Locked Out

When we built our house, we didn't spend a lot of time reviewing the options for many common but necessary items such as door knobs. What we ended up installing were knobs that when you lock them, you can still open them from the inside--meaning that it is extremely easy to lock ourselves out of the house, which we have done several times. (What is the purpose of this type of door lock? Who needs it?) I used to keep a spare key hanging outside in a tree, and it came in handy several times, particularly one cold winter night when Husband and I went out into the garage to see what kind of ice cream snacks were in the freezer. When we realized that we'd locked ourselves out, I borrowed his shoes and socks, as I was barefoot at the time, so that I could go get the key (he didn't know precisely where it was). It was a dark and cold night--I was wearing flimsy PJ's--and when I got into the woods, I had to feel my way to the tree and then feel all around to find the key. It was an adventure, and I didn't feel the need to eat ice cream that night.

Not long ago, some landscaping changes made getting to that key very difficult, so I took the key into the house and forgot about finding a new hiding place for it. That is until last night when Husband and I stepped outside to let the dogs go out before going to bed. As soon as I shut the door, I realized that it was probably a mistake, and indeed it was. To make a long story short, we ended up using a drill and a sledge hammer to demolish the door knob, and in the process, we ruined some of the door frame, creating another chore for my already overworked husband.

Today, my mission is to find a new place to hide the spare key.

My Simpson's Avatar

This is me as a Simpson's character. It's a remarkable resemblance, wouldn't you agree?

Re-vision

I reached a new milestone since I last blogged. Last week I visited my eye doctor, just knowing that the inevitable would happen this year. And it did. I now wear reading glasses. I knew it was coming. For a while now I've been sitting as far away from my laptop as my arms will reach. When I read a book, I have to move the book around every so often and look at it from a slightly different angle. I was starting to squint at things. The doctor said that I was suffering from eye strain and said that I would feel better if I wore reading glasses. The good news was that my distance vision is still very good, so I was able to avoid the dreaded bifocals. I swear I will never wear bifocals.

I am reminded at this point of an English teacher I had in high school. She wore two kinds of glasses--a pair for distance and a pair for reading. In class she didn't have to use the distance glasses, but when she wanted to read something she'd put on her reading glasses, read a few lines, look up and take them back off. It was sort of her trademark, repeatedly putting her glasses on and taking them back off. My eye doctor told me that I need to wear my glasses only when I'm going to be reading or working at the computer for long stretches, so maybe I won't become like my eleventh grade English teacher.

Shopping for reading glasses was not an altogether unpleasant experience. The girl who helped me was very friendly and honest and helped me to avoid any glasses that might make me look like a professor. I've never been a vain person, but I rather enjoy being mistaken for a college student when I'm at work, so I certainly did not want glasses that would make me look older. I picked up some brown glasses sort of the same color as my tortoise-shell sunglasses, put them on, and took them right back off again. Right then I decided to stay away from any drab colors. Since I don't have to wear these glasses all the time, I reasoned, why not go for something sort of funky, so I tried on pink glasses and green glasses and red glasses and multicolored glasses. I finally settled on a pair of turquoise and tan glasses that look nice with my eye color and will coordinate with most of my clothes.

When I used my glasses the first time I was sort of shocked. I opened my bible, looked at the words, and then put on my glasses. "Whoa!" I said. Although my eyes aren't in that bad of shape, I was amazed at the difference. I guess I'm sort of surprised since I've been an avid reader since I learned to read that this day didn't come sooner. I just hope that as the rest of my body starts to wear out, correcting the problems will be as simple as a new pair of glasses.

It's Time for Passover Again

Here's a wonderful piece of information I received in a newsletter from the president of my university:

"State legislators for the second consecutive year approved increased general operating funds for state colleges and universities. Seventy million dollars for new operating funds and 3 % across-the-board employee salary increases were approved.

"The 3% salary increase will be effective July 1. . . . The percentage raise will not apply to adjunct faculty, temporary employees, graduate assistants or student workers."

At my school, temporary faculty teach most of the general education courses--those classes that are required for all students (English, math, etc.). More and more, universities across the country are relying on temporary faculty; however, these same faculty are continually short-changed when it comes to raises and benefits. (I'm one of the lucky ones who does receive good benefits.) These faculty also typically teach twice the number of students per semester than their tenured or tenure-track counterparts.


This is the second consecutive year that temporary faculty will be passed over for a raise. I would complain about it, but because I had to reapply for my job this year and I haven't heard anything yet, I think it's better to keep my mouth shut. But this continual neglect is causing me to rethink how hard I want to work at my job this coming fall.

Relief

Today we finally got some much needed rain. Maybe now the grass in my yard won't be crunchy. But I doubt that whatever rain we get today will do much to alleviate the drought we're in.

Nothing much is happening around my house. We get up around 5:30; Husband goes to work, and I stay home and do laundry, study my bible, and think up something good for supper, or think up a scheme to get to go out for supper. That hardly ever works on a weeknight, however.
We're planning a fun weekend outing. We're going to canoe on the Caney Fork river on Sunday morning, putting in at the Center Hill dam and getting out at Betty's Island. We had a lot of fun the last time we went, and this time should be even better since we just got a new canoe. I can't wait to get it on the river. It's sort of hard to know how well it will handle just trying it out in my brother's swimming pool, but we got a pretty good idea that it's not nearly as tippy as our previous canoe. (Yes, we actually did try out the canoe in the pool. It was the highlight of our day--we're easily amused.)

Is everyone else having as uneventful a summer as I am?

Book Report

Tony recommended that I read Doug Marlette’s novel The Bridge, saying that I would love it. He was right; it is an excellent story. The primary story takes place in the present day, but a secondary story—what the main character, Pickard, learns about his family heritage—takes place in the late 1920’s through the 30’s, the main character of which is Pickard’s grandmother, Mama Lucy.

This is a novel that can be read more than once, and the reader can explore different themes during each reading. I particularly enjoyed the little history lesson presented in the story, one that I had never really learned about in school. Mama Lucy grew up in the South working in the textile mills weaving cloth. Her story centers on the textile workers’ strikes during the 1920’s and 30’s and the workers’ attempts at unionizing and petitioning their bosses for better pay and working conditions. What Mama Lucy experiences during this time is fundamental in shaping her actions and attitudes later in life towards her family.

Family dynamics, particularly those of Southern families, forms a major theme in this novel. Mama Lucy is the cause of much friction in the family. When she is first introduced, she a frail but feisty old woman celebrating her ninetieth birthday and resisting being sent to a nursing home. She still does all she can to exercise control over her grown children and grandchildren. Her family consists of a very colorful bunch, very few of which made it past high school, and those who did (Pickard) are viewed with suspicion. Pickard describes his extended family in the scene leading up to his attendance at his grandmother’s birthday party and family reunion:

The Cantrells are a fiercely modest clan, not given to ostentatious displays of personal wealth, material possessions, or hubris of any kind. Any and all forms of “showin’ off,” “puttin’ on airs,” or “gittin’ above your raisin’” are generally frowned upon in my family, and whatever pride we might possess is religiously suppressed, except when it comes to our means of transportation. Any residual Cantrell strut and boast is channeled into the chrome and paint jobs or the horsepower per cubic inch under the hoods of our latest set of wheels. We Cantrells may not go far in the world, but we’ll get there in style. No wonder a number of my relatives made their livings working on and around combustible engines—as garage mechanics, car dealers, auto parts specialists, service station attendants. Ambition in my family was gauged by whether you wanted to pump hi-test.

Pickard’s cousin describes ambition as the “Southern Disease,” a virus that should be avoided at all costs because “nobody likes it when somebody breaks with the rest of the herd. It pressures the rest to do the same, and that’s risky.”

Despite their various feuds and alliances (which will likely remind readers of some of their own past and ongoing family dramas), the extended family is very protective of each other, not allowing anyone, including other family members, to speak negatively of the family in pubic. When a particularly “redneck” cousin decides to badmouth Pickard at the reunion, another cousin comes to Pickard’s defense with a threat that I found particularly hilarious: “I want you to apologize to Pick, ‘fore I rip you a new asshole and rearrange your digestive tract to where you don’t know whether to piss or fart.” If the offender had been someone outside the family, he likely would not have received fair warning before being subjected to such a procedure.

In his dealings with his family, the main character Pickard enters upon a journey of self-discovery. Along his journey, the novel explores many other themes such as loyalty, betrayal, resentment, and forgiveness, not only within the family dynamic, but in other venues as well. This is a novel that can be read and interpreted on many different levels, and readers certainly will see parallels to their own lives in this very engrossing story. I will definitely look for other titles by this author.

