The Subway

I'm still playing catch up. During all of the house hunting insanity we had a chance to join some folks hiking The Subway in Zion. We had amazing weather and a great time. Because you have to swim through pools that never warm up, wet (or dry) suits are necessary and M and I ended up being the only two with dry suits. Unfortunately I haven't received copies of the photos taken of us prior to putting on the protective cover-alls but I will try my best to find them. We only needed red pyramid hats to be in a Devo video. They were truly crimes against fashion and just good taste in general.

The only real excitement (in a bad way) was when one person slipped and fell backwards several feet. It was not nice and I'm sure she had a more than impressive bruise the next day, but fortunately she wasn't seriously hurt. The rest of the day was just full of amazing scenery.

The hike in:



Our group before the truly macho took off and left the rest of us in the dust:



Here is our fearless leader, Kurt, hitting one of the last pools on the route:



Kurt's lovely wife, Janet prior to losing that very nice walking stick:



And finally the famous subway:



Along the way we regularly saw these cute little canyon tree frogs. I'm not sure if these white ones are the Hyla arenicolor species since we also saw brown ones (which H. arenicolor is supposed to be) but they appear to be close relatives given the many physical similarities. One even sat on my hand for a while. I suspect it was wondering why I hadn't eaten it yet as opposed to the Snow White moment most people imagine (yes there is a story here involving me, a hungry squirrel, some friends and my hip) but they really are pretty.



The hike through the "slot" canyon (it's a VERY wide slot for most of the hike) ends after a series of short falls:



At the very end, you get to climb back out of the canyon so that everyone who isn't in the best of shape comes out looking like they had their butts kicked in spite of the fact that it a very reasonable hike for most of the 9 miles.

Could it get any crazier?

We had an appointment to sign an offer on a new house today at 3pm. We show up and our agents sit us down and say they have something to discuss. Apparently someone went and talked some sense into the sellers of the first house and they are willing to give us everything we want.

Our agents were very smart and gave us lots of room to run away screaming which immediately required that we think about it all logically (even though emotionally I wanted to run away screaming). I have no idea how they know these things because my parents would have run away screaming whereas this was the perfect way to approach us.

We agreed, the sellers agreed and as of a few hours ago all of the paperwork was signed. We are still waiting on the lender's appraisal and we have promised to run away screaming if the appraisal is less than the purchase price. In the meantime though, we are somewhat hopeful that this could all be over soon and that we could have a new house in just two weeks.

Everyone warns you that buying a new house is an exercise in insanity but most of the horror stories we hear are about money grubbing agents and demanding lenders. Our agent couldn't have been nicer or a better advocate and the mortgage broker all but signed our names to make the process as easy (and as competitive price-wise) as possible. The sellers were our hurdle. They apparently have other issues beyond selling their home and had an agent who bought into all of their issues so that no one on that side was seeing quite right for a while. Supposedly that's all fixed now and we can all only hope that the lenders see it that way as well.

I do feel badly for the owners of the house we would have bought though. We met them both times we went to see the place and so they know that a couple was seriously interested in the house. Now, they will wonder what happened to us. I don't feel badly enough to turn down the deal we were looking for originally, but badly none the less.

The moral of this story is that, even in a buyers' market, buying a house is an exercise in insanity and you should always be prepared to run away screaming.

So...

So, I just realized that I appear to need to start my recent posts with "so." I just wanted to let you know that I've noticed and I should have it under control soon.

so much for extra time

So, like a fool, I went back to the online databases of homes for sale. We've now found another house that M has seen in person and likes enough that I need to drive back out there today so I can see it tomorrow and decide if it's worth the extra money it will cost us. By the time we finish this house buying nonsense, my car will be ready to fall apart I suspect.

So I won't be posting any more pics today and I won't make knitting tonight. However, this should be my last trip to Utah before the move so I should be more reliable in the next few weeks.

888 Seafood

So during the long break in blogging, my semester ended. To celebrate I took my TAs out to dinner at 888 Seafood in the San Gabriel Valley. If you're in the area, you should go.

