you were so high.
that should be my toast--"Here's to Kate. She was so high. And Marc, who I hope can keep up with her."
i had the greatest shower today, and when i came out of it the windows were cracked and a pleasant breeze wafted through, and i was then aware of a beauty underlying all things. this beauty only appears in warm weather. so you can't have any of it. so nyah.
tonight my boss is going to a local bar, having invited everyone there, where he'll get very drunk and gossip about all my colleagues in a loud, animated voice. this jump starts the weekend like gangbusters.
i love heidegger. levinas can go to hell.
posted by paully at 4:34 PM link/comments
Oh, and Paul: While I believe my parents might be slightly affronted if I had you (opposed to, like, them) give me away at my wedding, I would be delighted if you were to say a few words come time for toasting at the reception. Just don't regale my family with stories of any collegiate drug use in which I might have participated. Like tigers, man. Tigers.
posted by Kate at 1:10 PM link/comments
I don't have the privilege of shaping young minds the way y'all do, but I deal with the little And on the "leaking classroom ceiling" front, we're having the same problem in this building. For extra fun, the registrar has neglected to inform any of the professors that their classroom is unusable, and instructors are thusly a bit mystified when they show up to teach and find their designated room has been cordoned off by the maintenance department. The registrar has decided, apparently, that it's our job, as employees who work in this building, to lead large mobs of professors and students on a merry hunt around the building for a suitably-sized, unoccupied replacement classroom. Nat, is Wally the same "foster dog" you mentioned in your email to me last week? Or has the spaniel been replaced?monsters darlings on a daily basis. For the first week or two of the semester, they kept wandering into my office, utterly bewildered, unable to find their classes. Why? Because of the following logic: "Well, last semester, I took German 101, and it was in this room. Consequently, because I am now taking German 102, it should be in the same room. No need to concern myself with, say, checking the schedule!" It's gotten to the point where I simply keep a hard copy of the class schedule next to my computer so I can direct traffic until the add/drop period ends.
posted by Kate at 1:01 PM link/comments
My students also have a paper due on the fourth. Also, it's the end of the third week of the semester and I still have wayward students trying to add my class, thinking it will be not-a-problem to have missed those first three weeks. One has to wonder, sometimes...
posted by Jen at 12:39 PM link/comments
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Ok I hate to say it but Winnipeg kids don't even put on coats untill it gets to be the equivilent of 14 here. No wonder the south lost the civil war.
I know that I shouldn't be surprised by this, hell I might have even been guilty of it long ago as an undergrad . . . but my students have a paper due on the 4th, they have know about it for weeks, and I have had more people in my office this afternoon, begging for help on the paper, not even having a topic chosen yet! Arghhh. I do know that there is a lot that can be done in a weekend if one is dedicated, or frantic, enough.
We are toying with a new dog, again. Although the little fucker bit me yesterday, hard, with blood and everything. Granted he thought, at that moment, that I was satan for wanting him to go into his crate, and intending on leaving him. But little Wally came very close to going back from whence he came.
posted by Nat at 2:53 PM link/comments
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
He really said "cool up?" What the hell does that mean? How amusing...The South gets no sympathy when it comes to the cold.
posted by Jen at 4:44 PM link/comments
Monday, January 27, 2003
Bite me, Georgia. Closing schools because of 14-degree weather. What the fuck ever. "Because of the extreme cold temperatures, if a bus had a mechanical problem, inside that bus would cool up so quick, that I wouldn't want to take the risk," said Chattooga County Superintendent Mike Poole. Cool up. *snicker*
posted by Kate at 9:57 AM link/comments
Friday, January 24, 2003
Paul's escapades with his classroom change (the ceiling was leaking something fierce) were also my escapades, because it wasn't enough for the university to have us share an office -- we also teach in the same room at different times. Some of my students, confronted with the note on the door explaining the nature of the problem (ceiling falling in) and the solution (go to this other room for your class), simply sat down in the hallway and gave up. I kid you not. I sent out a dragnet to locate the hopeless, and we all eventually reconvened in the hostile territory of the Engineering Physics building, where the tables and chairs are bolted to the floor, and only one ceiling tile was sagging and water-stained.
