's from mr. lee
http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_cc_u.htm

blog plug

I've got my fieldwork blgo up and running, and I'd be delighted if you all would follow me.  I wanna look real popular when my adviser checks up on me!

http://saicfieldwork.blogspot.com/

Also: For the past couple of days, I get light headed every time I sneeze.  What do we think about that?  I'm sure (more) caffeine will fix it, while combating the cold medicine-induced drowsiness.

Blarg.

Snake oil.

Woo.hoo.

Allergies. Gyah. Hard. to teach. 2 doz freshmen. While on Sudafed.

Kill me.

In the meantime:
- Went to Marwen last week and it was pretty amazing.
- GO RANGERS!  I don't care about you but that means you're 10M times better than the Yankees!
- Fieldwork FINALLY progressing alsdkfhaldufgalijfbakl  but my confirmed site won't start til January. Hope fieldwork adviser doesn't mind... I have much surveying and interviewing to do in the meantime.  Also I need to start a proper fieldwork blog. WHOA!
- G and I have cooked an absurd amount of food in the past week or so.  This includes a root veggie pot pie (almost all ingredients from our CSA farm share!), a cheddar rosemary apple pie, vegan chili (til we added the cheese), fancy stuffed peppers, pumpkin pancakes, samosas.... duh.licious. And gym-inducing.

This is all I can do right now. Crunch time. I forgot that I kind of like this feeling.

To do tonight (you can stop reading):
- Make fieldwork blog.
- Email freshmen video playlist.
- Be useful on the Ning.
- Read a lot for John's midterm assignment.

readysetgo

We should make an app for that

This time of year can be a little overwhelming.  Not even including school. The problem is that just as baseball is getting condensed enough that I can really focus on it and commit to one team or another (as my team is so often such a colossal letdown), college football and the NFL are getting in gear.  Post season baseball will always... I think always.... take precedence over any other games that are, but it's hard not to feel a little schizophrenic switching constantly between the many, MANY channels that are home to various ball games to check on this or that.

So I said today, "We should make an app for this."

The app itself is not so brilliant: just a simple interface that allows you to put in which games you are watching and get alarms as a quarter/half/period/inning/half time begins/ends.  Yeah. Basic but useful.  For all I know this already exists in some form.

More worth noting I think is the phrase, "We should make an app for that."  We should make an app for having too many TV channels.  We should make an app for our incredibly overtaxed multitasking brain centers.  We should make an app to make things even eeeeeasier, even though it is through pursuing ease that we breed astonishing complexity.

Our approaches to problem solving and question answering have changed so much.  In the past few months, I have used Google to find campsites and roadside attractions, to stream sporting events and bad reality TV, to look up my own new home address, to learn how to make omelets...  There is just no excuse to not know pretty much everything.  And there's no incentive to remember any of it.  And I just had to ask my boyfriend for help remembering the word "incentive".  I could have looked up "motivation" on thesaurus.com and probably would have gotten to it pretty quick, but I figured in light of this entry I'd ask something other than the internet for help for once.

What the Art Institute Should Pay Me to Design and Implement

Every time I visit the Art Institute of Chicago (and that is very, very often), I find myself frustrated by something.  A few things.  Okay, many things.  In the Modern Wing especially, I see so much work that I just can't connect with based solely on its aesthetics, and in these moments I often pull out my smartphone to Google the artist and the work in an effort to grant context to a work that otherwise is just simply lost on me.  And sometimes I'm too lazy and I just move on, accepting that I just don't get it and I'm not going to but sure, it's probably a genius piece of art. Right.

Yes, there's always an artist and a title, but those things sometimes mean nothing at all to me.  And yes some rooms and some pieces specifically have big long labels that talk about the artist and the works in a thorough and well-rounded way but lots of people are milling around in front of those labels, often just pretending to read them so as not to bug their art-lover friend who dragged them to the museum in the first place.

In addition to frustration borne out of a lack of information and context, sometimes I think, "Wow, this is great! I wonder what else we have that is similar... how do I find the impressionists again? Maybe there's something there."  You'd think I'd have a mental map of AIC cemented by now, but I don't. And, embarrassingly, I don't have the entire public collection memorized either. So I don't know what we have or where it is or how to find it, and sometimes that is frustrating, too, and on top of it, the guards stationed throughout the museums are neither friendly nor helpful. GRUMBLE.

