Little Moments

For the most part, my bike ride home is pretty, well, to be honest, boring. It’s a bike trail that runs parallel to a major road and it’s just not very interesting. It’s great that I don’t have to ride on the major road and I love that there’s a bike trail, but it’s rather boring. But then there is this brief section where I get off the bike trail to get to my actual house. It’s on some surface streets in a neighborhoody neighborhood (and if you don’t know what that means, it’s because you’ve never lived in a downtown where the neighborhoods are really barhoods). Rarely does a car pass. When they do pass, they inch by me slowly, as if to digest the fact that there is a random person pedaling down the street with a billion manically flashing lights attached to her bike. It’s so quiet I can hear the CRICKETS. Crickets, people. Crickets in Minneapolis (spell check just underlined Minneapolis – I was momentarily convinced I had been spelling the name of this city wrong for three years)! Who knew that there were noisy bugs here? I can hear the wheels of my bike on the asphalt and the wind echoing around in my helmet. I pedal slowly to savor every last bit of the stillness. The smell is Downy-fresh, as if someone is constantly running a dryer full of towels, strictly for my benefit. I can act as a voyeur as I ride along, peeking in open windows to see who’s watching Monday night football, who’s chatting on their computer, and who’s holding hands on the porch. And the porches – the porches are all lit up and people sit in them. Some people read on their porches, some people talk to each, and one cute little family is always on their porch playing games. It’s a moment of peace I am thankful that I get when I am biking home at 10:30 on a Monday night.

Advice I Never Received

Hi. I just started my fourth year of graduate school. No one told me to file my articles by author. I have spent the last week organizing my files. Not just alphabetizing them, although that was a pain in the ass, but actually creating correct citations and everything. Had I just done this as I got every article it would be no big deal, but since I'm a moron and I haven't done it for THREE YEARS, this is now my payback. It's painful.

Minnesota Nice

A sign hanging on our computer lab door today looked something like this:

QUIET!
(please)
Prelims in progress

Hello. Hi. I'm a rude sign. Maybe the word please should go first. So as to let people know you're about to ask them a favor. Instead of first placing an order and then letting people know you know you have been rude by placing a rather insincere please in the tiniest writing possible.

I'm not sure how I ended up here.

Economics Question

I think all people who take an econ class should be required to answer this question: if a player in the NFL makes over $1,000,000 a year as a quarterback and still manages to throw interceptions at very pivotal points in games, why should he be allowed to come back the following year AND REPEAT THE SAME PATTERN?

I may or may not be referencing a rather dismal performance from a rather dismal Vikings quarterback.

New Job

So I was in court today and I was watching part of a murder trial. Since I was only there for about an hour and a half, I missed most of the history, but here's as much as I understood. Back in 1984, a guy sexually assaulted a woman he later killed. Along the way, he stalked her and as part of the stalking, he somehow accessed some of her checks and wrote checks out of her account. Now, in 2000, he got some fancy hotshot lawyer who decided that he should appeal he murder conviction. 2005. It's finally brought to court. And me, little old me, gets to watch an hour and a half of it. It's no Law and Order. The first hour and a half is the cop telling the lawyers that he gave the rape kit samples to the lab, the lab tech saying she gave the samples to the ME, and the ME saying he gave it back to the lab, blah, blah, blah, establishing the chain of evidence. Then came the super exciting moment. The handwriting expert. This woman has a 27 year long CAREER in analyzing handwriting. She had a three-year long appreticeship and then started a consulting business of her own. She was amazing. She was like, "look, the connection between the A and the G goes below the line. The didn't happen in any of the known samples. The stem of the G goes higher than in any of the known samples. The slant is fifteen degrees different. The ratio of the capital letters to the lowercase letters is different." Anyway, you get the idea. How come that never came up on a list of career options for me? When I took the Myers-Brigg and they told me I should be a nurse, a social worker, or a teacher, how come it forget to metion handwriting expert? I need to stop the grad school train, get off, and get on the handwriting expert train. So, when you're telling little kids that they can do anything when they grow up, you can tell them the usual boring jobs - teacher, doctor, lawyer, CEO of Disney, President of Guatamala - but don't forget the cool occuptaions like handwriting analyst and stenographer.

The Joint

On my way to and from school, I pass by a bar called The Joint. The slogan on the sign for The Joint says, "Where the ride begins and ends." Everytime, EVERYtime I pass by, I think to myself what a bad, bad, bad idea that is. Let's have a couple of beers and then go for a ride. Then come back, have a couple more, and drive home. But now that I've written this down, maybe I will stop thinking it EVERYtime.

