Saturday, December 29, 2007

Sewing projects

As I mentioned in my "annual" letter (see previous post), my next sewing projects are baby-related items. Specifically, diaper-and-wipe bags (much less bulky than a regular diaper bag, to be used on-the-go) and bibs. With some money I got as a Christmas present, I went crazy at a fabric store yesterday and, since I already had a stock of fabric I'd bought for the projects, I am now nearly swimming in fabric choices. So exciting! In the last ~24 h, I have made 4 diaper-and-wipe bags and two bibs and I can't wait to show them off. 

First, the diaper-and-wipe bags. I must give credit to the website where I found the pattern. I did alter my bags a bit from the pattern: I put handles on, so adjusted everything a bit to accommodate that (and I plan more changes to get the handles to fit better in future renditions). Also, on my second set of bags, I added a front pocket. I'll probably put pockets on all future bags.

Here are the bags I made, which are already in the mail to my dad so he can take them to South Africa with him at the end of January to distribute to two friends there:


The blue ones are the first ones I made, without the front pocket. As you can see, the flap closes with velcro. The lining of the bags and the handles is in a complementary color and pattern.















The pocket on these black & red bags is edged with the red fabric, where the lower piece of velcro is, and goes all the way to the bottom of the bag. Black velcro would have looked better... I'll have to get some next time it is on sale.















And here are the bibs. I got the pattern for free at this website. I'm trying out different methods to see what I like best. The first one has ribbon folded in half for the trim, so is slightly bigger than the other one, since I didn't lose the seam allowance. I bought the ribbon a few weeks ago, but love how well it goes with the fabric I bought yesterday (I am particularly proud of this piece in general)! The illustration on the front is from a piece of fabric that has lots of blocks of images (the illustration on the blue bib is from the same stock).


Front of first bib. I think maybe I should put a plain piece of fabric behind the illustrated panel in future bibs, so the background pattern doesn't show through as much. (Aside: I plan on making a diaper-and-wipe bag with the pink & green striped fabric... that was actually what I had in mind when I bought it. I really like this fabric). I just noticed that I should aim to center the stripes when cutting the fabric. I think it would look even better then.










Back of first bib... it's a flannel, so nice and soft. The bibs also have velcro to close them. (Side note: my skin is particularly sensitive to labels in clothing, so I've cut most of the labels out of my clothing. Anyway, I took care to have the loop (soft) side of the velcro be the one pointing towards the skin, in case it brushes the baby's skin while the bib is being put on. I also rounded the corners of the velcro pieces so those wouldn't poke the baby... just trying to make it something that wouldn't irritate MY skin, were I a baby still).










Front of second bib. For this one, I tried iron-on vinyl (hence the reflection of my camera's flash). The advantages of that to the user is that it can be wiped clean... and the advantage of that to me is that I can put stuff on the front of the bib without sewing it on. Since the illustration panel I used on this bib didn't have a border I could fold under to sew, the vinyl came in handy. A disadvantage to the vinyl is that the whole bib can't just be thrown into the washer (btw, I've pre-washed all the fabrics in the hopes that most of the resulting items can be machine washed). The patterned blue fabric behind the illustrated block is the same as the lining for the blue diaper bags. I used it to make the illustration stand out a bit better.






This is the back of the vinyl-fronted bib. No vinyl on the back. Perhaps it's a bit odd to mix blue and pink on one bib, but I'm not a fan of having all pink stuff for girls and all blue stuff for boys. So there.















So, what do you think? If I have any readers out there (I'm a real optimist, can you tell?), and particularly if any of my readers happen to have kids, do you have any suggestions for improvements? How is the handle length on the diaper-and-wipe bags? Should I put snaps on the handle so that it can be looped around something (like a stroller) more easily? I'm going to try sew-on vinyl on a future bib... is vinyl a good idea, or is the ability to throw the whole thing in the washer more important?


It's a good thing that Jesse is out of town, because this is what my "sewing room" (i.e., our living room) looks like in one place. I'm going to clean up now.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

"Annual" Holiday Letter

Calling this my "annual" letter is a bit of a joke, since it's been about 14 years since I last wrote one. I sent this letter out to some friends and relatives. Blogger is not letting me upload a photo, but maybe I'll add one another day.

