Monday, July 30, 2007

Notebooks: A family obsession

I normally bounce around the net to look for articles and such about journals, letter writing and other things that have to do with the power, impact and resonance of the written word.

Diaries from children hiding during World War II, letters to soldiers and memoirs of a distant relative are all occasions where the written word has allows someone of the present to be 'touched' by someone from the past in a way that's not easy to duplicate in our modern, digital society.

My whole family keeps notebooks of some form or another. My grandmother's real estate records, my mother's genealogy research and even my grandfather's rabbit journals (he raises them) are just scratching the surface of how important writing and notebooks are to those who shaped my life growing up.


From: Moleskinerie

As near as I can tell, my writing habit began more than a hundred years ago on a cattle ranch in northern Mexico. That was when my grandmother, at seven years of age, wrote three words in a little notebook her mother, Cristina Terrazas, had given her: hoy murio mama. No capital H, no accent marks, no other details--little Julia Terrazas simply wanted to record that her mother had just died.

Many years later, Julia gave her own daughter, my mother Emma, a notebook in which to jot down everyday happenings, thoughts, prayers and poems. Eventually, when I was nine, my mother also presented me with a notebook. I was confined to a hospital bed after having my tonsils out, was restless, and my mother wanted to keep me out of mischief. "Here," she said, "write what you see, write some stories." I did as she told me, and that's how three generations of Terrazas women passed onto me the itch to write.

I still write in notebooks-my latest one is a lined, pocket-size Moleskine--when I have time and mental space. But like most everyone these days, I've succumbed to the lures of the digital, electronic world. However, I've discovered the ease of e-mail comes with a catch. I can reply, copy, forward, print or save, but ultimately I might as well delete everything because it's all virtual, not tangible the way notebooks, diaries and journals are, especially old ones written by people no longer with us. Such written relics are filled with intimate thoughts, quirky handwriting, odd spelling, smudges, crossed-out words, even doodles and sketches. My mother and grandmother may have died decades ago, but when I hold their creations in my hands and read page after page, I see the world as they did--I touch their lives.

Several years ago, while trying to unravel some disturbing family mysteries, I regularly touched the past in this way. For me, the personal, confessional writing of my relatives had more than sentimental value. The hundreds of entries allowed me to pinpoint dates, names and events, led me to other sources, documents, letters, often to people I could interview. Eventually, my hunt for the truth evolved into a book, a memoir, about my family. Yet the project would never have started if I hadn't wandered into the tool shed behind my grandmother's house in Los Angeles the day we buried her.

Well into her eighties when she died, Mama Julia--as we called her--liked to watch Mexican lucha libre on television. Every week the sequined capes, scary masks and flying leaps off the ropes captivate her for a few hours. The frail old lady I saw whenever I visited her place had always been a quaint, slightly raunchy figure who just happened to like short, tubby men in tights. She'd call me Manos de bragueta, not because I fidgeted with my fly but because in her mind men's hands were vile and had no place in her kitchen. "Fuera, manos de bragueta," she would mutter. "Fuchi, fuchi,"--as if to say, "Yuck! Outta here, boy."

But after her funeral, everyone gathered at her one-bedroom house in a central Los Angeles neighborhood, officially named Elysian Valley but on the street called Frog Town because it runs alongside the L.A. River. We all poked around and took keepsakes of her presence. From the kitchen I came away with the comal--the griddle on which she had made me hundreds of flour tortillas over the years. Then in her bedroom I claimed a photo album no one seemed to want. Finally, I stepped outside and went around back to the tool shed. Inside, behind a rake, hoe and shovel, she had stored a small cardboard box on a shelf. I brought the box out into daylight, opened it and fished out a stack of her notebooks and some index cards covered with her invented prayers and poems. I glanced at a few pages but only remember that the rhymed verses in Spanish spoke about things like love and faith. For a long time after that I kept all her writing stored away and unread.

When my mother died I did the same thing--after the funeral I came away with a bundle of her notebooks and diaries that I found in a bedroom drawer. Yet rather than store them away, eventually I began to read them to look for answers to the lingering questions about the odd circumstances surrounding her death. She died at home at the age of 48 from drug-related heart problems. Months later my father, a secretive, enigmatic U.S. army officer, disappeared from me and my two brothers, never to return.

