Even in Kyoto

It turns out the ridiculous cooking mistakes didn't end with the rice mix-up. Yesterday I decided to make speculoos. The recipe I used had suggestions for either rolling and cutting out shapes, or baking the cookies in one big sheet. I opted for the one big sheet option, but then after rolling out the dough I put everything on the smaller of my two cookie sheets and discovered that everything just barely fit. So I crossed my fingers and stuck the sheet in the oven.

So then, yes, I did get to spend a bunch of time scraping burnt cookie dough off the bottom of the oven and airing out the kitchen, thanks for asking.

Also, apparently speculoos are close enough to gingerbread that I almost had to get a ruler out to smack S's knuckles to keep him out of the cookies (instead I just bagged them up and brought them into the office).

Time to update the recipe with some notes.

I partly blame yesterday's stormy weather. I wound up with one of those nasty, lingering sinus headaches, so the whole day was fuzzy, and the headache didn't entirely clear until I finally got up at 1 am to eat an ibuprofen.

If I'd been trying to do labwork instead of cooking, I would have sent myself home. Trying to do labwork in that physiological state is counterproductive at best.

It also probably didn't help that I worked on filing my taxes yesterday, too.

I was left with that feeling like I didn't get anything real done, and yet, there the day went.

Every year I get mad about how the tax filing software companies so successfully lobbied the federal government that even extremely simple tax filing is ridiculously difficult to do. The methods they use to sucker people into using their software are so insidious, too - if you make under a certain amount you can use their stuff for free so you get on their marketing lists. No thank you. For federal taxes I still just use Free File Fillable Forms, where I get the joy of typing in the numbers by hand, but at least the submission itself is electronic. For taxes for the Great State of New York, I used to be able to do almost the equivalent with a "smart" fillable PDF, but then of course this year I had to go and decide to switch over to a Linux-based OS, didn't I? And is the fillable PDF supported on Linux? Of course not.

I guess at least I'm helping to keep some state typist in one of those big government offices employed with my handwritten paperwork. Or maybe in this day and age they just put my forms in one of the piles to scan with OCR and then the typist just checks that it worked correctly. Who knows?

More than anything I'm just relieved I managed to get my taxes done ahead of the deadline this year. I just haven't had the bandwidth in recent years to tackle everything in February.

Yesterday was a long day, getting the next online lab put together and posted, plus another online quiz, plus rounding up resources for a student. Trying to make online labs SUCKS. To put it mildly. Oh, there was a trip in to campus thrown in there, too, to do the day's building check and check the animals, plus a quick grocery run to the Conventional Grocery Store. The rabbles were about as well-behaved as you could expect for a Conventional Grocery Store. They were out of conventional sugar, so I just sucked it up and bought overpriced hippie sugar. My biggest quibble with the hippie sugar is that the granules are larger, which affects the texture of things made with it. Food-processing isn't a full fix for this. First world problems, though.

I also bought cheese-its, Fritos, cheap salsa, cheese, chocolate chips, and vegetarian buffalo chicken wings. You know, just making the most of the conventional offerings.

As a sign of my fatigue levels: I decided I should just go ahead and finally get my tax returns filed today. Last year was the first year ever that I didn't file until April 15 just because I had no cope. I know there's the extension this year, but I also had to figure I'd be getting money back, so.

So far, my federal Free File Fillable Forms has bounced back twice due to stupid errors on my part. For my state return, I filed on paper because they only offer "free" filing through tax preparer services, and I REFUSE to go that route because it's a scam, harumph. So we'll see what kinds of errors they find.

Time to move on. And yes, I overpaid both federal and state, so that's some money I can throw into savings to continue repaying myself for 2018. Yay.

Onward. More teaching and grading to be done.

Yesterday, ivy linked to this post about what's currently happening in the US especially in large cities with housing shortages, tech booms, and consequent impacts on individual lifestyles + stuff ownership. [note: I think reading the post was strongly anxiety-inducing for me, due to having moved all over the place over the last 5 years, plus having certain kinds of job instability in my life, plus seeing a lot of what's described happening in cities like Seattle and the Bay Area. Also, I was buffered from a lot of this when living in the Bay Area but it was clear I was fortunate.].