If you've read it, let's talk about it. (Do I get an A, Tony?)

Rest In Peace, Woody

My dogs and I will miss seeing you jumping out of your Element and christening cars on Saturday mornings.

Bored and withering up like this tree

The lack of rain has taken its toll on the vegetation in my yard. I have watered this tree repeatedly, but as you can tell, my efforts seem futile. It's weird, though, that this tree is the only one that is suffering to this degree. The grass looks pretty bad, too. I last mowed the yard nearly three weeks ago. Husband mowed a little yesterday, but it didn't seem all that necessary.

Life since school has been out has been extremely slow. I have been doing some housework that needed to be done, and I've been putting off some tasks that I know will be very boring. It's sort of ironic, though, that I fear that August will come much sooner than I'd like.

I"ve been reading some. I read a book called The Faith and the Power. It's a history of the time between the crucifiction and the destruction of Jerusalem. Very interesting. Then I started a mystery novel that I picked up for a dollar a couple of weeks ago, but I'm having trouble getting into it.

I have not listened to very much news. It seems that every time I turn it on, it's the same stuff. I'm tired of hearing about Paris Hilton. The story about the tuburculosis guy was mildly interesting. I don't care about hearing from the presidential candidates because I don't see much point in following them this early in the game. Besides, the media will choose the top two in each party and that will be that.

I have not posted in over a week because I have nothing to say. The problem is I still want to blog. I like writing. Someone please give me a writing assignment.

No Worries

Medical researchers are constantly learning new things about our bodies, disease, and what is good or not good for us. However, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, much of the information that we hear about how to maintain good health is contradictory. For instance, foods like chocolate, coffee, and wine have both benefits and drawbacks. How do we know how much we can have and receive the benefits without the harmful effects? We’re constantly told that we need to keep our cholesterol low, but this morning I heard that people who have low cholesterol are at higher risk for Parkinson’s disease. So now all those people who were afraid of heart disease and did all they could to lower their cholesterol are now afraid that they’ll get Parkinson’s because their cholesterol is too low.

It’s really frustrating to constantly hear all this changing information. It’s confusing. The media purport to give us all this information so that we’ll stay informed, but the real result is that we’re just confused. We’re afraid and confused. We’re afraid of the bad things that might happen to us, and we’re confused about how to prevent those bad things. This causes us to worry which, in turn, has a negative impact on our health. We’d be much better off if we stopped listening to the media reports about what may or may not be good for us and quit worrying about the diseases that may or may not afflict us.

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ^For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ^But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ^Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matt. 6.31-4).

The Nutcracker Suite

Yesterday, my morning began with something I have been dreading for nearly two months. My gynecologist, whom I have known since fifth grade, is a very good doctor, and she always makes me feel good about what I’m doing to take care of myself. However, when she wants to prod me into doing more (for instance, exercising more), she has a way of using the pronoun we instead of you. She likes to use phrases such as “We’ve reached that age. . .” and “At our age, we really need to. . . .” So, at my visit with her early last month, it was with this tactic that she persuaded me to undergo my first mammogram. She assured me that it wasn’t really all that bad and that she didn’t dislike it nearly as much as that other part of the yearly checkup. I wasn’t exactly convinced, but I decided to go along with it.

Some man who hates women must have invented this torturous procedure. While it didn’t hurt as badly as I imagined it could have, I have nonetheless decided that I will likely not do it again. Surely, a monthly self exam is good enough. If a self exam is good enough for men—you know, guys, that you should examine your testicles periodically—then it should be good enough for women. However, if the medical establishment insists that an x-ray image of the breast is the best way to detect those little breast cancers early, then it stands to reason that men would need to detect testicular cancer early using the same method. In fact, in the interest of promoting healthy families, couples could make appointments together, and her mammogram and his “testigram” could be done at the same time, in the same room even. First the wife could have her mammogram, and then the husband could get his testigram done on the same machine. Besides being a great bonding experience, it would be very practical to do them together because after the exam, the wife would have to push the man back to the car in a wheelchair and drive him home.

On second thought, maybe that much togetherness is not a good idea. After all, when you have to go through a mammogram first thing in the morning, the last thing you want to do is take care of an incapacitated man that afternoon. No, a day of shopping and a nice lunch is a great reward after the torture of the morning.

For What it's Worth

Recently, Husband decided that he wanted a new car. I told him that he could have one if he stops doing hay in the summers and sells his hay equipment. He agreed, and while we have sold some of his stuff, we still have for sale a John Deere 735 MoCo (mower conditioner). (If you are aware of someone who needs some hay equipment, I'll be happy to point you to the ad.)

I sort of thought that we'd sell all the equipment and then buy the car, but I guess men don't work that way when they want a new car.

I became interested in the Mustang when the new body style--a real, honest retro style--came out a couple of years ago. I dragged Husband to a dealership right after they came out because I just wanted to see one up close--I appreciate a beautiful car, and the new Mustang is a beautiful car. I had no thoughts of buying one. Husband, however, got the fever, and though it subsided, he never quite got over it, and a couple of months ago, I broke down and made the deal with him.

Now when Husband decides to do something, he does it all the way. The way he thinks, if he's gonna spend the money to get something, he might as well get exactly what he wants the first time. He does his research, and in all the time I've known him, he's never made any bad deals. This time has been no exception; however, I think we both got a bit more than we bargained for when we bought this car.

He picked out a Roush 427 Mustang. This car is a real head turner. No more than fifteen minutes after we'd driven away from the dealership, a guy yelled at us with admiration for our car and took our picture as he drove alongside us. Later on down the road, some young kid parked on the side of the road with his souped up Honda gave us two thumbs up and then bowed in a posture of worship. We laughed and laughed. Whenever we go out to eat, we see men stop and inspect the car and sometimes take pictures. It's absolutely amazing.

I can't help but wonder what people think of the owners of this car. To me, it's a pretty car, and it's fun to ride around in it. But many people attach a lot more to ownership of a car and make judgments about people by the cars that they drive. I've done it plenty of times myself. I know better than to do that now. While some cars are more aesthetically pleasing than others, they all have one thing in common: They are all a hunk of metal that get their drivers from one place to another. We get into trouble when we begin to measure the worth of a person by the value of his automobile, or house, or clothing, or any other material possession and think that the person who has the more beautiful possessions is the more valuable person. Possessions can be fun, but their value is only in the eye of the beholder.

I See London, I See France. . .

If I see one more news announcer holding up a pair of granny panties and saying "poor Paris" I'm gonna scream.

Of course, it would be punishment enough for her just to wear granny panties without going to jail.

School's Out!

I have a big stack of papers to grade, but after I'm done, I'll be free until mid-August to do whatever I want.

Having to read so many essays during the school year doesn't allow me much time to read what I want to read, and by the time summer arrives, I've forgotten about all the books I've heard of during the previous months that I thought I might like to read. So if you have any suggestions for my summer reading list, I'll be glad to hear them.

Could it Have Been Prevented?

The young man who killed all those people at Virginia Tech was obviously a very troubled individual. News stories have portrayed him as a loner, someone who didn't have close friends. Students who knew him said that when they would speak to him, he'd stare right through them without saying a word. Perhaps we'll learn about his past as time wears on--I wonder what he went through to make him end up the way he was?

When we encounter people who are obviously very troubled, how are we to respond? How do you reach out to a person who no longer wants to be reached out to? Is a person ever too far gone to be helped by another human being?

If you look at all these school shootings, it seems that it was always the "weird" loner who perpetrated the crime. Have we been guilty of contributing to their weirdness? Have we ever not taken the time to become friendly with weird people because it's just so much trouble to try to relate to them? We need to do our part to make all people feel like they are treasured; otherwise we run the risk of helping to drive some people to commit these desperate acts. Jesus hung out with the social outcasts of his day, and we need to not be afraid to do the same. Perhaps we might help to save a life.

Checking In

I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately, but I've been swamped at work, and the time I haven't been working, I've just not felt like blogging much. I still have lots to say, but just no time or energy to say it.

I did take some time for an outing with my mom last week. We went to a spa and had a massage and a facial. It was my first time, and it was GREAT! I can't believe I waited so long to get a massage--I won't wait that long again. When I get done grading all the reasearch papers I'll be collecting very soon, I'll probably go again.

Y'all have a wonderful day!

Picking Up Strays

Yesterday, a little black and white beagle showed up and started hanging around at our house. He’s a friendly little dog, and we liked him from the start. He rolled over onto his back, showing us his belly, and, of course, we obliged to give him a belly rub. Since we were outside for a big part of the day, he stayed around, alternating between following us around as we worked and taking naps in the shade. Because he was wearing a collar with a tag, we figured out pretty quickly that he belongs to one of the neighbors, so I decided to walk him back home. However, he didn’t want to stay, and about five minutes after I got back to my house, he showed up again. So I called and left the neighbors a message, thinking they’d come get their dog after they got home. But they didn’t. He ended up spending the night on our front porch. We figure he’ll go home eventually, but for now, we have a new little companion.

