Ahhh! My (professional) web pages disappeared!

My college has been redoing their web pages.  There are good reasons -- the pages we've had have become like a hoarder's attic, so full of random collected stuff that it's hard to find things you want, and all too easy to come across stuff that's dated.

What the powers-that-be decided to do, which kind of makes sense, is to change to a system where everything "public facing" will be on the internet, and then we'll move all the stuff that just matters to us (like class schedules, or memos) to a password protected intranet.   In order to make sure that that the public-facing stuff stays nice, only the official web curators can change it.  That is, we're changing from a system where, before, I could put materials I wanted to share on our college pages on the internet, to, from now on, a highly curated internet, with other stuff on the intranet. 

What about faculty pages?  My own pages, while we were going through the transition, were often held up as an example of how awesome it could be for faculty to continue to share cool stuff -- it's just that the pages would have to be updated by an official chain of people.  So, last week, when we did the change-over from old to new, it was a bit of a terrifying bummer that my main bio page is still there but that all of the sub pages (videos of my talks, my classroom resources, my CV, my research description) are all gone.  "But don't worry, they're all archived!"

Even though the main page is there, if you click through enough links, my new page is harder to find:  the address changed from "School/My.Name" to "School/Directory/My.Name". Dang, and of course this would happen right when I'm in the middle of applying for a Fulbright, where I want to keep referring various people to my materials so they can believe I'm a real person or get a sense of my work. Dang dang dang.

Even if this gets fixed (meaning, put back the way it was), it's our department coordinator who's in charge; I can't update my own pages when something happens without going through that other person.

I think I really need to get my own web domain and create pages that I can control myself.  Sigh.  Suggestions are welcome!

Tool hanger wedding gifts

She got married, Sizzling did.  This post isn't about her getting married, but it *is* about the wedding gift I got her . . . which is the same wedding gift I make/buy/give to everyone who's wedding or housewarming I attend: a tool hanger.

I even have a standard letter that I write about why it is that I'm giving this particular gift.  I make three or four of these tool hangers at a time, because every time I run out of tool hangers to give away and have to make a new one, the hardware stores seem to have new configurations of tools.  Yeesh! 

So, below is the letter I wrote to Sizzling (pretty much the same letter I write to everyone, as I said), interspersed with photos of sewing the latest set of tool hangers.  Enjoy!

Dear Sizzling, 

As you know, my mother was not a typical 1950’s woman. Her father, my grandfather, was very conservative, and he thought that a physics education was wasted on a woman.  Fortunately for her, her mother was feisty and convinced my grandfather to be proud of his daughter’s intellectual accomplishments.  She earned her PhD in physics from Stanford while pregnant with me, and she became a solar astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, at a time when being a “rocket scientist” was even more prestigious and brainy than being a “brain surgeon”.  Partly because of her, I’ve always admired people who kept going despite long odds stacked against them.

I play with the tools a bunch, like they're jigsaw puzzle pieces.
When I have a configuration I like, I draw it on a 
large piece of paper, as a template.

When she married my dad in the early 60's, my mom told her parents that what she wanted for a wedding gift was a “toolbox”.  (Very romantic, right?).  My grandfather didn’t buy her a professional toolbox; instead, he got her a set of rather light-weight tools that came in a hanger meant to go on the back of a closet door.   

Next, comes pinning the straps
where I think they ought to go.

This gift ended up shaping so much of the childhood that my sisters and I shared.  The tools weren’t as substantial or professional as the ones my dad kept down in his workshop, but the fact that they were so readily accessible, so easily visible, meant we were always using them.  When I was growing up, what I remembered most about these tools was that my mom was always nagging us to put the tools back.  It was so easy for her to tell when a tool had gone missing. 

Check: does this seem to work?

Now that I’m older, I realize that the main gift of these tools was the fact that we actually used those tools, all the time. We were unafraid to attempt to fix things around the house. It was just so easy to grab a screwdriver or to grab the pliers or to grab a hammer.  (Putting the tools back that was another thing, but taking them out was easy!)  It was a fabulous experience for me and my sisters, who learned to tinker with everything around the house and to fix things ourselves.  You can see that that has shaped much of who we all are as adults.

Then, of course, I sew the straps where the pins had been.

This tool holder shaped our family life in a permanent way.  When the plastic tool hanger started cracking, my birthday present to my mom was sewing her a new hanger to hold the old, familiar tools. When my sisters and I moved out, we created our own tool hangers, so that we, too, could easily grab a tool and fix things around our houses.  And, like my mom, I’d occasionally have to chase down my children and spouse to remind them to return the tools to their correct places.

