What's Up

I have very few interesting thoughts these days, much less interesting activities. Here are a few things I have been doing:

• Grading
• Enjoying team-teaching with my friend Todd
• Editing Sam's tenure portfolio
• Hosting an informal "just stop by for a drink" party that I thought would be over at about 11:30, but that lasted until 2:30 a.m.
• Editing Sam's revised tenure portfolio
• Wondering if I should let my hair go gray or rage, rage against the dying of the light (the lightening of the dye?)
• Purchasing meticulously selected folders and tabs for Sam's revised tenure portfolio
• Trying to figure out why my W-2 says I made 33% more than my salary last year. (Would that that were true!)
• Crafting an urgent-but-not-shrill email lobbying for access to research databases
• Editing Sam's revised, expanded tenure portfolio
• Filming two videos for my church's fourth birthday party, which were put together by the MC (who fixed my mistakes)
• Retracing my steps in a failed effort to find a beautiful bracelet that I was given for Christmas, but that tragically came unlatched and fell off my wrist yesterday . . . :( [very sad about that one]
• Making chili also for the church's birthday party, but not entering it in the chili cook-off contest (too scary. The contest, not the chili.)
• Returning folders and tabs for Sam's revised tenure portfolio, and purchasing an alternative suitable for the revised, expanded tenure portfolio
• Trying to write recommendation letters for two students for the same scholarship without overlapping. At least there are 3 scholarships, so they could both win.
• Staying much warmer than last winter, since heat prices are normal again.
• Plotting and scheming

Googled 2

Somebody actually got to this blog by searching for "filthy lucre for dummies."

PersonalDNA

I just took the quiz Erin recommended and found that 1) I am an "encouraging director," 2) my femininity is at 90%, and 3) my masculinity is so low it almost doesn't register (2%).

Encouraging Director

I Knew I Had Moved Out of the House When . . .

my parents threw away my toothbrush.

Erin, this post is for you in response to your comment on Julie's blog. I completely relate.

Absent-Minded Professor, Part IV (and IVb)

Sam has been working on his tenure portfolio, and I've been putting in a lot of time grading 25 writing assignments per day for my course. A few days ago, with him fighting a stress headache and me batttling sheer exhaustion, we stopped for a little refreshment at Starbucks. We got back to his apartment eager to relax in the cozy warmth, but I realized that I had left my pocketbook behind. Alas. We went back out into the cold rainy day, and apart from the occasional superfluous reminder and teasing, life returned to normal.

Until a few days later, when we went to the realtor for Sam to put an offer in on a house. Afterward, we went out for a happy and hopeful little dinner, and started on the drive back to town. Since we'd had dinner somewhat early, we were looking forward to having an extra hour to relax before we both got back to the several hours of work we each had to do. Arriving back at my house, I went to get my keys, and where were they? In my purse. In the restaurant. 20 minutes away.

This blog post is part of my restitution.

Must-See: Rocky Balboa

[No spoilers here.]

I wasn't sure if I wanted to see the sixth Rocky movie. I had been startled to see that there was actually going to be a sixth, and I wondered if it would be just embarrassing and uncomfortable for everybody involved. But Rotten Tomatoes had a surprisingly favorable review, mentioning that it was Stallone's "love song to Philadelphia," and it is always nice to hear somebody else's praise of an object of one's own affection.

So Sam and I went to the matinee today. I love matinees--those stolen hours in the middle of the day. Clare and I occasionally used to go to matinees while in grad school--going to them was one of about a million things we did to get through grad school with some reserve of sanity and balance. And this, too, had been an intense week of working every minute, so slipping out early was a nice reward.

Anyway, the movie. In short: it was awesome! The review I'd read had said it was "all heart," so I had expected a feel-good story, but it wasn't just that--it was a reflective look at a city and a period of time and a certain kind of . . . heroism. Yes, there were some un-subtle moments, and there's something unsettling about the physicality of the version of heroism depicted, but I also respected the movie's willingness to recognize that we confront our lives with our bodies as well as our minds and hearts.

It also honored the experiences of (for lack of a better term) the working class. It wasn't pretentious or condescending or overdone. Coming from that backround myself, I appreciated the authenticity, simplicity, and dignity of this rare portrayal. It also captured the elusiveness and longing of memory. And finally, it was a song, from the opening sequence to the final shots after the credits--seeing the city from all its prettiest and grittiest angles reminded me of why I once loved it.

