oh, i am so disappointed in myself

I missed a meeting today at the university where I'll be teaching part-time in May and June--completely forgot about it. Ugh. Embarrassing. I got caught up in administrative details at my school and it just went out of my head. Fortunately, the lady I was meeting with got in touch with me, and we worked it out... it was no big deal. That was good to know and will let me sleep tonight. She's very laid back, and we knew each other from my training course last summer, so it isn't that bad. I do feel bad, though. I hate it when I do stuff like that.

I've really got to get into the habit of using a day planner. I've known it for years, and I've never actually done it. I spent some time today catching up on my Palm Pilot... now I've just got to remember to 1) carry it with me, 2) enter things into it as they arise, and 3) check it every morning and lunchtime and afternoon, just to make sure I haven't forgotted anything. It was wierd... all week, I knew I was going to forget this meeting. Hmmph.

I'm trying hard not to beat myself up over stuff like this, but it's difficult! I'm a bit of a perfectionist and am very hard on myself for no reason. It's silly, I know. Sigh.

Better news on the job front... I worked out an arrangement with my school to work 5 or 6 hours a week after I finish teaching 3 days a week to help with the inspection that we're having in August. It's the kind of work I like to do, organization and arranging things and the like. I also helped my boss find a very important file that had gone missing. That made me feel a bit better about the missed meeting.

Also, Monday is a bank holiday, so no school. Probably won't post a blog entry that day either, unless I'm bored. Then on Tuesday, I start teaching creative writing for three weeks to the big group of Filipino students who are coming this weekend. Whee!

Lighttime success

The lightproofing worked! D didn't close the door when he came to bed, so I did wake up at 7:00 with the light from the spare room at the end of the hallway, but nothing came in the window, which was marvy. I felt like I finally got enough sleep. And D has been gently instructed on how to operate the bedroom door before bedtime.

Worked a long day again today. I spent a good deal of time re-organizing the teachers' room, which changed rooms while I was away. I played a role in the January move to our new building, so I organized the old teachers' room, and when they changed the teachers' room last month while I was on holiday, everything went to pot again--photocopier in the doorway, computers everywhere, shared teaching books stashed away in private cubbyholes, etc. A mess. So I sorted that out (paid time, of course... D has trained me well to stop doing work that I'm not getting paid for). So I got most of that straightened out, finally. My boss has this tendency to want to fill the teachers' room with furniture, forgetting that people have to fit in there as well.

And then I started getting the welcome packs ready for the Filipino students next week--collected some leaflets and brochures from the tourist information centre and the bus station and am waiting on a couple more things that I'd like to go in them. Not a bad day.

Had a good discussion with the Japanese fellow from the head office (our school is owned by a Japanese company) who's working on our site for the summer about some improvements, such as a timetable board. This is the stuff that I like to do, actually. I think I should organize other people's lives for a living. If only I could organize my own...

D's philosophical methodology seminar begins tonight for this term, and he spent a lot of time preparing for it. He ran it last term as well, but he really wanted to make it more appealing and more popular this term. He feels like it went really well, and he'd like for more people from the department to be involved in the discussions of the topics he covers in his seminar. He's not home just yet, but I hope it goes well. He's used a few good old American marketing strategies to sell the seminar, such as including a line in the seminar announcement that gets emailed to all the philosophers about their usually going to the Merton Bar afterwards. :-) So I probably shouldn't expect him home anytime soon, I guess.

More planting

Planted the daisy by the front door, like I thought I might. It looks right at home there. I'll post a photo as soon as I get it off my camera.

Went to my workout class tonight for the first time in over 6 weeks. Can I just say: ugh. Ack. My instructor even gave me the "tsk tsk" when I was alternating arms instead of using both at the same time during the weights session. I told him not to pick on me, that I'd been on holiday, sitting on my bum and eating pie and cookies for weeks. He forgave me, fortunately.

Worked long today and met with the two other teachers afterwards. One of them frustrates me a bit, always trying to get out of doing a fair share of work. But it wasn't too bad, and we won't have to work together too much after this, I don't think. We spent the meeting planning the syllabus for our academic English course for the next three weeks. We're each going to be teaching the same syllabus to a different group. It'll be nice knowing in advance what I'll be doing and being able to plan and assess the group afterwards. That's a rare thing at my school these days.