When you arrive for dinner (not dim sum, you are just surrounded by carts then), they place a few small things to nibble on while you decide on your order. Who knew that the South had something in common with China? We all love boiled peanuts!!!!!



My wonderful TAs:





We somehow managed to show up on an evening when there was not one, but TWO weddings taking place at the restaurant (hence the lovely bows on the chairs in the background). We had cheesy elevator music on one side competing with electronica and hip hop on the other. We couldn't really talk over the noise but it definitely kept us entertained.

We ordered a few things none of us had ever tried before.

Sea cucumber with dried fish and mushrooms:


Frog hot pot (definitely the best of the night):


And shrimp with walnuts (as a back-up):


It was all great although sea cucumber has a very subtle taste and will give people with texture issues some problems.

Sadly I don't have any photos of their wonderful dim sum but if you google the place, that's what all of the reviews will rave about.

Where in the world is Erin?

I know I've been really bad and not posted in exactly one month today. So what the heck happened?

I got swamped with students who were worried about failing my class in the last few weeks (note to any college students reading this, your professor can do very little to help you improve your grade in the last two weeks of a semester!!!!!!) and then we went house hunting in Utah.

And we even found a house. In fact, we found it almost immediately.

Did we buy this house?

Of course not!

Instead I have spent the past two weeks more often in Utah than in California trying to negotiate this deal with "motivated" sellers who thought our initial offer was way too low (despite the fact that the asking prices of other homes in the same subdivision -8 out of 10 of them to be precise- were even lower than our offer) and then wouldn't pay for a new front door that wouldn't warp when the home inspection showed that it was warped to the point of not closing unless you threw the dead bolt.

Needless to say there wasn't any middle ground in spite of our agent's valiant efforts.

So this weekend she will be figuring out an appropriate initial offer on the next house on our list.

Ah, the joys of buying a home...


Fortunately I did get to do more than deal with contracts during those two weeks. We were invited to join a group on The Subway hike in Zion. You probably haven't heard of it as it is accessed from a side street in a neighborhood that borders the park and you have to apply for a permit several months in advance during the slow season just to get in. The bright side of losing our first choice house is that I will have time tomorrow to start posting all of the photos I've been collecting over the past several weeks.

For my local knitting group, it also probably means that I'll be around for a few more weeks and we can finish up that sock class after all.

Hokie Healing

In case you've missed the gazillion mentions of this on other blogs, I just wanted to point you toward Hokie Healing. Mosaic Yarn Shop in Blacksburg, VA (home of VA Tech) is asking for 8x8" squares to be used in memorial blankets for the families of the Tech shooting victims.

The squares need to be knit or crocheted and the shop is asking you to use the softest and nicest yarn you can afford. They suggest using the school colors of Maroon and Burnt Orange, as well as White and Black and you can send any and all squares to the shop at this address:

Mosaic Yarn Shop

880 University City Blvd.

Blacksburg, Va24060

Virginia Tech

For those of you who haven't heard the news, there was a shooting at Virginia Tech this morning. The information we have from friends there is that the total number shot is around 60 with 32 deaths as of a few hours ago. My brother did his undergraduate degree there and we both have friends who stayed on in Blacksburg after they finished college. It's a wonderful community.

All good thoughts, dpns, and prayers would be welcome.

Sheep art

For those who haven't seen it yet:

Woo-hoo!

I've been corresponding with the folks in St. George and the head of the department is not only willing to fund building me a greenhouse but is also quite willing to have my position shift into one with a lighter teaching load so that I can do research once they fill a few more positions.

Utah, here I come!

still quietly freaking out

But I've emailed the folks in Regina to feel them out and asked for a phone conference with the head of the department in St. George.

With the help of the gazillion or so folks I talked to about this yesterday (and the great comments people have left) I've at least figured out what the key issues are for me in making the decision. Now it all depends on the answers I get from various folks.

I'll keep you posted.

-------
While I was writing this, the guy in Regina wrote back saying he was fine either way. So now it's all down to St. George.

