Category Archives: minutiae
2012
The old year ends and a new one has begun. For me, 2011 was a thoroughly mixed bag. I turned 30 and broke a bone for the first time about a week later, which resulted in a month away from work — not exactly the sort of vacation I had in mind. In March, I returned to work and began a two-month-long regimen of physical therapy. Some ongoing family issues continued to be troubling.
On a more positive note, we made an offer on and bought a house in a nice neighborhood, just a few doors up the street from a good friend from work. We took a week’s vacation in the mountains of western Maryland in October, just as the autumn leaves were at their prettiest. We celebrated our first Christmas in the new house with a live tree and good food.
I resolved last New Year’s never to make another New Year’s resolution ever again, and while it remains to be seen whether or not I hold myself to that commitment for the rest of my life, I did keep my word this year. There are things that I would like to accomplish this year: a few upgrades to the house, a more positive attitude towards both my domestic and working lives, lose a little weight, and, maybe, make the first steps towards taking the graduate-school plunge. I’m not going to hold myself to any of this, though. Sometimes life intervenes; sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
We woke up this morning to snow, which I was not expecting.
On the third day of Christmas…
Make a list for the contractor. You’re more nit-picky than I am, so you’ll be more thorough.
Since we moved into our new home in May, we’ve made note of a few minor problems that will need to be corrected, as well as a few cosmetic — but not necessary — changes that we’d like to make. We noticed some water entering the attic roof a couple of weeks ago — not a lot, and only when we receive a really heavy rain — and that meant that it was time to call in one of the more popular local contractors.
Aside from taking care of the minor roof leak, there is some tile-work around the living room fireplace that needs a little restoration, and we’re curious what it might cost us to have at least the living room floors sanded and refinished. The contractor stopped by today around 1pm, and he’ll provide us with a quote for all of the work, though I think we’ll probably have just the leak taken care of for the time being.
Rattling off the last few days’ happenings in reverse, we met one of S’s old friends from high school, Jerry, and his wife and children for lunch yesterday. S. and Jerry hadn’t seen each other for six or seven years, and I’d never met him, but I managed to conquer my vestigial social phobia and actually had a nice time. It was good to meet them, and they stopped over at our house for the 25-cent tour before heading off to another social engagement.
Christmas itself was great — very low-key and informal. We cooked our turkey on the 24th, so dinner preparation on The Day itself was quite easy. Aside from turkey, we had mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, roasted brussels sprouts, dried corn, leftover homemade cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving (which had been frozen), baked pineapple, and dinner rolls. We exchanged gifts in the morning (hint: I’m typing this on one of my gifts) and took the dogs for a walk on the trail in the afternoon after dinner.
Working at an academic institution, we receive quite a bit of time off between Christmas Eve and New Year’s, and because of the way the holidays fell this year, work is closed for nearly two weeks. I used a couple of vacation days to extend my break to a full two weeks, and I could really get used to this being-paid-not-to-be-at-work gig. There will be plenty to do once we reopen, though, so I’m sure to fall back into my old routine quickly enough.
But let’s not rush that along just yet.
Keeping Christmas in My Own Way
I’m a (very) liberal atheist, but I’m not ashamed to say that I love Christmas — and always have. I’m a bit less abashed about my fondness for the holiday this year — spurred, I think, by the fact that we’ve moved into a home that I’m far more comfortable decorating, and, last but certainly not least, because I’m happier than I’ve been in recent years.
While I’m certainly not a practicing Christian, I come from a culturally Christian background, and so I celebrate the holiday with a Christmas tree, stockings, a traditional Christmas dinner, Christmas baking, Christmas music (including music of a religious nature), and, some years, I even set up a small crêche. For me, though, the use of the term “Christmas” is purely a matter of semantics. Many of the origins of Christmas date from pre-Christian times (see Saturnalia and Yule), and I’m perfectly happy for someone to wish me a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or a Joyous Julfest.
I find it very difficult to find evidence of “The War on Christmas” (which Fox News commentators seem so gleefully to decry). The majority of the country, it’s true, is comprised of Christians or those who are culturally Christian, and most of the winter-holiday celebrating I see and hear seems to be of the Christian/Christmas variety, but is it so difficult — or so awful — to wish everyone Happy Holidays? It’s an all-inclusive greeting that encompasses everything that late-year festivities can be to Christians and non-Christians – practicing and non-practicing alike. If I know that you’re a practicing Christian, I’ll very gladly wish you a Merry Christmas. If you’re a practicing Jew, I’ll likewise wish you a very Happy Hanukkah. But if I don’t know your religious affiliation, or if you haven’t one, I’ll wish you Happy Holidays, and that’s what I wish to you, my readers, tonight.
We spent our Christmas Eve in front of the fire, listening to "A Christmas Carol" on WQXR. How did you spend your evening?
Timeline Hysteria
Central Ohio received its first seasonal snowfall of any real significance yesterday. (We had a few flakes last week, but no accumulation.) It was just enough to be pretty, but not enough to be dangerous — which is exactly how I like snow to be. We were supposed to spend the afternoon/evening in Columbus yesterday, but that fell through, and, aside from a quick shopping trip today, my only contact this weekend with the world outside my house was through the newspaper and Facebook.
