Things I Have Been Thinking About

1. This poem:

The Quicksand Builders

The quicksand builders built
against the Folly of All.
They built from ancient custom.
They built for the good of the Wall.

As fast as they built, it sank,
and as fast as it sank, they built.
They felt no loss or sorrow,
no residue of guilt.

As long as they stayed on the job,
there was hope that the job would go.
The common people knelt
and prayed to the gods below.

The builders knew no gods
could save like a hard bed of silt,
and as fast as they built, it sank,
and as fast as it sank, they built.

-William Logan

2. This picture:



3. Not much else.

True, that.

"Sit down! You bewilder me," said the Duke. "Explain yourself!" he commanded.

"Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?"


--From Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.

True Stories

i.

Don't ask for the true story;
why do you need it?

It's not what I set out with
or what I carry.

What I'm sailing with,
a knife, blue fire,

luck, a few good words
that still work, and the tide.



-Margaret Atwood

Wrong Email Address

Gary wants me to come on Friday, and bring chicken (oops, too late)

Prof. Wolf's assistant would like to know if she will be brought to dinner directly from her plenary, or like, what.

An unknown phone # texted my email address to say "BRISTOL HAS TO GO! DID YOU SEE THAT?!?"

Deaona says: Happy anniversary! She says that Jackson will be Darth Vader this year as he is really into Star Wars.

Kelly says Happy Birthday and welcome to your 40s!

Jean & Don sent a very involved holiday schedule. For example: 12/11 is Grandaddy's Christmas, unless he calls it off. This will include Aunt Judy, Aunt Kay, etc. And whomever he chooses. For the Jean family, gifts will be for children only (Michael, Mathew, Meagan, Mason, Ava, Kayden, Riley, Joey, Duncan and Madilynn). Grandaddy will make his own choices and decisions.

...

They become white noise, easily passed by in the "not for me" 2 second skim.

Each misdirected; each remarkable in its own way.

Siam, favorite photos.

Look how excited we both are to be going to the park with Jason. Positively glowing!


When Siam and Jason moved in with me, and I would get home first--there was a whole lot of this: waiting at the door for Jason.


One of my favorite pictures ever. The animals never reached the "snuggle" stage like I hoped but it only took a few months for them to get used to each other in a "mutually-respecting-your-personal-space" type way. I was floored and so so happy to find them both chilling on the bed this day.


Christmas morning 2009 at Jason's mom's house in north Texas. It snowed.



We love you and we miss you, buddy dog.

Tomato part deux

Mary: Buddy! Buddy we have a problem.

Jason: I doubt that.

M: I can't put the tomato in the tomato holder because the tomato holder is already holding a tomato.

J: So put it in a bag.

M: Oh, like this bag here that was holding the tomato before I moved it to the tomato holder?

J: ...

M: This is really happening.

Whole Wheat Hater

(Sent to me via e-mail; note commentary which I have italicized here)

pasta rosa verde
Makes: 4 servings
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

8 ounces whole wheat (yeah, right... -J) penne pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 to 6 medium tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)
3 cups arugula, watercress, and/or spinach, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
2 tablespoons crumbled Gorgonzola or other blue cheese

Directions
1. Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and keep warm.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is tender. Stir in the tomatoes, salt, pepper, and red pepper, if using. Cook, stirring, about 2 minutes, until the tomatoes are warm. Mix in the arugula, watercress, or spinach and heat until just wilted.
3. Spoon the pasta into bowls and top with the tomato mixture. Sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts and cheese.


nutritional facts
362 calories, 12g protein, 55g carbohydrate, 12g fat (2g saturated), 5g fiber

Hello!

I happened to be in the neighborhood, and thought I'd stop by and say hi.

Hi!

How are you?

I am doing great.

Quick trip to Baltimore this week and saw many wonderful people I am so glad to see. And missed some, which is always sad, but inevitable.

And, considering I had a bonafide panic attack about a week before takeoff, not too shabby.

Mary, get a grip.

BABIES! Let's have babies.

A few "when are you getting married" inquiries this week, which was weird. Why would I want to do that? Other people do that, and I am happy for them. But, no thank you.

However, babies, YES.

I hope it is ok to ignore babies and carry them around in a bag for five months, because that is what I have done with my work responsibilities. UNTIL NOW! We never stopped getting things done, but now we will get them done with confidence. And less stress. Because we can access the appropriate folder. Uh-huh. For future reference, the appropriate folder is not that shady area of the brain where you try to store all important information including names, dates, places, things you are supposed to do, things other people are supposed to do, and things that need to be done but you are not really sure what to do or who should do it and then it all gets displaced by something mindblowing on Star Trek: TNG.

That poker game!!! Deja vu and altering your current reality! Crazytown.

Well, this was fun. Take care, blogosphere. Until the next bloggy business...

Sam Beard

Sam Beam, I love you, but I don't want to make out with you.

(Shave your beard.)

Upwards Over The Mountain

(Not the Austin City Limits version, which is amazing and not anywhere available on the internet. Check PBS.)

I Love This. Sign me up for Bible School.

"Don't worry about tomorrow, This is not a suggestion, but a command. I divided time into days and nights, so that you would have manageable portions of life to handle. MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU, BUT ITS SUFFICIENCY IS FOR ONLY ONE DAY AT A TIME. When you worry about the future, you heap day upon day of troubles onto your flimsy frame. You stagger under this heavy load, which I never intended you to carry."
Matthew 6:34, 2 Corinthians 12:9

#misdirected-emails-thanks

You Say Tomato...

