Thursday, May 27, 2010

Creepy child, creepier mother

I want to preface this story by saying: I prefer my walks with Dante in the morning to be solo walks. Okay, sure if Corbett wanted to join I'd have no problem with it, but as for others, no thank you.

There's this new kid who's moved into the building next to ours, and last weekend he came up to see Dante, and to well, be creepy. He has this air about him that I can't quite put my finger on, but it bugs me. Otherwise though, he's harmless, and he loves Dante (who doesn't?), and Dante seems to like him alright. He was out there again this morning, again with his mother sitting on the stoop in front of their building.

So he came and joined us for our walk (mind you, the way our "walk" goes here, it's more like a stroll around a grassy field that Dante has to inspect diligently, so there's not really much exercise happening). I wasn't too thrilled, but he was fine and I even got to teach him that it's wrong not to pick up after a dog (later he was singing, "Gotta pick up the dog's poo!" over and over again, and hopefully that other brat walking this tiny dog heard).

Then, as I went to the dumpster to toss it out, his mother came over to throw something away, and then made a bit of small talk (about Dante). Then she threw it out there: "You know, I hate to bother you but my phone just ran out of minutes and I have to make several calls, is there any way I could borrow yours?"

Now, for many reasons I would never let a stranger use my phone. In this case though, I wasn't about to go back inside, get it, and then wait while she made calls to how many random places? I muttered, "Ooh, I don't have mine right now," hoping that would imply that I didn't want her to use it. Then she asked about a home phone, which I don't have (but even worse, I'm not letting her into my home when I don't know her and also while Corbett was asleep in the next room!). I apologized and went along my merry way, but man. Creepy new family is gonna make me choose a new morning walk.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Just have to wait

So I just talked with the departmental secretary in New York, and well, I can't tell whether or not I'm happy. The basic issue is that I have to find a place to live there, and was spoiled when I was there before (considering my previous institution, let's call it OU for Old U, there owns about four million blocks of housing that they rent to affiliates). There is apparently a housing office at my future university home ("NU"), and I was told before that they help faculty get off-site housing.

This is not exactly the truth, although it's not a lie. They have a list of landlords nearby. Now, the list at OU was not quite useful, from everything I've heard, and I have yet to receive this list from NU. (Apparently it takes longer for emails to travel on days that end in "y".) So I'm not sure if it's going to be helpful or just a big pain. It makes me not look forward to going up there to find a new home.

What makes it a little more stressful is that this is a more long term place, ideally. It of course all depends on when C can get a job in the city, because I imagine we'll get a new place then, but I will want to be a little more picky about it since I won't want to move every year for the next umpteen years.

Well, in three months all of this will be over, and I'll just have a whole new set of complaints.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Inconsequential crap

I've not been in a posting mood, but I feel like I should have something to say, so here...

  • We're getting a new air conditioner! That's right, after dealing with it breaking constantly last summer, my bitchiness (I like to think of it as assertiveness) paid off, and within a week we'll have a brand new one. Of course, we're leaving in mid-August, but at least our last few months will be certainly pleasant!

  • I'm definitely not looking forward to the move. I'm looking forward to the week after the move, just because then I'll be settled. But having to find an apartment (well, two, if you consider the fact that we are both getting separate places) and scheduling everything is really starting to stress me out. And we're still months from it all happening.

  • I was happy with the Lost finale. Was it perfect? No. Really, the ending would have been almost that if they cut out the scene with Christian. You know what I'm talking about.* Overall, though, the problem with big hyped endings is that they never live up to it. It's never as perfect as "it could be in my mind." I'm fine with that.


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*And if you don't, too bad.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Small town

I have talked about this a lot, but the 'burg here is a pretty small town. Every time we go out for Vietnamese food* we tend to run into the man (Scott) who owns the coffee shop on campus that I go to every day. We also run into him at Trader Joe's, or the Japanese restaurant we frequent.

I see cars all over town that I recognize, either because they live in my apartment complex or just because I've seen them often. It's not surprising when we run into people while shopping. We ran into Kostas and Lily months ago at the Outlets, and Andre and Erin at Blockbuster (in addition to other professors).

The other day as I was biking home from a coffee shop (not the one on campus) and heard some honking as I rode through an intersection, and there were Kostas and Lily, at the light, waving to me. This is something I will miss about this place to some extent, because I do enjoy running into people (usually). Of course, New York is very similar, as much as people don't believe it. When I lived there before, I would run into people I knew all the time on the streets. Of course, usually (but not always) it was in the neighborhood we lived in (which was also where Columbia was), so it's not surprising.

