i miss it

maura @ 8:04 pm

Snow snow snow. I love the snow. I feel like the older I get the less I should love the snow. Like it’s unseemly for an adult to enjoy the snow, too childish. Or that the snow is just too cold and aren’t I getting to be too old for the cold?

But I can’t help it, something about snow is just too magical. The way it falls in big fat flakes and makes time slow to a crawl. Or the way it covers everything in glittery quiet. I never have been a princessy girl, but even I appreciate a little glitter now and then. Snow is especially awesome in the city, as a friend quipped, “it’s nature’s slanket.”

I’m writing this on our annual winter vacation to visit my dad + stepmom in Vermont, and it’s pretty snowy here. We were worried that it wouldn’t be wintery enough — there’s been much more snow down south since the new year than there has been up here. But there’s a good base and one night we got 4 more inches of fluffy dry stuff, just perfect for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, some of my favorite snowy activities.

Gus is seemingly eternally happy to play out in the snow. He loves to sled and skate and build snowmen and make snow angels, but he also likes just hanging out in the snow. Whenever we’re up here he’s out until it’s too dark to play, tromping around, looking for icicles, throwing snow chunks, etc. Often without a hat or with an unzipped coat — will someone please explain to me how a 50lb third grader with 0% body fat never seems to get cold?

Lately I’ve been wondering if we should take a warm vacation one winter. We never have before, we usually head north for our winter getaways. And there is something that sounds nice about taking a break in the bright sun during the gray of February. But I think I would miss the guarantee of snowy fun. Sure, we’ve had a fair amount of snow in NYC this winter, but that’s not always the case.

And there’s always Spring Break.

the city’s warmer by a couple of degrees

maura @ 4:59 pm

It’s Sunday night, the last day of the holiday break, and once again I am sort of grumpy. Though once again I have no real reason for the grumpiness: the break was good, I’m looking forward to getting back to work this week, and tomorrow’s an RT day so I don’t even have to leave the house.

Our break was kind of busy but also kind of not. We all stayed up much later than we should have most nights, but we still caught up on sleep (though tomorrow morning will probably be tough). Family visited us + we visited family. Jonathan cooked a ton of delicious food, and we all ate many more sweet things than is entirely healthy. We got (and, I hope, gave) lovely gifts: not too few, not too many. It rained and all of the snow melted, then it was warm and we went to the High Line. Then it got cold again and we went to the movies. While The Princess and The Frog wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I still wish the kids were old enough that we could have left them in the theater alone and gone to see Sherlock Holmes in the theater next door.

Seems like I can’t ever leave a span of time without some small amount of regret that I didn’t DO enough, so that’s probably the cause of today’s grumps. But I did get a lot done in addition to all of the holiday stuff. I cleared out my feedreader and kept my work inbox below 20 (as a friend said, sometimes a 1 day work week is better than a no-day work week). I almost got through my New Yorker backlog (only 2 to go!). I’m 80% done with sewing my new iphone cozy. We caught up on TV and even watched a movie last night (District 9, which was good, if disturbing). I finished the videogame that I got for xmas, though there are still puzzles that I haven’t completed so it’s not totally useless yet. Good thing, too, because my very own DS will arrive sometime in the middle of this week.

The video gaming was the most surprising thing to me about this break, actually. It’s been a while since a game has grabbed onto my brain so tightly. In many ways Professor Layton is the perfect game for me: an interesting storyline/plot that’s moved forward by solving puzzles. Of course lots of other games are like that (the Zelda series, e.g.), but the puzzles are much more overt in this game. I love puzzles but a game of just puzzles is kind of boring, you know? This is actually the second Professor Layton game so I’ll probably try to pick up the first one used on ebay.

These days many newfangled videogames keep track of the amount of time you play, which is an interesting (if sometimes alarming) feature. So it was also surprising to me that I could spend as much time playing a videogame as I did: 20 hrs over the course of one week! Now, I was only at work for 1 day during that time, and with all of the family around my childcare responsibilities were pretty light. And we finished TV right before xmas (and didn’t get a new movie until after New Year’s) so televised entertainment was low. And see above about staying up too late. But it still shocks me a bit to fire up the game and see that 20 hr figure. I always tell myself that I don’t have enough time to play games these days but of course, as with any leisure activity, it’s a matter of choosing to do that over doing something else.

