I've been productive today and recently, in fact. Earlier this week, I cleaned all the floors in my place. This involved 5 different cleaning methods - broom, swiffer, generic cleaning solution, Murphy's oil soap, and a vacuum. And I'm very pleased with my results. I'm a fan of having clean floors under my feet and I had almost forgotten what if feels like.
Today I had breakfast at my favorite place, ran a bunch of errands, had a late lunch, ran some more errands, had a nap, went for a long run outside, finished two things on my work list and now I think I'm going to watch a movie (or some old TV) or I might end up reading. Though I should spend a little time making 3 other lists. One list is for shopping I need to do tomorrow at Trader Joe's. Another is for my upcoming trip - I'll be traveling for about 2 weeks, most of which is work related. And the last list is for my house hunting.
The house hunting is coming along fairly well, thought I haven't yet found the one. I have seen more than one that could work. I'm still mulling my options and I will see three-four more options this week along with a revisit of three of my favorites.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Breakfast
edited to correct typos:
Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. Sometimes I eat it three times in one day. I recently finished reading Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies, which was highly recommended by NPR and a bit heart breaking. One of my favorite parts of the book was her talking about a breakfast she had with her family. The special was savory pancakes. It was pancakes covered with asparagus, Gruyere and ham. Covered with two sunny side up eggs and drown the whole lot in maple syrup. I'd pass on the ham. But otherwise it sounds divine. Though I don't think I could eat it right now. I have been having a culinary adventure that I would rather have avoided. I have switched my whole way of eating to try to stay healthy. I eat bread topped with applesauce for breakfast - a trick learned from my sister. And I've been eating a lot of roasted vegetables and way more meat that I normally do. My new favorite roasted vegetable is fennel. If you aren't totally averse to licorice and can find it at your local market, roast it up (400 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so) with what ever other veggies you'd like. I recommend precooking potatoes slightly. Couscous has become a staple again, too. Today I broke all the rules and had breakfast for lunch. I ate delicious lemon poppy seed toast coated with cream cheese. The cream cheese had lavender mixed in. This was a wonderful invention, but I think I would have also added a little honey and lemon zest to the cream cheese, too.
Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. Sometimes I eat it three times in one day. I recently finished reading Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies, which was highly recommended by NPR and a bit heart breaking. One of my favorite parts of the book was her talking about a breakfast she had with her family. The special was savory pancakes. It was pancakes covered with asparagus, Gruyere and ham. Covered with two sunny side up eggs and drown the whole lot in maple syrup. I'd pass on the ham. But otherwise it sounds divine. Though I don't think I could eat it right now. I have been having a culinary adventure that I would rather have avoided. I have switched my whole way of eating to try to stay healthy. I eat bread topped with applesauce for breakfast - a trick learned from my sister. And I've been eating a lot of roasted vegetables and way more meat that I normally do. My new favorite roasted vegetable is fennel. If you aren't totally averse to licorice and can find it at your local market, roast it up (400 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so) with what ever other veggies you'd like. I recommend precooking potatoes slightly. Couscous has become a staple again, too. Today I broke all the rules and had breakfast for lunch. I ate delicious lemon poppy seed toast coated with cream cheese. The cream cheese had lavender mixed in. This was a wonderful invention, but I think I would have also added a little honey and lemon zest to the cream cheese, too.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Mothers
I have been reading for pleasure a good bit over the last few weeks. Yesterday I finished a short book that I highly recommend. Ruth Reichl's new book Not Becoming My Mother was excellent. It is all about how the women of earlier generations didn't get to do what they really wanted. Ruth talks about her mom being an incredibly intelligent women who just ended up bored - partly because her parents discouraged her from becoming a doctor. Ruth is glad she didn't end up with that kind of life and knows that it's partly because her mother thought she could do anything. (In case you don't know the name, Ruth Reichl is the editor of Gourmet and a former food critic of the NYTimes and LATimes.) I think there are still walls and ceilings that women hit from time to time (and a good bit of it comes from others who still have a certain belief about what women should do with their life). But anyhow, it's a great read if you are looking for a short, funny, enlightened book, I highly recommend it.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Random Musings
It's been a busy couple of weeks...