posted by Jen at 7:09 PM link/comments
i'm sorry to hear about cleveland's ill treatment of your warmth-loving body. i remember cleveland as having few manners in this regard. cleveland likes to break down your door, crack all your windows, drink ice water from your best china, put the cups on your finest wood tables without a coaster, and poison your houseplants. idaho, on the other hand, has lately gotten real affectionate. after a brief snow, idaho has curled up against me in bed and is now singing sweet lullabies. it's all like, "Let's forget that nasty winter ever happened last year and spend a little time gettin our love on. I want to know all about the warmth-loving you."
in response to being in a place that sees hot weather only two months of the year, i've found myself in constant need of various layers of clothing to keep my core temp up. (i've also had to adopt mountain-climber language, like "core temp.") i have broadened my definition of "jacket," or "coat" for you Northerners and mothers in the audience, to include long-sleeved button-up shirts. i'm wearing one now, for you phone-sex perverts in the audience. this has had interesting side-effects, like changing my ideas of inside versus outside. since heretofore i only wore a jacket outside, and since i habitually wear long-sleeved button-up shirts inside where jen and i refuse to turn on the heat, i am forced to admit that inside is really outside. this makes sleeping in the great outdoors a nightly occurence, though it also means i don't feel right just throwing out the squirrels that are living behind the fridge.
those same maintenance guys who have added to your misery, kate, kicked me out of my classroom today, thus throwing every one of my students into panicked turmoil as they tried to navigate the complexities of reading the note on the door and finding the substitute room. the substitute room was pretty disappointing, as it just told us to pretend this was study hall and then sat at its desk reading magazines.
i do remember this Marc you speak of. i believe i shook his hand and said, "Nice to meet you. What are your intentions with my Kate?" he seemed like a fine boy.
do i get to give you away at the wedding? i would offer to give Marc away, but i barely know him. and besides, i didnt drive to taco bell with him when i should have been studying rhetoric.
teaching rhetoric has opened me eyes to the fact that Professors Rea and Brockett, who we thought were insane in their approaches to teaching rhetoric, actually were insane. more to come on this as developments proceed. now i must rapel down the internet and scale the opposite face with my pitons and cord.
posted by paully at 5:25 AM link/comments
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Never fear, Paully. The sardonic complaining Kate lives on. She only difference is that I no longer drink a lot of coffee. One cup per day, for somewhere along the line, I developed a gereatric stomach, and large quantities of harsh beverages like coffee and beer send the old girl into quite a tizzy. Oh. And Marc would like me to remind you that you did meet him once, outside in the cold in Dayton last winter. There was a brief handshake and absolutely no conversation, so it doesn't surprise me that the moment wasn't memorable. I'm extremely grumpy today. Three reasons why: 1. For the third time in 6 weeks, I'm not able to receive email on my work account. The help desk people tell me that my account "just occasionally wanders off," and then the postmaster has to send out some sort of electronic search party to find it and put it back in its place. This will take 24 hours, they tell me, which is decidedly doubleplusungood in the world of the webmaster. I'm also having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that my inbox behaves like a senile dementia patient. 2. It's cold. Not like "ok-it's-winter-in-cleveland" cold, but like "hey-when-the-fuck-did-we-get-beamed-into-the-yukon" cold. 3. Related to #2, the good folks from the maintenence department stopped by my office yesterday to clean my heating registers' filters as part of their ongoing investigation into why heat levels vary drastically from room to room in this building. In the process, they discovered that something was very wrong inside the registers and decided to rip them apart, rendering them completely non-fuctional. Then 5 p.m. came along, and suddenly, the workers were themselves rendered non-functional as they dropped their tools, brushed themselves off, and merrily made their way toward the exit, chatting excitedly about "quittin' time." I haven't seen them since, and I'm very, very cold.