I read and re-read everything--notebooks, diaries, journals, letters, postcards, store receipts with scribbled notes on the back. For the most part they gave me the answers to my questions. But the truth wasn't always in facts. Often it was in the touch of words. As a writer, in trying to create whole lives, of real people who lived and had minds and dreams and desires of their own, I was blessed by having all this in their own words. When Julia Terrazas writes that her mother died, or when Emma Arias writes on July 19, 1952 that she longs for her husband--who was then a prisoner of war in North Korea--I know I'm touching the truth.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Come to the Dark Side

Come to the Dark Side

The Dark Side gets all the cool toys. You come to the Dark Side, we can guarantee you a cape. You wanna use your powers to get into the movie theater for free? Cool with us. We provide excellent theme music for stalking through your lair. Oh, and don't forget: black is slimming, and it goes with everything. Power, strength, fashion sense, a great 401k, plus, we offer the ultimate prize -- cookies!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

My favorite Perch

After 2 p.m.

I'm out in front of Hattie's for my weekly indulgence and they're still closing around 2 p.m. I hope they don't take their front tables in when they close as that's where I'm currently perched. Thunderclouds are rumbling in the distance and the weather's turning from hot and muggy to breezy, hot and muggy. I guess that Hattie's was doing badly with their business plan and so they've decided to cut their hours back to only open from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. Once they get a gelato machine installed to serve Italian ice cream, then they will re-open in the evening from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. to handle an evening crowd. I was hoping that they wouldn't have done so badly as to curtail their hours. It's a real treat to be able to hit the coffee house in my area of town and just get some thinking, working, writing done.

One of these days I'll have to grab a shot of the place so everyone else can see it.

The skies of darkened considerably and the wind has kicked up a notch. I think we're going to get a nice storm. But, of course, I'll be caught out in it and my car will leak and it will generally be annoying. I need a new (read as: different, a car that is not like the one that I have now, one that does not leak in heavy rains.).

And here comes the rain.

Oh look, a student. Gotta go.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Shots from Roosevelt Lake

A shot up a tree that was leaning over one of the creeks that feed the lake.

My favorite shot from today's hike. The tree was in the same creek as the shot above but it just looked awsome to me. It's now my desk top.
A nice area just off the beaten path. The shot turned out dark but it was shaded by the trees and such. The moss-covered rocks were also cool.
A rock shelf on the hill beside the creek.

Visitor from Florida


Just after 10 o'clock this morning...

I'm up, showered and on the front porch waiting for someone I haven't seen in years.This will be the second time, almost to the day, that someone from my past has just popped up to visit. This time it's Stephanie, one of the few people that I'll speak with from High School. She normally lives in Florida but her father lives here in Portsmouth. She said that she's been up here since Sunday and they're leaving to go back tomorrow so I figured that hanging out with her today would be fun. I'm waiting on the drywall compound from my granddad so that I can repair the hole in the back bedroom wall. He said that he's not been able to find it, but will keep looking.

I've settled on a shade of blue for the office and will probably be buying it in a few days assuming that everything works out. Even when I get the back bedroom painted, it will take me a while to disassemble the furniture in the front and move it. I may go ahead and paint the shelves white since they can be painted and be drying while I'm working / waiting on the other steps to be finished.

Once the back office is finished, I can start to paint the front room and then move all of the bedroom stuff out of the middle room. This, then, will allow me to pull up the carpeting and start moving shelves around. The middle room is going to become something of a media room. The bookshelves are going to be moved into there and I'm thinking that the tv and such as well. The front room just isn't designed to have people comfortably watching television in there - not with the way the fireplace takes up most of the space. So, I'm going to convert it into something of a sitting room with a love seat and a few chairs for when I want to play with the fire or something like that.

The middle room, since it has much more wall space for furniture, will be the place to watch television and such. Once the old carpeting has been pulled up, it will be much easier to have hardwood floors sanded in both rooms and fix things up. I need to make sure that there is cable run to the front room and that they haven't cut it or something. The cable company is sending someone over this Friday to replace the cut cables in the back room.