I was dating one of the guys I mentioned earlier. But it turns out I'm pretty blind when it comes to someone being interested in me. This guy was all wrong from the beginning. When I think about it now, I can't believe I missed all these things. I know I was hesitant for a reason, but I went along with thing for too long because he called me and was in general interested. Sad. But I learned something.
I used a natural drain cleaner that worked like a charm. 1/2 cup baking soda + 1/2 cup vinegar put down the drain and plug the drain for 5 minutes. Then pour boiling water down. Impressive.
I went and looked at houses this weekend. I found one that I liked, but I think it's out of my price range. The location is great. I listened carefully as the real estate agent doing the showing said the builder had done a similar build nearby. The other property is way cheaper. I did a driveby today of the other property. It's in a good location for work, but not near a town, which I was hoping to find. I'm looking at a couple of other options later this week.
I did my shopping today and got about $40 worth of groceries, etc for about $5. I love the deals that stores have right now that you can get $10 off coupons. Good stuff.
My running total for the week was about 18 miles!
I was dating one of the guys I mentioned earlier. But it turns out I'm pretty blind when it comes to someone being interested in me. This guy was all wrong from the beginning. When I think about it now, I can't believe I missed all these things. I know I was hesitant for a reason, but I went along with thing for too long because he called me and was in general interested. Sad. But I learned something.
I used a natural drain cleaner that worked like a charm. 1/2 cup baking soda + 1/2 cup vinegar put down the drain and plug the drain for 5 minutes. Then pour boiling water down. Impressive.
I went and looked at houses this weekend. I found one that I liked, but I think it's out of my price range. The location is great. I listened carefully as the real estate agent doing the showing said the builder had done a similar build nearby. The other property is way cheaper. I did a driveby today of the other property. It's in a good location for work, but not near a town, which I was hoping to find. I'm looking at a couple of other options later this week.
I did my shopping today and got about $40 worth of groceries, etc for about $5. I love the deals that stores have right now that you can get $10 off coupons. Good stuff.
My running total for the week was about 18 miles!
In the classroom
I had an interesting conversation recently with two colleagues outside of my department. It's funny, it doesn't sound like this should be a rare occurrence, but it sort of is. In academia, we don't mix well across departments. And outside of our building is even worse. I wonder if it's like this in the humanities and social sciences? I know that everything is not the same between the arts and the sciences. Some folks in the arts get the summers off (I wouldn't say all, nor do I even know if a large % of them take the time off), but most (if not all) folks in the sciences work in the summer. This is even if we are only making a 9 or 10 month salary. We'd never get our scholarship/research done if we didn't.
Okay, back to the conversation. It was about students who come to class but don't pay attention. The faculty member who initiated the conversation was speaking about a class where the students bring computers and are working on projects with them, but that he suspects that they are surfing the internet or doing other things. He suggested that he'd like parabolic mirrors in his classroom. I strongly disagree with this. But, this semester has been the worst for students multitasking in my course. At various points in time, I have had students texting, reading novels and/or listening to iPods. I wonder if they think I can't see them? I'm pretty sure that they don't think about if I can see them when they are doing it. But I'm not really sure I know what makes them do it. I know my lectures aren't 100% engaging during 100% of the class time to 100% of the students, but such blatant disregard is a bit astonishing. I've thought about taking points off for students who have been grossly off task. I know all of my students by name, so I could easily do it, if I made a point of keeping track from the beginning. I have added into my grade book this semester notes on students who have participated in class a lot. I could also add notes for students who are absent a lot and/or who are off task a lot. All of this is super interesting to me because I always went to class (I think I missed <10 classes in my 4 years at college) and I always was on task (there weren't so many distractions back then, no cell phones and hardly anyone brought computers to class, but I don't think I would have been distracted even if I had this technology). But I am also of the ilk that the students are adults and they should make their own choices. I have been thinking that I might say a few words about classroom etiquette at the beginning of the year next time around. But it seems that a large number of students forget everything from the first week of classes by the last week of classes, so I don't know how effective this would be.
