Enough technology

Life in Enoughsville continues to give us plenty to be thankful for. Maybe this is a particular week to be thankful for manufacturing and technology.  OfSnough has had multiple stories related to his fancy exercise watch. He visited the dentist this week, and noted that he's comfortable enough there that his heart rate (62-ish) was lower there than while he sleeps -- although admittedly, he's not a world-champion sleeper the way his wife is.  

A month or so ago, while Gosling was in town, her exercise watch tried to friend my exercise watch, only to discover that I'd boxed mine up and put it in the closet after my half-marathon in September.  Her watch *did* friend OfSnough's, only to discover to her chagrin that he'd bumped her from #1 to #2 in the "steps walked" category in her social groupings.  She has vowed to surpass him, but to no avail.  My guy has pointed out that there's really no way she can win; either she has fewer steps than he does [a situation which persists, despite her incredible activity], or she can brag to her friends that she walked more steps than her 68-year-old father with bad knees (and one week, with Covid).  He's headed for 100,000 steps this week. Hard to keep up with that man!

Guinness (Gosling's dog) faced another technology challenge, and "faced" is exactly the right word: how to extricate yogurt without besmearing the face.

B-child responded, noting that adding extra technology components is no guarantee of success.

Prewash explained that she faces the challenge head on.  

In other tech-ish news, Nelson called me the other night.  He told me he'd spent about an hour chatting with Inkling, and then they realized he should call me, too, and joked that I'd chat for 5 minutes before hanging up.   Well, hah!  Shows them!   Nelson and I talked for a whole 12 minutes before I decided that was quite enough time on the phone, thank you.   This ought to hold me for about two weeks, I guess.

We've been front-row observers of big tech/machinery right outside our windows.   These construction workers are fascinating to watch, although a bit less so to hear and feel.   They have been digging holes in the ground, placing concrete boxes the size of someone's bathroom inside the holes, connecting the boxes with large, green pipes, filling in with gravel, stone, and dirt, and then tamping it all down.

It is the tamping that is the most . . . sensational . . . of these operations, if we think of "sensational" as affecting many senses.  Because we live in a city row house, all is connected (like the song that goes, "the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone").  The lot they're working on is connected to the street; the street is connected to our sidewalk; the sidewalk is connected to our concrete/brick porch, and the porch is connected to the house, and the house shakes and rumbles and tinkles and jitters all day long.  Sometimes the rumbling continues well into the evening, too -- the picture above was from a night in which I got a free "magic fingers" bed until about, oh, 10:30.  It does look like the project is progressing along, though, so our days of vibrating walls and floors are dwindling.  

The construction crew were not hard at work on Thursday, so my grandkids didn't get to see the diggers and tampers when they came over.  We had fun throwing a deflated football to a football-crazed dog, and then we engaged in collaborative art projects using old (but somehow still functional) markers.  

A different kind of tech art is a trophy emoji, like this one:  🏆, which Inkling's boss sent to her, because she's been doing such a good job of holding down the fort -- or the store -- on her own these past weeks.

What else?  We got our free covid tests delivered today (https://www.covidtests.gov/).  The site was surprisingly easy to use: it basically asks, "What's your address?" and then says, "okay, we'll mail you four tests!", and then they did.  The deaths due to Covid-19 in our area are still as high as they've ever been (roughly 50 per week), but the number of new people testing positive has dropped by half from a week ago.  

And on Monday, I start teaching in person again, with N95 or KN95 masks "strongly encouraged" and some kind of mask mandatory.  In one of this lovely paradoxes, meeting in person (not via technology) will help me better teach my students how to use technology -- specifically a typesetting language called "LaTeX", pronounced "La-Tech" because that thing that looks like an X is homage to the greek letter Chi (X).   I love LaTeX so much.  So, so much.

And that's the tech news from our family, which continues to be rich in our techventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

Enough with the jackhammer

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  It's been so rich, in fact, that I'm late in writing this up.  I'm late partly because I spent the weekend painting tables in a new student seminar room.  (Also involved in the project: heat gun and orbital sander).

