|
|
|
Friday, January 31, 2003
Yowza. I didn't think I was going to make it home from practice. Snow, snow and more snow.
10:13 PM
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Yesterday, when Tom asked me about it, I had to admit that I don't think my internship is going very well. I do a whole lot of nothing at the office. Mostly I answer the phones, and yesterday I signed for a package. I sit at my desk for 3 or 4 hours, teaching myself Form*Z in case I ever get an opportunity to use it. Today I'll probably go over and work through some Architectural Desktop problems in my workbook. But mostly, I do very little.
Having said that, I proceeded to talk to Tom for the next 10 minutes about all the junk I've learned passively. Since no one ever has me doing anything, I have plenty of time to just listen to everyone else talk. I have been wondering lately if maybe I made a mistake, if maybe I should have studied to be an architect, but just by sitting there and listening to the architects, I've discovered I'd rather be dead than be an architect. For one thing, the two principals are *always* on the phone. I think I answered the phone 15 times yesterday in a two-and-a-half hour time frame. Talk, talk, talk, convince, apologize, convince, suggest, demand, talk, talk, talk. Not my kind of thing. The other thing they seem to do is a lot of mediation--there are a lot of opportunities for disagreement on even a small design project, and it appears that everyone involved makes the most of those opportunities.
So, I am learning something, I guess, I'm just not actually producing anything. I have one definite suggestion for the firm, but no guts to make it. I do not see why they don't have an office manager. They have 3 architects and 2 draftsmen, and everytime the phone rings (when I'm not there) someone has to stop and answer it. If the UPS guy comes, someone has to get up and get the package. When clients come in, they just sort of stand in the big empty entrance way, looking around in confusion. When I'm not there, you can't even see the desks of the five full-time people, and that's a bad arrangement. The office standards (file naming) need re-worked, and as far as I can tell, they have no real archiving system. They need a web page. They really need to hire someone to take care of this stuff.
8:11 AM
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
What I look like when it's cold.
5:23 PM
I was right.
8:51 AM
Monday, January 27, 2003
Well, I don't have to be that pathetic. So, I won't be.
I spent my evening filling out transcript request forms. The transcripts are in support of an application for a summer job doing measured drawings or possibly some technical writing in the historic preservation area. I don't particularly want the job, but I can't just sit around and whine about not having any future career when I'm not really making an effort to explore my options. I'm going to pull this (very late) application together this week and see how it goes. They don't notify applicants until April, so it's a whole lot of hurry-up-and-wait, anyway.
My best advice: never attend six different schools. It is a complete pain in the butt to request transcripts from six schools. The stack of transcripts is either going to impress them or freak them out, it's hard to tell.
I've got some drafting work to do on the drawings I want to send, I guess I'll be doing that Friday, and I need to fill out one more form on my CAD background. I'm optimistic about getting the application in the mail, anyway. I'll deal with the repercussions later.
7:31 PM
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Fuck. I forgot I was supposed to be all honest with myself in my journal. What a pain in the ass.
The real reason I haven't seen Debbie since I moved to Indiana is because I now weigh 30 pounds more than I did when we both lived in Bellingham. I knew she'd be all lean and mean because she's obsessed with rock-climbing, and I didn't want to have to stand up next to her.
So, there. I'm a lousy feminist. I probably lost my membership card to that club a long time ago, though, so I'm not going to worry about it.
9:39 PM
Architects are notoriously sexist. There can really be no debate on this point anymore, there's too much evidence. That's why it is really amazing that the firm at which I'm doing my internship is currently hosting a feminist art show. On Friday, I spent my two intern hours helping the architects clean the place in preparation for the opening of the show on Friday. Quite coincidentally, the show is part of the list of events associated with The Kinsey Institute's big women's sexualities celebration. So, both Catherine and I had to show up at the opening.
The show consists of two installation works, The Bloomington Breast Project, and Sacrifice for a Culture by Gail Hale. I found Karen Baldner's remarks about the breast project really interesting, about the rather organic way the installation takes place, the actual process of modeling the breast w/ plaster casts and handmade paper, etc. The other participants made me a little uncomfortable, though. They all seemed to have these very intense relationships with their breasts, and I just couldn't relate.
