Traveling While With Parasite

This weekend the husband and I attended a wedding back east (we can actually say back east as we are actually from the east, all of these westerners who have never stepped foot to the east of the Rocky Mountains really should not call it back east...but anyway) which entailed traveling 5 hours in a plane from SLC to Newark.

When you live a million miles away from everyone (which I would recommend to everyone) you fly a lot. So we fly, a lot. I don't really like flying, I hate not having an escape route, but it's a necessity of life, so I fly, a lot. But I have never flown when my belly is sticking out further from my body than my chest, which makes my whole trick of spinning to the side and sleeping not work as the belly doesn't fit sideways in an airline seat. I'd like to go home in June to my stepsister's graduation, but I don't think it's going to work. I'll just be huge then and who the hell wants to travel like that? I mean, seriously!

But the wedding was fun. Husband got to see his family and the family got to see me in all my parasitical bliss. The next time I see these people the parasite just might have a name.

Oh, and, I was introduced to a friend of the husband's father as essentially the incubator for the grandchild...smile...I was thinking I need a t-shirt that says that in addition to the very cool parasite t-shirt my good friends got me.

Media Blitz

For the record, I have a degree from the esteemed S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in Newspaper Journalism. For a little - or really my entire high school life which began with my reading All the President's Men (which has some serious relevance today, but I digress) - while I was planning to be the next Woodward and Bernstein (and again a slight digression as I think, jeesh, if I had kept going down that path I could be toppling another evil president). This meant I needed a degree in newspaper - not communications, newspaper. And as I had bled orange my whole life - having been born at Syracuse General to an Orange alum - I needed a degree in newspaper from Syracuse University, which just happened to have one of the top three newspaper programs in the nation at the time. Unfortunately this path was derailed when it turned out I didn't really enjoy asking people questions - kind of a requirement to be a reporter - and that I really wanted to explain why politics happened rather than commenting on what happened politically. And if you re-read All the President's Men you'll see that all they're really doing is commenting on what happened politically. So I switched to Political Science.

But today I have rediscovered another reason why I left the path of Woodward and Bernstein. Media suck. Seriously. I have watched pre-eminent journalist after pre-eminent journalist try to trip up some young person in interviews after this tragedy. Thank God I am not in that profession.

Massacre at Virginia Tech

I am so angry today. In Virginia, 31 students were shot by another young man who decided to take his own life. Police officers go running into harm's way to try to save some young college students. We hear students on CNN and their voices are shaking as they try to answer media questions.

Why am I angry? Because three weeks ago I hosted a conversation on campus about guns on campus. The question, debated by a NRA lobbyist and a former Police Chief, was whether guns should be allowed on campus. At this conversation, the NRA jackass - wearing his fabulous $1K suit - brags about his ability to force campuses, specifically University of Utah, to allow students to have guns; he brags about the mortar launcher he has in his back yard, he brags about how much power the NRA has.

That MF. Here we are, half a month or so later, 32 students later, and this jackass is PROUD of what he did? I teach on a campus. And now I have to worry about some idiot coming in with a gun that the NRA says he has the right to have on campus to kill me and my students. And of course, checking the NRA website periodically throughout the day results in no reading of a statement from that interest group about how they feel about this.

But I know the argument they will say: if only all the students had guns, then someone could have taken him down.

Another banner day in America.

April Sucks

I really hate April.

Being a professor, or basically having a life that will always be a college schedule, means that certain times of the year are ruined by your job. You have a roller coaster job that is busy, extremely busy, at certain times of the year. And you don't get to go home at 5pm just because it's 5pm.

April is the last month of the school year. As I look at my calendar I have meetings, dinners, lunches, banquets, grading, final exams to write, student feathers to smooth...insanity insanity insanity. Thanksgiving is almost as bad and the week before my birthday (which is right around the first day of classes usually) ranks up there too (meaning my job has forever ruined my birthday). But April is terrible.

I will completely collapse in May. Not talk to anyone, not think about anything, and enter my own private ivory tower to work on my research (the reason I got into this gig in the first place).

2 weeks to go.

Very Cool

My father's friend sent this along, who then sent it along to me (did I mention that my dad has the COOLEST friends, I am probably the only kid on the planet who'd almost rather hang with her dad's friends from college than her own...but I digress).

Please enjoy.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4776181634656145640

Murphy's Law

I am picking up my parasite's minivan today. At 4pm. I have been driving around in a loaner from the Kia people since they took my trade in car 10 days ago. Today, on the day I am turning it in for my own car, someone in the (lots of big ass swear words here that are only appropriate in Martin Scorcese movies) parking lot at my (more swear words here) school decides to ding into my loaner somehow. There are three major scratches and two dents. All of which I can cover with my hand, but still. (lots of swear words, some involving very inventive body positions)

I canNOT believe this has happened. I have parked in that (more swear words) parking lot for 5 years, almost every day, and not once has some (more swear words ending in a noun starting with a c that is much more appropriate in England) banged into any of my cars. I call the guy to tell him. I just can't believe this! I am probably going to have to pay for the (more big swear words with the acronym MFCS) damage that wasn't my fault!!! Today! Today they decide to ding my car.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!