Out of the mouths of babes

NewSchool has a campus-wide coffee thingie once a week (we had ice cream floats at PrettyGood, and I think I went to get one exactly twice in 13 years). I went today, and was in line for coffee behind two girls having trouble selecting the appropriate artificial sweetener. Finally, they picked the pink one (Cumberland Packing Co., you are welcome for my not violating your trademark) because, as one first year student said to the other, "This one won't give you cancer."

The shorts are shorter here, but the flops are as flippy as ever.

One big difference I have noticed - New School is a much more national university. At PrettyGood, almost all the license plates were from Central State, but here, they are really from all over.

Welcome freshies, see you next week

So today is freshman move-in day and I am hiding at home, since we got a lot of dire messages about how there would be no parking and please, faculty keep your heads down.

This is way better than the PrettyGood model which was messages about how there would be no parking, and how they wanted faculty to choose one of two shifts to carry mini-fridges up the stairs for the new students. You could choose the a.m. shift which started at 6:30, but ended at 10, when it was only 95 degrees outside, or the late shift, which started at 9:30 and ended at 2, when it was 106 outside.

I am thinking that sitting in my townhouse working on my classes for next week is a much better use of my time.

Here vs. there (A happy post for once!)

Here: 88 degrees There: 106 degrees

Here: Trees There: Fire ants

Here: Strategic plans are made every 10 years and then actually happen. There: Strategic plans are made every two years, then they go away into the administrative abyss.

Here: Office window has view of central campus fountain There: Office had cinder blocks and no window

Here: 1500 square feet at home There: 2800 square feet at home

Here: $1600 property taxes There: $6000 property taxes

Here: Nearest major airport is 30 minutes away There: Nearest major airport is 2 hours away

Here: Special "Hogwarts" program for highly gifted kids There: Extra worksheets for highly gifted kids (Yes, I'm over summarizing here)

Here: Assoc. Prof. There: Lecturer

So there.

Underwhelmed and overwhelmed

What a day. Offspring started school today. Her bus was 20 minutes late this morning, so she waited in the rain for 1/2 an hour, holding her 20 lbs of required school supplies that she couldn't put down so they didn't get wet. I had to take my Mom to the airport early this afternoon (4 hours ahead of her flight because they changed my schedule from what was posted at the time that I booked her ticket). Then I went to a 3 hour HR summary for new faculty that was really inefficiently done (concluding with the HR person making the faculty wait in a long line to show her assorted paperwork so she could make sure it was filled out correctly. I don't believe her on the directions on one of the forms).

I ran and picked up Bun and went to meet Offspring, who was supposed to be home at 5:15. She walked in the door at 5:55, almost a full two hours after her school got out.

I gave her a quick snack and we went out to get her a cell phone. She hasn't needed one in the past, but now that she's making such a big commute, I wanted her to have a way to stay in touch. We want to get her a bare bones model that we add to our family plan.

We got our phones at Radio Shack because every time we have gone to the ATT store, it has been really chaotic, and the folks at Radio Shack have the same things, seem to know what they are doing and have more free time, it seems. Well, not in NewState, apparently.

We first had the fun of the GPS getting us lost in looking for the Radio Shack. Twice. 25 minutes.

Then we went in, picked out a model and were trying to check out when the clerk admitted that he doesn't know how to add lines to family plans. By which time Bun is pulling on my leg every two seconds to tell me she "needs to go to the potty really bad."

We leave, and at this point, it is really late, so I decide to pick up dinner at a place famous for a local specialty dish we all really like. So the GPS gets us lost. Again.

We finally get it and get home (7:30), and I get the kids eating while I begin my homework. Offspring had 3 math problems. I had 14 papers that I had to read and sign saying I would make sure Offspring adhered to the rules of x, y and z classes. It was so much nicer when she was in elementary and only had 2 or 3 teachers. This year, she has 8. I will probably not be knitting them all Christmas scarves this year.

