faʲlənə weɹɪŋ

In light of my having acquired what the rest of the world knows and takes for granted as "weekends," Daniel and I have been re-discovering what it is like to have multiple days off--regularly! For a while this was restricted to such amusing pastimes as keeping up with the laundry and the Sunday NYTimes. But recently we have been branching out a bit. Last weekend was our fourth anniversary, and Daniel took me to a petrified forest park near Santa Rosa, where a few million years ago a volcano exploded, knocked down the forest, and blanketed everything in ash. Over the ensuing few thousand millennia, each organic molecule of the fallen trees was replaced by silica and quartz, resulting in tree-rocks, all lying in the same orientation, because the blast knocked them all over in the same direction. Tree-rocks! It's really cool: you're walking in a pretty forest on a pretty forest path, and come across a fallen log, which looks just like every other fallen log--I mean, it's a forest! What else would it be? But then you touch it, and it's a rock! But it's a log! But it's a rock! It's really wild. This little forest was not particularly dramatic, largely because there were only a dozen or two well-preserved petrified trees, but I'm very eager to see more. Daniel tells me that there's a national park of the stuff, so we're going to have to get over there to check it out at some point.

After that, we went to Napa, where we went strolling in the local state park and had a picnic lunch, after which he took me wine-tasting, and that was very pleasant, but not too interesting to write about, so I'll skip ahead. On the way out of the Napa valley we stopped at Jack London state park. It was getting dark and the park was closing in half an hour, so we didn't actually look at the nature-y part of it, but we did peruse the museum of London's effects, which I was more interested in at the moment, seeing as how I've been getting very into Jack London recently. Particularly entertaining was the display of all his various rejection letters--some of them a polite dismissal, some of them a form post-card, and some of them rather insulting. We finished up the day with a yummy dinner in the staple Chinese restaurant of Daniel's childhood before driving home--but the celebrations were not over yet! The next morning we went on a Chicago alumni club-organized tour of the local Scharffen Berger chocolate factory in Berkeley. The factory made a strong name for itself and then sold out to Hershey's, which was smart enough to realize that an independent chocolate store is not going to retain its clientele by plastering NOW A HERSHEY'S SUBSIDIARY over its products, however great product placement it might be for Hershey's itself. So the only sign of that acquisition is the tasteful notice in small lettering that Scharffen Berger chocolate is an "Artisian Confections Company," which is the blanket name that is given to all of Hershey's high-class branches. The tour was very interesting, and I learned tons about the making of chocolate itself, and we even got a great meal in the attached restaurant afterward. The restaurant's food was fairly normal/good, but the desserts were magnificent! I was particularly entranced with a chocolate pot de creme that was seasoned with rosemary, which sounds a bit strange, but worked beautifully. I would say this is the perfect place to take one's parents, but I can only speak in theoretical terms because after spending three nights stuck in the O'Hare Hilton (two on the way out and one on the way back) the last time they came out to see me, my parents have vowed never to fly ever again. So no rosemary pot de creme for them.

Since I know there are a few UofC alumni who read this, let me take this opportunity to encourage you folks to participate in the alumni club-sponsored events. The prices are pretty good and the events are great fun, and the pool of participants really need some fresh blood infused. Except for one party of the 25-30 person group, we were the only people under 40--or even under 50, I might go so far as to say. Certainly the two gentlemen sitting near us at the restaurant were distinctly members of the old guard. I was taught in my tour-guide training that my dorm, Burton-Judson, was originally a law school dorm, way back in the day, which is why there is so little gothic carving: those frills were too girly, it was thought, and since only boys are going to be law-school students, they won't need the frills. But these gentlemen talked to us about our UofC days, and remarked, "Oh, Burton Judson is an undergraduate dorm now, is it?" Or, "Well, that was back before the war, of course--and I don't mean Vietnam." So in conclusion, chocolate!

