Enough of April

Life continues to be rich and full for me, and maybe also for other members of the family, but I've been head down, plowing forward, so not really sure about them.

Here's what I love about April as an academic: it's a hurricane of activity, but you know (when you're in the midst of it) that the hurricane will end. When my husband was still working in business, he could have similar amazing hurricanes of work, but he had no assurance that the storm would let up anytime soon.

Well, it's April, and there has been a heck of a lot happening in the work side of my life… but this week was the last week of classes, and I feel like this means that soon I'll be able to start breathing again.  I think that's true even though I am an associate dean.

Having said that, I also know from a long experience in academia that May does not exist. There's a month in my calendar that says "May", and so you'd think that the month is actually there.  I always schedule many tasks for "May", thinking that I will finally have lots of time then, but somehow whenever I get to the end of those days in my calendar, I look up and realize that I have felt busy for 31 days but can't remember a single task that I have done. It's really only in June that I actually start to think about research and summer projects.

At any rate, this was the last week of classes, and so my research students and I wrapped up our project. Next week many students will have exams; I'll get to go to student research presentations and honors defenses. We'll celebrate the seniors and try to squeeze in a few more committee meetings.

My own personal fun this week came when I realized that I am almost out of monthly planner pages. A bunch of years ago, I had figured out how to design monthly planner pages in Excel, but the last year that I printed out was "2022", so I'm going to need next year's pages soon.  Microsoft updates to Excel means that the spacing on my old spreadsheet is now all wrong, darn it, and so I decided to go back to my true love of LaTeX, which allows me to space things precisely and plop numbers exactly where I want to put them. To make the numbers and the lines come out in the right places I had to teach myself how to do for loops in LaTeX and also if then else statements, which I did, and it made me so happy to be geeking around in code that requires a bit compiling and then creates something beautiful that I can carry in my hands.

What else? My phone flaked out on me, which is only fair because I don't like my phone, so why should my phone like me? My husband likes me though, so he got me a new phone. We'll see if me and my new phone get along better than me and the old one.

I also got my second booster today, which was a real shot in the arm, so to speak. I'm in a group that's now apparently the minority of Americans – people who have never gotten Covid (at least as far as I know). I'm happy to do what I can to keep it that way.

I haven't done a very good job of keeping up with my kids, because April and also because hate phones, but now that we're entering the Month that Does Not Exist, I might try to get back in touch with them and see what they're up to.  More on that later, I guess.

And that's the news from one person in our family, who continues the wealthy in my adventures. May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Enough cats, socks, shirts, cows, and windows.

 Life continues to be rich and fall in Enoughsville.  It's been a "thingy" kind of a week, or maybe a "stuff-y" kind of a week, as the updates and adventures that roll through take on tangible, physical aspects.

Nelson, for example, has moved out of the convent into an AirBNB. He tells me he's in a room called the "Peace Room" that had a candle lit when he arrived, which he loved, and which inspired him to meditate for 20 minutes. The place where he's staying has two cats: Mochi and Charcoal. He's still working on lowering his blood sugar levels, which remain high. We're very grateful to Sizzling for all that she does to help him with all of these moves and machinations.

Inkling has begun round 3 of Sock Madness.  The irony of working in Ye Olde Yarnne Shoppe is that she has less time to keep up with the competition (any knitting she does at work is shoppe related).  She is contentedly pessimistic, therefore about being speedy enough to make it into round 4, and is enjoying knitting the lovely cabled socks (toe first, tight gauge) on her own time, and at her own pace.  

OfSnough -- that man that I love -- has started accumulating what I can only think of as a new genre of Pastime Bling.  (What is 'Pastime Bling', you ask?  It's been eight years since we did an IronMan Triathlon, and yet every couple of months or so I see him in a new IronMan shirt or hat or jacket, or carrying an IronMan bag, or somesuch).  Since his latest pastime is boxing up medical supplies for Ukraine, it's no surprise that lately he's been wearing this shirt.

(This shirt, in Ukrainian, directs a Russian Ship
to go perform deeds that are anatomically impossible,
 especially for boats.)

And also, now we own plastic stickers that will be useful if street names change around here, or that can do double duty as dust covers on our bookshelves.  

So, that's good. 

As for me, I got an email a week or so ago from a co-worker I hadn't yet met, asking this:

I heard through the grapevine that you have a cow costume. Would it at all be possible for me to borrow it next Tuesday? [Our office is] hosting a candy bar to celebrate our student workers for student worker appreciation week, and one of my students suggested that I dress up in something loud to grab students' attention. 

Do I have a cow costume?  Do I?  Indeed, I wrote back, I have two cow costumes; one that was gifted to me and one that I rescued from the curb before it made its untimely way to a landfill.  It is very nice for me to feel useful in the area of Cow Costumage, and so I was chagrined that she wrote back that the rescued costume had been damaged in a drier, and the plastic/rubber udders had gotten fused together.

Fortunately, I possess a sewing machine and had an old pink t-shirt in the rag stack, so a half-hour's worth of arts-and-crafts needlework put the costume back into full working order.  Phew!  I'm ready for the next cow-costume emergency.

And moving out into the field, so to speak, I have a new neighbor who keeps trying to break into the house around the corner.  See if you can spot him.

Any luck?  I've circled him: a robin that seems bound and determined, day after day, to make his way through the window back there.  

He sits on the fence, staring at the window, then launches himself toward the black space and flutters up against his reflection . . . and then heads back to the fence.  Over and over, day after day. I'm quite impressed by his determination; it's too bad he doesn't realize there's a "thing" in his way.  What a bird brain, I guess!

