Category Archives: Whatever

Five things

I’ve avoided doing this meme thing, but am clueless tonight for anything to write about. The most interesting tidbit I’ve come up with so far is to tell you about the student I had to speak with after class last night because his behavior was so inappropriate. Anyone care to guess what this 18 year old young man’s excuse was? Turns out that the 20 year old sitting next to him was tickling him. Since when are young men still tickling one another in college? I left elementary-level teaching because I’m ill-equiped to do deal with this type of silliness. 10 year olds don’t understand my sarcasm, but you can bet this young man did.

So I’m supposed to come up with a list of things you don’t know about me. The challenge here is to make it entertaining.

  • When I was 15 or 16 years old I decided that I wanted to join the Peace Corps and travel to exotic places and help poor people, so I sent away for the information packet and application, but when it arrived it scared the crap out of my dad and I got a talking to. I also dated a guy from Costa Rica for a few years and my dad was afraid I’d run off and be living on a coffee farm.
  • I love green olives. Now that’s entertaining!
  • I’ll listen to a song I like over and over and over until I get sick of hearing it. I do the same with food. There was a time when I ate tuna on wheat with american cheese for lunch every day until it didn’t taste good anymore.
  • I have hyper-sensitive hearing for oddball sounds. Mostly annoying ones that drive me to distraction. Like the sound the ceiling fan is making all of a sudden, or the rattle-and-hum of my car. My husband, Mr. Fix-It, never hears this stuff.
  • I am useless with diagrams – especially in instruction manuals – I need a verbal list, preferably in number order, to understand how to do things. My husband has this intuitive sense of how things work that baffles me. I routinely have to ask students to help me set up the overhead projector so that they don’t have to look at things backwards and upside down. Plus, this semester my classroom is *technologically enhanced* – but I still need a student to help me get my laptop hooked up so that I can use PowerPoint to teach.

So that’s five things you didn’t need to know about me. Hopefully, I’ll be a bit more inspired tomorrow.

A valentine rose

“Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?”
– Pablo Neruda
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Just a little something for you to ponder on a Friday night in February.

Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He wrote spectacular love poems and simple humorous odes, as well as political and historical poetry. He’s been one of my favorites since college, and I remember his poetry as being among the first that I could enjoy without the benefit of a bilingual dictionary. The snippet of a poem above comes from one of the last works before his death in 1973 callled, “A Book of Questions”.

Cranky catfish


If I had a tunnel to hide in today I would do it.

Do the people you work with ever make you feel like you were dropped here from some other planet? Like their mindless drivel about shoes and vacations and ex-husbands is some foreign language that hurts your ears to listen to? Like their screwy perspective on the world might be contagious and you should run screaming from your desk before you’re infected with their stupidity?

Do I need to think about a new job?

😉

This rant brought to you courtesy of seasonal affective disorder. Cheerful and sweet Laura may return tomorrow after a night under the grow light.

Born to run

This story touched me today. I’m not sure why it should; I don’t know anything about racehorses, other than enjoying the ones I see boarded and pastured locally. There’s two racetracks nearby to my home, but I’ve never been to see a race and don’t gamble anyway.

For a few years when I was first married I used to like to ride my bike across the river and past the stables where the racehorses are kept. In the very early mornings sometimes I would see them out being walked and the sounds and smells of the stables marked the half-way point of my ride.

I hadn’t been following Barbaro’s recovery, but was reminded of him this morning when I heard a somewhat-hopeful-sounding piece on NPR on my way into work. By lunch time I had heard that he was put down. It came as a shock considering what I’d heard just a few hours before.

From the reading I’ve done this afternoon it seems as if Barbaro had quite a fan club out there. I have to wonder why so many people can hang their hearts on an injured horse. Racehorses are injured all the time. It seems almost destined to happen when you consider the way they’re bred to have such delicate long legs beneath an oversized frame. And trained and raced so hard when so young and still growing. It seems like such folly that we should be surpised when one’s injured doing what they’re born to do; to run for the sake of our entertainment.