Dear All
When I mentioned the idea of writing a “Christmas letter” this year to Jesse, there was a minute or two of silence as we tried to think of one thing that happened to us this past year that would be of any interest to anyone other than ourselves. We broke the silence only to admit that we hadn’t thought of anything and in fact are still, a week later, trying to come up with something. In the meantime, I’ll fill you in on some of the things you may find less interesting.
Earlier this year, I joined the “in crowd” by signing up for a facebook.com account, which allows me to “connect” to my in crowd friends across the world on the Internet. This has brought me much joy as I have communicated with school friends I haven’t heard from since the day I left South Africa (in 1992) or even before. On a similar (Internet-related) note, I finally discovered what all the fuss was about blogs (online diaries/journals, essentially). It all started when one of the people I reconnected with through facebook started her own blog (that’s you, KRS). She is a good storyteller with interesting things to say, and I got thoroughly drawn into her blog and her stories about her husband and four kids. Then I started reading her friends’ blogs, and then their friends’ blogs etc., and I felt immersed in this other world. After a few weeks of deep addiction to reading these blogs at all hours (except, mostly, work hours), I cut back to a few blogs that I still read regularly. It inspired me to start my own blog, which is only three entries long as of today, far from interesting and may die out soon. But if you want to read my random stories (and they truly are random), here’s the site: http://senseandmissense.blogspot.com
The most exciting thing that happened to me all year is that a coworker and two of my friends became pregnant, one of whom gave birth on Thanksgiving. I have never had people I know so well be pregnant, and so this is all new to me. It naturally got me thinking about having kids of my
own, and though there are no immediate plans for that, at least I am seriously thinking about it.
This year was a very “crafty” year for me. After finally finishing a quilt I had been working on for a few years, I decided to try knitting again (first time since I had to knit for Home Economics in school). I knitted three scarves, two of which went to an ex-student of mine who is now at graduate school in Dartmouth and one of which went to my mother (I happened to finish the first scarf intended for my student while visiting my mom, and she liked it so much, I gave it to her). I have also been making placemats, trivets and potholders (sewing projects… knitting taxes my arthritic hands a bit) like there’s no tomorrow and have acquired patterns and bought fabric to start my next sewing endeavor: baby bibs and diaper-and-wipe pouches (see paragraph above… sorry to ruin the surprise of what I’m going to be sending you in the coming months, KC&CC!).
You may have heard about the massive wildfires we had in southern California at the end of October. The fires didn’t come any closer than about 8 miles from where Jesse and I live, but they did cause our places of work to be closed for over four days, which resulted in us being housebound (in large part to avoid the smoky air outside). I will try to remember to put the story I wrote about my week during the fires up on my blog in case you’d like to read more.
And speaking of work, I’m sure you’re wondering, as are so many of our family members, when Jesse and I are going to get real jobs. Well, neither one of us are having the successful postdocs we were hoping for, so let’s just say we probably won’t have real jobs for a while yet ☹ But I will mention one specific work thing: after so disliking the formal research ethics education I got as a graduate student, I was surprised to very much like the formal ethics training I got as a postdoc (a requirement for a fellowship I am on). My interest resulted in me being a panelist for a research ethics seminar series this academic year. I find I quite like dispensing what wisdom I have gained during my years as a scientist.
I hope that next year, if I sit down to write an “annual summary” newsletter again (it has been ~14 years since the last one I wrote, so don’t hold your breath), I will have more interesting news. Jesse and I have saved money for a trip next year. We haven’t decided quite where to go yet—I would like to see the Great Barrier Reef before all the corals die (climate change is taking a toll on them) so that’s a possibility. Botswana is another possibility, and so is a road trip of the western US to see places like Yosemite, Big Sur, Yellowstone, the Redwoods etc. I’ll be sure to take photos wherever I go, and they’ll be posted to my usual photo-storing website: http://ssorchard.smugmug.com (feel free to browse). Stay well.

Samantha

San Diego Wildfires, October 2007



I originally published this on my facebook page and am now publishing it here for your reading pleasure. If I refer to photos anywhere, I didn't bring those over from facebook.