Of course, on a completely unrelated subject, right now I'm still waiting for the paperwork for my new job, because there is a ton of red tape to get through before I can have my contract to sign, so I'm antsy. It makes me want to check the mail every five minutes, as stupid as that is. Of course, it doesn't help that since we've been in the new building, the mail comes at random times during the day. Before, you knew that by lunch, the mail was always there. This is no longer the case.
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* Yes, a small town with a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Poor bird

Warning: If you're upset by a sad animal death story, you may not wish to read the following...

On my way to work today I saw a terrible tragedy. On Jamestown road, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a bird fly across the street as the evil SUV* behind me, and it stupidly darted back in front of the SUV, while flying downward. During this time I think it realized what a mistake it was making so it tried to fly off but not before getting whacked by the evil SUV's tire.

It was a very disturbing sight since all I really saw was the body of the bird bounce off the tire and hit the side of the road with an explosion of feathers. It was a traumatic moment, and I am generally not a huge fan of birds. Still, it kind of put a damper on my day.
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*Evil because he kept tailgating me earlier, in addition to the fact that it's an SUV.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Look up

So recall that last week I dug through my boxes in my looking for my E&M notes, so I could use them for the class I'll be teaching in the fall. (I'm not necessarily planning out the course now, but I wanted to be sure they weren't packed away when I needed to find them this summer.) I couldn't find them, and well, that meant that I'd have to dig through the (scary) closet where we have everything stored in our home office. I was going to do that yesterday, but I looked at the closet and just didn't want to deal.

Thank the gods I didn't! Today at work I leaned back in my chair to read an article, and I glanced up above the cupboards in the office* and saw a box. One I hadn't noticed before. "Oh, that's right," I thought, "that's the box I actually emptied when moving into this office." Fifteen minutes later (I'm not a quick thinker), I thought that it might be a good idea to just check that it in fact was empty.

And of course it wasn't! Found my notes, actually, all of my notes from my undergraduate (and some graduate) life. Life is good.
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* This office used to be a biology lab, hence the cupboards.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Three days in a row

That's right, for all you nay-sayers, three days, it has been! This is the third day, in a row that I have biked to work. So for everyone out there, I say, "Ha!" That's right. "Ha!"

No but seriously, I had been saying for weeks now that "tomorrow, I will definitely bike in." The trouble is that I'm an exceedingly lazy person (most people will support that claim, and I'm not denying it), and often I'm rather creative. Okay, maybe my excuses for not biking are not the most creative, but they are excuses. And I'm willing to give in to them. So the goal is to not make an excuse for tomorrow, and that would mean that four out of five days I biked to work, and next week I'll attempt to make it five out of five.

Here's hopin'.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Any little thing

So of course when I got to the office this morning I felt pretty good (hell, I actually biked to work again, after weeks of saying that I would definitely bike in "tomorrow"). Then several things happened to very easily deflate my mood.

First, I couldn't find my old undergraduate notes for the class I'm teaching in the fall. They weren't at home (I thought) then I unpacked all of my office boxes (I left those packed after moving to the new building since I didn't really use that stuff all too often), and didn't find the notes. Now I will have to tear apart the apartment. Maybe I'll use this as a first pass of getting rid of things.

Then, I got a call saying that my transcripts weren't yet received by the school that I'm going to in the fall, and they can't process the contract until they get them. I ordered them last Monday, so they should have arrived. Okay, so I realized that I didn't put a street address on the transcripts when I ordered them, but honestly that shouldn't be a problem (because I put the name of the school and the ZIP+4, so it just may get delayed). I know that it's probably just a matter of the schools being too slow with everything but now I'm just in a funk.

I swear, it's any little freaking thing that just ruins my mood...

Monday, May 3, 2010

Too early for Dante

So yet again, sleeping was a problem last night. I think this time it was because I slept really late yesterday morning and wasn't all that tired when I forced myself to bed. I woke up at 4:30 and kept trying to fall back to sleep. At just after 6, Corbett just got fed up and got up. I did as well, and Dante looked at us like we were fools.

So I had breakfast, made my coffee, and we chatted for quite a while. It wasn't until Corbett banged at a bug on the window that Dante came running into the living room. Even still, he wasn't ready to go out yet. I think this was the first time ever that this happened (to me, anyway) with Dante.