What I definitely did NOT do this break is write. 2 personal journal entries, 1 twitter blog entry, and that’s about it. Which should be obvious given the state of this post, sort of scattered and not very well composed. I kept thinking of stuff to write over the break, but it’s hard to find the time for sustained writing in the vacationspace. I don’t really have any official resolutions this year (trying not to make resolutions I can’t keep was one of last year’s resolutions and I was not entirely successful, unfortunately), but I do plan to get back on track with writing. Starting today, I guess, since I’ve managed to squeeze a post out of the grumpiness. Go me!

everything you say, everything you do

maura @ 9:48 pm

Okay, that last post was kind of a bummer. Sorry about that. We finally turned on the air conditioner which helped enormously with the sluggishness I was feeling (and now it’s cooler again, phew). It’s been on so little this summer that I kind of keep forgetting that we have one (duh).

Last week we took a short but lovely vacation. We drove up to my dad’s in Vermont, stayed overnight, then left Gus there to frolic in the nature with my stepmother’s brother’s kids (who are about his age) while we hightailed it north to Montreal. Bonjour!

After driving an hour or so in the green hills it cracked us up that everything seemed to flatten out as soon as we crossed the border. Who knew so much mais sucre grew in Canada? We passed a hilarious pizza place called Arrete Papa! but went by too fast to get a picture.

We left a little later than planned so by the time we got to the hotel it was past lunch and I was starving. Montreal has a petite but tres charmant Chinatown that seemed about 50% Vietnamese restaurants, so we popped in for some pho + spring rolls, yum. Across the street was this awesome graffiti. Yay for recycling! If only my toilet paper was this happy.

After lunch we went to the library, of course! It’s a really cool huge library, 5 floors and very modern. An entire floor is devoted to music + movies (w/listening + watching stations), and another floor to the kids collection (also watching stations, kid-sized!). There was an art exhibit in the basement and loads of comfy-looking chairs and tables w/desk-type lighting + wifi everywhere. If I lived in Montreal I’d be there every weekend, seriously. Plus there was some more excellent graffiti in the alley near the back door.

We stayed in a small hotel in the historic part of the city (a birthday gift!). Among the lavender-scented soaps-n-things was a box of Everything. I know, seems small, right?

The next day we explored the city. This is the Palais de Congres (Convention Center) which looks like a kaleidoscope.

We walked through downtown which is just like every urban downtown (Starbucks? Non!). But on our way up the hill to see McGill University we passed this crazy sculpture of a crowd of people looking at something. All of the people in the front of the crowd are intently peering skyward, but as you walk towards the back of the sculpture things get kind of weird. Voici le petit homme mysterieuse! (I think I’ve got some gender issues in that sentence, oh well. High school was a long time ago.)

OMG there is an actual mont right in the middle of the city. After hoofing it up intense hills through McGill’s campus we got to the Parc du Mont Royal. These cool stripey rocks were near the bottom of the mont, and begged me to take their photo. How could I resist?

Then we climbed stairs/hiked practically straight up the mont, quite a workout. Luckily it was a gorgeous day, sunny but breezy and not too hot. The reward was this awesome view.

Then we had a little Mont Royal snafu. We wanted to head northeast out of the parc to the Plateau neighborhood to have lunch. But the parc is not very well-signed so in our efforts to not go back the same way we came up we kind of messed up and ended up walking forever only to emerge all the way on the other side of the parc BUT about the same distance from our destination as when we’d started, doh. All hail public transportation! We waited 15 minutes for a bus and were eternally grateful that it accepted paper money as well as coins.

I was starving (again) and exhausted by this point, and happy that we’d planned to eat at Cafe Santropol, a sort of funky crunchy crafty lunch place. There was an enormous garden and we snagged a table so far back next to the little pond that it was nearly hidden. And there was a tuba planter on the fence behind Jonathan.

This is my amazing and delicious sandwich, the Sweet Root: carrot salad with raisins and walnuts and curry on brown bread. Plus lots of extra fruits + vegetables. I’m getting hungry just looking at this, it was so good.