Then this weekend--which was not two days, but three! Three glorious days! More than half the fingers on one hand! Three!--we spent a good bit of time lounging, Daniel did tons of grading, and I did some housecleaning, but because there were three (three!) days, that still left time to go to a concert on Sunday and to spend the afternoon on Clement St. in San Francisco today. Clement is really a great place. We went to a tea shop on Sixth Avenue and Clement called Aroma Tea Shop. This place is amazing--in part because of the tea tastings. You can't just walk in and look around--no no, they make you sit down in front of what can only be described as a tea bar and serve you little muglet after little muglet of the various teas, describing the different uses and benefits and production methods of each tea, and stopping every so often to ask you what else you would like to taste. "Do you like fragrant, smokey, sweet, earthy?" they'll ask, and when you respond, they pick out a kind of tea that embodies one of those characteristics and make a cup for you to taste. If you express the slightest interest in one of the teas you see they'll grab it and make it for you. If you happen to mention in passing to a friend that that tea over there has kind of a funny sounding name, they'll grab it and make it for you. Daniel and I knew coming in exactly what we wanted (because an aunt who lives in the area gave it out as gifts this Christmas) and still ended up tasting eight different varieties (that we remember) before we purposefully stood up and announced that we were ready to buy. The other group who was tasting with us was still going strong when we left. It should be mentioned that the various teas are extremely expensive (something like $25-$40 on average for a little four-ounce package, but one spoonful alone of the leaves will brew several pots' worth. And they are amazing.), but if any of my SF-area companions are interested in trying this place out, Daniel and I would love to show it to you. And sit down with you during a tasting so you don't get lonely. Maybe we'll mention a fews teas that are worth trying, if you're at a loss amidst all the choices. It's for your own good, you understand. (And I'll mention right now that you can't leave without trying the Blue People Oolong. It is a truly magnificent tea, all the more remarkable because apparently the leaves have been fermented with mint and licorice, two flavors I abhor.)

Oh! And we're going skiing next weekend!

Oh! And I got into Cornell and Santa Cruz also. And Cornell is offering me lots of money. And Santa Cruz is offering me less. And I still don't know what Berkeley is offering me, but I'm going to an open house on March 10-11 for Berkeley and March 5-7 for Cornell--and Cornell is offering me so much money that they're even paying my travel expenses!

I have not been picking at Anna Karenina for quite a while. All the сельские вещи have really gotten to me, so I'm reading about similar aspects in English. Specifically, Jack London--I just read The Call of the Wild and reread White Fang. I had heard from a few people that The Call of the Wild is better, but I must say I don't agree. The beginning alone of White Fang, with the chilling recounting of the starving wolf pack haunting the arctic travelers carrying home the dead body, and the recurring discussion of how many dogs they actually have, is so artistic in itself that it would make White Fang the superior book, even if the plot were not more exciting and vibrant. I"m set next to begin The Sea Wolf, after which I'll probably have had enough of Jack London for a while. Richard Russo has a new book out, and I was so impressed by Empire Falls that I imagine I'll give it a peek, or if not the new one, at least Nobody's Fool, which seems pretty well known, although judging from what I know of it (i.e., from the previews of the movie, which I have not seen) I am sure someone (coughcoughMommycoughcough) will tell me I'm too young to appreciate it. However, given that my knee, which I injured years ago falling off a horse, has started twinging in damp weather, I think I can make a reasonable stab at being a crotchety old grump long enough to enjoy literature for old people.

Before Jack London I read some more Henry James--this time, Washington Square and Daisy Miller, both of which I enjoyed tremendously. I will not say quite yet that his early writing is superior to the later stuff (in particular The Ambassadors, which was an even richer brownie than Daniel Deronda*), but it certainly is easier to read. I had originally been planning to read those two preparatory to reading Colm Toibin's The Master, but now that I have my reading list of James finished, I'm finding my interest in Toibin's work less pressing. I might wait until I've completed The Golden Bowl, but since even my brilliant grandfather has admitted that he never finished it, I feel that that's a dangerous postponement to make.

In other news, I carved a pumpkin this season! It was not for Halloween, because we didn't sit down to it until at least November 2nd, but I did it! Here's a picture:

( Kitty! )

I love farmer's markets! I was thoroughly converted to them by Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, and I must say that they are great, if for no other reason than being able to take some item that before I had regarded merely as an ornament next to the vegetables that I actually eat and asking the farmer, "so, how do I cook this, anyway?" I have in this way discovered kale (rip out the stems, sauté like spinach, and enjoy without the gritty coating that spinach give to your teeth) and today,( delicata squash: )
Cut it in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and back face-down on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Serve with butter and salt. Fabulous! I can't wait to get some more varieties and see what this newly discovered form of food might yield.

