Sadly, no spring bonfires for me this year. I will content myself with the bounciest May Day song, Emerald Rose’s infectiously happy Merry May Folk:
Come up, come in with streamers
Come in with boughs of May
Come green and white and trip the lawn
Till night becomes the day
We sing of life arise
From the Lord who shed and died
Your God’s alive in greenwood
With the Lady by his side
And there is also JoCo’s amusing and indelicate ode to Beltane, “First of May.” (NSFW)
I’m a little disappointed I can’t find a good audio link for the Mediaeval Baebes’ “Summerisle (The Maypole Song)” from the Undrentide album. The original clips from the Wicker Man are kind of muddy-sounding.
In any case. Happy Beltane. I hope yours is a lovely, wild, wonderful day! Mine started out promising — Will made breakfast today. Delicious! One of many, many reasons I keep him.
Yesterday, the sky was very confused about whether it wanted to be sunny and warm or cloudy and cool. Regardless, we took one of his parents’ dogs for a walk in the fields yesterday, but the woods were too flooded by all the rain we’ve gotten lately. Maybe next time.
Yes, nothing for weeks, and then two posts in one night. Pro tip: Sneezing fits do not make for restful sleep.
Thing One: You might’ve heard: Vandals seem to have it in for Jarrida at Khun-Daeng Thai Kitchen. Her sign was destroyed two years ago, and now, within the last three weeks, she’s had her car pelted with rocks and a brick thrown through the restaurant window by the front door. The vandals appear to be teenagers from the Norman Heights neighborhood — so sayeth the jewelry store cameras across the street.
If you like KDTK, now would be a good time to treat yourself to a bit of curry or pad thai. Some friendly faces might cheer her up a bit.
Thing Two: Also, if you’re a fan of Japan-things, here is a thing that might interest you: A Kickstarter project to provide accurate, transparent information on radiation levels to residents in and around the Fukushima reactor area. The government and media have been accused alternately of cover-ups, exaggeration, and obfuscation, much to my brother’s frustration. If this project gets off the ground, he’s going to volunteer to be a rad-spotter. (Is it me, or does that sound totally Fallout? Oh, if only the sensors had a Pip-Boy mod…!)
The green is finally showing … or is trying to, if the sky would just stop drowning it.
I’ve been sick since last Thursday, which made the long weekend mostly just long and boring and full of sleep. Today was my first day back at work to tackle lingering graduation deadlines, though I haven’t yet shaken the nasty cough. So, I was pleased I managed to drag myself out of bed, skip breakfast, and make it to work on time for the shuttle … only to discover our pleasant bus driver waiting for me with his pleasant wave and cheerful call, “The bus is broken!”
Thus I began the half-mile trek from the parking lot to my building (yes, we’ve measured with a pedometer), coughing and dragging my sorry self along like the plague-bearing living dead I so closely resembled. By the way — there are zero zombie-proof buildings along that path, and a whole lot of college kids. For future reference. You know, in case we all wake up one day craving brain munchies.
Where was I? Right. Walking dead-ish. Now, normally I love the type of weather we had this morning — warm, muggy, a fine spring mist in the air. Beautiful driving weather, and perfectly fine for a 10-minute walk. Today, it felt like walking through asthma soup.
Actual conversation, upon arriving at the office:
Me: *coughcoughwheeze* /peel off too-warm jacket and collapse in a chair
Coworker Who Obviously Needs “A Favor”: Shari! I’m so glad you’re feeling better! Oh, did you do something with your hair?
Me: /blank, oxygen-deprived stare
CWONaF: It’s so cute and wavy!
Me: Ah. Yes, I have styled it with humidity and misery!
CWONaF: /confused laugh … slowly back away and decide, quite reasonably, to ask someone else for that “little favor” *
And then, I was informed the recommendation I needed to draft for a meeting on Thursday was now, in fact, due by 5 PM because the meeting had been changed to tomorrow while I was out. Also that I had an afternoon meeting with the dean. And I needed to proofread the doctoral section of the commencement program (three graduations’ worth of PhDs) by the end of the day. And oh, the templates for the annual reports and and my performance review were both due by Friday. And where was I on cataloging all the forms and processing payments and reviewing all the dissertations and theses that had been submitted?