So where will I be next year?

My life is nothing if not interesting.

Early this year I was offered a post-doc (research) position at the University of Regina. This would be a year long position and would give me an opportunity to focus on my research as well as another year to apply for tenure-track faculty positions.

As some of you know, my husband teaches at a college in southern Utah. His department just offered me a faculty position this afternoon. They hadn't gotten funding approved for new faculty but then managed to squeeze it out of the administration due to a faculty member taking an indefinite medical leave of absence. Of course it would start three months after the job in Canada making them mutually exclusive.

We like St. George as a place to live and the job comes with a decent salary and amazing benefits but a teaching load that would restrict research to the summers if then even. Plus I have committed to going to Canada and I'm not sure how the folks there would take this sort of change in plans. I figure I should determine how I feel about the new job offer before I talk to them about this new situation.

So, what do you think?

While I wait for your response, I will just be sitting here quietly freaking out.

Global warming solved!

In an article released April 1, 2007* by RealClimate.org, a website run by climate scientists to address global climate change issues, the authors highlight recent research that shows global warming is due to sheep albedo feedback. The number of sheep in New Zealand has dropped over the past several decades and so the darker color of the land they used to cover with their white wool, is now responsible for absorbing more of the sun's radiation.
So forget about your hybrids and biking to work, just raise more sheep. Soon I expect there to be sheep subsidies to encourage even Americans to cover their land with white wool.




*for those who missed it, the article was published for April Fool's Day

Canary in a coal mine

Many of you don't know this but I have a reputation as a canary in a coal mine.

For what you might ask? For food poisoning.

And I lived up to my reputation this weekend after nearly two years free of bad food (okay, I've had crappy food but nothing that made me literally vomit at least).

Somehow I have developed a very fragile little ecosystem in my digestive tract and all of my happy little symbionts are VERY susceptible to food poisoning, making me equally susceptible to all of the loveliness that this involves.

Want to try that hip new Indian place? Great! Let's bring Erin! If she gets sick, we just won't go back...

In fact, several years ago I spent a fabulous New Year's Eve in the bathroom of the friend of a friend because my dear friend took me to that hip new Indian place for dinner and I got hit bad. I'm still convinced that her friends from graduate school think that I'm just a sloppy drunk.

And it's a shame too as it can really spoil and otherwise lovely place to eat. I normally have a bad meal once or twice a year although there was a year or so in graduate school where I was getting nailed by something every month or two. Only once has someone else been afflicted by the same meal.

This weekend was probably my own fault. Sunday I was running late on my way to the office and I wanted to grab something I could eat at my desk, so I stopped at a local Burger King. I even ordered a burger when it's normally the chicken that will get me at a fast food chain (there's a chance that the afore mentioned New Year's Eve was actually ruined by a sketchy chicken mcnugget). I finished my work and got home.

So I'm sound asleep when around 3am I wake up with the awful feeling that my run of good luck had just run out. Of course I had to lecture at 9am and I am so seriously behind my syllabus that there was no way I was cancelling class. Fortunately I managed to not run to the bathroom for about an hour before class so I went in and just hoped for the best.

There is probably nothing like your professor warning you that she could vomit at any moment (oh, but don't worry, it's just food poisoning) to wake you up at 9am on a Monday. Well, at least that's what the expressions on my students faces were saying even if they didn't say so.

Amazingly enough I made it through an hour lecture with only brief pauses to make sure I didn't need the trash can I had placed strategically next to the lectern. Of course I immediately went back to my office, told the wonderful woman in the office next door what the situation was and gave her permission to call me at home if students came looking for me, and drove home to sleep through the rest of it. By the evening I was able to hold down simple food and life was looking better.

Oddly enough I spent the next day with the stomach pain (but not the nausea it is important to note!) and hardly ate anything. However, Ruth suggested we meet up with someone from out of town for dinner. I ordered possibly the most idiotic thing I could have without getting a burger, a BLT with avocado and a giant order of fries for the three of us to share. I figured either I was okay or, failing that, sitting on the outside of the booth with a direct line of sight to the bathroom. Well it turns out that the pain was because I was so hungry that it was no longer recognizable as hunger and by the end of the 1.5 lbs of french fries, I was feeling surprisingly better.

