Anyone still out there?

After almost a year of not blogging, I stumbled upon xanga again and figured I'd give it another shot. So, here's what I've been up to for the past year, cleverly organized as an alphabet meme (which was a lot harder than I thought it would be).

A is for Arabic, which I am still studying. I’m getting better at it, but it’s a slow process…

B is for our Border collie, Nana. I’m working on finding a new home for her, because we can’t really bring her to Egypt or Russia or France, and she needs some stability. She’s such a sweetie, though, it makes me sad…

C is for Cozy, our 17 year old cat. She’s still alive and healthy.

D is for (It was a) Dark and Stormy Night, the play R did last fall at her community college. She auditioned and got cast as both a singer and an actor.

E is for Egypt, where I am going this summer to continue studying Arabic. I plan to sort of wing it, and see if I can get around with my mad Arabic skillz.

F is for French, which R studied this year at the community college. She also started a French club there, and of course was president.

G is for Growing up, which R definitely is. It’s really cool to watch at times, but it’s also, well, sad sometimes… like she’s not my baby anymore.

H is for House, my new favorite tv show. I feel so mainstream…

I is for Ifrane, Morocco, where I went to study Arabic last summer… great place! Lots of fun! Morocco rocks!

J is for Johns Hopkins CTY, which is sponsoring the French immersion program R is doing this summer, and is also giving us 100% financial aid.

K is for Kirov, Russia, where R. will be living for the 2009-2010 school year, learning Russian and eating bliny.

L is for Languages, our new hobby. If all goes well, in a year I’ll be passable in Arabic and French, and R will be passable in Russian and French. My Spanish is still in there somewhere – I understand it still, but when I try to say something in Spanish it usually comes out mostly in Arabic.

M is for Missouri, where we live now. We’re in St. Louis!

N is for NSLI-Y, the program that awarded R a full scholarship to go to Russia. If you have older kids, get them to apply next year!

O is for Office – I have one now, and I think it’s very cool. Granted it has no window and I share it with two other grad students, but it’s still a good place to escape from the distractions of home.

P is for Paris, where I’ll be studying during the spring semester. I really must start learning French soon.

Q is for Quiet, as in “peace and…”. It’s in short supply here at the moment, but R’s finals week is next week and then things will settle down a bit, insha’allah.

R is for Ray, as in sting ray, one of the many animals R will now touch with her bare hands. She even touched mealworms once… trust me, this is huge.

S is for Shakespeare, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, which R was in this weekend.

T is for Transportation… public transportation, to be specific. St. Louis has light rail and a decent bus system, and my university gives all students a free pass. I love it!

U is for my awesome University, where everyone is supportive and smart and where they keep giving me money to do cool stuff. I am so lucky to be in this doctoral program!

V is for Vegas, where my brother lives now. He just bought a house there, and I’ll probably go out and visit him this winter.

W is for World Aquarium, where R volunteers now. She mostly leads school group tours and spends much of her time being hugged by small children and trying to keep them semi-corralled

X is for X chromosomes, which are still the only kind in our house. Even all of our pets are female. I did have a nice summer romance in Morocco, though…

Y is for yeast bread, which I have so totally mastered. I make up big four-loaf batches at a time and freeze some until needed, and it’s really good bread! I also give away at least one loaf from each batch. I started doing that last fall, as sort of a giving back to the world thing… so many cultures and religions talk about sharing bread, and it seems to be that maybe there’s something to it.

Z is for Zoo – St. Louis has a great one, and it’s free! Come visit us and we’ll take you there.

No, I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth. I've just been... well, not really busy, and not really depressed (because I have pills for that) but in a different space. More introspective, less bloggy.

Tomorrow I leave for 8 weeks in Morocco, studying Arabic. I'm excited but probably should be more excited, and worried but probably should be more worried. Eh. No, it will be awesome, really. I got a fellowship to cover the costs of the program and airfare, and I should come back knowing a whole lot more Arabic than I do now.

