Top Fives

Top-Five Lists in place of a more substantial posting:

Trees
Sugar Maple
Gingko
Eucalyptus
Flowering Magnolia
Date Palm

I really don't like oak trees. I don't know why. They just bother me. Maybe it's the leaf-drop in offset seasons. (shrug)

Classic Films
North by Northwest
Gone With the Wind
The Seven-Year-Itch
Desk Set
The Graduate

Pretense-Free Movies
A Chorus Line
Legally Blonde
Dirty Dancing
Aladdin
Good Morning, Vietnam

Ice Cream Flavors
Banana
Mint Chip (but only if it's green)
Blue Moon
Butter Pecan (it's not just for senior citizens!)
Cookies and Cream

Homecoming

So I'm back at Purdue for Homecoming weekend, with a science alumni board meeting tomorrow, tailgating festivities Saturday morning, football game Saturday afternoon, then back home on Sunday (missing the Mythbusters Sunday afternoon - that's a whole other rant I don't want to get into right now). I've never come home for homecoming, so it's kind of fun to be part of it all. Met some guy at the rental car counter who is back for his 50th reunion and some fraternity thing.

Anyhow, our flight was delayed from Cleveland, which means I just got to Lafayette about a half-hour ago. Driving I-65 from Indianapolis, I was awash with a flood of memories. I'm sure there will be quite the deluge tomorrow, too. I'm not going to even operate under the pretense that I'm not going to indulge in nostalgia. I'm just giving into it. It's too big a force to resist.

Via the scan button (took a few minutes to figure out the radio - why is it that American car stereos are so difficult to figure out?), I stumbled across an FM station playing 24-7 Christmas music. ?? People. It's not even Halloween yet!

It's perfect autumn weather forecast for the weekend - turtleneck-sweater-and-boot weather. I can't even explain how excited I am about this; I have grown weary of Florida and its 80s.

Happy Mole Day

Don't forget to celebrate Mole Day today, from 602a to 602p.

And you can dress up like a mole, if you like. This has me wondering why I don't own this. ------>

Five Things, Again

A friend and I worked at Biketoberfest in Daytona Beach yesterday, doing airbrush tattoos on people. I'm trying very hard to compartmentalize and never recall sights and sounds of the day, so let me just say that I've declared a moratorium on my interaction with the general public. I try to avoid the general public as best I can, but that's it. I'm done. My quota has been exceeded.


I'm exceptionally happy to report that all five things from the post below have been located! So now I have a new list:

Asset 001: Hiking Shoes
Known Aliases: Columbia Trekkers
Last Known Whereabouts: second-floor banister of former house; fruitless search for these rounded up missing Uncertainty book.

Asset 002: Blender
Known Aliases: The Kitchenaid Margarita Miracle
Last known Whereabouts: Under the sink of former house
Known Associates: other operatives such as the Food Processor, most of which have been traced

Asset 003: Knives
Known Aliases: none
Known Components: Block, five knives, and sharpening steel
Last Known Whereabouts: Kitchen counter of former house

Asset 004: #10 Envelopes
Known Aliases: none
Last Known Whereabouts: Office of former house

Asset 005: Toilet Paper
Known Aliases: Charmin, Cottonelle, many others
Last Known Whereabouts: Spotted in new house; presumed dead
Known Associates: Paper towels and napkins. May need to recruit more of its kin if it has indeed perished.


Other Top-Fives:

Fruit-Flavored Candy
1. Banana Laffy Taffy
2. Cherry Tangy Taffy
3. Passionfruit Tic Tacs
4. Peach Jolly Ranchers
5. Blue Raspberry Airheads


Chocolate Candy
1. Kit Kats
2. Dove Milk Chocolate
3. Valhrona 71% Cacao
4. Cote d'Or Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts
5. World's Finest Chocolate Milk Chocolate Almond Bars

Five Things

My life is in utter disarray.