The smell of rain is on the air. I know we had a storm last night that was more of a shower than anything else but you can still detect the traces of moisture in the trees. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll have another storm or shower this afternoon; probably while we're out at the lake.

I got a hold of Dan last night on Yahoo; he's moved into the house down from Barb & Zak and he and Heather are doing their thing. Dan was telling me how he WALKED home from classes the other day since they now live in town and that he was hitting the net with High Speed. I can't imagine going from what I have now back down to Dial Up; just gives me shivers sometimes even thinking about it. Granted, I also have a weird issue between a Digital life and an Analog one, but that is slowly getting resolved. I sent letters out on Monday and I enjoyed the whole process. I know tht writing letters is not necessarily a 'lost' art, but definitely a tradition or practice that has faded with the rise of the digital age. Most of my students can barely write legibly, but I'm sure that they could probably send you a thirty-word text message before they would even remember how to start a letter.

I figure that with our society going more and more digital, the ways of the Analog Anachronist will become viewed by society as clumsy if not abnormal. Why take the time to write and send a letter when an email is instant? Logically, emails are more efficient means of communication when that's all you're doing.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Something weird


Ok, so this is one for the books...

So here I was, today, working on the back bedroom. I cleared it out of all the furniture and the books off the shelves in preparation for having it painted. The process took most of the morning since I wasn't in any great hurry and it has been hot all day.

Finding a place to put all of the books on the shelves was difficult because most of my boxes are already full with other stuff so I had to go searching through the attic for a box or something. This basically meant that I took the books off by the shelf and not all at once. Had I removed them em mass I might have noticed the strange pattern of soot on the wall.

The soot came from an oil lamp that I used to burn beside my bed when it was in the far corner. For some reason one night, the oil burned sooty (which was odd since it normally doesn't) and I quickly put the flame out but the soot had gotten into the grain of the wall and would take some serious scrubbing to be removed. I didn't know, at the time, that the soot had crawled up and behind the first set of bookshelves - until today.

I didn't notice that there was a face there until I walked back into the room to grab one of the last things. I paused and snickered for a moment as I looked at it. I even remember muttering,

"Oh, great - I've got a spooky face. I wonder if I could sell it on Ebay?"

And then I looked at it more closely and grabbed a shot of it with my camera. When I upped the contrast (to the left), the image of the face became more apparent; vividly so.

I saw the nose and the eye as well as an open and what appears to be a fanged mouth with the line of the old shelf something like the line of the chest muscles of a male figure. The image wasn't exactly apparent with this copy so I then switched it over to a black and white and that's when it really pops off of the wall.

So the image of a "devil" appearing on my wall isn't what really got me thinking. What was interesting was that the face appeared on the wall behind the shelf where I kept my own journals.

A devil behind the book.

Interesting, yes?

-T

An Analog Revolution, Part 1


Letter writers use pen, paper to say it best
By KELLY W. BROWN

Most agree it is more satisfying reaching into a mailbox and finding a hand-written letter rather than just bills and junk mail. However, the age-old art of letter writing is dying.

In a 2006 survey, the U.S. Postal Service reports the average American household received one piece of personal correspondence a week. The trend has been in a steady decline since 1987, when the average home got two or three letters a week, the survey said.

But in Hattiesburg, letter-writing is alive and well.

"I think e-mail is fine ... but I just think that when you 'handwrite' a letter, it's so much more personal," said Anne Love, 67, of Hattiesburg. She said she began writing letters when she could barely write - her mother would write thank-you notes, and Love would copy them. Today, she said, she still writes at least one letter per day.

"I feel like I can say things more personally in a letter than I would on e-mail," she said. And, she pointed out, when you take the time to write and send a letter, people know how much you care for them.

"Acknowledging people is almost a lost art," she said, and when she writes to them, "It's almost like I have a mini-visit with them. I'm thinking of them when I address each card."