Hmm... I just had an interesting idea. Thinking back, one of the reasons I went to all my classes in college was because a professor early in my career mentioned (almost as an aside) that we were paying ~$100 for each class hour. I wouldn't throw $100 away, which was how I thought about not going to classes (and not being on task in class). I might be able to incorporate this into my class in an interesting way. One of the things that we do is work on statistical handling of data. I might see what happens if I ask my students how much they think they are paying to come to class and we could do some statistics on the data. We could easily look at the class average and the standard deviation, etc. Then I could tell them what the answer really is. This might be very interesting to try next fall because I'd be teaching concepts while also getting a point across that might translate into improved etiquette.
Okay, back to the conversation. It was about students who come to class but don't pay attention. The faculty member who initiated the conversation was speaking about a class where the students bring computers and are working on projects with them, but that he suspects that they are surfing the internet or doing other things. He suggested that he'd like parabolic mirrors in his classroom. I strongly disagree with this. But, this semester has been the worst for students multitasking in my course. At various points in time, I have had students texting, reading novels and/or listening to iPods. I wonder if they think I can't see them? I'm pretty sure that they don't think about if I can see them when they are doing it. But I'm not really sure I know what makes them do it. I know my lectures aren't 100% engaging during 100% of the class time to 100% of the students, but such blatant disregard is a bit astonishing. I've thought about taking points off for students who have been grossly off task. I know all of my students by name, so I could easily do it, if I made a point of keeping track from the beginning. I have added into my grade book this semester notes on students who have participated in class a lot. I could also add notes for students who are absent a lot and/or who are off task a lot. All of this is super interesting to me because I always went to class (I think I missed <10 classes in my 4 years at college) and I always was on task (there weren't so many distractions back then, no cell phones and hardly anyone brought computers to class, but I don't think I would have been distracted even if I had this technology). But I am also of the ilk that the students are adults and they should make their own choices. I have been thinking that I might say a few words about classroom etiquette at the beginning of the year next time around. But it seems that a large number of students forget everything from the first week of classes by the last week of classes, so I don't know how effective this would be.
Hmm... I just had an interesting idea. Thinking back, one of the reasons I went to all my classes in college was because a professor early in my career mentioned (almost as an aside) that we were paying ~$100 for each class hour. I wouldn't throw $100 away, which was how I thought about not going to classes (and not being on task in class). I might be able to incorporate this into my class in an interesting way. One of the things that we do is work on statistical handling of data. I might see what happens if I ask my students how much they think they are paying to come to class and we could do some statistics on the data. We could easily look at the class average and the standard deviation, etc. Then I could tell them what the answer really is. This might be very interesting to try next fall because I'd be teaching concepts while also getting a point across that might translate into improved etiquette.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Gone Away
I've been away from my blog for awhile. I was at an event last night and the speaker said that in our current culture, we spend too much private time in public spaces. This was in response to thinking about the fact that more people are dining at home (especially with the economy as it is) but there was also an element of connecting to people through online media. I was sort of beginning to feel that I was being too public, although this blog isn't truly public (in that I think the only people who read it are friends and family I've mentioned it to). I have also not been feeling 100%. Within the last week, I started to try something new and am beginning to feel better. I hope that my trajectory will continue in this direction. One week earlier in April, I only ran 3 miles (in the whole week). That was very sad, but I couldn't muster any more. I have also been working on writing projects at work and so have been a little less inclined to write here. I hope to write you all a bit more this weekend. But I need to get moving this morning so I can make sure to get a few errands done.
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