Something Shiny!

When animals attack

emily — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:44:12 +0000

Recently, a bear attacked a camp site in Yellowstone and killed a camper. While I don’t deny the horror of the situation, I doubt that the attack was premeditated. And yet, the language we use to talk about such events would suggest that we suspect otherwise. From NPR: “the bear entered several tents and attacked the campers for no reason readily apparent to humans.” Really, NPR? Really? Are we really suggesting that humans can deduce the motivations behind a wild animal attack? We haven’t figured out what keeps airplanes up! And here’s the thing that completely baffles me: they’re going to kill the bear. Just like they kill alligators who attack people, or sharks who attack people, or zoo animals that attack people. They’re going to kill the bear for acting as wild animals do. And again, I’m not trying to say that the attack wasn’t terrible. But the death penalty for wild animals? Really? And here’s the other thing that gets me: check out that headline! ‘Grizzly Bear Suspected in Fatal Yellowstone Attack Captured.’ Suspected! What if we don’t have the right one? Then we’ve got a killer grizzly on the loose and we’ve decreased the bear population! Is anyone with me on the sheer ludicrousness of this?

Bittersweet

emily — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:43:44 +0000

Last Friday, Zack and Nikki’s baby was born. Armed with a full shock of black hair, Max was finally ready to make his grand entrance. There’s a new baby in the family, and we can’t wait to meet him at Christmas. For my part, though, the celebration was tempered with sadness. In the same week that Max was born, a dear friend passed away. I worked with Marty in college, at K-State’s main library. In any given room, she was the first to laugh and the first to smile. She always wanted to help people. One finals week, I woke up and couldn’t open my eyes; they were swollen shut. I couldn’t imagine what had happened and I didn’t know what to do. So I called Marty. Now, in all honesty, she didn’t know what to do either! But she gave me all the suggestions she could and she was a tremendous comfort to this freaked out undergrad. So, as we welcome Max into the world, we say a fond farewell to Marty. She was a spectacular woman with a beautiful soul and a tremendous spirit. She will be sorely missed.

The bloody show

emily — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:27:49 +0000

No, still no baby. But I had a meeting with my dissertation committee yesterday afternoon and, I don’t know, the title seemed to fit. (Not that it was bad, you understand– just something that had to be gotten through before my dissertation could be properly… birthed? This metaphor has taken a weird turn.) This was a meeting for which I was eminently prepared and, having turned in the draft near the beginning of June, one which was a long time coming. I won’t say that I was particularly nervous about it, just that I had some trepidation about one committee member in particular who can be a bit of a challenge. In the days leading up to it, I wondered in which hand I should hold the olive branch (and in which hand, the arrows). Ultimately, it went smoothly and it was quite productive. I’ve now got an inordinate number of helpful suggestions that I’ll sift through, using some and discarding others, to make the final product more… final product-y. In the meantime, we continue to await news on Nikki’s baby, who seems to have decided he needs to cook a bit longer before making his grand entrance. (This kid is clearly going to be a handful.)

Babies

emily — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:26:29 +0000

No, not mine. We’re anxiously awaiting news on John’s youngest brother’s wife, whose due date was Friday and who was, as of last night, 75% effaced. (I say that like I know what it means, but I don’t. I’m content to be ignorant, though, which is a rarity for me.) This baby ride has been very different from the other baby rides for which I’ve been An Anxious Observer (TM). Partly because we’re super close to the parents-to-be, and yet, geographically, we find ourselves helplessly far away. Partly because we were the first to know (weeks before the rest of the families, woot!). Partly because, well, they seem so young. They’re not, of course, that young. They’re five years younger than us. But for a person who still feels too young to have kids… well, you can see where this is going. Ahem. Anyway, for now, we wait. On pins and needles and with bated breath, we wait.

Tolerance and intolerance

emily — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:30:45 +0000

Without going into too much detail (read: not any, no, not at all), I think it’s time to admit that I’m lactose intolerant. Naturally, as with anything having to do with me, it’s a fickle problem. Skim milk and yogurt? Yes. Ice cream and anything made with buttermilk, including baked goods? No. Solidly no. Which: how unfair is that? I can’t eat ice cream?!? Who’d I piss off in my previous life? Still there’s hope on the horizon. John, for example, is convinced that a product called Lactaid might help. That said, he’s not sure if a) he made the product up or b) if the product is real but, instead, is intended to help women breastfeed. Ahem.

