In my head

I have spent most of the last four days singing the following to myself. But that’s all right, right?



Before that, it was this one:




I have finally discovered the perfect solution to my xmas music predicament: John Denver and Muppets! The great taste that tastes great together!


And for your reading enjoyment:
Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.


Halloween crafts made of tampons


An interview with Velvet d'Amour, a plus-size model who was in Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion show during Paris Fashion Week.

Rubbing It In

Don't hate me for living in such a beautiful corner of the world. Hate me for gloating about it. ;-p

View from our study



View from our upstairs bathroom

Teaching the Teacher

I am taking a teaching methods course and have already enjoyed our first two meetings. I’m not nervous about teaching per se—as John says, tongue in cheek, it’s one of the few jobs where people have to listen to everything *you* say, but you don’t necessarily have to listen to them. :-) And I am teaching two classes this semester on topics that I feel fully qualified to instruct others on—American English pronunciation and how to put together a presentation.

I am not quite up to terrified about teaching German, more like very, very nervous. I know my German is leaps and bounds better than when we moved here, but good enough to be able to help other people improve their German? I’m not so confident of that. Fortunately, I have from now to January to prepare for my 45-minute crack at teaching a German as a Second Language class; also, we are learning how to organize a class-hour so as to minimize any unpleasant surprises.

As part of our class, we are watching and analyzing videos of other people teaching. After we watched the first video yesterday, some people in my class were complaining that the teacher in the video didn’t give his students any rules about the grammar topic they were working on (past tense). This was a beginner-level class. They gradually worked their way up to the actual grammar topic via some introductory exercises (that were old-fashioned but surprisingly ingenious), and the way the teachers organized the lesson, the students came up with a simplified version of the grammar rule on their own, based on the earlier exercises. Some of my classmates thought the teacher should have given them the full set of “rules” regarding past tense at this point, and we debated it a bit. As I pointed out (*buffs nails on shirt*), this is not the last time in their German-learning that these students are going to work with past tense, so why overload them with rules? Maybe the teachers wanted them to have more a feel for how past tense works at this point, and then another time they can get additional examples that demonstrate some exceptions to the rule they came up with.

I came up with an analogy while walking to meet my tutee this morning. Learning a foreign language is a bit like learning to ride a bike. You wouldn’t give a 3-year-old a 27-speed mountain bike to start out. Instead, you give him something like this (which is what I saw a small child on this morning and which kick-started this train of thought):



When he gets really good at balancing and is tall enough, you move up to something a little bigger, maybe with training wheels.



It may take a while to build up to that mountain bike, and some people may never make it past 10 gears, but most people can learn to get around on a bike. Same thing with a foreign language. You can’t expect a person to be able to handle a whole pile of rules right away; you have to give him a chance to find his balance and get familiar with this new way of doing things.


Well, duh!
To Lower Costs, Hospitals Try Free Basic Care for Uninsured (NY Times)

The Wheels on the Bus

All I wanted on Wednesday was to get from point A to point C via point B, but that was the point at which Mr. Itinerant Preacher Crazy Man got on the bus. His non-stop diatribe really killed my enjoyment of being squashed between the window on one side and 80 other standing passengers on the other. At least we got the entertainment of catching each others’ eye and cracking up.

Mr. IPC Man was in fine form: (translated from the German) “G is for God. God is great, ja ja. G is also for great. God is good, which also starts with G, ja ja. This is NOT about Hitler!” And so on and so forth.

By the time we got to my stop, I had prayed more in the 6 minutes he was on the bus than in the last 20 years. I was able to tune him out a little by thinking, “Christ Jesus and Baby Jesus! Get me off this bus!”

The next morning, I was forced to partake of a fellow bus rider’s iPod playlist. I didn’t really want to be at a funky disco bus party; I just wanted to sit and be surly as usual.