So what could solve some of the problems? What could ease frustration in a straight-forward and forward-thinking way?  Ladies and gentleman, I present:

THE PATHMAKER

I think it's pretty simple.  Running on a dedicated iPad (or a BlackPad, or an AndroidPad...), a very delicate GPS system, perhaps supported and supplemented by some sort of coordinate system managed by the Art Institute, will know the location and position of every piece on public display, as well as the location and position of its user.  The simple interface will feature only a small number of active buttons and links that remain consistent through most screen options.  Using the PathMaker is pretty straightforward and easily learned by even your least tech-savvy out-of-town guests.

When you find yourself standing in front of a piece that you'd like to know more about, simply press the refresh button on your PathMaker screen.  As the screen reloads based on your current location, you'll see an image of the art work in question.  A standard label including the artist, the work, and the media will be displayed, and below that you'll have the option of four buttons: Artist Biography, More info on this work, More by this artist, and More works like this.  Pushing any of these buttons will load a new screen with the appropriate information, thought the back button and the refresh button are present on every page.  There is NO SCROLLING in the PathMaker.

If you wish to see more works by the same artist, or similar works by other artists, those lists will have linked thumbnails and titles.  Selecting, say The First Part of the Return from Parnassus, also by Cy Twombly, will load a page with a larger image and should you decide you would indeed like to see that piece, you'll hit the "Take me there!" button below the image.  Turn-by-turn navigation will guide you to the piece.  If you decide you'd rather not see another part of the Return from Parnassus, simply hit the back button and make a selection.  Or just start walking and the next time you have a question about a piece, stop and hit the refresh button.

Sounds easy, right?  And very cheap.  And super straightforward to code and implement.

to keep in mind

What is the history? What is the conflict? ... read more Giroux

Pony Island Stomach Flu

The words in the title will double as the tags for this post.

I'm up because I had a nightmare about my cat getting attacked by a dog and now I can't get back to sleep.  I should be headed to work right now but I spent much of yesterday barfing/trying not to barf and fighting a fever with ice water and the show Hoarders, which in turn inspired me to lie on my bed staring into my closet thinking, "Am I a hoarder? A pre-hoarder? Are boxes of crafting materials and computer parts just the beginning?"  It was the fever talking, I'm sure.

So I'm left this morning feeling... well, so you know how when you wanna eat a mango in a hurry, you just slice off a piece and then use your teeth to scrape away the fruit from the skin? And then there's always a little bit of mango left on that piece of peel but you toss it down and cut off another piece and go through all that until you have in front of you a seemingly-wasteful mango core and a bunch of gnawed, gnarled mango peel.  I feel like that pile of stuff. 

What I'm trying to say is that I won't be in cyberpedagogy class tonight. I think I'm done barfing but I've still got a fever and everything feels bad.  What I will do though is post here and post my Photobet on Prezi (eh, what there is of it.. explanation pending) and I will participate on the Ning in our discussion of tonight's article and I will post my own article to read for next week.  The internet is a very useful thing.

SO.

Take a look at this map and click on each blue placemarker to read the exciting narration of my weekend's adventure:


View Pony Island Weekend in a larger map

You might need to zoom out to see it start to finish.  To fill in the gaps, I flew on Thursday to DC where G picked me up at the airport and we drove to Richmond.  The next morning we set out for the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we rented a kayak and camped on a little island with nothing but raccoons and sentry seagulls (for the first night anyway).  The next morning we kayaked SO. FAR. and got SO. SUNBURNED. I might post a picture of my current state... or maybe not. Just trust me, it's bad.  We thought we were doing pretty well til we were suddenly rolled by a very large wave and all our stuff went overboard and we went overboard.  I remembered hitting my head and being under the boat, under the water, and it was surprisingly quiet and then WHOOOOSH!

I took a deep breath and the above-water sounds were deafening for a moment and then I think I laughed a lot.  I found myself holding onto our pack, one of our 2.5 gallon water jugs, both of our paddles, my camera (in a ziplock), and the map (also in a ziplock), while G righted the kayak and we tried to assess our situation.  We seemed so close to shore, but the constant and multi-directional waves and the current were making it utterly impossible to make any progress. I learned that I can't really swim in chucks.  I started to feel tiny tendrils of panic creeping up from my stomach as I became totally exhausted fighting the water, but then (cue Baywatch music) G managed to get himself back into the kayak and make a couple of passes near enough to me that I grabbed our rope and he pulled me over and hauled our stuff into the boat and I finally managed to pull myself in and then somehow we were on Pony Island.  WTF.

