Yesterday I returned to my car in the parking lot in the hell that is the greater Los Angeles basin right now. It was hot and I was cranky after having taught Wednesday night. Night classes are great in lots of ways. In others, they’re not. Three hours of teaching tends to make my feet and throat hurt.

Scout-the-dog has a really bad habit of waking up early. Thursday mornings are especially bad for this, as they are our neighborhood trash day. He likes barking at the trash trucks. Ok, to be honest, he just likes barking. Scout-the-honey and I call him the “barkist.” When he’s out there barking and Biscuit is churning up circles in her attempt to chase off the planes on their approach to the Burbank airport, it all seems a little mental.

Anyway, Thursday morning, he was barking and I was not sleeping and by yesterday afternoon I was close to my limit. It didn’t help that I had spent all day dealing with a rather tragic circumstance, calling offices on campus I normally don’t call. I did what I could and got things to where I wanted them to be, given everything else, but it wasn’t an unpleasant matter.

So, I decided to go home a little early.

I slogged out to the parking lot to discover that a minivan had parked within about an inch of my truck’s door. On a campus as big as ours, there was no way of finding the minivan driver. I spent a minute or two trying to piece together what office the driver might be in, based on stickers. Having a “Star Student at XXX School!” was hardly predictive of the driver’s role on campus. Nor was the affinity for soccer. What could I do, really, walk into every office in a seven building radius ad ask, “anyone here a soccer mom with an above average child?”

Here’s my FJ, for those of you who don’t remember it.

So I opened the passenger door and looked in. It seemed to me that I had two choices. First, because the back seats were folded down, I thought I might try to crawl across the expanse of rubberized interior and sort of dive into the front seat. When I though that through a second time, I realized that I didn’t so much want my head on the floor and my feet in the air.

Here’s the back view. This is not my FJ. If it were, you would see books on CD slopping around and scratches on the rubbery parts from bikes being put in the back.

Here’s what the front interior of an FJ looks like. This is also not my interior. If you use your imagination, you can picture mine. Add CDs, dog hair, Coke Blak bottles, a bike bottle, and a cute grey and yellow Timbuk2 bag.

I sat in the passenger seat for a while, then turned the car on. No need to try whatever I was going to try without AC. I started with trying to get my butt moved over first, followed by my legs. Then I remembered what that great faker, Bear Grylls said on Man v. Wild, which is that your legs are strong. So I slung my left leg into the driver’s area and then scooted my butt over with it. Now straddling the center console, I had pulled out the rubber cup holder interior, kicked the parking light indicator, changed the A/C from face to defrost and I had a cramp in my thigh.

An aside about Bear Grylls, who turns out to have stayed in hotels and tried to “tame” already tame horses. Scout-the-honey said he was a faker. I should listen to her more often.

Anywho, I managed to get my right leg into position, though more things were displaced (my bag, the other rubber insert for the other cupholder, the other Coke Blak bottle, the radio control, etc.)

I put the car in reverse and silently wished the minivan driver’s kids well for a hot soccer weekend. All’s well that ends well, I guess. I’m just glad I went with the scoot over mode rather than the dive into mode.

Happy long weekend. My all your second thoughts prove successful.

When trying to branch out of lunch ruts, I have learned a lesson or two (or ten):

* Wandering around Trader Joe’s doesn’t help. They have what they have.

* Foil packets of Indian food and microwaved frozen naan seem like a good idea.

* Foil packets of Indian food and microwaved frozen naan are NOT a good idea.

* Nausene is just cola without the carbonation.

* Coke is better than Pepsi for everything including stomach upset.

* Diet Coke doesn’t help much with stomach upset. Neither does Fresca. Both are
good at other things. Mostly providing no calorie, tasty, carbonated beverage
experiences.

* Mints do not function like Tums.

* Neither does Advil.

* Do not undertake a rut break-perunity without Tums

* Tums smooth dissolve mint flavor taste like party mints AND helps stomach upset.