There are five things I need to find. So far, I have located two. So, that's 40%. Still failing, but definitely redeemable.
- Toothbrush (found yesterday)
- Deodorant (found this morning)
- Blank CDs (haven't a clue - I might just cut my losses and go buy some)
- My Uncertainty book (no clue where it might be)
- A Consumer Reports magazine I'd been reading the night before our move (again, no clue)

I mean, at least the things I've found were the mission-critical personal-hygiene items, but still, there's no telling how long it will be before I locate these. Particularly forboding is the fact that the book was from the library, and I might be maxed out on renewals...

I have a mile-high stack of papers to grade, but I need to get the rest of my life in order. No comments from the peanut gallery about how I'm currently writing on my blog when I could be grading. It's called a break, people! Anyhow, I'm going to set a goal. Unpack two boxes per night. Now, that's a pretty reachable goal. And at that rate, we'll be unpacked around 2010. But, as someone who puts easy things on her to-do list for the mental victory of crossing them off, I'm all for easily-reached goals.


Other Top-Five Lists, just because:

Purdue University Courses
- Wine Appreciation (FS 470)
- Floral Arrangement and Interior Plant Management (HORT 360)
- Art History since 1400 (A&D 227)
- Weather Analysis and Forecasting (ATMS 444)
- Constitutional History since 1873 (HIST 328)

Literary and Theatrical Themes
- Highbrow comedy
- Unrequited love
- The non-Bond spy (think: Bourne Identity, Alias)
- Understated religious symbolism (think Matrix, *not* CS Lewis)
- Oblivious romance (think: Niles and Daphne on Frasier)

Desk Supplies
- Fountain pens
- Sticky notes
- Index cards, unlined
- Hole punches
- Erasers


Update (1201a): Found the CDs! At least now I'm passing. Unless I add my knives to the list. So, maybe I'll pretend I'm not looking for them...

Damage Report

Before I launch into tales of the move, let me tell a quick story about what happened to me Thursday morning.

So I have my clock radio alarm dialed all the way down to the lowest FM station - 87.7. Which overlaps with VHF station 6, in case you weren't aware. I don't know how it got there, but inertia keeps it tuned to that station. Anyhow. My alarm goes off that morning, and somewhere between the alarm going off and the smacking it receives by my hand flailing for the snooze button, Mr. Low-Fidelity Clock Radio shouts, "...Al Gore's murder..." and SMACK - the snooze bar shuts him up. I lay there in bed and think, what?? But before I can really process this, I'm back asleep. Nine minutes later, I hear the TV talking head say, "...suspect is considered armed and dangerous..." and SMACK again on the snooze button. What on earth is going on? So I drag my bones out of bed, brush my teeth, pull on clothes, and go downstairs to turn on the tv. All I see is traffic and weather, and one would think that if the former vice president was indeed murdered, that would have higher priority. Well, one would think. So there's nothing to be found, and so I drive to work. I don't bother listening to NPR or any other news outlet. First period is my prep period, so I walk into the copy room first thing in the morning and see Jess. I ask, "Um. Is Al Gore still alive?" She responds (disappointedly) affirmatively. Hm. So I'm puzzled by all of this. Until last night, I heard a reference to this on the news. Aaaaaaah!


Okay. So, we've moved. Mostly. At least, the majority of our stuff is now in our new house. It's going to be a long time before we've found everything...

You know how every vacation has a theme? Well, they do. For example, our summer trip to Europe (2006) had the theme "Peculiar German Things." Major life events have themes, too, and this move was no exception. I began to think the theme was becoming "Supremely Bad Decisions."

The morning began inauspiciously. First, after taking the first carload of stuff over to the new house and retrieving tools to take apart beds and bookcases, I noticed a big mamma-jamma spider on our front porch wall. I stood there, looking at it for a few minutes, wrestling internally, do I kill it, do I spare it, yadda yadda, and eventually I decided to just do away with it, because the last thing I want is to be staring at this thing *inside* my house, instead of outside. And this was no spider I'd want to come upon in a darkened alley. So, the nearest weapon is my foot. So I kick it, and it falls to the floor. And so do thirty baby spiders! Turns out big mamma-jamma spider is a mama spider. So now I've given this spider a brute-force caesarean, she's not quite dead, and now I have little baby spiderlets scurrying everywhere. And these are going to grow up to be big ol' spiders. So they get the stomping, too. So now I feel horrible, because mama's not quite dead, and she's having to witness the carnage of her children. I'm trying really hard not to think of Charlotte's Web, all right?