Anyway, that post led me to this post on how to set up a home filing system. Super helpful and a thing I need in my life.*

Related to all that: Do any of you carry renter's insurance? Have suggestions on how to go about that?

Pretty soon here I'm going to need to go through that whole process of getting set up with a healthcare provider and dental stuff/etc. Again. I mean, again again, really. It's a little horrifying to not be set up with those things yet, but let me tell you, again, that's a product of how my life has gone over the last 5 years or so. And I'm highly, highly aware that I have the incredible good fortune to being able to push this stuff to the back burner for a period; I suspect the vast majority of people are not so fortunate and I am deeply sympathetic to how much harder that makes life when moving to a new place. (yay, academia) Also I am sure I will suffer some consequences of having pushed this stuff off (see: teeth).


*Edited to add: I have a home filing system at present, but was realizing that it's deficient in certain key ways (year-over-year management, specific categories). So that's a lot of what I'm getting from this post.

Today has been an "organize the calendar" sort of day. I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but at the same time this is a good time of year to take stock of things and think about plans for the upcoming year, including changes. I am not sure about how to organize this list of things I am wanting to organize, but here it is:

-Short-term: Finish bike hook installation (probably the weekend I get back to town - Jan 8).

-Schedule a piano tuner (S gave me the Gift of Tuning, hurrah!)

-Figure out rowing in the Bay Area. A big thank-you to dichroic for passing along a couple of lists of the area rowing clubs. Starting point: Berkeley Paddling and Rowing Club (closer), if not that then Lake Merritt (8.7 mile bike ride one-way).

-Finish out an R-12 award (i.e. ride at least a 200km brevet each month for 12 consecutive months; I have 3 more months to go). Once I finish this, I plan to focus more on rowing, with occasional recreational bicycling thrown in for fun and profit (e.g. more picnics and bike camping).

-Come up with a plan for creative projects. sytharin and the housemates are somewhat keen to get ceramics operations up and running, which is something that makes me dream of gas-fired kilns and learning to mix up glazes. These two dreams are impractical for the here-and-now, plus I have other, non-ceramic creative projects that I wish to attend to (specifically, quilting and knitting). Hence the need for more of a plan for creative projects. The best solution may be just to schedule Crafternoons with RAC. That should also help us figure out how I can best help her with gardening projects, too. I can see why people use shareable calendar goop for this stuff, although I am tempted to continue rebelling with my paper and text files.

-Academic to do (condensed version): make a schedule for the conference in Portland next week; push forward the leafcutter manuscript (which doom level have I reached, again?); make a semester plan; analyze data and write manuscripts; start new experiments; polish job application materials.

-Get back on track with tracking spending. As mentioned elsejournal, I'm particularly interested in doing some detailed grocery accounting. In part this should help me figure out which items I wish to buy where in the grocery landscape of the Bay Area, and in part I am intrigued by the idea of comparing grocery spending here against grocery spending elsewhere (Lincoln in particular), and in seeing what I eat over the course of a year. Lincoln groceries won't include the occasional foray to the farmer's market, but those trips were pretty occasional and mostly for pecans and fruit bonanzas, because the grocery co-op did such an awesome job of selling locally-produced foods.

Edited to add:
-Develop the Bike-Friendly Fridays coffeeshop agenda for the East Bay.

I think that covers the major bases.

Somehow or another this book came up in some discussions with my mother during the period when I had broken up with scrottie and was trying to sort through a bunch of emotional stuff. I was interested in the book not so much in the context of that immediate relationship situation, but more in general because I've felt for a long time like I haven't entirely understood the concept of forgiveness.

This actually stems back to my Catholic upbringing. One of the important rituals (sacraments, actually) in the Catholic church is the ritual of Reconciliation. Depending on who you talk to, you will hear different stories of what Reconciliation is and how it goes. The earlier versions of it were what you know of as Confession, with the private chambers where the priest hears about your sins, tells you to do some penance, and you go on your way. Growing up when I did, Confession had taken on a different tone that involved face-to-face meetings with a religious figure, but at that time I often felt like I was supposed to be coming up with a list of bad things that I had done so I had some basis for asking for forgiveness. I think this is in part because I didn't really understand the sacrament, but in part because I only received half-explanations of how it was supposed to work. I had this understanding that it was an important ritual, but that was the extent of it.

