Weekend!

55 thoughts on “Weekend!”

1. My docket consists of getting as close as possible to finishing all the work for my degree.

   Everything else is gravy.

   And me too, on the looking forward to this post next week.Report

   1. (Actually, there is one thing that is equally as important as finishing my degree, and that is that on Friday we are having a memorial for one of our students who died by her own hand. I am always a bit hesitant about these things but I had like 4 of my own students ask if I was going to come and be pleased that I am, so. She was a really great kid and I am still very sad about it.)Report

      1. Aw, man. Always sad to hear. Working in education for… wow, that long now? I hear these stories from time to time, and they’re always sad.Report

      2. Yep. This is the first time I’ve known the person who died this well (not as well as my student workers, but pretty well) and what I find saddest is actually how common it is, statistically. Significantly more common than for people of the same age who aren’t in college.

         School is a hard time, for many folks.Report

      3. Suffice to say, I think the fact that four year universities aren’t required to track and report on suicide statistics at their institutions is criminal.Report

      4. Sorrow.

         Joy, too, that remembering is as important to you as finishing your degree. That’s a loving heart; and it will hold her memory as long as it beats.Report

      5. I’m sorry for your loss. That is so very sad.Report

      6. Sorry for your loss, Maribou. My brother-in-law did the same just a few weeks ago.Report

      7. Oh @glyph

         Sad. Wishing your family well.Report

      8. There was food and painting and bluegrass. And I got to see her gramma wipe fingerpaint all over one of her friends’ cheeks, and little kids and college kids chasing around each other on the grass. That’s a good service.Report

2. Paper paper paper. I’m in Maribou-land.

   This is my last units required for the PhD (aside from the whole, “you need to write a dissertation” part, which is kinda a Big Deal, admittedly, and might take a while). Independent Study.

   I’m writing a paper on papers, no less… analyzing 164 full papers from the last three years of ISCRAM conference proceedings. It’s proceeding. The paper, not the proceedings.

   The goal is to get to 50% completion before Monday. Pretty sure I’m going to make it.Report

   1. Paper paper paper? I see a pattern. I guess I should throw scissors next time, or maybe that’s what you’re expecting me to do, so I should go rock….Report

   2. YOU CAN DO IT.

      Then I will start calling you ABD Patrick all the time (as long as it applies). My other friends with PhD’s just loooved it when I did that to them. *whistles faux-innocently*Report

      1. I’ve been in the program long enough that’s not gonna be a problem.Report

   3. I’m convinced you can do anything you set your mind to; and you’ve achieved that through blog comments alone. Which is saying something.Report

      1. That’s seriously the nicest thing that anybody-not-my-wife has said to me all year.

         Thanks, zic.Report

3. I will be completing a new design; a beach-wrap/sarong; a half circle, only fuller; that starts at a single point and increases in a fibonacci sequence; knit in a double-sided fabric. This is, for me, a mathematical poem expressed in fiber. It should make an incredibly elegant garment; and I’m quite proud of it. It is also a very long, tedious thing to knit. But that is the nature of knitting anything large enough to be useful.

   I’m watching Farscape as I go; on Season 2 now. Should I go all the way through the miniseries or quit at some defined point? And requests for what to watch next; I’m considering Locker 13.Report

   1. That is one of my favorite shows; I’ve watched it at least twice through by now, maybe three times? Or four times? The Time Before School is such a blur at present. So, I would say to watch the whole thing… You’re halfway there! (And I seem to remember season 3 being my favorite. My “forget everything so it is as much fun next time” thing kicks in extra-heavy with this show, hence my vagueness.)Report

4. Spring cleaningReport

5. Friday night we are getting a little taste of the Kentucky Derby Festival (pretty big deal around here) and hitting the Chow Wagon with some friends. That means a LOT of fried food and probably a lousy cover band but the weather on the river should be glorious.

   Saturday morning is more turkey hunting. Those feathered demons are giving me fits this season. I was really hoping to have one in the freezer by now. Saturday night is UFC at a friend’s house. Sunday we are tackling yard work and waiting for the youngest daughter to come back home from her trip to NM.Report

6. We came very close to seeing Bastille and To Kill a King, otherwise known as the Maribou show, tomorrow, but after hours of furious negotations (I had two shows I wanted to see, Charles Bradley and Thievery Corporation, and she had two she wanted to see, Bastille and Passenger), when it looked like we were going to buy Bastille tickets, we learned that during our negotiations they had sold out.

