Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Some days, I love my grocery store.

In general, I am happy with my grocery store. I could wish for a larger selection of meats, and occasionally fresher produce and I can certainly wish they would not store the onions right next to the potatoes. But it provides high quality, low cost store brands that make my grew-up-in-a-high-cost-of-living-area heart sing. Unbleached flour for $1.67?  Sign me up! It's not quite Meijer, where I could get everything and everything for a song, but it's darn close for groceries.

But mostly I love it because they occasionally do ridiculous sales on things I use. Like today's "Buy 2, Get 3 Free" on coffee. Yes, that is not a typo. If you buy 2 pounds of coffee, you can get 3 free. Three! We go through coffee at the rate of a pound or so a week, so this is fantastic. I'm going to measure the space in my pantry and go buy as much as I can store.

Also, Entenmann's! Growing up, their crumb cakes, apple puffs, donuts, danish and eclairs filled a sizable portion of my grandma's deep freeze at any given time, and filled a sizable portion of my stomach whenever I visited. While I have grown up to appreciate that none of these things are high cuisine, I still love them all and buy up their coffee cakes and danish (the only things we get down here) whenever they show up. And when they are 2-for-1, its irresistible.

This is why I love my grocery store.

And why I never end up walking out with just that gallon of milk I went in for.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Some days are just weird

Today has been...odd.

To start out with, my phone perished after an unfortunate swim yesterday morning, and I couldn't get to the mobile store to replace it until the afternoon, so I was temporarily communication-less. I remember a time, not too long ago, when I did not have instantaneous communication with friends and family in my pocket. It's amazing how quickly we become used to things.

There have been some teaching difficulties this semester, which I spent a chunk of the morning working out, or at least starting to work out. Five semesters of teaching and this is the first difficulty of its kind I've faced.

My research has in a sense gone well recently. I have it all in a very simple form. Too bad the simple form makes far less sense than the complicated form. Still trying to figure out what to do with that.

Went to the mobile store to get my new phone, which was no problem from the point of replacing my phone (and getting it a protective cover), but I had made the reasonable-at-the-time choice of wearing my boots. If the temperature is below 60 as it was supposed to be today, they are perfect, since my feet tend to be cold. If, however, the temperature is about 60, as it turned out to be, my feet overheat very quickly, and make me feel very queasy.

 It's a family trait, and why I don't wear socks to bed.

The store was warm, and I was standing in the sun. I ended up cutting off the very nice, helpful associate who was helping me set up my new phone because I knew I would throw up on him if I stayed a frighteningly short time longer. I told him I could finish setting it up myself, got my stuff, and high tailed it out to my car, where I opened the windows, took off my shoes and spent 15 minutes cooling down. I drove home in my stocking feet because I didn't dare put my boots back on.

My husband had a late night at work, so I am all alone in the house with Penny this evening. Which is great. Except she has a huge amount of energy, even after playing outside all afternoon with the three dogs who live on the other side of the fence. And I have no energy. I am currently trying to work up the gumption to do the dishes, because our dishwasher is older than I am and finally retired. And any evening on my own is a little strange, even though I do it on a not infrequent basis. We are a family of routine, and it messes with the routine to not have Dear Husband home around dinner time.

So here I sit, in my comfy chair, hoping tomorrow will be just a little less strange.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Becoming Real People: Furniture

When my husband and I got married, money was tight. He had just started grad school, I was looking for a job (eventually joined the PhD program as a job) and while we had significant savings, we weren't really looking to spend it. We got a cheap apartment that was mercifully bug free in a neighborhood that was miraculously low crime. I had inherited a little furniture from relatives (dining room table, a buffet) or from childhood (antique dresser, desk) and Dear Husband's grandparents gave us a bed as a wedding present. But otherwise, it was grad student-newly wed-Ikea chic for us. We cobbled together what we needed from the cheapest things that great Swedish gibberish-labeling superstore had to offer.  As a plus, it was all fairly light when we upgraded to a third floor apartment with no elevator. So our furniture was largely cheap, and there was very little of it, because we are cheap.

Then we bought a house. A wonderful house that satisfies his need for an open floor plan and my need for traditionalism. It has its issues, like the shower, but it's ours and we love it. However, 750 sqft worth of furniture does little to fill a nearly 3000 sqft house. And grad student chic looks a little out of place.

So I am very happy that we finally have upgraded to real furniture for the TV room. By which I mean we each now have a reclining chair, from a real furniture store. They are even power recliners, and Dear Husband's has a back-massage function.