Still having trouble sleeping. I woke up at 5:30 am again, with the sunrise. So I pinned up a bedsheet and a blanket to the inside of the curtains in the bedroom, and I light-blocked the glass pane at the top of the door, so sunlight can't come in from the spare room down the hall, either. We'll see how much light gets in at 5:30 tomorrow morning! Ha! Sleep, here I come!

happy bday to me (again)

We ate supper with our friends Rick and Liesbeth tonight. Liesbeth and I go to a workout class together, and we watched a film (Antonia's Line) in the bedroom while the boys played with their computers. D's trying to install Linux on his machine and get it to work with our ADSL service, but so far with no success. And once again, tonight, it didn't work. Ah well. Someday...

They gave us belated bday gifts... chocolate and fancy fruit and nut mix for Mr. Simplicity, and a big beautiful potted daisy plant for me! My favorites. I think I'll put them out front by the door.

I haven't been sleeping well since I got back to the UK, and those dark circles have reappeared underneath my eyes. It can't be healthy. I've also been waking up around 5:30, which is about when the sun comes up these days. Got to see what I can do about that. I took a 3 hour "nap" this afternoon after work. Can't keep up that habit, for sure.

Not much to report today. Only taught half a day, but I'm teaching until 3 tomorrow, then have a meeting with a couple of other teachers to prepare for a large group of Filipino students next week. Ho hum. Late to bed, too. Not good.

long weekend...

I decided to take weekends off, so I still technically haven't missed a day. So there.

Let's see... Saturday, I did my taxes. Thrilling, I know. We did get outside for a bit, since it was sunny for a few hours. Walked the dog, etc. D worked in the library that night, but I was not naughty and did not give in to my Internet addiction, as I am wont to do. I made real progress on my taxes. Once I confirm that as a self-employed person, I can indeed claim my office as an office for tax purposes, I'll be on my way to a refund (knock on wood).

Sunday, D's college friend Gin came to visit. She's a Yank like ourselves, but she's an engineer for an international company and was in jolly old Engurland as part of her job. We wandered around in the mist (see the photo of D and Gin enjoying our lovely weather; that's Gin on the left, and Emperor Palpatine on the right) and slogged home when we ran out of things to do, after taking refuge from the damp in the Turf Tavern, where Bill C. was alleged to not have inhaled while at Oxford. It was lovely to see her again, and she always seems to be doing well.

Monday, it was back to work. I have the same student at 9am, a woman from Azerbijan (sp?) whose son is also attending our school. She's very low level, but I'm learning more and more about her every day, and it's rewarding to see her improve. For my third and fourth lessons, I had my regular academic writing class, now with 3 Chinese boys (two teenagers and a college student, who's a Muslim... an interesting mix). They get on well with each other, so it works OK if I can convince the older one to help control the younger two, or at least set an example by working himself (which he's always happy to do).

In the afternoon, I took D's bike to the shop to have it checked out--this is bike number 3 for D, the first one having been stolen from the front garden in broad daylight (the wheel was locked to the frame, but they must've thrown it into a van or something) and the second one having had its rear tire kicked in and bent when he left it overnight in the city centre. The guy at the bike shop said that this was very common. Apparently, the yobs walking by on their way home from the bars just punch-kick the tires from the side and bend them in half in for fun. I now have learned to laugh and accept it when these things happen to me... payback and boomerang karma for some of my youthful indiscretions, no doubt... but D was actually a good kid who never hurt a flea so it seems unfair. I guess that he's been lucky in other ways, though (unnaturally charmed, says my sister), so maybe it's just fate's way of balancing things out.

So bike number 3 is knocking, so we're having that checked out. Hopefully they'll find the problem and fix it, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling us we'll have to live with it.

I'll leave you with a better photo of D and Gin at the Turf Tavern, with a caricature of our esteemed former prez on the wall behind them. Hasta manana...


ps: The sign says, "It is alledged [sic] that is was here, at the Turf Tavern... that Bill Clinton, while at University here at Oxford during the sixties, 'did not inhale' while smoking an illegal substance. (What he does with cigars in the privacy of his own home is his own business!)"

Fryday

At last... my first week of back-to-work succesfully slogged through. I taught the afternoon session again today, the same Spaniard as before. But this time we did grammar, and it went a lot more quickly this time. He's having trouble with word order when you throw adjectives and adverbs into the mix ("the blue Japanese small car" and the like). It went well. My German morning student is returning to Germany tomorrow, so she'll be out of the picture.

