Springing

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Kate

Spring keeps trying to spring around these parts, only to be temporarily halted now and then by a week or so of cold, gray, drippy weather. On the one hand, I do not really mind, as cold, gray, drippy days tend to remind me pleasantly of Oregon. On the other hand, I am most certainly ready for warmer weather, sandals, skirts (without tights), and genuinely sweaty runs and bike rides. Bring it on, spring!

In that light, I am happy to report the following: the dogwoods are blooming!

Yes, I love a good dogwood tree weighed down by thousands of blossoms. We had one of these in my front yard growing up, and they lined the edges of my college campus. Many pleasant associations, and here they are on my own street right now. Nice going, dogwoods!

I am also happy to report that a genuinely sweaty run was indeed ran on Sunday afternoon. It was my first one in about two weeks due to 1) a nagging hip flexor issue resurfacing and 2) the entire rest of my body deciding to crap out on me during my time off. Seriously: while completely resting, both of my knees, one heel, and my lower back all decided it was time to start complaining about, well, nothing. Thanks a lot, aging body. I blame you. But back to the good news: running! It happened! I am also looking forward to some cross training this week, in the hopes that swimming and biking will keep me sane while not aggravating my hip any more. Cross your fingers, will you? But try not to hurt yourself.

I also felt delightfully springy today in a “new” spring skirt I actually bought on clearance last fall but haven’t gotten to wear yet. I am quite grateful to Past KO’s thrifty clearance-rack discovery, even if the gratification that accompanied wearing it was delayed indeed.

I say all of this with the knowledge that my small number of Yankee readers are still suffering the temperamental pseudo-spring weather that is sunny and clear one day and likely snowy the next. I hope all this spring excitement isn’t too annoying. Just think: in a couple of months I’ll be sweating it out in 100 degree temperatures and 99% humidity, and then the last laugh will be yours. Essentially, I’ve got to enjoy this lovely weather while I can as it is guaranteed to be brief.

Currently I am kicked back with my after-work beer, another one from Magic Hat that apparently derives its pinkish color from beets. It is crisp and delightful. Can’t beat that.

(I know. Sorry.)

Monday, Monday: So Good to Me.

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Kate

Today could have gone quite poorly. Due to snow days and the MLK holiday, today was the first Monday I’ve had to teach so far this semester and therefore also the first Monday I’ve had to teach since summer. I was a Tuesday/Thursday Lady last semester and let’s just say I sure got to like it.

But you can’t win them all, so into work I had to go. I normally get up at 6:00, but today my dog decided it was time to get up at 5:00. “Take me out,” he said. “Feed me,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said.

This continued until about 5:45, at which time my cat started making that human-like garbled howling noise that announces a hairball is on its way from inside of her body to outside of it.”Oh woe oh woe oh woe,” she said.

I got up.

A Monday morning that begins with such loving* attention from two adorable* pets is a thing of beauty*, am I right?

(*Am I using these words correctly?)

Despite its inauspicious beginning, my Monday turned out to be pretty nice. Not spectacular, but nice for a working Monday, you know? Lots of little things seemed to brighten it up. Here’s a list:

1. I wore a pretty new dress for the first time.

2. I actually remembered to fix some coffee in my to-go mug and also successfully put it in the car and then I even brought it into the office, enabling me to drink it. I don’t always get all those steps right.

3. People I have met through blogging can be truly, incredibly nice.

4. Last week I strained my right calf (either Vibrams- or weight-lifting-related injury, not sure) but today it finally feels back to normal. I am planning some running and some yoga and such. Carefully.

5. I made falafel for dinner, complete with my own non-dairy tzatziki. Take that, cow-yogurt-having restaurant falafel!

6. I went to the grocery store to pick up another jar of my latest strange addiction, Bonne Maman brand cherry preserves (heavenly, I mean it), and while there I made an amazing discovery: at the grind-your-own-nut-butter station, there was a peanut grinder that had a few vegan dark chocolate chips mixed in. Not only did this allow me to grind my own chocolate-peanut butter, which is really damned delicious, I also got to think about the term “grind-your-own-nut-butter station” and quietly snicker my way through the store.

Nut butter. Grind your own. Heh.

So how has your Monday been?
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VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE! A Facebook friend’s post alerted me to the fact that today is allegedly “Blue Monday,” otherwise known as the most depressing day of the year. What a day for me to write a post here declaring that I had a great Monday in spite of its awful (cat-puke-filled) start.