The problem is that our dogs do not like this situation at all. At his first chance, one of our Jack Russell Terriers, Pete, took out after this little dog and left a mark on his face. Of course, we punished him, but he is still very upset that this little dog is here. This morning he took out after the beagle again, so we ended up trying to be dog whisperers and making him be friendly. After a few minutes, our dog seemed to calm down, the two dogs enjoyed a wary truce. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Our dogs are very territorial and protective, and if you know Jack Russell Terriers, you know that they’re very jealous little dogs, and our dog Pete is jealous of even the other two dogs in our house. So he’s especially jealous when a strange dog comes around and we’re friendly with it.

People are like that too. When we have a circle of friends, and a new person tries to come into that circle, we sometimes are jealous and don’t want to be hospitable. We’ll even do what we can to let that person know that he or she is not welcome, sometimes resorting not necessarily to violence, but to meanness and spite. We don’t want to get to know that person because doing so means that the relationships we share with our circle of friends that we have become so comfortable with will be different. If a new person comes in, those relationships might change; we might lose our place in the circle. Our friends might decide that they like spending time with the new person rather than us. We don’t consider that we might end up having a great relationship with the new person. Instead, we fear the changes that inevitably will take place, even if the changes might be good ones. Like dogs, we become territorial, allowing our insecurities to turn us into snarling animals instead of the loving creatures that we are called to be. Fear and insecurity are terrible emotions that we would do well to overcome if we want to be better humans than our dogs are.

Insuring Our Treasures

Disgusted with his insurance company after Hurricane Katrina, the Rev. Simmie Harvey let his homeowner policy lapse and left his house in the hands of a higher power.

Somebody up there must like the 88-year-old Baptist minister: His newly uninsured house escaped serious damage last month when a tornado ripped through the city's Uptown neighborhood and toppled a tree that narrowly missed his home.

"I wasn't lucky. I'm blessed," he said. "I'm going to be all right. The Lord takes care of me."

Facing soaring premiums or feeling shortchanged by their insurers, a growing number of homeowners and businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi are "going bare," or dropping their coverage altogether, insurance agents and consumer advocates say. Many more are drastically reducing their coverage. The rest here.

I've been wondering about this for a while. Christians are to be different from the rest of the world, but in reality, we look just like everybody else. We purchase homes and other tangible property that must be insured, especially if it isn't payed for. We buy "treasures" and then pay someone else to reimburse us for it if it should become damaged.

Is this just a necessary evil of living in today's world, or would it be better for Christians to live differently? Can we live without insurance? Should we?

Equal Time

If Fred Thompson really does run for President, should NBC give all the other candidates the same amount of time that Thompson gets in his role on Law and Order?

They're Gonna Git Ya Whatever Way They Can

According to a story in an Illinios newspaper, an elderly couple in Illinois is being threatened with penalties by the state's department of revenue for their use of vegetable oil as fuel in their car.

"They told me I am required to have a license and am obligated to pay a motor fuel tax," David Wetzel recalled. "Mr. May also told me the tax would be retroactive."

Since the initial visit by the agents on Jan. 4, the Wetzels have been involved in a struggle with the Illinois Department of Revenue. The couple, who live on a fixed budget, have been asked to post a $2,500 bond and threatened with felony charges.

Read the entire story to see the ridiculous hoops the state wants this couple to jump through in order to be able to collect used cooking oil from restaurants and use it for fuel for their car.

It's really pathetic that we're told to decrease our use of gasoline, but when people try to provide their own alternative, they are penalized for it. The reason for this is obvious: our government in dependent on the revenue derived from gasoline taxes, so they must find new sources of revenue. However, harassing people for being resourceful isn't the answer.

Back in time for Spring Break

Spring Break begins for me this afternoon at 3:55 p.m., and I am ready! Unfortunately, I have about twelve papers to grade, and I have to do my taxes. Thankfully, I am feeling much better after my battle with the flu, and I look forward to actually having a little fun if an opportunity for fun presents itself. Maybe I'll even blog a little bit over the break.

I hope everyone has a nice weekend!

This is How They'll Read Our Minds

I guess I'm a little bit slow, but I just realized that when I am logged into my Blogger account, I am also logged into Google. My Google account name is at the top of the Google search page. Yes, I know that Google owns Blogger, but I just didn't think about the idea that my blog content and my Google searches are now connected in one account.

Does anyone else find this a little bit disturbing?

T.M.I.!!!

This is what I get for allowing my students to write about topics that they feel strongly about:

One of my students is working on her cause/effect paper, and the topic she's chosen is what causes many girls/women to be overly flirtatious to the point of being a tease. Of course, when she told me her topic last week, my suspicions were confirmed that she is a lesbian. I'm fine with that. However, today she informed me that her research on her topic just became more complicated because,

"The straight girl that's been flirting with me told me this morning that she's bi."

Don't Bother Crying Me a River Because I'm Wearing My Hip Waders

This week marks the sixth week of classes here at my university and is nearly the halfway point of the semester. Next week is the last full week before Spring Break. So a professor would think that she is well past the point of having to deal with the student who appeared on the class roll but never bothered to show up to class. This morning at my 8:00 class, however, a student I had never seen before came into my classroom and introduced himself. I always have one student on my roll who for some reason has registered for class but has no intention of ever coming, and this guy was this semester's winner. I never expected him to show at this late date.

Now, this guy was desperate to find a way to begin attending my class and pass it, and he came to class armed with several ill-conceived arguments with which to plead his case. First he tried the "I-really-thought-that-I-had-dropped-the-class" appeal. Since obviously the computer system somehow wanted him to remain in the class even though he thought he'd pushed the right buttons to drop the class, he wanted to know if he could begin attending class and make up the work he had missed. I said absolutely not. There's no way I'm going to allow someone to come in at the middle of the semester and have a chance at passing this course when everyone else has been coming to class from the beginning. He then began to try to break me down. His next tactic was to give me the "but-my-GPA-will-suffer" story, saying that if he dropped now, he would get a grade of W (Withdrawn) which would harm his GPA. Of course, this is not true. A grade of W simply shows that the student dropped the class after the drop deadline. The only way that he would be harmed is financially if he were to drop below full-time status. Upon inquiry, I learned that he is enrolled for 15 credit hours, so dropping my class would render him no harm.

Next, he tried the old "my-mother-will-be-very-disappointed-in-me" trick. He wanted to attend class and do the rest of the work (assuring me that he's really good with writing and grammar). I told him that there's no way that he can pass because he's already missed too much work. He said that he'd rather attend class and do the work and fail giving it an honest try instead of not coming to class at all because his mother would be disappointed in his dropping a class. I told him that as an 18-year-old, he is able to make his own decisions about what classes to take and what classes to drop. Of course, he then applied the "but-my-mom-is-the-one-who's-paying-for-school" appeal, which had no effect on me whatsoever. I shrugged my shoulders.

Who is he trying to kid? I know that once a student gets a foot in the door, he'll do whatever he can to try to change my mind and allow him to pass the course, so I gave him no opportunity. I told him that attending class would do him no good and that he'd be better off just sleeping late in the mornings. He finally realized that no amount of illogical argument would get me to allow him to attend class, and he left.

If these students put as much effort into their academics as they do coming up with excuses and sob stories, I'd have some of the best college students ever. But I wouldn't get to share their antics and laugh about it with you.

R.I.P., O.V.

My grandpa, O.V. Warren, died late Wednesday afternoon. He had been sick for about three weeks, and for the last week, he really didn’t know that he was still alive. He was 97 years old.

His name, O.V., is just that—the letters do not stand for anything. In fact, most of his brothers and sisters had only letters for names: L.V., O.T., U.T., and S.T., I think; there may have been more that I don’t remember. S.T. changed the spelling of her name to Estee—I can’t really blame her. I guess his parents didn’t have much imagination because only one or two of the kids that I know of had actual names.

My brother once asked Grandpa what O.V. stood for, and Grandpa answered, “Old Varmit.” Ever since then, that’s what my immediate family has called him.

It’s sad that he’s gone, but he lived a long, healthy life and still got out and pretty much did for himself to the end, so we really can’t be anything but grateful.

Rest in peace, Old Varmit.

I suspect some bad essays this semester

I've been really busy with school the past week or so, so I haven't really had much time to blog. And to tell the truth, nothing has really pressed my buttons enough to make me want to. However, I did get a great line in an essay this week:

My life has been filled with many unsuspected events.

