I think I'll start counting the days

I need to get out of academic administration because this world of rules not mattering and deadlines being irrelevant is killing me. College students get to do whatever they want, or not do whatever they want, and the administration acts like whatever they did or didn't do isn't their fault, just like their enabling parents taught them. It's ironic that I'm quitting my job to go to law school.

A sure sign that things are not going well

I was nominated for an award at work, and my initial reaction was that someone is patronizing me.

A Piece of Prose

"Why the Last Two Days Have Sucked"

I didn't feel like being nice to anyone yesterday. So they weren't nice back.

I packed a bag to go straight to the gym after work. Right before I left work to go to the gym, I realized that I didn't have my gym ID card. They said I could pay the $6 day pass fee when I called on the phone. I walked home to get the card.

I walked to the gym, and every single cardio machine was occupied and reserved for the next two hours. I walked back home and ran outside.

I needed to go sign my lease today, so I took the bus on my lunch hour. On a normal day, the bus in a college town is filled with greasy undergraduates who stink like last night's booze and cigarettes. On a rainy day, the bus in a college town is filled with greasy undergraduates who don't have umbrellas and so they smell like packs of wild dogs that rolled around in mud and then stood outside in the rain and then rolled around in feet.

The Huz also needed to sign the lease, so we met and had lunch. We tried a restaurant that we'd never been to before, and it was awful. I love ethnic food, and I've had and loved Moroccan food before. But this was not good food. Soup at a restaurant should not come from a can. Maybe that's just my belief, but it's a strong belief. And tahini? At a Moroccan restaurant? It should also not come from a can.

And then I rode the bus back to work. Remember the wild dog smell? It was still there in abundance, and this time they could not comprehend why they should move to the back of the bus. It's been a frustrating couple of days. I'm not really one for a hot and sunny day, but here in the depths of a dreary season, I could use the recommended 20 minutes of sunshine.

Mmmmmmm......butter......

For a coworker's birthday I made croissants. Real ones. I started the dough on Tuesday night, I did four turns yesterday, and I did one turn, proofing, and baking this morning before work. My arms are sore, the palms of my hands are tender, and I never want to see a rolling pin again.

Conclusion #1: I am an awesome coworker.

Conclusion #2: I will probably see a rolling pin again, and I'll probably even use one, since the croissants were so delicious and flaky and layered and spongy that I will inevitably decide that I must make them again. Hopefully I can talk my mom out of her marble rolling pin before that happens.

Time for a list of unrelated items

1. I always think recipes call for too much onion. I always use less than I'm supposed to, and I usually think it's still too much.

2. My lovely in-laws gave me a Kitchenaid stand mixer for Christmas. She is cobalt blue, and she looks like this:


She and I have made four loaves of bread and one two-layer cake. We're still getting to know each other, and I'm taking it slow. But I have to add that bread loaves three and four (half white/half wheat with whole flax seeds) were so delicious that I marvelled at their deliciousness with every bite. It makes the best toast I've ever had, swear to god.

3. I am trying to resist eating the average-tasting chocolate chip cookies glaring at me from the counter next to me. I am the unfortunate owner of a receptionist desk out in the middle of an office, and people always dump food around me since everyone in the office passes by. Not only do I have no privacy, I have to suffer everyone else's "generosity." Why on earth do people still make no-bake cookies? Disgusting.

4. I brought half of a green pepper and a Diet Coke Plus for my afternoon snack. When I picked up the fridge pack of the Diet Coke Plus in the grocery store, The Huz gently questioned my choice by asking, "Why don't you just take a fucking multivitamin?" I gently responded, "I'll do that too."

Okay, maybe he didn't use the word fucking at all, but that's how the memory sounds in my head.

5. Why don't hashbrowns in the skillet ever turn out as brown and crispy as they're supposed to?

6. Do you watch tennis? Can you BELIEVE that hunchy Sharapova beating Henin like that? The nerve.

7. Springform pans do not work as well as I imagined they would.

8. I got my hair cut, but I'm having a hard time committing to the extra primping time shorter hair requires.

And sometimes at other times of the day too

If I am nice in the morning, I am probably faking it.