I have things i need to go buy at the store, but I don't know when, since I am sitting in stupid meetings AGAIN all day tomorrow. And I really need to unpack some more boxes. Really, I do.

The good and the bad

**Important edit: This announcement applies for NEXT year. They both do have a job this year. So sorry!


So Offspring's Back to School night was tonight. She got her first three choices of electives, so that's terrific.

She is very excited about the academics and the extracurriculars, and I am very happy for her. We got the bus schedules, and it is not much worse than she had last year - less than an hour in the morning and an hour and 15 in the afternoon. I think if she does her reading homework on the bus, it won't be bad at all.

In bad news, Spouse's department had a 1 3/4 hour meeting today during which it was announced that of the two new folks this year, they would only be able to keep one of them. That said, Spouse has 14 years of teaching experience over the other guy, so I am optimistic, but Spouse is sure bummed.

Things to do and no time to do them

I am sitting here in my new office at PrettyGood between the meetings that will pretty much fill my days this week.

Spouse is at his new U, and will teach his first classes in about 1/2 hour. School for the girls hasn't started yet, so my Mom is in town watching them. This is, of course, both a blessing and a curse, as I feel like since she's visiting, I should be spending time with her when I don't actually HAVE to be at work, and I don't actually HAVE to be at work except when I have these blasted meetings (which are really more me listening to presentations, it seems, or listening to discussions of things that I don't know what they are talking about).

So not a lot of anything is happening that would move me forward into a more settled life like, say, figuring out where Spouse and I can put our clothes until we get bedroom furniture, shopping for bedroom furniture or working on stuff for my classes.

Oy.

Word to the wise

If you can avoid trying to move your family cross-country, arriving the Friday before one of you has to go back to work, do that.

We were in a bit of a situation this summer, since we hoped our house would show better with furniture in it, so we didn't move the huge majority of our stuff. We discussed moving our summer apartment furniture here (everything folds or comes apart or deflates, so it is a pretty small amount) for a short while if it sold later.

This was presuming that anyone would look at our house. I think it was shown a total of 4 times in 3 months. We were careful in interviewing realtors and thought we really had a good one, but she moved companies this summer, and I think this represented a dip in her productivity. As evidence, Spouse's department at PrettyGood hired a new guy who ended up buying in a house really similar to ours, about 1 1/2 miles away. He wasn't even shown ours.

Anyway, since we figured it would be some indefinite, and long, period of time before we moved our stuff, and since we would have to make arrangements to move some important things like our work books and our winter clothes, we decided to go ahead and move.

We are AAA members, and they have an arrangement with a relocation company that finds movers for you to interview with and negotiates with them on price. It was free to us, and it got us a good mover at a fantastic price, it did slow down the process a good deal.

Long story short, we ended up moving last week, and Spouse started work Tuesday. I have an all-day thing today and tomorrow, so I spent some of yesterday taking the girls to my in-laws (3 hours of driving for me to get there instead of the 21 it took from Central State, so bonus!)

This means we have still not had a lot of time to unpack stuff/re-do closet shelving/put a floor in the unfinished space that's going to be a playroom. I was hoping to not start the school year with everything in chaos, especially for the girls. It looks as though I may miss that goal.

The bird cage is here

And so are we. The moving truck left Thursday, we left Friday and got to NewState on Saturday night, completely wiped out.

It was a very different move from when we first moved to Central State. Then, it was just Spouse, Parrot and me, with me driving a car and Spouse driving a U-Haul with our small amount of wordly goods inside. We took 3 days, and it was hard, but not too bad.

This time, the wordly goods were consigned to Atlas Van Lines (we enjoyed using them a lot - their local people who do the loading and unloading are very professional). I had one car with the two girls, and Spouse had the other with Parrot and a few worldly goods either too threatening or hazardous to go on the truck. We spent the night at about the halfway point and were pretty much zombies by the time we arrived.

