All Over

On Saturday, we attended a graduation ceremony for yours truly. Which was kind of weird, because I finished my exams a year ago January, turned in my thesis last July, received my diploma in the mail this January, and now it is June. But not all departments even hold a graduation ceremony, so I was happy to go.

There was a short welcome speech from a faculty member.



Then the English Department choir sang. John took some video footage of it, if anyone is interested.



Then the main speaker.



(The room was gorgeous, all wood carving and paintings, but it really seemed to suck up the light in our photos. Sorry.)

Then some more singing. Then the graduates (and people taking their exams but soon to graduate) were called up one by one.



A lot more people came than had been expected, so we really filled up the front of the room.



Afterward, we were served champagne and buttered pretzels (this *is* Southern Germany, after all).



(For those of you keeping track at home, in this photo I am wearing pumps and Hannah is not, yet she is taller than me.)

Then Hannah and John took me out to lunch. Hannah really wanted Chinese, but since she doesn't actually differentiate between Asian cuisines, we went to the Thai restaurant within view of the university building where the ceremony had been held. John decided to base his order on how obscene the dish sounded and ended up with Ped Rad Prik ("crispy fried duck with chili sauce"). Hilarity ensued: "You really seem to like that Prik." "You just can't get enough Prik, can you?" And so on in that manner.

I think John's 2 glasses of champagne went to his head, because Hannah and I were trying to explain about an experiment we had seen on Mythbusters about beer goggles, and he wouldn't stop watching a fly that got caught in a spider web in the corner behind him. It was his fault the fly got caught in the first place, because somehow (I didn't see it happen) he managed to knock one of the fly's legs off, making that 5-legged little sucker a sitting duck, so to speak. It was like being involved in the production of the most boring nature show ever.

Afterward, they wanted ice cream, so we headed down the street for it. The interprising ice cream salesmen had hung one of those stupid vuvuzelas (the horrible plastic horn that Africa has introduced to soccer fandom) out front and invited people to blow it. A couple had just given it a go when we walked up, and then while I was waiting for John and Hannah to order, I watched a little kid, maybe 4, walk up with his mouth wide open to blow into it. Luckily, the adult with him pulled it away and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. Just like with a public toilet, you are taking your chances with one of those things.

On the way to the parking garage, John insisted on one last photo to commemorate my time at the university.



Now the umbilical cord is officially cut. Hello, cruel world!

Too inappropriate

...for facebook. But here, anything goes.

Here's another quote from me, for the record books:
"If what you just said is likely to be cross-stitched and put up in someone's bathroom, it's not really pillow talk, *John*."

Working from home

So I am now more or less officially* working from home as a freelance translator and editor. For the first few weeks, I was working from the dining room table, or the living room recliner.





My back wasn't too happy with either of those arrangements.

It didn't take too long to realize that the desk I had bought Hannah was primarily being used as a horizontal surface for storing books, and ostensibly clean clothes, and anything that missed the floor. So I stole it from her and put it up in our sunroom, which is now doubling as my office. The chair is fairly comfortable, the desk surface extensive, and the view wonderful. I should be able to make a ton of money up here!












*Note to self: time to send in some paperwork for this, that, and the other.

Forgetful Jones, part 2

I'd forget my head if it weren't for my neck...

Around the time we were initially discussing a vacation to Greece, a little volcano by the name of Eyjafjallajokull was closing air space all over Europe. Add that to the problems Greece has by itself--economy cratering, protests leading to fires and deaths, strikes, the annual summer wildfires, plague of frogs--and I was as nervous then about traveling to Greece myself as I am now about John traveling to Russia in a couple of weeks alone. (Well, with a group of linguists, but not with me.)

Google's ads are tempting him, though. Every time I am around when he checks his email, he informs me of the latest travel specials--Crete! London! Berlin!

We just found out that our friends are staying in Switzerland one more year, though, so I think the weekend trip we had been planning could easily be expanded to include a visit to them and a bit of a vacation to boot.

On Memorial Day

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest", but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

-Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)*

*from the A.Word.A.Day email newsletter

Two eyes, four eyes, blue eyes, more eyes?

