Now Knitting: Hats For Giants

Taking a break from baby knitting last week (I finally seamed the sweater -- it's amazing how a little university gossip can distract you into completing the most tedious tasks), I knit up the beanie below. It took all of three days, I zipped right through it. TOO BAD IT CAME OUT SIZED FOR GIANT PEOPLE. 

My bad. Because I'm a lazy knitter, I don't often check for gauge before I start a project from a pattern. I don't think I've ever checked gauge on a hat at all, ever. I like my hats slouchy, and I used to think that the slouchier the better. This humongous thing, though, makes me look like I belong in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Or like I need to dread my hair to have something to stuff it with. Become a dreadlocked cartoon dwarf.

What a quandary. I decided that I had two options: either gift the hat to a person with dreadlocks and/or an enormous cranium, or wet block aggressively and then intentionally shrink it in the dryer (surely felting it in the process, very risky). A shame either way, really. I was really looking forward to wearing this thing in inclement Brontë weather! And that yarn was absurdly expensive! A friend then suggested that I do the reasonable and rational thing, which is to frog back halfway and then knit it up smaller, DUH. Thanks, reasonable and rational friend, I think that's exactly what I'll do!

For those of you interested in the pattern, it's Jared Flood's Rosebud from the Brooklyn Tweed Fall 2011 collection. Beautiful, just like everything else from the Brooklyn Tweed universe. JUST CHECK YOUR GAUGE, PLEASE. 

I'll post back with some "after-after" photos when I'm through, but I need to finish a baby bonnet and some tiny booties first. In the mean time, I'll leave you with this final, dreamy close-up of the mega-cable. Yes, sweet woolen dreams.

Walking with mr. Coe: sociopath and/or werewolf edition

Jason and I started walking Roscoe together on a regular basis recently. I love the three of us walking into town together. I love waving hello to our neighbors as we pass. I love that Roscoe waits attentively for us at the door of the store, and that the owner gives him treats as we leave. I love that, like the store owner, the winos and drunks on the park benches in town are literally delighted when they see Roscoe (it's weird, we're used to it and it's harmless).* I love that I get to walk with the two of them, though I have to admit that I don't think either of them care as much about the group walks as I do. Jason, at least, does it because he knows it makes me happy, but the dog couldn't care less who's doing the walking or how many of us there are.

Look at that dog go, full speed ahead! Roscoe has this home-store-home, Glen Arbor Drive circuit memorized.

Here he is at his favorite ivy patch on Glen Arbor.

Take a look at that insanely happy face above. A walk a day keeps the neurosis at bay.

On this afternoon's walk, I was able to snap some photos of the missing cat flyers that have been popping up in Ben Lomond over the past couple of months. These are just the two on our Glen Arbor circuit; there are tons of others (of other cats) tacked up around town.

The one above has been up for quite some time -- three months. The one below is "more fresh." SAD.

Oddly, I wasn't the one to take notice of all the missing cat flyers, Jason was. It may be because I'm just not that into cats** -- and Jason is -- but, in any case, I'm jealous that Jason made the Jessica Fletcher-esque old lady detective observation and not me. 

A couple of weeks ago, Jason said that he was concerned about the amount of missing cat flyers. When I asked why (because I'm a jerk who doesn't care for cats), he told me that he suspected that there must be teenaged boys in the neighborhood abducting and killing neighborhood cats. And then I said: THAT'S CRAZY. 

Once again, I'm jealous that Jason's having the weird old lady thoughts and not me. 

Rather than blame the missing cats on burgeoning young sociopaths, I actually think that it's coyotes. OR WEREWOLVES. I CAN PLAY THIS GAME JUST AS WELL AS HE CAN. 

But, no, really, I think it's coyotes.*** Which isn't any less scary! We've been having a lot of late night/early morning coyote pack action in the neighborhood lately. Few night-scares are scarier than waking up in the dark to the sounds of a yipping coyote pack. They sound like horrible old screaming crones. SPOOKY. 