Gail Hale's piece was about feet, more or less: what women think of them, how they hide them, how they display them. She took casts of different feet, and talked to each woman as she did it, talking sort of a "life history" of the foot. For instance, she cast Karen's foot, and the whole time, apparently, Karen was complaining about her thick ankles. But when you look at the foot cast, it is very clear that Karen has the most delicate ankles a woman could ever had. So, it was all about perceptions, and how we judge ourselves. A lot like the Breast Project, just a different body part, really.
The opening itself was fun, and I introduced Catherine to the architects, and she introduced me to the artists. Doug told a great story about the founding of the firm. It was originally Haney/Tabor, Architects. Haney was the first African-American architect in Bloomington, and Doug's great uncle, Mr. Tabor, started out as his draughtsman before becoming an architect as well. The story was much longer than that, but the gist of it was, no one thought the firm could survive, but it has been around since it was founded in 1968, now as Tabor/Bruce/Puzzello & Associates.
We had to kind of dash out of the opening a bit early and race to the women's basketball game. Ordinarily, we might have just stayed on at the party, but we really wanted to be in attendance on Friday. The bball coach announced a couple of weeks ago that if we broke the attendance record at that particular game (previous record: 5,503), she would donate $5,000 of her own money to a breast cancer organization. We really wanted to make sure we were counted in the attendance figures, so we dashed over to Assembly Hall w/Nancy about 1/2 way through the first half.
Sadly, we lost the game. Happily, our new attendance record is 8,890-something. The publicity was amazing, the local radio station picked up the event and pushed it as a "must do for a good cause" all last week. Even Ivy Tech sent around an e-mail to the faculty suggesting they go to the game. I'm hoping some of the attendees will bleed over to the rest of the season, even though we ourselves missed today's game as we were stuck in a blizzard on I-70.
9:14 PM
Sometimes I watch the Weather Channel during winter snow storms. Usually there's some guy in a Weather Channel parka, gesturing to the traffic behind him, talking about the dangerous conditions on the interstates. Images of slide offs, flashing lights, wind-whipped snow shrouding the glow of headlights...and I wonder who those idiots are, out there driving despite the obviously hazardous roads.
I have met that idiot, and he is me.
Today, we drove back from Columbus despite the fact that we should have stayed inside where it was warm and dry. But, hey, I had to get home and write a lecture on brick masonry, so I couldn't afford to laze about after our weekend away playing hockey. So, home it was.
True, we could have started earlier, but instead we went out to breakfast with Debbie and Jim. The best part of the weekend wasn't the hockey; rather, it was seeing Debbie after 12 years. It's really sort of pathetic. We're in Columbus *all the time*, yet we've never managed to get together in the five years I've been in the Midwest. That's truly sad, because it's not like I'm surrounded by people with whom I can discuss political theory over a cup of tea (much less Discipline & Punish). My own damn fault, I guess, I could have stayed in school.
If I can pull my hand and wrist together for awhile longer, Debbie said she'd take me rock-climbing down at Red River Gorge when it gets warmer. I'm not sure I'm up for it, but I'm thinking I might give it a try.
6:32 PM
Thursday, January 23, 2003
I have to say, Carol Anshaw is quite nervy to criticize Ann Wadsworth's prose. I loved Aquamarine when I read it some ten years ago, and I thought Lucky in the Corner was also a nice little book. But Seven Moves was stagnant on so many different levels I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. In my mind, Anshaw isn't always 100% on target in her own prose, so I'm not sure she should dismiss someone else's writing with comments of so little substance.
I read a short story by Ann Wadsworth at Blithe House last year some time, and it's odd, I didn't really like it at the time, but I remember it completely and totally. I didn't connect her with that story when Catherine gave me Light, Coming Back for Christmas, I just discovered the connection a moment ago courtesy of google.com. But parts of them do feel a bit similar, maybe the wistfulness coloring the edges of every page? It doesn't matter. The point is, Light, Coming Back is a very well-written book, and "cheesy" is not a word that should be lightly applied to it. It was good enough that I wasn't re-writing the entire thing in my head as I usually do when I read, and good enough to make me wish it wouldn't have to end. It was structurally sound (maybe I would have stretched out one of the transitions), and I liked the way she managed the ending. I liked Mrs. Medina, and it was a relief to read about someone with a real life for a change, instead of some hot young thing I cannot relate to at all.
Two thumbs up on Light, Coming Back. Ordinarily I would have given Anshaw's Aquamarine two thumbs up as well, but I'm annoyed with her right now, so I remove a thumb and hold it behind my back as a hostage.
8:16 PM
We made a new friend today.