When I was in the third grade, I got glasses. I could once again make out leaves on the trees, and I got "most improved player" in softball.* By the fourth grade, I had already had my lenses strengthened twice, so it was time to go into hard contact lenses. Those also needed to be upgraded once or twice a year until I was in my late teens, but they were supposed to help slow down the deterioration. Since then, I have always had contact lenses, although I haven't always worn them. There have been several long periods--after Hannah was born, after moving to Germany--where I got new glasses and didn't bother to wear my contacts. Unfortunately, in all my years of glasses-wearing, I have never figured out the best way to care for them, and inevitably the lenses get scratched. That is very annoying, especially since the current batch of scratches is right in the center of the lens. In addition to that particular annoyance, I can't wear sunglasses while wearing my scratched-up regular glasses. That was brought home to me while visiting Legoland last weekend. We had a rare sunny spell, and it would have been a lot more comfortable with shades. (And a hat, but I have noted that for next time.)

So, with all that background now thoroughly explained, I am having to train myself to wear contacts again. When you first get them (hard ones, at least), you have to gradually build up to wearing them all day. I am up to 4 or 5 hours a day at the moment. Since I am working from home, and my work space is right across the hall from the bathroom, it has been a fairly simple procedure; it would be a hassle if I had to tote the supplies around with me. Tomorrow I have to take Hannah back to the orthodontist, so maybe I will get myself some new shades while I am out to celebrate my newly independent eyeballs.

*My improved visual acuity did not included improved depth perception, nor improved hand-eye coordination, so I was never going to play softball professionally, but at least I didn't completely suck rocks any more.

Vacations of the stars

"Lydia ... never heard nor saw anything of which she chose to be insensible." --Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice


In summers past, Hannah and I left vacation planning completely to John. Those were the cold, drizzly vacations we spent in Sweden.



And Scotland.



After those, Hannah and I insisted on somewhere warm. We can get cold and drizzly at home. John took pity on us and planned a trip to Italy. That is definitely the place to go if you want heat.



This year, he has really been pushing for Greece. His original plan was to land in Athens, look around a couple of days, and catch a ferry to Crete.

Hmm, I said, are you sure about that? What about the financial crisis?

Ah, it won't affect us.

What about the protests?

That's just the Greek way of letting off steam.

What about the deaths?

Um, maybe we'll just skip Athens and fly straight to Crete.

In the meanwhile, I have made a few more pertinent points regarding our finances and upcoming expenses (which do include travel for John), and I think Greece will have to wait for us.

But in other news, Greece has been overrun with frogs.

Things that make you go WHAT?!

The washing machine repairman came today. He left the machine running with some special detergent for removing gunk, and I spent the next hour randomly feeling up the machine to make sure the water was really getting hot. It was! And we were only out 2/3 of the original cost for this 6-year-old machine. *sigh*

Hormones are kicking my ass. They haven't been making me crazy (that I can tell), but it would be a kindness if my face would just explode already and stop being colonized by monster zits. *sigh*

Hannah brought up the mail this afternoon: an L.L. Bean catalog. Ok, not an unusual experience. I pulled off the plastic wrap to find a quarter of the back cover neatly ripped off and completely missing. How did that happen?!

I will be spending my next couple of evenings researching computer printers. Ours has finally gotten to the point that it is unusable--actually, we might be able to print in color, but I got too frustrated with it on Sunday to verify that. I need to go into town tomorrow, so I will look at what is available there, then on Friday we are going to the mall and will look at what is available there, and maybe by this weekend we can have a new one up and running. *sigh*

We bought Hannah Sims 3 for xmas, and she was happily playing along when John's hard drive pooped, and now it won't load on the new hard drive. Who knows what is going on there, but neither of us have time at the moment to really look into it. *sigh*

The leak in the car mysteriously stopped as suddenly as it started, but now the AC compressor doesn't work, nor the windshield wipers. Coincidence? I wish! We could probably get by ok without the AC, but not the wipers (which, by the way, I managed to change all by myself, after carrying them around in the hatch space for *cough* at least a year *cough*). *sigh*

Otherwise, things are going just swimmingly! :)

-Nee in Germany just realized she sounds like a downer today

Surprise!

That's how we felt when we discovered that the computer John had bought in January was having problems recently and would have to get a new hard drive. WHAT?! John called customer support and was walked through some test in order to find that out. Oddly enough, I had run a diagnostic test myself just the week before, but the code that came up wasn't on the list I had access to, and I misunderstood the text that mentioned something about not being able to access a disk, something something. Turns out, that *did not* refer to the CD disk drive. *sigh* None of that would have been that big of a deal, but when John went to save the C drive to the backup disk, Windows didn't bother to include any of his data in that, only the programs and their data. Then the technician came and took away the old drive and mailed it off for reconditioning before we noticed the problem. John has pointed out that he was lucky to only have had the computer for a few months and not to have put that many new documents on it, to have some data in email and online, but it was still a very sucky frustration.

