Home Remedies

I'm sick again.

Sometime on Monday night I started to feel a bit below the weather and by Tuesday morning I was sporting a massive cold.

So I canceled classes on Tuesday and slept. Then Wednesday I woke up hoping that it was just a twenty-four hour bug.

Nope.

So then I canceled my class on Wednesday and continued the sleeping process.

So this morning I was hoping to grab yet another shower and see if that would help solve the cold. I got down to campus after a quick stop for more tissues and meds. My criminology class is supposed to last for 1.5 hours but I was out of there in 40 minutes. I couldn't keep talking, blow my nose or sniff in any combination to keep the conversation going.

On the way home I grabbed more supplies with grim determination to finally kick this cold and be done with it.

Soup, more meds, tissues, and sanitizer.

After sucking down more tomato soup than a Twilight Fan on a weekend bender, I realized that the one thing I'm really wanting is Egg Drop soup from "Uptown Chinese" in Athens.

I'm not sure if the restaurant is still there or not, but whenever I got sick while I was going for my BA - that soup would fix me in a day.

Unfortunately the only approximation for the soup down here is not exactly the same thing. It's more like egg-glaze because it's been left to sit in a warming tray for days on end.

I'll have to see if I can find a way to make something close to egg-drop down here. It won't be the same but I'll see if I can get some hints from my friend the chef.

Photography after the storm

This past weekend, once the storm had passed, I decided to go on a walk over to the local cemetery and see if I could snap a few photos.

The photo to the left is part of the monument of "The Lady", a well-known statue within Greenlawn Cemetery. I saw the snow on the top of the cross and thought that it was an interesting image. Once I processed the photo and cropped it to size, I decided to do something with it. I still can't decide on whether it should be sepia or black and white.

Once I found that shot, I continued to walk around the place for a bit and found another shot that I think is one of my best. The cemetery is a great place to take pictures.

This photo definitely suggested to be made into a black and white image. The barren tree stands directly center in the image with each branch covered in a sheath of ice. The shadows of the tomb stones and the conifers around it just kind of made it stand out that much more.

Day 2: The Ice Commeth

Well, we're closed for another day down here at Shawnee State, and it's all because of the wonderful freezing rain that's been falling since about 5 p.m. yesterday evening.

When I woke up this morning I immediately grabbed my camera and ventured outside to see what I could capture for my blog.

The power and cable lines are drooping because of the added weight of about a quarter-inch of ice encasing them. I've already heard that several homes out in the county are without power because of trees that have become too heavy with the ice and fallen through the lines. My uncle David, my mother's brother, has already lost power this morning because he lives -way- out in the county with lots of ice-coated trees between him and any main road.

I tried to focus in on a seed pod on a bush in the back yard to show just how thickly encased things were in the grip of the freezing rain. I think the plant is milk-weed but I couldn't swear to it. It looked so interesting with ice caught within the remains of the pod as well as coating all of the branches and vines that I had to try and snap a picture of it.

What really surprised me was some old scrub plants on the hill behind the house. Each branch and twig is coated with the ice and together they create quite a cool effect.Sometimes it's hard to see where the branch ends and the ice ends - as though the whole structure were somehow converted to a crystalline-based plant.

Wintery Blankets

Normally when it snows, I grab a picture of Tseo the Raccoon to show how bad the weather has gotten. Today when I went out into the backyard I realized that there was actually some measurable accumulation.

This morning he sort of looked like a raccoon ninja - hidden by the wintry blanket.

Shawnee has already closed classes for the day - originally only canceling classes until noon but then expanding it. So, it's a Tuesday and I have little to do.

Blood Stains in Carpeting

Sometimes I get some very weird phone calls; usually the more weird come from my friends. Tonight was no exception when a buddy of mine called up with a tone to his voice suggesting that he was somewhat upset.

"How do you get blood stains out of carpeting so that there's no trace?" was the question asked of me.

Before I could even ask, "Now why would I know something like that?" I ended up splurting out an answer.

"Soak a rag in peroxide and then dab / rub the blood and it should come up. If there's a bad place or it's turned brown already, coat it with a mixture of salt and water."

I have no idea where I'd heard that before but I knew that it would work.

Sure enough, my friend tried it while on the phone with me and the peroxide did the trick.

It turns out that his girlfriend had gotten bit by their dog and she bled... a lot.

So... in the spirit of "Friends help you move, Real Friends help you move Bodies"... I add this.

"Friends tell you things. Real friends tell you how to clean up blood stains without asking why."

Bones in Portsmouth?

From WSAZ:

PORTSMOUTH, OH (WSAZ) -- Police have found three bones in the backyard of a house in Portsmouth, but they are not those of a human, like they orginially thought.

This after Portsmouth Police and the Portsmouth Daily Times got identical letters that were very specific about the location of the bones. The anonymous lletter referred to a body being buried in late 1964.

