Phew.

Good News: This week is almost over.
Bad News: Let's just get it all out at once: I can now report that my Friday afternoon class, which starts shortly, is pretty much a nightmare. My other seminar is slightly less horrible, which is to say a far cry from good. My directed study has received no attention so far, because I have a combined 200-400 pages of reading a week for the other stuff. Several of my students are sick, but came to class anyways (I appreciate their dedication, just not the germs). I have to teach adjective endings next week. Adjective endings in German make the Israel/Palestine conflict look fun and easy. I had to take my car to the shop to have the multi-function switch repaired, so my brights wouldn't turn themselves on and off, which cost me about the same as a vacation in Cancun. Frankly, I would rather have gone to Cancun, since EVERY SINGLE DAY THIS YEAR the air temp has been at some point below 0, usually when I'm walking to my office, causing my eyes to tear up, which leads to frozen eyelashes. Better, I suppose, than having my contact lenses freeze to my eyeballs, which happens here sometimes - there is a specific warning about that in the orientation handbook. My ipod broke, and even though getting it fixed would probably only cost me the same as a vacation in Cinncinati, I'm trying to figure out how to fix it with tinfoil instead. I have a paper cut from a file folder under one fingernail. And then, foolishly, I read this: http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2009/01/2009013001c.htm. That good attitude I wanted to have this semester? Hanging by a thread.
Good News: My students are lovely, wonderful people. I love teaching (except for adjective endings). Matt made it to Zanzibar. I figured out how to trick libraries around the world into mailing books directly to my office. There are a lot of other things to list here, but I have to go to my horrible nightmare class. How does that statement reflect my existence? How would a gendered/poststructuralist/Marxist/etc. reading of that statement shape its meaning? Discuss.

Good News, Bad News: First Week Back

Good News: It's Friday! Alleluia!
Bad News: Friday's not over by a long shot.
Good News: I have a whole hour until I teach and I have already planned a lesson.
Bad News: I just finished planning it. This is a marked departure from my goal of planning the whole week's lessons each weekend, something I managed about 3 times in the fall, and which definitely makes me a better teacher.
Good News: I can try again for next week.
Bad News: This strategy does not make me a better student. If I have to choose between creating activities for my students and reading another 40 pages of Freud, I will definitely choose the former.
Good News: I don't have any Freud scheduled for this semester (for the first time since I started here).
Bad News: There is still one class to attend this week. Not only is it a Friday afternoon class, it could very well have something to do with Freud.
Good News: I'm trying to be optimistic about this class, even though it's on Friday afternoons and is taught by a professor last seen in our department in 1993 who is clearly being forced against his will to do it because there isn't anyone else left here. Anyways, even if it does have Freud, it won't have a certain archnemesis of mine. In fact, I have no classes with him this semester - another first!
Bad News: I still have to see him every day, and now I also have to deal with his former students who have moved on to my class and brought their bad attitudes with them.
Good News: Today I get to torture them with perfect tenses and past participles. Hahahahah!
Bad News: It's going to be really cold again this weekend, so cold that even the prospect of complex grammar exercises won't be able to keep me warm.
Good News: I have a lot of work to do, so I won't be outside much anyways (see lesson planning goals above).
Bad News: Most of that work is not finishing up projects I started (or meant to start) over break.
Good News: 1 week (almost) down, only 14 (or so) to go!