Saturday, when I was at the Y, I kept making kind of glancing eye contact with a woman who looked familiar, but I just couldn't place anywhere in my life. Work? School? Couldn't figure it out, and I couldn't bring myself to say, "Excuse me, but you look really familiar, do I know you?" How dorky would that be?
So, today, we walked into Applebee's (we go there a lot, I like their steamed vegetables, I'll even eat the broccoli), and there was this woman I'd recognized, behind the bar. She looks familiar because we've exchanged pleasantries a gazillion times by now, we always eat at the bar so we can watch sports on TV while we eat.
As we sat down, I mentioned that I had seen her at the Y, but didn't feel like I should say, "Do I know you," etc., and that started off a whole conversation. We exchanged names, and it went from there. We talked for a long time about Denver, she just returned, and we had one of our best vacations there, and then she and Catherine got to talking about the Kinsey exhibitions, because Catherine's article was in the paper today. We talked about workout routines for awhile. Talked about things we saved in boxes in our spare rooms, strange little topics like that.
As we were talking on and on (slow night at the bar, we were the only people there), I realized it was the most extensive conversation I'd had with anyone but Catherine all week long. I just don't get any social interaction at work, just a few sentences exchanged with Kirk and Tom once a week or so. It was nice to just *chat*.
Part of me feels like a complete loser, because I'm getting my best socializing done with the bartender. But part of me is pleased because odds are good I'll run into her in the gym and it's just nice to look forward to being able to say "hi" to someone and having a pleasant conversation.
8:01 PM
Nothing is actually wrong, at least not that I can see.
8:37 AM
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Yeah, and now I find out that everything sent to me in the past 12 hours hasn't just been inaccessible, it's been bounced. I'm not too worried about work e-mail, I talked to the one person who was trying to send me something this morning, but I know I missed this whole hockey discussion. Luckily, the last message of the cycle came through about an hour ago. If it hadn't, I wouldn't have even known that we were playing at a different rink than originally planned. Freaking mail services.
1:37 PM
If I had a buck for everytime my e-mail service went down, I'd have at least ten bucks by now.
Don't mess with me when I haven't had enough sleep.
10:48 AM
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Okay, this just pisses me off.
1:21 PM
The bitter remnants of snow.
7:19 AM
When I left home this morning, Luna was playing on the kitchen floor with the draintrap from the kitchen sink. I've given up trying to keep her out of the sink. Water deters her for about 3 seconds, then she is back in the sink, prying up the draintrap. Once she gets it free, she carries it around the house like a mouse. Freak.
7:18 AM
Monday, January 20, 2003
For what--or for whom--would I fight a war? I'm not a conscientious objector. If someone had a gun to Catherine's head, and I could kill that person w/out harming her, I wouldn't hesitate even a millisecond, I know that for certain and sure. If it was a friend or relative in direct jeopardy, I'm pretty sure I would kill. But would I ever deliberately participate in a war? Are there any principles about which I feel strongly enough to kill?
Hard to say. I wouldn't have fought in World War I, it was just a stupid, stupid argument between hateful cousins, fed by nationalistic pride and the remnants of nineteenth-century political games. I wouldn't have fought in Korea or Vietnam, even though I sometimes have mixed feelings about Vietnam because of Kimloan's stories. I wouldn't have fought in the Gulf War, even though Kuhlud's stories about Iraqi abuses left me wanting to vomit. I just don't see how a war could help in any of those cases, no matter how unjust the behavior of the oppressor. How could the act of my killing other people possibly lead to anything good in the end?
That leaves me with World War II and the War Between the States. Would I have fought in World War II? Obviously, if I had been running the world and everyone obeyed me, I would have solved the problem of Germany long before the first World War, so WWII wouldn't have even have been an event. But if I couldn't stop German aggression, if I had known as much as everyone else about what was happening in the concentration camps, would I have wanted to fight? Part of me believes no, because I would have been so pissed at the U.S. for letting Pearl Harbor happen, for manipulating our entry into the war, for treating Japanese citizens like criminals, that I wouldn't have wanted any part of anything. But then again...would I have been moved to fight if I had evidence that people were being slaughtered? I just don't know. It would have been hard to support the allies after the bombing of Dresden, even if I thought the cause was just.
