Almost fun weekend

Last weekend was pretty lame. We kept almost doing fun things, but not quite. We accidentally went to the Harvest Festival (lame) instead of the Autumnal Festival (fun). However, we did have some fun at the Harvest Festival. There was a pumpkin teacup ride. Joseph insisted that we not spin, which made the ride equivalent to taking a slow bus around a traffic circle.

There was a portable climbing wall from Upper Limits, this fantastic indoor climbing place in Bloomington. Upper Limits occupies Cargill's old soybean processing plant and you can climb the insides of the scary-high grain silos. It is pretty pricey, though, and I haven't yet been there. So I challenged Danny to a climb-off. I think that I won.


We had planned to visit our favorite local cheesemaker for an open house and pumpkin patch. However, our GPS failed us: we kept driving in circles without finding the place. We stopped at a gas station and bought a map, but the map didn't include the street either. So no pumpkins and cheese.
Saturday night we went to the ISU Biology picnic. Attendance was not great, and there were few other kids there. The weather was a little cold, but we all had a good time.


Sunday was the Champaign Surplus Store's fall clearance event. I had been waiting all year to find a reasonably priced winter coat. I have clearly demonstrated that L.L. Bean and Land's End do not make a coat in my size. Also, Columbia does not make a coat in my size (XS is extra short but extra wide). Only North Face makes (super expensive) coats that fit me. We drove 60 minutes to Champaign, but they had no North Face in my size. I did buy a pair of Frye boots marked down from $128 to $9.99.


Hopefully next weekend will be better?

Aaaargh! Minute Pirate bugs

For the last two weeks, every time I go outside, dozens of the these tiny black bugs start biting the hell out of me. They are incredibly tiny (1-2mm) but they pack a huge walloping bite. Surprisingly, the bite doesn't swell afterwards. Also, the bug never flies away after biting, so they usually get smashed and don't really benefit from biting me.

(Photo by Alex Wild 2004)

As an amateur entomologist with good vision, I can clearly see that they are hemipteran. However, it has taken me the better part of an evening to figure out what they are: Minute Pirate bugs. They don't appear in indexes of biting insects because they feed on plants. However, this year they are just so desperate for food that they will apparently bite anything.
So beware of pirates!


(Photo by UMN Entomology)

Apples! Pork!

It's festival season! This weekend we went to the Apple and Pork festival in Clinton. Last year I was enthused about this thing. This year less so. Half of the festival is really awful kitsch and crap. Which would be fine to skip over if not for the fact that the kids wanted to check out every stupid booth. Literally every booth contained either overpriced cheap crap (John Deere 'collectibles,' bejeweled factory-made clay dragons, T-shirts with trashy slogans, VHS tapes, non-interesting yard-sale items) or terrible crafts (handmade Halloween and Christmas decor, 'witty' yard signs, potpourri and scented candles, and the ubiquitous license plate birdhouse).

We had some sliced apples with 'caramel,' funnel cake and sausages while we watched the decent live entertainment. So why doesn't anyone every come up with food to sell that combines apples and pork? Apple pork sausage? Apples crisps with pork rinds?

The kids enjoyed the scarecrow contest. Surprisingly, SpongeBob did not win--it must be rigged! Check out the perfect little ear of corn Plankton!

We also stayed to watch some women demonstrate how to weave lace, which was pretty awesome!

The kids had a good time at the petting zoo. Sam walked slowly around doling out one crumb to each animal. Joseph gave half of his grain to the rabbit, and the other half to this entertaining llama.

Engines! Engines! Engines! Also cool antique tractors, horse-drawn carriages and antique farm equipment. NPR had a story the other day about antique tractors as the next big investment collectible. (What? Ordinarily I would say that it must have been a slow news day, but lately with the election and the end of the world and whatnot there are no slow news days.)

"Once again, the conservative, sandwich-heavy portfolio pays off for the hungry investor"

Potluck and also some bad luck

We had a lab potluck this weekend. We had kind of a theme: Election 2008. There was Senate three-bean salad, No-emissions chili, McCain-aroni salad, and an Uncle Sam mashed potato head made by Sam and Joseph. I made a white Sangria, and people brought plenty of beer, wine and cider. For dessert we had red-white-and-blue layer cake and cheesecake. It was quite a spread!

Afterwards we played Cranium. Joseph had a minor meltdown when he didn't get the playing piece that he wanted, but he recovered and actually helped our team win a point. Also, Sam was having some sportsmanship issues. Due to the aforementioned problems, and also the dog's squirrellyness, Danny and I were distracted and did not play so well as we usually do.