This is a long story that documents some of my adventures and thoughts during the week San Diego country was on fire: 21-28 October. The first part has more information on the fires, since many people asked me about them. The rest is the details (too many for most of you, I'm sure!) about some of the things I did and did not do and the things I thought. I hope someone other than me enjoys this! I've added bold phrases to help you pick out what you want to read.

Starting on Sunday, 21 October, 2007, many wildfires burned in and around San Diego county. Some 500 000 people were evacuated from their homes at the peak of the fires a few days later. Though the fires are not yet out, as of this writing, 7 people have died directly from the fire, and something like 1300 houses (and many businesses and outbuildings) have been destroyed in San Diego county. Soot and ashes have dirtied a lot of houses that were downwind of the fires, so many people who had evacuated but did not lose their house spent this past weekend cleaning up the mess. The exact cause of the various fires has not been established; campfires set by illegal immigrants or other campers, downed power lines and arson are some of the possibilities. Four years ago, San Diego county was severely burned by what is called the “Cedar Fire” and ~24 people were killed and ~2400 houses destroyed in that fire. In 2005, San Diego experienced one of the wettest winters on record (I arrived that winter). That rain spurred a lot of vegetation growth, much of which died and dried up in the years since, which have been a period of drought (we are currently in one of the worst droughts on record in SD… one extreme to another!). Certainly that excess of dry brush fueled the fires, as did the Santa Ana winds that came from the east and brought very dry (less than 10% humidity), very hot (high 80’s (°F)/~30°C…. and this is Autumn), and very strong winds (gusts 30-70 mph/65-112 kph). The wind itself did quite a bit of damage, knocking over trees etc. [By the way, Santa Ana winds are predicted for this coming weekend too, but with lower wind speeds. Will we have more fires?]. The first I knew of the fires was when I went running on Sunday night and saw a giant orange cloud heading our way from the east… I thought it was a dust cloud from the desert until “breaking news” cut into the regularly scheduled TV programs that night. The situation got worse and worse until Wednesday afternoon, when Jesse and I returned from a trip to an ice-cream store to read the first optimistic reports.

I did not have to evacuate, though I had a scare on Monday night: a fire started in Mission Trails Regional Park, one border of which is only a block from my apartment. The fire was in a central region of the park and was extinguished before it ever threatened my apartment complex. That night, before we had heard about the Mission Trails fire, Jesse and I packed our “evacuation gear” in case we needed to leave on short notice at 3 am or something, as many people north of us had to. Our gear included a tent, camping mattress, dried and canned food, toiletries, cash, our important papers (passports, financial records, renter’s insurance etc.), food for the cats, the cats’ carrier, toilet paper, can opener, flashlight/torch etc. The reason for the tent is that, because of San Diego’s “favorable” climate, the major evacuee gathering site was an open-air sports arena, and evacuees stayed in tents there.

All schools and universities in San Diego were closed at least Tuesday-Friday last week, and people were urged to stay home (if our home was not in the path of a fire or otherwise under a mandatory evacuation order) to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles and evacuees and to save our lungs from the smoke and ash outdoors (in addition to the 7 people who died from burning, several people downwind of the fires died from respiratory distress… typically older people or those with pre-existing breathing problems). Jesse and I had our windows closed and the air conditioning/central fan running almost continuously after Jesse started having problems with the smoke (he has allergy/sinus/chemical sensitivity problems) on Tuesday. His symptoms went away, so clearly our air filter on the central fan works (we replaced it after the worst of the fires was over and it was quite dirty).

But what I really want to write about are the things I did and did not do during my unexpected time off. The main reason to me is posterity, and to remember the thoughts I had during this strange time.

Let’s start with what I did do. Note that just about everything took place on my couch (not only do I love my couch, but I don’t have a desk or a dining table). The cushions are noticeably more compressed than they used to be.

- Together with Jesse, I watched the extended version of all three Lord of the Rings movies. That’s something like 11 h of entertainment! We watched it in about 6 chunks. I (alone) also watched the first two episodes of a BBC mini-series called Wives and Daughters and enjoyed that (last two episodes arrive from Netflix tomorrow).