   But Charles Bradley!Report

   1. Thievery fell off fast for me, but that first album is pretty dope.

      .38
      .45
      A Thievery number
      The Corporation

      Report

   2. OH MY GOD.

      I AM SO BUMMED FOR HER.

      DID YOU TRY STUB HUB ETC?Report

      1. We looked, but they were rather expensive.

         They’ll be back. Lately, everyone is coming to Austin often.Report

      2. Hah, yeah. That is one advantage of living in Austin which causes me to envy you.Report

      3. Well, y’all can always visit. R. is as good a tour guide, particularly for nightlife, as you could possibly find. I’d bet money she could even have Jay out dancing at a spectacular DJ show until they kick us out.Report

   3. (Trufax I almost went to Vegas on my birthday week to see Bastille. I couldn’t afford it and I really would’ve been in huge trouble for going out of town and I probably would have failed school… and it STILL took me an hour to talk myself out of buying tickets.)Report

   4. The problems of prolonged negotiations but it seems to have worked out for you.Report

7. Nothing special for tonight.

   Tomorrow, the new girlfriend and I are going to the fine arts museum.

   Sunday will probably be chores and yard work, also watching Wrestlemania VII if I have time.Report

   1. NOTHING SPECIAL for tonight?! 😉Report

      1. Oh, frig! Good call. I guess I should write something up in case my album choice gets picked.Report

   2. Wrestlemania VII… am I remembering correctly but isn’t that the awful one? (Or was IX the awful one?)Report

      1. I guess I will find out this weekend. The Main Event is Hogan/Slaughter (as Iraqi sympathizer). I did not watch WWE at this time, but I think there might be a few bad years ahead before the Attitude Era arrives.Report

      2. Ah, okay. Yeah, this one is unfairly maligned. It’s not *AWFUL*.

         Lord, it isn’t *GOOD*, but it’s not going to leave you saying “WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT???”

         IX will. (shudders)Report

8. Looks like a pretty quiet weekend for me. My wife will likely be out of town for most of the weekend, so it’ll be me and kiddo. If the weather turns around some, that should mean some time at playgrounds and the like.

   Fixing the oven will be on the list. I learned on Easter that at least with my oven, the element control is a single-pole switch – so, having a 240V element means that even when it’s powered down, it sits at 120V relative to ground. And when you lift the element to clean underneath, if the exposed contacts at the back of the element touch the body of the oven, sparks will fly and the smoke will escape (today I am thankful for: household circuit breakers).

   Hopefully I can work in some time to have tea with a friend who’s briefly in town on Saturday

   Incidentally – Charles de Lint’s The Cats of Tanglewood Forest is an awesome children’s book – I’ve never seen kiddo so keen to keep hearing the next part of a story before. Apparently she was talking to her grandmother on skype yesterday, went and got the book, and was telling her grandma about it. It’s a bit of a stretch for kiddo vocabulary-wise, but the story has her captivated.Report

   1. Charles de Lint’s The Cats of Tanglewood Forest is an awesome children’s book

      He’s one of my favorite authors. (I want to be a Crow Girl when I grow up.) That is until Onion Girl, where I could not bear to have harm happen to Jilly. I need to go back, and perhaps The Cat’s of Tanglewood Forest is the ticket.Report

      1. I guess for me harm had always happened to Jilly and it helped to know more about it…. one of my favorite writers too. I reread Trader and Someplace to Be Flying and Jack of Kinrowan and Memory and Dream. (Actually I’ve reread a lot of his, but I come back to those 4 most often.) The first book of his that I read was The Little Country, and I snuck down to the music room in the basement of my dorm to play all the songs on my saxophone… then years later when I took up the pennywhistle out they came again :D.Report

9. At the burrito place, the guy across the counter says “want a free burrito? We were making your burrito and messed it up. We accidentally put the hot hot sauce on it.”

   So tonight is actually turning out to be pretty good.Report

   1. the hot hot sauce…tonight is actually turning out to be pretty good.