When one of her best friends was in the hospital with cancer, Love said she wrote her a note every day. She still has the scrapbook with the correspondence to her late friend. She also keeps in touch with childhood friends in the Delta, women from her church and anyone, she said, who needs encouragement.

"If you think someone's having a really hard time, or if something is going on where you would maybe feel uncomfortable saying something, it's never the wrong thing to write a note," she said.

Marcia Gatewood, 73, is a recipient of Love's letters and an avid letter writer. She started as a Memphis State University student in the early 1950s. She writes around three per week, sending notes of encouragement.

"I think you can just put your thoughts on a piece of paper, what's really on your mind and what you're really thinking about," she said. "I enjoy getting notes, so I figure people enjoy getting them, too."

What e-mail has in speed, she said, it lacks in style.

"I hope that note writing and letter writing are not dying arts. It is easy to sit down on the computer and write something quick, but to me it is not as personal," she said. "When you're writing a note, you're sharing your personality, and you don't do a lot of that with a computer."

Letter writing has a place in the American conscious, particularly for couples who were apart during wars and other separations. But even younger generations have relied on letters to bridge the gap.

Diane Eaves, etiquette consultant, said she exchanged letters with her husband, Thomas Eaves, while he was stationed in Taiwan during Vietnam War. She still is a "letter-writer."

"I love to write letters, I do, and I love to get letters," she said. "I really do think that it's just like a gift when you send a letter to somebody, because most of the time what do we get in the mail? Bills. It's fun to get a letter that you can read and re-read."

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Around 4-ish

There's a huge thunderstorm rolling in as I type. I'm sprawled out in the hammock listening to the storm boil in the sky. It was kinda muggy and dry this afternoon but when I started to hear the distant rumblings of rain my mood brightened. I like rain and love storms.

While the rain pecks its way through the leaves of the trees and plants to the semi-parched hill behind my house, I'm trying to work through some projects for the house. I'm wanting to reverse the two bedrooms and stick the office in the back and the bedroom in the front; unfortunately when they ran the new cable, they cut the old cables in the back bedroom so I'm going to have to call and see if they can come out and replace them. It makes no sense to move everything around if I can't get cable and the net in the back bedroom. It looks like all the things will fit in the back so that should be cool.

One of the ideas that I'm stewing on is that when I have one of the rooms empty, in the process of moving things around, why not go ahead and paint it? A gallon or two won't be that expensive and I could have it painted in a day or two (second coat and touch ups) and leave the stuff in the middle room until I'm ready to move things in. Then, when I have the middle room empty, move things from the second bedroom and paint it.

Sounds like a nice idea but now I'm playing with colors. I'm fairly well set on the idea of white trim for everything so I just need to come up with a paint scheme. I think I'm going to paint the bedroom some kind of blue. The problem with this is that I have one wall in the room that's covered with paneling. Ugh. My thought is that I could probably just cover that wall with cork to cover it and make it a more usable space. Do I leave the cork it's original color or try and sponge-paint it to match the walls or even a lighter shade? I know that I can get the cork at Lowes in large squares (I think 1x1) for not too much money.

So that's crawling around in my head. The other bedroom has the same problem with the paneled wall so if it works for one it might work for another.

The storm didn't get as impressive as I had hoped it might. The radar showed a huge red splotch of a storm heading for us and what we got was a less-impressive soaking. It's not a bad storm but it's not what I thought that I'd get.

As for the idea of flipping the two rooms, I can then close off the bedroom (once moved) completely since I would rarely be in there for anything.

Another plan that I'm considering is to remove the carpeting in the middle room of the house. The beige color has been made dingey with years of foot traffic and there doesn't seem to be any hope of rescuing it. I'm also wanting to remove it so that the front two rooms are all hardwood floors. If I'm going to refinish the front room's floors I might as well remove the carpeting in the middle so I can do both with one whack. Disposing of the carpeting will be a pain but I'm sure I can find some means of getting rid of it. Someone might want it for something. I know that I'll have to leave the carpeting in the hallway but that's ok.

More thunder. Maybe the storm hasn't blown itself out just yet.

A bit of a detour...


Around 9:30 a.m.

