The vision

I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited kitchen remodel is underway. I used a program called Cabinet Planner to ... well ... plan the cabinets. You should be looking at a rendering of the plan, though you may not be able to see too much detail. It's not a radical departure from the current kitchen in terms of layout, though currently the refrigerator is sitting where the tall pantry cabinet is shown at the right of the attached image. In the new kitchen, it will be sitting roughly across from the dishwasher, across from the wall you're looking through in the picture.

A few other essential differences: the current cabinets are painted (I assume) pine or plywood. The countertop is postform formica, and it's not even really screwed down to the cabinets. Nor is it scribed to the back wall, so there are gaps behind it that a mouse could climb through to hilarious effect.



The current kitchen is dark. The new kitchen will be light, as the cabinets will be natural maple, which is light, with black appliances (the current ones) and a counter surface to be identified later. I hope to pick out the handles and pulls this week. We're also replacing the floor with a light laminate (we thought hard about hardwood or something more permanent and costly, but we know we're not going to live out our days in this house).

A few other features: the bottom cabinets will have either drawers or pull-out shelves, and the corner cabinets will have lazy susans. The sink will be black enamel, undermounted, I hope, and therefore lipless. The toe kicks will be cherry, as will the currently hideous soffits above the cabinet, and possibly the edge of the countertop. We'll be papering the walls, since they're already papered over paneling ... it's the easiest option, and it ought to come out okay.

So, how's it coming, you ask? So far I've done one cabinet. One. But it came out okay, and the rest will be done assembly-line fashion. They'll be finished with water-based polyurethane sprayed over shellac (Zinsser Sealcoat, which dewaxed shellac).

Should have it done in a week or so. Ha HAAAAA!

People need to stop messing with my stuff

Reading over some of my old posts from the last couple of years, I can't say that I'm overjoyed at the way the entities who actually own the material in Youtube videos have forced said 'tube to remove said material in the interest of protecting their copyrights. Because I gotta tellya, it interferes pretty seriously with some of the humorous juxtapositions with which I like to punctuate my pontificatin'. The nerve of these people! The hubris!

Even more irritating is when I dutifully posted the ostensibly legal links to material from MTV or Comedy Central, only to find that they are now dead. I try to play fair, people, but fair is a moving target, and as I've asked about other moving targets in the past, how come the moving target never seems to move any closer?

Of course, as a wannabe content provider myself, I take a much dimmer view of copyright infringement than I may have in the past. This not to say I wouldn't still be overjoyed if somebody thought any of the songs I helped to write were good enough to steal, which as far as I know hasn't happened yet ... and let's face it, that window of opportunity has probably sailed.

But the textbook is a different story, especially since we actually are getting some modest royalties on it. If I could put the kibosh on the black- and gray-market commerce in the book, I surely would ... including those people who buy exam copies from professors, though I must admit I've been on the offending end of that transaction once or twice or several dozen times.

Last year we received an inquiry from somebody in China asking for permission to translate the book. I had yuan signs in my eyes ... think about how many college students there must be in China--what a market! Turns out he wasn't willing to pay for permission to translate it. Well, crap.

Though I gotta tellya, the idea of all those Chinese students learning about writing about literature from our book (and thus becoming at least associate (if not full) minions)) does have its appeal.

I'm baaaaaaaack!

Back in the saddle again? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves ... I've missed doing this, probably more than anybody missed reading it. Look: if you know me at all, and you do, or you wouldn't be reading this, surely, unless you're one of the two or three people a day who get here by googling Karen Allen or something (why?), you know that I'm in general not a reliable correspondent ... but I'm going to try to write at least weekly. Hell, it got me through my dissertation, am I right? (Hi Murray).

I know that the themeless rant blog is passe (sorry about the missing accent), but I still don't really have a concept in mind aside from, as I've said before, the random conversation I'd have with students before class started, back when I was in the classroom ... or, let's face it, the monologue with which I'd waste the first few minutes of class. Not wasting ... building rapport. Establishing a positive learning environment. If you will.

Anyhow, I'm shooting for once a week at least, and I'm not going to talk about work. That's about it.

Oh, and I've been watching Justified, and it's not too bad.

You Are Not a Pleasure Unit; or, My Banal Anxieties

First, an observation: The Flint movies (the first title above is a quotation from Our Man Flint) play differently after Austin Powers. The tongue in the earlier films is somewhat salaciously in cheek, but the films are silly without being spoofs. Their existence renders at least a couple of the Austin Powers films superfluous. IMHO badabimbo. What's that? Oh, great.

And now for something completely different ...

I had an anxiety dream today, and it was disappointingly banal. I was in college again, taking a biology class(!), and I had an oral report due ... on bluegills(!!). I walked into class assuming I was prepared--after all, I had notes, and I've taught for many years, so I can prattle on endlessly with minimal preparation--only to learn that I had forgotten my notes and had no recollection of anything I learned while preparing them.

Gee. How novel. I might as well have showed up without pants.

The interesting thing is that it was me now, not me as a student ... so I didn't argue with the professor. I just asked him how many points the presentation was worth (152!?) and told him I was probably going to drop the class. His response was a wholly appropriate shrug.

When I woke up I was feeling quite anxious and relieved that it was only a dream. My only consolation is that I've probably inspired nightmares like that once or twice. At least I hope so. I want to be your superego!