- I edited a scientific review article that Jesse has been working on since the end of July (and he’s been doing little else… very few experiments (“bench work”) at lab, and he works on it evenings and weekends at home too). It took me a day and a half to edit it for a number of reasons: it’s not a topic I was familiar with (for any biologist types reading this, it’s on anterograde and retrograde signaling between the nucleus, chloroplasts and mitochondria in plant, yeast and animal cells… for the biologist types who didn’t understand that, don’t worry… I didn’t know what anterograde and retrograde meant either before Jesse started telling me about what he was working on). Also, I started editing on Tuesday, and since I was still in fire alert mode at that point, I was checking the TV/internet every 15 minutes for updates. And, many kind friends were writing me emails wanting to know if I was okay, and I felt compelled to send off speedy replies to calm their nerves. So, I wasn’t as efficient in my editing as I could have otherwise been.

- I analyzed a whole bunch of my own data and made pretty graphs and sent out data and an analysis to a collaborator in Scotland (this is the email that took me ~1.5 h to write that I talk about below).

- I baked cinnamon-raisin bread. Twice. We have a bread machine so I used that to make the dough. Yum-ee.

- I called the phone company to get reimbursed for a late charge they fined me even though my bill is supposed to get paid automatically. Last time I tried to call them about this, I was on hold for 40 minutes before giving up. This time, I was on hold only for 10 minutes, but then was on the line with a representative for 30 minutes (I counted). It was a bizarre conversation, with a good 2-3 minutes of silence every time the guy looked something up (such as my account information). I am not exaggerating (again, I counted). He also didn’t sound at all like someone employed to be in customer service. He sounded like a guy who would show up at your house to work on a broken telephone line and who would grumble/slur everything he said. I actually thought he was playing a joke on me and that I was being recorded for a Candid Camera-like show (afterwards, I told Jesse that if I do end up on Candid Camera that they hadn’t really fooled me and that I’d known all along). In the minutes of silence, I thought that either he had actually hung up on me and there I was foolishly staying on the line or that he was getting up and walking around the office and giggling with his friends before getting back to me. The good news is that he totally agreed that I shouldn’t have been charged $5.82 and promptly reimbursed me.

- I gave fashion advice. This was one of the strangest things that has happened to me in a long time (apart from the conversation with the phone company 10 minutes earlier… again I thought maybe I was on Candid Camera)… I was walking back to my apartment from getting the mail in my Crocs (I have foot problems, so don’t tease me), roughly-tied-up hair, jeans and T-shirt. I was sweaty from our hot apartment. A clearly-agitated woman asked me if I could help her and my first thought (sadly) was that it was a trick. She was wearing a long brown dress with a lace-up back and asked if I could help her get ready for the Marine Ball since her husband wasn’t around (there are a lot of military people in San Diego). She first wanted me to tie her dress for her, but when I said “sure… lift up your hair,” she asked me to follow her. I thought maybe her Marine husband was back in the apartment and she was luring me there. It was a passing thought. Turns out she just wanted to move into a hallway that was less exposed. So, I gently laced up her dress and tied a knot at her request. It was hard not to pinch her seemingly-delicate skin. Then she asked me if I thought the (brown with turquoise and yellow beads) color of the dress suited her. Why someone wearing Crocs would look qualified to judge this I don’t know. She told me that her husband said the color didn’t suit her and that she should wear her red dress instead. Then she asked me if I would look at her red dress. Now she wanted me to follow her to her apartment. Second minor panic. But, she left me outside her door while she went to get her red dress then held it up for me to see it. It was knee-length and had clearly been attacked by a cat or something and had loops of fabric pulled out. And the poor woman then said that her cat has the fleas and she has flea bites all over her legs and that she didn’t think she should wear the red dress because then everyone would see her messed up legs… she pulled up the ankle-length brown dress to show me her legs, and sure enough they had red marks all over them. I told her that, though I was biased because brown is my favorite clothing color, I thought the brown dress was far more fitting for a ball and that she looked good. Then she asked me how she should do her hair… I’ll spare you the rest of the details because I’ve gone on for too long now, but let’s just say that I was laughing all the way back to my apartment at the absurdity of what had just transpired. I thought about her (she is in her early 20’s, I estimate) a lot for the next day, wondering what kind of a relationship she must have with her husband that she was so worried about not wearing the red dress even though her husband preferred it. How did the ball go, I wonder? I thought about the things I could have said to her, since she was looking to me for wisdom. Should I have told her that the best thing she could have worn would have been confidence?