R is going to be here for two weeks (a nice undergrad friend of mine is housesitting, pet-sitting, and sorta-kinda-R-sitting), then in Tucson for two weeks with my dad and his wife, then in California for two weeks with her best friend, then here again... and then when I return home, we will quickly pack everything up (in 5 days) and rent a truck and move to St. Louis, where I got a big, lovely, fully-funded for 5 years grad school offer. R is looking forward to living in a bigger city again. I'm sad about leaving, because I love our little Kansas town here (well, 90K, so not too little) and my friends here. I'll have to come back next fall and defend my thesis, which is about half-written. I finished all my coursework (with straight A's, even) and then ran out of steam.

Right now I'm searching for a place in St. Louis, but it's hard because I don't want to move in until August first-ish, so I may be doing a lot of this from Morocco and moving in sight-unseen.

And that's it! Maybe I'll blog more from Morocco...

Two entries in one...

Entry #1

I suppose that's cheating, but since I left off with my caucus day quandary I thought I should update on that, so the last bit of this entry is something I wrote upon returning home from caucusing. I have given up on apologizing for blogging slackerness, since it seems to be a pattern and not an aberration at this point. I am just waiting for spring, really... then everything will be better. I hope. It's actually snowing outside right now, and I want to crawl back into bed and not get up until the sun is shining and it's warm...

R has been sick all week with the flu. It's going around here, and I don't know why I haven't succumbed. It's not my excellent self-care habits, for sure - I've living on carbs and caffiene and my current exercise regimen consist of walks from my parking spot to class or work. Maybe I'm just lucky. R got sick Sunday night, and on Monday she went to class to turn in her papaer and tell her professor she was sick. On Tuesday night she was still sick -  achey, coughing, sore throat, feverish - so she emailed her professor and missed class again. She did, however, go out Wednesday night to see the Post Secret Guy, although she felt miserable, and because I was working that night I had to drop her off an hour and a half early. She went with a very brave friend, who I hope shares my ability to resist illness. R enjoyed it, but would have enjoyed much it more if she'd felt better. She got home at 9:30 and slept for 13 hours straight...

Today she is in class, because the professor takes 2% off of students' final grades if they miss more than 3 classes, and since she'd already missed two she was worried about missing another one later in the semester. I think that's a stupid attendance policy, actually, because she really is still sick, although she's better. We could have gotten her a doctor's note, but it wouldn't have mattered for this class - absences all count the same, sick or slacking. So I sent my sick baby off to trudge through the snow this morning...

Entry #2 (from 2/6/08)

Wow, Kansas is really for Obama! Our caucus site had the highest percentage for Obama of any caucus site in the state - 82%! (Edited to add that a site that just reported in Kansas City, Kansas beat us- they were over 90% Obama). Picture 2,218 people (plus uncounted children) driving through the sleet and rain, hitting major traffic jams, and then standing in lines for 45 minutes or more, much of it outside, in the sleet and then the snow. We caucused at the fairgrounds, so "inside" was actually a livestock ring, smelling faintly of cow and more strongly of pine-scented cleaner.

We all found our groups, then we were counted (we grouped ourselves in smaller groups of 25, but they didn't even count the Obamites - they had a total, because everyone had to sign in, and then they subtracted out all the non-Obama groups, and everyone left was for Obama). There was a little speechifying, and then a ten minute break during which everyone could change groups, and then we recounted again for the final tally. Our caucus site was worth 11 delegates to the state, which translates into some fraction of the delegates our state sends to the national dems. Hilary got about 18% of the people, or 2 delegates, and Barack got the other 9.

It was really a great feeling to be part of it, though - everyone was friendly, and it sort of felt like a big party. Next time we need food and beer, and nicer weather. Our town has a lot of old hippies and they all live on my side of town, so they were all at my caucus site. There were some kids running around, mostly little ones, and some guy in their twenties who had climbed up and were sitting on the lifestock gates, and quite a few older people who were in chairs... most of us stood, although there were also bleachers - there were just too many of us to fit. Here's an article...

Oh, and the doors opened at 6:30 and you had to be in line by 7:30 to participate, and we were done at 9:00... my friends and I arrived at about 6:45.

Down to the wire...

Quick, who should I vote for? Obama or Clinton? Barack or Hillary? No, not a Republican - I know that much about myself. I swear, I thought this all through very carefully and chose the candidate I thought best reflected my values and priorities... and he came in second once and third the rest of the time and dropped out. Yes, I was an Edwards girl. I wish he'd endorse someone, and give me some guidance.

