Bye Bye Blogger

Update your links folks; I've moved on to bigger and better. Or at least, to cleaner and more user-friendly. Yes, I've jumped on the WordPress wagon. From now on, find me at The New and Improved Mimsies: same name, same material, different blog host.

Help Me Help You

Help! My blog is ugly. I just upgraded to Internet Explorer 7, and now my text is huge on my screen. But when I make the text smaller, people using IE version 6 or Firefox cannot read it. (Although, really, it's time to make the upgrade. It's free, people.) Also, while my blog header looks perfect to me, it's all messed up for those using other browsers.

So tell me: what browser do you use? Even if you just lurk and have never commented, could you please just drop a quick note to let me know? Pretty please? I cannot handle bad website design, and I don't want you people to suffer any more than you must. You might also let me know if my site looks like total crap on your computer. That would help, too.

(And in a couple of days, I promise I'll write a real post. I might even reward you by posting a super humiliating picture of myself or something. Consider that your dangling carrot.)

Central Heating: Current BFF

Four hours ago, there was no snow on the ground.



Murphy's clearly not excited about it.

She Speaks

Oy. So I let you have your two cents. Here are mine:

While I still have reservations about the appropriateness of posting student writing online, none of it has to do with my fear of being 'found out.' I've not identified the university, the students, or myself for that matter. Any qualms I'd feel would be due more to a feeling that it's just not cool to make fun of people behind their backs. But in my defense, I make fun of my students to their faces, too. All right, so maybe I don't make fun of them, per se, but I did meet with all of my students personally last week to discuss their essays, and the students whose writing you'll find below both smiled sheepishly at me in my office and essentially admitted that their essays were crap. They knew it. One had a test due that day and knew he could revise the essay, so why try? The other realized her topic was weak, but she just stayed with it and tried to fill the required four pages with fluff. I told them essentially everything I told you - that their papers were vague, weakly argued, poorly written. If they were to stumble upon my website, it's not likely that they would feel shocked and surprised at my comments. But, that's not to say they would appreciate my mocking them for an audience. Touché.

It is worth noting that I have some really beautiful student writing, too. Writing that I read out loud to other instructors in our big communal office, writing that makes me smile and wonder if this teaching gig isn't so bad, after all. But let's face it, you're not interested in reading good writing. You read my blog, for heaven's sake.

So all in all, it's probably not cool to post poor student writing, for the simple fact that my students wouldn't appreciate it. I wouldn't appreciate it in their position. But that doesn't mean they don't deserve it. It's a vicious cycle. Or as my student would say, a vicious circle effect type thing.

To Mock or Not To Mock?

So you might remember my recent slew of posts in which I made fun of my students' atrocious writing. Someone made the following anonymous comment: "Hopefully the school doesn't mind you making fun of your students work for the whole world to read."

Since this comment turned out to not be from my brother, I took it seriously. But then I realized that though anonymous had a point, I think he/she was being a little presumptive in assuming that I'm sharing these posts with "the whole world." I mean, my readership is only half that. Seriously though, I probably wouldn't post these types of things if I had some super extensive readership, a la Dooce. But since only a handful of people read my blog, and they mostly include friends and family, I don't think it's a big deal.

But I'd be interested to know what you think. I've written a few of these types of posts over the past year and a half, mostly as a cathartic response to the agony of grading some really crappy papers. Do you think it's totally inappropriate? Should I be worried about getting canned?

In the end, if the school finds out about my indiscretions, at least they can only accuse me of mocking my students' writing--not posting pictures on MySpace of myself drinking with them. I was smart and took those down already.

He Calls It The Beast

I'm pretty sure my dad is proud of the table he's building for my uncles' lakehouse (and by the way, he's 6'4").

Wait! Wait!

I have a better one, if you can believe it! Observe:

It works as a circle effect type thing.

Wow. I mean, wow.

Her paper is about how you don't need passion to succeed in college. (Please, please be aware that she chose the topic, not me.) Here are the last three sentences.

It's what you want to get out of the college experience that matters, whether if it's just the grade or the drive to be passionate in everything you do. It's your choice, and can easily be summed up by Robert Frost, "Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." Although taking the one less traveled by can make all the difference, it cannot change the fact that not choosing the less traveled path, the not passionate path, won't lead you to succeed.

Now if you excuse me, I need to go dab the blood away from my eyes.

The World's Most Worthless Sentence

After two years of teaching, grading, and waiting, it's officially here! Enjoy (and mock) with me:

Personally growing up in today's society I have become accustomed to many different things.

There are many, many things wrong with this sentence, from its absolutely pointless "personally" to its utter lack of punctuation to its use of my least favorite phrase IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, "in today's society." (This is basically three words that mean "today," but for some reason students think it sounds very academic-like. They all use it. ALL THE TIME.) But my favorite thing about this sentence? Let's see it in context, shall we?

Do you need passion to find success? [Hmm, good question.] If you were to ask people today what the word "success" means to them, you would receive all kinds of different definitions. [Yes, probably true.]

And right in-between these two relatively lucid sentences, our student, the master of vagueness, has pronounced that he has become "accustomed to many different things." In other words, he has found a way to say abolutely nothing in 14 words while simultaneously disrupting the flow of his essay. Congratu-frickin-lations.

*sigh*

I need a break. And a shot.