- I sorted through several of the drawers in one of my dressers. I reorganized them and got inspired by a stack of fabric I had bought from a clearance sale on fabric remnants last year (see next item).

- I made a set of 8 Christmas-colored placemats. They reverse to one of two different colors (four each).
I also got almost all the way done with a set of “trivets” and potholders, some of which match the Christmas color, and some of which match the reverse color.
For those of you who remember the failing grade I got for home economics when we had to sew, you might be surprised to learn that I sew things on occasion. I am too. I still wouldn’t get a passing grade for technique because I am more concerned with being a speedy sewer rather than a neat/perfectionist sewer. But, I do get things made. “A” for effort?

- I hung out with the cats. I think they LOVED having us at home all day. Clara spent her days on the couch next to me. Alice spent a lot of time on my left arm (she’s there as I write this).

- I took lots of photos of the smoky sky and a fire’s glow at night, as you can see on my facebook page.

- I listened to a few tapes of music I recorded from the radio when I was a teenager or from CD’s I’ve since got rid of, chose songs I liked, and bought them on iTunes (I had been given a $15 gift card). Then, I threw away the tapes. I have another 30 tapes or so to go (and only $4 left on my gift card…).

- I whitened my teeth with some of those whitening strips. I don’t at all enjoy having the strips in my mouth. A few years ago, I tried the brush-on type of teeth whitening and that was much more pleasant. I also thought once again how unfair it is that Jesse, who drinks a lot of strong coffee and tea, has very white teeth and I, who essentially doesn’t drink coffee or black tea, get stained teeth. An oral hygienist once graded my oral hygiene so highly, she ignored the check boxes where she was supposed to choose “Poor” “Fair” etc. and made her own box for “Excellent” or something even better. I didn’t know that she thought it was so good until the next hygienist who saw my chart remarked that she’d never seen someone rated “off the chart.” Apart from bragging, my point is that I take care of my teeth. And yet they yellow easily.

- I thought about charity and whether or not I should make an effort to be part of the “relief efforts” related to the fires. Before the relief effort was fully up and running, they were making appeals on TV for tents and blankets to be donated. I have a few blankets. I like them all. Should I have donated one? Should I have taken the tent from my evacuation pile and given it away? Should I have volunteered my time instead of working (note that I did try to keep “work hours” during the day and did the things like sewing on the weekend and movie-watching at night)? At first, they appealed for volunteers, then they said they had to turn away volunteers because there were too many and that they didn’t need anything donated except money. I have carefully chosen the organizations I give charity to every year. I give a percentage of my before-tax pay to them. Should I have given extra money because of the fire? I decided no. Most of the people who evacuated are better-off financially than I am. It wasn’t like they were suddenly cut off from their credit cards and bank accounts. They had their cars, the restaurants were open… did they really need my canned goods? They appealed for blood, but I can’t donate blood because my body doesn’t tolerate it well (the Red Cross told me, after an hour of repeated fainting the first and last time that I tried donating, that I wasn’t a good blood donor). The firefighters get paid and have chosen that profession. I pay my taxes. I have bought renter’s insurance. I have made sure I have savings in case I lose my job or have to take a long leave. If other people have chosen to build in a fire zone, or have neglected to properly insure their property, or have consumed themselves conspicuously into debt, does that mean I should carry them not that their gamble has cost them? I felt bad about my thoughts at first, but I’m at peace with them now. I don’t regret not helping/donating. I know that some people who were affected by the fires probably could really have used my help. There were stories of the manual laborers who kept on cleaning and kept on gardening in neighborhoods that were being evacuated because they were scared they’d lose their jobs if they stopped. I haven’t heard that any of them died or were injured, but they’re the people I feel for the most in all of this. The people you didn’t see on TV. Another thing that helped assuage my guilt is that companies and restaurants ended up donating a lot, and they got a lot of publicity for it. I think that’s fair.