After sewing the first one, I test with the tools in there,
yet again.  If it works well, I go ahead with the rest of them.

So my gift to you and your new husband as you start your life together is a tool hanger.  The tools in here are fancier than the ones my mom had.  They may or may not be as good as the ones that either of you would want to use professionally, but that’s on purpose.  These are just supposed to be easy to grab and quick to use, even if they’re not always easy to put back in the right place.  (Maybe someday, if you have kids, your kids will complain that you nag them about that, too.  If you have to nag them to put the tools away, you know they’re learning to fix stuff.  Success!)

Three sets of tool hangers, in boxes I made
because it's hard to find tool-hanger-boxes.

May the two of you build a wonderful marriage.  I give you love and hugs, and also a wrench and some pliers.

Love,

'Snough

Another name in the family

 Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  In fact, we now have a new last name in the family!   Between me, my husband, our kids, and kid-in-laws, we now have 7 or 8 last names, depending on what Kinderling's last name is officially these days (even she is not quite sure).

Lisa and Kevin Stanton,
sandwiched between my guy and me.

The wedding was beautiful; it was fabulous; it was lots of fun.  Afterward there was a huge dinner and awesome dancing.  The next day, I was really, really tired, but I managed to have a bunch of fun at a barbecue, catching up even more with family from around the country.

Lots of family . . .
with two more last names included in this group photo.
Hi, Jean and Tasha!

I found out a few days later that the reason I was really, really tired is a five-letter word starting with C and rhyming with Ovid.  Four of us (who spent a bunch of car time together) ended up testing positive; everyone else I've checked in with seems to have escaped safely.  I've been staying home by myself -- well, I guess actually with Prewash -- ever since.  I'm feeling okay again, but I'm still not safe to be around others, I figure.

But let me back up to before the wedding.  Inkling and my guy and I rented a car and drove together on the way there, with me reading "Breaking the Age Code" to everyone along the way.  I've been thinking about forming a book reading group around that book, and wanted to test it first.  Green light!  It's going to be a great book to read with my very intergenerational running group, if for no other reason than the book says that my younger friends and their children will live longer, happier lives if they think older people are cool, so now they'll have yet another reason to look up to me!  At least, that's how I'll spin it when we start reading together.

Once we got to Minnesota, I got to do an awesome workout with Gosling that had me hobbling (in a happy way) the next day -- oh, man, those squats!  And then I went to the Mall of America.  

Proof I was there.

But I wasn't really doing the mall thing, of course.  I was scoping out the Museum of Illusions, for math research purposes, naturally.  

Colin is not really falling off the building;
that's a mirror tilted 45 degrees.
You can see his actual feet toward the bottom of the photo,
where he's lying flat on his stomach.

Both my guy and Gosling gave fabulous speeches at the wedding dinner, 

The toasts were touching, and also quite funny.

. . . and, as I mentioned, there was lots of fun dancing.

Most of the dancing was much less sedate than this.
Footloose!!!  Shout!  Danger Zone!

Before we left, Gosling loaned us a book that she promised would make us laugh out loud.  Anxious People, by Frederik Backman, was indeed a wonderful companion on the ride home  . . . although a couple of times I had to stop reading so that my guy could catch his breath from laughing, and thereby continue to drive safely.  We loved it.

I got home and my guy almost immediately took off again, bound for Amsterdam by way of London.  I plunged back into my Fulbright proposal, but have taken a couple of "breaks" for other projects.  I visited an open-air farm stand (staying far away from other people), and picked up enough produce that I could put up 21 pints of corn and 33 quarts of diced tomatoes.  I'm very much enjoying my new electric water bath and pressure canners!

I'm doing two-handed can removal,
while Inkling's sock helps me by keeping me company.

I also participated in a yard sale on my block (again, outdoors and staying way up on my porch).  I put price tags on only a few things --- Prewash had a tag listing her as "$5000" --- and everything else was free.  We didn't have great crowds come by, but I *did* get rid of a lot of stuff.