I'll keep you updated. Or, actually, Jason might. This seems to be his crusade. 

* MOUNTAIN LIVING. 

** It isn't that I actively dislike them -- except for maybe one in particular whose name starts with an H and ends in a Y SARAH T KNOWS. 

*** Or a mountain lion! It's been a while since we've had a mountain lion prowling around, though, and word travels pretty fast if there's a new one so it's unlikely.

Jonah Matranga and two new postcards take us into the summer season

Well, this is a blast from the past...

On the back, Rachael only wrote: nostalgia! Indeed, Rachael, indeed!

Remember Jonah Matranga, also known as onlinedrawing, bandleader of New End Original (anagram of onlinedrawing), and member of earlier band Far? No? Here's the wikipedia link, then.* I found the postcard above in the mailbox earlier this week and thought: woah. Rachael must have been hoarding this postcard since, like, 1999. I remember that we got really into his music around that time, and saw him perform at the Troubadour in LA at least twice (oh what fond teenaged memories). The music was important to us then. I think I'll scrounge up those CD ep's of his that I have hiding in CD sleeves (OLD) and give them a listen. Apparently he just came out with a new album! And did you know that he has a twitter?**

A couple of days later I received the postcard below. What is going on in that image?

And on the back, a lovely message (though I do wish that I had the info for whatever's going on on the front of the postcard... perhaps you'll humor me in the comments, Rachael?) You can just barely make out a little text blurb under the sticker Rachael put down to write over, but I don't want to peel it back and ruin the text.

Thank you for being an enthusiastic postcard sender, Rachael! Keep them coming! I'll see you in August (if you don't take a weekend roadtrip to visit us up here first, HINT HINT)!

* Also check out this April 2013 Huffington Post piece with horrendous writing done by Salvatore Bono. 

** All of this information is purely for Rachael's amusement. Unless I start developing weird Jonah Matranga fan base blog traffic to rival my weird Enriqueta Martí serial killer fan base blog traffic. 

Kitchen (Mis)Adventure: Spinach Pesto Pasta Salad

I took this photo of one of my favorite meals months ago, look at how beautiful it is! I was reminded to post a Kitchen (Mis)Adventure about it on Sunday when I was making a new batch. I generally get six servings out of any given batch of my spinach pesto pasta concoction and, though Jason will have it once and maybe repeat with leftovers the next day, I'll eat it every day (sometimes twice a day) until the bowl's empty. Because it's amazing, and filling, and wholesome, and rad.

It takes all of 15 minutes to prepare, it tastes better the second (third, fourth) day, and you can eat it straight out of the fridge. DECADENCE. 

Ingredients:
8 oz penne pasta
0.5 cup pesto
8 oz baby spinach
2 cups kidney beans
juice of 2 lemons
0.75 cup toasted almonds
handful of chopped up sun-dried tomatoes
a healthy dash of red pepper flakes

While the pasta's cooking, prep and then dump the fresh spinach, beans, and sun-dried tomatoes into a large bowl. When the pasta's done and drained, quickly dump it on top of the spinach, legumes, and tomatoes and let it sit and steam for a bit. Toast your almonds (or buy a bag of pre-toasted almond slivers at Trader Joe's like I do and avoid all that), slice up and juice your lemons, measure out your pesto, and then dump all that in, too. Super excelente, you're all done.

We generally eat it at room temperature or cold, with some broiled chicken, as seen above. It's perfectly great on its own, but adding the chicken helps Jason feel like he's eating a real meal (eye-roll). It doesn't even need any grated cheese sprinkled on top (though I do add some generally because I'm a glutton) -- making it a great vegan dish! OOPS, wait, pesto sauce has cheese, right? I'm sure somebody's figured out how to make vegan pesto, probably Sarah Britton at My New Roots. Have you seen this shit? Vegan food has never looked (so) attractive. HA! 