Well, guess where I am? Last night, Jim and I were going to head up to Huntington to watch Harry Potter and grab some food. Well, while driving through New Boston the idea struck us to go kidnap Heath who is all by himself up in Columbus; April and the kids are down in Kentucky for the week. After a quick phone call to confirm the plan, Jim and I grabbed clothes and we drove up to invade Easton mall.

O.M.G. It's not a mall, it's a small community of capitalism. I love it. We saw the Order of the Phoenix and had dinner at Panera. Afterwards we ended up crashing at Heaths and talked until around four or five in the morning. It was definitely something different than just driving up to Huntington.

Who knows what we'll get into today.

***

Later, around 11:30 p.m.

Today was very cool. Jim and I crawled around Columbus for most of the day - I didn't get home until around ten o'clock. We ended up back at Easton and we started at one end and walked its four corners. I hate being poor. I need to go back up with about 100 dollars to blow and then I'd be quite happy. I had to walk by Barnes and Noble six times with less than 20 dollars in my wallet - oh, the agony.

Jim grabbed some cologne at Abercrombie and Fitch (awesome place) and we ducked into dozens of shops selling everything from electronic gadgets to a shop, Eddie Bauer, where I saw a possible new bag.

Leave it alone.

One of my Quests is for a perfect Field Bag.

Eventually we ended up at an awesome sea food restaurant (McCormick & Schmick's) and then meandered our way back home.

When I got into the house, I could smell the unmistakable odor of decay. The kitten's body was decomposing somewhere in one of the rooms. I ditched my bags and grabbed the flash light and began searching behind and around things once more. This time I found it in one of the few places I had never entertained as an idea - behind the entertainment center.

It was so exposed and 'open' that it didn't seem like a place she would have chosen. All of the other places were under something with a real 'roof' to it; my bed, both couches, etc. The kitten's head was at an odd angle so I can only guess that when she tried to move it from the basket to somewhere else - she either snapped its neck or perhaps it suffocated. Unfortunate but now, at least, the matter has been resolved.

I'm out on the front couch and watching the tv a little while I write this up. I think I'm going to crash soon.

Night

-T.


Photo link

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Kitten Bulletin

Well, I went to the store last night to get some things and when I got home the kitten had been moved from the basket.

So I crawled under my bed to look for it since that was the place Cinder had taken it the past two times but this time it wasn't there.

I've watched Rusty, who was my spy yesterday - indicating the location of the kitten, and Cinder and neither of them seemed to even acknowledge that there was a kitten.

Cinder's shown no concern for where it might be and she slept on the floor of the office all night. I figured that she would probably return to the kitten at night or hear it mew or something. So far nothing.

I have a feeling that 'Miracle' is either dead or will be shortly and I have no idea where it is.

-T

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Last Night's Cure for Insomnia


Ok, so last night I could not sleep. I was up until midnight just bee-bopping around the net doing this and that when I got bitten by the Bookbinding bug.

Correction, I got chomped on. There was tissue disruption and skin was missing from that little bugger.

I heard a voice in my head ask, "Can you make a soft-covered, double-fold journal that's a size one?" Yes, heard it. Not in the "I hear voices in my head" way but in the more divine sense of an angel or devil (or grigori) whispering to me like a muse.

The process was fairly simple since I already had the two, size 1 blanks ready for me on a shelf from who-knows when. With the last of my scored leather, I started the process as you would normally and scored a fold at the edge of the interior book's cover to create a natural hinge.


Once that was fairly well set, I added the second blank and pressed it under weight for the night. This morning, I added the elastic and pressed it again to fix the shape of the book.

I have no idea if this design is usable since not many of my clients (or fellow addicts) like using a size one (a quarter of the size of a normal sheet of paper) . I will have to try it out once I finish the books that I'm using now.

Sole Survivor


Oh and get this...

I thought that Cinder was acting up this morning before the roofing project started but I couldn't keep my eye on her since I was hauling shingles. Both she and Rusty disappeared once people showed up around the house as usual so I didn't think that much about it.

When I got out of the shower and enjoying the freshness of getting all the sweat and shingle-grit off me, I saw that Cinder was considerably thinner and her rear legs were covered in mud.