Thursday afternoon was a bit better, bus-wise. One stop after I got on, a whole kindergarten got on the bus (in Germany, kindergarten = pre-school/daycare and not the grade before 1st grade), so there were about 40 kids, toddlers up to about age 4. Cute! I shared my seat with the two tiniest, and one of them fell asleep on me. I had forgotten how tiny they can be. I actually ended up riding one stop further so I wouldn’t have to trample my way through kinders or wake up the little punkin on my arm.

***

When we moved here, I planned to be done with my master’s degree in 4 years. Looking recently at the list of coursework I had completed and had left to complete, I saw that I would be able to finish all my coursework by the end of next summer semester, right on time. Except I wouldn’t be able to *get* my master’s by then, because you can only apply for admission to candidacy (basically) once all the coursework is complete and grades are turned in; at that point you can write your thesis and take your exams (2 5-hour written exams and 2 1-hour oral exams—ouch!), which you have a total of 12 months to do. So even if I finished all the coursework as early as possible, I would not be able to complete the other requirements by the end of the summer semester.

This put me in a bit of a conundrum. If by conundrum you mean a day-long crying jag. Should I go on bended knee to the department head and try to get her to pull some strings for me? Which meant I would have to cram in the coursework, thesis, exams, and quite probably packing up our household into one semester. Just thinking about it makes me want to die. Or should I drop out?

Finally, I realized that although the MA after my name would be nice, it doesn’t define who I am and wouldn’t guarantee me the job of my dreams later. So I have decided to continue with some of the coursework (dropping one upper-division class, whew!) that would be most useful to me in the case that I had the chance to teach German in the future (a teaching methods course plus student teaching, a course on second language acquisition, and a conversation course). I woke up the next morning feeling a sense of total-body relief (you know it if you’ve felt it). If events conspire to keep us in Germany longer, then I will finish up. If not, then I still haven’t wasted my time here.

***

I needed to get out and stretch my legs today, so fall photos from our village here.

***

Furniture made out of books! Why didn’t I think of that!?

How do I love lists? Let me count...

Now that the semester and “real life” have started up again, I am back in list-making mode. You all know that I love me a list, uh huh, but I just realized recently that I am a really sucky list-maker. Here’s an item from my Palm To-Do list: “Start reading for class.” How helpful is that? When can I consider that item completed? 2 pages into the text? 5 pages? It has finally occurred to me that I have to be specific, and I am allowed to break jobs down into their constituent parts, which means more things on the to-do list, but the list gets whittled down faster because I am not waiting for one big thing to be completely finished. So that list item became “Read Chapter 1.” Much better.

John is one of those people who has a routine, and he deals with new things by making a routine out of them. That is *really* hard for me to do. Taking my vitamins? Sporadic. Forcing the poinsettia? Thank the seven dwarfs the days are getting shorter anyway, because I often forget to cover that puppy until it is already dark out. List-making is one way I deal with this; if it is on the list, at least I am reminded of it once a day at a minimum. We’ll see how smoothly this semester goes with my new outlook on lists.


Gnome-fanciers unite!
“Man vows to fight garden gnome arrest threat”

I first read about this in a German magazine!
World’s Ugliest Dog Contest

“In contrast to an earlier finding, it does not appear children who watch a lot of television wind up with behavior problems in school, researchers reported Monday.”

Christmas in October

Germans already have Fasching/Carnival for their big dress-up holiday, so they don’t really do Halloween except for the occasional costume party for adults here or there. That would explain why the xmas cookies and candy are already on the shelves at the grocery store—there aren’t any buffer holidays like Halloween or Thanksgiving (in September in Germany) to slow down the train-wreck of xmas advertising.

Personally, it doesn’t matter to me what time of year it is, any time is good for humming xmas songs. I like the tacky songs, while John is more a religious-carol-type guy. I don’t think my love of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is going to jinx our relationship, but it does put a cramp in our holiday music buying.