Facebook’s new “Timeline” seems to be hitting more and more users these days, and I’ve noticed a lot of worried murmurs. Some have even gone so far as to deactivate accounts that have been in use for years, only to reactivate a new, sanitized account. For my part, though, aside from finding the layout a bit puzzling, I don’t really understand all the commotion and panic surrounding Timeline’s rollout. Timeline appeared for me earlier this week, and Facebook tells me that I joined the site in April 2005 — which was shortly after my alma mater became part of the Facebook network, and only about one month before I graduated. Back in those days, of course, Facebook was limited to educational networks, and I didn’t do much with it again until 2007. Drunken college party photos never appeared on my Facebook profile (not that I ever really attended any drunken parties to begin with), and the most embarrassing things I can find were posted during my blog-whatever-comes-to-mind phase, during which I must have assumed that my friends would find my coffee-drinking habits to be breathtakingly interesting.
Nevertheless, my Facebook posts have long been limited to friends — and, sometimes, to subsets of friends — for the simple reason that I look at Facebook as a communications tool. It’s an email exchange in photos, or a telephone call in one-to-three sentence exchanges. I wouldn’t want my ‘phone calls in the public domain, so why would I want to open up all of my snapshots and mundane comments about daily life for public consumption? Any default privacy settings that you’ve selected should still be in effect once your Timeline is activated, and if you’ve exercised reasonably good judgment in regards to what you’ve shared on Facebook over the years — and if you’ve taken responsibility for maintaining your privacy settings — you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Might want to delete some of those old “I’m drinking coffee” posts, though, because, trust me, noöne cares.
It’s really only Wednesday?
It’s been a long week thus far, and, I have to say, I’ll be really glad when it’s over. I’ve so many little personal projects to accomplish before Christmas — shopping, cards, planning some sort of Christmas dinner — yet little motivation to do any of it on account of an oddly coördinated week at work. One thing I did manage to accomplish today during my (late) lunch hour was a letter to a distant cousin in Germany. We stumbled on each other about three years ago during one of my many spates of genealogical research, and have kept up a sporadic correspondence ever since.
My German, while not perfect, is better than his English, so we conduct our correspondence (his typed, apparently, on a manual typewriter — he’s 80) in German. Each time we exchange letters, I’m reminded of how much easier it is for me to read German and to understand spoken German than it is for me to write in German. No matter how well you understand another language, it’s always a challenge to express yourself in a tongue that’s not your own. Nevertheless, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to feel that I still have a connection, however tenuous, to an ancestral Heimat – for my cousin still lives in the town my grandmother’s great-grandfather called home until 1849. My German-American family last traveled there in the 1930s, and it is possible that my cousin (as a very young child) met my more immediate ancestors on their last trip home.
It seems remarkable to me that the American side of my family remained in contact with the German side of the family for nearly 90 years. I wonder if they would have stayed in contact had the war not intervened, or if distance and a language barrier would have eventually eroded the link anyway.
My German cousin's Christmas packet last year contained a number of homemade ornaments.
Something you don’t see everyday
From a distance, I thought he was shirtless but wearing shorts; after all, at 85 degrees, this was the first really hot day of the year, and college students sometimes wander around campus half-dressed. That’s how they roll. By the time I got to my car, however, I realized that there were no shorts at all — just a loin cloth. A back pack and a loin cloth, worn by a student ambling casually down the lane. In all other ways, today was a typical work day on The Hill.
After work, I met a friend for coffee, though I ended up ordering iced chai instead (sweet, vicious sugar!) and we spent an hour catching up on each others’ lives and complaining about Republicans.
And since this was the first truly hot day of the year, I finally broke down and turned on the window air conditioners this evening. I forget every year how loud they are, and I will be so glad to have central air again when we move into the new house!
Time
When you’re waiting for something to happen, time has a funny way of speeding by while somehow managing simultaneously to stand still. I never realized before just how time-consuming the home-buying process could be, but, in just under two weeks, we will finally have the keys to the house.
And there’s still so much to do, not the least of which is to finish packing. I also need to compile a list of people and businesses to notify about my new address; I’ve started this at least three times, gotten distracted, and then felt the need to start all over again. Each time I think I have a complete list, I realize that I’ve forgotten something.
On Nearsightedness
Back in the mists of time otherwise known as the late 1980s, I began having trouble with my eyesight. It didn’t seem like a very big deal at first, but became a significant problem by the time I started second grade in 1988. At the beginning of the school year, I was placed in the higher-level reading group, which meant that I had to switch classes for an hour or two each day. My reading teacher insisted that I sit towards the back of the classroom — probably because I was generally well-behaved and, therefore, trustworthy — and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I could barely read anything she wrote on the blackboard. I complained to the teacher over and over again that I couldn’t see the board, but she never believed me. As I grew increasingly frustrated, Mrs. C. discovered that behavioral problems were not beyond the pale of possibility with me.
