First, a disclaimer: I love my brothers very, very much. We're close and I would do anything for either of them. I've proven this before in a variety of instances, some of which are described below... But there's something to be said for being the baby.

My youngest brother (henceforth "Youngest Bro") is off to college in a few short weeks. He's really excited about it—getting in touch with roommates, buying stuff for his dorm... you know the story. Everyone knows the story. What I fear few know, however, is how the story differs among siblings. The older siblings always know how the story has changed... and the younger siblings deny it as vehemently as Peter denied Jesus.

Youngest Bro skipped the used '98 Compaq and bought a MacBook Pro without hesitation. I bought him AppleCare as his graduation gift. I even helped him get the free iPod Touch and HP printer by putting the purchase on my credit card. I didn't even make him pay me for tax. (I'm that nice or I figure the TaxMan already owns a quarter of what I make each month, so what's $100 more?)

Guess who had the Compaq? It died second semester of freshman year after being lovingly referred to as The Root of All Evil. Sophomore year I unwittingly bought a Dell desktop, which lasted an entire semester before I asked the campus IT guy about a Mac while he worked on my Dell in safemode. He said he didn't recommend it. Mike did, so I bought my iBook and have never looked back. Since buying my Mac, I've converted my entire family—all my siblings now own various models of MacBook. My computer tribulations cost me over $3000 during college, all of which I paid for in cash I earned from an amalgamation of workstudy and summer jobs.

Youngest Bro gets a hand-me-down mini fridge, desk lamp, and other things we Older Sibs had to buy for ourselves with our own money (graduation cash or otherwise). The mini fridge Youngest Bro is taking, though, is the BIG mini fridge my parents bought for my other brother (#3 in birth order, behind me and before Youngest Bro). It's taller and fits more stuff and I think it has an ice maker.

I paid $75 for a mini fridge! Why couldn't my sister have been done with school by the time I was in college so I could have hers?! Oh, and I NEVER had ice on a whim.

Youngest Bro somehow swindled my mother into asking me to help him shop for books. The kicker: he needs to buy them this week to have them arrive before he moves in. Where is Youngest Bro this week? On vacation with his girlfriend's family. I worked 9 hours today and came home to shop online for textbooks I'll never use. (Side note: mathematics textbooks are outrageously expensive! Who charges $187.50 for a hardcover book that's been revised six times in the last decade. Does math really change that much? It's algebra and geometry, for crying out loud! Euclid was doing that stuff a long time ago, wasn't he?)

At least I'm spending his money this time, not my own... I shopped around to find good prices, though, because I know what it's like to be stunned by textbook prices. What's too bad is that next semester he'll have to figure this all out on his own. Perhaps I'll have to teach him a thing or two over Christmas break so he doesn't empty his pockets on books.

Youngest Bro has it good. Other miscellaneous differences in our experiences include getting to shop for clothes with grandma and not having to spend his own graduation cash on such things as bed sheets, notebooks, bookbags, shoes, etc. and getting his pick of these items, not being relegated to "the ones on sale." (Somehow this is a trend for male children... It's strangely assumed, at least in my family, that the females will pay for their own items while the males get things bought for them. I smell unfairness!) I'm not saying I'm some kind of saint for helping him so much, but I do look at his situation and sigh sometimes. My life would've been so much less stressful if I had an Older Sibling like me to guide me along. (I have an older sister, but she was in the throes of college when I was a freshman, so she couldn't really help me out.)

Youngest Bro, you've got it good. I just hope you know how good you've got it. Go forth and learn. Make us proud.

It's ridiculous! It took me a couple weeks to notice exactly what the problem was. I went back to work full-time mid-July, so I am still dealing with a good bit of fatigue from the long days, but I figured I'd be able to do things I enjoy. What happens is I come home from work, make some food (the time involved and degree of difficulty are wholly dependent on my level of fatigue on any given day), and find something to do.

The "find something to do" part is when I choke. For example: feeling like I ought to relax, I try to stay away from my computer. I'll take a book and sit on my porch, read a few pages, and then I get this creeping feeling that there's something "bigger" I should be doing. For the past two and a half years, yeah, there's been something bigger—grad school. Before that, it was college. Before that, it was high school.. and so on.

