Living In My Own Cartoon

We took the girls to see Meet the Robinsons when it came out a while back.

If you haven’t seen it, you didn’t miss a whole lot. It was one of those pleasant but largely unmemorable films that come down the pike now and again – a few good lines, a fairly simple moral, some entertaining visuals, but nothing to make you want to run out and buy the DVD when it comes out. The main problem with it was that it needed to be about 20 minutes longer in order to explain all the things that needed to be explained without you feeling like someone turned on the infodump system and buried you alive.

It did have one good running gag, though. The villain in the film (as much as the film had a villain, anyway) spends most of his time coming up with impossibly complex plans to visit mayhem upon the good guys, plans which don’t so much fail as collapse of their own weight into a pile of slapstick. And invariably when that happens, whatever henchman the villain has hired for that attempt turns to him and says, “I don’t think this plan was very well thought out.”

Sometime this week I have to figure out how to report taking exactly two hours and three minutes of vacation time last summer – vacation time that I am both mandated and forbidden by law to take.

I am an employee of the State of Wisconsin, at least for most of the various part-time things I do. And Wisconsin, like so many other states here in the Great Recession, is hurting for cash. So they have decided to furlough state employees – to force us to take unpaid vacation time in order to save money that would otherwise be spent giving consumers the ability to go out and make the purchases which would drive the economy forward out of the recession and solve the larger problem.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Now, I can understand this policy, really I can. You can't pay people with money you don't have, and the state needs to figure out how to balance its budget since unlike the federal government they aren't allowed to print money or run deficits. I don’t like this policy particularly, since it is costing me money, but times are hard and everyone has to chip in and do their share and chin up, pip pip, don’t you know there’s a war on and all that, so I'm game for it anyway, like it or no.

But I don’t think this plan was very well thought out.

I have two different kinds of jobs here at Home Campus. For one kind, I am considered a “lump sum” employee, which is different from being a “lump” or “couch potato” employee, though I have been called those things too. Lump sum employees do not have to worry about furloughs, since our paychecks are cut in a lump sum and therefore when we work and don’t work is rather up to us. I believe I have had those checks reduced under the current plan, but I don't have to account for my time so I'm not going to worry about it. My main position here, though, is as Instructional Academic Staff – “IAS” in the jargon of the institution – which does fall under the provisions of the furlough requirement. So I therefore must, by law, take furlough time for that position.

The thing is, though, that they don’t want us canceling classes in order to take our furlough time. So I am not allowed to take my unpaid vacation time when I should be in a classroom educating people – and I agree with that, since classroom time is something I enjoy very much and don’t want to sacrifice. I get annoyed when I have to miss class because of blizzards, let alone edicts. So I am required by law to take furlough time only when I would have been paid to do something besides teach.

But here’s the thing: I’m IAS. This is the bottom rung of professorhood – the ad-hoc, one-class-at-a-time, one-semester-at-a-time temporary level of the university educational system as it is currently constructed in this country. I’m not allowed on any committees – that’s for the tenured and tenure-track faculty (and paid staff, including lump-sum employees, which is how I ended up on one anyway). I don’t have any service requirements, for the same reason. They can pay IAS less because they ask less of us – the only thing we are paid to do as IAS is teach.

So somehow I need to take furlough time that would otherwise be spent doing something besides teaching that I would get paid for, except that the only thing I get paid to do is teach.

It is a quandary.

On top of that, everything has to be prorated. I taught one class this summer (well, two, but the other one seems not to count for some reason that I am not clever enough to divine). We are required to take off so many furlough days, based on a full-time schedule, and if we don't teach a full-time schedule we have to divide the required time by the percentage of our workload. Further, because my class was interdisciplinary I have to then divide the result by the percentage of the class I actually was paid for in the first place.

Thus the two hours and three minutes of vacation time that I must take but am not allowed to take.

Robinsons, Wisconsin. Wisconsin, Robinsons.

In one sense, this whole thing is moot since they already took the money out of my paycheck this summer and the only thing that happens if I don’t fill out the form is that I lose the unpaid vacation time I had no opportunity to take. I'm okay with that. It's easier, in the long run.

With all the figuring that has to be done to determine how much time one has to not be around and the rules that cover exactly what it means to not be around, and all the explaining that has to be done to figure out how to determine that amount of time and what can and cannot be done under what circumstances, and all the covering of workloads that has to be done to make sure that everything doesn't grind to a halt while all this is or is not happening, I'm just not convinced that the state is saving any money off this deal. Maybe it's just me, but the accounting just seems a bit odd from my perspective.