      Tomorrow, however…Report

      1. Tomorrow is a million years away.Report

   2. One way Texas has changed me is that I put either hot sauce or salsa doña on everything. My writes water half of the time I’m eating.Report

      1. Writes = eyes. Phone = suck.Report

      2. Due to the frequent and chronic migraine I suffer, I believe I’m developing some deep insight into a significant modern problem — we don’t cry enough. I don’t mean the emotional stuff; I mean eyes tearing up and watering.

         While at the worst of the migraine problems I had with menopause (so constant that for nearly a year, I could barely talk), I would grow more and more depressed, and then I would cry, and I’d feel mentally better. One day, I wondered if the dark sadness was my way of provoking tears. So when I felt it coming on, I’d let myself cry, and would quickly feel better; then I wouldn’t wait for the sadness, I’d notice this pressure-in-the-eyes thing and cry and feel better; no sadness required at all. Within a few weeks of this, the depression abated. (I do not suggest this a cure for all depression.)

         I think there’s something essential to health about tears, beyond cleansing the eyes. I suspect the love of hot, tear-producing foods may be related to my propensity to depression during that year; a way to make ourselves tear up.

         /and thank you, once again, for tolerating my arm-chair brain-doctor questions.Report

      3. The very first time I went to Chipotle, I got the hot hot and couldn’t believe that anyone could eat something this abusive. There was no pleasure, only searing pain.

         Now I can’t even taste it.Report

      4. @chris and @jaybird Have you ever had a ghost pepper? Eat one of those and get back to me. I will bow to your superiority over my tame ways.

         If you can’t get your hands on one, get Mrs. Renfro’s Ghost Pepper salsa from the supermarket. I can eat that, very slowly, over a long time. But it’s pretty hard core. Frustratingly, the local markets only carry GP and sweet, neither of which am I a fan of. They do carry the green stuff, which is just about right, but sometimes I don’t want green.

         Also, if you like BBQ sauce with a tang, I recommend Stubb’s. Once I went there, I could never go back.Report

      5. I haven’t had a ghost pepper. A friend of mine grew his own, and I tried it, but it didn’t come out all that hot (he had an explanation for why, but I don’t remember it at the moment).

         And Stubb’s sauce is pretty good. It’s sold everywhere now, though since about half of the shows we go to are at Stubb’s, we eat there at least a few times a year. I am a sucker for the pepper and cheese spinach, which has a bit of a kick itself.Report

      6. My favorite kinds of hot (anymore) aren’t the jabs of the ghost pepper (I tried ghost pepper hot sauce a few months back… a single drop on a saltine (it was what they had) and I described it to the lady behind the counter as “weaponizable”) but the hot that has your first bite saying “this isn’t that spicy, I thought I ordered spicy!” and the last bite has you sweating and snotty and weeping into your third request for more napkins (and could you leave the pitcher on the table? I’ll give you a good tip…).Report

10. This is what I did Friday

    http://www.tout.com/m/gamoo5

    http://www.tout.com/m/nm8n8qReport

    1. Wow!!! That looks fun. How fast does that thing go?Report

       1. It can go about 20 mph when pulling our train did not get over about 10 mph. When I drove it, it had no cars attached so could go much faster but boy is it a bumpy rideReport

11. Tonight I participated in Glyph’s joyous listening party. Tomorrow, bookkeeping and furniture building. Sunday, playing a little bass at church, doing a Hank Williams tune called “Jesus Remembered Me”, then mostly likely taking a golf nap.

    To continue on the great children’s books discussion, my 2 faves from when my kids were little are Roddy Doyle’s The Giggler Treatment and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The former is one of the funniest books you’ll ever read, and the latter has all of Rushdie’s love affair with the English language.Report

12. The long anticipated barbecue finally arrived! Pork chops are marinating, and I’m going to go chop some kindling now.Report

    1. @dragonfrog Woo hoo!

       What kind of BBQ did you get?Report

       1. A Weber kettle grill – nothing that special.

          I think green papaya in a marinade does have a noticeable tenderizing effect.Report

13. The washer has been shifted over to the dryer, and the next time I do laundry, IT WILL BE IN MY OWN BASEMENT.Report

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