In other food news, a bakery customer has been giving me a hard time. I might even post it on customers_suck (which I keep rather alarmingly up-to-date on; it's a bit embarrassing to admit it, considering the rather appalling llevel of writing and foul language, but I'm sure my sister, addicted to such places as aintitcoolnews.com, will understand the draw.), but the saga is so boring that I won't inflict it on people who don't already know me. In a nutshell, a customer comes in a week and a half early to get information about a big, fancy cake. I help him, give him all the facts he needs about pricing and ordering, and tell him very clearly (I remember this consultation distinctly: he came in less than two weeks before he needed the cake and told me that the party was "in November sometime." You see why I had to be especially firm with him on the timetable) that he must order at least a week in advance for me to be able to guarantee his selections. Well, he waits until four days before he needs the cake to order, and--surprise!--the flavor he wanted is not available. So he goes for a different flavor, orders the cake, and then calls back and complains to my manager that it's not fair, he hadn't been told, he'll never order from us again, blah blah blah, and gets a big discount to make him happy. So of course my manager has to talk to me about it, and even though she's very nice and understanding that customers hear things selectively, I'm still kind of grumpy about it. Dude--I told you! I TOLD YOU!!! It's nobody's fault but your own, so stop making trouble for us.

Goodness, that was a boring tale, wasn't it? I've lost interest in it myself, which I guess is the point of this whole exercise.



*Daniel Deronda is not by Henry James, I hasten to clarify, but rather by George Eliot. This comparison is linked not by authors, but by the brownie metaphor.

I never know when I will be presented with a crossword puzzle, so I've started carrying around pencil with me at all times. Yet I should hasten to add, nothing being too trivial for an entry that appears (so far) centered upon the most trivial of trivia, that this "carrying around" implies too much agency on my part. Adept as I am at losing writing implements, I have yet somehow managed to retain this fairly nice mechanical pencil in my bag since Easter*, and I am beginning to find it remarkably useful for things--if not less trivial than crossword puzzles, at least trivial in a different manner. To wit: striking occurrences throughout the day that seem worthy of some sort of documentation. Since my family is so supportive that this "blog" of mine might prove sensational to read on the train (assuming you have, as I'm sure today's Gwendolyn would, a laptop and wireless internet connection), I might as well test their patience. I am sure to some people pencil sagas are as juicy as the making and breaking of engagements are to others--or even more so. Relationship drama is a real yawner to me.

1. People in Berkeley hate trees. ( More in this vein . . . )

But I didn't mean to write just about trees. Therefore, a somewhat briefer rundown shall follow on the other items I had noted down on the back of my receipt with my crossword puzzle pencil.

Overheard at the bakery
2. Two girls having a heart-to-heart over slices of chocolate cake. In reference to some boy trouble, one explains, "I just feel as if he's 70% there, 80% somewhere else." That's 150% of boy, dear. No wonder he's too much for you to handle.

3. One woman, tall, floppy, white, dressed with a hippy flavor, walks in with a short, compact, well-groomed black man wearing a very snazzy suit.

"We're looking for a wedding cake," she explains. "Reg is a vegetarian and a nutritional consultant, so we thought a carrot cake would be be the best way to go."

I confirm that we do in fact have a carrot cake, but alarm bells are going off in my head. I start giving them my wedding cake shpiel, but then I realize she's nattering on about other flavors--do we have anything that's healthy . . . organic . . . natural? As she trails off hopefully, I explain that one does not walk into a cake store seeking health food, at which point Reg redeems himself from his unprepossessing introduction by laughing heartily. They then sit down, look at books, do their wedding-cake searching thing, during which I overhear the woman describing how the "stars" were active in relation to "a lot of transition right now in our lives," and really now, are you for real? Reg seemed like such a reasonable guy. What can he see in this woman? Usually in such mind-blowing mismatches I say to myself, "the sex must be really good," but then it was pointed out to me that they had to get to that point in their relationship to begin with, and at least in this case Reg seemed far too much put-together to be one for drunken one-night stands. (I say this with the full knowledge of his character, gleaned from no more than two sentences' worth of exchange with him. He did not, as they say, open his mouth and remove all doubt.)

On the street
4. I saw a homeless man talking on a cell phone yesterday. How do I know he was homeless? He was selling Street Spirit, which is usually a pretty good give-away. The dirty, smelly, toothless, and generally showing signs of not being all right in his head was also indicative of that condition. Before my bike was stolen I might have laughed and said that now I've seen everything with regard to the cell phone epidemic, but now that some despicable slug ran off with my property I'm more likely to look at the underclasses' possession of valuables with distaste and suspicion. Whom does he have to call, anyway?