I neglect to mention:
Why is the dog squirrely? Friday afternoon Argos busted into the garden and chewed on Penny the box turtle. He gnawed on the edge of her shell and caused some minor breakage and bleeding. Danny took Penny to the vet ($80) where she got an antibiotic injection (it took many vet techs to wrestle her out of her shell). She has to go back Tuesday for a follow-up injection. Also, the dog is on everyone's shit list.
Why is Danny distracted? He has been having cluster headaches all week. He has 1-2 per night, so he is not getting enough sleep. He takes Imitrex, which works well but is hard to find in stock in local pharmacies.
Why am I distracted? Check out previous blog entries.

Apples apples apples!

Danny drove Joseph's class went on their yearly field trip to the apple orchard. Joseph had a great time. The picked apples and saw how apples were processed into cider. There was also a pumpkin patch and a playground. The kids got to sample apples, apple juice and apple donuts.



On a related note: I just drove the kids on a different field trip (we saw a play of James and the Giant Peach). I have to say that as much as I worry about Joseph's "spicy" personality, it takes interacting with other kids his age to realize what a great kid he is. I worry that Joseph's temper will get him into trouble, but his teachers have always reassured me that he does just fine in school. When I spend time with other kids, I see what they are talking about. Although Joseph is occasionally spicy, the rest of the time he is self-sufficient and competent at doing things for himself, he pays attention to the rules and is conscientious about obeying them. Joseph is also a great conversationalist: he has a lot to say about a wide range of topics and he is charming with a surprisingly entertaining sense of humor for a kid his age.

Kid blogs

Check out Sam and Joseph's blogs! Both kids took pictures at the 3rd Sunday Market and posted them on their blogs. Also new this school year: rather than dictating, Joseph has started doing his own blogging!

MAD MADDER MADDEST

I am decently happy most of the time, but today I was ALL-THE-WAY MAD for most of the day.

My team-teaching colleague is doing a crappy job. He needs to be reminded multiple times to do what he is supposed to do and creates stress by missing every TA meeting and deadline. And tomorrow he is going out of town for a vacation. I just realized that he was on the schedule to supervise lab next week and he is leaving without making any arrangements for his absence. Our TA is very anxious about this, and I don't want her to suffer, but I am infuriated that I will likely have to cover for him against my will.

My TA and I had little enough confidence that he would show up for lab today that I reassured her that I would help her out if he didn't show up. I had a dentist appointment for my cracked filling, and I actually had to put off having it repaired to be back in time for lab. My colleague showed up at the last minute for lab, acting as if everything was fabulous, and now I am stuck with a cracked filling until Tuesday.
He also finally brought in the data that he said that he would do. He is two weeks late on this data set, as well as two weeks late on the previous one, so I have processed all of the remaining data while waiting for him to finish. He (perhaps intentionally) takes so long to do anything that I am forced to do his work to stay on schedule.

So today he swans in and drops off the data, expecting that he will get a hero's welcome for his effort. But at this point, it is just too little too late. And then he starts making helpful suggestions/criticisms about the data processing--WHICH I HAVE ALREADY FINISHED minus the small set of data that he has finally returned to me. He professes interest in dividing up the effort on getting the papers written, which is when I went from being somewhat irritable to ALL-THE-WAY MAD. He and I have already been two cycles of this crap. First, he is enthusiastic about the project and we make plans, dividing up the work, etc. Then, he disappears, and I am stuck--unable to finish the work without knowing what he has done or will do. Somehow, when I am so pissed off that I am about to take desperate measures, he returns, full of enthusiasm and promises. This has already happened two times, and I am not going to participate in a third round.

So, all day I was just beside myself trying to deal with the ALL-THE-WAY MAD thing. I was so mad that I was making stupid distracted mistakes at work. So, I swam laps (I went so fast that I finished 5 min early). I commiserated with someone. I listened to attitude-adjusting music. I worked on fun busywork. I went for a run. But clearly, I am still mad, sitting here with the metallic taste of my broken filling.


Update 9/26: I felt more calm in the morning, but new developments have gotten me maximally MAD again. Re my colleague skipping town without finding a teaching lab replacement: I found out that my TA (probably under duress) told my colleague that I had offered to help her out with the lab. Thus, although my colleague never spoke to me, offered to trade labs or compensate me in any way, he can feel free to not show up knowing that the lab is covered.
Re my research project: I was processing his belated files and realized that he actually did all of the data processing yesterday and the day before. So, on Friday when he said that the left the data at home, he was lying. And on Monday when he gave me his thumb drive and told me that the data was on it, he was also lying!

Sorry and falling

Tonight when Danny and Sam went to TaeKwonDo, Joseph and I played Sorry with teams of action figures. He is becoming such a good reader! I took video of Joseph reading the cards.


When Sam came home he showed us the proper way to fall.