While waiting for to-go food at Panera:

Guy walks up and sits down in the “to-go” waiting area and sings a snippet of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.” He turns to his companion and says:

“That’s the first song I ever knew as a kid that I thought had deep meaning. I mean, like, I was really impressed that I figured out that the lyrics meant something and weren’t just words. I totally thought I knew what it meant.”

(pause)

“I didn’t. I’m still not sure I do now.”

(pause) Sings a bit more.

“R.E.M. is deep, man.”

Later that same evening, I indulge in a self-torture habit, which is looking myself up on ratemyprofessors. Only one comment from last semester has appeared. It’s from a deaf student who I KNOCKED myself out to help, but she just couldn’t understand the material. That may have had something to do with the fact that she NEVER watched the interpreter and tended to chat with her neighbor in ASL.

Here’s what she said:

“She is good teacher very understanding with concepts of the class teaching but with the written test she is so picking and myself being deaf i am struggle with grammers that she is picking with but i do understand the class concepts but written so picky so she gave me D+ She does 3 papers and 2 written test that overall for semester.”

Understanding comes the way it comes and in its own time. Or not. Damn grammers.

Deep, man.

Things I’m not going to write about:

*How busy I am.

*How the wildfires make me want to camping. Not where they are, mind you, but because wood smoke makes me want to go camping. I should feel bad about feeling this way.

*How a student made me look stupid while I was being observed in class the other day.

*How a colleague pretty much refused to do work he’s already been paid to do, which will make me look bad.

*How much I’m looking forward to getting out-of-town this weekend, but how panicked the missed time is making me.

*How little grading I’ve done on papers that came in a week ago. (None).

*How much I need to finish an article.

*How behind I am on blog commenting/reading.

*How I need to stop this list RIGHT NOW or will feel worse, not a little purged.

*How much I look forward to Lost every week. (no stress factors in that last comment).

Anyway, what I will say, however briefly, is that I’ve been enjoying these little Italian yogurts from Trader Joe’s that come in pleasing little glass bottles.

Honey and I had a running joke about them because I wanted to try them for the bottles and she didn’t think I’d like them because they are too “wangy.” To translate: sour/overly yogurty, etc.

This is how it would go, “Honey do you think I’d like those yogurts?”

“No”

Ok, so it’s not that funny, but we liked the patter. Then I saw them in apricot and I’m a bit of a fool for apricot, so I got them anyway. I really like them. They ARE wangy, but wangy in a good way.

So, I’ve had four of them at work so far and have been washing and displaying their little bottles. I can’t decide how many little bottles is too many little bottles.

Here’s what the little bottles look like:

Aren’t they cute?

I also like the company’s English translation of their blurb on the product:

“…[T]he traditional processing of the dense double layer yoghurt, where the ferments join the milk and pot after pot the unmistakable texture is achieved. Finally it is packed in its traditional glass pot Biospega.”

I want to go to the place where the ferments join the milk. I’m guessing it’s right in the center of the land of wang.

I have one “pot” on my desk and three others on my bookshelf right next to my woodblock Colosseum. At least I’ve got my vaguely Roman stuff together.

My conclusion, if I stay in the land of wang, I may be ok. At least there are cute little jars there.

I don’t have a bad commute, all things considered. I’ve lived in three cities in my life, all with notorious commutes. In fact, a recent New Yorker article mused on the worst commute cities in the U.S. noting that Washington, D.C. (city #2 for me), San Francisco (never lived there, but would like to), New York (nice to visit), and Los Angeles (city #3 for me) all have bad commutes that are exacerbated by geographical impediments (mountains, rivers, bays, and the like). The worst commutes, the article contended, are those that are bad simply because of planning. The two cities cited as simply bad because transportation engineers and urban planners let everyone down were Atlanta (city #1 for me) and Houston (drove through it once, didn’t get stuck). Anyway, despite having lived in three of the six worst, I’ve never had a horrible commute. I say this even while mentally counting bus commuting when I was in graduate school in the “not horrible” category.