5. There is a kind of flower common in Berkeley called a naked lady, so named because the stem shoots straight out from the ground with no leaves to obstruct the view of the flower. The fact that the flower is, after all, the sexual organ of the plant, only makes the name all the more titillating. However, these flowers are past their prime, and whenever I pass a stand of their withered remains, I think to myself, "Hmmmm . . . naked crones." This is perhaps a less attractive title, but it is no less whimsical, and if you want to cut and paste here a rant about unfair standards forcing women to retain the illusion of youth and beauty when they are just as (or more) valuable to society and beautiful in soul after having aged (like a fine wine) for a few decades, you have a legitimate argument for using that name to refer to the flower during its entire life cycle instead of the ageist, lookist, womyn-as-sex-object-promoting name that, after all, refers only to the beginning of the flower's existence, not to its ultimate culminating fate.

6. Walking to work today (on Hillegas Ave., in fact), I saw what appeared to be a man dumping the contents of a stroller into a waste hauling truck. I'm not a big fan of the usual contents of strollers, but it seemed to me that this was a bit extreme, even for someone of my views. So I got a bit closer to investigate (also, work was in that direction), but it turned out that the stroller was a rolling container for hauling construction debris. There are a number of different paths to be taken from this set-up, ranging from a discussion of the narrowly averted consequences of excessive gun-jumping with regard to samaritanism and baby-rescue, to speculation on how construction workers feel about their materials if they haul them in stroller look-alikes, to rumination on how one might compare the usual contents of strollers to the byproducts of construction work, but I feel that none of these avenues of thought would reflect well on me if I elaborated on them, so I will simply mention their existence and move on.

Today
7. Madame customer, I am capable of making change for a $1.50 cookie out of a $10.00 bill. My hesitation was due mistrust of our elderly computer system, which screws up more than it works properly (in magnitude, if not frequency of occurrence), and your unhelpful prompting of the correct change, followed by a gentle excuse making ("It's okay; I understand; it's late in the day") only revealed your belief that we in the service industry are apparently undereducated high-school drop-outs, incapable of performing basic math functions. While I can understand the experiences which might have led you to that conclusion, it is always impolite to act upon it without proof of its accuracy. The correct thing to do is wait patiently while I make sure that the computer will not screw up in some ridiculous way that will keep me at work half an hour after I should have left (which has happened before.)


8. But I will not end on such a cranky note. When I came home, the neighbors, who have a doggy named Monkey**, had a friend over, who had brought herpuppy named Coda, and Monkey and Coda were having a marvelous time chasing each other all over the back yard. I heard them mentioning how in a month Coda would be much too big for Monkey, but this afternoon they were having a grand old time, although Monkey's age and treachery were running circles around Coda's youth and inexperience.





*I know it is since Easter because the pencil's provenance is guilty. My mother borrowed it from my aunt when the whole family went to brunch that weekend to do--surprise!--a crossword puzzle with, and somehow it ended up in my bag. I have never returned it--indeed, I forgot all about it for several months, which might explainin part why I have not lost it yet--but I comfort myself with the knowledge at least it's still performing its true, original duty.

**Whose name, I might add, once very much confused a small girl who met the dog on the street. How can he be Monkey when he was so clearly a doggy?

The stereotypes say that it's only the crotchety old retirees who sit at home at 9:00am on a weekday morning and shout at the paper, but when I find myself doing that, I don't feel old and crotchety. I feel young and idealistic and somehow naive, because I know that these things that seem so self-evident they have me yelling at a piece of newsprint cannot possibly be this obvious. Yet I can't see the other side of the issue because the obvious side is blinding me. There is some famous quotation from Mark Twain, the gist of which is that when he was young (14, 15, or "a boy," according to various versions on the internet), he thought his father was an idiot, but when he returned home later (7 years later, at the age of 21 is the most common version, but there's also 10 years later at the age of 25, and even a 30 years later floating around as well) he was amazed at how much the old man had learned. I feel like I'm ready to discover what the old men have learned, but I'm well past 21 and I'm still waiting.

( Don't click if you want pictures of fuzzy animals; I personally find political diatribes tiresome, especially on livejournal, which seems much better suited to fan fiction and bad grammar. )











*You should know that I really don't do well with children. They come into my shop, shriek, smear up my nice clean glass cases, and make noise everywhere they go. Aside from the kids I am personally related to or who belong to my parents friends and managed to behave when I met them, there are really only two kids that I like: Mimi Smartypants's Nora, who I know only from nice quiet text on a screen, and the little girl Boo from Monsters, Inc., who is not even real. Cute, though. Daniel and I watched the movie last night. This does not mean, however, that I want them to suffocate from asthma or die from infections they could easily have been immunized against. I am aware that they become perfectly reasonable, intelligent human beings capable of carrying on a civilized conversation sometime around the age of ten, and I'm willing to put up with them until then.