Here’s what I think about this: you can have a dreary day that gets off to a bad beginning, full of inconveniences and petty frustrations and disgruntlement. And if things start out that way it’s easy to blame it on a Monday, a bad day, or a “most depressing day of the year” scenario. But then doesn’t that just shut out from your mind all of the small successes and unexpected pleasantries? The things that, added up, could swing your day from bad to good? I don’t mean to be all Pollyanna on you here, but this shit matters.

There’s a reason I didn’t come over here to complain about how much money I spent on groceries, or the fact that I have to go to the dentist tomorrow, or the new zit I found, or the rest of that litany of complaints I could have (quite justifiably) also authored today. I’m not sure what that reason is or what shifted my perspective today or what has been shifting it generally. I like it, though. All for it.

A Great Giveaway – Just in Time for Holiday Shopping!

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Kate

You guys, I am very excited. For the very first time ever I am doing a sponsored giveaway post. This means you (yes, you there, with the face!) have the opportunity to win a gift certificate to do some extremely fabulous online shopping. This is being sponsored by CSN Stores, who sell basically everything under the sun, from briefcases to kitchen supplies to modern furniture. And about a million other things. Go check out what they have.

A little while back, they asked me to review one of their sites, so I ordered a few things from All Modern, one of their stores, with a gift certificate they provided for me.

You all know my deep and abiding love for both whiskey and retro-modern fashionable glassware, I am sure. If you have heard me wax on about the glassware on Mad Men, well, just imagine my delight as I pored over all of their selections.

I bought a set of four of these beautiful etched glasses (the Double Old-Fashioned Glasses by NotNeutral) and I already love how they lend an air of sophistication to anything I am drinking.. Yes, even Four Loko, but let’s talk about that another time.

I saw that they also carry Alessi bar supplies, and I absolutely love their style, so I got this excellent bottle opener and a wine stopper.

Cute, yes?

So what do you think you would buy with a $45 gift certificate good at any of their stores? Because that is what you can win here, friends!

Here are the rules:

To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post. Please enter your actual email address in the form so I can contact you if you win. Your email address remains invisible and I promise I won’t spam you.

One entry per person, please.

CSN can only ship to addresses in the U.S. and Canada, so that means only readers in those countries are eligible to win. I’m sorry overseas friends!

I will close comments on Wednesday at midnight Central time and then select a winner by random number generator.

I’ll contact the winner via email and get you hooked up with your $45 gift certificate.

So go ahead and leave your comment below to be entered in the giveaway. Tell me, would you buy holiday gifts with your windfall, or go for something selfish? I think you know what I’d do. Heh.

Falling is Like This

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Kate

Is it fall already? The time of crisp air and cool nights and leaves turning and things made out of pumpkin and cozy sweaters? Oh, how I long for it, but it’s not here quite yet. In Alabama it’s still well into the mid 90s (35 C) every day. But, but! There is hope. The humidity is dying down and signs of fall’s approach are popping up everywhere.

For one thing, college football has started. You know I don’t really care too much about college football (though I will always root for my Oregon Ducks), but it certainly does make it feel like fall. This past weekend, my friends Brunbec and Deebeecooper and I went down to campus to check out the tailgating scene at our first home game. What did I happen to see but the marching band!

Did y’all know I was in marching band in high school? Baritone saxophone, just like Lisa Simpson and Gerry Mulligan and that guy from Morphine. Coolest instrument of all, of course. We were pretty good — we marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade my sophomore year, in fact. Fall and cold weather and itchy uniforms and frozen grass on the practice field. Oh, I feel such nostalgia when I think of my marching band days.

That night we ladies hung around taking goofy pictures:

In the one of me, do you see that vein in my forehead? I call it my flux capacitor. As you can see, it is fully fluxing at the magic number of 1.21 gigawatts. And the cause of all this hilarity?

Yes, wine.

I did not let a night of over-indulgence stop me from going on an epic bike ride the next day, however. My friend E and I have been talking forever about going for a bike ride together and we finally made it happen. It was my first long ride since the triathlon in June and his first since he had a nasty wreck a couple of years back. I think it’s safe to say we each made our return to the roads in style.

I finally broke in this pair of padded bike shorts I bought a couple of months ago. They do indeed feel like a diaper when you are walking around in them, but when you are sitting on a hard bike saddle for 25+ miles of riding, they feel pretty awesome. Not gonna lie. I mean, they do not look good on me, no, but they work.

Our long Sunday ride was wonderful. The weather was warm but not humid, the roads were lonely and the countryside was beautiful. A couple of dead armadillos and trailer parks couldn’t detract from our enjoyment. I think long weekend rides will be just the perfect thing to do this fall (and a great way to add some low-impact cross-training to my marathon plan).