Perhaps this nagging feeling I have is a side-effect of having been in school for the last 18 years. The only other time in my life that I haven't been a student was the seven month stint immediately following my undergraduate career. (This excludes the time before kindergarten.) I hope to be a student again next fall, in a Ph.D. program to my liking. Right now I'm trying to decide where to apply. Next I'll fill out applications and try to secure a teaching assistantship. But until next fall, I have a problem... I'm not a student.

I have hobbies: writing, knitting, reading, biking, yoga, walking and training my dog. But how do "normal" people just do hobbies? Don't they feel like there's something more important they should be doing? (I mean that in the nicest way possible.) I don't think hobbies are a waste of time; I just wish I felt more comfortable doing them. That sounds horrible, but it's true. I think I'm wound too tight right now...

Currently I'm a cog in the workforce who comes home exhausted. (For now.) I have no scheduled activities or due dates (outside of bills to pay). I plan to stay at my job for the next year (unless, inconceivably, it gets more unbearable) so I seem to have found a sort of stasis. I'm making new friends (though I'd like more) and I'm trying to become more active (because I turned practically sedentary since my surgery... it still hurts sometimes). I feel less relaxed now, though, than I did when I was a full-time student and worked full-time. How is this possible?!

Maybe I just need to develop a schedule for myself. I don't know if that'll work, but I should at least give it a try. After all, it can't make me any crazier than I feel right now without one. I've even considered working through a reading list just so I feel like I have something academic on my plate. (Lord knows I'm terrified about mental attrition because I've worked so hard and paid so much to learn what I know!)

If anything, this experience has proven to me the old cliché about asking a busy person to do something because they'll find a way to fit it in. I am a little terrified, though, to know that I'm somehow happier when my activity level is maxed out.

Yes, PAT is at it again. Rate hikes, route cuts. And this time, despite all politics, they mean business.

My sister is a resident of the city and uses the bus system to get around. She doesn't drive because she has a medical condition that prevents her from being able to do so. She may never drive, and so she relies on the (somewhat wilted) bus system in our local metropolitan area. The route cuts alone would cripple my sister's mobility on weekends. The rate hikes just make it feel like a TV cable bill— surprise! you get less, but we're gonna charge you more for it.

Lots of people argue that these cuts will only hurt senior citizens. This is wildly untrue. Sure, the seniors may use the buses quite a bit, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of disabled people who use the buses because they are simply unable to get around any other way. They can't just go buy a car or a bike. They can't just get a ride or call a taxi. (Nor is a taxi an economically feasible choice on a consistent basis.) These people need the bus systems to help them get from A to B.

This deeply affects people's lives. I know that each time my sister has moved that she has had to pay close attention to what bus stops are nearby so she can get around. So what happens if she has a lease for an apartment in the city and the bus route near her is cut? Then what? Hm?

I have a feeling people aren't going to take this recent announcement lying down. Groups are already forming to fight back. One such group is Public Transit 4 Pittsburgh. The letters to the editor are already beginning to pour in as the local media lay out the details.

I know I'll be paying a lot of attention to this issue because it affects someone I know and love. Voice your opinion and support at Public Transit 4 Pittsburgh.

Today, on my way home from work, I was driving along when I saw a creature hit my car's grill. I thought it was a large insect. I've had moths show up on my grill before, so I didn't think much of it.

When I got home, I hurried inside to let my dog outside. I walked past my car without a second thought. Upon my retreat indoors, however, I saw it. A small bird lodged between the grill and the hood of my car, its tiny head pinched near the latch release at the very center of the front of the car.

I dropped my dog's leash and cried out.

I hadn't considered it could've been a bird that I hit, but there it was. Lifeless, drooping in front of the chrome grill.

I took a picture. After I took my dog inside and wiped my tears, I decided that before I cleaned anything up that I would take a photo. Yes, I captured the gruesome image digitally. Why? Because it's just so strange. So unreal. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen, yet there it was in front of me. Peaceful, unbloody, accidental death. View the image at your own risk. *Warning: Some may consider it gruesome.*

Then came the difficult part. I unlocked my car, popped the hood latch, and—nearly inaudibly—the bird fell to the gravel. I looked at his poor, lifeless body and cried. I said I was sorry, that I didn't mean to hurt him. I sobbed as scooped his body into the bags I had wrapped around my hands. I apologized again as I processed to the dumpster, weeping, and laid him to rest.