My current commute is fine, though I can’t use the L.A. freeways to any good effect in it. It’s a surface street commute and one that I would like to do by bicycle sooner rather than later. Gas in L.A. running $3.45 right at the moment and all.

In the less fit that I should be zone than I’m in now, I’m driving. I waver in and out of what I like to do while driving. Sometimes I can be an NPR person. Sometimes I’m a sports radio person. When it occurs to me, I plug in my ipod.

I’m currently in a phase. A books on CD phase. These happen every so often. Sometimes, the right kinds of things prompt it, like Sarah Vowell writing a new book. What I like to listen to is not at all the same as what I like to read. I love Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events on CD. I read the first book (yes, I know they’re for adolescents), but not any of the rest. I adore them on CD. Adore as in I’ll pay full retail adore. I like being read to, I guess.

I would never read the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Pendergast novels, but the versions on CD I love. Partly, of course, my adoration is a function of the narrator. Tim Curry in the former case and Rene Auberjonois in the latter. It’s not just that, though. I need to be able to follow. It needs to be lively. Violent is ok (the Preston/Child books are certainly that), though not necessary or even sought.

All of which brings me to the current phase. I’m listening to the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective novels by Alexander McCall Smith narrated by Lisette Lecat.

The stories are lovely, hearkening back to the feel of Miss Marple, but with Botswana, rather than St. Mary Mead as the setting. It’s a long way from one place to the other, but the feeling is similar even if the time and place are different. Mma Ramotswe, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and Mma Makutsi are all fully realized characters, but realized in a gentle way that feels at once old fashioned and comfortable. My grandmother, a great fan of the “soft” mystery, would have loved the series.

It’s funny, I think, when things make you nostalgic for places you’ve never seen. But the tone (and narration) of the books is such that I find myself wistful for the Botswana that was.

I find myself wondering about going there.

In case you wonder too (and who wouldn’t?), South African Air (a member of the Star Alliance, so you can use your United miles) flies frequently from Johannesburg to Gaborone. Delta now offers direct flights from Atlanta (if you can get to Hartsfield-Jackson given the traffic) to Dakar and then on to Johannesburg. The flight to Jo’burg is about $1800 and the flight to Gaborone is 1880 Rand. (That’s $270, just so you don’t have to look it up). By the by, $100 will get 628 Botswana Pula.

We should put animals on our money, too. Not eagles, though. They’re overdone. I’m thinking squirrels or pigeons. Maybe deer and possum, too.

Anyway, if anyone wants to join me for a trip to Gaborone, let me know. We should rent a tiny white van like Mma Ramotswe’s and see what there is to see. I’m hoping to see a Hoopoe or two.

If you’re not up for a Southern African excursion, and you like a soft mystery of the old-fashioned type, narrated exquisitely, try the series out. It may make your commute a little brighter, too.

We have acquired two new items to make our lives in the living room (that’s where one is supposed to live, is it not?) better.

The first was a result of a moment of weakness as I looked (as I often do) on steepandcheap.com. Steepandcheap is a site that sells one item at a time until it sells out. It’s like a woot-off on woot.com all the time, but instead of electronics, steepandcheap features outdoorsy stuff. I buy socks there (smartwools) when they pop up and have bought a handful of other items. A couple of weekends ago, I happened upon them selling a dog bed. Now, Honey thinks I’m obsessed with dog beds, and she may be right. I do have a tendency to comment on them when I see them in a store and to paw (sorry) through them. This is especially true if we happen to be in a big box or discount store like Costco or Pic ‘n Sav (which is now Big Lots, but I still think of it as Pic). It’s been a while since I’ve been in either store, so to see a dog bed on steepandcheap gave me that little thrill I used to get at Pic.

My first “I’m an adult and can get a dog” dog, Carter, the neurotic basenji from hell, loved dog beds. I could even tell her to go get on her dog bed when she was being neurotic and then she was neurotic on her dog bed instead of in my face. Red also liked dog beds. He sighed a lot, did Red, because of his arthritis. The dog beds seem a small mercy to his comfort.