But the things that struck me most last week are the things I didn’t do. Time flew during my days on the couch. On Friday, a work-related email I wrote took ~1.5 h to write and I was just amazed each time I looked up and another 30 minutes had gone by. And I wasn’t just sitting there day dreaming… I was putting concerted effort into that email the whole time. The overall effect of time flying was that I felt so unproductive. I kept feeling that if I knew I was going to get this time away from the lab, I would have planned a long list of goals (science papers to read, emails to write, computer files to sort). But after the first day at home, I realized I was going to be at home for the rest of the week (and so theoretically could still have made that list of goals) and still every night I felt like I hadn’t got much done. I spoke to my mom one day towards the end of the week (she didn’t know about the situation here until I called her on Wednesday night, by the way, and apologized for not worrying about me appropriately) and told her how time was flying and she said that she is finding retirement to have the same quirk. She’d always imagined all the things she’d do if she just had the time, and now that she is retired (she retired in April), time flies by and she still doesn’t feel like she has the time to catch up. Well, that greatly diminished my hopes for my own retirement! But it has also taught me not to long for free time in the hopes that it will let me finally catch up on all the emails I owe people, or will finally let me do all the other things on the to-do list in my head (scan in all my photographs, sort my “To be sorted” folder that grows in size each day on my computer, finish reading the stack of National Geographics next to my bed so I can get started on the stack of books I want to read, write a novel (that’s really near the bottom of the list) etc.). And particularly, to not put my life on hold until all those tasks are accomplished, but to rather realize that life is what is going on right now. I must either decide to tackle those tasks in the small moments I get free each day, rather than hoping for a large chunk of free time, or I must not feel that those tasks are so important that I have to stress about them.

Life has essentially returned to normal for me now, and the thoughts I had during the week the fires raged are slowly fading from my mind. I’ve preserved what I can here. If anyone actually read all the way to this point, I hope my ramblings were somewhat entertaining or thought-provoking and that you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your time.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thanksgiving 2007


I woke up at 6:35 am, sans alarm. So much for sleeping in—and good old body, knowing that by that time on a Thursday I should be awake! I did my physical therapy exercises (that I am supposed to do a few times a week for the rest of my life, if I want my pelvis to not cause me too much grief), de-cluttered the kitchen counters in preparation for a day of cooking, had a shower, then got started on the first recipe: pumpkin pie! I went with an all whole-wheat flour crust this year, and it turned out almost as good as a white flour crust, so I’ll be sticking with the whole wheat in the future. While the pies were cooking, I started on the brown rice and cranberry dish. I’d done the hard part of cutting 4 cups of cranberries in half, one by one, last Sunday, since I’d had the cranberries out for making the Exploding Cranberry Relish (= cranberry sauce, with the twist of having jalapenos in it) that day. After the salad came the stuffing, and Jesse peeled the potatoes in preparation for what I think is his favorite dish—mashed potatoes. Then we combined our efforts on the “turkey substitute” dish: a vegetarian meatless loaf. That’s right, no tofurkeys or tofurtles this year!