Hey, wait - WWJD? Yes, What Would Jimmy Do? Who is Jimmy Carter voting for? I trust his judgement a lot...

Of course, I'm riding to the caucus site with someone who has very strong opinions on this... and she's going to have the car keys. Caucuses are kind of public, right? They're not like primaries, where you just go into the little booth and vote in private. She would know... on the other hand, R will be babysitting her kids, so if she leaves me stranded she'll have to drive R home herself.

But seriously - I want affordable health care for all. I want a path for illegal immigrants to get citizenship, and no more walls. I want us out of Iraq, and I want us to drop this stupid ethnocentric idea that American-style democracy is best for every country. I think mandatory preschool is offensive - I think all mandatory school is offensive. I think we need to expand programs to help working Americans and stop subsidizing stupid shit. So, who should I vote for? The caucus starts at 6:00 tomorrow night...

A Glasses PSA

I intended to illustrate this entry with two photographs: one of me wearing my old glasses, and one of me wearing my spiffy new glasses. However, I'm pretty sure that if I wait for photos, the entry will never actually be written, so I'll solider on without them. I don't actually own a digital camera anymore, which makes the photos things harder, although R has a splendid camera so it wouldn't be impossible, because she is a fairly generous person.

So, the old glasses. I think I got them when we were living in Alameda, which would make them at least seven years old. It's possible, though, that I got them when we were living in Tempe, which would make them at least ten years old, if not older. They were big and round and pinkish-plastic, and the lenses were scratched, and the frame had broken once over the left eye and was superglued together, fairly neatly but not perfectly. I could see through them adequately, but my eyes have deteriorated a bit over the past seven or ten or more years so everything was always slightly fuzzed. I've always gone for the cheapest frames, which has meant that my glasses have always been green or pink plastic, but springing for something cute seemed like a needless expense. My old glasses were not very attractive on me, if you haven't guessed that. I think the word hideous applies. I looked sort of like a big-nosed owl, and R was petrified that I would someday wear them in public in front of someone she knew.

I usually wear contact lenses, so as far as I know that never happened. I wear glasses in the morning, before I put my contacts in, and in the evening, after I take them out. I also wear them when my allergies are bothering me, as long as I'm not leaving the house, and sometimes on long, long drives, like our move from California to Kansas, because my eyes dry out. So it wasn't like I needed new glasses, really... which is why I couldn't actually justify spending $100 or so on them. But I wanted new glasses.

Enter Zenni Optical. I found the site surfing some internet coupon forums, and it seemed to good to be true. Glasses for $8? Real, prescription glasses, frame and lenses, for $8? How could that be? But people were posting that it really was true, and I figured that all I had to lose was $8, plus $4.95 shipping... so why not? I ordered glasses with these frames, carefully filling in the numbers from the glasses prescription I got a year ago and never used, paid my $12.95, and waited a week, or maybe two.... and they came! Direct from Hong Kong, in a hard plastic case wrapped in a lens-cleaning cloth, my glasses showed up in my mailbox on Wednesday.

They're perfect! I can see, beautifully. Everything is crisp and clear. They're lightweight and comfortable, and even better, they look good! Really! I even have R's permission to go out in public wearing them, and I would only be a little bit self conscious. I am so happy...

I suppose I am not doing my part for the good ol' US of A, and it's my fault that American workers are losing jobs to those overseas, but you know what? This country was fine with not providing me health care coverage that would allow me to get glasses that I could see with, and this country thinks it's okay to jack up prices so much that the same glasses here would go for ten or twenty times what I paid... so I don't feel all that guilty. If the folks in Hong Kong can make a better mousetrap, well, then that's how capitalism works, right? They should succeed. I am a little more worried that the workers there are not getting paid a living wage, or being treated unfairly, although I hope that's not true. As long as the workers are happy, I'm completely happy.

One note - you do need to know your glasses prescription to order, but I believe your eye doctor has to give it to you, by law, so you can always go back and ask. They don't actually ask to see the prescription, so if it's not current but your eyes haven't changed it will work. You can also get cheap eye exams from eye doctors who have offices next to Costco, in my experience - under $50, and you don't have to be a member.