After lunch we thought about going to the archaeology museum, but I was too tired to read exhibit signs so we just went down to the river and hung out and read and watched the boats and people. There were some segway tours so of course we gawked at them, how could we not?

The next day we were headed back to the US, but not before going to the depanneur (= bodega) to buy a whole mess of chocolate bars in varieties not available on domestic soil. On our way out we stopped on two island parks in the St. Lawrence River. One was natural and one created for Expo ’67 (the world’s fair). Some of the old pavilions are still there and used for various purposes. This Buckminster Fuller-designed one was the US pavilion and is now a small environmental museum.

And then it was time to say Au Revoir, Canada. I’d like to go back sometime with Gus — we didn’t hit any museums and it seems like there’re lots of kid-friendly things to do. Not that he missed us, what with all of the canoeing and swimming in the pond and riding the alpine slide and making ice cream he did with his grandparents.

On our last night we made smores over a real campfire, though Gus preferred his toasted marshmallows solo. Because I hate marshmallows I just ate chocolate and graham crackers. Together we make a smore!

i’m a robot man

maura @ 11:03 pm

It’s finally summer here and even though it’s not too hot yet my brain has been kind of slow lately. We went on our fabulous midwest vacation last week and though I’m back in the groove at work I’m having trouble shoving myself into a writing frame of mind. Also since it finally decided to stop raining this week I started riding my scooter to work again, which means that I’m more tired than usual at night.

So hi, internets, how’ve you been? I feel like I should have something more interesting to say than that, but sadly I do not.

We had a great time last week. Gus was treated to all manner of grandparental spoilage including go-kart construction, pottery making, junk food eating and late night TV watching. I slept for eight hours EVERY night and spent enough time lying around reading that I think I actually gained a few pounds. We all got to pet adorable baby goats at the zoo.

Jonathan and I also went to Chicago for 2 nights which was a blast. It was fun to see old friends and spend time walking around the city without having to give someone small a piggyback ride. We went to the newly-expanded Art Institute, and though I was a teeny bit disappointed that the Chagall stained glass windows aren’t back up after the renovations it really was lovely. There’s so much space now that lots more of the collection is displayed than before. The Cornell Boxes were among my favorites – so interesting + creepy. We rode my favorite El line and took advantage of our friend’s knowledge of architecture to learn about all of the new buildings. And I stood under the bean and took a picture of us:

(Please note: unless your name is Anne or Tex you are probably not at all interested in this paragraph. Feel free to move along.) On the way into the city we stopped in Hyde Park to eat garbage pizza and drink (strong!) coffee at the Med and wander around campus. The new dorms by the Reg are intensely orange (and not really in a good way) BUT they have the old house names from the now-demolished Woodward, which is kind of cool. And the new GSB building is handsome but kind of pushes Ida Noyes even more to the periphery than it was before.

Mostly I really wanted to ogle the new library construction. Instead of offsite storage they’re building this crazy oval-shaped dome-covered subterranean library next to the Reg. It’ll be closed stacks with automatic book retrieval (read: robots!). I’m calling it the underground robolibrary in my head – you should, too.

cause the days change at night

maura @ 10:38 pm

Woah, has it really been 2 weeks since my last post? Time flies when there’s teaching teaching teaching and then bam, Spring Break. Now the teaching is over (though Spring Break isn’t quite yet) and I’m a little sad, just like last semester. Curious, it is (see Yoda reference below).

Thanks to the spring non-secular holidays, Gus’s Spring Break was extra-long this year, so we hightailed it to Our Nation’s Capital for a few days to reprise our vacation 2 yrs ago. We even stayed at the same hotel! It was nice to be sort of familiar with everything. And we finally figured out the metro. Such a weird system, with the whole pay when you exit thing and how 2 people can’t use the same card and the fares are different between locations. Duh!

The trip was pretty fun. We did a few new things: Lincoln Memorial, which I found so moving (realized I had never been there), Vietnam War Memorial (ditto), pedal boats in the Tidal Basin to ogle the Jefferson Memorial (tho someone w/short legs was a pedal slacker), and the Museum of American History (which had been closed 2 yrs ago). Gus was tired + crabby for the latter so we let him play his DS while Jonathan ogled Julia Child’s kitchen and I grooved on Within These Walls, a reconstructed historic house with info about 6 families that lived there from the late 18th-mid-20th c. Go, historic house nerds!