I think his owners are to be commended for giving him the chance to recover against impossible odds and I’m glad that his vet had the compassion and the courage to put him down before his condition got any worse.

A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old work horse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose into the open. ~Gerald Raferty

Idleness

“Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.” – John Boswell

I’m going to spend a few idle hours this evening with a new cross-stitch project that I bought the materials for on Friday night and haven’t looked at since. You know how on Friday night with the whole weekend ahead anything seems possible? Well, here it is Monday evening and the fabric and threads and chart are still sitting in the bag where I left them at the start of the weekend.

We had a dusting of snow overnight. Not enough for my husband to be called in to work to plow, but enough to make the everyday scene above look a little special, to me, at least. This is a tiny wooded tangle that separates my office building from the police academy that is situated behind the slight incline and closer to the road. I want to believe that a pair of Red-Tails nest here, because I see them perched in these branches so often, but I’ve never been able to spot their nest.

“Divine Design”

Walking in the woods or along the beach at any season reveals an endless variety of forms. Nature is full of delicate colors and intricate shapes – the mosaic of a butterfly’s wing, the coordinated movements of a flock of birds or school of fish, the patterns of seashells, the architecture and symmetry of a beehive.

These patterns in nature captivate the naturalist and photographer in me. To those with an inquisitive mind, not content to just gaze in wonder, nature’s complex patterns may provide the added appeal of mystery surrounding artistry.

“And while I stood there
I saw more than I can tell,
and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner
the shapes of things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.”
Native American, Black Elk

Vicki left that quote on the comments to this post a while back. Also in the comments to that post, my brother Kevin made reference to the idea of the divine in nature which he reminds himself of by displaying a few found objects from nature on the shelf in his cubicle. He sees similarities in all apects of nature’s design and believes that if you can’t find God in a pinecone, you won’t be finding Him in church.

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A co-worker of mine also likes to display found objects from nature in her cubicle. She is a budding naturalist (whether she knows it or not, Linda!) and rather than seeking the divine in nature, I think the variety of colors and textures are what most appeal to her. Linda is the Martha Stewart in our department, and generally serves as cruise ship director and party planner. She’s good at what she does. She loves baking and interior decorating. She’s also a bit…. I would call her ditzy, but that might sound mean… let’s say instead that she is easily distracted. Vicki did a post about a particular food channel celebrity which contained a description that I think is hilarious and that I like to apply to Linda when her social tendencies are particularly annoying to me on a Monday morning – Linda prides herself on her advanced degree in tablescape architecture. (You’ll just have to go and read Vicki’s post before you’ll understand the referencego ahead, I’ll wait ’til you’re back).

So the other day I picked up the pinecone you see above from Linda’s cubicle-top menagerie. Turning it over and round and round in my hand I noticed the pattern and turned to Kathy, who God-Bless-Her-Sits-Next-to-Linda, and remarked that it looked to me as if someone had actually taken a sharpie marker and drawn the design you see on each of the scales. Linda was only half-listening at this point, which is her usual state with any conversation. Kathy wondered aloud that anyone would go to the trouble to do this and I said that I thought that, yes, someone had actually gone to the trouble to design it that way. “Really?” Kathy asked. (Kathy and I talk this way all the time – on the surface very mundane, but we both know what we’re really discussing). “Sure,” I told her, “that’s divine design at work”.

At that, Linda’s ears perked up.

“I love Divine Design! Candice Olsen is my absolute favorite! Her designs are so innovative and inspiring. Did you see the last episode when…”

Linda. Gotta love her.

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If we keep our minds and hearts open to it, nature’s creations may delight the imagination and challlenge our understanding of the world around us. How do these patterns develop? What rules or guidelines shape the world we live in?

What draws you to nature – the mystery or the artistry?

Fresh faces

I met my new students for the first class of the Spring semester last night. I’m less nervous as the years go by, but it still makes me pretty anxious. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way my knees shook the first time I faced a group of students ten years or so ago. It’s not that bad anymore, but I teach semi-adults now. I think a group of 6th graders, like that first class years ago, would have that effect on most anyone.