Even more delightful, and frankly surprising, is that my new next-door neighbors participated in a big way.  These particular neighbors have been pretty stand-offish; we've tried saying hello, and they mostly rush by us and back into the house.  But at the Yard Sale, they brought out a bunch of stuff.  They even brought out a grill and started selling food.  They offered me cookies, and I showed their kids how to feed cheerios to Prewash.  I learned that they're starting a bakery; they learned that I speak Spanish.  We each hung out on our respective porches and commented on the traffic (or lack of it), celebrating when each other managed to offload something.  I offered one of my hand-me-up dresses to the wife, who was delighted to accept it.  It was more interaction than we've had ever before, and it felt like a really nice development.  

I just realized that because missing a posting last week (while I was starting my really, really sleepy phase), I didn't write about 

• volunteering at a huge back-to-school event for our local public school kids, or 
• sifting compost and dirt with my compost club (so much fun!), or 
• dermatology appointments, or
• making cardboard reverse perspective structures, or
• Ofsnough attending the local Honor Guard.

Oh, yeah, we've been hopping around here.  As I wrote in my 5-year diary one night: "Life is full of good things to do".  So, that's the latest news from our new family, which continues to be wealthy in our abundance of last names.  May you and yours stay healthy.

A moving (so to speak) update

Our lives continue to be rich and full of movement here in ol' Enoughsville.  Nelson has the biggest moves this week, as he's moved homes!  

I asked if he could send photos, and he happily whipped them right back at me.

Lots of closet space --
and wooden hangers, which I'd love!

This blue room of Nelson's looks quite soothing to me.  

It's harder to see, but the moves on this kid below are pretty awesome, too:  Gosling says, We went to see trampled by turtles on Saturday night... they are an American bluegrass and folk band from Duluth, MN.

One of their well known and fast paced songs was played toward the end of the concert, it's called, Wait So Long. Elery was having a blast dancing!

Shake it!

Another kid was moving product more than moving her body.  

"Achild wanted a lemonade stand, so we made one.
 Fresh squeezed lemons, home made simple syrup"

And moving from drink to food leads to this beautiful picture that Kindering shared.

Made focaccia tonight

I didn't make focaccia, but I did get the means to make food in a whole new (to us) way: we now are the happy owners of an induction stovetop.  

My husband:  "You must be feeling a range of emotions".
Me: "I feel radiant, in fact.
 It's a good thing for a mathematician to have an induction stove."

The stove and the new 220 electrical hook-up cost a pretty penny (dang; I should have installed the circuit breaker and electrical line myself!), but I lucked out and found a lovely set of matching saucepans -- the kind my magnet stuck to -- in various sizes in one of our local so-called thrift stores.  So between those and our assortment of cast iron frying pans, we are well stocked . . . [heh heh, stock]!

As for other aspects of my life, my ride back from the math meetings was much more pleasant (and placid) than the ride there.  Once I got back, I jumped into a project I hadn't been planning on, but that MathFest -- and my fave people there -- inspired me into: to apply for a Fulbright grant to Panama.  Fortunately, I still have lots of time to prepare the application.  [Hahaha, that's a joke.  The application is due September 15, which translated into "academic time" is basically tomorrow.]  I'm rounding up all sorts of information and writing like crazy.  I already arranged to take a required Spanish Language Evaluation (which went smoothly; it's now official that I speak Spanish well!).

As part of the evaluation, I read an essay about how cell phone use affects marriages and other relationships, and then wrote three different paragraph-long responses to questions about the reading.  One of the questions asked about whether I think my own cell phone use is distracting, and likewise for my family.  This tickled me:  every Sunday my phone tells me about my usage, or what other people would consider to be my lack thereof.  As an example, last week it told me my weekly usage was down one minute, and that during the previous week I'd averaged 5 minutes per day.  Sometimes when I'm using my timer and communicating with Xavier a lot, it'll climb dramatically to 11 minutes per day.  At any rate, I could honestly write that I am delighted when my family members use their phones for GPS or finding train or plane schedules, so that I don't have to deal with that kind of stuff myself.

It's not quite related, but this week I also managed to get my new debit card delivered.  I noticed in late July that my old card had expired in March.  Whoops!  It's totally a frugal-world problem that it took me three months to realize this.  I had to make a bunch of different phone calls to get the new one.  I tried the "lost or stolen" option on the telephone menu, but since the number on my old card was retired, they couldn't locate my account.  I finally reached the correct person at my bank who started clucking her tongue and talking about replacement fees, until she realized they'd mailed my husband his new card and checked "done", but hadn't actually mailed mine to me.  So, finally my new card has arrived; I've activated it (racking up another 30 seconds of phone use, just fyi), and now I'm all set to carry it around and ignore it for another year!