Fast-forward to graduate school. Two or three years into grad school, I hit something of a crisis point in the time right after Zack disappeared. One of those phases of, "What am I DOING with my life?!" I came to feel like I couldn't trust some of the people I had thought of as some of my closer friends, in good part because I didn't like who I became when around them. For instance - they found me funny when I was drunk, where I experienced a profound sense of alienation from myself and other people.

After certain things happened, I instinctively needed to push away, hard. Pushing away from those friends was more about who I was than it was about them, but regardless, it was a big rift. Breaking up with friends is incredibly hard.

But after some time had passed and I reached a point where I felt like I had re-aligned my sense of self, I started to experience another thing: I had this incredibly strong urge to forgive those former friends, but I also had this awareness that I really didn't know how. Ever since that point, the whole concept of "forgiveness" has been high on the radar as something I want to understand and practice better. For instance, this piece talks about teaching children to do a better job of reconciling wrongs.

I also copied out a quotation from a friend: "Forgiveness is for the forgiver and not the forgiven. Personal power arises from the ability to transcend the need for acknowledgement of our personal work. Let the action be the reward."

And when I encounter incredible stories of forgiveness, like this Holocaust survivor forgiving an Auschwitz guard, I listen.

What is going on here?

It feels like Desmond and Mpho Tutu hit some pretty big nails squarely on the head in this department. The Book of Forgiving contains some utterly horrific stories of the awful things that human beings do to each other, but it also makes a crucial point about human connectedness. The point is this: when another person hurts you, you have two options. You can retaliate, which will extend into a cycle of revenge, or you can choose to enter a cycle of forgiveness. There's a strong human impulse to retaliate, which is why the Tutus take a step back to ask, why and how can we choose to do something different?

Their perspective on humanity resonates deeply with my perspective, which is that we all need to recall our shared humanity even when faced with acts of extreme depravity. Towards the very end of the book, they talk about the distinctions between restorative and retributive justice. I deeply believe in the capabilities of human beings to become better, even while recognizing that we still live in a flawed, hurtful world. Tutu does not shy away from talking about some of the very worst things that humans have done to each other, including genocide, over the course of the book, and this is part of what makes the book so powerful.

As such, I would highly recommend the book, and I would be interested to hear your perspective, too.

Today I spent a considerable amount of time doing certain tasks I loathe. First, calling up a Large Cell-o-Phone Conglomerate (okay, maybe not a conglomerate) to switch over to a carrier that actually provides service in my area. I talked to four different people over the course of a 40-minute phone call, and while they managed to activate my SIM card, that was about all. At the end of the call I eventually found the correct buttons on their website to set up online login information for myself, but for some reason or another no one could tell me my account number, despite apparently establishing one for me during the call (the online site shows me that it has four final digits). It must be really hard to work in customer service for that company.

This evening, I reserved a rental car for the 600k brevet starting in Falls City over Memorial Day weekend. Rental cars seem annoyingly expensive when one does not own a car or usually pay for car insurance. How much do you car owners spend each month on your gasoline-powered wheelchairs, anyway, between gas, insurance, maintenance, and cost of car? I am hoping you can spout off numbers that will make me feel marginally better about these ridiculously extravagant (not really) rentals.

In other Things I Am Not Looking Forward To, it is time to look at plane fares for the Seattle-to-Portland and for Paris-Brest-Paris. PBP is more complicated, because it requires that I answer the questions of, where would I like to go, and when would I like to be there? With hauling a bicycle along, I'm wondering if it makes sense to try and take Amtrak to Chicago, and then fly to London from there, instead of flying out of the wee Lincoln airport, where oversize luggage might be a bigger issue. We shall see.