It sounds like we've got a whole new batch of students coming next week. And the week after, we've got a group of thirty or so Filipino students coming (upper-int to advanced level of English), and I get to teach nothing but Creative Writing and Academic Writing for 3 weeks. I'm really looking forward to that. I've got to come up with a syllabus this weekend for that course.

I made the inaugural smoothie in the blender today! Thrilling. A dozen strawberries, 1 banana, a peach, a dozen blueberries, yogurt, and a little OJ. It was delicious, especially after a long day of teaching.

I also worked in the garden for a bit. Finally finished prepping the patch and put in the bean seeds. The remaining carrot and rocket (aka arugula) seeds got mixed together somehow, so I had to just scatter them together, and I'll try to sort it out later, if anything comes from them. I think the carrot spouts will be easy to ID, but I hope I don't weed out all the rocket. I've also got some rocket sprouts in the sprouting tray, as well as a muskmelon (aka cantaloupe), and the peppers might be starting too, but those weren't seeded in sterile soil, so I might be seeing something other than peppers. We shall see.

Just got an email saying that the Japanese girl isn't coming after all. The possibility did motivate me to clean up the spare room a bit, though, so it isn't all bad news. And this way, I'll also have my weekend free instead of having to scrub down the house. Laziness rules.

Happy birthday to you...

...Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Lissa,
Happy birthday dear you!

It's Lissa's bday (we won't mention which one), and I'm so sad because my baby sister is so far away. Boo hoo hoo, waaah. I hope she's enjoying her new fridge. I didn't get her a fridge for her birthday, but managed to break hers while I was staying at her house last week (was it last week? No, a week and a half ago... further and further in the past...). Leave it to me to figure out how to break an expensive major appliance whose only movement is via a couple of door hinges. She says it was on its last legs, but we all know the jinx that follows me.

Today I invested in the "get fit" program. I got a set of 6 weights (2x 1.5, 3, and 5 kg) and a jumprope. I also picked up D's bday gift, a blender to cater to his addiction to smoothies... yum (as well as his aspirations to partake in vegetable smoothies... yuck). I got into weights via the aerobics class I've been taking on Sunday nights with my friend Liesbeth. I also finally formalised my membership at the university club yesterday (I had been using Dave's free card, but I got busted last term--oops), so I can now start up with the aerobics classes again, starting this Wednesday. Ha!

Let me tell you how comical it must've been seeing me pedal home with 6.5kg of weights stuffed into my little backpack and 12.5kg hanging precariously out of my piddly little wire bike basket. Groceries have broken this basket before. One guy actually laughed at me as I was arranging things and getting ready to go--some people are so pessimistic. I reinforced the basket with the plastic straps from the box that the weights came in, and set off for home-- VEEEERRYYY slowly. And I made sure to get off and walk, not ride, over the two cattle grates on either side of the "mesopotamia path" that runs between the university and our house. Poor little Emma (that's my bike's name... and yes, I am aware of the silliness of naming a bicycle).

I was also inspired because I think I gained about ten pounds on our holiday in the States. Between exchanging my bicycle (the only way to get around Oxford) for a car (the only way to get around in the States) and eating celebratory cake and cookies and lovely huge dinners hosted by our various generous parental and grandparental and other familial units everywhere we showed up begging for sustenance... it wasn't good for the old tushie. I had to squeeze into my jeans on the night before we left to come back home. Bad news.

hola

Worked a longer day today because I had an afternoon student, a Spanish university student who wants to get some English learning into his skull before he graduates and enters the scary world of work. We had a good discussion, talked for an hour and a half about all kinds of things, from career choices to Basque separatists. Not sure what I'll do with him when I have him again on Friday... boring grammar, maybe.

Also got an email from a Japanese girl who'd like to stay with us for 8 days in late April-early May. We'll see if that happens. Haven't been a host family before, but I thought I might give it a try.