And the Civil War...if you put me back there now, with the personality I have now, definitely I would have been an abolitionist. But would I have been like a Quaker, working as a pacificist, manning the Underground Railroad, or would I have been like Sarah Emma Edmonds and taken a man's name and enlisted to physically fight against the institution of slavery? I think I would have just been quietly seditious, but you know, I just can't tell. How threatened do I have to be before I'll fight? How much do you have to believe in a cause before you'll kill for it?
9:37 PM
Catherine beat me at chess today. She's on her own from now on, I don't think she needs my help playing the game anymore.
It's nice having a built-in friend in your house. We can do fun things without going to any great effort to make plans.
Sometimes, though, it's a little like living with a Swedish foreign exchange student. Whenever we go out for coffee or stop for some fast food, I have to walk her through all the steps for ordering. Yesterday, we got sandwiches at Subway, and I had to explain all her bread choices to her, then all the vegetable choices, then all the chips, and then explain that they would try to get her to buy a "meal deal," but she didn't want that because she was just going to have water, not a soda. If we go to McDonald's, I have to order her cheeseburger w/no meat, etc. for her, and I usually walk her through the menu at Starbucks. It's the same routine every time, she just doesn't get how it all works, and it makes me laugh.
4:28 PM
Canadian pop singer Avril Lavigne's father:
"She can stir the pot if she wants to. If she didn't have this [career] she'd be in more trouble than you can shake a stick at." But when asked about her self-perpetuated reputation for fighting, he says, "I don't think she looks for fights, but she can hold her own if she has to. She's had enough of those in hockey."
At ages 10 and 11, Lavigne played in a boy's league in Napanee. "One time," John recalls, "the two teams were coming off the ice and next thing you know there's a great big commotion and moms and dads were pulling kids out. I went to the dressing room thinking, 'Who's that rotten kid that started this?' and turns out some guy called one of Avril's teammates fat pig or something and Avril slugged him right in the mask. So she started it."
10:43 AM
Sunday, January 19, 2003
The text for today's sermon:
"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."--Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963, Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Rev. Macklin's sermon was a little difficult to sit through at times. It's hard watching someone crack up. I don't know if everyone goes through the same process growing up, but I know I did. There was a point when I was 21 or 22, and I looked around and realized that the way I was living in the world wasn't going to work. The political system handed to me by my parents and community wasn't supportable. Everything--and I mean *everything*--I had thought was right was actually wrong, and what was I going to do about it? It's painful to let everything go, and hard to build up something to replace the things you're abandoning. I'm still working on it, I guess.
So, I felt great empathy for Rev. Macklin today, standing up there admitting that her typical optimism wasn't working, that she was being forced to take off her rose-colored glasses and take a good, hard look at where the world was heading. That she had to face the fact that her niece and nephew, just because of the color of their skin, were not treated with justice and fairness, no matter how much she'd like to believe the best of everyone in the world. I think its important that she lose her illusions about humanity, you have to recognize the injustice in the world before it can even occur to you to try and make it a better place, but still, it's painful watching someone go through the process of losing faith. I think ultimately she still believes in humanity (unlike me), but it's very difficult to maintain a Whiggish "onward and upward forever" mentality, even if you're only half paying attention to what's going on in the world.
I understand how she felt when she talked about worrying about her nephew, how to keep him safe in a world full of traps set for young men with dark skin. I worry about my cousins, Toran and Meaghan, and wonder how they're being treated by their classmates and strangers. The positive thing about their situation is they now live in a more culturally diverse urban area, and that must make it easier. But I worry about the "urban" part of that, and wonder if Toran is going to suffer more than he would if he was back home living in a small town chock full of relatives.
Ah...ethnicity. It never occurred to me to worry about my cousins when were were growing up because--quite frankly--I didn't realize they (we?) weren't white until a few years ago. The evidence was there, my family just preferred to ignore it, and I didn't understand what I was hearing. It was just a funny story to tell after Uncle Dean had problems at the Canadian border because they thought he might be an illegal migrant worker. It was just Sharon being vain and egotistical when she wouldn't play outside with us because she didn't want to get any darker in the sun "because kids were already teasing [her] about being a Mexican." It all went over my head. Until I went walking in the river with Meaghan a couple years ago and really looked at her hand in my hand and wondered if we were even related. And then I looked at her dad, and his dad, and my mom, and my aunt, and damn...someone in my family lied about being white.
But the point is, I worry about what people are going to do to Toran. They're going to be mean to him, it's pretty clear, but are they going to be mean to him because he's an odd little fellow, or are they going to be mean to him because of the way he looks? Does it matter? Do I need to know what's at the root of bad behavior? I think so, but maybe I'm fooling myself, thinking that if I understand oppression, I can fight it. I'm just not sure.