"My hat!" cried G. "I loved that hat!"

"My camera!" cried Me. "The rest of my photo project was on there!"

Then we both fell asleep on the beach for a while (this surely contributed to our terrible sunburns) and then realized where we were and went off and found some wild ponies and got really really close to them.

And then we had to get off Pony Island and people looked at us like we were crazy, but it was significantly easier and less eventful than our arrival.  And then: PBR, boiled peanuts, icecream, Indian food, fireworks, towel pillows, deep sleep, homeward bound.
---

Then: barf.

---

Now: So about the Photobet.  I have a new camera in my possession and I intend to finish the project in a very timely fashion, but I've at least loaded the photos I took before the day I left for DC into Prezi and here's the progress, sans paths or layout, the letters are just arranged in order so far, with gaps: 

Digital Photobet on Prezi

Geezlouise, this has taken a very long time.  I kept stopping to lie back down.  I'll post my article for next week to the Ning later today.  Back to bed again.

lazy hermit crabs

 

ne'erdowells, these.

Newport

At the end of August I drove to Providence with my best friend and stayed a short while.  It was rainy the entire time, even this day, but we drove to Newport and found a vista and parked the car and got out and a blue sky suddenly peeked out just enough to remind me how long it had been since I'd taken a deep breath.  I felt exceedingly out of place in the town, but exceptionally in place in the shallows on the rocks covered in sea plants and the teeniest baby mussels and the laziest hermit crabs in the whole world.

Hard habit

It's hard to get back into the habit of writing here.  It's odd because for so many years writing online was a part of my daily routine.  I started blahgging in 7th or 8th grade, before anybody had a sassy name for it.  I built a dumpy looking but highly functional Tripod page where I posted "Dear Diary, Today was fun..."-type entries, photos, embarrassing poetry, and an extensive alphabetical list of bands I listened to, with links to their websites or UBL entries.  I was a lonely nerd and the internet offered me many solaces.

If I look back at my various online journals and weblogs from the past fifteen years (?!!), very clear patterns emerge.  Up until a few of years ago, when I've been at my most sad, lonely, stressed, lost, etc., I blahg noticeably(/exponentially) more.  When my life has been on the up and up, my entries are generally shorter and farther apart, but still clearly convey the state of things.  At some point all my posts began getting more concise, less all-revealing, and generally infrequent, for probably a variety of reasons.  Facebook (but not Twitter) certainly played a role, but also I just have had more and more people to spend time and share with and perhaps as a result have felt less of a need to vent my life to the internet.

All this to say, I need to find some new inspiration lest I post nothing but entries that could be boiled down to one of the following titles:

"Grad school is so hard."
"My boyfriend is so great."
"My cat is sooo cute."
"Bikes are so fun."
"Indian food is so delicious."
"I so need caffeine."

Hmm. Maybe I stopped blahgging so much simply because I ran out of things that felt worth talking about in such a forum. HMMMM.

Since it got pulled before...

(and will again)

Ookay okay okay okay okay

Dear Blahg,

Please forgive my absence. I spent the summer trying to pretend I wasn't in grad school. I spent the summer traveling and cooking and riding bikes and watching baseball and making big plans and learning big things and falling in love.  And it's all been way more fun than blahgging.  No offense.

But now school's back! Huzzah! Huzzah. No really, I'm excited. I'll prove it by checking in more often. Starting now.

Sincerely,
Michelle

Whoamg, denouement?

I sure hope so.  The past few weeks have been so, so rough.  Getting the first part of my thesis report together was a nightmare and a half, though my presentation and panel review yesterday went much better than I was expecting and it was thoroughly helpful and gave my momentum a boost.

After a post-panel drink with Carolyn, I headed home to kick off my heels and pull on some layers for what will hopefully be the last frigid critical mass until fall comes back around.  What ensued involved was falling a couple of times, being called "Hot Pants" by a police officer, my first bike-car contact, not getting to eat Indian food like a certain map promised, small and funny apartment parties, small and weird other apartment parties, small and awesome pool party, riding home with wet hair and clothes at 3am.  Total blast.  Dragons.  Fake money.  Sauna.  Pizza.  Band-aids.


And today I went with Carolyn to Working Bikes where we found her a nice Ralieigh mixte that she was happy with.  Yay bike shopping! And on the way home I swung by the Renegade Handmade store for the bake sale my friend Sue was having to raise money for Haiti and while there I bought some delicious vegan (and non-vegan) treats and a great winter bike hat (that would have been very useful yesterday).