I knew it. She had the kids while she was off hiding from the strangers. After crawling through all of the unfinished sections of the basement I found that there were a total of three births but only one survived. Cinder seemed to have no clue what was going on and once they were out of her she left them alone.

The kitten is not mewing now - probably exhausted from screaming its tiny lungs out so that Cinder (or me) would hear it and rescue it from the big brown spiders that patrol the basement. Right now it's curled up on a towel in an old laundry basket in a corner of my office. The sheet is an attempt to convince her that the kitten is 'hidden' from prying eyes.

Rusty, however, had other ideas.

He crawled in to the room like a ninja from the Nikotashi clan (hey, can I help it if I have weird dreams?) . Slowly, he extended his head to peer through the holes in the basket and examine the kitling. Cinder wasn't having none of it. When he got too close, she rared up on her hind legs and went after him with the infamous Northern Mouse Fu (somehow learned from the most honorable master Mouse who lived in Athens Ohio. Rusty was more confused than injured and attempted to evade but only fell over his gut in the process.


His curiosity was stronger than his wit and he tried to peer in once again and this time Cinder decided that she was just going to shove him out of the way with her shoulders.

I have no idea if the kitten will survive or if Cinder will try and play the "Let's Move the Kitten" Game a few more times.

Ugh.

For a Tuesday this has been quite an active day. I'm tired.

-T

It all began with a phone call...


There I was - blissfully asleep at 8 a.m., enjoying the cold, morning air that blew in through the window. I could hear the stirrings of people outside as they started to leave for their day's activities. I knew that many other people were either getting up for work or starting their commute.

But I... I could sleep in. I could stretch and roll-over.

As my dear friend Willy once penned:

Away from the light steals home my heavy son,
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out
And makes himself an artificial night:

And then I got the call. My grandfather had decided, this morning, to put a roof on the front porch of my house. He had me assess the condition of the roof on Monday but since I barely know how to describe what I'm looking at, I could only use a limited vocabulary.

Well, when he called this morning, he was already heading to pick up my father and shingles and was going to be at my place in about an hour. So I roused from my bed and began mustering myself for roofing.

I've never done this kind of work so I basically was just there as grunt labor; and I hate being grunt labor. My grandfather purchased nine packages of shingles to cover the roof. Each package weighs ninety pounds. Yes, 9-0 pounds. Ugh. Hauling them through the house and up to the attic was one hell of a workout.

The front pannel of the roof is done but the sun got too high before the sides were finished. My dad will return on Friday to do the last of it.

I've begun to loathe 8 a.m. phone calls.

-T

Monday, July 9, 2007

Future site of a nice deck

Well, as with many things in my life, one creation leads to another.

Here's a shot of the car port when I stopped painting the other day. The parched dirt 'floor' of the car port isn't a bad thing just doesn't look like much to me.

When I was spending some time out under it while working on painting or running electrical work - I realized that I enjoyed the artificial shade.

One of my friends had mentioned the idea of building a deck as a floor and wrapping the car port in screen to turn the whole thing into a nice back porch. The idea really, really appealed to me. The problem - where to put the car?

I'll either have to build onto the car port to create a section in the driveway or to just buy one of those aluminum sheds that I can anchor down. I'll have to see how much they cost because the idea of the screened porch where I could grill and hang out just sounds too cool.

-T

Mumbo Gumbo

Mumbo Gumbo

After living with and visiting so many friends who are awesome cooks, (Bryian and Barb), I have gotten spoiled with my eating habits. Unfortunately I've not focused any real energy to learn to seriously cook since most of the time I'm either too busy to cook for myself or the meal is for a small group so I'm not just cooking for one.

When I am attempting to feed several people at a sitting or one person for several sittings, I find myself drawn to the stews and other concoctions that we invented while living in Athens.

One time this past winter, I wanted to make some stew to munch on for a while. I had a bunch of canned vegetables in my pantry so I started to brew up something which became known as "Mumbo Gumbo".

It was almost literally, one can of everything in my pantry plus some smoked sausage and a pair of left-over chicken breasts. The process was simple and the results were very yummy.