I am now perhaps wishing we had done some more home-improvement type things before we headed back to Central State to pack up, although scheduling that would have been tricky.

Fitting our 4-bedroom house into a 3-bedroom townhouse that's about 1/3 smaller is tricky, and I am in the situation where I have things to unpack, but no place to put them right now. We are adding shelving to the closets, which is helping but also takes time. I'm sure in a few weeks, we'll have it all together, but right now, it's been hard on all of us. I did get into my new office and my new computer. My office is palatial, so I think I am going to bring a table we can't use at home up there. Spouse got into his new office yesterday, and it is smaller than what he came from, but he said it's closer to the size of the one I had at PrettyGood.

So where is home, exactly?

I am up to my eyeballs in boxes. And yet, there are more things to put in boxes. And I just made arrangements to give our bed away. I did have my final MA student from PrettyGood defend today. The project was good, the presentation was really bad. I was embarrassed. So what grade do I give for that? He can't re-do the defense since I am leaving and he is graduating. Finally, I gave a C+. Enough to pass and graduate, which, based on the written and practical project is merited.

Now I am trying to make dinner in the one pot we have not packed.

Urg.

Conference day 3

Also known as the day I skipped out on most of the day.

I had an 8:15 breakfast, which is a meeting that is usually the highlight of the conference for me. Not this year. The basketweaving professional who spoke was of the old skool "everything needs to be more like rattan" variety, when everyone knows the industry is moving more towards synthetics every day.

Then I left and went to look at art at the city's art museum. This is definitely a second or third tier city for the conference this year, but let me tell you, their art museum was AWESOME. So, so good. It wasn't because they had an extensive collection. They don't, although I was pleasantly surprised.

It was good because it was very visitor friendly. Lots of opportunities to conveniently learn more like explanation cards you could pull out at the different works, rather than a $20 audio tour.

It's a guilty pleasure of mine to go to museums alone so I can look at what I want, skip what I want, and spend as much time as I want. This was answered on all counts.

Then I went to a session that was not nearly as interesting as it sounded. Fortunately, I got a large frappucino beforehand, so I didn't actually fall asleep.

Then I went back to my hotel and tried (and failed) to take a nap, since I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night.

Then I took my two PrettyGood grad students who are here out to dinner to celebrate their paper presentations being over. I was prepared for a swishy place, but they wanted to try Indian food, which saved me about $40.

Then I went to my section's business meeting (keeping the same, not a whole lot of work, office so score for me).

Then I went to the social, and the section bought me a fancy pants beer in the large size. I brought one of the PrettyGood grad students with me and they bought him a fancy pants beer in the large size, also. And I didn't have to feel awkward about it vioating any school policies (for adults, mind you) or anything. I feel like a grownup. I may be starting to recover from the PrettyGood experience.

At the social I met someone who gave me a great idea for my research, and who I think will be a good collaborator. So conference goals achieved.


And tomorrow I go home. And it will be good.

Conference day 2

I just got off the phone with Spouse, who apparently had a hellacious day dealing with the kids and trying to get things packed. The kids are stir crazy and getting into a lot of little issues, and I think Spouse is really worn out. So it makes me wish I were home.

Both my papers were today, and seemed to be well-received. Tomorrow will be my break day - I usually try to take an afternoon off while at a conference - so I am going to go to conference city art museum. But since my day will start at 8:15 and end at 10 p.m., I feel somewhat entitled.

I went to a panel today that had people from NewSchool, and ended up going out for a snack with some of the assistant profs from there, which was enlightening.

Um, yeah. i guess that's about it.

Conference day 1

Walking from my cheapie Priceline hotel to the conference hotel is not fun in dress boots with a broken toe. The more you know.

I went to a couple of teaching panels today, and found what MIGHT be the perfect solution to my problem with technical basketweaving. I have to find out more information, but if it's true, this might just make the whole trip worthwhile.