We also hit a few of our old faves from last time. The cafeteria of the National Museum of the American Indian has dee-licious food (mmm, fry bread. and fiddlehead ferns!). Maybe one of these days we will have time to visit the rest of the museum, too. And it’s right next door to the Air + Space Museum, which you may have heard is the most visited museum IN THE WORLD, a fact which I could not help myself from mentioning about a jillion times as we slowly swam through the ridiculous crowds of people inside.

Gus reeeeeeally wanted to see the planetarium movie about black holes, so we did. It was narrated by Liam Neeson and I spent the first part of the show feeling really bad for him. But then his voice got all spooky and he told us that many galaxies have black holes at their centers and Gus said “does our galaxy have a black hole?” and I said “uhhhmmm…” and Liam said “there is even a black hole at the center of our own galaxy!” and Gus grabbed my arm so tight it hurt. So Liam Neeson, I am sorry for your loss, but thank you very much for freaking out my child. Stupid black holes.

After that we had to get ice cream, even though it was 50 degrees and raining, because we wanted to drag Gus to the Hirshhorn to see some modern art, which we <3 and he despises (“I hate art!”). The pin book wasn’t on display, but we stumbled (literally, as we had to piggyback Mr. Crabby + Scared of Black Holes throughout the museum) upon a great exhibit of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois’s work. My most favorite of her pieces were the little rooms made up of wire cages or spirals formed by wooden doors joined together with cool furniture and other weird stuff inside, sometimes only visible through a window or via a mirror. Red room (child) was the neatest, with spools of thread and wax hands. Creepy.

Gus was mostly happy just to swim in the hotel pool, eat Frosted Flakes at the free hotel breakfast and watch cable (he discovered Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network — see, there’s the Yoda reference!). It was kind of weird to see real TV (esp. Fox News at breakfast, ugh), but it’s good to experience it every so often if only so we have the chance to engage in what passes for media literacy education in our house. When loud obnoxious kid commercials come on (like a horrible one for a card game called, appropriately enough, Chaotic), Jonathan and I mock it loudly and whine to Gus to buy it for us. He’s also started reading advertising claims to us (from all media): “Mom, is this really the best yogurt you’ve ever tasted?” which is hilarious.

Also one night in a totally hilarious, Bart Simpson moment, Gus called Jonathan “farty fart mcweiner butt.” And we completely blew it by laughing until we cried. Oh well.

gobble gobble

maura @ 7:43 pm

The dinner’s been consumed (dessert too), and Gus is in hog heaven: playing Link’s Crossbow Training on my BIL’s Wii w/surround sound. We had some iconic fall moments this afternoon raking leaves so Gus could jump into a pile of them a la Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (“never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker”). AND we didn’t even hit traffic on the SIE and NJT today. Much to be thankful for!

Don’t forget, tomorrow is Buy Nothing Day! Sadly, tomorrow we might actually have to buy something, since it’d be rude to eat all of my sister’s food + not pick up dinner in exchange for crashing at their pad. But dinner’s hardly frivolous, so I think we get a pass on that.

3 5 0 1 2 5 go

maura @ 8:48 pm

For our nation’s birthday this year we at mauraweb! decamped to parts north. Unlike other years, when we’ve headed to the Midwest, this year the Midwest met us in New England. Rollicking family fun ensued: lounging around, swimming, feasting on lobster + corn, and indulging in slightly terrifying backyard fireworks. Gus was surprised to learn that he has an 11 yr old first cousin once removed, who has 4 toy lightsabers (including the color Gus covets: purple), a pool, and Super Smash Bros Brawl. I was surprised to learn that teenagers still make friendship bracelets. Who knew?

The kittens were both good and bad in our absence. The house was in decent shape when we returned, but one of them had chewed through the thin Wii sensor bar cable. Luckily Jonathan was able to fix it, saving us from buying a new one (which isn’t as easy as it should be). They also chewed through the ground wire for my turntable, but it needs a new belt so I haven’t been able to use it recently. I’m thinking about upgrading to a USB turntable anyway — this one is nearly 20 yrs old and wasn’t that great to begin with. And it’d be nice to convert some of my records to mp3 so I can actually listen to them in the places I’m listening to music these days.

