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Cat in hat makes $10 million for town - CNN.com

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Funny Cat Photos - http://blog.esaba.com

Funny Cat Photos - http://blog.esaba.com

Sayonara, Japan

We just returned from IB's first international trip. All in all, it was a success. She did good-to-great on the long flights and I didn't lose my mind. The 10-hour flight over was rough but mostly b/c she was overtired from the 1-hour flight to Portland first. She did great in the ergo carrier--DH wore her hours everyday, all over Tokyo, etc. She slept, woke, and smiled at Japanese people. We had a great time visiting my best friend and her family and it was a fun chaos with 5 adults and 3 kids together.

Now, my summer of idle is almost officially over. I've got about 10 days left before real school work starts, and I've got all sorts of chores to do that I've put off in favor of more fun. So, fence-ordering, drapes-buying, eye MD-visiting, and endless food-shopping awaits me.

Now that you have tenure, what are you gong to do?

. . .is much like the question "so, when are you having another one" when you have a new baby! For me, these things are happening at the same time, sort of. I got tenure last fall and had a baby a few months later. Now, said baby is 9 mos old and due to all sorts of departures at my university, there's an associate dean position open in my college. I am not entirely sure what it entails, but I think it does mean a teaching reduction but more of a 9-5 schedule. If I didn't have a new baby, I would JUMP at this chance. And even with a new baby, I could probably make it work so that I didn't have to have her in daycare full-time.

But, then I start thinking about time, my age, etc. At 37 1/2, I don't have decades left to have another kid. But in academia, I do have decades (hopefully) ahead of me in which I can work to be promoted to full professor, apply for some administrative positions, etc. There's no rush there at all. But baby-wise, there is sort of a rush. Not to mention the ever-looming conventional wisdom* that says the smart time for professors to have a baby is summer. Which means if we "plan" (ha!)** to have a baby next summer, we need to get on the stick (so to speak . . .) soon. If we don't worry about well-timed baby arrivals, then the pressure is off. But regardless, I don't think that taking on a new administrative position this next year would be wise, for me or for IB or for any future babies.

So, I've resigned myself to my grueling quarter ahead--3 classes, 3 preps. The most I have had in 2 years. This is when I'll need all that energy (HA!) that younger faculty like me supposedly have.

*Often, "conventional wisdom" means some BS that people think is tradition, I've found.

** I had an egomaniacal chronically lying colleague tell my friend (whose 2nd baby was due the beginning of her 2 year at the university) that she didn't time it well--and that HE timed his 2 babies down to the week! Such bullshit. He said the same thing to me when I told him that IB was due at the end of the fall quarter: "ouch--winter babies--not a good idea". Apparently, it's "conventional wisdom" that spring and summer babies are better b/c you can take them out, etc. Yeah, well I was a mid-February baby born in Alaska, so suck on it.

Summertime and the living is sweaty . . . .

It's a long hot summer here in the Inland Northwest. I thought it was me--I thought I was freaking out b/c I couldn't handle this heat. Well, it turns out that it has been hotter than normal--something like 35 out of the last 40 days have been 10 degrees or so above the normal. That means it's been over 90 for most of the summer so far. As Hubby says, get used it--global warming ain't going away. Perhaps I should have considered this before we moved here. It's seldom (or so I thought) so hot that you cannot function here without AC, but there are a few times that make it pretty miserable.

When I was a kid in the 1970s in Alaska, we could put our bathing suits on and run thru the sprinkler when it got to be 70 degrees. I remember standing on ladders and breathing on the thermometer to get it up to 70 so my mom would relent--it was that rare for it to be 70. Well, now, even in a cloudy summer in Anchorage like it has been this summer, it gets to be 70 more often. Even on non-sunny days.

So, because of all of this and because I have the time this summer, yesterday I participated in a small "action" at Home Depot, as we delivered a box with 40,000 signatures opposing Home Depot's advertising on Fox News Network. Home Depot purports to be environmentally friendly in many ways, yet they advertise heavily on the the "network" that often mocks the idea of global warming, calling it at best "climate change" and even denying that it's real.

So IB and I showed up, with a handful of others with signs, and delivered the petition to the manager on duty. He seemed bemused, pretending to be respectful. I wonder if he had been forewarned. It was anticlimatic, to say the least. But we did get some attention from orange-shirted workers and the streams of people pouring in the doors. Then, I went to Lowes to get some propane. IB's first political activity--lots more to come.