Craziness

Eric has been cleaning out his office and has found a few gems worth blogging about. These fall into the category of: and I thought I was insane, but...
Who knew that in the mid 90s, our department offered ski/conversation classes. Yup. You could get credit for skiing in German, skiing in Italian, etc.
Here's a gem from some 1994 meeting minutes:
The following amendments to the Merit Committee document were approved:
a...
b. that there be a sliding scale...
c. that the sliding scale be eliminated...
d....

It also turns out that the department voted on all sorts of things that never actually got put into practice.

What fun.

Happy New Year

Out with the old and in with the new. So far the Christmas tree stands denuded of its decorations, but still shedding profusely in the family room. We haven't yet figured out how the robotic vacumn cleaner direct from Taiwan works, but it should prove essential when the tree has been dragged out and shed all its needles. Both front and back yards are deep in snow - Craig has shoveled a path from dog door to off the deck for the obvious reasons. This allows Sadie to get to her special spot - repository of all her treasures. On Christmas morning this included Sam's wrapped ipod stolen from under the tree in the dead of night. For those of you haven't heard, I spent the first minutes of Christmas day knee deep in snow, in the dark, digging for the thing. I found it, a t-shirt, a stuffed animal, two paper plates, and well, you get the idea.
Since then, I've been to Chicago for the annual conference where I got to stay in a hotel room with two bathrooms... Got back in time to ring in the new year at Ted's where there was some truly abysmal karaoke and delicious food.

red wine and dermatologists

Some of you may recall my speculating that I might be allergic to red wine. This was a prime example of self-diagnosis. The thing is, I was suffering terribly from itchiness. I was reduced on many occasions to wrapping a cold, damp towel around my feet and ankles at bedtime in order to get some relief. Of course Craig suggested a visit to the doctor, but where I come from, we just suffer... Actually I did mention the itching to my doctor at my annual female visit late last spring and got the usual advice of changing soaps, laundry and otherwise, and so on. And so I continued to itch. What drove me to visit Craig's dermatologist? Well, I realized that people sitting next to me in meetings might be secretly repelled by my scabby wrists and hands. Yup, it was that gross. I had even tried forgoeing the red wine -- no discernible improvement (thank god). So I finally scheduled an appointment last week. As I recounted the visit to Craig, he said "Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you he is quite parsimonious." No kidding. I was called in and sat down. He asked what was wrong and I launched into my tail of itching and soap changes and lotions and.... he swiveled in his swively chair, grabbed a wooden stick with a pointy end and scratched my forearm three times. Then he jumped up and promised to be back in a few minutes. I sat there thinking I hadn't told him about the damp towel and I studied my arm. Eventually he came back and I held out the arm. "Hives" he pronounced. "Neuro-systemic". He then scribbled out a prescription for something better than benadryl and dashed out. I filled the prescription, took two at bedtime and the itching is history.

Christmas pic

When research calls

I am frantically collecting data for the paper I will be giving in two short weeks in Chicago. I needed some more Russian subjects and a friend at work volunteered that at the divey coffee place he likes to hang out at they are aplenty. So last night I popped the kids into bed and headed out to the Coffee Break. You get old and forget that places like this exist (ok, probably this is the only one in SLC). A pretty large place divided into three spaces. Back room with couches and comfy chairs. Main room with tables and the counter for ordering. Many pierced and tatooed young people bustling behind it. Then outside with heat lamps for the smokers. It looked like I had a big crowd, but the numbers shrank when it became clear that the task involved reading words on a screen. Many of them had come to the states prior to much schooling and simply weren't up for it. Still I got half a dozen which was pleasing.

Christmas challenge

So, the staff in our office, probably like office staff everywhere, love to decorate. They don't need much of a pretext before the place is dripping with festive cheer. Halloween and Thanksgiving were all out - the latter quite weird. I don't know, but a large cardboard turkey on all the adminstrators' doors sends some sort of message...
Of course once the turkeys went back into their boxes, out came the tree, garlands and other sparkly bits of holiday cheer. It wasn't long before one of the faculty complained. We had a long disucssion on the separation of church and state and I promised to look into the matter. Well it turns out the US Supreme Court has actually ruled on this issue, and the tree is not a religious symbol. You just have to call it a 'holiday' tree and it's all good. Personally I think that is some serious semantic slight of hand. Of course it's part of Christmas! However this does move the issue to one we can discuss as a department. When I had suggested that option to said faculty member, he asked if we were "really going to debate the Constitution". Now that it's no longer a constitutional issue, just one of personal preference, well, I guess we can have at it in a department meeting... That should be fun.

Winter has arrived

We have had a dry fall and the ski resorts are still mostly not open, but yesterday it snowed. Here is a picture Catherine took of the front garden.