Sigh, another long + boring post. Sorry, Interwebs! I used up all of my writing mojo today on the first of my five Summer Friday Scholarly Activities Bonanzas: drafting outline of an article and researching the literature review of said article. Go me! I’ll make it up to you in the next post, promise.

your every scene is in the round

maura @ 10:22 pm

Woah! Seems like just yesterday I was all, “I’m going to write something every day, yes I am,” and now it’s already next month and here we are.

I did write something yesterday AND last Friday, but since I was at airports both times (and decided against schlepping the heavy laptop) it was on paper.

I was at a faculty development workshop all last week, then spent the weekend in America’s Most Livable City (2007). I learned a lot at the former, which was really fun, but you’re not interested in my blathering on about how much I love my job.

So let’s talk about travel, shall we? We don’t fly very often — about once a year, really, to visit Jonathan’s family in the midwest. And we tend to go for about a week so there’s not much time-related pressure.

But earlier this year a plan was hatched. A girlfriend* of mine moved to AMLC2007 w/her partner + son, so another girlfriend + I decided to go for a visit sans our own partners + kids. A whole 2 nights of sleep minus little Gus feet + little cat feet — incroyable! (Why is it suddenly French? Je ne sais pas.)

* I’ve been hyper-aware of small quick scenes in movies lately, one of which was that scene in Juno (which we finally saw, thank you Netflix) where Juno + her friend are at the mall and they run into Jennifer Garner who says that she’s shopping w/her girlfriends and Juno’s friend says, “are you gay?” And it cracked me up + made me feel about 100 yrs old all at the same time.

And thus a weekend away was planned. I’m hoarding my vacation days for our 2 family trips this summer, so I decided to fly out around dinnertime on Friday and return at the same time on Sunday.

You know, we’ve heard all of the travel horror stories over the past few years, but it didn’t really sink in until this weekend. Can I just say, wtf? What has happened to air travel to get us to this state? My flight on Friday was over 2 hrs late, and last night, 1.5 hrs. Much of the former was spent in the plane on the tarmac at Newark (hot, and with a chatty seatmate, grrr), while thankfully the latter delay was mostly in the airport. It doesn’t sound so bad while I’m typing it now, but on Friday I could have driven to my destination in the 7 hrs it took me to fly there.

My friend did fine on the Friday leg of her trip, which was earlier in the day, but fared much worse than me yesterday. Her (nonstop) flight was cancelled, she rescheduled to a flight with 1 layover, and with the inevitable delays didn’t get home until nearly 2am. Like mine, her kids are up at 6am. Ouch.

Can’t say I’m looking forward to flying again anytime soon. Luckily we’re meeting family in New England rather than the midwest this summer. And the next time I head to AMLC2007, we’re taking the train, man.

can’t fight the undertow

maura @ 1:25 pm

We’re back from our fabulous trip to the Midwest, but this week has been depressing, sad and frustrating in for many many reasons, completely trashing our stress-less vacation moods. I am still so sad about London, though thankfully all four of our friends currently living in London’s environs are fine.

So let’s sweep that downer stuff under the mental rug, pour ourselves a cup of our favorite caffeinated uppers, and recount amusing vacation anecdotes!

…or even not that amusing. We had a fantastic time. Gus was, as ever, adored and doted upon. This year there was a new, huge, motorized Thomas train set for him to direct the big people around (“Grandma, I am Thomas and you are Percy. No, go on number one track only!”). Plus a Slip-n-Slide, which admittedly gave me a little pause (I am so vain — whenever he falls I always say a little prayer that he won’t land on his beautiful face) but which was rejected by my usually cold-loving child anyway because the (well) water was too cold.

We parents slipped off to a “meeting”, overnight, in Chicago, to stay with college friends, ride the Ravenswood line, gawk like the rest of the tourists at Millennium Park, and stuff ourselves with lingonberries + potato sausage at Ann Sather’s for breakfast. Good times. We felt a little bad while riding the El — our train freak child would seriously have loved it — but the El’s not going anyplace and neither are the grandparents, so it’s not like he’ll never get his chance.