State of the Pointless

What, again, is the point of the State-of-the-Union address?

"We will still win the war in Iraq."

CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP

"Here's my idea for a heathcare plan, which I know you will absolutley never pass."

CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP

"The economy is growing. We will work to make it keep growing."

CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP

"This lady invented Baby Einstein. She's an example of America's entrepreneurial spirit."

CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP

"This guy saved someone's life. He's a real American hero."

CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP

Go America!

CLAP*CLAP*CLAP*CLAP

So in case you missed it, that pretty much sums it all up.

Tardy Birthday Wishes

Happy 27th, Sasha! Can you believe these pictures were taken almost 10 years ago? Maybe in another 10, you'll be able to carry me. (Hah.)





p.s. I'm hoping this post will make up for the fact that I totally forgot to call you yesterday.

Churning

Well folks, thanks for your comments and your two cents, but I think we're moving to Arkansas.

There are many, many reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that Jared only has a solid job offer from the Arkansas office. New York and Chicago would be great, but alas, no real offers to move there. Plus there's the friends thing, the family thing, the fact that I don't want to have my kids in a huge city with no family nearby. I need roots, people. I have roots in Arkansas.

But. Part of me still feels the way I felt when I wrote this last summer. I'll miss the crap out of this old city, this old house, our old friends two streets over. I'll miss the 16 chili restaurants within a few miles' radius, the crazy church festivals where people get tased, the signs everywhere advertising hand-made Cincinnati cornhole sets. I'll miss this city's weird German food (like goetta, which is offered with eggs in the morning or on pizza for dinner), it's obsession with beer (even if I don't drink it), and the way people say "Please?" when they want you to repeat what yourself. It's a charming city, and we've had fun here.

Tonight as I was digging my hand down the sink in Sarah's kitchen to pull bits of food out of her drain (neither of us have garbage disposals), we started talking about some of the things we won't miss about our old homes. I think this is probably a healthy thing for me to do at this point, because the thought of giving up this charming old place makes me sad. So, here it is:

The Top Ten Things I Will Not Miss About This House

1. The mice that live in the walls. I know, I know. Some of you are leaning over your keyboards to gag and will probably think less of me knowing that I have learned to share my home with vermin. Let me assure you that acceptance didn't come easily. Last winter, fed up with what sounded like a rodent civil war being waged above our heads in the family room, we decided to put mousetraps in the basement. I was envisioning giant, Splinter-like rats with tails as big as my pinkie. But when we caught one, he turned out to be this tiny, adorable little gray and white furry mouse, much like the ones Jackie and I kept in cages growing up. And thus we discovered that messing with the traps was more hassle than they were worth, and after my 14th mousetrap-induced heart attack, I decided to just live with the fact that cute little rodents occasionally scurry around in my walls. Judge me if you must.
2. The no garbage disposal thing. My trash really stinks at the end of the week. And sometimes the sinks really stink, too.
3. Our lead pipes, which will certainly poision and instantly kill us if we drink the water that comes from them (or so I think). We can drink out of the fancy, reverse-osmosis-filtered spigot in the kitchen, but we can't drink out of any of the other taps in the house. It's kind of annoying, particularly since the filter's pressure peters out after you've filled one glass of water. A pitcher of lemonade? Forget it. It takes like 5 minutes. The water does taste darn good, though.
4. The straw that covers our living room walls. Some previous owner decided it would add nice 'texture' or something. It doesn't. It's ugly. We have been meaning to scrape it off and get the walls replastered for a year now, but just haven't done it. I never sit in that room because the walls are so repulsive to me.
5. The fact that our bedroom is on the second floor, and the bathroom we use is on the first floor. We do have a bathroom on the second floor, but it's got an old clawfoot tub that just isn't very practical.
6. The fact that the last owner's husband died in said bathroom. On the toilet. And that's all I want to say about that.
7. The heating and cooling bills for a 104-year-old, 3-story house.
8. The fact that we blow a fuse in the kitchen whenever the coffeemaker, microwave, and toaster are functioning at the same time.
9. Not having a garage.
10. The fact that the third floor smells like grandma funk. And that the basement is, well, the basement of a 104-year-old house, i.e., very smelly, damp, and stinky.

But really, who am I kidding? I love this place. I love that the porch is perfect for a porch swing, that about 50 gorgeous hostas come up each spring without my doing anything, that the second and third stairs creak in the middle, and that the house has maintained so much of its original character, from its leaded-glass front door and four stained glass windows to its clawfoot tub and the huge, gorgeous built-in hutch in the kitchen. And how could I forget all the original wood trim, the banister, and the Rookwood tiles around the fireplace? I love the enormous trees and the flower beds that don't require much yet do allow for a bit of creativity each spring. I love that Jared can play basketball in our back yard, which has enough lawn for the dog but not so much that it's annoying to mow. I love our neighbors, and the fact that I can walk to the library, to Walgreens, and to our friends' house two streets over. For some reason, all these things make mice and stinky basements seem pretty benign.

I remember something Frances Mayes wrote in Under the Tuscan Sun when I read the book years ago, and it's stuck with me: "You have to churn somewhat when the roof covering your head is at stake, since to sell is to walk away from a cluster of memories and to buy is to choose where the future will take place."

I think I'll be doing plenty of churning for the next few months.