Good times, good times...

The only bonus is that the head of my department overheard me laughing about it with someone else in the department and now thinks I am a stud for teaching under the circumstances. Of course I was just teaching out of fear that I wouldn't get through the material in time for the next exam but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Back to the grind

So I had a lovely spring break and I even have photos but I'll have to post those later.

Today I want to describe one of my classes for you. Several folks have asked me in the past to write about my experiences teaching. I must admit that other than the ever present slacker and brown-nosing students that are in every class, I haven't felt that I've had much to write about.

That was before this semester. This semester I have a lab class that is worth writing about (and no, not a single one of my students or TAs has the address to this blog, nor is it listed anywhere except by friends' blogs) .

Normally you get a good mix of all sorts in any group of students you teach. Sometimes you get groups that are so enthusiastic that it makes teaching a real joy and sometimes you get that apathetic group that is so soul sucking that you consider leaving academia all together. This lab class fits neither description.

But this one group I teach this semester is either so funny I can't help but laugh or so sad it makes me want to rip out my hair. I still haven't made up my mind which it is. This is the kind of class about which people write sit-coms. My students fit every possible stereotype and have formed little cliques that seems to accentuate these stereotypes. Now realize that I teach at a fairly selective school and that these students were definitely the cream of the crop in their high schools and generally do have a clue (of sorts) so all of these statements are relative.

1. I have the cute blond girls who must have been wearing some sort of short cheerleading type skirt not too many years ago. They spend a great deal of their time talking about anything but class. They are the last ones to arrive any place we need to go during class time (but always with an excuse). And they generally seem to look down on everyone else in the class (I'm fairly certain I am included in that "everyone else"). However you often hear them wondering out loud and VERY loudly if other students in the class are talking about them. So here you have the typical, cool but with a low self-esteem group that people probably love to hate (I would not be included in these "people" -I am a professional folks! And besides, they were probably the nerdy cheerleaders in high school so you can't really hate them).

2. Then you have the awkward, geeky kids that will never be picked first for anything and will never win a beauty contest plus the lone black student of the class (who is neither as brilliant nor as geeky as her clique-mates, in fact she's very cute but in a school as white as Wonder Bread, the black kids fit in where they can). These kids are very smart (even for this place) and will probably go far if they can ever develop their communication skills.

3. Next there are the stylish, alterni-girls who have wardrobes that most of us would kill for but with an edge. These are the ones who tend to shoot nasty looks over at the blond cheerleaders most days. By an odd coincidence, this is also the group that has the one student (there is one every year) who wants to have her hand held through every step of every exercise. This seems like a bit of a contradiction to me but perhaps it is just one of the joys of the selective liberal arts college.

4. Of course it wouldn't be a sit-com without the group that somehow manages to contain both the class clowns and the most uptight girl of the entire class. Much hilarity ensues as I'm sure you can imagine.

5. And then there is the seemingly catch all group that isn't really catch-all as it will reliably form with similar members every year. This is the group of the rather effeminate gay boys and the uber-self confident girls who don't wear quite enough clothing to avoid being labeled sluts regardless of their behavior.

6. Lastly you have the jocks who are never seen in anything but running clothes and are generally fairly outgoing and friendly to all of the other students but still manage to form their own little clique.

Now take all of these groups and make them form working groups limited to four people that then have to count bugs, grow plants, row out in small boats to take pond water samples and force their way through shrubbery to collect data. Obviously group 4 describes one of these working groups as the class clowns and uptight girls would probably avoid interacting under any other circumstance.

This last week we had our aquatic biology lab. This takes place out at the campus field station (just north of campus) and involves students using microscopes to identify a large number of pond organisms including leaches as well as the afore mentioned rowing of small boats. Do I need to even describe my day with this class? I'll just leave it to your imagination and then, just shy of students falling out of the boats, let your imagination go wild. You'll be fairly close to the truth.