I only read ONE book (Because I Said So, which I ripped through in less than 24 hrs), but I did write in my journal three times. And we did spend about 6 hrs in the car with the Chicago trip, time which could’ve otherwise been devoted to reading. But also, I just wasn’t that into the other books I brought. I actually returned two nonfiction books to the library yesterday, mostly unread. Yes, my nonfiction love affair has been rudely broken off, thanks to Jonathan and his pesky fiction recommendation. It’s sad, really, because mostly right now I just want to go back a few weeks and read Time Traveler’s Wife again, how lame is that? But I got three mostly fiction books at the library yesterday which should hold me, I hope. The first is starting out well, at least.

Which all makes me wonder why the nonfiction glut happened in the first place. I mean, the parenting/momoir (ugh, hate that word) stuff is easy: duh, I had a kid, didn’t you know? But the other stuff, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that having-a-degree-I-don’t-use complex rearing its ugly head.

And speaking of that complex…we topped off our vacation with a visit to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum (which really is fantastic, if you have kids and happen to be in Indy you should totally go — it has FOUR floors of fun for all ages!). Of course Gus now claims that his favorite thing was “the running ramp” — the ramp spiraling up the middle of the museum, leading to each floor. We made him run up and down this a zillion times, thus insuring that he was mellow + quiet (read: tired!) on the flight home.

But I digress! There’s also a big dinosaur exhibit called Dinosphere which mostly consists of huge skeletons in a dome shaped room. The walls of the room change colors + there’s a booming sound system to imitate the weather, plant and animal sounds + visions of the Cretaceous. When we walked in here, Gus said darkly, “I don’t like this world,” like it was a video game level or something. But on the edges of the sphere there was a fake (? maybe real, hard to tell) paleontology lab. Gus had fun fitting together the rubbery, amber-colored molds and bone casts. And I made Jonathan’s stepfather take a picture of this case for me:

Look, it’s Paleontology Barbie and Ken!!! Is this not hilarious? Note her supine, loungetastic posture! Check out the spiffy attire (yes, those are tiny dinos on her shirt) and the bright pink canteen! And there’s no alcohol in sight! Surely this CAN’T be right. At least Ken is wearing latex gloves. Sigh, maybe they should hire me as an exhibit consultant.

goodbye small hands

maura @ 10:41 pm

Phew, just barely coming up for air here before we jet off to the great Midwest for our 5 leisurely days with the grandparents, woo hoo! Things have been a mite crazy-busy recently, I’ve had lots of work, Jonathan’s had lots of work, and of course Gus is off school all this week. He and I have been seriously head-butting too, which doesn’t make anything easier. We are so similar, so stubborn, it’s a bit scary at times.

But never fear, for tomorrow we hit the promised land! Gus never wants a thing to do with us when the grandparents are around to attend to his every preschooler whim. Playdoh on the porch! Endless hours spraying everything with the garden hose! No pants ever! So we lounge, read, sleep, occasionally take a field trip to the playground or supermarket. It’s just lovely. I have FOUR books in the suitcase right now, AND my journal.

And, since that hotel date was so successful a few weeks ago, we think we’re going to try an overnight in Chicago while we’re out that way. I have been seriously suffering from the Chicago nostalgia recently. I read this, which I REALLY loved (even though it’s an Oprah book, o, the shame!), and of course reading Mimi Smartypants gets all the Chicago up in me, too. Our college friends we’ll be staying with told us that Demon Dogs, our favorite hot dog place (conveniently located under the El tracks), has closed, though, so who knows where we’ll eat. At least we can still have breakfast at Ann Sather. And I have this weird desire to see Millennium Park, does that make me completely uncool? Of course, if it’s 90 million degrees out we will not be spending any time outside, so I guess we need a plan B. Any ideas?

So, finishing the abovementioned book has put me in a bit of a fiction depression. I’d been on a serious, hardcore non-fiction jag, really for a few years now. But that book was so good, so dreamy, romantic, but not sappy, with all those tasty Chicago tidbits… Finishing it has left a big hole in my literary life. I know not what to read, I’m interested in nothing beyond reading MORE stuff EXACTLY like that. Sigh. Made an emergency run to the library last night to grab a few new books, so hopefully one of those will grab me. And if any of my 4 readers have any books they’re loving, let me know!