Right now, I suspect I'm a living example of Dr. King's "shallow understanding from people of good will." I have good intentions, but not a deep enough comprehension of the world to do anything with them.
8:26 PM
Ah...it turns out it was a good thing we went to the hockey game. For one thing, it was sort of nice to see Purdue get whomped 11-1. I did feel a little sorry for them, IU was plainly toying with them half the time, and the goalie really got beat up. A little sorry, but not too sorry. Never feel sorry for a Boilermaker.
But the real reason I'm glad we went is that because we were at the game, we weren't home when the shelf above our kitchen table liberated itself from its moorings and came crashing to the floor. It made quite a dent in our new flooring, but luckily a) it's kind of hidden behind the table and b) I wasn't sitting at the table when it happened. If it had come down while we were having dinner with Jenna and Amy, I probably wouldn't have been killed, but judging by the damage to the floor, I definitely would have had a headache. Astounding that only one thing broke, considering all the glass involved in the crash. Very pleased that the bottle of red wine that we had on the shelf remained intact, that would have been one hell of a mess to come home to.
7:22 PM
Friday, January 17, 2003
Every once in awhile, I post something to my website--here or on my "real" site--that maybe I shouldn't oughta. I lay awake at night and worry about it, thinking, "God, I should really take that down." I can think of at least three instances where I posted something, thought better of it, yanked it down, and then put it back up because I felt like a coward.
So...here I am, in over my head. I'm not totally sure I even have permission to do this, and the odds are good I'm going to come home from practice and take it all back down, but in the meantime....the Carnival Series.
2:46 PM
On a completely different topic, I despise being called a "Yankee." Lynda might remember me having a meltdown over this some ten years ago. I just really, really hate it. It is a deadly insult from anyone, but especially from anyone from the South (okay, Bloomington is technically below the Mason-Dixon line, and David says if you look at a map, you will see that Indiana is just the middle finger of the south, flipping everyone off, but really, "the South" is somewhere south of here) to call me a Yankee, even if they're trying to pass it off as a joke. That's the thing about "polite" southerners, they say something mean in a sweet, slow voice and half a smile, and you're not sure if you can be mad at them or not. Today in the coffee shop, the woman in front of me was complaining about the way people drive in the snow, and finished off her sentence with "stay in the south, teach a Yankee to drive," which sounds pretty innocent as I type it, but all three counter workers recoiled and said, "Ohhhhhh...." in that way you do when you know you can't defend yourself because you'll lose your job, the customer is always right. And my first instinct was to say, "Yeah, those neo-Confederates, blowing through stop signs in their big trucks and Stars-and-Bars license plates, they drive sooooo well," but I do, in point of fact, know when to keep my mouth shut.
Oh...I could write a book on the subject north/south relations. Sometimes I just want to go grab some of these boys in our parking lot, the ones with the confederate flags on their gas-guzzling trucks, and crack their heads together. It is so truly ironic that it is the poor white boy that has so thoroughly embraced neo-Confederate thought. Who the hell sold them on the idea of the South and states' rights? Who made them think they were southern? Because if they'd been alive during the Civil War, even if they'd lived in the hills of Georgia or the valleys of Virginia, they sure as hell wouldn't have supported the Confederacy. That's what just amazes me. I don't know how it is that the Confederacy--and the Union, for that matter--has been passed down to us as some monolithic structure. There were as many people living in the south who were *against* the south as there were people living in the north who were *for* the south. And the people who had the most reason to be against the south were the ancestors of the kids flying the Confederate flag today: poor, white, landless families who would remain poor as long as the power was held by the plantation owners. Well, let me rephrase that. Obviously, the slaves themselves had the most reason to be against the south. But after that...poor white trash, baby. No chance at getting ahead as long as the plantation owners controlled the economy--why are they flying the flag of a nation that would have oppressed them as long as possible so the rich could get richer?
8:59 AM
Even I'll admit it's cold. My internal thermometer is totally screwed up, and some day it's going to get me in trouble. People fuss at me all the time, "You should be wearing a coat!" and I think they're insane until I look at the mercury and discover it's 20 degrees outside. Someday I'm going to go out for a walk without a jacket and end up frostbitten because I didn't realize it was so cold out. Anyway, it's 7 degrees out right now, and yes, I wore a coat to work. Mittens, too.