I originally adapted this recipe from theKitchn's Lemony Pesto Pasta with Edamame and Almonds (mouthful), and it changes slightly every time I make it. The "pasta, pesto, lemon, legumes, iron-rich dark greens" formula is super versatile. As long as it's light on the pasta/pesto and heavy on the greens/lemon juice/legumes,* I don't think it really matters what you use, it'll always come out perfect. Doodle around with it and let me know what you come up with!

Lastly, I want to mention that this stuff is super healthful. Don't be turned off by the pesto -- you're using a very small amount, so little that it isn't really "saucy" just "bindy" in a small-amount-of-salad-dressing kind of way. I calculated its caloric and nutritional information** on Sunday, and (with a light sprinkling of grated pecorino-romano and not including the broiled chicken) two heaping salad-tongs full is all of 450 calories and a swell balance of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, etc. AM I BORING YOU YET? 

* Do be sure to "steam" the greens with the hot pasta a bit before stirring in the pesto and lemon juice, though. Especially if you're working with some gnarly fresh dino-kale or something.
** Can you tell that I'm trying to lose weight? I wouldn't be able to without this dish, life would be too awful.

Now Knitting: Knits for small people

EZ sweater for a small girl baby.

A couple of weeks before I left for Spain, Stevenson's Core coordinator started up a knitting circle at the college, the Stevenson Stitch, Monday evenings. It was perfect timing -- I was a couple of weeks out of my Forever Spring Break period, I was looking forward to new ways to be a sociable human being, I needed to get started on some knitting for Paula's baby girl (due in June), and I wanted to get back to doing an activity that would help me to, generally, CHILL OUT. I hadn't worked on a knitting project in over a year.

I showed up on the first day, and it was just Caren, my coordinator, and handful of her students -- two of which were just learning to knit. Let me tell you: it was delightful. Delightful. We sat and talked, I helped a girl learn to distinguish knit stitches from purled stitches (scarves vs. nooses!), and I cast on for the baby sweater above. I went straight home after we stopped at 9pm and continued working on the sweater until 2am like a crazy person. I'd forgotten how relaxing knitting is! It's like yoga for the brain, I can meditate on those little stitches for hours and hours and hours.

I finished knitting the sweater by the end of the week and went back to the next week's Stitch to sew in all the loose yarn. I intended to sew up the under-arm seams (the only seams that the sweater has!) as well, but I'm a lazy person who hates seaming so screw it, I'll do it later.

I got the pattern from the book above: Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. EZ has beautiful, simple and intuitive designs and a great knitting ethos. Consider the following gauge notes for baby leggings:

Don't worry too much about size; babies vary, and knitting stretches. 

Revolutionary! No numbers listed at all. WHO CARES if it isn't perfect! WHO CARES if you forgot to put in a botton hole or two! WHO CARES if you goofed the lace pattern a couple of times! The baby certainly won't!

Here's a photograph of what the finished sweater will look like, above. When I first got started on the sweater, all those knitting-produced endorphins shot me into expectations turbo over-drive: I was convinced that I would get the sweater, bonnet, leggings, and blanket all done in time for my visit to NYC this summer. Since I've had about a month to let my expectations settle, reality has set in, and I've come to set my goals to completing the sweater, bonnet, and a pair of booties to match. Those leggings look like a lot of fun, so they're definitely on the list for later, but I need to pace myself (and she won't need them until winter). 

I won't be posting any finished images to the blog until after my trip to NYC in July (lest Paula checks in on the blog regularly, not sure that she does), but I'll post little tidbits to the Instagram feed and here as well as I work on this and future projects. The knitting bug has bitten again, hard. (GROSS)

Greetings from postcard season

Look what I found in my mailbox when I got home earlier this week -- the second postcard of the season! If you've been keeping an eye on my Instagram activities over the past couple of weeks, you'll know that I've just gotten back from a family trip to Spain. It was the first time in about ten years that my parents and sister and I have been able to go together as a family to visit my grandparents and extended family, and it was great. More on that sometime soon. In the meantime, enjoy this garden gnomes and Jesus Christ, Chelsea Flea Market postcard from Sarah T!

