Letter to myself

It seems more blogcationy around here than not.  Yet, I think about it.  Waiting like the most patient dog in the world.  The most patient dog in the world, who would have long-ago starved to death from inactivity.

Today I received a letter from myself in the mail.  I wrote the letter in August at a two-week intensive professional development thing I did.  The thing was amazing.  The letter came at a good moment.

It's been hard, the new job.  Some days harder than others, but most hard.  There was one where I came home and was able to say it had been a good day.  That's one day out of lots.

It's not all bad, of course, just hard.  And lonely, as I knew it would be.  So, I try to take the moments.

The student who told me that she liked my pants today.  

The actual dogs, who do get fed.

Honey, whose birthday is tomorrow.

And, today, the letter.  The last line of which I said (to myself, remember), "Take care of yourself and ride your bike more often, without guilt and with joy."

I haven't done that, of course, but I like that I told myself to.

What continuum am I on?

Recently at work I had to start a social media ad hoc committee.  People have behaved badly on social media this year.  Blogging mostly, but faceplace, too.  It was just at the end of the term and I asked a few folks to get together on the day of commencement (before the string of parties started) to talk.  During the conversation, I admitted (not in a confessional way, but I'm sure it was taken that way) that I had a blog and that it was anonymous.  Sort of.  Earlier this week, someone else mentioned my anonymous blog to me.  Clearly trying to get access.  No quarter was given.

People still blog.  I read them every day.  Every once in a while someone who doesn't blog much whose blog I read back when I played blogleague fantasy sports will blog.  That makes my day.  A little bit of sunshine, you know?

So I have this new job.  Start in a month.  I can't decide whether the "beyond this place there be dragons" is the right metaphor for the next phase in my professional life.

Or maybe I'm a little like Halo.  Will the box be all I want it to be?

Best case is that it's like the entrance to my favorite hotel.  It's on a little street in a little town in the desert.  You wonder if you've arrived at the right place.  You ring the bell.  Once you make it through the arch, though, you never want to leave.

I'm hoping the new job is somewhere between Halo's box and Desert Hot Springs.   

Recently, in my current job, I've been dealing with several unpleasant circumstances.  People causing drama, insisting on controlling the drama narrative.  Drama that requires after hours meetings.  Ad hoc committees on social media.  Me to steel myself against others' crying.  It's karma, I think.  For leaving.  For feeling bad about leaving. 

For being a more than a little afraid that the continuum is between the dragon and Halo's box.

The only way out may be through.  Halo figured that out.  Maybe I will, too.

Wish me luck. 

"Saved" from a seed

So, Treecup has got herself a new passion. It's great for her.  She looks good, feels good, has normal blood sugar.  Sly describes himself as "raw adjacent" and I feel adjacent to the adjacent.  On Saturday they were kind enough to invite us to their club, which I heart.  After working out we went to a large chain restaurant, and Treecup had cooked vegan food to be social.  It's perfectly normal to go work out and then go eat chain restaurant food, right?

Once we reconvened at their house, I wandered into the kitchen to explore the raw zone she's created.  I was being my usual forward self and smelling tubs of stuff and being perhaps more disparaging than I ought.  Treecup offered up "cheese" on a "cracker."  Sly says that her food has entirely too many quotes.  The "cheese" was made of cashews and was a rough approximation of cheese.  Like, if we were in the cheese ballpark and cheddar was playing first base, this was in an obstructed view seat in the upper upper deck.  Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd, buy me some (raw) peanuts and cracker flax...

Anyway, if the cheese was in the cheese bleachers, the "cracker" was maybe standing on the street waiting outside cracker stadium to catch a long ball hit by a saltine.  When Teresa asked how the seeds could be made to form a "cracker" Treecup informed us that, when soaked, flax seeds exude a semi gelatinous substance and then can be made into cracker shapes. Handy.  (See, there I go again being more disparaging than I ought.  Still, I have anti-flax seed feelings just at the moment).

We departed soon after our raw experience.  (I should note that I demurred for us when Treecup offered up a viewing of her new raw dvd).  She claims it very inspirational and I think we may need to watch it next time.