Biscuit doesn’t so much like them. I bought her one and she treated it like a giant dog toy. Then I bought her another one and she did the same thing. There’s a lot of stuffing in most dog beds and Bisc thought spreading it about was great fun.

Now that we have Scout, I had been thinking I might give the dog bed thing another go. And then…steepandcheap came through for me. I hit “Buy 1″ without thinking. A few days later, a gynormous box was sitting on our porch. The Insulmutt dog bed is made from recycled tents and other outdoor equipment. It comes in medium, large, and extra-large. I had inadvertantly gotten an extra-large for our 30 pound bahuashepchowpei. He’s a big fella, but not that big.

I put it in the corner and both dogs sniffed at it. There may have been some dragging it around on Biscuit’s part. The cats thought it was fantastic and on several occasions Honey and I came home to both cats engulfed in it.

Then, yesterday, Scout discovered it.

Biscuit prefers to nap on the most expensive piece of furniture we own. I don’t know how much it cost, as my parents bought it. I’m willing to guess it cost well more than any piece of furniture I’ve ever purchased by quite a lot. They gave it to us when we took Red from them. He liked to lounge on it. Biscuit does, too. Must be a spaniel-head thing. Biscuit may not be smart, but she has expensive taste and she’s pretty. Come to think of it, that’s true of so many people one sees on teevee. Honey was walking Biscuit and Scout the other day and a guy stopped and told her, “the black one is pretty.” The yellow one, apparently, is not.

So, the dogs are set for lounging. That’s good.

Our other acquisition was a result of a convergence of spheres. Honey said she wanted to go see a cheap movie yesterday. Honey likes the 11am $6 movies. Seems like the right price to pay, she says. I can’t disagree.

After the movie, I proposed we walk a few blocks to a bookstore to which we had gift cards. We’re travelling later this week and I’m in my usual “what am I going to read on the plane?” panic. So, off we trekked, over the hills, across the street and through the mall. As we approached the bookstore, we saw a woman waving a sign that said “CompUSA going out of business 10-50% Off Everything.” Honey doesn’t like sign waving as a concept. She thinks it demeaning to the sign person. I agree, but I like me a bargain. So up the escalator to CompUSA we went. I had visions of $500 iMacs. Surely the Apple products would be 50%. Surely. I kind of want a new computer, as my trusty swivelheaded iMac is a little long in the tooth. The Apple products were 10% off and well more the the Apple certified refurbished ones sold on Apple’s own site.

I wandered off and was inextricably drawn into the teevee zone. If dog beds are a long time focus, a widescreen HDTV is a medium time focus. For six months or so I’ve been looking at them. Calling Dish to find out how much upgrade would cost. Almost buying a really no name one on a woot-off. I’ve held off in the face of the aligning spheres. My parents got one for their KITCHEN. Then they got one for the vacation home. My brother got one.

Last weekend we went to Honey’s parents and they had one. I watched the Masters on it. I abhor golf. It was really pretty. The golf. On the hd teevee. I watched the Dodgers play the Giants. I don’t like either team. Barry Bonds’ head looks even bigger in HD. Not in a good way at all.

So, there we are standing in amongst the teevees. And they have one I had researched and was interested in. In the size I wanted. For 25% off. And they hadn’t jacked up the price. It was really 25% off the price it was supposed to be. Unlike several others, they still had one in a box.

Within moments, mere moments, I was up at the front proffering my debit card and then off to the car, several blocks away, to bring it back to the place where the nice men in red shirts put the teevee in the car.

Honey helped me get it in the house. It’s set-up. The old 27″ is in the bedroom. Dish has been called and is coming soon to make it HD and HD dvr.

We put it on fishing to take pictures of it to show how good it looks even when it’s broadcasting something as stupid as fishing.

I think the rawhide in the second picture looks like the dogs’ small offering to the coolness that is the tv.