2008

I will:

have my fourth wedding anniversary
have my 25th birthday
start law school
travel to Germany (hopefully)
travel to California (definitely)
travel to Colorado (definitely; I love weddings!)
read more (a ton more; see #3)
sleep less (a ton less; see #3 again)
probably cry a lot
try to surf (but I can't promise I'll put my whole heart into it; you know, cause of the sharks)
maybe learn to swim a little better before I try to surf
spend a couple of weeks with my 95-year-old grandpa
quit the longest full-time job I've ever held
quit trying to grow my hair out because I just don't like it
continue to make lists because I do like it

Friday afternoon blues

I am DYING to leave work early so I can go home and read Harry Potter. How old am I, 12? I wish I could bring the book to work, but reading a book is not like screwing around on the internet. Both are getting paid to screw around, but one is much more likely to get caught.

Another motivation to move out of this country, other than cheese

I work in an academic advising office at a university, and so all day long I interact with college students. One of the most frustrating parts of my job is dealing with students who are turning to my school as a last option. I have no idea how or why this is the case, but my school has the second-lowest GPA requirements for admission and graduation of any school on campus. Students who have screwed up in other schools come crawling over here because they can't get in anywhere else. Awesome, huh? That's not to say that there aren't students in my school that are passionate about the curriculum and goals of the school, but I'd say there are easily as many screwups as high achievers.

Yesterday, a student from another school came into my office to inquire about our majors, and with a little questioning, I was able to get out of him that he didn't want to continue with his current major because of the foreign language requirement. He didn't see any reason why he should be forced to learn another language. He said, "I already live in the best county in the world, so why would I want to learn anything else?"

I almost launched into a list of a hundred reasons why he would want to learn something else, but I held my tongue out of respect for his ignorance. He clearly valued it enough to share it around, and I didn't want to burst his safe little 'merica bubble. The truth is that I cannot WAIT to live abroad. We have plans, and plans involve finishing degrees and getting the hell out of here. People like that guy make me even more anxious to leave, but I suppose it's reassuring that I won't have to deal with people like him after I'm gone.

While I'm thinking about ridiculous things, here's something that struck me as so odd that I just had to take some pictures.







I hate it, but I also secretly love it. Maybe I just hate that I secretly love it.

And then time stopped

I'm not good at this whole morning thing. Regardless of how early I get up, I always spend a little too much time eating breakfast or watching the news or getting ready. I'm typically 5-15 minutes late each day, but I think my 7-minute walking commute is also partly to blame. I don't factor in travel time because there is so little of it needed, and 7 minutes is about how late I am every day.

Anyhow, this morning I fixed some peanut butter on toast and plopped on the couch to watch a little news. Then I wondered if tivo had saved anything for me last night. Sure enough, a new Grey's Anatomy was waiting, and so I started to watch it. I knew I wouldn't be able to watch the whole thing before work, but I'd rather watch a show I like than suffer through Meredith Viera just to see what today's weather will be like.

So I'm watching the show, keeping an eye on the clock, and eating breakfast. Sean wakes up and sits down next to me. I keep watching the show. It's the season finale, so of course I'm paying attention, and it ocurrs to me that I've been watching the show for a long time. The clock says 7:33, but I started watching it at 7:00, and I'm starting to feel like I've watched more that 30 minutes of the show. I get the tv menu screen up, and sure enough, it's 8:10.

"Well shit. Now I'll really be late," I say.

"What time did you think it was?"

"Well the clock says 7:33, so I thought it was 7:33."

I grumble as I head to the shower. I thought it had been 7:33 for a little too long.

helicopter parents

I'm feeling frustrated by the seemingly ever-declining quality of this country's higher education system. In my day-to-day interactions with college students, I'd say that maybe one student out of twenty is bright enough to calculate four times eight in under two minutes. Okay, that's not fair. They could probably do it in one minute. If they had a piece of paper and a calculator.