At seven, I was already an avid reader, and, at the time, was engrossed in a series of novels for children by Lucy Fitch Perkins; the novels concerned the adventures of twins growing up around the world. I found them utterly fascinating — often much more so than whatever we happened to be reading in class at the time, and, under the guise of having to go to the bathroom, I would sneak them out of the classroom with me and lock myself in a stall in the restroom so that I could read a few more pages. Although I no longer remember exactly how the situation resolved itself, I suspect that my absences from class grew longer, more frequent, and more noticeable. It seems to me that Mrs. C. may have called my mother in to discuss my deception, but, at any rate, my nearsightedness was discovered soon enough, and I was swiftly fitted with a new pair of glasses: thick (for my age) lenses, with thick brown plastic frames. My eyesight grew worse nearly every year until reaching a sort of plateau by the time I was in my late ‘teens. Thirty now, I’ve had only three or four small changes in my prescription since the late ’90s. Nevertheless, one habit I acquired as a myopic youth carried over into my bespectacled life: a fondness for reading without glasses by, quite literally, burying my head in a book.
I am so nearsighted that a text can be no further than three or four inches away from my face before it becomes illegible, yet I enjoy reading without my glasses. Serendipitously, this works to my advantage as I’m an easily distracted reader. I can’t read and comprehend while someone else watches television; the noise is too intrusive. (But I can listen to the radio while I read — figure that one out!) I’m also distracted, when I read, by other physical objects that are within my reach: another book, a magazine or newspaper, even my computer or iPad. It all aids in ruining the concentration I need to comprehend what I’m reading.
So, in some ways, I’m grateful for my nearsightedness. There are times when it’s the only thing that makes it possible for me to read with purpose over a sustained period. It’s how I read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom; frequently, it’s how I read the New York Times. Something about burying my head in a book — something about being so close to the text that I can see its texture and smell the ink — enables me to concentrate within the shallow depth of field I experience when my glasses come off.
Hooray for nearsightedness!
Unstructured Rambling
Wow, it’s been a while since I last entertained my three or four readers with a thrilling dispatch from my life in the uncivilized reaches of the American Middle West. What’s been going on? Not a lot, to be honest.
Much to my own dismay, my organizing, tossing-out, and packing efforts have been, largely, non-existent. I just can’t seem to overcome the inertia I feel when I think about it. I’ve always been a pack rat, and it’s not easy for me to take a pile of stuff and separate it into piles of treasures-to-keep and junk-to-toss. In one week minus two hours, the new house will be ours, but moving day is still several weeks away, and, somehow, I haven’t quite felt the approaching deadline yet.
I’m nearly finished with physical therapy; my last appointment is next Monday. I’ve been feeling perceptibly better every week — sometimes, even, on a day-by-day basis — and I will be very glad for a measure of normalcy to return again to life. Though therapy will soon be ending, I likely won’t feel completely “normal” again until mid-summer, and my last appointment with the orthopædic surgeon is in early July.
I have so much correspondence to catch up on: cards and notes to acknowledge from February, when I was mostly unable to write. Whether by letter, ‘phone call or email, I’m notoriously bad at keeping up with people on an individual basis. My best intentions are usually thwarted by an odd work schedule or other commitment, and a letter I intend to write in March often isn’t finished until May. After I organize my stuff — there’s that word again – and we move into the new house, I hope to keep up with these things in a more responsible way. I have decided that my desktop computer will not inhabit the room I intend to use as my office (where I end up storing it remains to be seen), which will contain a bookshelf, a writing desk, my piano, and, I think, a comfortable chair where I can read. Hopefully, the lack of electronic distractions will allow me to be more focused in regards to my reading and writing. I do intend to purchase a new laptop once we’ve recovered a little from the shock of making the down payment, but that won’t happen for several months yet. I find that I use my desktop computer less and less all the time — mostly only when I need to store or manipulate large files — so that all I really need for day-to-day use is a laptop.
Sometimes I really hate the entries I post here. They’re so unstructured. I wrote such good academic papers in college; structure in writing was one of my strongest talents. I really feel that I’ve lost that. I’m just out of practice, I guess, but sometimes…
Exhausted
I’m substituting tonight for a coworker who usually works the late evening shift. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked these hours, and, as I can usually curl up and go to sleep at 10pm, it’s definitely a challenge to keep myself up and running at this hour. Still, everyone deserves a day off now and again. It’s been a busy evening, and I’m taking a late-evening coffee break at the moment. I desperately need the coffee, actually, as I’m still not sleeping well (a continuation of my post-humerus-fracture troubles).
The recovery is progressing nicely; I’ve more than passed the halfway mark in my physical therapy. My range of motion is almost back to normal, and what remains now is to regain the ability to bear weight on an arm that hasn’t lifted more than a pound or two since the end of January. While I’m supposed to be on “light duty” at work until June (not that I frequently lift heavy objects at work anyway), I am feeling stronger as the weeks pass, and I hope to be able to fill something slightly more than just a supervisory role by the time we’re scheduled to move.
When we placed an offer on the house, I honestly thought that the time leading up to the settlement and moving dates would fly by. Instead, I’ve found that time seems to have dug in its heels, determined to stand still. I haven’t felt quite this much anticipation since I was a small child waiting for the joys of Christmas when the joys of Christmas still held some mystery.