Now, we just need to get down to the business of living in the living room. Dog bed? check. Dog lounger? Check. Big teevee? Check. We’re all set-up. When is everyone coming over?

Ok, I have bag lust again. This is bad news, as I just bought a new bag a few months ago. I heart it still. It’s a Chrome messenger bag with a seat belt buckle. It must be worn over the body. It can’t be carried in the hand. It’s impractical as such sometimes.

In addition to this bag, I have:

A custom Timbuk2 messenger bag in red/grey/ivory. It’s nice, I like it. But I don’t wear much red. I mostly use it to carry my clothes for after work bike rides on such days as I feel motivated to do them.

A large leather bag. It’s nice. It’s too big, though, and has no top handle.

A grey Timbuk2 that’s a little frayed for my taste. It’s got a vertical orientation and is a tidy size. On a recent business venture I used it. It felt a little shabby in context.

A very small yellow Timbuk2 bag. Small notebooks only in this one. Really, it’s a purse. Shh. Don’t tell it.

A black leather dealio my mother gave me. It would suit her terrifically well. I think it rather fussy.

All of which is to say, I would like a bag about the size of my worn and red Timbuk2 ones that would be suitable for occasions when I would prefer not wearing a seatbelt over my shoulder.

I have found the bag. It costs too much.

Plus, if you’ve been counting along, I currently have six bags which I deem unsuitable. And I’m not counting backpacks (shudder) or the two bags made for carrying a computer which I use on the rare occasion when I, um, carry a computer.

Here’s what’s perfect about it. It’s small, but big enough for a full sized notebook. It’s black and tan. Mostly, I love the Eames design. I’m a bit of a fool for mid-century modern. (I love Arts and Crafts, too, but I don’t know how you could make a Greene and Greene bag). So, the Eames thing is a real turn-on for me.

Do I need it? No.

Do I want it? Lustfully.

So…what to do? *Sigh*

When it gets right down to it, I’m not very fond of my butt. I recognize that it serves a needed function. But were I to list my own favorite parts of the anatomical mess that is me, my butt wouldn’t make the top ten. And, no, I’m not going to list the ten I would choose. Shout out to my ears!

Bottom line (har!), my butt has been hurting me lately. I was blaming my newish chair, which is a mesh deal rip-off of a Herman Miller Aeron chair.

My very smart Honey pointed out that the chair was probably not to blame. Rather, the most likely culprit was the Gunnar. No, not the twin son of Rick Nelson. Nor is Gunnar Peterson, the work-out guru, to blame. Instead it’s my new-to-me Gunnar Rockhound.

What, you ask, is a Gunnar Rockhound? Why, it’s a bicycle. A fancy green bicycle.

I often use my mountain bike to get around campus. My old mountain bike, a Cannondale F400, was aluminium. Here’s the thing about aluminum. It’s light. It’s strong. It’s rigid. It makes your teeth fall out rigid. Plus, the C’dale was too big for me. So, after months of obsessing on ebay, I bought the Gunnar and sold the Cannondale.

The Gunnar? She’s steel. Flexy, comfy steel. And a blast to ride.

Since the picture above was taken, I’ve swapped out the seat to this:

My biggest change to the bike, though, courtesy of a conspiracy of the best kind–a birthday conspiracy–was an upgrade the the front fork. Forks are the shocks on the front of mountain bikes. They make riding more fun. I asked for high end in the fork department. I got it. Everybody say woo-whee.

So, now that my bike is everything I want to be and more, I’ve been riding it. And my butt hurts. Leave it to Honey to see the connection.

It’s a hardtail, which means it has no shock on the back end. I am not a hardtail, which means I do have cushioning. But not so much a swingarm or 100mm of travel (that’s about 4 inches). That and I’m not a good mountain biker. I gather I should ride out of the saddle more.

I have my bike with me today. My butt’s here, too. How much more sore can it get? Maybe I don’t want the answer to that question. I might get it anyway.

