Orlando

J.D. and I just watched the film version of Orlando. (It's not as good as the book). It's ok, but Orlando is actually my favorite of Woolf's novels. Anyway, the movie inspired J.D. to pose an interesting theoretical question: Would you be willing to change your sex if you could live for 400+ years? Orlando begins life as a man but wakes up one morning a woman. He was born during Queen Elizabeth's reign but lives into the 20th century and possibly beyond. Her longevity is not determined by her mysterious sex change, but it is part of the theoretical question we're asking.

Or would you even want to live for 400+ years?

April

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Sophie vs. Farm Cats: A Contrast

Today Sophie talked on the phone to her Cousin Lou in Twin Falls. They exchanged a few brief greetings. Lou is an indoor/outdoor kitty, and he is pretty dang smart. When he wants in the house, he'll come around to whatever room Candice is in and scratch lightly on the window. Now that's an intelligent little guy.

Sophie is definitely a "city-slicker" kitty, since she only gets to play indoors. And she's a little spoiled with the 10 toy mice she can choose from to sling-shot around. I say she's spoiled because farm cats don't need "fancy" toys.

My mom told me tonight about their kitty, Tubby, who plays with dirt clods.
Now, that's cute.

Tough Luck Ladies

No Equal Pay for you.

McCain says you just need more education. That wasn't really the point, but thanks for pretending to care.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ilwlQYv-XRhmiQFTlUtTmjvWMV_gD907S59O0

Sophie vs. Freedom

I refuse to leave the sanctuary of my carrier.

These were from a month ago when she refused to come out. She stayed in there for about an hour. We had just taken her to the vet for her cold. Since Sophie won her battle against freedom, she has been far more willing to exercise it. I guess she just needed to know she could win. But I told her to be careful, don't let George W. find out she "hates freedom."

Pictures of the boys

This video contains cute, funny, and one or two heartbreaking pictures of J.D. and I with Marley and Figaro. I did this as a type of catharsis, so it is unabashedly sentimental and sad, but happy at moments too. I will hopefully one day be able to set the pictures to purely happy music, but today is not that day. I share this because people who cared about them (and us) may want to see their pictures. They were our little family.

Pronking

They've been on a role recently. I don't know what I would do without my favorite fake news.


Congress Debates Merits Of New Catchphrase

Crawfishapalooza

Thanks to Jessica and Paul for having us over to their home for the 5th annual Crawfish feast this Friday evening. We had a great time. Since we're from the northwest, J.D. and I had no concept of what cooking crawfish involved.

There are pictures and even a recipe that seems similar here:
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Seafood/CrawfishBoil.htm

I enjoyed the shrimp and cocktail sauce, sausage, mushrooms, potatoes, and corn. J.D. ate about 20 crawfish! Overall, it was quite fun.

Thank you for welcoming us to share in the tradition this year.

Earthquake?

It woke me up last night, well, this morning around 4:30 a.m. Did you feel it in Chicago? The windows rattled, and I could feel things shaking. And we just now, about 5 minutes ago, had an aftershock. The building moved again, and Sophie looked at me like "What's happening"? Very weird.

It's funny, the first thing I thought this morning was, "What are the neighbors doing now?" Then I realized, oh, this might be an earthquake. I went right back to sleep though, without waking J.D. And he didn't feel a thing!

I called J.D. at work around 10:30, and he didn't feel the aftershock either! Silly man.

Later update: The earthquake was 5.4, and the aftershock was 4.6.

Spring!

Yesterday in my Merrill/Archive class we discussed Darwin and the quotation came up: "Privately, we know, Darwin took intense delight in the act of observing. His son writes: 'I used to like to hear him admire the beauty of a flower; it was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself. . . . '" (qtd. in Baird 485). It was a nice coincidence that later J.D. and I went to the Botanical Gardens, definitely my favorite place in St. Louis. I had never been there in spring.

Gratitude to the flowers.

Live in the Loop

Off-campus protest against Scientology draws students - News
(The news article is from February, so evidently they've done this multiple times)

Saturday J.D. and I were just driving to the mall, minding our own business, when we noticed about 50 people in full face masks walking around the loop. Most wore V for Vendetta versions of Guy Fawkes masks; although, one individual wore a green alien mask. The protesters stood huddled against the cold across the street from the Scientology building. They carried signs like "Scientology Kills" and "Scientology destroys families." They claim to be protesting the recruitment practices, but when you wear an alien costume and carry those signs. . . .

Anyway, the whole thing was odd.

People love nothing so much as belonging to a group, unless it's protesting a group.
And then, that's best done, in a group.

As for me, I'll stick with my caffeine and pass on the (what was it, potassium or vitamin B...? I can't remember). Oh wait, it was niacin!


P.S.

* The insider joke is that a year or so ago, I went inside the Scientology building during an Open House with my friend "Ellen." We saw the lie-detector gadget, the meditation room, the video tape room, and the basement/exercise room. But mostly I remember the guy, at the end of the tour, asking me if I'd ever taken so much niacin my skin and face turned bright red.

I don't know how I did it, but somehow, I managed to keep a straight face and give my most sincere, sweet: "No, actually, I never have." That was a feat of acting because right now I'm cracking up remembering it. "Why yes, I try to turn bright red all the time!

Amused in St. Louis,
"Rita"

New Orleans

Sometimes a "Thank you" means so much.

New grad-school ruled notebooks... FINALLY!

Mead Releases New Grad-School-Ruled Notebook

I must say this article made me smile. Here are some of the highlights:

"According to Mead's website, the ruling lines in the grad-school-ruled notebooks will be placed 3.55 millimeters apart, making them 'infinitely more practical' for postgraduate work than the 7.1 millimeter college-ruled notebooks. In addition, the standard 1.5-inch top margin normally provided for dates and headers will be halved, and the left-hand margin will be eliminated entirely.

'Just think: If you are writing a dissertation on elements of thanatopsis and necromimesis as they relate to cacaesthesian themes of mid-20th-century Irish literature, do you really want your notebook lines to be more than seven millimeters apart?' Luke said. 'Of course not.' 'When you're in grad school, every millimeter counts,' he added."

Also great:

"'Gone are the days of graduate students having to tediously pencil in new lines between each existing college-ruled line just to make the notebooks usable,' the press release read in part. "And with the time you'll save by not having to flip a page every 33 lines, you could earn your Ph.D. a year early.'

The new notebook also features a helpful page on its inside back cover that includes not only the traditional metric-conversion charts and world time zone map, but also handy guides such as the periodic table of elements, the Hertzsprung-Russell star-luminosity diagram, steel wire tension strengths, a list of the lattice phenomena of crystalline solids, and the entirety of Willa Cather's 1918 novel My Ántonia.

In addition, each page will be triple-perforated and seven-hole-punched, which Mead representative Kurt Fleming said is 'essential for the 21st-century graduate student.' The notebook will also have more spirals. Asked to explain why this particular change was made, Fleming responded, 'This notebook was designed with graduate students in mind.'"

* Cacaesthesian: from "cacaesthesis" as defined in an online medical dictionary, an "uncomfortable or morbid sensation."

Yeah, sounds right.

Journey to the Big Easy

I'm getting ready tonight to go to New Orleans for the CCCC. Just now, in preparing for which sessions I'm going to attend at the conference, I found this lovely section and HAD to share. Unfortunately, it's an ongoing joke that only 1 person (in addition to J.D.) will find funny.

At least now I know why I'm going to this conference:

Thursday, Section E, group 02, "Diving In to Prison Teaching."

Thought

“God’s love is ever with us, and naught can separate us from it.”