About a month ago, a friend of mine posted a link to a brief PBS story about "Handsome" clothing for women and transgender individuals. I've just finally watched it, several weeks after reading and pondering a piece for women on dressing for academia. I can't get over one point in the Dressing for Academia article, the point about wearing makeup. On one level, I can understand what drmellivora is saying about make-up making a woman seem more competent. I understand and appreciate the role of professional dress in the academic workplace.

But on a personal level, ...I just can't. I can get myself to put on lip gloss occasionally, but my skin crawls at the thought of being covered up by anything beyond that. Even light moisturizers make my skin crawl. My skin demands to be kept bare. And with wearing glasses, I have zero interest in shoving anything in the direction of my eyeballs. It just sounds like a recipe for smearing goop on my glasses.

I used to wear more skirts, but there are points where those feel emasculating, too, particularly because I am not comfortable sitting in chairs like a normal human being. Skirts were fine for grad school they're splendid for bicycling, but they make me feel a bit like a gangly heron in the lab, and they aren't exactly lab-safe anyway. I'd like to feel competent without also feeling gendered. So the idea of being able to look professional without feeling gendered is more appealing to me than trying to look professional in fluffy blouses. Part of it for me also comes from being relatively tall and strong. I want to dress to project confidence, and I don't want to dress in a way that makes people focus on my gender.

I can find long-sleeve cotton dress shirts that feel comfortable and appropriate, but I haven't found much that's short-sleeved that appeals, and I'm still working on jackets. Polo shirts make me feel too sporty-mc-sport-a-lot. I've acquired a couple pairs of trousers that work, so long as I don't try bike commuting in them and ruin them prematurely, but things could still be better in that department (ugh thigh-squeezers). Some high-quality stuff that's still appropriate for warm weather would be nice, too (e.g. linen pants). A lot is confounded by climate.

Anyway. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach for how to portray ourselves in professional settings, but it's at least comforting to hear the stories of other people who've felt similarly left out when clothes-shopping.

Some recent conversations and the stupid NYT bestseller book have gotten me to contemplate living arrangements in greater depth - both the ideal, and the real. A recent chapter in SNYTBB talked about how American society has transitioned from a culture idealizing strong moral character to one that idealizes extroverted personalities. In association with that change, which has affected the qualities that are sought out in businesspeople, there have been changes to how workplaces are constructed, such that the majority of workplaces emphasize group work and shared space. Ugh.

This can be harmful to introverts, or really anyone requiring quiet space for concentration (see: my current lack of office and terrible academic writing productivity). A large part of the book's premise is that introverts should receive equal attention and respect (reminds me of Somebodies and Nobodies), and I agree. So, how should this affect the shaping of our spaces, public and private?

Back to living arrangements in particular. I'm trying to reflect on what sort of living arrangements would be my ideal, and how that matches up with where I've lived previously. In this post I'll begin by reflecting on where I've lived so far, before trying to think about what might be ideal for the future. We all start out in living arrangements that are primarily driven by someone else. In the house I grew up in, it was easy to find nooks and crannies to squirrel away in as necessary - we kids all had our own bedrooms, and the house had three stories, so I could happily hide in an attic room or in the basement. Dorm life, in contrast, was a hard transition - I had to sleep and work in shared spaces (stressful), but I found relief by going to the library, hiding in the chemistry building, or walking down to the Someday Cafe. I do have a vivid memory of not being able to find somewhere safe to cry, though. 90 Bromfield was pretty glorious, once I moved out of the little stuffy room on the bedroom floor and down into the drafty room on the main floor, further away from my 3 housemates. I could look out the windows for hours, and read books on the balcony. 89 Bromfield was similar - I spent hours in my room, staring at the wall, thinking. It helped that most of my roommates at 89 Bromfield were introverted. Both Bromfield spaces had the benefit of public areas and private areas, and the benefit of multiple levels. I'm a major proponent of multi-level dwellings.