Apart from that, not much to report. The weather is gloomy again. I got a theory today about why English people seem so angry and repressed sometimes. It always SEEMS like it's going to rain... sky is gray and black, wind kicks up sporadically, mist starts appearing in the air... but it never actually POURS. the most we get is a little sprinkle, really. So you get all the buildup and none of the release. Just tension, tension, tension all the time... something is always looming, but nothing ever actually happens. You never get the big thunderstorm, the payoff, the catastrophe and drama that clears the air. You just keep muddling through the grayness, day in and day out. I imagine that'd get to you after a few dozen years. So much for my anglophilosophising theory of the day.

Hi ho, hi ho...

... it's back to work I go. It wasn't so bad, actually. I taught two lessons today. The first was an elementary student, the mother of one of my former students, from Turkey. She's really low level, but she's trying very hard, and since she's here with her 4 kids and doesn't speak English very well at all, this will be a good social experience for her, if nothing else. I asked her about friends, and she said that she takes care of her kids and doesn't have time for friends! Hopefully, if her English improves, she can change that.

The second lesson was an academic writing class, with one German girl and one Chinese boy, both teenagers preparing to take the International Baccalaureate exam. We're starting with sentence-level skills and moving up through paragraphs and eventually on to essays. Worked with word choice today--for example, correcting the sentence, "Braille is a system that presents letters by dots."

So a pretty easy day. While I was on holiday, the school changed things around, so the rooms are arranged more reasonably. Before, the principal had an office in the biggest room in the building (ha!). That room is now the teachers' room, and she's moved into one of the other big classrooms. Of course, the door to the teachers' room is blocked on the left by the output tray from the photocopier (hovering in front of the dor waiting to be ripped off by passersby) and on the right by the chair at a computer desk. I do love the British. (Have I told you about their door-mounting or light fixture-installing skills? They somehow *always* seem to mount doors so thatthey swing in the most inconvenient way possible and install light switches so that they're either *behind* the inconveniently-placed doors or across the room--or sometimes even in a different room altogether.)

SO back to it. It was a really lovely day, actually. I only worked until 12:30 today, and I got to cycle home in the sunshine, to the sound of spring birds and busily nesting ducks! Felt very lucky today. Still putting off putting in those seeds, as it's still fairly chilly, though. Probably just being a massive wimp.

Photos are up!

I've spent the morning and much of the afternoon on the computer, editing photos so I can put them up on the website for everyone to see:

http://www.sassafras.org/photos/20060417/

It was such a great vacation and visit with everyone, and looking through the photos makes me remember everything and all the friends and family we got to see... and even more depressed about having to go back to work tomorrow. :-)


Last night, we went over to our friends' house, Caroline (French) and Alexi (American). Also there were Jeni and Yuli (Bulgarian), Kock (Malaysian), and Rick and Liesbeth (Dutch). So it was the usual multicultural Somerville MCR crowd. Somerville is D's college, and these guys (or their partners) all joined in his year. It was good to see everyone again, and as usual, Caroline and Alexi showed off their baking skills with strawberry cakes, fairy cakes, pancakes, etc. We got home before midnight but didn't get to sleep until probably 1:30. I forced myself to get up at 8:30... got to go back to the grind on Tuesday, when I teach my first lesson at 9:15.

We wanted to work in the garden again today, but it's been really chilly and damp today. It keeps *looking* like it's going to rain--wind, black sky, humidity, etc.--but then it never does anything more than mist. Frustrating, especially after that incredible thunderstorm we got in Baltimore. I'm a big weather fan, by the way. I like few things more than a good ripper of a storm. Ah well.

Back to work tomorrow... ugh.

Me and Farmer Ted

More gardening... we dug into the compost bin and found several surprises from previous tenants inside (plastic bags, balls of aluminum foil, pieces of plastic, broken glass, etc.). Who knows what else is in there that we couldn't identify. I don't want to think about it. Dave did the dirty work of picking through it as best he could and mixing it in with the soil. But all his hard work seems to have paid off, as the patch looks great--very rich and dark. We have high hopes for it.

We emptied out the compost bin and moved it behind the tree, which is a much better place for it than in front of the gate (we must've had some brilliant folks living here before us). Our pushy but knowledgeable neighbor, Hannah, corrected our placement of it a little bit, so we'll have to get to that tomorrow. She's from Croatia, and she studied Biology at university, but then she married an Englishman and moved to England, where she had a hard time finding a job, so she decided to stay home with her daughter and now puts all her biological knowledge into her garden. She works in an alterations shop during the day. Her English is very good now, but she was out of the job market for so long that she didn't feel confident enough to look for work in the sciences after such a long time away from it. Her husband Alan is being treated for cancer, so he's home a lot, and her life has been very rough lately. We chat over the fence a lot, usually starting off with her giving us a little gardening "advice" (like I said, she's a bit pushy). She also makes an excellent summer pudding with red and black currants and serves it to us with cream. Yummy.