--

Flash back to three months ago when I was living with my grandparents while recovering from surgery. One Sunday evening in April, we drove to my house to pick up my mail. I unlocked my house for the first time in three weeks.

Grandma helped me carry a few things inside while my grandfather parked the car. She commented on how clean my house was. I explained that I had cleaned with vengeance before going to the hospital. She said I kept my house as neat as she did (a compliment).

I inhaled. I didn't like what I smelled. Yes, my house was clean, but it didn't smell clean. (I couldn't expect grandma to comment on the smell of my house because she can't smell at all thanks to a concussion she got when she was quite young.)

My nose is quite sensitive, but this wasn't a good smell. It smelled faintly like something dead. I began sniffing around, not unlike a bloodhound (except that I remained walking on two feet while smelling).

My nose led me from my kitchen to my basement, and in the basement I found a dead blackbird square in the middle of the floor. I gasped, then went upstairs. Grandma asked if I found the source. As I grabbed a large plastic shopping bag and my snow shovel, I said that I had.

With my snow shovel covered in plastic, I scooped up the bird. I turned the bag inside out to enclose his body and tied the bag shut. Then I walked unceremoniously to the dumpster, tears in my eyes, wondering how a bird ever got in my basement.

I told my landlord the next day. He said it was possible that the screen he attached to the flue of my chimney had fallen down inside, what with all the snow we had this winter. The poor bird must have fallen down the chimney and gotten trapped. Not knowing how he came in, he didn't know how to get out, and he died a prisoner of my basement. My landlord fixed the chimney while I continued recovering at grandma's, but the thought of the poor trapped bird still haunts me.

--

My dead bird tally for the year is two. Please, God, let it stop at two. I love birds and accidental deaths are tortuous for the mind to ponder.

I've always hated artificial sweeteners. You name it, I've tried it and disliked it: Sweet 'n Low, Splenda, Equal, Stevia... the list goes on. I don't care how much people claim they taste like sugar. The fact is that they don't and you can't convince me otherwise. (I can taste the difference in everything from yogurt to coffee to cake.) These chemicals/plant derivatives are not sugar and they cannot do sugar's job. And now, scientists can prove it.

Evidently sugar helps our brains predict the caloric content of foods and drinks. If we have some other kind of sweetener and not sugar, our brains get confused and think we need to have more calories. "Diet" products fail by not giving any sugar at all and making the brain think we need more.

Ultimately, I would love if this was the downfall of all things "diet." (But of course some people are still going to buy that stuff.)

I learned about this by reading one of my favorite blogs. Lehrer wrote about soda (pop if you're from western PA) today and the idea of a tax being useful to curb people's sugar-sipping habits. I'll keep my political opinion on this to myself, but what I found most interesting about his post was the blurb about how artificial sweeteners just throw off our biochemistry.

Three cheers for sugar. (In moderation, of course; like the Romans.)

One thing that hasn't changed, however, is how she misses me when I'm gone. Since I got her, Trixie has displayed a severe case of separation anxiety. She barks and cries when I leave, whether for work or the grocery store, and she will do anything to get out of her kennel. Anything. My boyfriend (a mechanical engineer and great welder) and I are currently building a kennel that should be strong enough to hold her. We're making it out of steel. The project is code named "doggie jail." (Well, I guess that's not really code...)

Trixie may not know it, but I know what it's like to miss her. This past Friday my mom came to pick up Trixie because I had a busy weekend planned--boyfriend's sister's wedding all day Saturday, recovering from said wedding on Sunday (at a barbecue!). Today I'll go to pick her up. It's been weird without her here. She's normally sitting next to me while I type and read on my laptop, nudging me to pet her. She barks when people pull into the gravel driveway. She whines to go outside. But the past two days and three nights, there has been no Trixie. It's strange. I'm just so used to having her around. Sure, initially it's nice to have a vacation from constant dog duty. I have to say, though, I much prefer her company to no company at all... I miss her.