**Ever since I had to write industry briefs on advertising and marketing, I've been fascinated with them. Often commercials bug me, but in a fun way. I am rather crotchety at heart (if not in a retiree under an afghan sense (although that does sound awfully comfy)), and I enjoy pointing out the foibles of bad advertising. For example, the ubiquitous framework: "Do you have trouble with X, Y, or Z? (no.) Hi! I'm Joe Schmo, and I'm here to talk to you about how you can fix X, Y, or Z with just six easy payments of $800." Why do they ("they" being advertisers) think that the "hi, I'm Joe Schmo" is going to pull in people? Is it related to the human element? Is it a similar strategy to having the two fake personalities have a fake conversation wherein one tells the other how her life has been changed by produce Q? Because it's not convincing, although it does make me laugh at the stupidity of the approach.

One advertising gimmick that makes me cranky in a less enjoyable way is the emphasis on "natural." Not "organic," which actually means something and has a department to enforce standards (even if it is understaffed and ineffective, as I read recently in a NYT article that now proves untraceable), but "natural," which means exactly nothing, because people don't genuinely want everything to be "natural." "Natural" in "natural childbirth" means an appallingly high death rate after an appallingly painful experience. "Natural" in "natural medicine" means eating a lot of herbs that are not regulated because homeopathy is not a licensed medical field, but because the herbs can do actual things to your body, you can poison yourself and have no one to sue when you go blind because you took a tincture of parsley in wood alcohol for the sniffles (oooh, doesn't it sound natural? "Tincture" is a great word, and parsley, gathered fresh*** from the woods sounds so refreshing). A human's "natural" lifespan without antibiotics is something like thirty years or less. Yes, you die young, but at least your corpse yields organic steak for the wolves.

***Oh, don't even get me started on "fresh." Look, people, you come into my store, eat my samples, rave about how good they taste, and then ask me if my cakes are fresh. Did it taste good? Then what do you care how fresh it is? If you want a "fresh" cake, I'll give you something still hot from the oven. Oh, the mousse won't have set, so it will slop all over, and the buttercream won't stick, because the cake is too hot, but this gooey mess will be fresh, just for you!

This is all an issue of how things sound. Meaning and practicality mean nothing in public relations, only soundbites, and people are so touchy about it all. Two newspaper articles caught my eye. They are not really related to fresh, natural, organic selling, but neither is advertising really related to politics, so lets not worry about continuity. Article the first I read yesterday, about a ferry in Washington that had let the FBI know about two men who had been asking suspicious questions about structural details and off-limits areas of the boat. The FBI then released a picture taken by a crewmember of the men, and suddenly Muslim groups and Arab American coalitions are crying foul because the men appear to be Middle Eastern. "It's racial profiling," they cry. Get a grip, people! These men acted suspiciously, so a picture of them was released so the FBI could investigate. The fact that they are Middle Eastern is incidental! No one would cry foul if they were white and the circumstances were the same. Then it would be "please report to the police if you see these people," and everyone would applaud the crewmember for having the foresight to take a picture so the FBI could resolve the reports. This is the same nonsense that Daniel ran into in school when the police came into classrooms to take into custody suspects who were presumed armed and wanted in connection with a pistol-whipping attack. The policemen were white, the suspect students were black, and a teacher was upset because this was an "image problem." Because what you really want to do is waste time finding a black policeman while a kid with a gun who is suspected of having attacked somebody the day before moves about freely in a school. Because there's an image problem.

Article the second involves sikhs who are upset about being asked to take off their turbans during airport screenings, while Jews are allowed to keep yarmulkas. This means a specific community is targeted, claims the managing director of United Sikhs. People wearing straw hats also have to take them off, which means cowboys are also targeted, I guess. I am sympathetic to the claim that removing your turban is an intensely private thing to do, and being denied space or privacy to retie it is insensitive. However, it is not unfair racial profiling. A genuine turban might be wound so tightly that nothing could fit inside, but that doesn't mean someone can hide something inside a fake turban and try to pass for real. This is the same sort of reasoning as, "I'm offended you think I'd steal a credit card! Why must you check my ID?" Whether or not you are for real is secondary to the fact that somebody who is not for real can look the same. You can't hide a gun under a yarmulkah. Lighten up.