So now the garden is looking great. I planted most of the rest of the seeds in pots for starting, although I'm going to put a few beans and carrots directly into the ground to see if that works any better, since I often have trouble transplanting seedlings. We made a new little path back to the new compost bin location behind the treee, and we reinforced the border on our little growing patch. Ready for bean and carrot seeds tomorrow?

Gardening!

We've been composting over the winter and would like to plant some vegetables and herbs this spring and summer (or as close to summer as it gets in Oxford), since we're trying to eat more of those sorts of things. Tony Blair tells us that five a day is optimal. Plus, gardening will get us out into the sunshine and fresh air even when we're not feeling like walking anywhere, which happens a lot to me (not so much to D).

So we did a lot of weeding and mixing of soil, and Wookie watched from the comfort of the living room. I put the tomato and pepper seeds in pots along with half the cucumber and muskmelon seeds, and covered them all with plastic to try to create a bit of a greenhouse effect to get the seeds started.

I've never had much luck with starting things from seed, so we'll see how this goes. If I have to give up and go get seedlings, I'll do it. I want a frigging garden this year.

Back in the UK

I got to sleep around 10pm last night, and we slept until noon, which we probably shouldn't have done, but I woke up feeling great. D isn't so lucky (ahem ahem... for someone who made so much fun of my method, he seems to be having a much rougher time of it... ahem). I cleaned up a but more, then the housesitter came over and picked up all his stuff (finally). He offered to look after Wookie and the house again anytime. Wook's a cinch to look after--he mostly sleeps and eats, always loves a walk of any length, is pretty healthy, and appreciates any attention you give him.

Then I walked with Wookie up to Oxford Brookes University, where I'm going to be teaching an evening class in May and June. I was supposed to bring them some documents like my passport and national insurance number. But when I arrived, I discovered that the whole university was closed for the Easter holiday--Good Friday through Tuesday. So I'll have to go back sometime late next week, it looks like. But Wook and I both enjoyed the walk, so it wasn't a big problem.

Reacclimating to UK life. The weather was really lovely today, so that made things easier.

Welcome, welcome

My gramma says that I need to be keeping a journal, so here I am. Now gramma will get to learn all about blogs.

Brief intro for the uninformed... I'm an American living in England with my partner (who I'll refer to as "D"), who's doing a postgrad degree. He's been here since October 2003, and I came to join him finally in June 2004. We also live with our dog Wookie, whom you'll probably see and hear about before the end of the day.

We've just gotten back from a month-long trip back to the States, where we were able to see most of our immediate family as well as several friends. I'll put up the photos from our trip on my website.

We're back in Oxford now and trying to settle in. I don't have jet lag because I use this little visualisation thingie. Starting about three days before I left the States, whenever I looked at a clock, I'd add 5 hours to the time and picture in my mind what that time looked like back in England. For example, if we were driving around in North Carolina at 5pm, I'd look at the clock and say to myself, "OK, that's 8pm in England. So the sun's down now, and i'm probably starting to wind down for the evening... it's time to start getting sleepy." Or when I woke up, I'd think, "OK, it's 7am here, so it's noon in England, so I'm waking up late, and the sun is high in the sky, and it's the middle of the day, so I've got lots of energy at the moment."

Even though D made fun of me to no end every time I did this in NC, I've had no problems with jet lag so far. I was able to sleep for about 3 hours on the plane (because even though it was 8:30pm NC time, I told myself that it was 1:30am, so it was time for sleep), and I slept for about an hour on the bus home from the airport. So I had plenty of energy and was able to walk the dog to the store for eggs and milk and straighten up around the house a bit while SOMEONE else in the house was knocked out completely and feeling ill. Ahem.

The housesitter was excellent (although he left a huge pile of his stuff in the living room and many other things scattered throughout the house), and Wookie is exhausted from all the excitement. He's slept nonstop since we got home. He doesn't even open his eyes when I call his name. Poor little guy.