Ingredients:

1 can of whole kernel corn
1 can of kidney beans, light red
1 can of cooked potatoes
1 can of green beans
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 link of smoked sausage
2 cans of tomato sauce
1 package of chili seasonings (optional)
2 cooked chicken breasts, cubed (optional)

Process:
  1. Fire up your stove and find your biggest stew pot.
  2. Begin opening all of the cans
  3. Fight off the cats who think you're going to give them cat food.
  4. Continue opening all of the cans
  5. Continue fighting off the cats
  6. Empty all of the canned goods into the stew pot and bring to a bubble.
  7. Add in the sausage which you can cut either thick or thin depending on how you want the stew to look. I like the appearance of a stew with nice big chunks so I leave them about half an inch thick.
  8. Stir in whatever spices and additional flavors that you would like and wait for it to come to a bubble a second time and pull it off the heat and allow to cool.
  9. Continue to fight off the cats.
  10. Allow the stew to cool down. The stew is best if the sauce has been allowed to thicken slightly. Like every other stew, it's always better the second day.
Serve with bread, crackers or whatever you happen to have in the pantry.

Grr... now I'm hungry.
-T

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Envelope Book

From Instructables:

The idea is that you can fill it up with all sorts of things you want to keep safe. It has a ribbon marker and would be perfect for organizing monthly receipts, check stubs, coupons, extra money and basically any other flat objects you might want to file in an attractive manner.

When I saw this I immediately thought of a book that someone could use to store leaf specimens and wild flowers or even seeds or seed packets.

The block is simply stab-bound together so it can expand to fit whatever it is that you cram into the various pockets of the envelopes.

A very neat idea that I might have to try sometime.

-Tom

Spring Class Evaluations

Class evaluations are basically how the University grades its part-time faculty. The Dean and the department Chair both see these evaluations before I do. Though student evaluations aren't reason enough to dismiss a faculty member, they do help the administration get a sense of how the students feel about them.

So, when students continually give an instructor praise and such, it helps the administration when they're making choices about what classes to teach and what instructors to use each year.

When I got my reviews back in Winter they were good, but I was reserved in my excitement because I thought that they were just a reaction to a new teaching style and a new face on campus. The students liked me but I didn't look too deeply into it.

However, with this past quarter's reviews - let's just say that I was all happy and fuzzy for about two days after I read my reviews.

When I read one comment from Psychology I actually had to do a double-take. I couldn't believe that someone had wrote this. Under, "What are the main strengths of this Instructor?"
one student wrote:

"Personality - always made the class engaging. Thanks Tom for brightening my bad days! You at least touched one student this quarter. "

Another student wrote, " He keeps everyone on their toes. He also keeps it interesting and doesn't want to see anyone fail like some professors here."

Comments like, "I don't zone out in his class... I really got my money's worth. I would love to have him again." just made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

I am in love with my job.

I don't think I was ever this happy when I was working for CAO. I just never felt appreciated for any level of effort that I was giving them. If I worked 12 hours a day for a week, they would still tend to bitch that someone wasn't putting enough time into their problems.

In academia, I actually have students appreciating the efforts I put forward to help them understand the material better. The decision to get out of Private / N on-Profit and Gov work wasn't easy, but damn is it ever worth it now.

I'm getting in better shape. If you ask anyone of my friends who've seen me lately I'm in a much better mood than I have been in years. Even when things aren't exactly working out financially, like this summer, I'm still in a better 'place' than I was when I was pulling down 30+ K a year and hating my life.

Sometimes the Universe is a nice place to live.

-Tom

Friday, July 6, 2007

Northern Shaolin Paint-Roller Style


After I got the security light re-wired this morning and then installed a new outlet for the car port, I started to paint.

I grabbed a roller pole and got to work. The wood soaked up the paint like a 20 dolla ...

Let us recite the Pimp's Prayer...

Ok, let's not.

Anyway.

The car port has one coat of paint and will take another at least. I may even need to get more paint so that I can finish the project. I'll have to see what happens once I get the second coat on tomorrow or Sunday.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Lunch and a workout

A few minutes past noon...