This is how you can tell you've reached your 30s: you put on the warmest coat on the rack, even if it makes you look like a complete dork. Today I am wearing a ski jacket that was out of fashion when my mom first bought it for me in 1991. I have a "work coat," a long trenchcoat w/a lining, and that's pretty warm, but it's a huge pain in the butt. I have to make sure it doesn't get slammed in the car door, and I have to make sure I don't step on it or catch it in the trunk, or whatever. It makes a compelling argument for not wearing a coat ever, it does. So, today I went for functionality, knowing perfectly well that I am breaking fashion laws right and left.
8:45 AM
Thursday, January 16, 2003
I'm considering changing my middle name to "Fret." That sounds better than the other options: "Fuss," "Worry," or "Anxiety."
12:55 PM
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Kimloan sent me the most fantastic New Year's card.
7:13 PM
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Well, I'm not sure where I'm going with this postcard project. I'm kind of in a holding pattern, anyway, because I need more paint, and I've been waiting for it to be payday already (tomorrow, thank god). I haven't actually sent anything from this series to be printed yet. Some of the artist's proofs look pretty good, though (if I do say so myself). Anyway, I'm not sure I what want to do with them, besides look at them myself. I think I have at least one more "women's bodies" series in me, and then I'll have to find something else to do with my spare time.
6:37 PM
Is it just that Tues/Thurs. classes suck? Is it inherent in the scheduling system, or what?
The best construction model from last semester.
11:04 AM
Things I am pleased to announce to the world:
- Our new snow tires had their first test today, and although they were expensive and it was tedious having them installed, I am no longer in such danger of sliding off into a ditch.
- I no longer have to teach a night class.
- I am once again off the caffeine. After only two days of hockey, I was so dehydrated that I was forced to make the right decision. Decaf for me, please!
- One year, two months, and eight days, no Coke.
- We caught Lunacy and Jack playing this weekend instead of fighting. They've been fighting ever since, but still, there's hope.
Things I am not pleased to announce to the world:
- Those-who-are-in-charge ignored the environmental impact statement, not to mention the protests and requests of their constituents, and decided I-69 will run through Bloomington. Never mind that it's going to rip through the property of locally-owned businesses we'd like to see succeed, never mind that it's going to destroy even more farm land, never mind that Terre Haute actually *wants* I-69 but didn't get it, never mind that it's going to absolutely and completely divide the east and west sides of Bloomington. What really matters, apparently, is that it will save a driver 11 minutes driving from Indy to Evansville. Fucking idiots.
- Our two-week kitchen renovation project is now in its seventh week with no end in sight.
- There are too many issues in the national/international news that displease me. If I started listing them, I'd be here all day.
8:09 AM
Monday, January 13, 2003
http://chess.about.com/mbody.htm
5:49 PM
Today, a student asked me if I could stop moving my cursor while I was teaching them how to use AutoCAD, because the motion on the screen made her sick. How she expects me to teach a computer program w/out ever moving my cursor is beyond me, but I told her I'd see what I could do.
5:31 PM
Sunday, January 12, 2003
"...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue."--Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rev. Macklin gave a good sermon today. Actually, the whole order of service was fairly sound. She told two stories for the "children's moment," one about some ancient founding Unitarian whose name escapes me, and how he didn't hit a turtle with a stick, and one where she and this teenaged boy acted out a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey (she was HAL). It would be a little complicated to type out the scene, but the basic point was that we (as humans? as Unitarians?) have the right to conscience, we have the right and the need to question, the need to be "with knowledge."
The sermon itself was a discussion of science, why we pursue it, how pursue it, and what it leads us to in the end. Her main question was: "How do the tools we create further our humanity? How do the tools we create strip us of our humanity?" She gave a run-down of "the greatest discoveries of 2002" and encouraged us to question how each item she mentioned played a role in our life. Good role or bad role? She talked a lot about cloning, and different religion's response to it.
As kind of a side note, she talked about what she perceived as our inability to grieve, that we as a society are so inundated with new-new-new every day, that we never are able to properly let go of the old. She talked about grieving as a lost art, that we're so expected to deal with change, and deal with well, that we never get mourn the loss of anything. Kind of a touch of Futureshock running through the text.
I think Rev. Macklin is my favorite of the three reverends. She sure reads a lot of Rilke. Or maybe she just memorized Letters to a Young Poet. She quotes it in every sermon she gives.