I did NOT use backhoes, jack hammers, earth diggers, or dump trucks.  I left that particular work to the people digging up the road across the street from us, who were highly effective at shaking things up so that our whole house vibrated.  Free massages?

OfSnough returned from even colder places, where he got to visit Nelson and Sizzling.  

See that neat hat?  Two stories about that.  One is that, as people do when they're not me, OfSnough and Nelson spent some bonding time going shopping for new clothes.

Two is that, the hat is an indicator of other stuff that my offspring excel at; as my guy wrote later,

"The basketball game was a lot of fun to watch. You made a couple of three-point shots and played for almost two hours! Wow!"

And I don't even have the words to say how to think about all that this particular picture means to me these days.

At any rate, my guy is back in Enoughsville, cooking, doing laundry and vacuuming a lot of dog hair.   I am flinging emails through cyberspace and having meetings -- mostly Zoom meetings.   We started classes this semester, and I'm teaching a half-credit seminar that, for the first two weeks, will meet remotely.   Last year when I taught via Zoom, we started the year with cameras on, and that remained the default even though more and more students tended to turn them off eventually.  My class on Thursday morning was just the opposite:  a 4-by-5 grid of white names on black rectangles.   Ah, well, I let the students stay camera off; life is hard enough without adding to the stress, and we'll be in-person in February (or at least, that's the plan).

The other cool news is that at a Faculty Meeting, my boss announced the next round of Endowed Chairs, and one of them is . . . me.  (For those who don't know, for professors, being named to an endowed chair is kind of a cross between getting an award and getting a promotion.)  It also means I'll have a confusing title that includes other people's names:  Dr. Snough, the Thurston and Lovey Howell III Professor of Mathematics.  So that's fun.

And that's the hastily jotted-down news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

The down, blue downspout and some baloney

 Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  We're extra down, and full of baloney, but that's actually all good.  

Here's the extra down part.  Inkling texted me on Tuesday to say/ask

Hi Mama! How are you doing? 

Also, do you know how to reattach a downspout? Mine is currently on the ground

Since my daughter very wisely bought a house that was practically on the route between my office and the house I'd buy a few years after she bought hers [hint, hint, other children!], it was super easy for me to swing by on the way home from work.   The downspout was down, and it was blue; that was for sure.  But in no time at all we had the spout back up again.  There's one metal bracket missing that helps the spout hug the porch post, but it turns out that yarn works incredibly well as an interim attach-er.  

And speaking of yarn, Inkling is reveling in her new professional perks and responsibilities.  Perks: she now has a work email address, which is [this is fake, to protect identity] "inkling@EnoughsvilleYarnStore.com". 

AND, this week, she'll be running the shop herself, as the owners are taking their first ever (or at least, in many years) vacation, and entrusting her to their baby.  She's over the moon, as is her proud mama.  What a way to be bringing home the bacon!

Her proud mama may or may not be bringing home the bacon, but I *am* bringing home the bologna!  If you've read about all those blood shortages that hospitals and such are fretting about, it's not my fault: I donated my pint earlier this week.  Our local blood bank partners with a variety of local businesses, and so just about every time I do this, there are odd freebies.  I have a "clean cotton" scented candle from a few months back, and a t-shirt or two from other times.  This time, it was "give a pint, get a bologna".  I'm not a big bologna eater, actually, so this is likely to last a while; perhaps this will become fodder for teaching a middle-aged dog new tricks (since Prewash is less wishy washy about bologna than I am).  

Prewash is earning her keep, both by living up to the job implied by her name, but also by befriending and helping me entertain the child of my colleague who passed away last month.  The three of us go to the dog park just about weekly, and often stop by the math building first so we can use chalkboards, run like maniacs up and down the empty hallways (Prewash is the maniac, not the child), . . . 

. . . and play highly entertaining games of tug of war.  

I'm very impressed by this dog.  She is both exuberant and gentle.  Ge, the child, reaches into her mouth to remove the toy, and she never snaps.  Ge has learned they can have one hand on the dog toy, put the other hand on top of Prewash's nose, and say "drop it" -- and then she does, and bounds after the toy once Ge throws it.  