posted by Kate at 9:58 AM link/comments
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Kate, i have to say i never, ever expected you to get married. but then, the Kate who lives in my head is a sardonic woman who sits in the B-side and drinks a lot of coffee while she complains about the state of things in a post-Reaganote economy. i have to remember that you've probably changed a little since college. and i have to say, i'm pleased and happy for you, and i wish you and this marc character (who i've never met, which makes things even weirder) the very best of luck in surviving the impending turmoil that is planning a wedding. i hope you can get jennifer lopez to plan your wedding, because baby she's the tops in her field, even though her heart is lonely for the love of a hunky blond pediatrician.
there is not a lick of snow on the ground, and i'm still delirious with the love of a snowless winter. it makes me want to kiss the streets, but then i remember that they have nothing to do with precipitation output, so i get mad at them for trying to trick me into surrendering sweet love. stupid streets. so flat and paved.
nat, my condolences on the loss of your dog. my own dog is nearing the end of his life, and there has been talk about putting him down, so when the time comes i can turn to you for advice or insight. i know i'll miss my own pup.
all right, y'all. i'm off to an art theory class which i'll probably drop.
wedding portrait cookies? dammit.
posted by paully at 7:31 PM link/comments
About that wedding idea link -- wedding portrait cookies? Good god. Someone wake us all from this bad dream. First day of class -- male student, possibly of the fraternity variety, shows up with beer-holder hard hat, minus the beer. Claims he doesn't know where the hat came from but he "woke up with it." Wore it all through class. Cheers to a new semester.
posted by Jen at 3:51 PM link/comments
I know everyone's going to scream at me for this, but I haven't seen Lord of the Rings (either one) yet. My excuse is that I've never been much for fantasy. If it makes everyone feel better, however, I've joined Netflix, so I can rent LOTR with great prejudice at very little cost. I promise to do it once I've gotten through the 15 or so movies I have stored up in my rental queue. In other news, I signed up online for some bridal catalog thingy, and I've now been placed on the Bridal Industry's Central Mailing List. You can't imagine the sheer numbers of catalogs that arrive in my mailbox each day. Combine that with everything I've been looking at online, plus the ideas being forwarded to me by well-meaning family members (check out this little gem -- aiyyeeeeeeeeeeek!), and I can see why some women go into wedding meltdown.
posted by Kate at 10:04 AM link/comments
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Get the four-disc Lord of the Rings special edition. It has been entertaining us for a week, and we still haven't watched the entire thing. And ironically, the first DVD we rented was the classic German Expressionism early-part-of-the-century film "Dr. Caligari's Cabinet," which we'd watched a bit of in a film class. It didn't even have a trailer. The only special feature was a choice between soundtracks.
posted by Jen at 12:09 PM link/comments
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Hey, I got a DVD player for Christmas. Marc apparently decided that the engagement ring wasn't quite enough in the gift department, so now I get to experience the joys of theatrical trailers to supplement my otherwise plain-jane rented movie experience. Very cool.
posted by Kate at 8:34 AM link/comments
Saturday, January 11, 2003
A nice DVD player has been purchased and attended to with due diligence. Also purchased was a large entertainment center cabinet thing, which, once in our apartment, inspired extensive furniture rearranging. That's it for the news from Idaho. I can only wish there was a wayward kitchen sink nearby. How exciting.
posted by Jen at 2:42 PM link/comments
Friday, January 10, 2003
Heard on the radio on the way home from work: "... and traffic is still snarled up at 271 and Broadway because of that kitchen sink in the middle of the highway." Right.
posted by Kate at 7:27 PM link/comments
Thursday, January 02, 2003
There is something very non-medieval about contemporary "bridal rooms." Yay for frosted plastic.
Paul and I are safely back in Moscow. On the flight from Chicago to Spokane, we got to sit in one of those exit rows where there are bountiful fields of leg room, and it was heavenly.
posted by Jen at 4:12 PM link/comments
Yesterday we registered for wedding gifts at a retail store. To register, we had to sit in the store's special "bridal room," where we were interrogated mercilessly for personal information, then handed a scanner so we could zap the items we coveted at heart's content. The informational packet they gave me was made of frosted plastic and sealed with aid of a piece of heart-shaped velcro.
posted by Kate at 11:09 AM link/comments