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An engineering PhD student/wife/mami navigates the nebulous path to the light at end of the gradschool tunnel
- Entry for September 11, 2006
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Did you know that baby flamingos are gray? We have some at the Riverbanks Zoo and Diego and I visited them yesterday. We also have a very cool white (not albino) baby alligator- you should visit.
What a weekend, on Saturday afternoon I took the boys to a birthday party and Finlay Park- nice weather! Then I went with Wally to a SC Poetry Initiative event- it was a book launch, poetry reading and reception at the Vista Arts Gallery. There was music at the beginning and the woman singing was awesome, at one point she sang Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun- wow! She also sang Summertime (I love Porgy & Bess). It was a great event, and we got to hear some wonderful poetry- my favorite was Ed Madden. I haven't been to anything like that in a long time, it kind of reminded me of senior year in high school in Ms Stephenson's class with poetry Mondays and the stage that she built for us in her classroom. I remember at first it made me nervous but then I thought, "hey I've got a captive audience here- lets do this"! And I felt just like Jim Morrison.
Monday September 11, 2006 - 10:59am (EDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Entry for September 08, 2006
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Sorry I haven't posted in a while! It has been a busy 2 weeks, last week I was putting together a job application and had to write a teaching philosophy, which was much harder than I thought. I know it seems early to be applying since I won't be done until next year but it was one of those "dream job" openings that would take me close to home so I thought I'd give it a try. We shall see.
I usually don't like going to Wal-mart (evil empire) especially after seeing the Walmart documentary last year but every now and then we need something that we can't find elsewhere. Last week we were there and look what I stumbled upon, a Cantinflas Show DVD!
I bought it for me and the boys and they love it, Diego especially. Adrian is horrified! He thinks it is creepy looking and plus he has never heard of Cantinflas, I will have to send him to do some Wikipedia research.
We went to a cookout at my in-laws house on Saturday for an early Labor Day celebration, it was great- nice weather finally not too hot and yummy food. The ribs were my favorite and my mother-in-law made a great home-made chili for the hot dogs, that was a treat!
So what else? On Wednesday, Wally and I found some very cool mushrooms outside on our way to tell the Dean some good news. I can't share the news yet, but I will when its official. ANyway, the mushrooms. Check this out:
I called Rudy Mancke (my favorite naturalist!) and described them over the phone, he knew exactly what they were: Columnar Stinkhorn Mushrooms, scientific name Clathrus columnatus The Columnar Stinkhorn contains slimy stinky sticky spores. Flies and gnats love it and come to feed on the spores and spread the fungi! Cool huh? I visited them again this morning and there are more.
Friday September 8, 2006 - 10:17am (EDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Entry for August 25, 2006
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guess what I found at Best Buy yesterday, the Dark Crystal on DVD- yay! I loved this movie when I was a kid even though the Skeksis were SO scary. Diego saw the cover and said "THat's ugly!" and he put it back on the shelf. So I had to sneak it to the register and buy it along with Justice League and Muppets take Manhattan. Darian told me he would watch Dark Crystal with me, hooray! I love it when he likes my movies. I got them into Fraggle Rock too!
I also just have to share pictures of my new dishwasher- you know ever since we moved I have been washing dishes by hand, but no more ... ... now I have an energy efficient "dishwasher" see below
Gracias Diego! (he thinks this is great fun)Friday August 25, 2006 - 11:00am (EDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Time Sink!
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OOh this is the coolest thing I read about on the crochetme.com blog. Its called Library Thing and it lets you catalog your books and connects people with the same books, it comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so on and so on. This has been a time sink- I'm warning you.... (unless I am a dork and this insterests no one else, which my husband claims to be true)Tuesday August 22, 2006 - 02:21pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Entry for August 22, 2006
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Back to school Move-in started on Friday and although I am not happy about the lack of parking this will bring, it is nice to have fresh faces around campus. As far as the eye could see, there were station wagons and vans full of dorm stuff, excited freshman, and sad faced parents. My favorite thing to see is all the dads helping their daughters move in- so sweet. It reminds me of my dad and how he helped me move all my junk in (&out) of the dorms each year. *Sigh* This is my 10th fall on a college campus. After all the kids moved in and left their cars in our 300 Main (this is our Mechanical/Civil Engineering building on campus) parking lot for the weekend, a giant rain storm came. Downtown Columbia saw 2.7 inches of rain in 71 minutes Sunday night. That’s not a record. But it was enough to cause severe flash flooding along Rocky Branch Creek right behind our building. The poor kids cars were floated around the parking lot and filled with water! Never leave your car here overnight, children. You should know better. It’s a floodplain, stupid! Here it is, the front page of the state paper (shows our parking lot as the red circle on the bottom.) I am not sure what they expect to happen, when you build on wetlands you get flooding. How about trying some pervious pavement & green roofs!
By the way, Felina introduced me to a silly online game "Alphabet Game" Play it and see if you beat my score 8.703 seconds. Don't spend your whole afternoon trying to beat me, this was my score the first and only time I played- (since I beat Felina's score, I stopped) See if you can beat me, you probably can!
Tuesday August 22, 2006 - 12:38pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 1 Comment