In less frustrating news, I got a rush translation job this week and made a wad of cash. Ka-ching! Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of time I would need and had to put in some extra hours I would normally reserve as non-work time late in the evening and early in the morning. But the doctor who hired me didn't seem to mind that it was a little late.

Hannah is harassing us to make an elaborate birthday party supply order from amazon us, just so she can have a ton of Star Wars swag on her birthday. Most of her friends are going to be out of town; we could make the Star Wars stuff ourselves with our color printer and some glue. Today I was teasing her about her nerd cred--she misremembered the subtitle on a Fantastic Four (*heh* I just typed "Fabulous Four") movie--and she said it was hard growing up in a nerd-free country. I asked if she felt like she didn't fit in, but that wasn't the case--there just aren't enough nerd role-models here to emulate.

I lost some of my balcony plants, including the mystery tree, the smaller walnut tree, and the lavender. I didn't really like the lavender very much, and I didn't even know what the mystery tree was, so I guess it was not too much of a loss, and now I can reuse their pots. All my flower boxes have sprouted so far, and I finally have seedlings coming up in my herb pot as well. Yay, cilantro! I need to cut back my poinsettia and just generally do some gardening this weekend.

John and I take turns planning meals and grocery shopping, but Hannah was not pleased with John's choices this last week, many of which were meat-less. "I neeeed meeeeat!" she moaned at every meal. Scurvy, I am telling you. Anyhow, today I got sick of her whining about the lack of meat and the lack of instant food for lunches and told her that if she didn't like it, she could do it herself. And she did! She sat down with our kitchen notepad and started planning meals. When she ran out of ideas, she fetched a stack of cookbooks and started looking for more ideas. One of us still has to drive her to the store (and probably cook some of the meals), but my baby sacked up and offered to take on some responsibility! *sniff*

And now I will try to post this with the poor internet connect from up in our sunroom.

-Nee in Germany looks forward to meat

Forgetful Jones

God, I always leave something out of my posts, so this will be the general catch-up post.

Poor Hannah, with her Star Wars fetish, missed out on the Star Wars characters at the mall last winter. After one of our near-death attempts to deliver Hannah to a birthday party in a different town--a successful attempt, although we almost killed each other over it--John and I went grocery shopping at said mall, and it was overrun with adults dressed up as Star Wars characters. One of the shops had a big Star Wars sale, with costumes and Lego sets on display in the main mall. I couldn't find a light saber like Hannah wanted, and I couldn't be tempted to buy one of the Lego sets, but I was tempted to pinch the butt of one of the Storm Troopers to see if I could get a reaction. I decided against it in the end.

Hannah has also been haunting an American costume shop online and has discovered a Princess Leia costume that she wants. It comes with a Darth Vader head for collecting candy in, but she thought something a little more R2D2 would be more appropriate. She is bemoaning our lack of a dog--we aren't really dog people, though--because they even make Star Wars costumes for dogs. I can't remember the second choice, but the first was Han Solo.

And in technology forgetfulness: After I got John's Palm up-to-date, I plugged in a card reader to get some photos loaded onto my computer from our digital camera. John commented on the many little gadgets I have invested in recently, and I had to point out that if our many electronic devices still work fine except for one little detail--Palm cable won't connect to computer, camera cable won't connect to computer--isn't it better to buy a little gadget for 10 or 20 bucks and get several more years out of the device rather than toss it and shell out hundreds of bucks for a replacement? I had him there.

John and I aren't averse to buying things, just wasting things. Which is why the washing machine repair man is coming next week to look at our washer. It should heat its own water, but I don't think it has done that in a while. That hasn't concerned me too much, because even Al Gore recommends washing in cold to save energy. But when slimy gray bits started showing up on our clothes, bits that would not have formed if we had been able to occasionally use hot water (as proved by my pouring hot water into the machine and getting rid of the gray bits behind the drum), then it is time for a repair.

And now if I have forgotten anything, it will be lost to the mists of time.

-Nee in Germany uses Forgetful Jones for her Facebook icon, sometimes

I fought the technology, and I won

John has been so sweet; he's been posting my technological successes on his Facebook page, even.

It started with hooking up my laptop to our LCD tv. John has been on a youtube kick, watching various stand-up comedians like Billy Connelly, and Eddie Izzard. And he also found some Far Side specials. So of course he wanted to share these with us, but he couldn't quite figure out how to force us in front of the little screen on my laptop, or crammed in front of the desktop computer in the study. That's where I came in.