On another note, I took my research and argument students to the library yesterday. It's amazing how many of them had not been in there before and didn't know where or how to find things. Do school kids not go to the library anymore? I remember when I was in elementary school, every week or so, we went to the school's library where we learned how to find books, and we were expected to check out a book and bring it back on time the next week. Going to the library was always a fun experience because we could browse through the books and find some interesting story to take home for a week.

Apparently, library trips have fallen by the wayside for kids today, because too many of them seem to view going to the library as a chore to be avoided whenever possible, and they have no idea what to do once they do go inside. I think the internet has ruined the library experience for many people. I know that the internet is going to ruin the grades of some of my students who will find out that they can't use the first hit on a google search to write a good research paper.

Terror Tax

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Tuesday that Congress should consider a special tax to pay for the nation's war against terrorism.

Such a tax could help ease the squeeze that military and security spending is putting on "critical domestic programs," said Lieberman, whose support for the Iraq war has come under fire from anti-war Democrats.

Lieberman favors President Bush's plan to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq.

"I think we've got to start thinking about a war-on-terrorism tax," Lieberman said during an Armed Services Committee hearing on Bush's defense spending proposals. "I mean, people keep saying that we're not asking sacrifices of anybody but our military in this war, and some civilians who are working on it."

More here.

Do I have to pay the tax if I don't support the war?

Just A Typical Exciting Evening at JMG's House

We did not watch the Super Bowl at my house yesterday. Trixie was busy watching the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet. Here she is cheering for the boxer puppy.

Actually, the Puppy Bowl did not interfere with the Super Bowl, but since neither Husband nor I are sports fans, we watched Gunsmoke, Andy Griffith, and M*A*S*H* and were in bed by 9:00. We did manage, however, to see a couple of Super Bowl commercials in between episodes of our favorite TV shows.

Dinner and Supper are not Interchangeable Words

Apparently, people all over the country are confused about what name to call the evening meal. I know this because nearly every day, at least one person surfs into this blog having googled the terms "dinner" and "supper." Being the truely Southern country girl that I am, I wish to offer my expert, educated opinion, which should clear up the matter definitively.

Here in my neck of the woods, the meal eaten in the evening is always called supper. If you have moved here from some other area, you should be aware that when someone invites you to supper, you will be eating sometime around 6 p.m. It doesn't matter what type of food you eat in the evening, whether a sandwich, steak, soup, salad, chicken and dumplings, pizza, or tacos; the meal you eat in the evening is always supper. (Sometimes I like to eat breakfast food such as biscuits and gravy and eggs and grits for supper, but I still call it supper.)

So, then, what is dinner? Now here's where it can become confusing, but it really is simple. Dinner is eaten around noontime. Always. However, sometimes we don't eat dinner; instead some days we eat lunch. Here's the difference: Dinner consists of a hot meal that is served on a plate not made of paper. However, if you can hold it in your hand, and/or it comes wrapped in paper or sits on a paper plate it's lunch. A hamburger served hot on a plate is still lunch because you typically pick it up with your hands. Most of what you could eat in a fast food restaurant would qualify as lunch. Dinner is a heavier, more substantial meal than lunch, and it tends to make you sleepier than lunch does. Dinner also tastes better than lunch. It's more satisfiying and more memorable. No one talks about Grandma's Sunday lunches, but they sure do remember her Sunday dinners.

Today's typical adult works outside the home, and usually eats lunch instead of dinner for the noontime meal. However, some working people do eat dinner. How does one know whether he or she is eating dinner or lunch? Some foods could fall into either the lunch or dinner category, for example, say a loaded baked potato. If said potato is served on a plate (and I don't mean a paper plate), then I would call it dinner, but if it comes from a drive-thru barbeque stand, then it's lunch. Soup and salad are some other problematic foods. Usually soup and salad are lunch. However, if the soup is really hearty and is served with some bread, then I'd probably call it dinner. If the salad is just some greenery, then it's lunch, but if it's one of those that's loaded with meat, then I might call that dinner. If the soup and salad are eaten at the same time, then in my book, that qualifies as dinner, but only if both are served in real plates and bowls, not paper.

I don't know what it's like in other parts of the country, but most native Southerners that I know adhere to these definitions without really giving it much thought. These aren't definitions that we were taught, but ones that we just sort of learned through traditional use. However, the line that tends to divide the language of food is being blurred, mainly because of the migration of people from one part of the country to another, and because of television watching. As we are exposed to new and different people with their different ways of speaking, the little things that make us unique, such as our different names for the same thing, are gradually falling by the wayside.

No matter where I go, however, I will never eat dinner after dark.

Snow Day!

This morning I woke up to find that it was snowing outside, and there was about an inch of snow on the ground. This is the most snow I've seen in ages.

Of course, I had a bit of a dillema. My students have a paper due today, but I really don't want anyone getting killed on the highway on my account, so I decided to cancel class today. I doubt anyone will complain.

So I get to enjoy a snow day at home today. But it isn't quite as fun as when I was a kid and school was cancelled. Now I'm the one who has to weigh all the factors and make the decision, and I'm the one who has to rearrange the schedule to keep the class caught up. Being a grownup sort of sucks sometimes, but I still like snow days.

Why Bother With Church if This is All There is to It?

I've been sitting here working on some handouts for my students with the TV on in the background. Right now a certain church minister from Texas is on. Every time I have listened to him, his "sermon" sounds like a self-help workshop. Before his sermon, he has everyone hold up his or her bible and recite a little mantra about how "I am what the bible says that I am, and I can do what the bible says that I can do." During his sermon, he doesn't open his bible, and he rarely quotes from it. When he does, it's always one verse lifed out of its context so that it works well with his topic. Today he's talking about developing good habits and overcoming bad ones, and he used Paul's words in Romans 7.14 as an illustration. Right now he's offering the opportunity for TV viewers to ask Jesus into their lives, but he never mentioned Jesus once in his whole sermon.

Every time I hear this preacher, it's the same sort of thing. It's all about self-improvement, with some asking God for help thrown in. Maybe I'm just watching on the wrong days, but I sort of doubt it. I think I can see why there are 25,000 people in attendance at his church. There's no real challenge to act like Jesus. Everything that's said is something that could be read in any popular self-help book in any bookstore. People can attend that Sunday service and come away with some decent advice on how to improve their lives, but they haven't gotten anything that will help them understand God and his purpose for the world. From everything that I have observed, people will come away with a false spirituality that will do them little good in cultivating a deeper relationship with God. I hope that the smaller Sunday school classes offered at that church are more "meaty" than what is being presented in the main service.

I'll admit that I haven't been to church much in the past 10 years. Is this the trend in churches today? If so, I'm not missing anything.

We Like Foreign Oil, But Not Foreign Wool

This is wierd.

According to arkansasleader.com, "Bancroft Cap Co. in Cabot, the only company currently under contract with the Department of Defense to supply the U.S. military black berets, has dropped the hat and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court, forcing the Pentagon to look for a new domestic supplier. There may not be another U.S. company that can supply the military with 100 percent domestic materials, which was Bancroft’s downfall: It got caught mixing domestic and foreign wool and leather, which is in violation of U.S. law."

. . .

"Not listed among [Bancroft's] creditors is the Department of Defense, the company’s biggest customer, which alleges that Bancroft owes the government repayment for 340,000 black berets at about $4 each which were shipped before March 2006. Those berets were paid for and then later found to contain either foreign wool or leather and therefore unacceptable. Whether Bancroft concedes that its berets contained materials not produced in the U.S. is not known because repeated attempts to contact owner Barry Goldman have failed."

Surely the Pentagon has more important things to worry about.

No Gold for You

This week in his State of the Union speech, the president is set to outline a new plan which would be aimed at helping to provide health insurance coverage for people who have none. According to an article reprinted in the Seattle Times, “The basic concept of the president's health-care plan is that employer-provided insurance, now treated as a fringe benefit exempt from taxation, no longer would be entirely tax-free. Workers could be taxed if their coverage exceeded limits set by the government.” In the president’s plan, “The administration would cap the amount of benefits that can remain tax-free at $15,000 for a family and $7,500 for an individual; anyone whose health insurance cost more than the cap would pay tax on the difference. The cap also would be used to establish the amount of the new deduction for people who lack coverage. In this example, a family buying insurance could take a $15,000 deduction — even if the insurance cost less.”