Last year in December, I went into a Starbucks for the first and only time—a classmate invited me, I swear!—and not only did I drink a large cup of their coffee, I also bought a CD of xmas music. I felt my soul shrivel even smaller than usual on that day, but the CD turned out to be not quite what I was looking for, so that made me feel better. Here’s what I got:



Sleigh Full of Songs
1. I Like a Sleighride (Jingle Bells), Peggy Lee
2. Deck the Halls, Nat King Cole
3. Winter Wonderland, Dean Martin
4. The Christmas Waltz, Nancy Wilson
5. Do You Hear What I Hear?, Bing Crosby
6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Aimee Mann
7. 2000 Miles, Holly Cole
8. The Little Drummer Boy, Lou Rawls
9. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Lena Horne
10. Merry Christmas, Baby, Charles Brown
11. Silver Bells, Wayne Newton
12. O Come All Ye Faithful, Ella Fitzgerald
13. Peace on Earth / The Little Drummer Boy, David Bowie & Bing Crosby

I realize that practically every recording artist prior to 1980 recorded at least one xmas song—my mom had complete albums of xmas music by Elvis and Jim Neighbors--but I’m not too keen on some of the artist/song combinations on my Starbucks album. In theory, I find it awesome that David Bowie and Bing Crosby did a duet, but in *practice*? Meh.

So if I were to compile a perfect xmas album—and this might be perfectly within my means via the magic of the Internet—here is what I would require, but not by any particular artist (I find that generic is usually better):

Sleigh Ride
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Up on the House-Top
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas
All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth
Jingle Bells
Jingle-Bell Rock
Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland
Let it Snow
Silver Bells
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
Frosty
Rudolph
Blue Christmas
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Any additions? n.B. This is the camp-only list. Non-campy songs should go to John.

Speaking of xmas, has anyone successfully "forced" a poinsettia? Mine is 2 or 3 years old, and this year I am covering it with a black trash bag 6 pm to 8 am. After 3 weeks of this, one leaf looks a little blotchily red; the only other impact I can discern is that other leaves are turning yellow and dropping off. I don’t know if that might be due to changes in watering patterns after I brought it inside, being enclosed in plastic half the day, or being man-handled into the bag twice a day. Otherwise it looks mostly healthy (once I cut off a branch that had some kind of boils on its bark). According to the web site I linked to above, the whole process can take about 8 weeks; I’ll keep you posted.

New to Nee

I come across a lot of interesting things via my Internet reading, but I am loathe to forward them via email, because it seems like the modern version of my grandmother the bag lady clipping and mailing bits out of the newspaper. But since I have a blog, where people can decide for themselves whether they want to follow a link, I can put up items of interest whenever I like. Ha ha ha!

John is the real debater in our family. He can formulate a position and make logical arguments, and he doesn't get all worked up the way I do usually (depending on the topic and the other person). So for now, I will put up links with a short bit from the text itself, and maybe a quick explanation in case the topic is more controversial, and save the personal commentary.

My first article is from the New York Times (you probably have to be registered to read, but it is free--I've used it for about 5 years, no prob):

Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.

Halloween, part 3

I think I’ve already mentioned that Hannah and I wanted to make a Halloween version of a gingerbread house since we will be in Texas at xmas-time this year. Yesterday we got busy and put one together. (1)



Here are our building blocks. I made the dough from scratch out of an xmas-themed German cookbook; Hannah designed the house, and I made a pattern for cutting out the pieces. Then I whipped up some “mortar” made of egg whites and powdered sugar.



I can’t remember if this is before or after the house fell apart on us. I think it is the first assembly. Here’s a tip, if you should ever want to build your own g-bread house: let the walls set before putting on the roof—it is surprisingly heavy and will knock the whole structure down if the mortar is still wet.



Here is a front view of the finished product. Note how the edges of the walls curved while baking, so we had to fill in the gaps with lots of mortar and candy, “so the rats can’t get in,” said Hannah. Here’s another tip: be careful while adding the baking powder, or the walls will end up much puffier and rounded than you intended.



Here is a back view. Hannah didn’t really like the sugar-egg glue, so she pulled apart some Brach’s Halloween candies and used those to attach additional decorations onto the back wall since it was looking a little bare.



This morning Hannah got out some marzipan and sculpted a witch and a broom out of it. She got them to stick to the front of the house by impaling them on a toothpick. Gruesome!