I'm out of energy.  Did not get enough sleep last night.  This post is over.

Chromes, Greys

I want a chrome bicycle so bad my guts ache!  There is a chrome Carlton that works in the building next to my school. I've sat in the coffee shop window a few times to stake it out and see who comes to unlock it and ride it home, but I can never stick around long enough.

It's gloriously mild today, and thoroughly foggy.  Despite being in a 9th floor window a block from the lake, I might as well be a day away, as it's enshrouded by the most solid physical manifestation of grey that I've ever seen.  Like this, but tangible... and damp... and everywhere:




I'm making some good(ish) headway on the new thesis research.  Looks like I'll be visiting Detroit a couple of times in June for a few days each trip, plus (funds allowing) Philadelphia, Providence, and Portland?  Maybe San Francisco while I'm on the west coast if they have programs that suit my research.  It's weird to suddenly feel very centered, when less than a week ago I was a total. wreck.  Maybe I'm just in denial. Hm.

Worst blahgger ever

Worst week of grad school ever.

I have been working on my thesis proposal for a month, and then it got changed on Wednesday and now I have to do all that month of work all over again, but in a week this time, and when that all sank in I just hit a mental wall and cried a little and drank some whiskey in a stair well by myself (don't worry, there's a first time, and a last time, for everything, and it's exciting when those happen at the same time!).  Then I realized that I care about my new topic 100 times more than my old one (and it's far less naive and self-righteous) and all was again right with the world.  I'm noticing that days I skip my bike ride to school are harder to cope with than days when I click down the hall to class sweating and red-nosed.

So bike updates: I might be getting a new bike tomorrow.  Yes, that will mean I have three bikes, but seriously, one of them is getting sold as soon as this weather looks a little more reliable and I can make my money back on it. And I got lobster gloves and toe covers last week just in time for RDDR.... oh wait!  I never posted about the ride I dreamed up and planned with Amanda and Gabe- The Ride!Drink!Dance!Ride! Ride.  Here's the flier I made for it...

 

 The turn out was great. 20 people at the start? Lots of riding and dancing and I'm already looking forward to April's RDDR, RDDR:EUROTRASH.  We'll be hitting up Polish Country on the west side of Chicago and starting at a Polish buffet where I guess I'll eat cabbage and boiled potatoes. And dance.  Click below for more RDDR:INAUGURAL pics...

...we were pretending to be riding our bikes in time to the beat. NERDZ.

What else?  What haven't I covered? School's hard. I've been eating less real food and more ice cream lately than is healthy or good for anybody.  I've been buying groupons (and not redeeming them- YET) so I can eat fancy foods on a grad school budget.  The weather was mouthwatering for a couple of days, but the rain's moved in and now I absolutely must invest, finally, in rain gear. Somehow I imagined this town just going from snowy to sunny with zero liquid precipitation in between. Sigh.  Scout still hates the other cats.  I'm going to visit Detroit soon to check out the Rivera mural as "research" for my art history paper.  I shot a gun for the first time today. Then I shot another one.  Two of us went through 150 rounds really really fast. I want to go again.  I cut my hand on a library book drop box.  I finished my homework early.  I realized that unless I make peanut butter cookies, it takes months and months to finish one little jar of peanut butter.

And in a minute I'll post some pictures of shooting and the Blue Bike I Want To Sell, plus here- a picture I never posted after I first finished the paint job on my Gitane...

 

Oh, here:

The Bridgestone I'll be selling asap. Comfy seat, goofy bar tape. Nice rack (heh) that now lives on the Gitane. Somehow it's just never felt like my bike since I got it home. Too bad.

Aaand shooting... so weird.

 

Danger staring you in the face

Oh yeah, here's my inspirational jam for the week.  Did you sing this song alone in your bedroom and think you were an amazing vocalist? Yeah, me too...



Those dimples, that little nose wrinkle... Motivations.


So I went to a bike expo over the weekend and didn't buy anything except beer and a veggie burger, but then I went home and planned on studying but I couldn't shake the feeling of missing something... something important.  I then went to a bike shop and spent a lot of money (though it was only $18 more than I'd budgeted to spend at the expo... about the same as the burger and beers...) and walked out with these babies

and the pedals to go with them, and a wrench for the pedals, and a litt-le bag that will fit under my seat and hold small things like keys and a wallet and a phone so I don't have to carry a backpack all the time.  Within the next few days, I will be riding my bike, attached at the feet, and it will be awesome.  Between now and then, however, a winter storm is expected to dump 7-10" of fresh snow on my fair city.