The Wedding

I was in wedding in August back home in Michigan. This first picture is of feet on the beach of Lake Michigan. This is where we went for the reception. My friend Shannon's feet, my feet, and Shannon's husband, Nick's feet, to be specific. While it may look as if this the second is merely a picture of a man in a yellow jacket, this is me flirting with Biker Boy as he takes the picture. I guess you can see the bride there on the left, too. I was going to post more pictures, but, alas, since I am technically incompetent, this has taken me forever. Maybe I'll be more patient with it tomorrow.

Why No One Should Go To Grad School

It shouldn't take me by surprise. It really shouldn't. Grad school attracts a certain kind of people. Those kinds of people aren't MY kind of people. This is clearly an overgeneralization, but it just fit today.

Being brutally honest, I can say that I am not exactly tactful. I say what I want to say and what I believe. But I care, I care DEEPLY, about other people. My tactlessness might be more painful it if weren't clear that I desperately care about people and what I'm saying is said because I think it will help in the long run. This serves me well in my relationships. It serves well in my domestic violence work. It served well in my internships and real world crappy part-time jobs. It has not served me well in grad school.

Becaue I'm surrounded by equally tactless people, but people who don't care. When you are tactless with your comments and actions, but don't look around to make sure no one was hurt, it's clear that you just don't care about people.

I have cried too many tears over these people. I don't know what I've done to make these people - my coworkers, my peers, my classmates - dislike me, but whatever it is, I clearly can't change it. So from here on out, I can take nothing personally. Because these people just don't know that other people are hurt by their actions. I am not sure if it's personal, but I can't take it as such. Because it's killing me day by day and I can't take it anymore.

It's hard to develop relationships outside of grad school when in grad school. But it's something I need to work on a lot to make sure I don't continue to think I'm a worthless person because everyone I work with thinks so. New friends. New friends. It's not an entire solution, but it's a start.

Hole-y Mackerel

As I grabbed a pair of jeans out of my closet, I noticed that they have a hole in a rather conspicuous location. Instead of being sad about the ruin of a wonderfully comfortable pair of jeans, I was excited because the location of the hole indicates too much bike riding. I've officially ridden my bike enough to have bike-related clothing fatalities.

It's Raining Bugs

The trip to Iowa was as successful as anything that includes Iowa could be. Hee hee. Biker Boy LOVES that I mock his home state. It was good times. His family is awesome and they are so kind to me that I am overwhelmed at times by their generosity and love. And they are some of the funniest people ever created. Biker Boy's mom feeds me so much food I am ready to burst right now. Biker Boy's dad, the doctor, hooked me up with free samples of Zyrtec and Allegra so that I don't have to pay for allergy medication for the next two months. Whoo hoo. His brothers and sisters are wonderful and I adore them.

A low point in the weekend came when Bowling Green lost to Wisconsin. I had been sporting my tshirt that said Beat Wisconsin with the big falcon on the back for weeks and I thought we had a genuine shot, but now I have to eat crow for a long time because we lost. But, it was a mighty effort from the Falcons. Go BG!! A second low point was the death of William Rehnquist. I wish I could say that when he died, I was like, "oh, how sad, a man died," but instead, I was like, "oh, fuck, now Roberts is in and this sucks and there's another opening and fuck, fuck, fuck." I'm sorry. I'm a bad, bad person. I am sorry he died, though. I know he was sick for a long time and I hope he didn't die in pain and I hope his loved ones were with him when he died.

But, the point is, not all this sad stuff, that we drove my new(ish) truck to Iowa. And the bugs!! The bugs, people. We had to pull over once, not because we needed gas (sorry, President Bush, I know you told us not to travel so we could conserve gas because of that business with the pipelines and the refineries, but it's a tradition in Biker Boy's household and who I am to stand in they way of tradition?), but because we had to clean off the windshield that had so many dead BUGS on it that we couldn't see out of the window. I have never, in my whole life, had the pleasure (?) of seeing so many bugs on a window. Really. And I've done my share of driving. In the midwest. In the dark. The bugs in Iowa. Too many to count. New(ish) truck now has so many bugs in the grill, I don't know if I'll ever be able to get them off.

School starts tomorrow. I'm doing my best to stay optimistic about it. I am going to do my absolute best to get my prospectus done this year. This semester I need a solid topic and next semester I'm going to write it up. I need to get a decent committee together. Those are the goals. I can do this. I can get through this alive.

Huffing and Puffing

NGS: pedal, pedal, pant, pant, pedal

Biker Boy: whistle, pedal, whistle, pedal

NGS: pant, pant, pant

Biker Boy: How's this pace for you?

NGS: Oh, just fine. pant, pant, pant

Biker Boy: Isn't this gorgeous weather?

NGS: A bit warm, don't you think? pant, pant, pant

Biker Boy: pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal

If only I could count the number of times this exchange has taken place. Maybe someday I'll learn to say, "hey, you, Biker Boy, how about you slow down so I can breathe?" But until that day, I shall pant, pant, pant.

Happy Labor Day.