There was more. I’ve just forgotten it all in the sweet, blessed embrace of NyQuil.
You see my point though. The day, to paraphrase internet muse John Allison, started off explodey and got explodier. The situation obviously called for drastic measures.
* Yes, I did end up helping CWONaF. Because I am still the only person in the office who knows how to use Illustrator well enough to more or less recreate a file from a print example. And despite my horrid antisocial leanings, I’m mostly a nice person when I’m not coughing up a lung and contemplating brain nibbles. Mostly.
Lunch break (hahaha) on deadline day. Jimmy John’s sabotaged the sammiches. And then replaced them with sammiches sabotaged in an entirely different way. /sigh
I wanted to post this before I forget again: Wrestler Mick Foley is matching donations made to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) during the month of April. The catch is that those donations need to be made through his page on the RAINN website (http://www.rainn.org/mickfoley) by the end of the month in order to qualify for the matching donation. (If I had a spare $5k, I would totally pay that to have Foley mow MrFenris’s lawn. He used to be such a Mankind fanboy.)
To promote Mick’s effort, fantasy author Jim C. Hines is holding a raffle/drawing on his blog (http://www.jimchines.com/2011/04/endrape-2) If anyone wants to be included in Jim’s raffle, they can just email him to let him know they’ve donated to RAINN, and they’ll be eligible to win a signed novel, a cameo role in a new book, or an as-yet-unannounced prize. (He keeps adding a new prize with every $500 in documented donations, so the more donations he hears about, the more prizes there will be.)
There you go. Support an important organization, double your dollar’s kick, and get entered to earn bookish prizes. These are all good things.
—
Deep breath… And now back to the endless paperwork.
Not dead yet, just not feeling particularly talkative these days. There are the usual things and then there are the fury-inducing news and politics that I can’t seem to get away from lately. I find myself having to be very careful which blogs and articles I read, lest my ire and frustration manifest itself on some unfortunate, (mostly) undeserving student.
And this week is the dissertation deadline for May, so oof. We all know how that goes. Wall of Patience, now would be an excellent time to show yourself.
At least the weather has finally shifted. Spring helps, though I could use some more muggy, hazy days. Last week there were two trips to St. Joe: to see the Russian Icons exhibit at the Krasl Art Center, and to walk along the beach and eat delicious ispanak at Cafe Gulistan. The storm on Sunday helped a bit, too.
Found this video. The music is okay, sort of mellowish alt rock, but oh, the visuals. The steam ship, the clouds, the coat, and most of all, the goggles. I have goggle-envy, I tell you what:
Great glowy goggles! I wants them, oh yes.
Finally, a taste of March. In the 40s at home today, and in the 50s by the time we made it up to St. Joe near dinner time. Sadly the ice sculptures downtown didn’t survive the thaw, but Lake Michigan’s ice crust was still impressive; it seemed to stretch out in rough meringue peaks and drifts all the way to the horizon, save for a few channels that had presumably been opened up by ships using the harbor. I’m sure I’ve seen this before, and yet I still had trouble registering that landscape as real.
The wind was extra blustery so we decided to forgo the traditional walk and trip to Kilwin’s for a cone and headed down Red Arrow for an early Valentine’s Day dinner at Cafe Gulistan instead. I’m still amazed by the deliciosity of the ispanak — by far the most crave-inducing vegetarian dish I’ve ever had. The Gulistan appetizer was so good, too … lamb and eggplant and the most mellow, delightful yogurt sauce. I so wish they’d open a restaurant down here in the SB area.
Last night we had a great time hanging out at my assistant’s housewarming party. (More deliciousness: sumac chicken and tabouleh, mmm.) They are the best sort of geeks, so instead of booze we brought them a copy of our favorite board game for a housewarming present. Also, Ling the doomkitteh completely ignored me, even when we were all sitting around on the floor. It was kind of awesome. I suspect it was the lack of Benadryl in my system — no sweet delicious scent of pink to lure adorable fuzzy death my way. I paid for it later but that’s to be expected. Allergies have no mercy.
The bathroom is finally done. This week we’ll deck it out with hardware — towel racks and shower curtain and such — and put it to use. And now we shall see what new plots the House will devise to rid itself of us.