(1) John is so sweet. He thought it was ingenious and original to come up with a Halloween version of the xmas favorite, but I had to disabuse him of that idea. A google search came up with 434,000 hits for "Halloween gingerbread house" and 125,000 hits "+kit". At least I didn’t try to market the idea, because some of the kits are really cool.

Nee: Entertaining and Informing Since 2004

I have a bunch of photos I wanted to put up, so consider this post educational.



This scary item is Mortadella sausage for children. See how the package looks all cute and slightly appetizing, while the reality makes you glad it is going to be smothered in ketchup and covered with bread? Hannah specifically asked for this lunch meat.



To the uninitiated, this may just look like a bucket of water. But for your information, it is the amount of water that comes out of 1 week's worth of whites and underwear in our condensation dryer.



(Sorry for the blur.) This is the one and only bud to form this year on the xmas cactus I bought last winter. I had been watching it diligently for about a week, giving the plant plenty of water and verbal encouragement, but one morning I found the bud lying in the pot. I don't know if it dropped or if a cat had anything to do with its untimely removal, but I was slightly heartbroken. The other xmas cactus has bloomed regularly ever since I got it (hell, it has flowers and buds on it right now), but I had high hopes for new hot-pink flowers.



Halloween, Part 1. Hannah was in charge of drawing on the jack-o-lantern's face. We are not going to carve it until closer to the 31st, because I hate having a pumpkin deflate before the big day. Doesn't this guy look dapper? I think he just needs a beret and a cigarette in one of those long holders.



Halloween, Part 2. The other side of the pumpkin is a bit abraded, probably from lying on the ground, so Hannah couldn't make face 2 opposite face 1. This is a girl face (note the long hair), but to me, it still looks like a clown.

Ding Dong, The Paper's Dead

So I turned in my paper yesterday. It's basically garbage, but at least it is gone. I got off the bus to go to my department 25 minutes after the last page came off the printer, and things I meant to put in the paper started popping in my head. Also, a better conclusion. Also, a better section on paranoia. At this point, I will take a C and a note to never enter his classroom again. That is how sick of it I am.

On the plus side, I found this lovely line in Underworld that just really clicked in my brain:

...and he bucketed up to the bar car, filled with people who more or less resembled Charlie, give or take a few years and a few gray hairs and the details of their evilest dreams.

Even after reading it several times, it gives me a shiver.

My daughter has a mouth on her that would please my mother to no end (her and that "mother's curse" and all). I rubbed Hannah's cheek, and she claimed I scratched her with my "old lady skin". It's not that bad, yet! So now I feel no compunctions against bringing up her flabby armpits and stinky feet. Take that, young one!

You asked for it!

I hadn’t realized how much like a transsexual I was starting to look until I tried to take a hair photo this morning. Yikes! The photo below is the best out of about 5 or 6 attempts, sadly enough.



And I had been thinking about posting a grey update anyway, so here is the new photo, taken in natural light in the sunroom:



And here is a photo from almost exactly a year ago:



I knew the shorter hair would show up the grey, but it still makes me a little sad to see how *mature* I look. *sigh*

15 minutes

That's how long I have until John and Hannah get home and want some dinner! So I must blog fast-ly and furious-ly (but not like that crappy Vin Diesel movie *shudder*).

I am still writing on my paper. I know. Don't say it. I am plugging along with an outline and everything. I have a sneaking suspicion the whole thing might be garbage, but it's too late now!

Hannah and I want to make a gingerbread house, Halloween style, but one of the main ingredients is only available at the whole foods store. Despite that setback, we forged on with making Halloween cookies!



Hannah was actually only home for mixing the dough and cutting out one batch of pumpkins, but I put her to work frosting the un-candied cookies the next day:



She's got to earn that allowance somehow! (Wow--how exclamation-mark heavy can this post get?)

I have been very dissatisfied with my hair lately. It is tiresome always picking up one-and-a-half foot long hairs that I've shed, so in the grand tradition of my grandmother, I picked up a pair of scissors this morning and gave my hair a good whack. Goodbye, hair! It turned out pretty good for being self cut; even John was impressed. Now if I can just keep it out of my eyes...