Investigators found the bones Friday night at a house in the 2200 block of Vinton Avenue in Portsmouth.

After the discovery Portsmouth Police called forensic investigators from Cincinnati to take a closer look.

Investigators say at this point the case is closed, unless they get more information from the person who wrote those letters.

"The information contained in the letter indicated the person knew exactly what they were talking about," Portsmouth Police Detective James Charles said.

BSG the musical

After watching about ten hours of BSG this past Friday to catch up with the series, I listened to one of the characters singing a lament.

The character was one of the side-line characters who had been there since the series started. Lt. Gaeta was sort of the guy that everyone over-looked until he wasn't there; a backbone of the CIC who would leave a big gap in their operations if he was gone.

Through the course of the series, Gaeta ends up getting shot in the leg and they have to amputate it below the knee. While recouperating in sick bay, he is half-drugged on pain killers but can occasionally feel the twitches of his missing limb. The doctor told him to sing whenever he felt it to help get his mind off the sensation. It's an interesting idea considering that they can't just keep pumping him full of morph - they're not making it anymore.

It reminded me of the scene in Return of the King where one of the Hobbits sung some depressing dirge while a force of men charged in on a suicide run to retake the ruins of Osgiliath.

Well, I had wondered if they had borrowed the song from another source (like they did with the song that gathered four of the last five cylons together) or if it was original. So I started digging and finally found the words to the song and that it was originally composed.

To give you some idea of how the song was used in the show I've put a link to the Youtube video here.

An Original

With the end of BSG coming soon, I returned to the beginning. Thanks to youtube, I was able to find the introduction to the original series.

"Life here...began out there"

Powerful. Simple. Thought-provoking.

See ya.

Click here

Classes

Well, it's that time again.

Classes are starting.

Today I'm in my office and it's a few minutes before my first course of the term; Sociology 1101.

There's not much to do in an intro course on the first day but I like to basically discuss how I run my class. It's easier to lay out the ground rules for how things work right off from the start so that if the students don't like it they can find another class.

In three years of teaching, I haven't had a student complain or argue any point for the first lecture but I've had several plead that they "forgot" when it comes time to make up a test or the like.

Oh well, after my one and only class today I'm hitting the gym to get back into some sense of a workout schedule.

It's too easy to be lazy when it's cold.

Ugh.

See ya later.

-Tom

Tseo says...

Tseo says:

"This time, I think she's serious."

It is only fitting that the first day of finals, the finals that I am giving, would be met with two inches of snow.

I have already received, before ten o'clock this morning, three emails from students stating that they can not make it in for the final tonight. Yes, tonight. The final is not scheduled until six o'clock this evening.

I'm sure that several students are simply treating this final exam much like they did High School. Generally speaking there are only a few times in the year where the University is serious about sticking to a deadline; finals week is one of them. Students, however, feel that if there is a reason, any reason, that they should not attend class - they won't.

Snowflake in the air? Cancel.
Relatives coming (the next day) for a Holiday meal? Cancel
Rain might (might) make the roads slick for driving? Cancel

The students are ready for this term to be done. Perhaps that's just how fall terms go. Since so many students are still trying to fight the reality that this is no longer their high school, they will take any chance for the proverbial "Five more Minutes."

So, since the snow fell in earnest last night, I took this time to shovel my sidewalk and throw down some rock salt which I kept by the front door. You would think that an old, oatmeal tube full of rock salt would have been the least interesting thing in my house. But simply by placing it near my front door there was some level of curiosity aroused.

"Why do you have salt next to your front door?" A friend asked this past fall.

"Because that's where it's needed." I responded.

No need for magical intervention or supernatural explanations for this one. Keep salt by your front door (especially in a house like mine that doesn't see a lot of front-door traffic) so that when it snows or is icy you don't have to hunt down the bag from last year. I know that there's a bag of salt =somewhere= in my basement and I'll eventually dig it out, but it's quite handy to have just enough to hit the sidewalk whenever needed.

It may be magical in some circles, but it's practical in mine.

-T

So about that Ritalin

Last night, around midnight, I was surprised by a big flash of lightning. The rain began to pour and assumed that we would have to miss out on the snow that everyone else was getting. Then, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized that the rain sounded different; almost metallic.

I poked my head out of the front door and realized that it was the ting-ting of freezing rain that I was hearing. So I crawled into bed with the idea that we would probably have some icy patches but that was about it.

And then, when I woke up, my roommate said four words:

"You got your wish."

I ran to the front of the house and tore open the door like a 'Night Before Christmas'. The street was coated with snow; choked with the White-Death. I realized, while I was in bed waking up this morning, that the lack of sound that seemed a bit eerie; no cars, no rain, nothing.