Party!

Oh yeah. It's that time of year. As of 7pm today I am officially on Spring Break!


Woooo-hooooo!

Of course I am in complete denial about the large stack of homework and rough draft reports I have to take with me to Utah to grade. And I'm in even further denial of the three hour lectures on completely new material I have to prepare for the week following and the quiz, and, and...

And one of my students gave me the nicest send-off today by trying to get me to give him yet another extension on taking a make-up quiz that was really his fault (not illness or anything like that, he just missed the three lectures where the fact that there was going to be a quiz was discussed because he didn't feel he needed to be there). His current reason for the extension? He didn't study. That is one lucky kid that he has a good memory and he still pulled off an 'A.'

I just adore such opportunities to express what a terribly grumpy and nasty witch I can be sometimes.

Oh yeah. This Spring Break is gonna rock!

(I'll be in Utah for most of the week and will probably even spend some time not grading. If this happens, I promise photos.)

freshman fifteen and cooking with intention

I mentioned in the crab cake post that I get all of my lunches at the many campus cafeterias as a perk (depending on your opinion of fake crab cakes) of my job.

So I got on the scale and discovered that I have put on about 4lbs since I have been on campus!!!!

Asking around, I have discovered that all faculty members here go through this their first year apparently. It's the exact same issue as being a first year student faced with a giant room of choices to which one hasn't grown indifferent with extended exposure.

On top of it all, faculty members then often go home to cook full meals for their families. So, before this gets out of hand (and because I have no family to cook for right now), there will be much less cooking in my house. There may be bread since it makes a good snack; but it's soup, salad or sandwich for the evenings from now on.

Last night it was a small bit of raw milk cheese, some slices of a chianti sausage (yup, made with the wine) and a tropical fruit smoothie (frozen fruit and apple juice from my own kitchen or this wouldn't qualify as at all restrictive as most commercial smoothies have as many calories as a big mac). So there may be a swing back to fiber heavy content as smoothie and salad recipes are often not as exciting as other things.
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And I've switched templates in blogger to account for the fact that I was sick and tired of trying to find a nice rounded corner graphic to widen the general text area to accommodate photos in the last one I was using. When I have a bit of time I'll mess around and insert photos into the title area like I did in the last one.

free audio book from audible

Audible is promoting a "Listen with your kids" month and in honor of this has made the audio version of "Where the Wild Things Are" available as a free download.

How fabulous is that? Go now.

Leave me a comment if the link doesn't work and I'll post a new one. I'm not sure if the link I had was connected to my account or the one for the general public.

fiber related?

Can you believe it? I'm finally getting off of my butt and posting about the fibery things I've been doing.

I spent some time over-dying some yarn that I had originally dyed with iron logwood.

The original color was a washed out version of this:


Unfortunately I didn't tell thuy what I was doing until I had already started so her helpful reminder to take photos missed the original color.

The dye pot:


And the final product. The color is almost accurate but it is more blue.


I finished up the gifts for Jen and Farooq's new baby, Zara. A good thing too since she was born about ten days before I mailed everything off.

So here is that linen stitch blanket that I've been working on for forever and a day. I decided not to rip it out and I'm glad as the pooled colors aren't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Of course Sam decided he was being neglected with all of the photos not involving him so he made sure he was smack in the middle of it all.



I added a simple crochet edge to finish it off.


And finally, this onesie has a baby girl to go to! I knit this years ago but not in time for the intended victim. Everyone I know since then has either had boys or adopted older children than this would fit.


A close up of the hat:


And the buttons that save this from turning a child into a giant purple and pink marshmallow.

ascad

This was taken with Marius' fancy DSLR. The only problem was that we didn't bring a tripod with us so most of his photos were out of focus due to the low light conditions. I think my little point and shoot has held its own fairly well in comparison. I'll try and get the yarn pics up tonight from stitches. They aren't nearly as exciting as the massive haul I brought home last year but were much more kind to the bank account!