Arctic Blast

Remember the other day, when I stayed home because it was -17 when I got up? Today it is -22, again, three hours after I got up. The weather people keep calling this an "arctic blast" and then laughing in that smug, fake-sympathetic way, as if they could bring warmer air if they felt like it, but they know what's good for us, and it's this cold. It's hung around long enough that they've exhausted their tiny vocabularies (arctic, frigid, and bitter cold) and also their usefulness.
There has been some news of "weather rage." It's only human, though, to get kind of cranky when you can't go outside for more than two minutes without getting frostbite. I went out with the dogs and my teeth had goosebumps.
Aside from the weather people, my short temper is directed at those who are dumb about the cold. I recognize that it is irrational and unproductive, but I get annoyed at the girl waiting for a bus with me in SUBZERO temperatures who was not only too vain/fashionable to wear a hat, but had no gloves, no scarf, and only a pair of strappy, open-toed high heels (no socks) on her feet. If it had been warm enough to move my scarf off of my face to speak, I would have verbalized what was going loudly through my head: really? REALLY?!? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!? That was the other day. Now that it's dipping to -24 and lower at night, some of our pipes are freezing, and my irritability is directed at the former owner of this house, who thought it was a bright idea to run water pipes to the upstairs bathroom by way of the UNHEATED BACK PORCH. Luckily, nothing has burst, and we've managed to thaw them out again with a space heater, but it's still got me wandering around the house, unbathed, in my ratty wool sweater like a crazy woman muttering REALLY?!? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!? and scheming about rerouting the pipes myself. The crazy is exacerbated by the fact that I've been wearing the same outfit every day for about a week, occasionally accessorizing it with one slipper (I left the other one under the bed at the cabin) and mittens and a cocoa mustache, since tap water is frankly too cold to drink. Also by the fact that my skin has had it with this weather - it's trying to secede from my body and escape to warmer climes, and refuses to stop cracking and bleeding and peeling and itching no matter how much lotion I put on it or how much cocoa I drink. I also just finished Northern Lights by Tim O'Brien, which involves some people getting lost in a blizzard in MN and nearly freezing/starving to death. I thought I had snapped when I spotted a midget sneaking around our house yesterday, but I'm pretty sure it was just the meter-reader.
Cross your fingers for me and hope that it warms up before I lose it completely.

Snow Day

I'm home with the dogs today because a) even though I have Things To Do, there are no meetings which require my presence at the office today and school's not the boss of me; c) it snowed 5 inches yesterday and they still haven't plowed; and b) when I got up this morning to let the dogs out, it was COLD. I don't know exactly how cold, but cold enough that Cricket only did one lap, peed, let out a single, half-hearted yelp at the neighbor coming out to start his car, and came back in without having to be called. For reference, she usually goes berserk whenever anyone in our neighborhood so much as shows their face before sunrise. This is the procedure for getting her to come in: 1) whistle from the porch, 2) call from the porch, 3) whistle in a more insistent tone, 4) call her from the deck, 5) stomp out into the yard where she can see you and call her again while clapping, 6) stomp over to her, calling and clapping, 7) chase her around the yard as she playfully frolicks through the snowdrifts with a huge piece of frozen poop dangling from her mouth. So when she came back in without any of that, I knew it was bad out. An hour later, it had warmed up to -17. As evidenced at left, it's still cold out.
Since I don't have to go outside today, I'm kind of enjoying it. This is real winter. We're supposed to have this kind of winter: it's Minnesota! Of course, I also feel a teensy bit of schadenfreude toward those hysterical Minnesotans who meant to to California or something. They are very confused by the snow, and seem to think they'll make it go away through vigorously bad driving, inappropriate winter dress, and exclamations of bafflement and woe ("It's cold?! But a hat will ruin my hair! Oh, it's cold! Oh, it's so cold that even my Uggs won't keep my feet warm! Someone should really do something about this weather. This must be the beginning of the next ice age! Woops, was that my turn?" *slams on brakes, fishtails, nearly hits pedestrian).
So I'm staying home, away from them and out of the cold. It's all I can do to keep myself from curling up on the couch right now with a book and some cocoa - like I said, I have Things To Do. Lesson planning, proposal writing, laundry. We got the wallpaper off the dining room walls over the weekend (so easy! and no, we didn't just smear them with bacon grease for Cricket) and it's already much better, but I'm hoping to get the walls cleaned up so we can patch and prime and paint this weekend. You can see the current state of the room to the left. It's the center of the first floor, kind of a focal point, so I'm having major color indecision (Rob, consider yourself warned). Bright or neutral? Rust? Burnt orange? Eggplant? Butter? (Why do so many of the colors I like have food names?) Le sigh. Suggestions? Extra points if you create an entire pallete we can eventually use to make our living room and kitchen also look stylish.