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

Enoughing it, mid April

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsvile. We are in the thick of April, which I have always found to be a deeply intense month in my academic calendar.  April is the month in which everybody on campus realizes that "if we don't do it now, it doesn't get done, . . . so we better do it now!"  And it's also the month when we realize we're going to have to say goodbye to people so there are celebrations, ceremonies, and gatherings galore.

Because so much is going on, it's hard to do justice to any one event. I got to go to an amazing panel discussion on redistricting in Pennsylvania – an incredibly timely topic – with fewer than half a dozen students in the audience. That, right there, is April for you.

My days continue to be full of meetings, many by Zoom, interspersed with email triage. A junior faculty member who I was meeting with one day told me "I looked at your Google calendar, and it scared me!" I guess I'm getting used to being an associate dean, because the pace feels familiar to me.  Heck, I'm even doing a little bit of math research on the side, partly as a way of maintaining my emotional equilibrium amid all the administrative ups and downs. Last week I visited (by Zoom) several talks from the big math meetings, including an amazingly inspiring talk in a session of "math with no words". One of the speakers went above and beyond the requirements of the session, which was to have pictures but no words or equations on the slides, and gave a talk with a series of pictures, but no words, not even talking! It was amazingly well done, and made me want to go back and rewrite several of my own papers still in draft form, to make the diagrams much more visually accessible.

Inkling got to go to an in-person knitting retreat, which is good for her soul, in the same way that math conferences are good for mine. She has made it through Round Two of Sock Madness, successfully completing socks that have pockets in them (because why not have pockets in your socks, I guess?).  I don't know if she was allowed to use words or equations in making them, but they're still very cute, those socks.  

April showers have canceled many of my early morning runs with my friends, but the showers are doing their requisite job bringing forth the flowers all around us. For this I am grateful.  In fact, I drew daffodils on my chalkboard just for decoration.

I'm still working hard on bringing together a faculty/staff performance, and this show includes one scene that involves small children playing the roles of parents. One of these small children is my own granddaughter, who dropped by the house after rehearsal this week to draw this lovely picture on another of our chalkboards, inspired just a little bit by my own chalk drawing of daffodils.

Ofsnuff asked if this was a picture of him. A-child responded, "no, grandpa; you don't have long hair!"  I love this drawing.

My guy continues to help pack medical kits for Ukraine; he's really enjoying the chance to do something that feels incredibly useful, and that also involves him in such camaraderie.

 Oh, and travel.  As I write this, my husband is in Texas at an engineering conference, and I am at my dad's house, visiting him with my sisters for Easter weekend.  Being with my sisters is great fun.  We're not packing boxes for Ukraine, but we did sift through boxes of photos and memorabilia, marveling at photos of my mom back when she was younger than we are now.  I'm turning into my mom in many ways; when I put on her visor and glasses and pile my hair on top of my head like she did, it was a twinsie kind of a tribute.  (Thanks, Mama!)

And that's the news I can remember off the top of my head from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

High, low, hope

Sometimes with my advisees or my students, I start our gatherings asking people to share "a high, a low, and a hope".  That seems appropriate for our week here in Enoughsville.  

The "low" -- let's just get this over with -- is that today was the memorial service for my friend who passed away last December.  It was a beautiful gathering, with wonderful stories, including a video of his 6-year-old son describing how his dad taught him to ride a bike and to understand numbers.  I was the last speaker, and I've been carrying this eulogy with me, in my planner bag and in my mind and in my bones and muscles, for  a few weeks now.  It has been a momentous and terrible task, to have the last word in a ceremony that I keep feeling is just all wrong; I don't want to say good-bye to my friend.  I just want him back.  I am, frankly, a bit drained.   

So, that's that.  

And yet, there are beautiful things happening, and I've had many moments of joy as well.   So, for a "high" I'll list several: My kiddoes, the Snoughlings, keep delighting me with their creativity and joy.  

• Inkling, progressing into the second round of Sock Madness, gifted me a gorgeous pair of black socks with gold, glittery beads.  (I didn't take a photo, and now they're in the wash, so you'll just have to believe me that they're amazing).  
• Kinderling hosted the coolest (like wow, so cool!) Science-themed birthday party for a group of 7-year-olds that I've ever seen.  A dozen+ kids with protective eye gear seeing balloons expand from gasses formed by vinegar and baking soda!  Graduated beakers that frothed from hydrogen peroxide/yeast mixtures!  Mini lava-lamps made from water, oil, and antacid pills!  There was so much ooh-ing and ahh-ing.  I was super impressed.
• Nelson is doing great with the steps of his program, and he was really excited about progressing from step 3 to step 4.  I'm keeping my eyes and ears peeled for that.  Go, Nelson!
• Thanks to Gosling, I have new art on my wall, in a formerly-blank space that was just calling out "fill me up!". 

Cows, in colors that are very, very me.
Love 'em!

And as for a "hope", I'll just plunk in there that the antibiotics seem to be doing their magic on my dog.  So the hope is that Prewash's lab tests come back confirming that what we're seeing in her improved energy and appetite seems to indicate.

"How ya feeling, Prewash?"

"Things are looking up, thanks!"

Let's add one extra "high", for good measure.  OfSnough has been working with a volunteer group to get medical supplies to Ukraine.   His group was featured briefly on MSNBC (they filmed right before he showed, so he wasn't on TV himself).  

It is good to see people serving something bigger than themselves.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours stay safe.