It's not even 10 am and weird stuff is happening today:
1. Older woman called (woke us up) looking for Dr. Ikrandamoo's office. B said, no, you have the wrong number. (His doctor is Ikramadin, so that seems a little weird.)
2. She called right back. He made me answer the phone, which confused her more.
3. She called again, and this time we let the machine get it.
4. The chopped onions sparked in the microwave. Hm, didn't realize we bought the sack of onions with "FREE IRON FILINGS INSIDE!"
Whatever will happen next? I can't wait...
As I may have mentioned, B and I have embarked on the South Beach Diet. I try not to blog about it, because reading about what other people eat or don't eat is supremely boring (even though I am obsessed with what we eat (or can't), and think about it EVERY MINUTE of EVERY WAKING DAY!).
It took me about 5 days to realize why all the recipes are salads. Duh! The founders are in Florida! So here we are in frozen flyover land, dreaming of rich stews and soups, and what do we get? Gazpacho.
Thus - we have invented a few recipes for soul-warming food that I think meet the parameters for being "on the beach" even if that beach is a dark hole bored in some lake ice around here somewhere. Think the South Beach people would mind if we published a book called "North Beach Diet"??
Yeah, how's that frequent updating thing going?
One weird thing about sitting here evenings is that my landlord can glance up from his computer and see me sitting at mine, just across the driveway.
It's snowing - the sky has that urban orange-purple look of snow to it. No, that's not right - what the heck IS that color, anyway?
My horoscope today says not to worry and jump at the first thing, b/c the RIGHT thing will be coming soon. Let us hope.
What IS that color?! I am going to have to concentrate on this. Maybe at 4 am, when doubtless I'll be awake. Ah, insomnia...
Remember back in late 1999, when "everyone" was afraid the world would crash on December 31?
Well, has anyone else noticed that customer service in the last week has been plagued with claims of "our system is down"? Isn't that just a little weird? What if the programmers had built in a 7-year buffer?!
One is not paranoid if there is really trouble afoot. Or so I've heard.
(Dla Piotra:: Jestes naprawde Polakiem? Musimy mowic po polsku! Napisz mi! as below "at" umn.edu.)
I have to write 5 cover letters this week, and that doesn't even include the job at this university that I have pretty much decided not to apply for.
My heart really isn't in it. I have a template letter, but I am really tired of it. The sentences sound hollow and pompous and overwritten, in that way sentences do when you have worked over them probably a thousand times.
Plus my tandem language partner emailed that she doesn't have time for me this semester. It was frankly a struggle to go over to St. Paul every week, but at least it kept me in touch with spoken Polish. Now it's all up to me. Thinking positively: so far I have kept up my resolution to do a chapter of review a day (1/4, 1/5, 1/8) so perhaps if the goal is small and do-able, I'll be able to stick with it. My ultimate goal for this semester is to build vocabulary in reading, since I have a lot of translation work still to do.
As I have already mentioned, we envision 2007 as The Year of Transition. Oh, sure, that includes new jobs and new housing and new degrees and all that, but it is also time to get serious about losing that middle-aged spread. Every year for probably like the last 15 years I've vowed to lose some weight. Every year, I lose nothing: in fact I gain more.
So yesterday we raced around to the few branch libraries that are OPEN ON SATURDAYS (which could be a blog entry in itself were the topic not already so ably covered by literate (and stadium-skeptical) Minneapolitans) and got the South Beach Diet book.
It's a lot like The Zone, which I had some success with about 5 years ago. I think it's nutritionally sound, but eco-irresponsible. If everyone on the planet ate only meat and fresh vegetables, the food chain would be pretty screwed up. Nevertheless, although I love pasta and potatoes, I don't love bread or cookies or sweets generally so the diet doesn't represent a life of total self-denial. So that's good: a diet that is in tune with my basic habits of eating.
On the other hand, it's also like the Zone in that preparing meals and snacks takes more time because you can't just reach for the cracker-box, or the nuked potato, or whatever. The meal plans in South Beach are VERY elaborate but I think I can streamline that right down to our simple way of eating. There's (for example) no need to spend an hour before breakfast boiling artichokes for Artichokes Benedict when you can just boil some eggs and whip out some Canadian bacon and eat that instead. Good grief.
Once we have eaten up all the fruit and bread we bought last week, we plan to embark. In the meantime, I am studying up on principles and recipes.
You might think that academics would be more disposed to appreciate the value of middle age for the experience and the extra years of reflection upon life that older grad students bring to departmental culture.
But no, you would be wrong. For example, one of my colleagues relating hearing this dismissive comment (I paraphrase) about a recent potential hire, a woman who had had a successful career in the private sector before shifting gears and getting her doctorate: "I just don't see her moving the discipline forward. Her dissertation is probably the best work she'll ever do."
Perhaps it's from a sense of nostalgia for their own forever-lost youth - but these fifty-ish profs who make such ageist judgments about forty-ish women seem totally impressed with the youthful arrogance and swagger of the twenty-somethings who still think they know it all and will be masters of the universe. Whereas I (at 46) am more keenly aware with each passing day how much there is that we will NEVER know, no matter how early in life we start our doctoral work. It's sad how people who really should know better value youthful braggadocio over the humble, middle-aged awareness of the limits of knowledge and influence.
We are back in flyover land, and I'm in a pretty good mood, because:
a. The holidays are over. I'm not really a big fan of the Christmas/New Year thing. Staying in someone else's place is always kinda stressful, and then there's the expectation level for gifts and spending the right amount of time with the right people, and running around to try to see a lot of folks, and if there is a slight kink somewheres in the schedule, then it ripples right through the entire vacation, just like snowstorms in Denver ripple through world aviation.
b. My cold, which has been REALLY dragging me down through this flurry of visiting, is subsiding. I probably blow my nose only every 10 minutes instead of every 10 seconds.
c. I'm home!!!!
d. It's warm (relatively speaking) and the sun is coming out, and that makes me cheerful.
e. I am as always filled with great expectations for the new year. We are calling Aught-Seven "the year of transition" - new place to live, new jobs, completion of our degrees.
f. Our lease extension is signed in MA, and there is relative stability in real estate at least until the end of February, and probably beyond.
Hm. All the clever ideas I had in the shower for blogging have evaporated. More tomorrow.