So after I got myself together, I threw on a coat and grabbed my shovel and did that very domestic chore of clearing the driveway. Within a stroke or two of the blade, I realized that I was standing on about an inch of compacted slush as well as a few inches of snow. Oh, this was going to be a Good Snow. By the time I got out to the front steps, I ended up having to scrap the ice away rather than shovel it.

I'm sure my neighbors were pleased hearing the sound of plastic against concrete at 10 a.m. on a snowy Saturday.

Who knows how long it will last.

-Tom

Mother Nature Needs Ritalin...

Ok, maybe not but she definitely needs to make up her mind.

Today the temperature had climbed into the 60's and I had to get out into it for a while. So I grabbed my camera and went out to the lake.

The lake was pregnant with all of the run off from the past week's snow and rain and I tried to get some video clips of it from a different point of view.

The vid above is from the main stream and small pool and the other is of a small creek that leads off into the hills.

Leap Day

Well, it's Leap Day.

One of those strange abnormalities of a Roman calendar that decides to have fun with us every four years. It is the end of an equation attempting to balance itself.

I've always wondered how you would measure age if someone was born on this day. Do you cheat and count the day before or afterwards? What kind of karmic whiplash may come at you for being born on a day stolen from the process of time?

It's early and I haven't had coffee yet. I have strange thoughts.

I wonder what I'll get into on this 'stolen day'.

-Me

A cold by any other name...

... means that I'm passed out on NyQuil for a day.

For those who have been trying to get a hold of me, I apologize but I've been sick. Since Friday afternoon, I've had the sinus cold that has been going around with my Students. The combination of sniffles, cough and dizziness usually means that I just have to sleep it off.

Thankfully, today I feel better and I'm on my way out of the snot-induced haze.

See ya.

-T

Ten Degrees of Separation

What Five Degrees you might ask?

The Ten degrees I woke up to this morning. BRR.

You've all had that moment; you wake up in bed just enough to realize that you are in bed and not exploring some ancient tomb to discover a lost manuscript. The bed is warm and toasty with your body heat (and the added presence of one or more cats who, because of their own gravitational pull, have caused all heat to be drawn to them - and if you're lucky you get some of the ambient glow), but you can feel that the air in the room as a chill to it. The bubble of warmth protects you like the shell of an egg and for FIVE whole minutes, you do not have to get up.

Your mind squirms with the age-old question, do you lay there and enjoy five minutes of blissful relaxation, attempt to fall back to sleep so that you can get your hands on that manuscript (Laura Croft keeps stealing it from me), or bite the bullet and crawl forth from your thermeonic embreo and start the day.

This morning I had little choice in the matter. As soon as I began to wake, both cats stirred and began to walk towards me on the bed like a pair of alien face-huggers.

I tried to resist and then one crawled atop of my bladder, knowing that the pressure would force me to rip myself free from the blanket-shelled coccoon.

They were hungry - again.

I stumbled through the house and banged my toe on the edge of the coffee table (I swear that they must move things like that so I'll trip over it. Imagine the math involved in calculating the probability of my path while half-awake. Hrm. Cat-scientists.). After putting food into their already half-full bowl, I stumbled back to crawl into the shower.

Ahh, there's nothing more satisfying than walking into a small room that has a heater. Though the house may be chilled in the morning, I know that the bathroom is always warm. Mmm. Small luxuries.

Off to class.

-Tom

Snow, not so much

Most of yesterday and last night all of the news channels were broadcasting that we were under a Winter Storm Warning with snow on its way; like it was a plague or an invading army.

The snow was supposed to arrive early in the morning and really be in full swing by the 7-8 o'clock rush. However, the snow that we -actually- got was rather... limited.

We did not have 1-2 inches of snow on the ground. We did not awake to the sound of 'crunch' 'crunch' on the roads. Nope, the first thing I heard when my eyes flitted open was the sound of a car ripping down our road. Definitely not something that you'd hear if there was real snow on the ground.

So the cats decided to crash out in front of the windows and watch the flakes fall where they may.

So disappointing.

-Me

It's official...

...Winter is not dead.



I woke up this morning knowing that there would be some degree of snow on the ground. I watched the weather.com reports and as the hours ticked by last night, more and more emails begain popping up in my University box from students who were already going to miss class today.

As the emails were coming in, there was barely a dusting on the roads, but it was slick in some places (in the city). I assume that it must have been near apocalyptic conditions in the country since almost every student had the same message:

"Roads snowed in. Can't get out."

So, this morning when I got out of the shower, I fired up the laptop to see what was happening in the world. I normally just hit weather.com to see if there's anything remarkable about the weather but for some reason, I decided to pop by the University's page to see how many more emails I received in the wee hours of the morning. That's when I saw it:

"Morning classes are cancelled."