 They don't match, but they match their owners. I like a chair that I can sit cross-legged in and is soft and comfy. He likes a chair with back support and his feet can touch the ground (I have to go antique if I want to touch the ground. Modern chairs are not built for the 5' 1" crowd)

Penny approves of the new addition as well.

As for our old couch, we still have it. It is now the seating area in the previously no-western-style-seating living room.

My old camera isn't really any good any more I guess...
It feels like we are completing the transformation from broke newly-weds to successful married couple. Though we are too careful/cheap to get all good furniture quickly, this seems like we have reached a new stage. And I like it.




Friday, February 21, 2014

Micro Flash Flooding

One of the fun/scary things about living in this part of the world is the crazy thunderstorms we can get any time of the year. They are a lot of fun to watch, and they dump a terrific amount of water in a very short time. Which of course can lead to flash floods.

Our house is set on a slope, and this leads to some interesting water situations. Our patio/driveway are sloped slightly towards the house, because they are supposed to drain into a drainage channel/french drain that runs along the . Only problem is the drainage channel gets clogged with dirt/leaves easily and the french drain was ruined by the previous owner. Our front yard contains what is technically a dry stream bed that fills and drains into the active stream in our neighbor's yard. There is a large pipe under our driveway to allow it to flow when it does rain.

That tan stuff is water.



It was an inch and a half (about 4 cm) deep at my back step

It filled our driveway...


Which then flooded the garage....

And out front, the streambed was no longer dry


About an hour later, all the water was gone, with no visible sign of it ever having been there.

Easy come, easy go.


Thursday, February 20, 2014

Best of Both Worlds

North Carolina is like no other place I have ever lived, weather-wise. And I'm not just talking the summer heat.

Last week, we had 12 inches of snow (and ice) in our yard. It was wonderful fun, and good for a laugh at our neighbors' expense.



Today, it was 75, sunny and breezy. No image can capture 66% of that statement, so just imagine it. Heaven has this weather.

I like this part of the country.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

5th Semester TA Enthusiasm Running Low

I love teaching. I love interacting with students. I love sharing knowledge in a setting where no one looks at me weird for explaining how old-style CRT TVs or MRIs work and why your microwave can't give you cancer (but could cook you if you got into one of the industrial ones) but the tanning bed can't cook you, but can give you cancer. I love encouraging students towards those ah-ha moments and deeper insights into the world. 

I'm also feeling a little burned out right now when it comes to teaching. This semester has been particularly bad in the getting-off-schedule department, because trying to coordinate between 4 teachers is hard enough without adding snow days to the mix. One of my classes is in a squashed, overcrowded classroom in the boondocks of campus (from my perspective, centered on the far reaches of the grad campus); the chalkboard there is 8 inches higher than standard, which means I have about half a chalkboard to work with, which because of angles is only visible to half the class at any given time, and there is a creepy diorama in the corner. I have an unusual concentration of mechanical engineers, who really do not care a bit about electric fields. I also have a crop of students who came untrained in the art of taking in-class weekly tests, so grading is more frustrating than usual.

Does any of this diminish my desire to be a teacher after graduation? 

No, not really. But it does make me long for smaller class sizes, and being in control of things like textbook choice, and schedule. Working with 1 other person would be fine. Trying to work with 3 in an insanely complicated schedule is exhausting (no one seems to actually know when the students are supposed to do what assignments, for example). 

Mostly it makes me long for days when I tutored, and could concentrate on teaching to a specific understanding and not the near-lowest common denominator. If I could start a from-home tutoring business I would almost be happiest, I think. But I am not charismatic enough to go build a customer base. 

I think this will get better as we move towards midterms and some of the students make the final decision to drop the class, and we get into we-must-stay-on-schedule mode. 

In the mean time, I'll just have to keep calm and teach on. 

~AMPH

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Penny vs. Blankets

Changing the bed linens is one of those tasks which is necessary, but is usually boring.

Unless you have a dog like Penny.

Any other time, she seems to understand that blankets are blankets and are there to keep things warm. But when you are changing the sheets, she seems convinced they are now alive and must be fought.

She splays out to control the beast underneath.


She bites it, trying to find its neck


A new layer is  added and she pounces (slightly too fast for my camera phone)


She bites this one, but in a more leisurely fashion.

Then, having killed the beast* she looks at me with the face that says, "I did good, right?"


*While I am ok with her terrier-neck-breaking the $20 target blanket in the first picture, I don't want her to do the same to my beautiful handmade wedding quilt,  so I wait until she is off the bed to smooth it out.