Sometimes I think we'd all be better off if our political leaders watched more cartoons and less C-SPAN.

Things That Go "Huh?" In The Night

What a difference a year makes.

It's coming up on Halloween again - happens every year around this time, apparently - and this means that it was once again time to stuff our car to the gunnels and head off to Michigan for the annual Halloween Bash hosted by Dave and Karen and their daughter Emily. This was our second time going, though they've been hosting this thing for - what? - eons now.

Last year it was 80 degrees and the skies were darkened with voracious clouds of mosquitoes. Insect repellent was not enough, so we adults were forced to consume vast quantities of alcohol in order to get the mosquitoes drunk enough to kill by hand. Being an adult is about the sacrifices you make for your family. That's what we tell our children, anyway.

This year, however, the overnight low was somewhere in the mid-30s. There were no mosquitoes. But we still consumed our alcohol, just in case. Because you never know. Sacrifices, sacrifices.

We arrived a bit later this year than last, since Kim's conference didn't let her come home until early afternoon and it's a long drive out to the middle of nowhere. But we pulled up to a rollicking festivity, and the girls immediately bolted off in search of their cousin Emily, and - having found her and a gaggle of other children - were never seen or heard from again.

Well, no, not quite. But it felt that way sometimes.

There was more face painting by Kim, and the Haunted Trail was reportedly quite fun. I say reportedly because I started down the trail with Tabitha, Lauren and Adriana and we got almost 5% of the way in before they turned as one and demanded we go back. This I was happy to do, since the Haunted Trail leads through the Haunted Swamp and across the Bridge Perilous over the Haunted Creek and I had only my sneakers to squelch my way through the night in should any of that Hauntedness get inside them. We repaired to the bonfire and had a good, non-haunted time there.

The highlight for me, again, was the karaoke barn, because I am uncool and perfectly happy to be that way. We ended up with a gaggle of kids and a few parents alternating between Hannah Montana tunes (which as parents of course we all knew...) and Chumbawumba's Tubthumping, which is the ideal song for small children and adults thoroughly defended against mosquitoes to belt out on a cold night.

I get knocked down! But I get up again!
They're never gonna keep me down!
I get knocked down! But I get up again!
They're never gonna keep me down!

But like everything else in life, it does have its odd side. There really is nothing like a half dozen five-to-nine-year-old girls singing:

Pissing the night away!
Pissing the night away!

Oh well. Maybe they thought it was just what you did after drinking all the things mentioned in the song.

We slept inside this year, not being particularly eager to freeze to death in a tent - indoors with cots, air mattresses, couches and heaters is just fine, really. Because we're smart, that's why. And old and creaky and not likely to ever regain "vertical" after spending the night on the ground in a tent in what is, effectively, winter. The reasons just keep coming.

The girls spent most of this morning tending the bonfire and achieving a densely-smoked aroma that now permeates our car so thoroughly that we can cure meat in it.

Ah, memories.

It's A Hockey Night in Our Little Town

Hockey fans are an interesting group.

Our Little Town recently got its very own minor league hockey team. They're roughly the equivalent of Single-A baseball,  so they're a bit rough around the edges when it comes to things like passing, shooting and goaltending, though they have a cool name and snazzy uniforms, and they hit each other very well.  This made the crowd happy, and was thus a Good Thing and very appropriate.

With Kim off at a conference on Friday, the girls and I decided to go see one of the games.  We thought we'd have the place to ourselves, but apparently hockey is big here and the place was just packed with screaming fans.

If you've ever been to a hockey game, you know this is something of a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, it is always best to have a raucous crowd at a live sporting event. The athletes play harder. The fans enjoy more. The house makes more money, thus keeping the team around longer. It's just better.

On the other hand, well, let's just say that the girls and I had a few conversations about polite versus impolite words and the boundaries of each. It's not like I could turn around and say, "Hey! Watch the language! Where do you think you are, a hockey game?" Because they would just have said "Yes, yes we are."

Well, no, that's not what they would have said. Not quite. And then I would have had to continue my explanations to the girls and expand those explanations to include what is and is not anatomically possible or advisable, and there is no "win" there.

But there was plenty of win at the game, at least for us.