So, I decided to go out in my sweats and shovel the drive since I knew that the combination of snow, slush and ice would spell certain doom for me either while leaving or later when coming back. This wonderful weather combination usually means that my driveway will become a solid sheet of ice. The water drains off the hill and right onto my drive. The wind is often buffeted by the two houses and the space between becomes a wind-tunnel and will aid in the freezing process. So rather than swerving into a gas meter, I decided that it was best go get steamy.

And steamy I got. About every third shovel, my cellphone would ring with someone telling me about the weather or that the classes were closed.

I'm so loved.

I, then, felt it my moral obligation to call up a friend in Huntington and inform him of the maddness. He had already heard of the weather and that Marshall was on a 2 hour delay and was laying in bed and being lazy; not that he doesn't - on occasion - deserve it.

My roommate, Josh, was still asleep when I walked out to start shoveling, but as his bedroom is in the back, there's no way to sleep through the constant 'scrape-toss' sounds of a plastic shovel on a drive.

I'm sitting in my office now and watching the slush to continue to congeal. The Univ. trucks are attempting to push the snow out of the way and it seems like all they're doing is stirring a parking-lot load of icy-slushy goodness.

it's days like this that I wish we had a BIG (I'm talking bubba big; so big that even bubba is saying 'Da-yum') mess of snow so I could make snow-cream.

Snow-cream is sort of an ice cream made with snow, sugar and vanilla that my mom used to make when I was growing up. It's basically just vanilla-flavored water with sugar mixed in, but I remember that was the BEST thing to slurp down as your nose tried to stop running after a morning of wintery warfare.

Ok, back to work. I have class in a half-hour or more.

I doubt that I'll have more than 20 students.

-Tom

kitchen blogging

Since my roommate moved in, I have had the opportunity to cook a lot more than before. When I was the only one in the house, I didn't really care how I cooked and generally ate very poorly. It's really difficult for me to cook healthy in small portions. So tonight I had the chance to throw somethings in the wok.

As my friend Barb is off handling a family medical matter, I thought it fitting that I would try and post tonight's creation.

Fresh Veggies & Beef

Ingredients:
1 Green Pepper
1 Red Pepper
1/2 Cucumber
1 yellow onion
1/2 pound of stew beef.

I chopped all the veggies fairly large so that they don't get lost in the mix but chopped the meat smaller so it would cook up faster. The whole thing had some chopped fresh ginger added and a bit of lemon juice.

Oh, and this medley is served with brown rice.

Normally there would be a long post on the procedure involved in making such a meal but as this is only as Chinese as the Wok that it's cooked in, I'll assume that everyone reading can toss some veggies in a pan and make it work.

I'm just really enjoying the idea that I'm blogging from my kitchen.

Light 'n Fluffy

The forecast for today's weather was that we would have "light and fluffly" snow with little to no accumulation. This has not, however, stopped 23 of my students to email me to say that they will not be in class this morning.

The picture you see here is what I saw as I walked onto campus this morning around 9 a.m. The ground isn't really covered and there's only a bare dusting of anything out there. However, it must be enough to drive people back into their homes and huddle for their own health because other professors have already gotten the same notification.

Snow (flurries to blizzard) + 10 o'clock class = no students.

It's supposed to warm up today and all melt off by this evening, with a high of 33, but it's then going to drop into the 9-11 degree range some time tonight. Brr.

Even now, I can see the big ball of pain in the sky trying to burn its way through the snow clouds and it's only barely slowing their assault. The hills of Kentucky are all but obscured by the flurry of 'light 'n fluffiness'.

PROJECT UPDATE:

I have the second episode of "Prometheus" on my laptop. I need to get some more footage (that I am downloading) and then I'll be able to post it. Go me.

-T

Winter Break

With the return to campus for the start of Spring Term, I figured that I would recap what I've gained over the break.

1. A Laptop
2. A Roommate
3. 10 Pounds (ugh, damn cookies!!!)
4. Stress Fracture of the right foot and 3 sprained toes
5. A realization that I might have some philosophical similarities with Buddhism. (Does the Book have a Buddha Nature?)
6. An honest drive to post to my blog more often
7. Four more Correspondo-philes (pen palls sounds like something you'd have with guys in prison or people in another country - like Conneticut)
8. One less best friend (Nevermind? Nevermind?!? Blah.)
9. A growing interest in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (Say it with me now: E-pis-to-lary)
10. Less of a twitch about saying the word "Vista".
11. A bigger grocery bill
12. A project to make a video storyboard for a space-colony movie. (I'll post it to 101 Tales if I can get the first part done)
13. A lot of facts and figures about Criminology crawling through my head.
14. More confused and somewhat jaded about the U.S. Criminal Justice System
15. Sore muscles from not working out in three weeks.

I could keep going but I need to post some things to Blackboard for tomorrow's classes.

The flurries have all but completely obscured the view from my office window of the hills of Kentucky. I believe that we're supposed to have 30% chance of real snow between today and tomorrow.

AtQ

-T