All of these little successes started with some online research, naturally, so I could avoid buying things that I would then have to send back. Five packages in the mail later, I have set up a converter (requiring three separate cables) for connecting my laptop to our tv, and installed an infrared device on my laptop so we can finally (after 2 years) upload John's data from his Palm for safekeeping and also download electronic texts for him to read.

And of course, buying the proper equipment didn't mean that it just up and worked as required on the first (or second, or third) try. There was all sorts of adjusting and more looking up tips before I hit on the right combinations. One thing that still irks me about the tv set-up is that I can't just use it as a projector, i.e., what's on my monitor shows up on the screen. I had to set up the tv as a second monitor, which means that my monitor is now functionally twice as wide, with the left half still visible on my laptop and the right half visible on the television. It is strange mousing off the right side of the laptop monitor and trying to keep track of where I am on the tv screen. But once you get it set up, you can't really tell that it's not tv-ready programming.

I also bought some more ink for our printer to see if the name brand really does a better job than the store brand, or if our printer is just that sucky by itself, and some new surge protectors for John's newish computer. It has been doing this weird shut-down thing that could be due to our landlord's shitty wiring, and I'm hoping the new strip will help.

Unfortunately, I have allowed all this setting up to cut into my work time, so I need to see if I can't get caught up soon. That may be easier said than done, though. Hannah and I have dentist's appointments tomorrow after school, and I am helping her get ready for a math test on Friday. Luckily, she has afternoon class at least one day this week, so I have a few more child-free hours in which to work.

I never know how to end these entries. Maybe I should take a page out of mimi smartypants' book:
—mimi smartypants wrestled a pangolin once.
—mimi smartypants does what her brain tells her.
—mimi smartypants tells James Joyce, in no uncertain terms, to put it back in his pants.


-Nee in Germany is good with plugs

Isn't it funny...

how being effective leads to more effectiveness, but being a lazy loaf just leads to nothing? And you get a brand new chance every. single. day. to manage either of them? Just thinking aloud.

Yucky Easter

The weather has been quite bad today, wave after wave of dark clouds and rain. Luckily, Hannah is too big for egg hunting, which we wouldn't really be able to do outside anyway since we don't have a yard or a playground nearby. But after chomping down an 8-inch-high chocolate bunny, she complained about the dearth of candy around here. She seems to think that the American version of every holiday is an orgy of candy (although in this case, she wouldn't be far off the mark), and it is unfair that we have separated her from her sugar-laden heritage.

I have been in various stages of soreness all day today. Yesterday I defrosted and cleaned the freezer (which is on the bottom), and scrubbed all the gunk out from underneath. All that kneeling and squatting made my thighs hurt, only I don't notice it until I want to get up from sitting.

I also started planting the seeds for my herbs and flowers on the balcony. I got most of the planter boxes cleaned out and topped off with new soil, but I had to stop when, surprise!, the weather turned cold and wet yesterday afternoon. I am pretty sure that defrosting your freezer or starting your gardening works like washing your car for attracting rain clouds. At least I had the sense to put the planter boxes I had already seeded onto the balcony floor instead of back out on the railing to get washed away in the rain. In a couple of weeks, I might have some seedlings.

Not paying attention

On a recent shopping trip, I wanted to treat myself to one of my favorite German candies, gummi-colas.



Only, when I got home, Hannah pointed out that I had managed to buy FRUIT-flavored gummi-colas.



Okay, I suppose. I mean, I am familiar with cherry coke,



and lemon pepsi



and pomegranate 7-up.



(Heh, that last one is actually 1. not a cola, and 2. a recent find of Hannah's from the import shop.)

But if you will notice on the bag, the third fruit is (not pomegranate) orange. I don't recall there being an orange-flavored cola in the States, but they drink it over here.



There is another one called Schwip Schwap.



I wouldn't drink either of them, for I hate orange, but I like the commercials for Schwip Schwap better. They show a lab where people are trying various methods for getting the cola in the orange, with humorous results.

Anyhow, Hannah was able to reassure me that the gummis didn't actually taste like anything but cola, so I was able to chow down on them without worrying about them including any extra flavors or vitamins. *whew!*

I've got to start reading the packaging more closely, though. Who knows what it will be next time...

Follow along

I took a break from translating earlier to eat lunch and clean the stairwell. Normally, our house is as quiet as the grave, minus our cats meowing their heads off, but someone went into or out of each of the other 3 apartments during the 45 minutes or so I was sweeping and mopping.