It waits. It watches. And then, when it thinks to catch us unaware, it pounces like an angry, stealth rhino of doom. If the angry rhino was an ice-filled gutter outside the bedroom window and, in fact, the exact opposite of stealthy.
Okay, granted, we should’ve tackled the great northern ice shelf sooner, given the winter we’ve had. But still. At least the House is lazy, too. The only thing it managed to kill (this time) was the outdoor light that overlooks the flat roof in back. I ought to teach ‘em a lesson … just you wait. I’m so gonna pummel ‘em in their sleep. I’m gonna … meh. On second that, that seems like a lot of work. Maybe I’ll just … yeah, I’ll just take a swing that convenient and inoffensive light fixture, just hanging out, minding its own business, and have a nice lie-down on the first-floor roof. Take THAT, light fixture. Oof. Snow! So comfy… Sloth wins. Again.
The gutter began its slow, agonizing decent with a loud, House-shaking crash around 1:30 AM Monday morning. It continued with a series of additional loud, House-shaking crashes throughout the rest of the night. Will, in his role as a Man of Action, used the window of doom as a doorway out to the flat roof since we’re currently ladder-deficient. He spent a good part of Monday clearing out the snow accumulation and carting icebergs off the roof while we waited for emergency roofers to come assess the damage. (Because we all know how well I cope with the possibility of water getting into the roof these days.) I helped. By that I mean I mostly handed things through the window, got in touch with the roofers, and fretted about him plummeting to his doom from an icy rooftop. Because if there’s one thing the women in my family can do, it’s fret.
The roofers (roofies? hm…on second thought…) were helpful and practical and half-spider monkey, I think, which normally would not endear them to me at all, but in this case it meant they got to climb all over the roof instead of Will. So I’m calling that a win. Also, they had some sealant with them and sealed up some tears in the rubber sheeting around one of the chimneys while they were getting their monkeyshines on. Awesome. I would totally call these guys again. And in fact, I probably will once the world thaws, since we’re now in need of a new gutter and all.
Gutter Assassin Aftermath: Sounds like an anime title, doesn't it?
The ultimate source is probably the tendency in some of us, part of our psychological inheritance from our far-distant ancestors, the tendency to look for extreme solutions, absolute truths, abstract answers. All fanatics and fundamentalists share this tendency, which is so alien and unpleasing to the rest of us. The theory says they must do such-and-such, so they do it, never mind the human consequences, never mind the social cost, never mind the terrible damage to the fabric of everything decent and humane.
I’m afraid these fundamentalists of one sort or another will always be with us. We just have to keep them as far away as possible from the levers of power.
Taken somewhat out of context, but still. A thousand times, yes.
Also excellent: The more on-topic points he makes about coercing portions of the community to bid against each other in unfair ways, about the value of public libraries, about the responsibilities of politicians and the dearth of independently wealthy volunteers with loads of free time. Very much worth a read.
PS: Normal posting, such as it is, will resume soonish, I hope. Last week was rough in all kinds of ways, including aggravating my already wonky right hand/wrist/forearm. Typing is no fun ATM.
Still looking for a name for this blog-thing. EtFI was always meant to be temporary, after all. Perhaps Samhain is not the most cheerful time of year to be re-naming, though, based on the ideas so far. Stabbity-stab-stab seems to be in the lead today.
The Monica posted a good article confronting the fears to which writers often fall victim. If you like to write but have never attempted to get anything published, you owe it to yourself to look in her mirror, if only to prove to yourself that you’re not the only one who thinks like this.
Keeping up with Facebook a little bit more, since I have to monitor a work account there, now. Which is why this blog is not auto-linked to my FB account, thankyouverymuch.
If you have nothing to do on Saturday (9/18), consider going bowling. MichianaFeral.org is hosting a charity bowl at Chippewa Bowl from 7:00 – 9:30. Tickets are $25 and proceeds go toward responsible and humane care for stray and feral cats in St. Joseph county. Register a team of 6 to receive complimentary canvas bags and a chance to win door prizes.
I admit the idea of feral cat colonies in South Bend is intriguing. And would probably be the death of me if I found myself within 25 feet of one. Oh, how they are drawn to the scent of Benadryl…