OK. So the federal government wants to tax the difference between the $15,000 cap and whatever the excess cost is. I guess this is like allowing a certain amount of income to be untaxed, but when you earn more than that amount, you have to pay tax on the difference. I get that. I don’t like that if my insurance cost goes up, which it has every year, I’ll soon be paying tax on the difference. But I get it. Apparently, the tax revenue generated is supposed to offset the cost of the next part of the plan, the tax deduction for people who have to purchase their own insurance. The way I understand it, if I bought my own health insurance instead of getting it through work, no matter how little it cost, I could claim a $15,000 deduction on my income taxes. However, I’d venture to guess that most people who don’t get insurance through work either can’t afford what their employer offers or they aren’t offered insurance at all. If the former is the case, these people can’t afford an outside plan either. If the latter is the case, they probably are not paid enough to even consider buying insurance on their own. In either situation, a tax deduction won’t do them any good because they likely already have enough deductions to make their adjusted gross income below the taxable limit. Another deduction is not going to put more money in their pockets to be able to buy health insurance.

What this plan sounds like to me is just another way of collecting more tax to fund the unpopular war effort.

In his Saturday radio address, the president said that the way people normally purchase health care, through their employers, “unwisely encourages workers to choose overly expensive, gold-plated plans.” Now that’s an elitist statement if I’ve ever heard one. A worker who is willing to spend a little more for the better of the plans that his or her employer offers should not be criticized for wanting the best that is offered. I want the president to show America his health insurance plan. I’d be willing to bet it’s more than “gold-plated”—it’s solid gold, I’m sure. I’d like for him to live like an average American for just one year, with an average salary and an average health insurance policy, and see what it’s like to wonder whether insurance will cover a hospitalization from a major illness or accident.

This plan won't do anything to help people who already can't afford insurance. And it certainly won't help those who because of pre-existing conditions must either pay outrageous insurance premiums or do without.

Luther's Day

It's really great that the federal government has set aside today to celebrate my husband, Luther's, birthday, and there will even be parades in his honor!

Happy birthday, Baby! I love you!

Misc.

There's a lot to blog about, but I'm not feeling very articulate today, so I won't say more than a couple of sentences about any one thing.

First, my grandpa is very sick. He had to have surgery last night, but he seems to have made it through OK. The situation is still very serious, however, because his body is pretty much worn out--he's 97 years old.

Second, Husband slept really well last night because I did not snore once. However, I slept only fair because it was my first night using a CPAP machine. This is going to take a lot of getting used to. I had to force myself not to take off the mask in the middle of the night. My dog Pete wouldn't get very close to me after I put the mask on--he didn't like the way I looked.

Third, I did not watch Chimpy's speech last night. Just watching and listening to him gets on my nerves, so I'll just see what the commentators have to say about all of it.

Fourth, I still have a lot of work to do before school starts. I have to get my websites up and running, which will mean either going over to my parents' house to use their high speed internet or going to the office, and I don't want to go to the office until it's absolutely necessary.

Fifth, Husband is having sinus surgery on Tuesday, and he is scared half to death about it. I keep telling him that everything that the nurses said could go wrong won't go wrong for him. I think today I'll look online for people who have had the surgery just so he can see that lots of people go through it just fine. He'd never admit it, but he's a little bit of a hypochondriac, so if he knows about any complications that could occur, he will think that he's having the same complications. I hope he doesn't drive me crazy next week.

I guess that's all. I know your life is richer for reading all of this today.

I'm really not in a bad mood--I'm just feeling sort of lazy and don't feel like putting a lot of effort into providing you with one of my usual enlightening and thought-provoking articles.
:-)

Thou Shalt Not Plagiarize

Sunday morning as I was straightening up my kitchen, I turned on the radio and began listening to whatever radio preacher happened to be on at the time. This particular guy was preaching out of Romans, which I found interesting since I am studying Romans in BSF right now. As I listened to the guy, I began to realize that his sermon sounded very familiar. The more I listened, the more familiar the message became. I suddenly realized where I’d heard these words before. Now, I am one of those annoying people who talks back to the TV and the radio, and at this moment, I turned to the radio, pointed my finger at it, and exclaimed, “You’re a plagiarizer!”

This guy was preaching straight from the BSF notes. I know this because he read almost word for word, as if they were his own words, a passage straight from the lesson 11 BSF notes on Romans—a passage that I blogged about just a few weeks ago.

I was so amazed that this guy would do such a thing that I went to the internet and found the website for his ministry and clicked on the link for that day’s radio broadcast. As I listened, I hoped that I’d hear him give credit to the BSF notes for the ideas, but he didn’t.

Now, I know that sometimes preachers will recycle other preachers’ sermons. I’ve heard preachers say that they heard so-and-so preach this message and wanted to use the same material, but they gave credit to the author. This guy just made it sound like all the illustrations were his own.

Is this common practice among preachers? What do you think about this?

Will This Presidency Ever End?

First our phone calls, then our emails and internet use, now our snail mail.

Read about it here.

The State of Marriage, According to the Readers of Popular Magazines

According to a poll conducted by AOL and Women's Day magazine, "More than a third of American wives would not marry their husbands if they had to do it all over again.

"The poll by Woman's Day magazine and AOL.com found that 36 per cent would not marry their husbands, while another 20 per cent were not sure if they would re-do their 'I Do.'

"The poll findings carried in the February issue of Woman's Day magazine, which hit newsstands yesterday, provides an insight into a variety of issues, including flirting, infidelity, soul mates, bedtime habits, honesty and jealousy.

"Of the 3,000 married women surveyed, 76 per cent said they keep secrets from their husbands. The poll found that 84 per cent of American wives would want to be told if their husbands were cheating, with 49 per cent of them stating they have suspected or even caught their husband having an affair.

"On the flipside, 76 per cent admit to fantasizing about a man other than their husband, with 39 per cent stating they flirt with other men constantly."

I don't read women's magazines even when I'm at the doctor's office--I take my own reading material--so I have a sort of negative view of the type of woman who reads them and takes the surveys. It seems to me that many of the women who read women's magazines and take the time to answer the surveys and quizzes have a lot of time on their hands, or they are just too lazy or shallow to read things with more substance (yeah, yeah, I know those magazines sometimes have informative articles about women's health and such, but they're mostly a lot of fluff), so I have to wonder just how representative of all women this poll of 3000 is.

What do you think?

(I'm sorry if I've offended anyone who regularly reads those types of magazines. I guess I should just be glad that you're reading something.)

Ugghh!

There's another TV ad that is getting on my nerves (yes, I hear you saying "just turn off the television, JMG"). This one is for a particular weight loss program in which you buy special food. In one of the company's ads, a woman says that as a result of this program she "got her life back," and then she says that her husband says, "I got my wife back."

If I were that woman and my husband said that to me, I'd be insulted. Did he not consider her his wife while she was fat? Was he ashamed of her? Just who was that fat woman that he was sleeping with all that time?

Surely that was just scripted for the commercial.

New Blogger Switch & Other Stuff

I got my blog switched over to the new Blogger yesterday, but before I could use the new tools, I had to update my template, which caused me to lose my header image and my favicon. I managed to get my image back on there, but I haven't figured out the favicon yet (the favicon is the little spider I had next to the url in the address bar--if you use Internet Explorer, you probably never saw it).

I also switched Musings From the Chariot, but it's under a new account with a different username. So, if you see comments in your blog by someone named "professor j," it's me.

Readership is way down this week. I guess everybody is getting ready for Christmas rather than blogging. I'll probably blog a little less in the next couple of weeks since Husband will be home from work. We need to finish the upstairs bathroom project that we began a couple of months ago, and he has a new project that will likely require my expert help. He's taking the automatic transmission out of his Trans Am and switching it out for a six speed manual transmission. Apparently, this is supposed to make driving more fun, but I think it's just a ploy to keep me from driving it, since I can't drive a stick shift.

If I don't hear from any of you before then, have a good and safe Christmas!

I'm Not Buying It

Sears is running a TV commercial right now for their diamond jewelry. The jist of the ad is that even though the two of you decided not to exchange gifts this year, you know that means that you'll be getting each other something anyway to surprise each other with. This bothers me. As suggestible as Americans are, you know that someone who has made an agreement with his or her significant other not to buy presents this year will see that commercial and think "I'd better get him/her something anyway just in case he/she surprises me, and then I'd look stupid if I didn't have something for him/her." It's a ploy by the retailers to sell more, and it will work.

Another ad that's getting on my nerves is one for Directv high definition programming. Jessica Simpson is in her Daisy Duke role (her Southern accent absolutely sucks, by the way) telling some technical information about the resolution of the programming, and she says, "I totally don't know what that is, but I want it." This is about the stupidest thing that I've ever heard, but Americans will buy into this as well. If it sounds like the latest and best, we'll go out and buy it even if we don't know what it is or what we'll do with it.