There were boom sticks for the girls to clatter together, the better to destroy our neighbors' eardrums and drown out their rather limited vocabulary. Our neighbors were both blindly partisan, berating the refs for making clearly correct calls when they went the other way, and loudly critical in rather unoriginal ways. The clattering boom sticks were better conversation, really.  I can think of a number of situations in life that would be improved by the addition of boom sticks, in fact, beginning with just about every staff meeting I have ever attended for most jobs I have held in my life.  I think that during my next meeting I will just sit back and visualize this, and they can wonder why I'm smiling.

There were also snacks. Lots of snacks, though we limited ourselves as best we could.  We had sugar, but refrained from purchasing any of the beverages being consumed around us in bulk.  Did you know they come in plastic bottles now?  Special "sports packaging" versions of your favorite beers - what a country!

And when all else failed, there was the game.

 

Lauren took those pictures with her own camera. She's quite a photographer, really.

We stayed until about halfway through the third period, when Tabitha's adrenaline gave out and we had to go home. Lauren would probably have stayed, though she conked right out once we found her bed. She was worried we'd never find out who won.  It's not like they cover this team on the news.

But there is always Teh Intarweebs.  Apparently the good guys lost on two goals in the last 1:10, so perhaps it is better that we left when we did.

I'm glad the girls are hockey fans.  We'll have to go back.

News and Updates

1. I have tried the hot sauce. It was tasty, but very hot. It has been several hours, now, and apparently I will live.

2. Hammy and Vee came back a while ago. We had sent them on to the next family in our Rent-A-Hamster plan, but that didn't last too long and so far we have not found anyone else to palm them off upon. I think we have hamsters for good now.

3. I am grading exams. I do not like grading exams, mostly because it serves to remind me of how little of what I say or do in class matters.

4. Having finished my most recent book, I have now moved on to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. You know, so far it's just More Of Same, although the chapters are considerably shorter.

5. Does anybody want to buy any Girl Scout Cookies?

6. It is now cool enough to justify drinking tea on a large scale again. Mmmmmm, tea.

7. The Phillies have made it into the post-season and face the Rockies in the Divisional Playoffs, starting tomorrow. Let the non-belief begin! I hope to be as pleasantly surprised by my inaccurate predictions as I was last year.

That is all.

Put Out an APB on "Peter Piper" and Get His Carcass In Here

I think I have all the feeling back in my hands now.

Or, rather, I think I have only the proper amount of feeling back in my hands now. There is quite a difference between these two things in theory, though in practice it amounts to much the same result, namely the general sense that your arms end in a pair of fuzzy dice that somebody stole out of a 1963 Chevy Nova and swapped out for what used to be a useful set of appendages. It does raise some interesting questions about what is now hanging off the rear-view mirror of that Nova, but so it goes.

Yesterday I made my own hot sauce.

Kim’s garden has been producing produce in mind-boggling quantities for some time now, and among the bushels coming in were more than a few hot peppers that she planted as a way to make me interested in the garden. And since it would be a shame to see all those peppers go to waste, I figured I’d try to make some hot sauce. So I found a recipe that looked promising and cleared some time yesterday afternoon.

Now, I’ve had experience in dealing with hot peppers before. Some years ago I decided to pickle the four tons of banana peppers that we grew that year and spent several days chopping them up, salting them down and drowning them in jars full of vinegar, and from that experience I learned some valuable lessons.

First, the importance of rubber gloves when dealing with hot peppers cannot be overstated, especially if you ever want to use those hands again for anything besides repositories of creams, unguents and emollients.

Second, if you can process the peppers outdoors you should, otherwise the whole house will smell like the aftermath of a particularly vicious riot.

And third, there are more hot peppers in your garden than you know what to do with. Really, there are. Just let them go, man. Let them go.

I took the third lesson to heart immediately this time around, harvesting only about 20% of the peppers that were hanging there on the plants. I also tried to move the process outdoors as much as possible. This worked for the chopping part (eight cups of chopped, de-seeded hot peppers) but not for the simmering part, as it was too windy and the flame on the grill kept blowing out and I had to move the process indoors – first to the kitchen and then, when that became untenable, to the stove in the basement. I wore the rubber gloves the whole time, too.

Fat lot of good they did me, though.

In the end, the house ended up saturated in capsaicin and vinegar, my gloves ended up stained and porous, and I ended up with about a quart and a half of hot sauce that I’m kind of afraid to eat now.