We have a really nice plumber. He’s handsome and chipper and after installing a toilet for us admired its beauty. I like a person who gets the aesthetics of what they do.

Saturday we went to the grocery store and afterwards Honey cleaned out some suspicious food from the fridge. Some of the suspicious food was pasta. I merrily disposed of it by slamming it down the disposal and whirring the disposal around. On the second whir, gross water began to back up into the sink.

Honey and I both had flashbacks to the apartment we lived in before we bought our house. It had a really problematic disposal and we often had to get the building manager to come deal with it. Our landlord liked to quote some municipal/state/federal code that said that he only was responsible for getting water INTO the apartment and we were responsible for getting it OUT. In other words, he wanted us to deal with the crappy disposal he didn’t want to fix.

Well, now we knew we were responsible for all directions of flow. We plunged. There were old straws in the sink. Who put them there? Can’t say. Not us. We removed the trap. Got water all over the world. The sink stayed stopped up. Saturday of a holiday weekend.

With hope in my heart, I called the plumber yesterday, hoping he might not observe federal/state/municipal holidays. He called back this morning.

We’ve been eating cereal and frozen food that can be microwaved. We’ve been rinsing dishes in the half bath where we keep the cats’ litter box.

Turns out that you shouldn’t put pasta or other starchy foods down the disposal. At least according to the internet. And since everything on the internet is true…

I’m in plumber zone. He was going to come by 10. Then he called and said he couldn’t. I went to work. Now, I’m meeting him at 2:30. It will all be worth it. Functioning kitchen sinks are good good.

I’m going out-of-town tomorrow and Honey has a tendency to eat cereal for dinner when I’m gone. A non-functioning sink will insure that she does that and only that. So, I’m going to meet the handsome plumber and pay him a lot of money to fix our problem. They say there are those who have more money than sense. Now where did I put my checkbook?

When I bend down, I see my navel. It’s not all that exciting, but I am in one of those moods. This morning I listened to several folks I work with discussing making more appealing and attractive adult diapers. The idea seemed to really appeal to them. They discussed it at length. I, from the safety of my office, was a little horrified. While I’m all for embracing my age and station in life, I don’t need to look forward to incontinence.

The diaper discussion produced a sense of nostalgia. I don’t know why. So this afternoon I was googling people. Some were old friends, some were newer, some were people I was just curious about. Then I remembered my navel. I’ve always maintained that I’m not googleable. I decided to persist in paging through the result for my name (first and last, no middle in quotes). I appear first on page 4 and again on page 7, both for a recent article I wrote in an online academic journal. Page 4 was my bio from the ‘contributors” page and Page 7 was the article itself.

The depth of my gazing was, well, deep. I paged through many, many pages. Hockey stats and Revolutionary war letters, lawyers, photographers. I might have gone to Yale or Cornell or Harvard or Lander (wherever that is). Oh, and my gravestone might be found in any number of states across the continent or indeed in England or Australia (mine is a very WASPy name). I could be a psychic or a “zoo parent.”

After page 20 or so I despaired. Sure, my middle initial, name, research interests, where I actually went to school, etc. will all get you “me” more directly. Using my middle initial revealed that someone who shares my name is a child molester. On the upside, using my middle name helped me discover that a university library (besides the place I got my degree) ordered my dissertation and has is sitting on their library shelves. Bless their hearts. I may go visit it. Still and all not finding me for page after page was disturbing.

I occur again on Page 75 for a project I worked on in graduate school and then again (alarming quickly, it seemed at the time) on Page 78 for an online ‘zine I contributed to some years ago. On Page 79 a course I helped develop is mentioned. A book review I did last year pops up on Page 82. I must be a 70s and 80s kind of gal. Google stopped on Page 84. I was going to go to Page 100.

I was weirdly grateful to not find myself in the Google image search. The Google image search disturbed me in its pictures of people with my name and not my face staring back at me. Best to look navel-ward.

So, blog-friends…

How googleable are you?

Do you google yourself?

Others?

How googleable do you want to be?

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