A Bad Sign

There's lots going on, but no time to write it up at the moment. To tide you over until I can do a real post, here's an excerpt from the University Budget Update by our esteemed President Robert H. Bruininks:

While it is clear that we will need to reduce the size of our workforce over the next two years, it is our goal to limit layoffs by continuing to take advantage of attrition, by reexamining the ways we work and being planful about filling vacant positions, by exploring other options including voluntary reduced-time appointments, and by improving service and efficiency. [....] I remain committed to working closely with the University community on these important issues.

Planful? We need to be PLANFUL? Sir, you run a massive top-tier university. Surely you are aware that planful is NOT A WORD. And you know you're not fooling anyone by couching ugly facts in fancy euphemisms like "taking advantage of attrition" and "voluntary reduced-time appointments." Perhaps you should work closely with the University community to create statements that don't sound so stupid. Or stupidly bureaucratic.

Destruction, cont'd

Good News: The weather has improved! Spring has finally arrived! As the weather improves around here, so do our demolition projects. This picture of our front planter may not be encouraging to any of you, but if you look closely, you can see some real, live green things starting to grow in there!
Bad News: This planter is pulling on parts of the house which should not be pulled, so it has to come out. Good News: We took advantage of the warmth by starting to destroy the upstairs kitchen, which was last updated back when our house was used as a duplex, which was sometime before 1955. Here, you can see the smurf-colored trim (also the color of the cabinets), but we had already torn out a lot of the mustard yellow counter top by the time we got the camera out.
Bad News: It can always get uglier. You can also see the wallpaper we found behind the upper cabinets, which sets a new standard for hideous - quite an accomplishment, considering some of the other wallpaper we've found here.
Good News: I got to spend some quality time with the sledgehammer (We should name it. Suggestions?). In a tank top, no less!
Bad News: We also got to spend some quality time resetting the outlets. We know they're supposed to be attached to studs or something, but these were held in place mostly by the plates and wires and sparked when we moved them.
Good News: We are quick learners! Now we know a) how to shut off power to that room, and b) how to replace an outlet!
Bad News: While we were out getting outlet pieces, Cricket put a paw right through our front window, cut part of her toe right off, and then ran around the house, bleeding everywhere.
Good News: We weren't gone long; Cricket will be fine; our front window is divided into four panes, and she only broke one; it is no longer snowing and/or -20; replacing window panes is a useful skill which I now have.
Bad News: This was a very expensive accident. Doggy emergency room + plexiglass (we decided not to replace it with glass, just in case it happens again) + gas wasted driving all over creation trying to find someone to cut a new piece of plexiglass for us after we ruined the first one, foolishly believing people who say you "just have to score it to cut it down to size" + new furniture to put in front of the window + large plants to set on new furniture so Cricket can't get up on that + beer = eight gajillion dollars.
Good News: Watching Cricket walk around with that huge bandage on her foot + seeing her stay the hell away from the window = priceless. She is very contrite.
Bad News: Because she can walk, she needs to go on walks, which requires triple-bagging her foot and listening to random strangers say "Oh, poor puppy!" Which is better than those who ask me "Did she hurt her foot?" No, of course not! She likes all those bags tied to her foot.
Good News: The plants and new furniture and new window look nice, especially against the windows that I OPENED BECAUSE IT IS SO WARM. Cricket, try to remember this: if you absolutely have to go and do something so stupid, try to do it when the weather is nice so it puts me in a good mood.

Demolition Derby

Over the weekend, Rob and I continued the project we accidentally started not too long ago when we tore up the hideous carpet on the stairs. Now, in that post I might have mentioned a few things we found that made us believe the people who installed that carpeting and paneling were a little...off. But nothing could have prepared us for the batshitcrazy that we found under the rest of the paneling when we took it down.

Behold the madness:

Yes, that is a railingish thing constructed from the old stringers which probably supported the original stairs. And yes, of course they seem to have much better construction than the current shoddily built stringers, which we will be replacing someday, when we're done taking the house apart.

See that blue? That is a HOLE in the wall between the stairs and the closet off of the den. When we took the paneling off of this section, that hole was stuffed with sixty-year-old underwear, but I was too grossed out to take a picture of it for you.

Here, you can see some different pieces of wood nailed at random to the wall for no apparent reason, as well as a part of the lovely antique beadboard that they managed to not destroy. Here, you can see where they built an entire closet out of that awful paneling. Around a window. So the sun can cheer up your sweaters when they start to get depressed about the long, dark winters. The door to this oddly-shaped and mostly useless closet was also nothing but paneling. Without a door, what use is a closet? Also, it's March, there was finally some sun, and we were on a roll letting some light into the hallway, so we took the closet out too. And the ceiling tiles after that. Luckily, we both had to work the next day, or our house would probably be in pieces.

Top 5 Words That Are Ruining Higher Education

1. Potentiality
2. Interdisciplinarity
3. Intertextuality
4. Commonality
5. Historiography
   

Good News, Bad News: Asbestos Facial

Good News: MPR says that "meteorological winter is over."
Bad News: The weather doesn't care what they say, there is still a foot of snow on the ground and <0 wind chills.
Good News: Since it's been too cold to go out, Rob and I stayed in and spontaneously ripped up carpet and took paneling down! Now our stairwell looks naked, but in a good way.
Bad News: When the carpet in this house comes up, you are always sprayed in the face by a shower of grainy, yellowish grime from the carpet backing. Judging by the age of the carpet (300 years) and my luck (horrible), it's probably asbestos.
Good News: It has about the same exfoliating properties as my apricot facial scrub.
Bad News: Without the carpet, we can see that these stairs were built to go under carpet and next to the paneling. And behind the paneling, we can see the grody lathe-and-plaster walls that are a) probably also asbestosy, and b) need some TLC. Apparently the previous ownerwas really lazy and/or batshitcrazy and/or thought times would never change, cheap wood paneling would always be pretty, and carpet would never get disgusting, so poor craftsmanship was ok.
Good News: The hallway leading off the stairs is miraculously the same beautiful old wood as the bedroom and office.
Bad News: It probably also used to have beautiful old baseboards, but they got ripped out at some point and now there are 1/2" gaps between the floor and the wall.
Good News: I learned how to install baseboards and build stairs on thisoldhouse.com, so as soon as we get a new table/miter saw (hint: wedding present) we can tackle those. In the meantime, the stairwell is much louder than it was, but also less like a cheap, dark, ugly deathtrap.

Snow Day

Ok, winter, we get it. Yes, we live in Minnesota, it is still February, you are very cold and snowy and powerful. You made your point already.
This is a picture from earlier today. Since it was taken, it's snowed several more inches. It is one of the more dramatic storms we've had, both in terms of the snowfall (2.9" in St. Paul in just one hour), cruelty (it was almost 40 yesterday!), and showmanship (apparently we have something called "thunder snow" here, which is almost as fun as freezing rain). You can tell it's bad because the University canceled classes (this NEVER happens, at least not since I moved here seven years ago), because all the streets leading up the bluff in St. Paul are closed because the roads are too slick for cars to get up them, and because our mail carrier was wearing snowshoes. This weather was really annoying during the hour and a half it took me to get home, but now that I'm cozy in my sweats on the couch at home, it's pretty great. What can I say? I love a good storm. Keep your fingers crossed for a University snow day tomorrow!

To balance the superficial tone of the previous post...

This makes me want to write again, a feeling that almost never comes from reading literary theory:

As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of "it feels right to me." We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into language so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

From Audre Lorde, "Poetry is not a Luxury," Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1984), p. 37.