After we got the meatless loaf in the pans and into the fridge, got the kitchen tidied up and yet another load of dishes done, Jesse and I went to a nearby Lake Murray for a pre-meal run. Jesse did his usual ~5.5 mile run and I heaved myself (that’s what it felt like anyway) through just over 4 miles (I’m supposed to be getting back into running slowly, for the sake of my feet and pelvis, so I’m running slower than Jesse these days. Also, he’s picked up the pace of his running dramatically since I was last a regular runner!). We got back to the parking lot and were finishing up our post-run stretches when I noticed a hand protrude from the passenger window of a pickup truck window in the parking lot and a tissue fall to the ground from said hand. I was appalled. Littering is one thing. Littering at “my” lake where I go to enjoy the outdoors/natural environment aspect of it is another thing. Thanksgiving or not, I marched over to the truck, picked up the tissue and threw it into the lap of the female owner of the offending hand saying “I think you dropped this” and starting walking off. I heard her say “I meant to drop it there” and I turned around to find the tissue falling to the ground outside her window again. Well! I marched back, picked it up and said to her with incredulity, “Have you no passion for life? For the environment?” to which she said, “Excuse me!!” impertinently and rolled up her window. She looked shocked that I would be so rude as to address her, and a little scared of me—I think she thought I was a crazy lady. So I chucked the tissue behind a cargo net in the bed of the pickup truck, and picked up a tissue I found behind the truck and tossed that in too. It was at that point that I noticed that the (male) driver of the truck was using binoculars to observe something… maybe birds? He was there to admire the environment with a woman who cared nothing for it! I do hope he enjoyed me rebuking the woman. Maybe he secretly hates the way she litters? I can only hope. I went back to where Jesse was… he didn’t know what had been happening so I told him the story. He was amazed (at her and at me). I have replayed the events over and over in my head, and I now think that she truly didn’t see that there was anything wrong with dropping the tissue where she did… I think maybe when she said “I meant to drop it there” that she was thinking “That silly woman who picked it up… thinking I dropped in by accident. It was nice of her to pick it up for me, but there was no need” So when I started talking about her lack of passion, she probably had no idea WHAT I could be going on about and that’s why she got scared and rolled up her window (at the time, I thought she was just being rude and getting my out of her face by rolling up her window). Who knows. I should have told her that she’s welcome to litter as much as she wants in her own driveway, but that I’d appreciate that she not do it at “my” lake, so that I could get her to see my point of view about the incident a bit better (hindsight, you know). As I initially marched over to the truck, I briefly thought about pointing out that littering was illegal, but decided not to say that because, duh, everyone knows that and I’m not one to believe that just because the government mandates something, it must be the right thing to do (though I am against littering, of course). But overall I’m happy with my handling of the situation. When I saw the tissue drop for the second time, you can bet I had to hold back a swearing and yelling instinct. In my “maturity,” I know that calm and collected is a more effective way to go. Are there really people who, if they actually thought it through, would not think there’s anything wrong with littering so blatantly at a public park? I think maybe I met such a person today.

Hang on, what was I meant to be writing about? Oh yes, Thanksgiving. So I got home, got the meatless loaf and stuffing into the oven and realized I had enough time to prepare another dish—sweet potatoes with apples and walnuts in a buttery-sugary syrup. After I got that into the oven, it was time to cook and marinate the beans, cook the corn and set the table with the Christmas-y placemats I made while stuck indoors during the recent wildfires. Jesse mashed the potatoes, adding garlic to his share (not for me, thank you! I like my potatoes bland). Then, we brought it all together and sat down on the floor (no dining table, only a coffee table) for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, with sparkling cranberry juice to drink. For dessert, it was pumpkin pie with some of the “stiffest” whipped cream I’d ever had… I was quite worried while Jesse was whipping it that it was only seconds away from becoming butter. Then, as you can perhaps imagine, it was time make some creative rearrangements in my fridge to get all the leftovers to fit. While I put food away, Jesse did a hill-high load of dishes. Go Jesse! Now as I write, the dishwasher is finishing the rest of the dishes and everything is almost back to normal in the kitchen. Ahh. But I still haven’t figured out the woman in the truck, and don’t think I ever will.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The day my car fell down




In late summer, 2005, I attended a work-related conference in New Hampshire, and was away for about a week. The day after I came back to San Diego, I decided to go shopping. I got in my car, put it in reverse, let out the clutch, and slowly starting backing up while turning the wheels slightly to maneuver out of the parking spot. Kerklunk. I heard a noise as if I had just driven over something, and my car shifted perceptively. I got out and went over the the passenger side, since that's where I'd heard the noise from. Instead of the flattened object on the ground I expected to find, I found that the tires on the passenger side of my car had fallen off the bolts that normally hold them on and that my car's body was now resting on the semi-upright rims of my tires. I then noticed that my hubcaps and lugnuts were missing on that side... yep, someone had stolen them! I had just had new tires put on my car ~2 weeks earlier, and I wondered if that's what they had been after. The first photo is a close up of the one tire... it's hard to see what's going on, but do notice that no bolts are protruding through the four holes near the center of the tire. The second photo is from the back (my car is on the right... that's Jesse's old Buick on the left) and you can see the tilt in my car towards the passenger side (the right side, for the South Africans reading this).