So I went dow to campus to work out; felt good but also it reminded me of exactly how badly I'm out of shape. I've not been down there in two weeks and it shows. I'm up to 209. Ugh. I saw John down there, a guy who's also getting back into shape from a while out of it, and we caught up a little. The gym was packed with the Golden Bears, the elderly supporters of Shawnee State. Almost every machine had a man or woman over 70 on it and just panting to hold onto every breath. I'm surprised that they University lets them work out unsupervised for fear of one of them dropping dead on a tread mill.

After I cleaned up, I went over to my office to check my voice mail and university mail. I received a thank you from the Trio Center for helping keep a student from dropping out of classes last quarter.

Go Me!

There weren't many people hanging around so I decided to walk over to the University Center to grab something to drink. While walking over I saw Phil, one of my students from my winter psychology class who had to drop out in Spring to go build schools in Panama for the U.S. Army. It turns out that he also got shipped around to build some other stuff in Costa Rica and a few other places since he did such a good job with the first one. He's also being given a promotion to E-7 so he can hold some kind of management slot at Ft. Knox with their Engineers. I know that I'm butchering the actual information but that's the jist. I don't speak Army that well.

I finally started to head back to the house and Jim got a hold of me for lunch. He's going to be a little bit behind schedule so I grabbed my mobile to write up this blog and have something to do while they get here. The Market Street Cafe' is closed today so everyone has hit Toro Loco (a nice Mex restaurant). To say it's packed is a bit of an understatement.

This city needs a few more restaurants downtown; something to help take up the slack.

The campus seemed so empty today. There are only a handfull of students taking classes that it feels like a hollow shell of buildings. Phil, the student I spoke with, said that his Calculus class only has three in it though there were eighteen registered. I hope I don't have the same problem this fall. A three hour class, once a week, at night - I'm not exactly going to be packing them in.

Almost noon-thirty...

Jim called to say that he would be a little late getting down here. He's running home to grab Tuffy, I think

New Structure Discovered

From Yahoo News:

After five years of research, archaeologists have confirmed that a 30-meter-high building is buried in the vast mausoleum of Emperor Qinshihuang near the former capital, Xian, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

Just when ya think that there are no more mysteries to find out there something jumps out at ya. Perhaps there are still some spooky underground tombs to go explore after all. - T

Sunday, July 1, 2007

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Journal

Ok, so I have been reading up on the Jules Verne style of the old Steam-Pulp stories. When I got a copy of the movie I saw that there was something unique in the props for the character of the Professor; his journal.

Immediately I sprang to work on tearing apart how it's made. Like an arrow from a bow, I snagged some screen shots and thanks to some photoshop work I think they're clear enough I can tear apart the design.

The first thing that I saw was that it has a snap closure on a flap that folds over the journal's cover; not an uncommon feature since you want to protect the pages and such.

The left cover, apparently wooden, is longer than the pages by almost six to seven inches. This extra width in the board to cover not only the pages but also the small 'box' that's attached to the rear board.

This 'box' is designed to hold ink wells and dip pens - the most common writing medium of the film's period. I have a better picture of what the box looks like below but for now let's concentrate on how the designer has incorporated it into the cover.

Two hinged flaps extend from the head and the foot of the rear cover that can fold over the box presumably to protect it from wear and tear.
The two flaps, somewhat shown here in a capture that I tried to blow up large enough to see, just fold over the 'box' or 'tray' of writing materials and the actual closure flap would close off the third side with the paper covering the fourth.



The character of the professor is shown opening the head and foot flaps so that he can access the ink wells and dip pens in the open box / tray inside.


The pages of the journal almost look like they're stab-bound. A stab-bound journal would seem to make sense since you're basically writing things in it that will be pulled out and later organized into whatever research you're working on. I would almost say that this design of journal is more like a captain's log.



This is the good shot of what the inside of the journal looks like. The writing tray has the two ink wells and a few dip pens for writing. You can clearly see the tab that extends out of the head of the rear cover as well as the closure flap that would close over the front board.

I like that in this case, they covered the tabs with some marbled paper and the tray is apparently felted.