I'm Proud To Be an American, Where At Least I Know I'm Free

"At least"? What does that "at least" mean?

Okay, the whole song makes my skin crawl, not that I myself am not glad to be an American, because I am, though what I feel about it isn't pride, exactly, but extremely lucky I got born where I did. Makes you wonder why all those other people didn't choose to be born here, huh? I mean, what's the matter with them? The song bothers me the way "Dixie" bothers me when old men sing it slowly and solemnly. Again, not that I don't occasionally wish myself in the land of cotton. My old times there will definitely not be forgotten.

But here I am in downtown Philadelphia, where a lot of this America stuff got sketched out, so while I'm going avoid politics (I avoid politics religiously), I'm going to float an observation or two.

First, if there's a heaven, it's liable to be a lot like the Reading Terminal Market.

Second, and this gets me back to the whole America thing, I committed two social errors yesterday (which admittedly sounds like a pretty good day for me ... and incidentally I would have used the term faux pas, but I'm too ignorant of the Anti-American Freedom Hater language to know what the plural should be ... Fries, anyone?). See, I like talking to people. If I'm interacting with people professionally, be they a salesperson in a conference booth or an "engineer" from the hotel who comes up to fix the internet connection, I'm liable to strike up a conversation. If they sport accents that indicate that they're not from around here, I'm liable to ask them where they're from. It interests me.

But it turns out that people really don't like that at all. The foreigners I've met in the U. S. recently haven't been too comfortable telling where they come from. Even the British guy ("our staunchest ally") who was trying to sell me a big expensive piece of software was hesitant to acknowledge his origin ... though eventually we were talking about his adopted home in Atlanta, his dogs and his wife, who is a cancer survivor, and his lower middle-class education, which involved learning a higher than upper-class Oxford accent. All of this was after we established that I wasn't buying the software. I should have asked him to sing "Dixie."

Hours later, I was in the hotel room trying to get some work done, and the scandalously expensive internet connection quit on me. The tech--excuse me, engineer--who came to my assistance is clearly Not From Here. Still comfortably stuffed full of my dinner (carryout from the Reading Terminal Market) of falafel, hummus, grape leaves, tabbouleh, etc., I asked him where he was from. "South Phillie," he replied, stiffly. "Oh, okay," I said. "I thought I heard a little accent." Turns out he's from Egypt, not from Cairo but from farther north. He told me a little bit about it, we joked about the weather, and then he fixed the internet connection and got the hell out of there.

In my line of work we spend time in conferences and meeting rooms talking about "celebrating difference" ... and we feel pretty good about ourselves when we do so. But the barriers to doing so are many and complicated.

Ratatouille

Here in the Keystone State the Thanksgiving holiday bleeds over at least until Monday for public schools, since Monday is The First Day of Deer Season. When I grew up and moved to Ohio, I was incredulous ... I just assumed that everybody got the first day of dear season off. Everywhere. At least in America. The university where I work will be open tomorrow in spite of deer season, but I imagine we'll be a little short-staffed.

As a non-hunter I'm usually able to let deer season pass me by with barely second thought: a few more cars driving around with dead deer strapped to them, maybe, a few more gun shots heard in the distance than usual ... nothing more. But having just moved into my new abode last week, I've found several things that need fixing, and some of them are beyond me: a new subpanel in the basement, for instance, and some alteration of the roof over the garage to allow for the truck. Turns out there will be no home improvement for the next few weeks, since most of the people who do that sort of thing will be out hunting. Well, I hope they bag their limits tomorrow, because I've got some big ideas.

So: holidays, home improvement, and hunting--how to bring all of this together? Well. This is the season when outdoor critters start looking for heat, and this house having been bipedally unoccupied for some time prior to our arrival, it has been home to at least one resident, a mouse who decided to present himself in the kitchen during the preparation of the Thanksgiving feast. Ah, nothing brings three generations together like a mouse hunt! We might have been able to ignore it, or at least postpone the inevitable, had it not taken refuge up in the top part of the stove, mere inches from where the succulent giblets would soon simmer.

Madcap hilarity, shouting, violence, and remorse--Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings!

Hiatus

So in case you haven't noticed, the Wordshed has been on hiatus for the past couple of months ... what can I say? Work has been challenging but rewarding, and the idea of stealing a half an hour or so during the day to post something is pretty much out of the question. I'd rather be busy than bored, though, so I'm not complaining.

I spent the last week moving out of the crappy apartment. I can honestly say I'll miss the place, and the incessant hollering from the floor below. "ANDREW!" "MOOOOOOOM!" "MITCHELL!" Stomping, swearing, shaking my floor from the floor below--I don't even know how you'd do that. But it was great listening to two adolescent boys who ain't quite right practicing the F word when mom's out. Swearing is an acquired talent, and I was tempted to help them out. And it was great smelling burning microwave popcorn night after night after night. I'll miss it. I really will. Really.

So from a cramped apartment to house that's larger than we need on two acres with two views ... definitely a step in the right direction in spite of the general dilapidatedness of the house itself. The dog is having fun discovering the yard and the various interesting droppings deposited by deer and bears. The cats are still in hiding during the day, but they come out at night and raise galumphing, elephantine hell all night.

For everything I fix, I find two more things that need fixing. I guess that's what they call job security.