One plus for me as a college instructor is that I get a new crop of students every few months. Just when we begin to get tired of one another and have each other figured out – the semester ends!

For all the nerves involved in the first class meeting, I have a good time with it. I get to pretend that I’m very strict and likely to be a difficult teacher – for a few hours anyway. They see through that act pretty quickly in the weeks to come.

They seem like they’ll be an interesting class. There’s a few culinary school students, and a dance major, and a girl in the automotive program. All of them claim to be good readers, but hate reading, and most couldn’t name the last book they’d read.

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A gentle, but late reminder to anyone planning to submit a photo for this week’s Good Planets on Saturday. Please email to me at lc-hardy AT comcast DOT net sometime tomorrow. Thanks.

Two things meme

from Laura at Natural Notes 3:

two names you go by: Laura and Sweetie
two parts of your heritage: Pennsylvania Dutch and German
two things that scare you: fire and going to the dentist
two everyday essentials: Carmex lip balm and coffee
two things you are wearing right now: jeans and ridiculous slipper socks with pom-poms on the toe
two of your favorite current bands/artists: Little Big Town and Luka Bloom
two things you want in a relationship (other than love): laughter and shared values
two favorite hobbies: being outdoors and reading
two things you have to do this week: get ready for the start of Spring semester and clean up Xmas clutter
two stores you shop at: Barnes and Noble and Whole Foods
two favorite sports: people-watching and surfing (the net)
two shows you like to watch: Without a Trace and Real Time with Bill Maher
two things you’d buy if money were no object: nothing comes to mind right away!

two wishes for 2007: happiness and less stress

Festive frog

This frog perched pondside is the extent of our outdoor decorating this year – I like it, but worry that it might be keeping the fish awake! My husband loves outdoor decorations and would have the yard filled with obnoxious stuff if I let him have his way. He came home with this gem following an unsupervised shopping excursion with his brother a few weeks ago. It makes me laugh when I see it there in the middle of the dark yard, so it can stay.

We’re just about ready for company tomorrow; the house is mostly clean, the gifts are wrapped and under the tree, and my husband is out doing the traditional *cookie run* to our friends. In good years we bake; the last few we’ve bought delicious trays of the best Italian cookies we can find to give as gifts for neighbors and coworkers. I have some cooking to do still and then plan to spend the rest of the night staring at our pretty tree from the couch.

Christmas tree bird count

Birdchick wondered if anyone had any fun bird ornaments, so I thought I’d post a few pics of some of the ones that grace our tree. We used just the glass ornaments to decorate this year, so the really *fun* ones stayed tucked away in the attic. If you’re a bird lover, I’m sure you have lots of *fun* bird ornaments that people have given you over the years. I’m not talking about nice ornaments; I mean the cheesy ones that people grab because they have a bird somewhere on them. I’ve got quite a few of those (that don’t resemble any natural bird I’ve ever seen) – mostly given by my SIL. And Kevin, not your wife, you know which SIL I’m talking about here! The type of ornaments that make you hesitant to admit to a hobby, for fear of what you might find wrapped beneath the tree with your name written on the tag.
Junior wanna-be?
Sometime before Christmas I need to learn how to take in-focus photos of the tree and ornaments.
Had I wanted to be cruel, I’d have posted fuzzy pictures of the not-quite-accurate, but still pretty ornaments and asked you to identify them.
These may be hard enough to ID without a good imagination. In addition to birds on our tree, we have lots of butterflies, dragonflies, and many other insects and animals thanks to the NWF catalog. They make nice sets and have new designs each year. My husband is a good customer.
The last few years they’ve offered lots of owls and herons, but only this eagle and no other hawks. I’d like a red-tail or maybe a handsome kestral.
We have a few ducks, mostly some variety of mallard, but this wood duck is a favorite. What’s on your tree?