Supremely bad decision #2 (however involuntary) was Brian's choice of footwear. As he was carrying things out of our old place to the truck out front, his sandaled foot hits a utility meter grate and punches through it, sustaining injury involving toenails. Other people's toenails gross me out, so I'm going to stop here before I barf. The bonus is that we had a nurse practitioner there to help us move, so she did some triage and got him back up on his feet.


Things perked up after that. Cable's working, so's water, electricity, even internet. Everything has been pretty plug-n-play. So far, we've had only one wrinkle - the kitchen table set that hasn't been delivered. The rant on Kane's Furniture can come some other time.

We have all but two bathrooms and the entry hall painted, and it didn't seem like a great idea to paint the entry hall until we moved everything in. We've had a fleet of people here, doing all kinds of work - installing blinds, putting handles on cabinets, installing ceiling fans, painting, hauling, etc. It's been great. We made such progress yesterday, I suffered from some strange form of daylight savings - you know, the kind of day where you think it's gotta be about 700p, and when you look down at your watch, you're delighted to see it's 330p? Anyhow, it's certainly starting beginning to feel more like home.

Things I will miss about our old home:

• The Publix half a block away. So convenient for fresh food at a moment's notice. We have one nearby, but it's a 5-min car ride, at the very least. :(
• Stairs. My knees don't agree with me. They don't have any problem with a one-story.
• A private walled patio. We have a screened enclosure, which I love, but people can see in screens! Not like I run around outside naked or anything, but it's just different, being on a porch without walls.
• Being in the flight path of the Britain-bound 747s. We'll still get to see them take off and land, don't get me wrong, but it's not the same when they're not flying low and slow, directly overhead!
• Neighbors (mixed blessing). We're on the edge of the prairie here, on the frontier of our neighborhood, and we don't have many people around us yet at all. Another house across and down the street had a moving van outside yesterday, too, so I'll have to wander down and meet them sometime soon. I hope we can have people nearby that we like and know. I've never lived somewhere - besides growing up - where I really knew my neighbors. Maybe here.

Yay!

It's ours. :)

Bonus Picture Post

My latte art this morning.

It was actually intended to be a pumpkin. It ended up looking like a sea creature, so I gave it an eye and pronounced it a dolphin.

Summer Reading

I had an ambitious summer reading list (to say nothing of the teetering stacks and bowing shelves of books -yet-to-read here at home) that I wanted to finish during summer, when I actually have time to read. During the school year, my reading-for-pleasure consists of rereading the same paragraphs night after night as I barely finish a page before falling asleep.

So, my (hedonistic-scale - I loved it! I hated it!) reviews:

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
I liked it - plain and simple. I like books that plop you down in the middle of another culture and just let you experience it through the text. This was one.


Wonderland, Michael Bamberger
A quick read about a year in the life of an American high school. Interesting, but nothing terribly fascinating. Best lines:

"His career had spanned eras. When he began teaching, the role of the teacher, as Mr. Cunningham saw it, was to get inside the lives of the students and shape them. Now the job was all about, he said, 'covering your ass.'"

The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
This was a re-read for book club. I hadn't picked it up since high school, and was antsy to read it now that I'm (almost) a grown-up. A lot of ladies did not love it. I thought it was great, still. I'm sure I had more profound things to say about it two months ago.


A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Also a reread for book club. This and Catcher were my favorite books that I was ever assigned to read. I wound up reading A Separate Peace twice during high school. And so I was looking forward to re-reading, particularly since I teach at a boarding school now. I still like it, but I was expecting much more from it. It has given me a wonderful quotation, something I want to devote an entire blog entry to someday:

"...when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love."