Anyway, I kept pulling flax seeds out from my teeth with my tongue.  One of them got lodged in my windpipe just as I was steering the FJ onto the 10.  (Non-SoCal note:  Socalies use the definate article when referring to freeways.  I've lived here long enough that I do it too.  "The 10" = "Interstate 10" which stretches from Santa Monica to Jacksonville, Florida.  It's 2460 miles long, which makes it longer by 270 miles or so than my high school distance.  I can code-switch well enough that when I go to Atlanta I switch back to "I-75").   So, there I was getting on the freeway and needing to merge onto "the 57" (aka California 57, which runs from Glendora to the Orange Crush for a distance of almost 24 miles) and I'm choking on this flax seed.  Coughing with watering eyes choking.  It persists all the way up the 57 until I merged onto "the 210" (aka California 210/I-210 which runs from San Fernando to Redlands for a distance of 86 miles, it swiches from I-210 to CA-210 at the 57).  Choking and coughing so hard, I'm hoping not to vomit choking.

Honey was very supportive during my coughing episode.  She offered my some tepid lemonade and offered to drive.  She also refrained from saying disparaging things about my Garmin nüvi, which was telling me to do things vis à vis the freeways.  Teresa vacillates between thinking the Nüvi is rude and thinking it might lose the will to live.  She doesn't like that it interrupts her (which it does) or that I defy it (which I thoroughly enjoy doing ).  I agree wholeheartedly with my co-worker who says that all Nüvis (she has one, too) are "judgemental" when they say "recalculating" after you've defied their direction.

As I merged onto the 210, I finally stopped coughing.  I noticed at that very moment a Dodge station wagon (of the modern magnum/charger variety) that had a brown body and bright orange expensive looking rims.  It also had sepia tinted pictures painted across its sides.  Of Jesus.  Both sides.  Sepia Jesus on a Chrysler product.

WHY I stopped coughing is up to debate.  Some possibilities:

Chance?

The 210?

The biological dislodging of the flax seed from my windpipe?

The shock of the sight of the car?

Divine intervention?

Very hard to say.  Maybe if I had watched the raw dvd I'd know better.

Cracker flax, know thine enemy.

On the wall

When I was younger, I would often go into my mother's office. She has always kept Hershey's Kisses in a jar and I'd have one or two. Because of what she does, I had occasion to spend a lot of time at her workplace as a child and teenager. Occasionally, I would also go to my father's office. He didn't have kisses, but inevitably had a better view. Hers was always a ground floor office and his was a high rise office. Sweeping vistas are ingrained in the American consciousness, even if the vista in question is of other high-rise buildings.

I always admired their degrees on the wall. I read them and then re-read them. They went to the same college, so the bachelors' degrees looked the same, but their advanced degrees differed and I found their language and appearance very appealing. There was a deep commitment to education as an idea in my family, but the material culture of education also appealed deeply to me. The degrees themselves, the regalia, the places. The verdant landscapes in otherwise normal contexts.

Really, I wanted those pieces of paper. I have some of them now. Four, if you want to know. One of them has a typo. Two of them are framed. I really have no idea where the fourth one is. The "highest" one, as they say, had been sitting in its frame in a closet. I had never put it on a wall anywhere. I had it on top of a bookshelf at home for a while, but then our roof leaked and our office ceiling collapsed and, as I hauled ceiling and insulation out to the trash can, I put it away in the closet to keep it from forming some undeniable bond with the wet insulation.

This weekend, we cleaned out that closet so the house can be re-floored. I found that highest degree in the closet.

This morning, I brought it in to work. The frame had some smudges on it, so I cleaned it a little. I took down a picture I had taken some years ago of a cyclist whose name I don't know and hung the degree on my wall. I like the language on it more than any of the ones my parents have, "The Regents of the University of California on the recommendation of the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate, Los Angeles Division have conferred upon [insert name here]" Isn't that great? So florid.

It continues, "...who, by conducting original research has demonstrated thorough knowledge of [insert field here]" So, original research demonstrates thorough knowledge. Good to know. Now, with all of that, you still don't know what degree it is. Way to bury the lead, UC. Good things come to those who bother to read the whole thing. The degree comes next.

..."The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy." There it is. Whew. Took a while. "with all the rights and privileges thereto pertaining." I'm not sure what rights it gives me, but it is a privilege (most of the time) to be an Associate Professor for the same state the issued the piece of paper I'm currently discussing.

"Given at Los Angeles This Twenty Sixth Day of March in the Year Nineteen Hundred and Ninety Nine." Note the lack of "of our Lord" language. Secularity is SO rampant in, well, secular institutions. Rightly so. It's signed, by among others, the ousted former governor of the state. There's also a gold seal.

It looks nice on the wall, I have to say. It perches right above a picture of a starling eating watermelon and next to my Union Pacific Las Vegas poster. I don't know why I didn't hang it there before. I wanted it for so long and then I got it. It belongs in my office with its first floor view. Come by and read it, if you want.