8:39 PM
Spent all day out of town yesterday, four-and-a-half hour drive to South Bend, four-and-a-half hour drive back. We misjudged our dining options, we should have eaten in Kokomo, but we were listening to the game on the radio, so we didn't want to stop. That was a bad decision, we couldn't find any place to eat the rest of the way. I was pretty wiped out by the time we got home and had a sandwich. Checked the e-mail, went to bed.
I taught Catherine how to play chess today, in between services and the women's basketball game. It is amazing that we've been living together for ten years or so, and I've never gotten around to teaching her the game. The local coffee shop has a chess set you can check out for use on their chess table, so we had some coffee and I showed her the basic moves. I won, but I have to say, I may not win the next game.
Back to work tomorrow. I'm in total denial. I should be doing prep work...but I think I'm probably going to read instead.
4:26 PM
Friday, January 10, 2003
I hope this internship things works out okay. Paul said different things to me today than he did when I initially talked to him in December, so I'm not sure what's going to happen exactly. My goal is to keep an open mind.
My other goal is to find more food to eat in the next ten minutes.
My last day of freedom, and I spent half of it working on syllabi. Blah. I really just wanted to sit around and read my book on the election of 1864. But no. Stupid job.
9:24 PM
Let's see....where did I leave off?
My life is so boring that not even I want to spend time reveiwing it in my journal.
My handsome cat just threw up all over the comforter. Such a nice boy.
1:16 PM
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Well...damnation. I decided to quit whining about the fact that no one I know reads and do something about it, so I went out and looked for a book discussion group in town. I found a few at the library and a few at Borders. Most of them looked too weird, but a couple looked okay, so I went as far as buying one of the assigned books and reading it.
The book group meets tonight, but tonight is also the opening game in league play for the IU men's team. I have to choose between going to a discussion group full of STRANGERS who might be WEIRDOS, or staying home and watching BASKETBALL. Basketball should win, hands down, but then it will be my own fault if I can't talk to anyone about the book I'm reading.
2:29 PM
Freaking e-mail. If I had a dollar for every time I was unable to access my dreamhost e-mail accounts, I'd be able to actually afford this remodeling job.
9:38 AM
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Oh my god. Here I was, sitting innocently working on my dad's book, and the contractor comes in and says, "Do you have time to answer a couple of personal questions?" From experience, I know that means only one thing, he wants to ask me something about being gay. I really want to say no, but how can I?
So, he says his daughter has chosen to live "my lifestyle," (he does apologize for using those words, but says he doesn't know how else to phrase it). Can I give him any advice on what or what not to do as a father? He gets points for caring about his daughter, I think, but he's probably asking the wrong person. It's not like my father and I have this all worked out. And anyway, the best advice I can give is to not act differently at all. If you'd treat her one way if she was straight, why change it because she's bent?
Anyway, we had kind of a lengthy conversation, with me trying to fumble for answers. His daughter wants to go to Sarah Lawrence, which would be a good decision in terms of her future dykedom, but a bad decision in terms of her father's pocketbook. But I can't really recommend a college in Indiana. The best I could do would be to recommend a liberal arts college around Chicago, or even UW-Madison. Bloomington is liberal, but not especially gay. She's seventeen, and unless she plays softball, she'll never meet women here.
Ugh, I should never have to discuss my personal life with strange men.
1:45 PM
Depression hovering in the background--I don't want to go back to work. I brought home a stack of books from the library yesterday, and when Catherine commented on how I seemed to like "the thick ones," I replied, "Yeah, well, I have to do all the reading I can before school starts." There's something wrong with that statement--learn now, because when school starts, it's all over! I'm kind of looking forward to my internship, but as for the teaching...I think I'm just not cut out to be a teacher. One thing I'm really bad at is reviewing material, and I think my students suffer for it. I hated sitting through review sessions when I was a student, and it bores me to hold them for my students, but I need to force myself to do more of them this semester.
I wish, I wish I didn't have to work. There's so much other stuff in life to do. I've got a thousand books to read, I haven't done any work on my dad's book, I haven't even started on Fran's house designs, I want to work on this postcard art project more, I need to hang up a bird bath and bird feeder, I want to go skating, I want to sleep, I don't want to work. I really need an inheritance.
9:04 AM
Monday, January 06, 2003
Birthday dinner at Lennie's.
6:53 PM
I hope Luna hasn't taken a wrong turn down the path of insanity when we weren't looking.