Actually, I want to do an entire series of posts on the nature of love. I have a lot of scattered writings to condense into some posts. Maybe it will make a good school-break task.


Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Heller
I loved this. It was such an easy read, and really fascinating. A total bait-and-switch. It's billed as a story about a teacher who has an affair with a student, but it's really about the predatory friendship that the teacher suffers at the hands of another teacher. Which is a far more captivating story. There were some passages that made my commonplace book.(1) Maybe I'll get up and grab it. Maybe later.

Okay, it's later.

"I keep staring at things, willing myself to remember them. [snipped] Of course, memory is not really as obedient a faculty as that. You can't consciously decide what is going to adhere. Certain things may strike you at the time as memorable, but memory only laughs at your presumption. 'Oh, I'm never going to forget this,' you say to yourself when you visit the Sacre-Coeur at sunset. And years later, when you try to summon up an image of the Sacre-Coeur, it's as cold and abstract as if you'd only ever seen it on a postcard. If anything unlocks the memory of this house for me, years from now, it will be something - some tiny, atmospheric fragment - of which I'm not even aware at the moment. I know this, and yet I still persist in making my little inventory, trying to nail down my recollections."

"What is romance, but a mutual pact of delusion? When the pact ends, there's nothing left. That's the thing about people who believe in God, isn't it? The love they have for Him never ends. He never lets them down. I read some writer once who said that love - he was talking about romantic love - love is a mystery and, when the solution is found, it evaporates."

"Talking to him is rather like attempting to converse with a school play."

"Any break in my routine - any small variation in the sequence of work and grocery shopping and telly and so on - tends to take on a disproportionate significance. I'm a child in that respect: able to live, psychically speaking, on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the freight of my excessive hope."

All Loves Excelling, Josiah Bunting III
Exceptionally predictable. A decent beach-read, which is exactly where I read this. One portion made the commonplace. Again, later. Maybe. It's not as good as the other quoted text here.


The English Teacher, Lily King
A used-book-sale find. A pleasant read, interesting characters. A bit slow in parts, but enough character development to keep my interest.


Only Child, Siegel and Ulviller
I've already described my thoughts at length. Enjoy them.


Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, David Lindley
I'm so enjoying this book, but I've made it my bedstand book for six weeks now (thank you, OCPL online renewals...), which means that I collapse, exhausted, into bed and reread the same paragraph or half-page three nights in a row, like I reference up there^. Not a great way to read a book; I don't recommend it. I'd like to make it a point to finish this one, in one swoop. Maybe tomorrow, but that's highly unlikely.


There were many I didn't so much as even think about. Actually, that's not true. There are a few books that I at least obtained, even if I didn't read them:
- The Headmaster, John McPhee (2)
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (A re-read; my husband and I had BNW inside jokes at the beginning of our relationship. Maybe that's too geeky for public release...)
- Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road, Donald Miller (A treasured birthday gift, it was to be the first thing I read this summer, but I put it off. I don't know why. I should crack it open.)


There were several others I didn't so much as investigate the availability at the library. Still, I think I did some serious work on a pretty lengthy list. What with traveling and whatever else it was that I did this summer. It feels like ages ago already.


(1) I have sucked at writing in my commonplace book. It needs a more prominent home, and I might actually remember to write in it.

(2) I strongly encourage the reading of any John McPhee. Florida readers will enjoy Oranges, though it is somewhat dated, having been published in the late 60s, if I recall correctly. Rock-heads (geology, not death-metal) will enjoy his Annals of the Former World. The Control of Nature is worthwhile. Or if you want a sampling, The John McPhee Reader. On my McPhee short list are The Curve of Binding Energy, the aforementioned Headmaster, and Common Carriers, his latest.

On the Color of Lightning

We had a grey, windy, rainy day today. The kinds of mornings of which I have written. It was a stretch, but I made it into boot and sweater weather.

Tonight, on the drive home, the lightning was almost olive-green. Normally lightning here has a bluish or purplish tone to otherwise white light. Tonight, a storm in the distance had lightning with the most green cast I've ever seen lightning have.