I pride myself in being relatively freak-out-proof... I am normally calm in "scary" situations. However, I took it so personally that someone had shown that little interest in my well-being (I mean, what if I hadn't been trying to turn my car while reversing? How far could I have driven before my tires fell off? Could they not have left me a note "hey, look out, I stole your lugnuts so your tires will fall off if you drive"?) that I was instantly upset. I went back to the apartment and woke Jesse up and told him with panic in my voice that I needed help. That woke him up a lot quicker than usual! I felt silly being so worked up about it, but told him the story and asked him what I should do. Most people probably don't know this about me, but I am quite handy at "fix-it" stuff. Being a landlady in graduate school certainly helped. I do plumbing, electrical, painting, woodwork, oil changes etc. So for me to ask Jesse (who has none of the forementioned abilities... sorry Jesse, love you anyway) what I should do was very unusual. Anyway, to keep this from being a runaway story, I'll say that I got him to drive me to an auto parts store so that I could buy replacement lug nuts, then chickened out of jacking my car up on my own (since TWO tires were off, I didn't know where I should put the jack), called a towing company and ended up telling the guy how to do things (he was a bit slow, and he couldn't get his jack in place, so I lent him mine). Later, I went to a dealer and got the OEM lugnuts (since the first ones were generics and didn't fit very well) and a set of rim locks (locking lugnuts--you need a certain "key" socket to get them off. I didn't know what rim locks were before I moved to California, land of car thefts... I had previously had my indicator (turn signal) light bulbs stolen in this same garage, which is gated, as you can see in the second photo). And about a year ago, I bought two replacement hubcaps off of eBay... my car was 11 years old when this happened, by the way, and it was the original, plastic, scratched up hubcaps that were stolen. I got similarly scratched up replacement ones (hopefully not the exact same ones!). So my car is all back in one piece.

Later that day, I called the police to report the theft. The policeman who took down my information panicked slightly when I said that my tires fell off--he was apparently worried that I had made it onto street and picked up some speed when this happened. If only the thief had considered that!

Monday, November 12, 2007

The story behind the picture


I have spent much mental energy trying to think what I am going to use a blog for in general, and also what I'll write about in my first entry. But all that thinking made it start to feel like this was getting far too serious, so I decided to just quickly choose a photo off my computer and write about its background.

This fine specimen of a cactus you see here was purchased at the Madison (Wisconsin) farmer's market by a woman who worked in a laboratory down the hall from me when I was a graduate student. But when she bought it, it looked nothing like this! It was small enough to fit into the lid of a soft drink bottle. This student was worried because her cactus wasn't growing and decided to give it to me to see if I could "rescue" it. I gave it some water, put it on a sunny ledge in my then-lab and it started growing. Instead of just getting bigger and keeping its shape, it put out a little "bud" on top of it that soon looked like a mini version of the main part of the plant (the original plant is the whitish part at the base in the photo). But it kept on growing and eventually outgrew the first part of the plant. As I kept watering it, it kept putting out more and more buds, mostly in a straight line. I transplated it to a bigger pot... and, well, I think the photo (which is a scan of photos I joined together) tells the rest of the story. As you can see, it was so "stringy" that there was no way it could support itself. I have no idea what kind of cactus this is or what shape it normally grows in, but I can't imagine natural selection would let it grow like this out in the wild! I seem to remember some incident when the cactus fell over onto someone and either they tried to catch it or it scratched them or something... my memory fails in the details but you can imagine the possible outcomes of human vs. cactus. I took this photo of it soon before I destroyed it by chopping it into bits and putting the bits in the garbage (I assume I wrapped them up to save a garbage handler from the thorns). It was getting to be too much to care for and worry about. I also didn't find it very attractive!

A follow-up to this story is that a couple of months ago, I purchased some antique botanical prints online from a place called "The Cactus Patch," which also sells cacti plants, including at the Madison farmer's market! I wonder if The Cactus Patch is where the photographed cactus started its life? Small world.