On the topic of gently training, I am more than a little flattered about what Kinderling tells me what she's been up to:  "purging and reorganizing:  we have so much stuff!".  Part of the reason I think this statement is so interesting is that her house feels the opposite of cluttered; it's wide open and what is in it feels joyous and interesting.  The wooden toys she's bought/made for her kids are abstract and attractive enough to encourage even adults to want to play with them in super creative ways.  And yet, I also totally appreciate her sentiment that having less unwanted things makes the wanted things all the easier to use.  Even though Kinderling is the child who joined our family last of all, there are so many ways I think we take after one another.  

OfSnough seems to have recovered from any of his Covid symptoms, and enough time passed that he was allowed to board a plane, so board a plane he did.  Of all the places he could go to escape the frigid 20°F weather that elbowed its way into our area,  he chose Minnesota, where he will get an appreciation for just how balmy it is here when he returns.  He's visiting Sizzling and Nelson, and hasn't sent me any pictures.  Updates next week on that one, I guess.  

And that's the news from our family which continues to have enough baloney and yarn and stuff. May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Dog-faced Pants-legs Gift bags

Every year, my two adult step-daughters give me the clothes they no longer want.   I'm a grateful recipient of many, many (way too many) hand-me-ups.   Fortunately, they both know that there will be a bunch of clothes that never make it into my closets, and that my home is largely a stepping stone along the path to a donation center.  

However, every year I do manage to snag a bunch of new-to-me outfits . . .  ooh, right now I'm wearing a sweater they gifted me three years ago and a pair of jeans from ¿some year?, so, --> Evidence <--.   Also, exercise clothes are fabulous.  

Gos and Sizz seem not to wear their clothes out, but I do.  A pair of sweatpants that I've been wearing for running for a half a decade or so has finally worn out: grown significantly hole-y in the mid-sections, and so of course I've been grateful that I've received just-in-time replacements from the snoughlings, so I can retire the hole-y pants for something less breezy.  

One of our conversations during the holidays this year was about trash (because somehow, I always seem to bring the conversation around to garbage, apparently).   In particular, we were discussing wrapping paper.  Gos noted, "well, at least you can recycle it", and I explained that wrapping paper has such a high plastic content that our recycling center won't take it.  We then turned to potential alternatives:  Gos suggested aluminum foil, and Inkling -- who knows me much better -- suggested that cloth bags could be an even better alternative.

All of this explains why I'm making gift bags for Gos out of the pants she once gifted me.

Gos is the one who loves dogs: she fosters rescue labs, writes books about the rescues, dresses her dogs for the holidays . . . if you see dogs on this blog, it's either Prewash or it's (more likely) Gos's furry friends.  I searched for "lab silhouette" on the web, traced my favorite version onto some precycled paper, and then cut out some cloth heads.  I loved the floppy ears of this particular silhouette enough that I sewed them separately, and those cute ears now flop around appropriately.  Add a button for an eye and ribbon for a collar, and the dog-face is good to go. 

Also, the hem at the bottom of the pants leg is now the top of the bag, making a perfect channel for the drawstring.  

I'm using one of the bags for Gos's birthday present (some books she kind of asked me for), and I'm saving the next for future presents, either from me or from Inkling.  So I guess we've got a leg up -- so to speak -- on next year's holiday shopping.

One more photo.
(The color looks different, but it's the same bag, different light).

We have enough snow to make us happy

Life here in Enoughsville continues to be rich and full.   This has been the week that I did not fly to Seattle for the big math meetings, because they are not happening (except maybe later, virtually), and the reason for all the "not"s is because of the infamous Omicron blowing through.   And sure enough, it's blowing.  Our college, in spite of having vaccine/booster mandates and mandatory masking, has declared that the first two weeks of the semester will be held remotely.  Area schools have had a few closings.  The local hospitals have record occupancy.  And here are four emails I got this week:

My boss: As fate would have it, somewhere during the last week I contracted COVID.. . .  Given that much of what I wanted us to discuss during our staff meeting dealt with our staffing during the two weeks of remote teaching, mine is a case in point of why we want to try to avoid increased transmission during the post-holiday period.

My running buddy:  Hey! I'd love to join but am going to skip this one. After waking up and not being able to smell Sunday morning, I took an at-home test and tested positive for COVID. I'm technically clear since it has been 5 days but I'm feeling a little cautious about breathing heavy on all of you ... just in case. 