The last person came out of the apartment directly below us. I thought it might be the son, who was a teenager when we first moved in here and is now in his early twenties. I don’t know what he does exactly, but I remembered that I’ve seen him with the ambulance service, so I thought he might be an ambulance driver, and thought that was pretty cool. But then I remembered that in Germany, young men have mandatory military service; if they object, they are allowed to do social service instead. So maybe he was doing the ambulance thing as part of his social service. Still cool.

This thought led to the memory of the members of Tokio Hotel getting their orders, but trying to get out of it because they were on tour in America. And then I realized that there was no situation I could imagine the German army being in where they would say, “Damn, if only we had Bill Kaulitz here!”

A little of this...

I am in a really good mood because I have a translating gig that is going really well so far. Except for the fact that the spacebar on my laptop is acting up. It was worse earlier, even after I used canned air to blow under it. Now it is just occasional, but not quite often enough to make me want to throw my laptop across the room.


Since I was working on the translation, John took Hannah to the orthodontist yesterday. And of course neither of them could tell me exactly what was said, just that she has another appointment in May and will indeed be getting regular braces. So I called today to ask if I should arrange to have her teeth sealed at her upcoming check-up/cleaning. And also, what is the deal with the braces? Long story short, the orthodontist will be doing the sealing on the fronts of the teeth when she puts the brackets on, sometime over the summer. I think Hannah will be in them for a whole year.


John wants to get through more of the songs on Rock Band at the "difficult" level, and when making his choice just now, he said, "This guitarist only has four fingers. It can't be that hard." He was talking about a Black Sabbath song. Looks hard to me.


I'm really supposed to be cleaning the stairwell since this is our week and it is my turn (we're so egalitarian). But John is my enabler, and he got me on my weak side: "It's already 7!" I like going to bed early, and my sense of duty couldn't overcome my love of lots of sleep. So tomorrow I will use a bit of the time when I'm taking a break from translating to do the cleaning.


The weather is super nice, and I really wish I could be spending my daylight hours out on the balcony, playing in the dirt, but alas, my work ethic has kicked in and I am trying to stick with it, damn the luck! But, I give myself little coffee or fruit breaks to get some fresh air and stretch, so I used the hand that wasn't holding my apple today to pull dead plants out of one of the planter boxes. Unfortunately, my bucket for collecting stuff for the organic waste can is full, so that put a crimp in my "gardening." I guess I'll drag it downstairs tomorrow when I'm cleaning the stairwell.

And with that, I will start rounding everyone up for bed. Night!

Hannah has gone to the Dark Side

Hannah has decided that she is a huge Star Wars fan and that she therefore needs more Star Wars stuff. We have all the movies on video, so that is a start. She has also given one of the characters on Animal Crossing the catchphrase "StarWarsRox".

Two Halloweens ago, we went through the epic struggle to find a Storm Trooper costume, successfully, as it turned out. But now Hannah has outgrown her costumes and they are in the hands of her male cousins. What would they know about Star Wars?



Oh, that.

I bought myself an Empire Strikes Back t-shirt at Old Navy when we were in Louisiana; when she saw a Star Wars t-shirt at H&M here in town, she begged me to buy it for her. I hate to say it, but mine is much better quality. At least it is not almost sheer.

She discovered that the animated Clone Wars series is on tv on Sundays and about had a nergasm. Like most programs she likes, we are not allowed to breath a word while it is on, at the risk of being shushed and getting the glare of death. I have to say, the animated series is better than the movies I-III, and this from a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fan.

All of this was kicked off by us buying a copy of Fanboys while in Texas after having it recommended by a new-ish relative who, it turns out, is as big a nerd as we are.



We watched it again last night, and Hannah said she wants to have a Star Wars funeral, maybe have her ashes scattered at the Lucas Ranch. I pointed out that she will probably feel differently about it when she is 90, but that if she gets run over by a bus next week, I will try for the Star Wars funeral angle, and that seemed to satisfy her.

Despite my nerd creds, Hannah has a hard time talking me into buying her Star Wars stuff. Unfortunately for her, my tightwad side overrides my nerd side in department stores. Also, I am constitutionally unable to spend a big chunk of cash on what is basically a hunk of plastic with a brand name on it (i.e., a light saber). In the third place, she doesn't have anyone to fight with here at home (unlike in the photo above), so that means John and I would be the recipients of the inevitable light-saber-whacking.