M: I need you to get on board with me on something.

J: Ok, what's that?

M: The leftover onion... is in the tomato holder. It looks like a tomato, but it is an onion.



J: No.

M: What?

J: 1. It needs to be refrigerated, and 2. it will ruin the plastic and smell like onion forever.

M: Well, GEEZ, ok.

J: It's in there now?

M: I'm MOVING it. I thought I was making a funny, but apparantly I am causing a vegetable disaster.

J: You should put it in an onion holder.



M: I don't have an onion holder. I have a tomato holder. That was holding an onion. That is now going in a plastic bag.

J: Well, you should get an onion holder.

M: YOU should get an onion holder.

Don't show your neck around here anymore

Subject: Dress Code
From: Les to bob, Lynn, mark, me
9:03 PM (21 minutes ago)

"Bob please inform gail of Ross s surname who played at quinns last night as I gave him his first warning for not wearing a collared shirt."

-------------------------------

OHHHHHHHHH SNAP.

(file under misdirected e-mails)

Homepage

The benefits to having two seperate user accounts on the computer is that my stuff doesn't have to fraternize with Jason's stuff, and vice versa, and my iTunes does not get littered up with Cambodian pop music.

The downside is that certain programs, if open by another user, cannot be opened until they are closed by the original user. And sometimes these programs make themselves very difficult to close. I'm looking at you, webcam.

Sometimes I'm not sure which user account is open, so I hit the homepage button: Washington Post = Mary; New York Times = Jason.

The Wife Who Could Not Work

The next installment of bedtime stories from Children of Wax: African Folk Tales concerns marital relations and division of labor.

So a rich man goes adventuring and in one village, he spots the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. She is a serious catch. He approaches her father to ask for her hand in marriage and her father says he can marry her for 50 cows (a lot of cattle, in this story). The rich man agrees to pay her father 50 cows and they shake on it, after which the father says, oh, by the way, you should know--a girl as beautiful as this one is not able to work. She is too delicate. And the rich man says, no problem.

The man takes his new wife back to his village where everybody ooohs and aaaahs over her beauty. Since he travels often, he installs new wife in his house and she sits in the shade every day. After a time, the other women in the village grow weary of this and they think, seriously, there is lots of work to do: she needs to pitch in. They wait until a time when the husband is out of town and then approach her about helping with an easy task: fetch water in a jug from the river. And she's like, sure! The beautiful woman takes the jug to the river, fills it with water, and on the way back she is caught in quicksand, weighed down by her cargo, and sinks below the surface.

After they realize she is missing, the other women in the village FREAK OUT and make up a lie about how she was eaten by a lion. But the husband, upon his return, is not deceived by this story, and he goes to the local wise man to figure out how to find his wife. The wise man tells him to go to the riverbank and get a fat woman (I am not making this up) to jump up and down in the sand. Husband does this, and slowly but surely the wife emerges from the sand and everyone apologizes and promises to never make her work again.

Moral of the story? Well, that's a weighted question, now, isn't it?

If you ask me, beautiful people should surely be revered and consulted with and not forced to toil, as we have this unfortunate habit of stepping into quicksand.

On the other hand, combine a beautiful person with a control freak and she's like, "I'm cool!" even as she's sinking.

Perhaps we are all the beautiful wife, and perhaps we are all the rich man, and the fat woman. We are all too delicate for this world, and we work anyway, and we guard our possessions, and we strive for social justice.

And if we have any sense at all, when we find ourselves in quicksand we drop the jug of water and fight for our lives to get out.

Jury of Your Fears

I don't normally blog about work.

And, I'm not going to start.

Except to say, that my new office setup is something of a fishbowl.

Imagine a large room. And in every corner of that room, there is a desk. And at every desk, there is a person, staring into the fishbowl. And a large, mostly underutilized space in the middle, perfect for dance parties or cartwheels or placing a table and placing papers upon said table (some of these things happen more often than others).

So that, when a person walks into the room, they have four people staring at them from every angle, passing judgement, 360-degree-mirror style. It's not terrible user friendly.

And, I think an office should be friendly.

For the people who work in this office space, it means at any hour of the day, three people are in your direct line of sight, and vice versa. It also means that most phone conversations are extremely transparent. I did not fully comprehend the repercussions of this set-up until a co-worker in the fishbowl remarked to me, "Mary, you are very expressive."

"What??"

"You make noises, and faces, and it is very easy to see what you are thinking."

And this is all true.

And I think probably, in order to be a better professional, and hide my Achilles' heel(s), which include making commentary at the computer and making faces during phone calls and reacting to various e-mails that cross my path, that probably I should have a cubicle, or like a pizza box or something.

So I am advocating for a cubicle. Or "like a pizza box." Or something.

Which is a strange position to take, but here I am.

And I love my job, I do. I get expressive because it means something to me -- about my own professional proficiencies, about the ability of my acronym to do good in this world, about our shared future and what will become of it.

And every time someone walks into the room I want to offer them a seat, a comfortable seat with an advantageous vantage point, so they can get comfortable and we can just talk. I want to like people and be liked. I want to have the space to do this well.

I am working to get to the point where I can make these things happen.