Right.  Moving houses, moving bodies, moving product, moving projects . . . and moving on from that, rumor has it that supposedly Inking traveled to New York with OfSnough where she supposedly got to see yet another Broadway show, possibly even Peter Pan Gone Wrong (but maybe that was another day.  shoot.  So hard to keep track).  Still, who would believe such a story without photographic evidence?  I didn't get any photos, so all of the above is still in the realm of theory and speculation.

And that's the news -- what I know of it -- of our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventurous moves.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

 

Early August update

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  We've been lucky to have enough -- and more than enough -- of the stuff we love.  

For example, last week, Inkling worked 49 hours at her part-time job.  If that amount of time sounds a bit more "time" than "part", it's a testament to how much she loves the stuff she does, and to how much the owners of her Ye Olde Yarne Shoppe trust her to take over when they're out of town.  Having said that, she's glad to be going back to "part" this week.   Also, she tells me that the Tour de Fleece is over. 

My guy has had more than enough military paperwork; he's needed multiple iterations of his multiple D-something-something forms in order to join the local Red Rose Honor Guard.  Fortunately, the 8th time is the charm, and he's now officially honorable.  

The "Take A Cow/Leave A Cow" display is another kind of successful, so much so that I had to bring it back inside before I left town, so my husband wouldn't have to deal with replacing cows that people took.  At first, it was all "take" and no "leave"; then a mysterious person who might possibly (definitely) be related to me left an eraser cow and a hand-crocheted sheep.   However, after I left town (and the box was inside), we got a donation of a farm set!  I'm so excited that I'm getting some partici-cow-pation!

(donated cows, etc)

In another "more than enough" story, I had my second train experiment-cum-adventure, hopping aboard an Amtrak train for a 25-hour ride down to MathFest in Tampa.  When my husband and I trained our way up to Boston, we rode mostly with business types, and what we learned is that it's helpful to bundle-up; the trains were ice cold (some people were wearing winter coats!), but otherwise relaxing. 

Not an Amtrak Train,
but rather a beautiful trolley that's free to ride in the City of Tampa

For this trip, I wisely packed a comforter to bundle up in.  The train was not nearly as frigid.  The passengers were not the highly focused business types, but rather gregarious families and wayfarers.  This matters mostly because I learned that long-haul trains don't have "Quiet Cars"; I spent my long-day-and-night in  the opposite: the Quite Noisy Car.  There were many loud conversations all around, videos and games with no headphones, kids singing to themselves.  At night, after the conductors dimmed the lights and announced that meant "quiet conversation" mode, it didn't get much quieter.  I gave the kid behind me some earbuds so they could listen to their movie without me listening to it, too, and I eventually worked up the nerve to ask the people across the aisle to please, please hold their conversation in a lower tone.  Even after that, there was loud snoring, people waking up and interjecting loud exclamations.  I had a hard time finding a comfortable position in my seat.  I ended up throwing my comforter (so glad I brought it!!) over my head and resting on my tray in front of me.  

Outside my hotel in a city with blue skies.

The sun set over the tobacco fields of Raleigh, North Carolina and rose over the palm trees of Jackson, Florida.  The people who had had animated conversations late into the night surprised me by waking early for even more animated conversation.  I sprung for a $5.15 coffee and nursed a headache.  And that ended my most recent train adventure: as I write this, I'm bracing myself for the 25-hour trip home.  (So far, it seems to be much quieter heading north than heading south.)

Singing and dancing at a Jam session

Tampa itself is a lovely city, and the math meetings likewise were wonderful.  I got to be with 1500 people who I love being with; I particularly appreciated getting to room with, and even go swimming with, a friend from my department.   (After she heard about my train trip, she made a point of being almost comically quiet in our hotel room, but fortunately I recharged quickly enough that we could have some good chats together).  I got to reconnect with some of my mentors, catch up with colleagues I haven't seen in months, hear a bunch of great talks, lead a minicourse, sing and dance on stage during a "Math Jam session", and go out for dinner with a group of AWESOME, energetic, creative, and funny friends.  

A group of mathematicians
enjoying a great dinner outdoors.

After a week like this, I feel kind of unreasonably fortunate.  It's such a joy to get to take trains -- even uncomfortable trains -- that can whisk me into a joyful intellectual community, and then that whisk me back home to the home, the husband, and the little city I love being a part of.  (And my ear seems to be getting less painful and less noisy slowly, so that's good, too).  So, I think that's more than enough news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.