Grad school got real last week. Real real and real hard. And I'd thought that had already happened... Remember that really reading-intensive class last semester?  Yeah, well I've got three of 'em this semester and I'm not sure how I'm going to actually accomplish everything that needs accomplishing. I guess it doesn't help that I am blahgging instead of reading, huh?

It also doesn't help that, as I believe Angela pointed out, I have accidentally joined a bike gang and, resultingly, I have taken on the exciting challenge of organizing a mobile dance party ride called The Ride, Dance, Drink, Ride! Ride. If the weather is good, I'm guessing we'll get 15-20 people out on bicycles to ride around town and dance a lot, both off and on bikes. With mobile sound systems.  Am I excited? Yes.  Am I spreading myself thing? Ehhh.... yeah, probably.

But taking it easy doesn't feel as good as taking it... hard. Hrm.

Oh, and I just picked up some more hours in the computer lab, just this second, so that's, per week...
9 hours of class
12 hours of TAing
12 hours of lab monitor duty
and 30-40 hours of reading/homework if I want to be a good student and have a complete thesis proposal by the end of the semester...

The rest my time will be for the most fun stuff I can dream up (see: mobile dance party).

Is this turning into a bike blahg?

Perhaps it is, and I'm okay with that because clearly that suggests what part of my Chicago life I'm most super pleased with right now.

The semester started last Thursday.  I TA two sets of freshmen now, all day Thursday, all day Friday, and my kids now seem super fun and generally more energetic than they were last semester. Maybe we all had a rough start. We were all new.  I looked at my reviews from last semester's class and they were, to put it modestly, stellar.  I feel like I'm doing something right here. I am wondering how late is too late to switch the the teaching track...

I'll still be working long Mondays and a jaunt on Tuesdays in the computer lab, and I've got a required Art History class on Tuesday mornings, Thesis I on Tuesday nights, and another social theory sort of class on Wednesday mornings with the same incredible teach from last semester. I am generally pleased with this schedule, and it leaves me with mostly free evenings and nice blocks for studying/reading/doubting.

Over the weekend I rode for a short bit of Critical Mass and also did the Full Moon Fiasco with my new bike friends.  I seem to be developing two full sets of very different social scenes, ArtEd and Chainlink, and I really really like it. Like a lot. I suddenly feel like I know people here who could eventually make this place feel like home.  I am working on it and embracing it and feeling generally in love... but that kind of tentative love where you're sure this thing is worth loving in thought, even if it hasn't yet quite proven it in deed, so you decide to just go ahead and love because that is more pleasant than resisting, but sometimes you still get a little worried about the whole situation and you tend to keep that to yourself.  Unless you have a blahg.

So here are things I want/need (besides bikes themselves):

Clipless Pedals , major major step
Shoes , for my pedals.  Velcro for grownups!
Tights like this , but specifically windproof
Lobster gloves , for real finger quotes and dinosaur impressions
Rain gear , because it isn't always snowing


For those and many other reasons, I've been asking the universe to help me win the lottery.  I guess I should help the Universe by actually buying a lottery ticket some time.

Post lottery money deposit, this place will be one of my first stops.

So much fun

DSC_6899.jpg
Originally uploaded by smitsmat

Loving this.

Full Moon Fiasco

DSC_6867.jpg
Originally uploaded by smitsmat

I think I'd be really depressed if I suddenly couldn't ride my bicycle.

That happened fast.

Brain Bloom

I tried to describe it earlier as a vine with lots of tiny buds bursting to bloom and then dying off and then being instantly replaced with new blooms.  That's how it feels inside my head.  Unfortunately, most time lapse videos of flowers blooming are pretty but dull, and videos of flowers dying are just depressing.  So you get a bramble video and a cactus video.  I recommend a Phoenix remix during the cactus.

{SOLD: MARCH, 2008} _ GITANE Piste (Track) 1970s

{SOLD: MARCH, 2008} _ GITANE Piste (Track) 1970s
Originally uploaded by stronglight

Oh yeah, I'd like to start a Gitane collection, too.

Peugeot Mixte Porteur with "Hêtre" Tires

Peugeot Mixte Porteur with "Hêtre" Tires
Originally uploaded by Vélocia

I want mixtes from Schwinn, Peugeot, and Raleigh.