We've been conditioned to respond to these ads, and it's obvious that they work because we're lined up at the stores to buy whatever we see. We see an ad and suddenly the stuff we have is no longer good enough, even though we liked that stuff yesterday. We need to get smart and stop being manipulated into parting with our hard-earned money every time we see something new.

Private Eyes are Watching You--And Ears are Listening

The government has a whole new way of bugging your conversations, and they don’t have to get into your house or office to do it. If you have a cell phone, it’s possible for someone to listen in on your conversations—not just your phone conversations. The microphone on your cell phone can be used as a bug to pick up any sounds in the near vicinity, even if your phone is turned off.

Apparently, if an agency decides to investigate you, they can have your cellular provider download some software to your phone, making the microphone active at all times. According to an article at CNET, “The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that ‘a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone.’ An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can ‘remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call.’” The only way to deactivate the bug is to take the battery out of the phone and leave it out. Law enforcement agencies need a court order to be able to conduct such surveillance, but this past summer, we learned just how broad is the government's scope in collecting information.

When I read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, I thought it was really farfetched that the TV could keep track of what people were doing inside their homes, but it’s totally within the realm of possibility. The next thing you know, we’ll hear that government agencies have been working with satellite and cable TV providers to download software into our cable and satellite receiver boxes in order to listen in on our conversations.

Scary stuff.

The Midnight Call

Let me tell you what happened to me last week. First, some background info.

I allow my students to turn in essays through email, and I give them a deadline of 11:55 p.m. This deadline gives them a grace period of a few hours because they all know that I'm not going to check email in the middle of the night--it's usually late the next morning or early afternoon before I get around to getting their emails. When I do check email and find their essay, I send them a reply that I received it.

I have a class in the afternoons that I swear they all must have ADHD. They drive me nuts because of all their energy. I constantly have to tell them to shut up. Everyone in the class is very good natured; they don't cut up out of malice; rather, their chatter is usually related to the topic of discussion (of course, if left to their own devices, their conversation will soon go off on a tangent.) I like these students, but they drain me of my energy. There's one guy in the class that's sort of the main instigator. Everyone likes him, and he gets his energy from that. He's quite intelligent and he writes pretty good essays. However, for as good natured as he is, he also tends to think that everything he does and says is quite cute. You know the type--fraternity guy, party animal.

I give my students access to my cell phone number because it is much easier for me to have to deal with only the one number and one voicemail. So far no one has abused the privilege--until last week. On Wednesday night--actually it was early on Thursday morning (the morning before my surgery), 1:00 a.m. to be exact--my cell phone rang. I usually turn it off or put it on silent at night so that in case I get a wrong number call, it won't bother me, but this time I had forgotten. I didn't bother to get up and answer it, but then it rang again, so I thought it would be a good idea to answer. By the time I got to my phone it had quit ringing, so I checked the missed calls log and dialed the last number, which I did not recognize. As I was leaving a message my call waiting went off, so I switched over, and it was the above-mentioned student calling, so he says, to ask if I had gotten his essay (which was due two hours prior to his phone call) because he had not yet received a reply. When I heard that, coupled with all the background noise, I knew he was calling me drunk from a fraternity party. And I was pissed! I mean thoroughly pissed! I didn't say anything to him that I shouldn't have said--not that he would have remembered it the next day anyway--and I knew that there is no reasoning with a drunk person. I decided to tell him that he needs to remember who keeps the gradebook in this class, but about that time my cell signal died. I went back to bed, but it took Husband and me a couple of hours to get back to sleep.

Our next class period is on Thursday, but it is optional; they can come to figure their final grade if they wish, so I don't know whether he'll show up. I have plenty to say to him if he does. He is signed up to take the next course in the sequence--my class of course. I'm going to advise him that he needs to take someone else because I don't know how objective I'll be able to be with his grades after this incident.

Can you believe the audacity?

Take That, Bellsouth!

As of today, Bellsouth no longer provides me with DSL service. A couple of technicians did whatever it is that technicians do and determined that the homes on my street are no longer eligible for DSL service. As it was explained to me, "When the power company came in and redid their lines, something happened to our lines that caused problems with the DSL." It is obvious to me that Bellsouth has determined that to fix our problem will cost more that we are worth as customers. I won't tell you what all I said to the customer service representative--it wasn't pretty.

However, Bellsouth has lost me as a customer altogether. I just finished speaking with a representative from another phone company that will now be providing my home telephone services--at a substantially lower cost that what I have been paying. I will also be switching to a local dial-up provider, a small company in Murfreesboro that has been around for a long time. This means that my email address will change, so some of you will need to update your address books. I'll send that info as soon as I make the changes.

Now that I have finally made the move to completely break ties with Bellsouth (well, I'll still love my brother even though he works for that outfit), I feel much better.

What's the Point?

This is from an article in my campus newspaper today. I'm sure that my students will be rushing out to buy it as soon as it's available. I cannot, however, figure out why this combination.

Vicious Vodka, a new caffeine-infused vodka, is being marketed to the Nashville area by MTSU student Tim Grace, a senior public relations major and Tennessee distribution manager of the California-based company Vicious Ventures.

(snip)

The company is targeting Nashville's young, single, contemporary crowd from ages 21 to 35, Grace said. First it will be marketed in the Nashville area, then eventually to the rest of Tennessee.

Vicious Vodka is also being marketed to the extreme sports crowd such as snowboarders, wake boarders and skate boarders.

Grace said he hopes to have Vicious Vodka on the shelves in Tennessee around January. The company is currently marketing the vodka in New York and Hawaii with promotions and special events.

Rendes has not disclosed how much caffeine is in the vodka, Grace said. However, per volume it is the same as coffee.

"The biggest concern I have is mixing a stimulant, the caffeine, with the sedative of the alcohol," said Pat Spangler, medical director of Student Health Services. "You're trying to offset the side effects of one product with the other."

Spangler said the caffeine could possibly cover the signs of being intoxicated.

Somehow, I don't think the caffeine is going to counteract the alcohol. The rest of the article is here.

The End Is Near!

Classes end this week, and a much needed vacation begins after I finish my grading. By the last day of classes on Wednesday, I'll have taken up essays from all of my remaining students. I haven't counted, but I think I have around 85 students still hanging in there. What's wierd is that one student who was doing really well and would probably have earned an A suddenly stopped attending. She had only a couple of weeks left and only one essay left to write. However, it was a well known fact that she did not want to be in school and was there only to appease her mother. Too bad that the entire semester ended up being wasted because she couldn't hang in there a couple more weeks.

For all of my complaining, I realize that I have a great job. I work for fourteen weeks (well, around 15-16 if I count the time from the end of classes until the end of final exams) and then get a month-long break, and then I work for another fourteen weeks , and then I get nearly four months off from work. Those two sets of fourteen weeks are killer, but the long breaks make it worth it.

On Thursday of this week, after I finish classes, I will have a little surgical procedure on my throat. I won't bore you with the nasty details, but suffice it to say that I'm having some excess tissue cauterized. I have been promised a sore throat for a few days and the possibility of some bleeding. All this right at the time that I have to begin a marathon grading session, so y'all pray that I recover quickly and that the soreness is kept to a minimum. The good news is that I'll have an excuse to eat lots of chocolate pudding!

If I find some good quoteable quotes, I'll share them with you. My last set of essays did not have any good ones, but I did read a teriffic essay on how to end a bad date early and ensure that you never get asked out by that guy again. (Some tips, ladies: order the most expensive item for both yourself and your date, lament the bareness of your ring finger, and complain about the amount of tip he leaves--whether it's too much or too little, or even if it's just the right amount!)

Y'all have a nice day!

Mean Old Professor G.

My students have known since the 6th of November what the assignment is for their final research paper. We have used class time to discuss possible topics, and I accompanied my students to the library one day to help them with research. I even gave them two days off from class to persue their research. They have a draft due for workshop on Monday, and their final draft is due on Wednesday.

Today I received this email from a student:

I'm really having a problem finding information on my topic.
I can't find what I'm looking for.  I'm writing on
Thanksgiving.

What does this student expect from me at this point? Perhaps this will sound uncaring, but I replied that I cannot do her research for her and that she should visit the library and speak to the librarian at the research desk for help.

I really hate it when students wait until the last minute to do a task and then try to make their emergency into my emergency.

Double Take

I just saw a very incongruous sight in the campus parking lot: A white guy with long dreadlocks and shabby jeans got into a new Volvo with a John Deere tag on the front of it.

Strange.