These kids are dull and slow, in both their thoughts and movements. They seem to have such trouble managing their personal and academic lives, and in the inevitable event that they screw up, their parents hop right on the phone to go to battle for the rectification of their children's preventable mistakes. Failed a test? Missed the deadline to withdraw from a course you're failing? Screwed up your schedule by not visiting an advisor? It's okay! Just have your mommy call and bitch until someone gives in!

Last week a father told me on the phone that if we didn't let his son drop a class (it was April 26, and the deadline to drop a class was March 7), that we would be responsible for ruining his son's and his family's lives. Yes, he missed a well-advertised deadline, but it's not his fault, you see. No one e-mailed him to tell him the deadline. No one held his hand when he crossed the street. No one told him a bedtime story or warmed up his bottle.

I've been feeling for a long time that the quality of an undergraduate education is declining, and I think that's in large part due to the fact that college is just what everyone does after high school now. If you don't go straight to college after high school, there's a murmur that something is wrong with you. Too many 18-year-olds don't want to go to school; they just want to get away from their parents and party. The institution that was created to increase the intellect of society seems to be losing grip on demonstrating to students what all this "higher education" business is about. I think a bachelor's degree is worth far less today than it was worth, say, 30 years ago, because college isn't the rigorous experience it should be, and it seems like just about anyone can get a degree nowadays.

Maybe I just spend too much time with an infuriating age group.

and they didn't tip either

One day each weekend I work at a local winery. I started there when I first moved here and was still looking for work, and after I found a full-time job I stayed on for the fun of learning about and being around wine. I really do like learning and talking about wine, and an amazing variety of people come through the door: there's the typical Midwestern (as long as it's sweet enough to rot my teeth in under 5 minutes, I'll like it); there's the typical Californian (they don't grow these grapes in California, so this can't be good); there's the typical wine-tasting novice (I can't describe why, but I like this); and then there's a rare breed that I've never had the pleasure of witnessing until Saturday (I was taught how to taste wine by a person that didn't really know much about wine).

This man tasted 5 or 6 wines, and each sample provided him with the opportunity to swish and sniff and gargle with such flamboyance that even I was embarrassed. Judging by her reaction, I can only assume that his girlfriend knew no different; she watched him do it and was unfazed. I'd pour him a taste, and he'd take 3 huge sniffs in the glass and a couple huge sniffs out of the glass, in the glass, out of the glass, swirl, in the glass, out of the glass. Then he'd dump the whole pour into his mouth and swish and gargle. A little smack of the lips and he'd suck several big gulps of air through his mouth and smack smack smack his lips again. Now, to be fair, several of the dramatic things he did actually do have merit when it comes to tasting wine, but it was the drama that made his behavior so outrageous. Of course you want to swirl the wine to coat the inside of the glass so when you stick your nose in it the aroma of the wine is encompassing, but trying to vacuum the wine into your nose is unnecessary. Of course you want to move the wine around in your mouth to let it touch the different taste buds, but the hard mouthwash gargle is excessive.

I could've excused the outlandish behavior because the man might have really perfected his own experience with wine. He might have tried all methods of tasting wine and found that his own noisy, obtuse method provided him with the most complete sensory experience possible for him. But then, after one round of inhale, exhale, gulp, swish, suck, he looked at me with stars in his eyes and said, "Wow, the oak on that one is almost cedary!" The wine he'd just tasted was a very fruity stainless steel-fermented semi-dry white. He wanted to talk about what the pH level of one wine was. He needed to know what the filter type used on another wine was. And he yammered on about how we do "such a good job making the wines so well balanced."

We can't expect every patron to buy wine. But when two people try several wines each, usurp 2 employees' time, spend 30 minutes praising the "amazing quality" of the product, and buy only a bottle of water, it's about enough to drive a girl to drink. Wine.

a visit from Mickey

Despite what I believed for 23 years, it turns out that growing up in the country did impact me positively: when reports of a mouse scurrying around the office caused screeching and the tucking in of pants into socks, I could still focus.