I tried to make the Schwinn happen tonight but Craigslist is a breaker of hearts and spirits.

Angela has a Raleigh so I guess that almost counts, since it lives in our house.

And Peugeot.... Soon enough. Isn't this thing goooorgeous though?

Long-eared Owl

Long-eared Owl
Originally uploaded by Hard-Rain

This animal lives here in Chicago and I'm going to find it and photograph it.

CTAwesome

So this morning. is. GORGEOUS. I'm sad I'm at work all day instead of riding my bike by the lake, but at least I got to ride to work, and now that I'm here I have a spectacular view. I hope it is not too distracting, as I have a big to-do list for the day.

Most inspiring current project here in Chicago:  CTA. Chicago Transit Awesome.  If you live here, expect to hear about this and plan on participating.  Imagine the best public transportation experience you've ever had, and then make it way better, and that's what we (I) here at CTAwesome intend to bring to you.
My only gripe about this winter weather is how dry my skin is because of it. I want to spend a week submerged in a bathtub full of Jergen's or something. Give me a Twizzler straw and I'll be happy.

I'm afraid this is the worst blahg ever. Sorry.  Just trying to stay in the habit....

How about a follow-along to-do list!

1. Milwaukee Excursion Itinerary
2. Email Milwaukee Excursioneers above itinerary
3. Read at least 100 pages of The Darker Nations, A People's History of the Third World  (pending fail)
4. Mail penpal letter
5. Write another penpal letter (pending fail)
6. rint that long long article for upcoming art history class preparation
7. Timesheet
8. Send J the syllabus for Doing Democracy
9. Respond to a few overdue emails
10. Get a spot for CTAwesome   http://ctawesome.blogspot.com/

I'll strike things through the day as I complete them, and you'll thus be privy to my successes and failures. I love lists and I love accountability.

Blogs Yes

On Humility

After living in biketerror for about a decade, riding now, in Chicago, in the winter, makes me feel like a badass.  It gives me a confidence that I've never known.  I can't find my inhaler and the air on colder nights makes my lungs scream and revolt, but riding in 15 degree weather (I'm leaving the wind chill out of this) has a way of reminding me how many times before I have been wrong about my limits and that alone is enough motivation to keep pedaling.  It makes me feel like I have secret that has something to do with grit and reckless abandon.

And so I ride.

And so I fall.  Fell.  Once.  Finally.

On my way home from Weegee's a delightful, semi-swanky, old fashioned bar where I drank an Aviation and a Bocci Ball and played shuffleboard, the wind picked up and it started snowing, which only increased my feelings of being tough and capable. A pair of bikers on the other side of the street held up mittened fists of solidarity to me and shouted, "Yeah!" while I waved politely and shouted, "Hullo!"  Yeah guys, we're in this together and we are conquering winter, one block at a time.

I cruised down Milwaukee, cut through back streets, coasted past the park, and then about 10 seconds from my front door, I hit a patch of something and went down hard on my left side and wound up in the middle of the intersection, me and my bike all tangled up like lovers.  And like lovers, we laid there for a minute still, breathless, feeling humbled and thankful and dazed, before we eventually righted ourselves and realized how much damage we'd done to each other.

I was so relieved there were no cars and no late-night dog walkers to see my fall, though Tim pointed out that maybe I should have wanted somebody to be around, in case I'd been knocked out somehow.  That hadn't even occurred to me.  Being self-conscious was more at the forefront of my thinking than being unconscious.  I will spend some time considering this.

Grossss

two oh ten

Happy 2010, dears.

2009 taught me A. LOT. Do I wish certain things were different right this moment? Well of course.  But things are as they are, and they will be as I make them, and as we make them, and thoughtfulness and wisdom and guesses at what wisdom might look like will be, I think, the keys to 2010.

Resolutions:

Deeper compassion: for others and myself
Stronger conviction: for all those causes I rally for slash against
Truer truthiness.
Sans murder: Thou shall not kill thy neighbors, nor steal and pawn their wah-wah pedals.
Symbolism: Sometimes I feel I have little else to offer to certain causes.
Dance Parties and Karaoke: Few things please me as well with so little cost to my pocketbook/modesty.
School: Harder, faster, better.

Temptation: Mastered? From time to time. Acknowledged.

Teeth: Flossed.


I think you're wonderful and I hope 2009 was not so terrible as everyone makes it out to have been, and I hope 2010 is better still.