In other fashion news, I have fully embraced the horizontal stripe.

Clinton and Stacey of What Not to Wear fame — and my own mother — can suck it. Horizontal stripes rule. Just putting on a cozy cardigan in the evening makes me think happily about fall, too. With the drier air these days, the evening temperatures are becoming downright …well…not terribly hot. It’s a start, at least, and I’ll take it.

So this Labor Day weekend felt like a perfectly enticing little preview of what’s to come this season. The town is coming to life; friends and fun abound. And sweaters. One cannot forget the sweaters! Maybe soon I will even indulge in a pumpkin spice latte from the old Starbucks. I hope some good things are coming your way this fall, too.

Back-to-School Scheming

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Kate

Most people look at the beginning of a calendar year as a time to review where they’ve been in the last twelve months and what they want to do in the next twelve. This makes sense, of course. The first day of the first month of a new year seems so ripe for new beginnings.

For me, though, the new year always begins at the end of August. When a new school year begins, so do I. I have been living according to the August-to-August year for as long as I can remember. I started Kindergarten in August, 1983, and since then I have been governed by the school year. Thirteen years of primary education (counting Kindergarten), four years of college, seven years of graduate school, and three years of college teaching — this is year four. That’s a lot of years, now that I list it out like that. Twenty-seven years. Damn.

Well, to steer back in the direction of my point: I don’t begin the year anew in January, but now. Now is the time for me to think about goals, hopes, plans, plots, and schemes.

A building that reminds me of Winthrowup.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about trying to accomplish this school year:

Stay Organized: Between my campus office, my home office, my teaching, and my research, things can get crazy. I always find myself wishing I had brought home a book or folder that I left at school, or frantically looking for my flash drive. I am attempting to solve this problem by syncing my work-related files with dropbox (AMAZING, simply amazing tool), keeping up with my schedule on iCal and my tasks with teuxdeux.com. My home office will be used mostly for research and writing; my campus office will be prep, teaching, and grading central.

Plan Ahead, Grade Ahead: Hopefully staying organized will help here. My goal is really to avoid last-minute class prep and weekends full of grading hundreds of essays. Do a little at a time until it’s done. SO much easier said, though.

Pack Lunch: My office mate and I are going in together on a mini fridge to use in the office, which will make this easy and convenient. Any lunch I pack, no matter how hasty, will be cheaper and better balanced nutritionally than anything I can find on campus. Period.

Maintain Weight: I am really happy with where I am right now weight-wise. My fitness goals are always growing and changing (with my marathon focus right now and maybe more triathlons in the spring), but I don’t need or want to lose any more pounds. My newest Sports & Wine post over at the Bodies site explains my plans for the food aspect of weight maintenance, should you want to read about it in any more detail.

Bike Commute: I am committing to get to campus by bike instead of by car on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Those are my non-teaching days, where I might go in to grade or prep and thus I’ll be dressed in more casual, bike-friendly clothes. I may also try biking in on Tuesdays and Thursdays if I am wearing trousers, but my road bike with horizontal top bar isn’t ideally suited to biking in skirts (which I wear frequently). I have biked to campus once last week and twice so far this week, and it has made a trip in to the office on my “off” day much more enjoyable!

Dress Nicely: I still run into the problem of looking a little too young for my job, so I’m trying to cultivate a more professional appearance on teaching days so I can feel more confident and authoritative. I think it’s also going to help me to project more professionalism around the halls in general. Plus, clothes shopping is so much more fun now that I can wear standard sizes and therefore can shop in any store (uh, any not-too-expensive store, anyway — I still do have that enviable teacher’s salary). I’m currently finding inspiration from a few academic fashion blogs. See here, here, and here.

Job Market: The academic job market runs concurrent with the school year, meaning that postings for tenure-track assistant-professorships will start appearing soon. I don’t want to talk about this too much because it is an AWFUL topic, but here are my thoughts: I am not going to waste a ton of time and energy throwing myself at any halfway appropriate job just because one “should” go for the tenure-track openings. If something truly great appears on the job list, I will attack it with purpose. Expect not many updates on this one, ’cause, like I said, AWFUL topic.

Open Windows: I am going to try to be open minded about relationships and new people. Not just romantic relationships, but new friendships and social opportunities, too. Even though the guy and I split up, I still believe everything I said in this post. Just because that relationship didn’t work out doesn’t mean I have to be like Clooney in Up in the Air, and shit, you know?

What about you guys? Though your lives may not be Ruled by School like mine is, do you have any goals or plans cookin’ right now?