Resolution-Free Zone

Last month, I finally got around to joining the gym. It's a gorgeous, if expensive, facility. Paying for the membership seems like a colossal concession to my own laziness because I could go to the campus gym for free, but the campus gym doesn't offer classes, and while I'd like to think I was disciplined enough to go without a class, my experience for the last 18-months (entirely sedentary) proves otherwise.

So, one "benefit" of membership at this place is a fitness assessment. It's humiliating. They ask you a bunch of questions about your eating habits. I felt myself grow sheepish and defensive in a way that I haven't since I stopped lying as a child at about age 3. Then you have to do a number of tests, the most arduous of which is to "go" around the track for 12 minutes while they smile cheerily and count your laps. They just tell you to "go," as if it's not going to be very challenging, but then they cheerfully add: "as fast as you can!" which basically means you run, or stagger, or whatever your pathetic gait.

Then, at the end--voila!--they hand you a sheet of paper that analyzes your physical condition. They remind you (oh-so-helpfully) of your Chronological Age, which in my case is 32. Then they tell you your Body Age, and it turns out that eating vegetables like my mama taught me has its advantages, as my body has just turned 30. Then, you get the sense they're getting to the real point, and they list the Recommendations:

"Tara, the following are factors that will improve your Body Age:

Improving your flexibility from Poor to Average (the trainer had smiled gently and said, "It's not so bad--you're almost Fair!") will improve your Body Age by 2 years.

Improving your Cardiovascular VO2 score will improve your Body Age by 4 years.

Improving Your Heart Disease Health Risk Appraisal Score from Low-Mod to Low will improve your Body Age by 2 years.

Improving your Nutrition Health Risk Appraisal from Good to Excellent will improve your Body Age by 2 years (maybe so, but there's no way I am giving up meat).

Improving your Body Composition from 21% to 19.09% will improve your Body Age by 2 years.

By improving these factors, it is possible for you to reach a Body Age of 18."

Yeah, right!

Googled

Every now and then, somebody gets to this blog by searching for "lopsided head."

Happy New Meals

Yesterday was Jodi's birthday--happy birthday, Jodi!--and she and Ed came over for dinner. We had a nice evening lingering over the meal. I had gotten a somewhat late start cooking, so it was a frenetic burst of activity that afternoon. I could not have done it without my new K1tchenAid mixer (and kitchen assistant). I baked a chocolate cake and made this frosting that my family loves; the recipe comes from a bakery in my town where the cakes are show-stoppingly gorgeous. You can order a cake with, say, pointsettias and pine cones and pine needles, or lilies-of-the-valley and irises, and the cake decorators (who are artists) will shape these lovely, perfect flowers out of frosting. The irises will even have little petal tongues. So anyway, I didn't make any pretty flowers because I have still never gotten to take a cake-decorating class, though it is one of my life's ambitions. I did stencil some little cocoa stars on it, and called it a day.

After all, there was parmesan herb bread to bake, with beer substituted for the water to make it special. I don't even like the taste of beer, but the smell of the beer and the herbs was sensational; I practically wanted to open the breadmaker and taste it raw! I browned onion, garlic, and beef to get the pasta sauce simmering and mixed up a beef, spinach, and cheese ravioli filling. By then it was getting alarmingly late, so I was relieved when Sam came to help with the pasta-making and ravioli-stuffing.

This occasioned our first freighted disagreement--no, not politics nor past relationships nor life goals nor gender roles nor financial commitments--but rather how much meat should rightly go into each ravioli.* As the great-granddaughter of Italian immigrants from a small village outside Rome, having learned to make ravioli from my great-aunt and mother in the way my Nonna made them, I maintain that the ravioli should have more meat, which might mean a misshapen appearance (but that just proves that they are handmade and therefore more delicious), while Sam would prefer ravioli with just a tiny smidgen of meat to approximate a machine-extruded symmetry. That must be how the Scotch-Irish prefer them. ;)

*A word for the wise(-a**): I just looked it up and found that raviolo is the Italian singular, but that term is now used mainly for large ravioli, not for the little bite-sized ones, which are called ravioli in the singular and the plural.