I shook a few hands, got some good teaching ideas, and am really excited about the keynote speaker tonight - a professional basketweaver whose work I have GREATLY admired for many years that I have always wanted to hear speak. I tried to get PrettyGood to bring him in, but they were not that progressive.

Also had excellent falafel and hummus for lunch, so perhaps this trip isn't a total bust...

Made it, but not into the fray yet

So when I was in grad school, I went to my conference where my advisor gave me her excellent conference advice. You should have two goals besides presenting your own work. First, get an idea for a new project. Second, make a solid contact with someone who can help you professionally (like collaborate on future research).

That's been pretty helpful to me in the past. With the job change, my goals have changed a little. I am planning to learn all I can about teaching basketweaving with the new, space age fibers that are just starting to take over the market, since that's what I am going to be doing at NewSchool. Second, meet and seem supportive to all the people here from new job (they have a large faculty, so I only met about 1/3 of them when I interviewed.

I got in at midnight last night (SuperShuttle is less expensive, but you DEFINITELY pay for it in convenience!), so I am just getting going, but I need to grab a shower and head over there sometime in the next half hour.

Gee, I want to go home

Sitting at the airport surrounded by my work bag, my clothes bag and my lovely, robin's egg blue poster, looking at a jet bridge that is supposed to have a plane leaving from it with me on it in an hour. I'm not betting on it, as right now there is no plane at said jet bridge.

We have interviewed all the movers and gotten the quotes from two (as an aside, if you have a AAA membership, you get free help from a relocation service. You should do this. It's the b*mb (don't know if I can type this word in an airport...). It's actually less than we thought and not that much more expensive than our doing ABF or something would be. It looks like this might just all work out.

Of course, this means that I am leaving Spouse with 2 kids and about 1/3 of our stuff still to be packed, which I really wish was not the case. I have 7 things I must do at the conference, but two pairs of them were scheduled at the same time, so I really just have to show up 5 times. It will be good to have some kid-free time to work on fall classes, but right now I just feel badly about leaving Spouse to deal with all of this. The August dates of the big conference in basketweaving are usually pretty convenient for me, but not this year.

Taking deep breaths...

ON today's list:

Freecycle: Bird cage
Calls: Cable, phone, furniture consigner, power, PrettyGood for exit interview
Go do: Change address on water account, go to bank, get oil changed, Post office (packages, & pick up help mail), Sam's, Store (tape, batteries, disposable razors)

Do:
Finish packing bathroom
Pack the rest of the fragile stuff (Helloooooooo bubble wrap!)
Clothes - pack for my conference, 1 suitcase for 1st week of work in case we can't get a mover before then, for here and the trip up, to go on moving truck

Pack cabinet over washer

Sort/pack Offspring's old clothes we are keeping for Bun

Meet with grad student finishing project

Show mover giving estimate around Chez Prof

I dont do receiving lines

The party was a lot of fun, and most people liked their presents (or at least took them well. Except for the guy who got all the soap and stuff we have taken from various hotels over the years...)

We went to our church this morning. We are being deliberately vague about our "official last day," since a) it's a wee bit uncertain, depending on when we can get movers to actually come and b) since there's always a risk that we will get asked to stand at the front at the end of the service while people shake our hands and tell us how much they'll miss us, yadda yadda. It's not that I'm unsentimental, but that perhaps I'm too sentimental, so we like to slip off silently into the night...

Anyway, the gospel reading today was from Luke 12: 13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

It's a well-known parable, but one that takes on extra meaning when you are deciding which of your 4 bedroom house worth of worldly possessions are worth packing up and moving halfway across the country. We try to not get attached to stuff, and, really, we don't have the quantity or quality of stuff that our income might allow, mostly because we don't want to have to worry about it - your not-so-nice car is less likely to get stolen, for example. But it's still completely overwhelming.

I remember when we could literally move everything we owned in the car.