Happy New Year!

Aaaaah, 2009. Let's be frank. 2008 was not a great year (not really terrible, but still), and I'm not sorry to see it go. So far, 2009 looks better, but that might be because I'm still on official break. You can blame my optimism on that fact if you want, but by doing so, you will forfeit any right to complain about my lack of optimism later on.
I could bore you with my resolutions (I did make a few) or a recap of 2008, but instead, let's return to the time-honored tradition of Good News/Bad News for 2009 so far.
Good News: Despite ample opportunity (lots of trips, storms, and unusual foods), no disasters (yet).
Bad News: Still 357 days to go.
Good News: I am being much more productive during this break than I expected. I have several running lists filling up my new calendar (thanks, Cathy!) and I'm actually doing that stuff instead of reading the internet in my pjs every morning until midafternoon.
Bad News: Some of that productive energy has been misdirected to the kitchen, where we now have enough food to last until the apocalypse. I can't seem to remember that the two of us just don't eat enough food to justify a new, huge dish every single day, so our fridge is overflowing with my culinary ambitions/boredom (spinach lasagna, green chile enchiladas, minestrone soup, homeade applesauce, etc.)
Good News: Can't fit any more in there, so I'm holding off on making that pot roast, which has forced me to turn to other projects.
Bad News: First I ate the last Christmas cookie. Yes, it took us this long. No, I am not wearing pants with an elastic waistband.
Good News: Those other projects are going swimmingly. I got a wedding dress, and it cost less than our mortgage payment.
Bad News: I still need to get it tailored.
Good News: I rewired this lamp that I bought at Goodwill:
It's sideways, but I'm lazy. The point is, it works. Subpoints: I didn't electrocute myself, burn down the house, break the lamp, or have to call an electrician, all of which are major accomplishments considering that I haven't spent any time thinking about wiring or electrical currents since the 3rd grade potato battery project. This gives me confidence and also makes me accutely aware of the wiring problems in our house. Not a single light switch makes sense, some of the outlets are loose, and we'd like to replace a few of our light fixtures....
Bad News: I don't have an appropriate shade. Ten points if you send me one!
Good News: We also successfully completed our first joint plumbing project over the weekend, capping a supply line to the sink in what was once an upstairs kitchen, without hurting ourselves, flooding the basement, ruining our relationship, or having to call an emergency plumber. This lucky streak also extends to the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Wallpaper Situation. If you've visited, I've shown you the top layer of awful beige '70s-era wallpaper and the even worse bottom layer of bright green and yellow textured '40s-era wallpaper in our dining room and living room. One day, not too long ago, we came home and Cricket had eaten some of it. We would have been furious (what dog chews on walls?) except that she had managed to get it off completely, in the kind of way that you really only see on infomercials for cancer-causing wallpaper removal products that cost $85/bottle but come with a free scraper. She also loosened a bit, so we pulled, and an entire section came off, just like that! I'm tempted to just rub bacon grease on the remaining wallpaper and let her at it, but I don't want to set a precedent.
Bad News: It's hard to be serious about training a dog NOT to chew on the walls when you're so happy about it.
Good News: This means the wallpaper should be down soon, and we might even get to start painting before classes begin! Cue: delusions of interior decorating grandeur.
Bad News: It's a domino effect: once the wallpaper is down, we will debate color choices for the walls and the trim, which will lead to a discussion of whether to paint the crappy trip or just replace it, which will bring us to the ceiling and the light fixtures and remodeling the entire first floor.
Good News: By the time we finish that discussion, it will be spring, and we will forget about the inside of the house so we can play in the garden.