in which i become employed

So... I have a job!  I was worried that I might find myself with one moment of spare time sometime in the future, and I decided to quash that hope by getting a weekend job.  Stress, commence!  Actually, my job is very de-stressy.  I do yard work with a fantastic guy who's very nice and who explains everything well but doesn't beat the horse, and when he says, "Mow" I put on my earmuffs, turn on the mower, and turn off my brain.  It's like a little brain-cation that I'm getting paid for.  I also get to learn all about the native plants of Oregon (so far, I've learned that vinca=bad, ivy=bad, and the rest looks like a green blur [perhaps because anything and everything is covered with ivy]).  I'm also getting to explore all over south Portland and hang out in people's beautiful gardens.  Most people have to work in their own gardens and mow their own lawns, all for free, but I get all the benefits of being in a beautiful space and getting a workout AND I'm getting paid for it.  The only downside is that I've become one of those people that neighbors and environmentalists everywhere hate: I blow leaves.  With a leafblower.  I try to blow them very very fast to keep my noise disturbance to a minimum, but I still cringe at how many times I cursed the leaf-blowers at Linfield.  Oh, well; those Linfielders got paid for it, I'm getting paid for it, so instead let's all curse the universities and homeowners who want their leaves blown.  Curse ye!  (And thanks for my paycheck.)

On another note, one more downside to this job is that it cuts into any fun times I may have had time to have.  E.g., potentially not-happening fun times: 1) my roommates are having a brew-party (brewing hard apple cider and/or beer) in the near future, and unless I stop blogging and start homework, I will not be able to participate, and 2) all of the book blogs of which I am fond of snooping in on are participating in a 24-hour-Read-a-thon as we speak (reading as many books as they can in a 24-hour sprint with no significant breaks and blogging about it every hour) and I am ABSOLUTELY NOT participating because I am BURIED in homework.  Does reading a textbook for 24 hours count?  Except I really don't think anyone else wants me to blog about my experiences reading "Cultural Globalization and Language Education" and "Distant Mirrors: America as a Strange Culture" (2 books, 417 pages) and "One Functional Approach to Second Language Acquisition: The Concept-Oriented Approach" and "The Associative-Cognitive CREED" and "Processability Theory" and "Natural Language Learning and Organized Language Teaching" and "Where Data Come From" and "Understanding Research Designs" and "Categories, Context and Comparison in Conversation Analysis" (5 book chapters, 2 articles, 161 pages), all due next week.  Plus writing my thoughts on all these.  Plus conducting several hours of ethnographic interviews.  Plus several other mini side-projects.  So, yeah, no life for me.

OK, self, stop whining (and blogging) and start working that brain!

surfacing

Maybe...?  Nope.  Still drowning in schoolwork.

sendoff

Last weekend, my family hosted a rollicking sendoff for my grandpa.  There were friends, there was wine, there were stories, laughs, tears, and a 21-gun salute.  (And don’t forget the Olympia; it’s the water.)  Grandpa died in August, a wonderful man well-loved by his friends and family, and last Friday we had a ceremony at the National Cemetery in Tahoma, Washington (honoring his service in World War II) and on Saturday we celebrated his life.  What a life!  He was a scientist, a soldier, a husband and father, and one of the funniest people I ever knew.  The stories that came out at the celebration were fantastic—most were old family classics, but one was new for me: he was down at the experiment station looking at nematodes in carrots, so he had carefully cut away the dirt along a row of carrots and was on his knees, sweeping the dirt away and peering closely at the roots.  A car pulled up along the road bordering the experiment station field; the people stopped and stared.  Grandpa continued working and the people kept staring, but he was never one to pass up a good prank.  He grabbed two carrots, put them on top of his head like horns, and charged the car.  The people took off and went down to the local hospital’s psychiatric ward and told the superintendent that one of their inmates had gotten loose; eventually it got back to his boss, who wasn’t too pleased, but Grandpa kept the job and apparently relished re-telling the story.  We all told his favorite stories in his honor, and raised our orange cans of Oly (one of his old-time favorites) to him.  We sure miss you, Grandpa.