First things first: First of all, there was an earthquake this morning! A big one, too, which woke me up and had Daniel out of bed and squawking before we even realized what happened. You may read more about it here. (Warning: there are pop-ups) Fortunately, there was no damage in our house (however dramatically it may rattle), beyond the fall of Maria Tsvetaeva, who, at roughly half an inch high, is the innermost little figure of Daniel's Russian literary matryoshka set. (The outermost is Pushkin, who measures in at nine and a half inches.)

Second things second, although this may soon become first: Second, I have received confirmations from 4 of the 6 professors at Cornell and Harvard (and these were the best 4) that they are happy to meet with me and talk to me about grad school when I go next week to see about getting myself a doctorate. Ideally I'd be able to see a class, too, but that's not so possible in the summer, so scratch that.

Many things many-enth: Many-enth, last week Daniel and I went on a road trip!( Many pictures follow, as well as a smidgen of text )

I just got another call, this time for an interview at the Phoebe Hearst archeological museum on the UC Berkeley campus. I'd be a conservation assistant. And this isn't even an internship--this is a real job! Which pays money! And best of all, it wouldn't start until August, which means that I could complete an internship before then! Good heavens. I remember when I was applying for these types of positions last year I got no responses whatsoever, and now I've had five of them in a month. I guess that CCI internship/travel coordinator position, deadly dull and disappointing (and all other manner of bad things beginning with D) as it was, was great resume building material.

And yet, yes! I update finally because I will be coming out of my unoccupied/not-happily-employed/grumpy funk. I hasten to add that I am, actually, employed, at the same bakery I've been working at since August, and I very much enjoy my job and my work. I was grumpy, however, because after I finally left CCI, I was not able to work as many hours as I wanted at the bakery, and have been feeling at loose ends. This is not helped by the fact that, although I have been applying like crazy for jobs and internships, no one seems to want me. I got as far as a telephone interview for one position (which went terribly), and a "library exam" for a really sweet library job (which I passed. I am now on a list, along with 60 other people, of applicants who "will be notified as positions become available." Hah.) However, all is well in Claraland, because in addition to applying for jobs and internships, I am also getting involved in volunteer work. In particular, I will be introducing kittens (KITTENS!!!!!!!) to preschoolers tomorrow morning, and presiding at a few kitten (KITTEN!!!!!) adoptions this month and next month. Furthermore, next week I will be going to some meetings at Planned Parenthood in San Francisco to learn about how to volunteer there. This entails everything from escorting patients to abortion appointments so they are not intimidated by fundamentalist jerks in the parking lot, to going to events and educating the public about reproductive health and the fact that Plan B does not cause abortions and send you to hell, to dressing up like birth control pills and running marathons to tell people about safe sex*. And next month I will start helping with adult literacy training through the Berkeley Public Library. You, my collective friends list (and people who read this (*coughfamilycoughcough*) will be responsible for making sure I do not flake out on these events to read science fiction.**)

Speaking, however, of science fiction, I would like to mention that my mother's friend, who lives one town over from me, has put me on to Lois MacMaster Bujold, who writes very good sci-fi/fantasy. The Curse of Chalion in particular is good, and I am putting off reading her Miles Vorkosigan books simply because I cannot quite figure out where to start. Wikipedia is not much help, although I am coming to rely on it more and more as the source of all knowledge.

I have also started reading linguistixy stuff, in preparation for graduate school***. I had great fun with Cyrus Gordon's Forgotten Scripts, a bitter account of how those ancient Mediterranean scripts and languages were decoded by great pioneers in the field who were, evidently, always being snooted and sneered at by stodgy academicians who were too stupid to recognize the genius in front of them. No, really, Cyrus, why don't you tell us how you really feel? Stephen Pinker's Words and Rules (about how regular and irregular verbs are processed in our brains) was also lots of fun, and segues nicely into George Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, a description of how categories reveal the workings of the mind. I have my doubts that I'll actually finish Lakoff's book, though. His writing is really dense, and not nearly as linguistics-oriented as I had hoped from the title, which is a reference to a grammatical category in the Australian language Dyirbal. (It encompasses women, fire, and dangerous things, among others.) This sort of reading has also helped me refine my research goals, should I end up schooling myself graduately. Ancient writing systems are so cool! I remember trying to persuade my BA adviser that I should write my BA on the Glagolitic alphabet, the script that Saints Cyril and Methodius actually invented for the Slavic languages. (Cyrillic was only named in honor of Cyril; he had nothing to do with it.) My adviser kept helpfully pointing out that I knew nothing about Old Church Slavonic, the language that Glagolitic was used to write, but I was so enamored of this new script that it was hard to drop the idea of studying it. Now, however, I have studied OCS, and I think it would be way cool to research Glagolitic and what it tells us about the sound system of the various dialects of Late Common Slavic that would evolve into Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, and so on. I don't know if there's a PhD thesis in there somewhere, but I could easily see myself expanding the idea and writing about other scripts and how they are influenced or are related to each other, and how we can extrapolate from there how the sound systems of those languages behaved and interacted. I mean, this is the combination of some of my favorite things: phonology, historical linguistics, and calligraphy! How can I go wrong?