Navel: It's What's for Gazing

I realized last night as I couldn't sleep that my recent "Shame" posts are what is known as the opposite of helpful. All this online self-flagellation is not actually helping me to write; it's just providing a distraction that I had mentally labeled as acceptable.

John needed to work on the computer this morning, which sent me to the table with paper and pencil, and I actually got a lot done. Today I feel like I'm in a better place mentally for working, so that's what I am aiming for: steady progress. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

The Shame Game--Tuesday, Part 3

(What a waste of a 400th post, eh?)

I make a little headway on my paper, then I flounder a bit. And I hate the whole thing.

I would rather be watching movies with Hannah (and I did stop to watch part of a Jimmy Neutron movie--the shame!), but instead I flail about on my paper, then take a break to help Hannah with her tooth-removal efforts, or get a snack, or more coffee, or go to the bathroom.

John is working like a fiend upstairs, and I...mmm...not so much. Rats.

The Shame Game--Tuesday, Part 2

It's 2:30. I have almost 4 pages of paper, plus bibliography, plus a couple more pages of hand-written graphs that won't be included with the paper, so why the hell did I do them after all?

John is diligently plugging away on his reading.

Since I last checked in, I have fed Hannah lunch, ate an apple and some peanut butter, taken a shower, made more coffee, washed a load of towels (in the dryer), and checked out Hannah's Polly Pocket plane that she made herself. And written a bit on my paper, but probably not enough to finish the goddamned thing today.

Feeling frustrated and ready to give up. Why did I think a paper about a book *827* pages long was a good idea?!

The Shame Game, Tuesday--Part 1

So here we are again. It is 11:30, and I am just getting started. I slept in, despite John's attempts to boot me out of bed starting at 9. I got Hannah up, started reading my email, cooked breakfast, finished reading email, and now I am going to work on my paper.

It has been raining for 2 days, and Hannah has a mild cold, and John is leaving for a conference on Thursday, so he has a bunch of reading and preparing to do for his presentation at said conference. I put Hannah on the couch and turned on the tv. We usually try to limit her tv intake, but today I will just add that to the shame list.

Shame Me Once...

John and Hannah got home, so we fixed a quick salad dinner, and now I'm back to looking at what I was doing when they got here.

I'm at the bottom of page 3, plus some notes on page 4. I had already abandoned the computer for my notebook and novel before the monkeys got home, and I think that's what I'll continue to work on this evening, but no all-nighter. That is never helpful.

I will check in tomorrow morning when I get rolling.

Self-Shaming Update

I had to take a quick break to empty the dryer (but not fold the clothes!), so here is the update:

I have another 3 paragraphs or so. In one hour. But considering that the novel I am writing about is 827 pages long, and even with a whole pad of post-its marking pages in the novel itself and about 15 pages of notes, it can sometimes be difficult to find what I am looking for. But the ideas are there. An outline would be nice, but I don't know if I am that far.

Onward and upward!

Oh! The Shame!

My paper is still not done. I wrote my professor over the weekend and told him I would turn it in today, but it is 4:30, and I barely have 2 pages. Tomorrow is a national holiday, so the department won't be open, but that is a lame excuse for putting off finishing the damn thing.

John has been really supportive and tries to give me positive reinforcement, but it is obviously not working. He and Hannah went into town to run some errands and see a movie (and give me uninterrupted time to work), but I am such a jerk, I am not getting much done.

So! I am going to have to take up the slack and shame myself into working. Here, for all the internet to read and tsk tsk at me. Feel free to tsk tsk in the comments, or just aloud when you read this. I will report back regularly today as I work.

Excuses, excuses

1. Check out Hannah's new video.

2. No new blog-love for a few days until I finish my literature paper. Being the smug smart-ass that I am, I started too late, and now am both super-late and stuck.

3. Hannah has no school on Monday or Tuesday (Reunification Day), so maybe there will be hijinks to report on.