The nuptial celebration she refers to is her own. I'm looking forward to a great, Latin American Entourage,* NYC reunion -- even if it is in July, my second-least favorite month in NYC (right after August). That's how much I love you, Sarah T: voluntarily -- happily, even -- coming to NYC in the middle of summer, my hell on earth.

* Oh, the Entourage: I miss you!

Sack Man: NYC Specimen

"El Señor del Saco," Clo Blanco

Clo posted this amazing photograph onto her instagram over the weekend and then sent me a copy so I could post it here as evidence of an NYC, street performer, gold-painted Sack Man specimen. Do note the small, gold victim's foot sticking out of his Sack Man sack as he snoozes on the subway platform in the Times Square station. Nefarious!

Weekend Update: Hello, friends/springtime edition

Greetings from the Monster Menagerie: new addition, Kachina ("Hillilli") doll, on the right.

It smells like spring out there! And with summer-time temperatures, to boot. This is the second day of a five-day streak of temperatures in the mid to high-eighties in Ben Lomond, and we have the house on heat lockdown. Early every morning, I'll open all the doors and windows to let in what's left of the cool night-time air, and then I'll close everything up and draw all of the blinds on the west-side of the house at around 9am to lock the cool temperatures in for as long as possible. This can usually get us through most of the afternoon, and then we'll open everything up and maybe even get the hurricane fan going once it starts cooling down outside again. 

The winter quarter ended with a bang. So much so that I embarked on a three-week mental Spring Break sometime in the final week of teaching. Once the vacation-fog cleared from my brain, since I'm not teaching this spring quarter, I've turned my attentions to everything that had been neglected due to my teaching load in the previous quarters -- namely, the house. 

Jason and I have been doing some gnarly spring cleaning around here. Organizing closets, bookshelves, climbing things up into the attic, scrubbing cabinets and baseboards, vacuuming cobwebs and dust tundras, etc. etc. It's amazing how easy it is to ignore the fact that you live in the Munster's family home (cobwebs on candlesticks -- no irony, no hyperbole, true!). But once I got the heavy-duty cleaning out of the way (12 buckets of soapy hot water to mop the entire house) I couldn't stop dusting and scrubbing and throwing things away (selling books and other stuffs at Logos and online). My parents came to visit last weekend and we extended the work outdoors -- repairing the irrigation system demolished by this winter's septic system repairs, planting and pruning in the front yard. It 's all looking GOOD. We even have the hammock back up, too.

This should also mean that there will be more activity on the blog as well (how many times have you heard that one before?). Since I'm not teaching right now, I'm actually quite hopeful that it will be the case since I'll need something to keep my brain energies exercising. It's amazing how much "healthy" brainpower* gets sucked into teaching and how much of a surplus you have once you aren't teaching anymore. I want to read books and watch foreign films for which I must read subtitles and write big thoughts. I want to start producing things other than letter grades and essay evaluations again.

Speaking of the blog itself, yesterday I was looking through its pageview statistics and saw that a good deal of traffic was coming in from the blog Barcelone Experimental. Look! They took some of my filtered images from my third Enriqueta Martí post! Reading through the article, I was finally able to find the link they put in for my blog. My French may be rusty (and it certainly is), but it looks like they're attributing my Enriqueta Martí posts to Elsa Plaza. That gives me a chuckle (see the Editor's Note and comments at the bottom of the post for why). I briefly considered writing the author (or better yet: leaving a comment) but then decided against it. It's flattering enough that my weird Sack Lady posts have become source material for others -- and, if we wait long enough, Elsa Plaza will take care of the misattribution eventually.  So, thanks, anonymous author of Barcelone Experimental!

* as opposed to "junky" brainpower -- that thing I use to watch shitty television and waste time on the internet. 

Springtime, also for postcards

Check it out -- it's the first postcard of the 2013 season!

Retro and futuristic and weird all at once. 