Oddly enough, I remember what it was like to want Star Wars stuff and not get it, but in my case, my mother wouldn't let me buy action figures or vehicles, only stuffed animals (Ewoks) and t-shirts and the occasional coloring book. Those fell into the "acceptable for girls" category. When I wasn't trying to trace the movie poster for Return of the Jedi out of the newspaper, I was longing desperately for a little plastic Luke Skywalker and his jiffy speeder. I was definitely a tom-boy growing up, playing softball (badly) and spending the time I wasn't reading on my bike, and I guess this was where my mother felt she had to put her foot down. Most of the time, she told me I could be anything I wanted to be. I also internalized the message--from where, I am not sure--that anything boys could do, I could do better, so having my mom be so anti-action figures was a real blow. BUT, when I was in my 20's and already married, she bought me a Millenium Falcon 3D puzzle. I guess she figured that the odds of me turning out as a lesbian as a result were pretty low at that point, so it was a safe purchase.

[Edited to add:] I forgot about Hannah's ipod. The first video clip she put on her new ipod was this youtube video--the Lego Star Wars Orchestra playing the Darth Vader theme. Excellent!

Hannah, Re-Activated

As you may remember from last spring, Hannah has been wearing an activator to correct her jaw misalignment. She has been very diligent about wearing it, and the orthodontist has declared herself pleased with the results. We were kind of expecting that she would be going into braces soon, but the ortho thinks she can fix everything without them. The jaw is now in the right position, and all that is left to do is pull one or two teeth that had been growing from too high in her gum down into position. So Hannah got a new activator, pictured above, that is designed to do just that. It is grape kool-aid colored and fused into one piece, meaning that instead of two parts that attach separately to her upper and lower teeth, her teeth slide in and out of the wires attached to the single piece that just sits in her mouth. The first two nights she had it in, she managed to spit it out during the night and found it on the floor. Mmm... if there is anything I want to put in my mouth in the middle of the night, it is a chunk of plastic and metal wires that has been lying on the floor in a 12-year-old's room. Glad it was her and not me.

Now I guess I had better get her in to the regular dentist for a cleaning. I was waiting until we found out if she would need to have all her teeth sealed in preparation for braces, but that doesn't seem to be in the plans anymore.

Say Hello to Nee, M.A.

Back in July, I told you all about my adventures in thesis writing. I have been waiting more-or-less patiently since then for my results, and as you may have noticed from the photo above, they finally came! I am now officially a Magistra Artium.

At first, I was just glad to be done and didn't want to worry about it. Then we went to Texas on vacation, and I didn't have to worry about it. Then we came back in September, and I figured it was too early to worry about it. But when classes started back in October, I started to worry. Finally at the beginning of November, I sacked up and called the appropriate university office. It turns out that faculty have no deadline for grading theses. ::boggle:: So then I went to talk to my first reader, and she told me that she had sent in her assessment/grade already, and it was a pretty good one. Basically, I had to wait for the second reader to get his grade in, then for the diploma to be printed. Only then would I find out how I had done. And that took about 10 weeks. *sigh*

But now I am officially done. No more worries, no more waiting. Yay!

Water, water everywhere

Back in November, I found out that my thesis was accepted and that I will indeed be getting my M.A. (more on that soon). To celebrate, and because he had been jonesing for it, John took us to a little restaurant up the hill from us for dinner. On the way home in the car, I noticed that the floorboard was wet.

"What do you mean 'wet'?" demanded John.

I splashed my feet in the puddle under my seat. "Wet!"

At that point, it was late and dark and cold, so we scooped out as much water as we could manage with a dust pan we keep in the trunk and called it a night. The next day, and on many subsequent days, I went out with a stack of towels and sopped water out of the front and back floorboards on the passenger side. Judging by the many sprouts I pulled out of the carpets and floor mats and the moldy items I scraped out of the door pocket, I'd say we'd had the problem for a while.

I can't tell that there is a leak around the seals on the doors, and a little googling brings me to the conclusion that the water could be getting in through a couple of different places in the ventilation system (blocked pollen filter or blocked a/c drain), which are located behind the dashboard on the passenger side.

When we first discovered the problem, it was a busy time of year, approaching the holidays and all, so we put off taking the car into the shop. I tried to buy a tarp to put over it, but let's just say that it wasn't a successfull maneuver. After the holidays, it finally turned cold and snowed. Frozen floorboards are preferable to soggy. But yesterday it rained all.day.long. Buckets and buckets of rain. At some point, I am going to have to go outside and bail out the car. If we don't get it into the shop soon, I am going to buy us all galoshes to wear in the car.