Swell

emily — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:09:18 +0000

I bought a new bra from Victoria’s Secret the other day. It was, from the catalog description, exactly what I was looking for. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated (if you’ve seen some of the bras they’re offering, you know what I mean). Plus, it was on sale. Bonus! Then I noticed something else in the description: swell, it said. “Swell: lightly lined.” Great, I thought! I don’t want anything padded or pushed or even pumped. It seemed like the right, er, fit for me. And then it arrived. Swell: lightly lined? More like, swell: implants. I looked in the mirror and, what the hell? Suddenly I looked more like Dolly Parton than myself. I sent it back. Swell indeed!

Uncooked chocolate

emily — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:58:54 +0000

Fair warning: this might turn into a rant on Food Culture, The Death Of. At the grocery store last night, I picked up a few bars of Lindt dark chocolate (80%). As the checker rang them up, she looked at them quizzically and said, “what are you going to do with those?” I told her I planned to make brownies with them. The look of confusion on her face was something otherworldly. She seemed to not believe me. I laughed and joked that I should have said I was going to eat all of the chocolate myself. She chuckled nervously and said, “yeah, but isn’t that like eating [wait for it] uncooked chocolate?” Uncooked chocolate. Uncooked chocolate? Give me a minute while I weep for how little upcoming generations know about baking and cooking. What are these people eating? McDonalds? Frozen dinners? I digress. While I puzzled over what she meant by uncooked chocolate, it became clear that she was referring to Baker’s chocolate. I explained that no, dark chocolate isn’t the same as Baker’s chocolate and that it’s perfectly fine to eat. She nodded, but she clearly thought that my brownies were going to taste like ass. She probably also wondered why I wasn’t just going to use a boxed mix. Because isn’t that where brownies come from? Hold me.

ESL

emily — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:04:12 +0000

Talking to John the other day about someone who’s having a hard time finding a decent house to buy, I mentioned that all of the houses they’d looked at so far were real melons. “Melons?” “Yeah, melons. You know– the houses so far have been real duds.” “You mean lemons, then?” “Oh. Yeah.” What can I say? All of the letters were there, I just had them in the wrong order. AM SMART.

At the library

emily — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:48:58 +0000

In the lobby, a tutor is helping a coed learn Trigonometry. I hear snippets of their (one-sided) conversation, but not more than that. “See, if it’s on the inside… then if it’s on the outside…”. His charge is staring off into space. After ten minutes, he has her work a problem by herself. Across the room, a guy with a grating, nasally voice is having a conversation for all the world to hear. He doesn’t seem to realize that there are twenty other people in the lobby, some of whom might not want to hear about what he did all day. “Yeah, and then I took a nap at about 11:30. Then I went to the gym. Then I showered and took another nap.” I silently hope that his sleep schedule isn’t interfering with his studies. Two guys studying next to me audibly hope that he shuts up soon. Meanwhile, the coed has finished her trig problem. It’s unclear if she was successful. Her tutor asks her if she has any questions, and when she doesn’t, he fires off a few of his own. She’s nodding her head, but it’s debatable that she’s taking in anything. Just as I’m contemplating whether or not I should move to a quieter area (though I’d miss the coed-trig tutor saga), Nasal Guy makes another phone call. Time to relocate.

Self portrait by the artist

emily — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:15:06 +0000

I should mention that before I took that personality test, I thought it was basically crap. I figured the results would be well wide of the mark and wouldn’t really reflect who I am. Ahem. ::shuffles feet, looks at shoes:: As it turns out? Those personality tests are, ah, eerily accurate. Apparently I’m the way I am because I’m an ISTJ: Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging. Or, put another way, a Guardian Inspector. I’m dependable and organized. I have a keen sense of duty and tradition. I don’t like rule-breaking. I’m a perfectionist. And when things start to go wrong? I fall into a cycle of doom wherein everything is bad and nothing will ever be good again, no not ever, no not even then. John has forever joked that I’m the human version of Eeyore. Turns out? Yeah (scroll to the bottom). What’s more amusing to me is that I had John take the personality test also. He’s a Rational Inventor, meaning that he’s exactly the opposite of me. I’m supposed to “get comfortable with his ‘need’ to question authority,” while he needs to understand my adherence to rules, procedures, and tradition. We had a good laugh about this, from John’s personality description: “You will cause your partner great discomfort when you flagrantly ‘disobey the rules’ or ‘flaunt authority,’ even though that intent hadn’t even crossed your mind.” And then this, regarding gifts from from him to me: “It needs to be enough to show that they are valued highly but not so much that they feel resources are being wasted.” So, I guess opposites really do attract?