What's Happening

This week I have given all of my students "research days." They have assignments due next week after Thanksgiving, so since this will be a short week, I decided that they could use an extra day to spend in the library. Like they're really going to go to the library! I'm doing office hours today, but after that, I'm off for the rest of the week to grade papers and work on the new home improvement project that Husband and I have begun.

A couple of weeks ago, we began work on the upstairs bathroom. When we moved into our house eleven years ago this week, we did not finish the upstairs very far beyond the drywall stage and some doors. We finally decided that it's time to slowly finish the upstairs, and we've begun with the bathroom. I painted on Saturday. Husband finished laying the tile last week, and I'll grout it this week. Yesterday we installed new lighting. The next thing after that will be the vanity top, which we are going to make ourselves out of concrete and bits of colored glass. I'll post some photos when we get done.

In other news, I am on the warpath again with Bellsouth concerning my DSL service. I have not been able to connect since Friday (I am using dialup right now), after a week of very good service. Tech support told me today that I am too far away from the central office to get good DSL service. I say they are going to put me on a new central office or they'll lose a customer. They are supposed to send out a technician today to check my situation. Again. Something will have to change after today because I'm not going to put up with this any longer. Bellsouth is the only thing that makes me angry enough to want to throw something. Even stupid drivers don't make me as angry as this whole ordeal has, and that's saying something!

I should have some more good quotable quotes for you later this week, as I'll be spending some time grading essays.

Christmas Plans

Well, I got some good news yesterday. If you recall, a few days ago, I talked about the Christmas situation for my family, and how it has been sort of uncomfortable the past few years. I just found out that MIL and A have decided to have separate Christmas gatherings for their respective families. So I suppose that Husband and I will be participating, even though it will still mean that we'll be doing the whole gift exchange.

However, Streak has reminded me of a great idea (follow the link at his blog) that I heard about back in the summer. Micro credit is a program that allows people (usually women) in third world countries the opportunity to take out small loans in order to start businesses. For example, a lady might take out a loan for ten dollars and buy several chickens in order to start an egg business.

Last summer I watched a TV program that profiled one particular loan program and its participants. The thing that really struck me about this was the way that the loan program encouraged the women of a particular town or village to work together. Each week, the ladies who had taken out loans (men are excluded from this particular program because they aren't as reliable when it comes to making their payments) met as a group in order to make their individual payments. If one of the ladies had had a particularly bad week and had trouble making her payment, the other ladies would pitch in and help her. The idea of community was really being enforced with this program. Many of the women had benefitted so much from the first loan that, after paying it off, they borrowed again in order to expand their businesses. One of the ladies used her loan to buy a sewing machine and then she collected juice pouches and made purses out of them to sell to tourists. Another lady used her money to buy little toys and trinkets to give to neighborhood children in exchange for them collecting the hair out of their mothers' hairbrushes so that she could sell it for wigs. Almost exclusively, these women wanted to succeed in business so that they could have enough money to send their kids to school.

I think this is an excellent idea and a worthy cause, and I plan to learn more about it.

Quotable Quote

From a student's essay about obesity:

American society today moves at a very fast paste.

My first thought was tomato paste.

You have to see it to believe it.

I've always been a bit skeptical about people who claim to see the image of Jesus in strange places, and I have a hard time seeing it for myself until someone explains it. This sighting is no different. See for yourself.

FYI

Musings from the Chariot is updated today.

It's Just too Early to Start the Insanity

Yesterday at BSF (Bible Study Fellowship), I overheard a couple of ladies in the restroom talking about their Christmas trees. One lady said that she had just gotten hers up but it wasn’t decorated yet. The other lady said that hers was up and decorated and already has five presents underneath it. She said she wasn’t going to let Christmas sneak up on her this year.

I guess not!

Two Christmases ago, Husband and I were laying tile on our downstairs floors, so I didn’t bother putting up a tree. Last year I remembered that I had really enjoyed not having to fool with putting up and taking down all that mess, so I gave my tree and all the decorations to my niece. I didn’t miss it a bit.

When I heard those ladies talking yesterday, I realized just how free I feel not having to worry about something so trivial as decorating for Christmas. Now, if only I didn’t have to worry about shopping. (I blogged about this last year just before Christmas. Click here and scroll down to Thursday, December 15 to refresh your memory. Perhaps it’s early enough for all of us to consider some of these ideas and spare ourselves the headaches of Christmas shopping.)

Husband and I have discussed boycotting Christmas this year. We have even talked about taking a trip over to Asheville and touring the Biltmore estate, which neither of us have seen, instead of participating in the loot exchange. The only problem with this idea is the fact that some people on his side of the family will get their feelings hurt if we don’t show up. Is it better just to continue the tradition even though our hearts aren’t in it in order to keep peace in the family? We both are sort of leaning toward the trip, but we both are a little hesitant to be “selfish” this year, especially since we have the reputation of being the good kids. (Say, if any of y’all want to go with us to the mountains for a couple of days, maybe we could call it a spiritual retreat or something. Surely nobody could find fault with that!)

It’s really sad that what is purported to be a celebration of our savior’s birth has turning into an elaborate ordeal that involves rampant spending, tiresome and frivolous decorations, and has the potential to cause hurt feelings and resentment. Maybe this is the year to make a change.

My Daunting Assignment, Should I Choose to Accept It

In the comments of my previous post, Tony, in his gentle and tactful way, basically told me to quit complaining and investigate why I continue to feel frustrated by my students' choice of paper topics. He, in essence, gave me my own writing assignment--identify a problem and solve it.

So, as the good student, I submit my essay.

As a writing teacher who likes to keep up with what is going on in the world, even if I don’t necessarily understand it all, I am continually frustrated by my college students’ lack of interest in topics beyond their normal circle of everyday movement. The issues that typically trouble the average college student—judging from their paper topics—are campus parking, dating, sex, sports, music, celebrities, beer, and marijuana. Every semester it seems, my students are less and less inclined to talk about larger national or world issues. Oh sure, they will engage in a conversation about, say, capital punishment, but their minds are made up on the issue. Invariably, a small handful of students in the classroom will offer the standard, trite arguments against capital punishment, while the majority of the class will regurgitate the same old tired diatribe in favor of executing criminals. The same holds true for hot topics of the day such as illegal immigration, or a few years ago, gun control. It seems that students make up their minds based on the standard tag lines that the media feed them (or that they hear from their parents), and they feel no need to further research the issue for themselves—unless they are forced to write a paper about it, and then they typically ignore sources that are contrary to their sensibilities.

More and more, in order to ensure a lively classroom discussion, I find that I must put myself into the shoes of an eighteen to twenty-year-old and learn what topics interest them and then bring those topics to class. However, this is a tiresome undertaking. I have about as much interest in MySpace and Facebook and music downloads as they have in political scandals or the wars of words that the United States engages in with other countries. Even when I try to bring up issues that I think they will realize will have an effect on them, such as privacy of their Internet searches, they dismiss them with an attitude along the lines of, “As long as it catches terrorists, I don’t see a problem.” Unless they can clearly see how an issue will directly impact their sphere of existence today, that issue is of little or no importance.

Most college students today do not have the imagination to envision how seemingly unrelated, unimportant events can, when viewed at the same time, come to affect their small world. They need to realize that the things that are happening in Washington and the events that are occurring half a world away in a place they will likely never visit will eventually come to touch their lives. Because my students have grown up with a cell phone attached to one ear and an iPod earbud in the other, with their hands busy at the keyboard while their eyes are glued to MTV, they have become numb to anything but the adolescent drama of their, and their friends’, lives. Events in another country might as well be taking place on another planet for as much as these young people are concerned. Until today’s college students either experience directly or can vividly imagine just how much discomfort today’s world events can bring to their lives, they will continue to remain isolated in their own little electronic worlds with their hormone-fueled, reality show existences.

And until I can figure out a way to prod some imaginative thinking, I'll continue to be frustrated at having to meet the teenage mind exclusively in its teenage world.

Tony, my essay is turned in well ahead of the deadline and contains 287 more words than the 300 word minimum that you imposed. I have also given you a shameless plug. I expect extra credit.

I Need a New Job

I have just finished a week of conferences with my research and argumentative writing students. They had to write a paper in which they speculated about causes or effects of a problem and then offer a solution to the problem. Two students wrote about the problem of marijuana being illegal. Someone wrote about steroids in sports. A few students wrote about obesity. One wrote about the fact that department stores don't carry a good variety of fashionable clothing for larger sized women. One student wrote about global warming. And the rest were not remarkable enough for me to remember what the topics were.

I need to read something intellectually stimulating. Unfortunately, my next task is to read my freshman students' process analysis essays which consist of such topics as how to end a bad first date quickly, how to apply makeup, and how to drive a stick shift.