I have not just been reading non-fiction, however. I have also just finished (actually, this was quite a while ago) Henry James's The Ambassadors, which is another one of those great late James slogs that my mother cannot understand why I read. I had a great deal of fun with it, although I strongly doubt that real social interactions are so internal as he has them being. Maybe people think the things he says they think, but I strongly doubt they all play by those ridiculously subtle rules that seem to govern every social interaction. As an antidote to this style of writing, therefore, I read George Eliot's Middlemarch, which I cannot recommend highly enough. It is the epitome of the English novel, I feel: all those social classes, all those entailed estates, marriageable bachelors, girls desperate to keep from being old maids, good marriages, bad marriages, virtuous widows, vicious society dames, dark secrets which must be kept from the light--seriously, books do not get much better than this.

*This last I will not be participating in, only in part because I am not a runner.

**I put this here simply because I can't think where else it fits into my entry, which is ironic because it is about editing. I have had another response for an editing internship, and one part of it involved editing a sample text to show my prowess. And I don't believe I have ever seen such bad writing. I mean, it was dreadful in so many ways. There were spelling errors, punctuation errors, bad flow, bad everything! Even the content (which was the one thing I didn't have leave to revise) was lousy: leadership during times of change and transition. Ugh. I cleaned it up the best I could and sent it back, with a polite question as to whether this is a representative sample of the sorts of work they usually deal with. I'm hoping it's simply an example of particularly egregious writing, so that even the duds can run their spell check and feel like there's something for them to do.

***The list so far: Cornell, Amherst, Harvard, Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford. I'm also looking at safety-type places like NYU, but grad school isn't like college. You don't want to get bogged down in a 6-year program that's entirely optional and not what you really want to do just because the places you did want to go didn't accept you.

After learning how to ski last month, I decided that I was ready for more, so Daniel and I went back to Tahoe this weekend to give it to me. After having scouted out various weather conditions, we decided that North Lake Tahoe looked more snowy than South Lake Tahoe (which had been fine for learning to ski on, but not so great for much else), and booked a little studio-cabin online, which turned out to be perfect. Franciscan Lakeside Village, I believe it was called, for those of you who are interested. They sold us discount lift tickets and recommended an independent ski shop, unaffiliated with the resort, where the entire fitting and rental procedure was cheaper and friendlier and less crowded and thus more competent-seeming than it would have been at the resort. And so we arrived at Northstar on Saturday morning with our equipment in the trunk and nine inches of fresh snow on the slopes.

( In which I babble about skiing )


( Footnotes )

First, a picture:
( Lake Tahoe )
On January 1st through 4th, I learned how to ski. This sounds like a process that took several days, but in fact the skiing was only a few hours. The rest of the time was preparation and recovery. Daniel and I researched cabins, emailed cabin owners, mapquested, borrowed ski jackets/hats/gloves/cars that we can trust from various people (i.e., his parents), and although I was not ready to leave by the time we got there, it sure does sound like a good way to end the sentence rhetorically, doesn't it? Actually, I was thoroughly psyched, so much so that by the time I actually got on my skis I wasn't even nervous, despite their disturbing propensity to slide backwards whenever I was on any sort of a slope. The beginning class that I took was split into two groups: the group with experienced people ("I learned how to ski five winters ago and have forgotten everything") and the group with timid people. I was not timid, so I went into the "experienced" group, which turned out to be the right choice, because by the time we were skiing down the bunny slopes the other group was learning how to walk in the skis, and by the time we were going down a real slope (A "green circle," which is the easiest kind of slope there is, but it's still a real slope!) the other group was beginning to go down the bunny slopes.