First Street, in Tempe, was not so great, because it was a single story and my housemate liked to stay up late watching television. Also, the neighbors had a super-barky dog, which would wake me up frequently, and the airplanes flying overhead were so noisy it was impossible to have a private phone conversation in the postage-stamp yard. Maple Ave was particularly difficult, between life in a bedroom right off of the kitchen (single-floor dwelling again) and trying to maintain even keel with a highly extroverted roommate who would barge in a lot. Also, late-night dinner parties hosted by a roommate in a single-floor dwelling aren't fun when I'm trying to go to sleep so I can get up early and go rowing.

Then, the Garage period. In some respects, the Garage was glorious - any messes were ones that I made myself, and the space was beautiful and peaceful, all bricks and rafters, tucked away under a big mesquite tree. I was close enough to the main house to not feel completely isolated, but still had my own space. It just wasn't quite enough room to invite over much company, though, and a bit awkward when half of the seating was on my bed and I had to perform furniture origami all the time to get anything done. I also grew weary of its stuffiness, and the lack of insulation. Keeping it cool was a challenge.

Things were pretty good in the Farmer House, although there the yard situation was kind of the opposite of the Garage - a little too much space for my tastes. I like having room for a garden, but when the yard's too big, it generates too much maintenance work in addition to the gardening space. I am thinking of the hours and hours spent pruning and managing tree branches there, and raking up and composting ornamental citrus. On the other hand, one of the greatest things about the Farmer House was that the two bedrooms were on opposite ends of the house, so even though the house was only one story it was still possible to retain a level of quiet thinking space. The house itself was also a nice size, overall - large common area for hosting friends, plenty of counter space in the kitchen, and a bike room for projects.

What about Villa Maria? It was too large for me by myself, too isolated, and way too noisy. Another large yard full of dying trees requiring way too much maintenance time. The bedrooms were adjacent to each other, separated by a paper-thin wall which is far from ideal. The kitchen didn't get any natural light whatsoever, and the whole place felt stuffy and claustrophobic. I've griped enough about it lately.

Beck Street is great in some respects, but still leaves certain things to be desired. On the one hand, the bedrooms are arranged fairly well, and the common areas interact well, too - while the kitchen itself doesn't have windows, the adjoining dining space lets in plenty of light. The house is a little strange in that it's one of those "antisocial" dwellings where there's minimal interaction with the street out in front, and maximal garage instead. The privacy and quiet can be great, and the garage does get opened up and used in a more public manner on occasion, but I keep thinking that something crazy could happen right outside the front door and we'd never be the wiser.

On top of all this, it's difficult to find quiet space when living with a five-year-old who is still getting familiar with the concept of "personal boundaries" (although he can be cute with his polite interruptions). I suspect most mothers would agree. My room is close enough to the living room that it can be difficult to filter out activities there (especially because my cat yells if I close the door all the way, even though she doesn't actually want to go out due to the ever-vigilant Luda). On the other hand, I'm now closer to downtown Bryan, and there are a couple of places there which I can easily reach if I need some time and space to think in an anonymous setting (library, coffeeshop).

So - based on previous experience, I think the Farmer House is close to ideal. My parents' house was a good size for a family with three kids, but if it were just me, myself, and I, it would be WAY too big. Maybe the Farmer House with a modified backyard, with the part along the train tracks converted to something low- or no-maintenance, and consolidated gardening spaces.

How about for you?

Through an accumulation of events, I've shied away from putting too much personal content out on teh internets, but there are certain points in one's life where things don't all happen in neat, tidy packages, and so here I am. From the sounds of things, Dad's surgery yesterday went as smoothly as it could, so now he's on the long, slow road towards healing for the time being (still without fully knowing about certain parts of this whole "cancer" puzzle, but hey, much of our lives is about the unknown, right?). It still weirds me out a bit, making the private, inner workings of someone else's body the focus of so much attention, but it's all part of the experience of life, I suppose, particularly as we get older and more fully realize our intimate dependence on others. Hardest when we return to a stage where we can no longer wipe our own asses. He shared a poem/prayer with friends and family that he said is giving him comfort through this process, which I'll put at the end of this post.