My former student Ali (adoptive son of Carlos and Claudia) is spending his final college quarter abroad in Berlin. He left close to a month ago promising postcards, which is a good thing especially considering that he is terrible about checking/reading/writing email. Here's the (first?) postcard. Keep them coming, Ali!

Turning the postcard over was especially exciting:

Woah. 

I love receiving lengthy epistles via postcard! It appears that Ali is having a fantastic time. Careful not to do too much public 9am drinking, sir. You're enrolled in classes, after all. Leave that Bacchanalia for the summer. 

By any means necessary

We are now not only behind but out of order as well -- to come, if I can get it together: Gandhi; Martin Luther King, Jr; Viktor Frankl. Malcolm X week went well; we discussed privilege, stereotyping, and old lady conspiracy theories regarding the racial/ethnic makeup of the student bodies in the colleges at our university. A former student of mine (from Merrill) joined us as well -- new blood, different Core, same considerations.

Core Café flyer by Clo Blanco.

Malcolm X scared a lot of my students, and that's okay. Many of them came around, and when they started making connections between Nietzsche's "slave morality" and Malcolm's critique of Christianity, the twinkle in their eyes lit up my heart. 

Nothing feels better than 18 year olds coming around to Friedrich Nietzsche (vis-a-vis Malcolm X Shabazz). Will to power, meet (post)colonial theory. 

Go west, young arantxa!

Highway 46, heading west on the Antelope Plain.

I just got back last week from a very quick (very truncated, I had to rush back a day early to beat the storm) visit down to Los Angeles. Back in December, I learned that my wonderful friend Paula would be in LA from NYC for the President's Day weekend, and that my parents were planning a trip to visit my sister in Seattle for that weekend as well and were looking for someone to take care of their dog, Rusty. What an excellent coincidence! I signed on to drive down to dogsit and see Paula,* too.

In the end, my parents never booked that trip, and I waited to leave Santa Cruz until late Saturday morning. I always take the 101 all the way down (I know every California Highway Patrol hiding spot from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles. 101 all the way!), but traffic was so bad that, in a moment of desperation, I slipped onto the 46 in Paso Robles and jogged over to the 5 in order to catch Paula's party later that evening.

What a weird and wonderful decision that was.

Oil pumps and tumbleweeds along the 46. 

There are certain towns and strips of highway -- even entire counties -- in California that, since we were little kids, my mom would make us lock the car doors in while passing through while on road trips. It makes us laugh now, but my mom was reacting directly to an entire catalogue of highly publicized cases of child molestation (Kern County), kidnappings and serial murders (Merced, Modesto, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties), endemic drug addiction and its correlating violences (Antelope Valley, Inland Empire et al), and general "sordidness" and infamy that has stereotyped so many rural and desert communities in the state.

I like to think of myself as a self-assured and independent person,* and I have plenty of experience travelling internationally on my own, but there are still certain carefully stipulated rules that I follow when it comes to lone, long driving trips: fully charged cell phone, large bottle of water, gas stops in large towns, no highway rest stops, no gratuitous side trips, no scenic drives. And, lastly, no Interstate 5. On the road, I am Little Red Riding Hood and I stay the course -- until this past trip, that is.

Driving the 5 itself, once I got to it, was tedious, boring, long, and filled with insane people tearing down the highway at 90+ miles per hour, but it was the jog along Highway 46 that put me on red alert. As my Yiya would say: METE MIEDO. Specifically, Lost Hills mete miedo.

The small drilling town of Lost Hills is, of course, scary in that same way that the wolf is scary in the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale: sinisterly attractive in the way the Uncanny always is, dangerous and seductive and ugly. The landscape is monstrous in its very nature: arid, barren, corrosive and corroded in its hyper-industrialized mechanizations. Driving through its oil fields, I thought to myself: this is like a weird and horrible Steinbeck novel that I've never read. Then I realized: No, it's Upton Sinclair's Oil! personified, 90 years evolved. Post-industrial and post-apocalyptic. Have you seen the great and horrible There Will Be Blood? It is brutal and beautiful and it is this place. Amazing.