After my lesson, Daniel met me for lunch, and then he spent the rest of the day with me, going down the same three easy slopes over and over and over again, like the sweetie he is. The hardest part of the slopes were really getting from the chair lift down to the beginning of the slope, because that is the steepest part, and usually the most crowded. Also, there are very, very steep right-hand turns between the chairlift-to-slope part and the slope itself, and when you combine these characteristics with a beginning skier who is not very comfortable turning to the right (left-hand turns are no problem), you end up with a kind of frenzied, vain attempt to ski down the first part with some modicum of control, followed by a most undignified skid to a stop, before the beginning skier can manifest any evidence of ability. These slopes are also the places where very small children do not look where they are going, and where beginning skiers are too busy trying not to lose control to look out for small children, so collisions are not unusual. Fortunately, the beginning skier who has been the subject of these past few sentences landed on top of the small child during her collision and so was not hurt in the slightest. The small child started crying, but its mother assured our beginning skier that the small child was fine, so all ended well. Here is photographic evidence that I was there:
( Snow bunny! )

The next day I was covered all over with bruises, and so sore that I was barely even exaggerating when I groaned with every movement that involved a transition from standing to sitting or from sitting to standing. The evenings were spent with hot cocoa and the West Wing (another example of what a sweetie Daniel is; for some unfathomable reason he is not thoroughly engrossed in the TV show, so after about 10 episodes I have decided he gave it a good try, and backed off with the pressure. But in Tahoe he watched West Wing with me every evening.) And the next day I was feeling well enough to give it another try, but we had to drive home, so naturally that day there was a humongous blizzard to cover all the slopes with up to 20 inches of fresh powder. Perfect ski conditions, said Daniel, as we got in the car and drove home. In fact, there was so much snow that we had to put the snow chains (which his father had insisted that we bring) on the tires, a learning experience for all of us. I am now an expert at snow-chain application, and here is photographic proof of the success of my labors:
( Snow chains! )

In fact, here's some more photographic proof of the blizzard; it's something pretty remarkable, even for someone who has lived through Massachusetts, Indiana, and Chicago winters:
( Blizzard 1 )
( Blizzard 2 )
( Blizzard 3 )

We are now at home, with our (once more) non-functioning heater, but we're back at work, we have clean laundry and groceries, and Daniel met me at work this evening with flowers. Life is good. And before I stop typing, I will share a little exchange that prompted Daniel, who knows from smelly experience how well connected are the air vents in our building:

Certified CRACKPOT male downstairs neighbor (to nice female downstairs neighbor): Hey, baby! Wanna get stoned?
Nice female downstairs neighbor: Yeah, snookie-woogums*!

And that is that. Good night.



*Actually, Daniel did not quite catch what she called him in return, but her response of "yeah!" could not stand alone and still pack the same punch.

Let's recap:

Sunday:
-no heat
-no food
-ant infestation

Monday:
-no heat
-no food
-ant infestation

Tuesday:
-ant infestation
-no hot water

Wednesday:
-ant infestation
-no hot water
-no power

Thursday:
-still some ants
-no hot water

Friday:
-my BART train derails

No, not much fun. However, this weekend--well, I won't say it made up for everything, but it certainly did make things better. Daniel and I went to Asilomar, which is a conference held every December for math teachers just south of Monterey. Daniel spent all day Saturday at conferences, while I spent it walking on the beach, napping in the hotel room, reading on the lawn, reading in front of a roaring fire in the main room while a fellow played nicely on the piano, and pretty much reading until the cows (that is, Daniel) came home. We were fed very well for every meal, Daniel saw deer, I saw woodpeckers, we watched the sunrise on the beach Saturday morning and walked on the beach Sunday, and a good time was had by all. Then today on our way home we stopped at the Monterey aquarium, which is much better viewed without a fever than with one (having done both, I can attest to the truth of that statement), ate Ghiradelli ice cream sundaes while watching otters and seals and cormorants (and, judging from our ears, if not by our eyes, sea lions (ork! ork ork ork orkorkork!) in the Monterey Bay. There is a rather tremendous amount of cleaning to be done here (having to bathe in a basin of water boiled on the stove does not make one feel like scrubbing out the tub), but I'm so refreshed and relieved that it was a pleasure to wash the dishes in hot water, and I plan to hold on to that same sentiment, however much it may struggle to get out of the way, until the bathroom is done too.