A co-worker on a big project:  I've had Covid this week and today is the first day that I have felt human, so between that and the holiday, I'm a bit behind.

My pastor: I tested positive for Covid on Thursday afternoon and [associate pastor], who has had extended close contact with me (mostly against his will)*, will also isolate this Sunday out of consideration for the rest of the church family.

* This is my pastor being funny.  Our denomination does believe in free will,
but no associate pastors have been coerced. 

My husband didn't send me an email to say so (since we have an in-person kind of a relationship), but early this week his Garmin warned him that his heart rate overnight was higher than usual, so he visited his doc, who confirmed that Omicron is a guest in our home.  Somehow, in spite of all of this, I seem to be completely symptom-free (so far).  And Prewash?  she lost her tennis ball under the radiator.   

It's just that kind of week, I'm tellin' ya.

The radiators, by the way, have been cranking it out.  Early in the week, my guy taunted our Minnesota-based kids:

OfSnough:  Highs this week here we're mid 30s. Sun bathing weather!!!!

And then the snow blew in.  Here's the frost on my window this morning.

And the Snoughlings are similarly blanketed:

Gos-ling:  RVA is a low of 21 and high of 42

Siz-ling: Minnesota low is -9 and high of 9. Another balmy day up north, Dad, sad you're missing the beautiful weather!

Nelson: [adds a correction] Low is -18

Inkling:  We have snow here in our city! Enough other closed school today

OfSnough:  I did not go to school today.

"If I found a radiator,
would there be a tennis ball under it?"

Kinder-ling didn't chime in; she's worked some 36-hour shifts, and so is understandably otherwise occupied.  It's on my to-do list to check in on her.  Me, because I'm not at the math meetings, and also because of hunkering down at home waiting for Omicron to blow its way through and gone, I'm NOT putting in 36-hour shifts.  I've mostly been trying to plan for the semester and to do a bit of reading.  (Oh, reading, I love you; I miss you.  When I'm done deaning, I'll spend so much more time with my nose in a book).  At any rate, I have enough to do right now, and another week before (remote) classes start in which to do it.

That's the news from our family, who continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

Enough with the resolutions

 I almost didn't make a New Year's resolution this year.  

But it feels so, so (so) strange to me NOT to make one.  That's not peer pressure speaking, it's totally a core part within the deepest parts of me that always wants to plan things out.  In fact, I just this year wrapped up a 10-year plan I'd started (not surprisingly) a decade ago, and I was kind of astounded by how amazingly well I'd adhered to it.   A book I'd contemplated writing happened a year later than expected; a triathlon happened a year earlier.  The calendar ticked over to 2021, and my plan said, "retire or become dean", and I checked off "dean", and the plan clicked shut.

I am such a planner that I tend to make New Year's resolutions not once, but twice each year: once as we begin a new calendar year, and again as we begin a new academic year.  I love making resolutions, and I love carrying them out.

But this year, I've felt adrift.  Maybe it's because the 10-year plan snapped together so neatly, and I really don't know what will happen as my dean years bounce along the ruts of the academic avenue and turn hard left into the Retirement Road.  Maybe it's because the usual resolutions (get in shape! eat well!) have already been nailed so firmly into place in my daily habits.  The truth is, I really haven't been sure what -- if anything -- I want to try to resolve.

And yet, and yet.  And yet.  I love pointing my head in some direction and having the rest of me follow along toward some new territory.   Being resolution-less has made me a tad antsy, and by "tad" I mean "extremely".  I found myself mulling this over while walking with my daughter, while running with my friends, while meditating, while getting ready for bed, while planning out my daily tasks, . . . and I finally figured out a resolution that makes me very, very . . . um . . . curious.  Resolute.  Reso-curious?

Experts say a good resolution is "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, And Random oTher words I forget).  Mine is kind of the opposite of all that.  Here's my 2022 resolution:

Avoid solutions that are in search of a problem.