I couldn't drive fast enough through the high winds and dust and miles of oil pumps, passing the tumbleweed and the gas station and the strange little school district building. I am the perfect abductee victim! A young woman driving a Prius! Mindlessly meandering alone along the high desert plain! I am tasty and delectable serial killer bait! 

But I went back! Over my short weekend stay in Los Angeles, I read a great article by Richard Manning on North Dakota's fracking boom in this month's Harper's Magazine. I kept thinking about the Lost Hills oil field, not one of the largest in California but one of the most productive, and its natural gas reserves; the weird little isolated community struggling along beside it; its scary alone-ness and desert desolation. I decided to retrace my route back up to Santa Cruz and stop in Lost Hills and take some photographs.

Here they are. Aren't they something?

I originally intended to pull over along the highway a couple of times while driving through town and the oil fields. But, frankly, I'm still my mother's daughter, and I lost my nerve. The winds were gusting and I felt too exposed. I snapped photos blindly with my iPod as I drove along, eventually putting the camera away when I had to quickly swerve out of the way of the third tumbleweed to bulldoze out onto the highway.

While driving, I started listening to an audio book I had downloaded at my parents' house before leaving: Hampton Sides' 2007 text Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West. It's right in line with another history of the American West I had downloaded a couple of years ago -- Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe of American History (MOUTHFUL) by S.C. Gwynne (2011) -- only, frankly, better. Because I'm a snob, I attribute it to the fact that, though both authors have History BAs from prestigious Ivy Leagues, Sides considers himself a historian whereas Gwynne identifies, professionally, as a journalist. When the rhetoric got problematic and weird in Gwynne's history of the Comanche,*** I first let it pass because he wasn't an academic and then eventually stopped reading/listening altogether. Nearing the end of Book I of Sides' text, I have yet to run into this problem of what I feel to be an unbalanced critical approach.

But I digress: listening to this history of the American Mountain Man, the Mexican-American War, the invasion and conquest of the American West, and the highly polemical and problematic imagining of race and ethnicity in the Southwest in particular, I drove from Lost Hills all the way into Paso Robles. And as I listened (with great interest, might I add) I reflected on all the other kaleidoscope images that make up my imaginary of the American West: the old Autry westerns of the 40s and 50s, and the spaghetti westerns of the 60s and 70s; novels and short stories by those beloved authors who I tie directly to California and the West like Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, John Steinbeck, Joan Didion; those long and yearly road trips from my childhood, during which we explored every continental state west of the Rockies; forays to roadside tourist traps in the Colorado Desert with my grandfather; Pee-Wee's Big Adventure; the Manson Family; the Donner Party; Neil Young and Tom Russel songs; Cabeza de Vaca wandering the Sonoran Desert.

I love the West in all of its kitsch, its horror, its Good, its Bad, and its Ugly.

I decided to stop for dinner before turning north onto the 101 in Paso Robles, and went off in search of Good Ol' Burger, a nutty looking tourist trap in downtown Paso Robles that my dad and I had stopped in for lunch on a drive up to Santa Cruz nearly twelve years ago. The weird shack was gone, as you can see, but the burgers are still good. They built the new place over ten years ago, apparently.

* Paula is nearly 6 months pregnant -- surprise! I wanted to see her before the little one (who I'll have the pleasure of meeting in July) arrives in June. 

** Okay, let's get real: I meant "woman." Travelling alone is definitely a sexed issue. 

*** Judge-y qualifiers like "primitive," "savage," "uncivilized" -- as well as a bold contention that the Comanche (pre-horse) had, literally, no culture whatsoever -- eventually turned me off completely.

Woolf on the wall

A backlog already.

Two weeks ago, my students read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and they were, refreshingly, receptive. They were digging Julia Shakespeare, they were digging a room with a lock on the door and $37,000.* They were even digging the Androgyny of Mind. Enthused, I then pushed them on her critique of uncontrolled emotion in writing and asked them how her aesthetic framework compared to Nietzsche's and lost them. Many didn't know what 'aesthetics' meant. But, you know: Baby steps.