At certain points, our minds respond to difficult situations with emotional numbness. I have a partial sensation of speaking and thinking through a sort of thick styrofoam, tinged by the sadness of loved ones all being very far away. I had one of those moments yesterday where I was a bit shocked by the notion and remembrance that life has continued to advance without me in Phoenix, just as over the years I've come to watch the city of Seattle move on.

But in the meantime, things continue to move and grow here, as well. The thunderstorms and heavy rains which drenched me last Thursday on an aborted bike ride out to Lake Bryan meant that the boatyard grass has grown again. Yesterday I was ever so grateful to be bicycling out to the lake, if only because it would be a welcome distraction through the wait while Dad was in surgery. Practice consisted of a continuation of equipment maintenance, so while others worked on cleaning out the boats and painting the oars, I fired up the lawnmower and shoved it around the boatyard. The mower was such a beast that it made me miss Mr. Pushy, although I don't know if Mr. Pushy could have handled the grass out there. At least it wasn't as crazy as two summers ago, when we had to tackle it with weed whackers because it had gotten so overgrown. It's always amusing to go out to the lake and work hard, because for most of the other people in this region the lake represents a destination for idle recreation. Rowers, however, are all people who relish the hard work itself on some level.



PSALM OF A WAKE FOR A CHANGING BODY, by Edward Hays

Wakes are for the dead;
even the term leaves me cold.
I usually prefer to deny my death,
which comes by inches,
but comes relentlessly all the same.

Another signal from my body,
another sign of age,
has visited me, with its foreboding forecast
that l’m growing older.

I look with envy at the young
and am often tempted to try
a wizard’s wonder herb
to restore my aging body
to its former age of agility
that was free of aches and pains.

Today I must mourn,
aware that those who hold enough wakes
die with dignity
and even dance with death
in a Chronos childhood play.

To wake with great love each small death and loss
and then move on to what life offers next:
it is thus that i can honestly rejoice
at another’s youthful beauty.

I sense that by observing enough wakes
I'll awaken, to my surprise,
to a new, mature magnetic beauty
that radiates from those
whom time has tanned into a handsome hybrid
of the eternal youth.

While I was in Seattle, my father made me an offer I couldn't refuse: he offered to buy out the rest of my student loan debt owed to Sallie Mae. Given the choice between making interest payments to the government and making interest payments to my father, which would you choose? I still owe a considerable chunk of money to my parents anyway, and last year, I paid $324 in interest to Sallie Mae.

Over dinner on Tuesday, annikusrex and I talked about what it's like to be a Millenial, as she has been reflecting on the topic in association with her wedding; many things come to a head when a person gets married, and it's one of those times where a number of financial things surface, in particular. Student loan debt is a sizeable element in the lives of many Millenials. People my age and younger generally don't have the sorts of financial resources at our disposal as previous generations. We've invested in education because we were told it was the right thing to do. Now we aren't buying houses or cars, often simply because we lack the money. It's a hard reality to face at times. In many ways, we are no longer asking for these things or prioritizing them because they've never felt like possible, tangible goals of any sort. The hardest part of the equation is that it often makes us feel powerless, especially in the face of governments that are heavily influenced by the money of lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the Wedding-Industrial Complex has been built to cater to the children of wealthy, retiring baby boomers who all-too-often use their children's life events as opportunities to display their wealth. It's *somewhat* easier to swallow that notion when the people getting married are freshly out of college, as one can understand if new graduates have little or no financial resources and parents want to ensure their children are taken care of. The situation can be more complex when the children are older. On the one hand, older children are assumed to have more financial independence. On the other hand, how does one address the unrealistic expectations that have been built up for weddings, if one isn't interested in feeding the beast of consumerism?

I'm constantly grateful for a major gift my parents (and especially father) have given me: as a family, we can have conversations about financial decisions and priorities, and the conversations and decisions don't involve any emotional blackmail or weird maneuvering. The conversations don't always go how everyone would like them to (see: me wanting contacts in high school, family deciding they weren't affordable), but they're as straightforward as they can possibly be.

It's hard to have these conversations honestly, as a society. There can be a lot at stake, especially for businesses and organizations trying to sneak into consumers' pocketbooks. Here's hoping that my generation can continue to push back and keep the focus on the human experience.