I'm not entirely sure what it means, and that's kind of why I like it.  I first said it to myself when I was boxing up some packing paper and finding a place for it in a storage closet, because (?) maybe someday I'd need to pack something in paper (?).  And then I started trying to imagine what kinds of things I might mail, just so I could use this paper.  And then I realized I was making space for this paper (a solution), and using this to stash to try to drum up a problem I don't have (packing and mailing stuff).  So I moved the whole box down to the basement, together with other packing materials that we share with a church rummage sale or that we give away on Freecycle.   I'm going to avoid keeping this paper that's a solution to a problem I don't have and don't want to have, either.

I'm not sure what else my resolution might apply to, but it sounds so right.  To say it another way, just having the resolution, knowing that it's mine, makes me feel less rudderless.  This little sentence ("avoid solutions that are in search of a problem") reminds me somewhat of the mantra I often use when my to-do lists get long: "people are more important than things".  It's a way to make sense of and value of the choices I need to make.

But because that 2022 Res is also so very . . . inscrutable . . .,  I think it'll be a great resolution for me right now when I really don't know what exactly I want to happen in my life in the next 5 years.   A "SMART" resolution would have the most chance of success at moving me from point A to point B, but I'm ready for a resolution that allows me to open the front door at point A and then just go exploring.   

It's enough of a resolution, and so I like it. Happy new year to us all.  

Ten years of trash, a retrospective

Tuesday last, I put out the fifth and final trash can of the year.   Then I hauled out the sewing machine, and I stitched together two empty dog-food bags to make the garbage can liner for the first trash can of 2022.   (If our current pace of trashiness continues, that first trashcan will head out to the curb sometime in March).

Landfill-bound garbage cans

In one sense, 2021 saw a huge (66% !!!) one-year increase in garbage production in Chez Enoughing-It.   But, eh, a year ago we had the choice of timing on a December/January trash can, and we January-ed it.   If we'd decided the other direction, both 2020 and 2021 would have seen four trash cans at the curb.   In other words, we seem to be leveling off, finding our garbage equilibrium.

The early garbage-reduction techniques were of course the most powerful.   A biggie was realizing we could recycle corrugated cardboard on our campus.  (Nowadays, we can curbside recycle it).  Moving the kids out of the house helped with our personal tally, too, although I guess in all fairness this means that there's a lot of garbage production that used to come from the Snoughlings that I no-longer measure, and so the drop in that graph above isn't anywhere as individually impressive as it might seem.  But my own lifestyle and buying habits have certainly changed in the past decade, and some of the drop-off in garbage production is a result of me living differently than before.

 The change in my purchasing habits has rippled out to affect not only what I buy, but also what other people buy for me.  This past Christmas, my friends and family got me things like . . . 

• bamboo toothbrushes packaged in cardboard,
• homemade cookies delivered in a wide-mouth canning jar,
• cast-off clothes ("hand-me-ups") from the more fashion-intensive Snoughlings,
• chalk-board canning jar lids, in cardboard boxes,
• a ten-minute sand timer (like an hour glass, but instead a 10-minute glass),
• a cutting board, packaged in a burlap bag,
• a hand-made, hand-warming mug, 

. . . and then also a few plastic-y things wrapped in plastic, because after all I do live in the world with regular people.   The first entry in the 2022 garbage can is, in fact, a plastic Soda Stream machine I nabbed many years ago off of Craigslist, but that no longer works.  The repair folks I chatted with on the phone assured me that their machines are recyclable, but my local waste management people don't have the facilities to deal with this (and recycling plastic is a lie anyway).  

What other things can I say about trashiness (or lack thereof)?  I remain intensely grateful to my next-door neighbors, who let us use a corner of their yard as a compost pile.  (That is seriously nice of them!)  I'm an on-going fan of "Free" piles, of yard sales, of Freecycle and Craigslist, and even occasionally of so-called Thrift stores, where we can get new-to-us items that come with no packaging.  I'm grateful for local merchants who let us bring cloth bags, pyrex containers, and canning jars for collecting more food.  

But even so, we still have a 30-gallon can in the basement (lined with dog-food bags stitched together), that will eventually fill up with plastics and a few other non-biodegradable, non-recyclable objects that nobody wants, not even us, and that we'll put at the curb, and pretend it goes "away".