Flyer by Clo Blanco

Woolf's Core Café discussion went wonderfully. It was an intimate group -- only a handful of students, none of them compelled to come by their professors or a half-finished essay assignment -- and the conversation was inspired. 

* How much Woolf's 500 British pounds would be in today's American dollars, according to Dr. Susan Gubar, the Mariner edition's editor. 

Pink Freud

I took this snapshot of a flyer for my "Core Café" discussion salon for work last week. I hand out flyers at each week's faculty meeting, and by the time I walk into my classroom at 2 o'clock to teach my second class, a flyer's always tacked up on the grungy bulletin board in the back of the room. A circuitous way of getting things done, but one less thing I have to do myself (i'm so lazy) -- excellent! Thank you mystery instructor who teaches in my room at 12:30!

Freud in the American university classroom: so many penises.

An even bigger thank you to the super helicopterita who agreed to make the flyers for me in the first place. The first link in the chain of posting flyers for Core Café is, of course, the flyers' creator: Claudia! Did you know Clo Blanco is an internationally renowned art director, graphic artist, and painter? Did you know that she designed the NYC Condom "Get some!" campaign? Well she is and she did, and you should see her online portfolio on Behance.

The best part of the fact that I somehow suckered (badgered) Clo into making these flyers for me is that she designs a new one for each week's salon meeting and emails me each week's design on Sundays. It's a fancy surprise every Sunday evening, almost as much a surprise for me as is it for the rest of the faculty and students. Clo, everyone at Stevenson College loves the flyers. They want to mail you cookies as a thank you.

I'll post new photos each week, and then photograph the wall in my office where I put up each week's flyer at the end of the academic quarter -- a grand total of nine flyers! Marx and Nietzsche through Marjane Satrapi! It's quite the canon.

This week coming up is Virginia Woolf!

More postcards for the winter

These four postcards arrived in the mail over the course of a week and a half recently, and, as far as I can tell, are the wonderful holiday postcard equivalent of a happy, drunken New Year's voicemail (I did receive both communications from the lovely group of people who went in on writing and sending these postcards). Online sleuthing (instagram) tells me that these four postcards were likely purchased and prepared over the Thanksgiving holiday last fall in Boston, and then mailed from New York City some time later. It took a long while for them to get to my mailbox, but they were a treat well-worth waiting for.

If you turn them all over, they fit together in order to reveal a drawn drunken X-mas tree formation. I would have taken a photo, but that would have entailed a bunch of blurring out of names and addresses. NO THANK YOU. 

More photos on Instagram. Besos and abrazos to the Padrón-Blanco-Thomas's for sending me a series of postcards that made me very happy. 

Welcome back, here I am

After what felt like the world's shortest winter break, spent mostly at my parents' house with my family, in semi-retirement,* here we are. And, in the blink of an eye, we're already finishing up week two of the new academic term. First Marx, now Nietzsche, next week Freud. Oh my god I'm in heaven.

Marx, Engels, Angela Lansbury, and me. Saturday nights don't get much better.

I have a new Sack Man post in the works (Sack Man and werewolf!), as well as a Serbian vampire and Venezuelan cannibal to investigate. With the way things have been going with my teaching load this academic year, we'll see how quickly I can churn them out. In the mean time, check out the Instagram, I'm posting images of the quotidien to it frequently.**

It's just about my bedtime. I've been getting up before dawn on teaching days to work and it is DELIGHTFUL. The world is quiet, and dark, and it's just me and the dog and maybe Murder She Wrote, too.

***

* Semi-retirement really isn't much of an exaggeration: up at 6am, working together, eating together, walking the dogs together, falling asleep at 9pm in front of the t.v., watching Rachel Maddow together. It's either semi-retirement or some kind of socialistic suburban co-op utopia.
** Jason tells me that, based on the sheer volume of photos of Roscoe on there, Instagram people must think that I'm an insane dog lady, which is fine, mainly because the only people following me are my friends who know that to be true already.