2:10 PM
I can really say nothing good about having your kitchen renovated.
12:49 PM
Sunday, January 05, 2003
It's a good thing we were only gone for three days. The friends who said they'd feed our cats didn't show up, so Jack and Luna had to make do with the bowl of dry food we put out for them Friday morning. I thought Luna was going to explode, she ate so fast when we finally got home this evening and fed her.
For Catherine's birthday, we went down to Madison, Indiana for the weekend. This is a pretty neat town, 133 blocks of it are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It's definitely the off season, most museums, shops and restaurants were closed, but we had a good time walking around in the cold, anyway.
It was really cold when we got there on Friday, but we poked around a bit anyway. We walked around quite awhile trying to find somewhere to eat (we even went into the Central Hotel, but that was a bit of a mistake) before going up the hill to Clifty Inn at Clifty Falls State Park. The dinner there wasn't spectacular, just a buffet, but the location was supreme.
When we were out walking earlier in the day, we passed by the Ohio Theater, one of the dying breed of downtown movie houses. The prices were great, 3.00 admission, 2.00 for a large popcorn. We decided to go back downtown after dinner and see Harry Potter, who can pass up a three-dollar movie?
Saturday was also cold, but we still went out on a self-guided walking tour of downtown. Lots and lots of architecture. I'd like to go back w/a tripod and slide film, I could build up a pretty good collection of 19th c. American architecture slides. We stopped in at the Madison Fudge Factory, and the owner, Jim Grant, showed us around the upstairs, which he rents out as a B&B. We might stay there next time we go to Madison.
He recommended lunch at the Cafe Express, so we went there after we walked around a bit more. Was that rainbow flag outside just there to be colorful, or did it have meaning? We couldn't decide.
After a great lunch, we drove back up to the park and took a short hike to Clifty Falls (Big and Little). It was still pretty cold, but probably above freezing. At least in the sun, I felt like I could take my hat off. One thing I realized, looking at our photos from this trip, I really need to find some clothes that fit. Everything is just way too big, and I look like the Great Pumpkin rotting in the field, walking around in a fleece vest that is 6 sizes too big.
Anyway, the trail was a bit muddy and icy in places, but it was nice to be out in the woods. Afterward, we sat in the car and listened to the end of the IU game, then went back to our room at the Inn so I could take a much needed nap (was up a lot of the night before being sick). Catherine watched a lot of ESPN while I read and slept for a couple of hours.
Skipped dinner and went back to the movies. Shelled out three more bucks for Star Trek. Considering how much I hate to go to the movies, watching two in a row is pretty good for me, especially given that I'd watched 6 or 7 movies on DVD earlier in the week.
This morning we did some more walking around town, then drove up to Versailles and Milan. If you know how to pronounce those "correctly," then you are a Hoosier. This is the first time we have been to Milan, and really, there's not much there. There's supposed to be a '54 Milan Museum, but we couldn't find it. It is an obligatory basketball pilgrimage site, though, home of the "Miracle of Milan," inspiration for the movie Hoosiers, my second favorite movie.
6:53 PM
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Doing some much needed tidying, shredding old bills and receipts. Suddenly, it occurs to me that the stack of papers I had on top of the bread machine is missing. They'd been there for a couple of months, and every so often, I would grab a few pages and shred them. There were so many of them that I didn't want to stand in the kitchen for an hour and shred them four sheets at a time, so it seemed like a good idea to just do it in piecemeal fashion.
I'm pretty sure I didn't shred the whole stack. Pretty sure. But where is it? I wouldn't really care, except that my kitchen has been full of strange men for the past month. The pages comprised an early draft of a novel I wrote about ten years back. If they had been pages from the last little (banal and benign) story I wrote, I wouldn't be so concerned, but this is a novel that can only be described with the word "pornographic," and I definitely don't want strangers flipping through the pages of it.
Okay, probably I did shred them all and just don't remember it, but still...the possibility of someone reading all that makes me a little ill. This is made even worse by the fact that the contractors have been using our garage to do their sawing and building. After they'd been working out there for a few days, I suddenly realized that the stack of lesbian porn mags we had stored in there to donate to the Kinsey Institute were right next to the table saw. I covered them at the earliest possible moment, but there's no way the men didn't see "the best of lesbian sex." Geez.
5:54 PM
Wednesday, January 01, 2003
It may be possible to be more of a slug than I've been today....but I doubt it.
7:46 PM
|
