Weekend tasks and pleasures

Got up at 6:30. Went to the gym and swam laps for an hour. Wanted to take a picture of the pool, but obviously you can't take pictures of strangers swimming - I wouldn't like it if someone were taking a photo of me. And you really can't take photos in a locker room if other people are around. That would be just creepy. So I have a photo of a deserted locker room.

Here's one of the best parts about swimming laps - it gives a person plenty of time to think. I came up with a long list of things I needed to do, or wanted to do, this weekend.

Nice hot shower and then back home for breakfast.

Coffee, toast, and a bowl of tomato slices, fresh off the patio. Then to the computer, where I emailed a resume and cover letter I had prepared yesterday. No more about that unless there is any interest, but let me just say that I'm not averse to the idea of a new job in a different city.

Then our regular Saturday routine - library, Whole Foods, Giant supermarket, Wawa for a second cup of coffee, BJ's (a big discount store) for supplies like paper towels, Produce Junction for an amazing amount of mushrooms and red peppers at a very low price. A frenzy of consumerism - and we are now stocked up for the week.

We discovered a new product - frozen Greek yogurt!

Back home to put everything away, and to have a bowl of tabouli.

Time to tackle the back yard. I filled four big bags with branches that had come down during the recent storms, and it was hot work in the humidity. Will finish up the front yard tomorrow.

Visited with the neighbors across the fence, and admired their adorable grandson. He has recently learned to walk, and you can't keep him still.

Dripping with sweat, so back inside for another shower. Made a southwestern stir-fry on rice for dinner.

Watched a very good movie after dinner - The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky. An indie film that all three of us enjoyed very much.

And now typing up my blog diary for the day. And thinking back to that list of things I need to do this weekend - there are still so many undone!

Hurriquake week and assumptions

I was talking to colleagues at work yesterday about the hurriquake week, and we discovered that most of us had immediately assumed the craziest stuff when we felt the earth shaking.

Crazy in the sense that it was the only thing our brains could wrap themselves around in those first few seconds, because we had no earthquake experience to fall back on.

For example, one person was in a car when she felt the shaking, and assumed that she was having car trouble - really bad, peculiar car trouble.

Another was in the house, with a small child who happened to be having a mild temper tantrum at the time, rolling around on the floor and kicking the furniture. Her first thought was that her son was getting awfully strong, since his exertions seemed to be shaking the whole house.

I was at home sitting at the computer, and my initial assumption was that my son upstairs had knocked over a heavy piece of furniture. Now, he has never in his life done such a thing. However, I was at someone's house twenty years ago when her son did knock over a dresser upstairs, and it shook the house - and my mind immediately leaped to this "explanation," even though I hadn't thought about it in decades.

Colleagues who had lived in California, on the other hand, said that their first thought when things started wobbling was simply "Earthquake!"

A good illustration of how we turn to the familiar first when something wholly new occurs.

The next time I have car trouble, though, I'm probably going to think - earthquake!

Labor Day - what's on the menu?

Grilled stuff - corn and chicken.

Yum.

Labor Day Eve

Today is the eve of a holiday celebrating the role of labor unions. I believe that unions have had a great role (and, unfortunately, a terrible role) in our history.

But I have never been a member of a union. Increasingly, very few people are.

So I have not much to say about organized labor.

About the topic of labor in general, though, especially the labor of homemakers and housekeepers (non-union) I have some experience.

Today, I cleaned the refrigerator. Thoroughly. It's a job that people (almost always female people) do all the time, mostly unnoticed.

The need for cleaning the refrigerator was great at this time, because a glass container had exploded inside the fridge. (Note: it was not filled with hot food. I have no idea why it exploded.) A good reason to clean.

I cleaned with a vengeance. And with a steam cleaner.

The process looks like this:

That is, it looks like lots of white and steam.

And I ended up with this:

Surprisingly enjoyable, in spite of the fact that it won't last.

Then I had a cup of lemongrass and spearmint tea with honey, in a mug I bought at a drug store in San Francisco a few years ago. While in the city, I visited a friend I had not seen in more than 30 years.

All in all, very satisfying. Cleaning, relaxing, remembering.

Looking forward to the holiday tomorrow, even though I am not a member of a union.

The Black Prince

It's a variety of tomato, not royalty.

And it's mostly green, not black.

Tastes great. Seems like they were a long time coming, though. We are now getting a good crop of tomatoes, but it's almost Labor Day. I think perhaps all the rain in August (the rainiest August in this area since whenever) discouraged the plants.

What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in college—the term paper—and not necessarily intrinsic to a student's natural writing style or thought process?

Collaborative learning for the digital age, by Cathy Davidson.

Lots of interesting stuff for anyone who writes, or teaches, or blogs, or reads.

Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers. Longitudinal studies of student writers conducted by Stanford University's Andrea Lunsford, a professor of English, assessed student writing at Stanford year after year. Lunsford surprised everyone with her findings that students were becoming more literate, rhetorically dexterous, and fluent—not less, as many feared. The Internet, she discovered, had allowed them to develop their writing.

Perhaps academic writing is so poor because we can't help but write poorly in that style. It would be amazing if it turns out that blogging is a better way to teach writing than the traditional academic methods.

The section on crowdsourcing grading is very interesting to me, in spite of the fact that I am skeptical - but interested.

[The world] sprang into being . . . from my cup of tea

And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

Swann's Way

The famous opening about the tea and the madeleine. I love it.