There was a time in my life when I used to think “the hotter, the better.” That time ended after a hard-fought and costly victory over Colonel Johnson’s Thermonuclear Ribs on a field outside of Pittsburgh, and since then I have been more interested in spice as a flavor than as a test of manhood. I’m a historian. I already know where I stand on the Manly Men Doing Manly Things scale, and I no longer feel a need to purchase food that requires me to sign a Release From Liability beforehand.

So I’m waiting for the volatile organics (see, there are advantages to living with a chemist) to fall back into the hot sauce so I can open up one of the jars without losing my eyebrows and give it a try on something. If it’s any good, I’ll freeze the rest and go pick more peppers. If not, well, I suppose I could use it as a pesticide.

Busting Myths With Kari and Grant

We went Mythbusting yesterday.

The Kids Museum to the south of us was having a fundraiser, and they invited Kari and Grant from Mythbusters to speak. And you know we were there. You know that there was no force on earth that could make us not there. Not storms, not deadlines, not recessions, nothing. We were going to be there, by God, and woe betide anything that stood in our way.

We bought these tickets sometime in the spring, roughly fifteen seconds after they went on sale -only a dozen rows or so back, though hard up on the house right aisle. Not a bad trade, as it turned out.

And we counted down the days. One by one. For. Months. And. Months. Major wars have started with less anticipation than the Mythbusters coming to speak near us. As is appropriate.

We love Mythbusters around here. Any show that combines science education with explosive mayhem is always a good thing. It's the one show that we make time to watch, and often we do so as a family. On Wednesday, for example, when the new season starts, the girls will have special permission to stay up a bit later than usual to watch.

So a little rain was not going to keep us away.

We arrived at the theater with about ten minutes to spare, which counts as early around here. Fortunately there was parking right across the street, and we were well situated by the time the lights went out.

Kari and Grant made a rather grand entrance, rising up out of the orchestra pit along with the moderator and a copious amount of fog. They then went back to the two rather kingly chairs that had been prepared for them, and got the show started with a bit of back and forth with the moderator and a very brief trailer for the upcoming season.

Then they got to the heart of the matter - the questions from the audience. "Does anyone have any questions?" the moderator asked. "Please go to the microphones set up in the aisles if you do!"

And as one, the audience rose up and marched over.

Well, not quite, but it certainly felt that way. Both Tabitha and Lauren decided they wanted to ask questions, so we tromped up to the line and waited our turn.

Don't they screen these people?

It must be said, though, that Kari and Grant were gracious, willing to listen to just about any question thrown at them and give a good solid try at answering. Grant got asked a lot about his experiences on Star Wars, and they both went through the usual things that people wanted to know about the show. Yes, Adam and Jamie are just like that in real life. The most dangerous myths are the small ones that they underestimate. They all knew each other prior to the show and remain good friends now that they are on the show. The biggest, most complicated, most expensive, most nerve-wracking thing they ever did was drop a car from a helicopter. The scariest was try to count sharks in the dark down on a wreck.

Tabitha asked them how many myths they had done. Over 700, it turned out.

Lauren wanted to know what the weirdest myth they had ever tested was. That provoked a lot of interesting discussion, with the upshot being that the weirdest is yet to come. Really - it's in this season's episodes, and those who've seen Shrek and remember where he got his candle will know what this is all about. This also got their vote for the most disgusting myth they've ever tested.

Eventually the moderator stepped in and called the whole thing to a halt, roughly an hour and a half after it started. You got the feeling that they could have sat there and talked all day, though.

And to top it all off, the girls ran into their friend Becca there, and they got to play on the old rheostat board that the theater put out in the lobby when they redid the lights. So it was just about a perfect outing, really.

Bought and Paid For

The check is in the mail.

Almost exactly a quarter of a century after I first set foot on a college campus, I no longer have any student loans. I am not sure how to react to this milestone. I will likely write checks to shadowy quasi-governmental agencies for months out of sheer habit. I hope I remember to tear them up before mailing them off.

I was never sure what would happen if I stopped paying them. What could they do? Repossess my education? Stick a vacuum up to my ear and suck out all the knowledge, leaving me to spend the rest of my days watching reality television and writing speeches for Sarah Palin?

I'd have had to take it on the lam - a mendicant scholar, will construct persuasive arguments for food.

But now I no longer need to worry about that. My brain is fully paid off. The neuro-repo-men need not trouble themselves on my account.

Time to go back to school, I say.