I really like my students, but some of their writing makes me feel as though my brain is going to go numb from disuse.

Election Woes

I've been sitting here trying to blog about this election, and nothing is working for me. I see the ads; I hear the rhetoric; I hear the commentators' evaluations; and it's all meaningless. No one talks about what matters. No one discusses what real people are concerned about. The canditates all talk about what they will do, not how well they will listen to and represent us. It doesn't matter whom I vote for--they're all the same. Vanity of vanities. I'm fed up with the entire process.

Quotable Quotes

From my freshman essays:

"The United States should not pride into the business of other countries."

"I don't want people to think I'm ease dropping in on their conversations."

"We searched in every nook and granny of the house."

My Little Rant

This is a copy of an email that I sent to Bellsouth Customer Care regarding their DSL service:

I'd like to make Bellsouth aware of the problems I have been having with Bellsouth FastAccess DSL, or what should be called LimitedAccess DSL. Most of the residents on my street are currently experiencing problems with their DSL service. The problems I have are
representative of the problems that all my neighbors have complained about.

From the outset, the reliability of my DSL service has been sporadic; however, in the past months, the service has become much worse. Early in the mornings, I might be able to connect and check email. In the afternoons, however, beginning at about 2:30, connectivity is nearly impossible, and this condition continues, I assume, until the next morning. On the best weekday, I might get four good hours of connectivity. On the weekends, it is nearly impossible to connect. I am tired of paying for a service that I have only limited access to;
however, my only other option is dialup.

I have spoken to my neighbors, and we all seem to agree on the condition and severity of the connectivity problems. We believe that the high internet traffic times (after kids get home from school, and weekends) are the times when we have the most problems. One neighbor decided to completely drop her service and go back to dialup. We all agree that if Comcast were available in our area, we would switch without hesitation.

Bellsouth has sent technicians out to try to help our problems, but the technicians agree that the phone lines and equipment running to our neighborhood are inadequate to address our needs.

I noticed this morning that Bellsouth has posted its 3rd quarter earnings, and they are impressive. Obviously, those profits are not being used to upgrade equipment and improve service in our area.

It seems that the only person on my street who is not having connectivity problems is my next door neighbor, who has the highest level of DSL service, which, coincidentally, is also the highest priced option that you offer. Hmmm. Could there be a correlation?

It is obvious that Bellsouth has the customer base in this area to warrant upgrading and/or replacing your DSL equipment in order to make our service better. It would seem, however, that because you know that Bellsouth is the only high speed option for those of us in this area, you are content to allow us to keep experiencing the substandard service that we have come to expect.

Thank you for your time.

I received a reply that my comments have been forwarded to Technical Support and that someone would be contacting me regarding my case.

I replied back that I hope my comments would also be forwarded to Bellsouth's CEO and to anyone else who has the authority to make a decision to take some action that would actually bring about improvement in my service. And I said that I would not sit on the phone for an hour with a tech guy in Singapore who can only tell me what I already know: that something is wrong with the phone lines in my area. I also said that I would contine to keep my blog readers updated on how bad Bellsouth's DSL service actually is.

So, I've honored my promise and will let you know what develops.

Update (Fri. 8:55 a.m.): The reply I sent yesterday afternoon to the reply I received yesterday morning (sorry if that's confusing) seems to have generated an automated response which urges me to contact technical support. The funny thing is that yesterday evening when I received this email (I checked around 5:30 p.m.), I was able to connect using my DSL (and I am connected at this moment). All day yesterday I had had to use my backup dialup connection. However, now things seem to be working, and at a fairly decent speed. Could I be receiving some results?

Sick of TV Prescription Drug Ads Disorder

Sunday morning the CBS morning show did a story on one way that drug companies market new prescription drugs to consumers. According to the story, when drug companies have a new drug that they want to market for a particular disease or disorder, they hire ad agencies to come up with a new name for the disorder--something that is palateable to the consumers, a nice acronym that consumers feel comfortable using with their doctors, like ED (erectile disfunction) instead of impotence. On the story, the ad agency team was trying to come up with a new name for arthritis. One suggestion was PJD--progressive joint degeneration. I'd be willing to bet that we start hearing that one on TV commercials very soon.

I have very mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, I am glad that I can do research and find out what might be wrong with me so that I can, along with my doctor, make an educated choice about my treatment. However, this proliferation of new disorders and new drugs is making people feel that they can take a magic pill to cure every little ache or pain that they have. TV commercials urge viewers to "Ask your doctor if (fill in the blank) is right for you." How many suggestible people have, after watching a commercial, decided that they have a certain disorder and called the doctor's office to get an appointment for the purpose of obtaining a prescription for that drug? Many, I'm sure. If the commercials didn't work, the drug companies wouldn't pay to air them.

This is just another symptom of our society's obsession with having all that we want when we want it. Instead of changing our eating habits in order to keep from having acid reflux, for example, we just pop a pill every day so that we can keep on eating crap. Rather than deal with our problems and decide to have a positive outlook on life, we take an anti-depressant pill every day. Because we are too lazy to do the work or make the necessary sacrifices in order to have better health, we'd rather depend on a pill to do the work for us, and if that pill doesn't work, some other drug company makes another pill that surely will work. And on top of that, we complain about the prices of prescription drugs and the fact that drug company executives make tons of money, but we keep on lining their pockets out of our laziness and complacency.

What is the matter with us? I'm sure that as soon as someone figures it out, we'll have a new disorder and a drug to treat it.

Misc.

I'm sorry I've not updated this blog in the past few days. I tried to post something this morning, but Blogger was acting up. I've also had internet troubles again. If some other company besides Bellsouth offered a high speed internet connection out in the country where I live, I would switch in a second. And as long as Bellsouth continues to offer the crappy service that they are providing, I'll keep pointing it out and bad-mouthing their service--even if my brother is a Bellsouth man.

In other news, yesterday I got the results of my sleep test that I told you about a couple of weeks ago, and I do indeed have sleep apnea. I stop breathing about 15 times per hour when I'm lying on my side and about 45 times per hour when I'm on my back. Tomorrow I go back to my ENT doctor to decide for certain what I need to do to correct the situation.

Nothing else has really been happening. I still have plenty of papers to grade, but that'll be the case until the end of the semester.

Tomorrow I'll be sort of busy, but maybe I'll have something worthwhile to blog about by Friday.

Talk a Little Louder, Why Don'tcha!

Yesterday I was sitting in a waiting room when a woman walked in and started talking. At first I thought she was talking to me, but she never looked toward me, and nothing she said made any sense. Then I realized that she was on her cell phone, but it was one of those wires that has the ear plug on one end and a small microphone that hangs down near the side of the face.

I absolutely hate those things. For one, when people talk on the phone, then tend to speak louder than when talking face to face, but when the microphone is not right in front of the mouth, the person has to talk that much louder. I thought this was really rude. I don't care if she was a big business woman who has to take lots of calls. Eavesdropping is no fun when you don't have to strain to hear everything, and usually the details aren't nearly as juicy either.

The Blog World Comes to My Real Life, or What I Did This Weekend

This weekend was a really good one for me. I got to meet some new people that I had only heard of, and I got to meet some people that I'd been wanting to meet for a long time.

My mom and dad had a campout at their house over the weekend with some people that they have bible study with. Because my bed is only a couple hundred feet away from their back yard, I did not camp, but I did get to sit around the campfire and roast hot dogs (well, actually Husband roasted the hot dogs) with some people who are serious in learning about the bible. Most of the time that I was there, however, was not spent in serious discussion. Instead we sat around and quoted lines from what seems to be a favorite movie for most people: Sling Blade. We had a good time.

On Friday morning I checked my email and found that JettyBetty and Critter would be in town for a church event and that they were planning to attend Tony's church on Sunday morning. So I drove to Brentwood to meet them all at church, and it was great! JettyBetty greeted me with a big hug, and we began talking as if we had been friends for a long time--which we have--even though we had never met before in real life. I also loved meeting Critter, even though I don't read her blog as often as I read JB's. I also met Tony and his lovely family, and we also talked as if we'd known each other for years. In fact, after church was over, we all sat in the sanctuary, each of us on the end of a pew, just talking and talking and laughing until someone finally turned the lights out and we had to leave. They are all now well aware that I am not nearly as articulate in real life as I am on my blog. I really hope that we can get together again soon, and not wait until next year!

Dumb Question

I wonder what's happening behind the scenes in Washington that this deal with Foley is diverting our attention from?

Duh!

I just did something really dumb. Right now I'm on my lunch break sitting at my desk reading a book. As I was getting to the bottom of the page, I reached for my mouse so that I could scroll down.

I think I'm losing it.