When I got to get her from my parents' house today, she'll jump on me and cry and bark because she has missed me too. She'll go a little crazy and then get excited to go in the car... When we come home, she'll be a little calmer and I'll pet her and tell her I love her. It's what we usually go through when we've spent time apart, more time than a typical workday anyway. She's a great dog, even though she hits a nerve with me each time she tries to escape her kennels, and I wouldn't trade her for the world.

I'm borrowing the DVDs from a friend at work. He's a big fan and bought all the seasons as they came out--season 6 is due in August. I'm currently in season 4. It's been nice to just relax and watch a few episodes in the evening.

I have to say, though. This show is wild. Unlike anything I've ever watched.

I don't currently have television service at my house. No basic cable. Nothing. So my TV is mostly used for DVD viewing. (The other option is streaming online.) I never had an interest in the show until recently. It spanned my college years and time in grad school when my dedication to television of any kind was sparse at best, so it's probably good I never got hooked before.

My friend at work gave me the season 1 to watch when I was off work for two months for my surgery. I was slow to start with it. But now that I'm seeing the depth of the show--true literariness--I admit I'm impressed.

Not every episode is stunning. There are some duds. If I watch a dud, though, I'm usually going to watch another episode immediately so I have a good bit of the story to discuss with my work friend. It's fun. He knows the whole story (and is quite sad that it's over), so I tell him what I just watched and he reminisces. We both get great joy out of discussing the show, so we both win.

I didn't think I'd get as involved in the show as I have. I really look forward to watching it. My friend always says, "Can you imagine having to wait another whole week for the follow-up?" I say that, no, I couldn't, but I really mean it. The story is built like a movie such that I have a continual desire to know what happens next. A sign of good storytelling, I think.

Currently my favorite character is Jack, even though I'm not thrilled with him. His flaws have been exposed gradually, and I admit some of them have repulsed me. But that feeling alone caused me to consider something about the show I hadn't thought of before: seeing these characters and all their flaws (because there is no hero, I'm learning) and gauging our reactions to the characters, are we seeing how we would react to people in real life?

For example, Kate, who killed her stepfather by burning him alive, then ran from the police (among other things). I can't say I like her. But I like how she behaves on the island most of the time. It's caused me to consider my own judgment of people as good or bad. Because I usually feel like I give people a fair chance and get to know them before deciding how they fit in my life (or don't). But do I?

I know it's just a TV show, but I'm really enjoying it. It's less superficial than most shows, and I think that's what keeps me coming back.

I am done! All that's left is formalities and paperwork!

I am really going to graduate in August! I will have my master's degree!

I can begin taking my search for a Ph.D. program more seriously!

Yay!

THESIS COMPLETE! THESIS COMPLETE! THESIS COMPLETE! :-D

I have never used so many exclamation points in a blog entry! Yay!

Have a look! I welcome feedback.

*Note: There is one dead link at the moment, but it's on purpose... I'm waiting to hear back from a professor whose class I observed and analyzed. I haven't heard back from him yet so until I do, I'm leaving the link dead.

I immediately put down my earrings, threw on some shoes, and grabbed my camera. I had time; I wouldn't be late for work by stopping to snap a picture or two.

From my back porch I got two pictures before he moved out of view, behind my landlord's business. I zoomed in as close as I could (unfortunately this meant using digital as well as optical zooming). The picture's quality leaves something to be desired, but from the shape of his body and the coloring on his head, I was able to determine that I think I was visited by a great blue heron!

I love this backyard.

It's sad when we have a windy day and the webs get destroyed. I watch to see if and where new ones will form. My porch is a favorite spot for a few types of hungry spiders, it seems. As long as they're outside my house, I'm cool with spiders. (Now if my mom lived here, we'd have a problem; she has bad allergic reactions to spider bites...) They don't come near the windows that open up onto the porch, so the spiders are welcome to inhabit the edges and catch all the bugs they want.

This was the first web picture I took... (On the left.) The sun didn't really illuminate the individual strands like I'd hoped.



















If you click on this picture (above) to see a bigger version, you'll notice there are two webs: one in the foreground and one in the background. The two webs create a layered effect, which is not only beautiful but also probably effective for food catching.


Here's the little guy I found on his giant web. (On the left.) He must be a talented web slinger to create something so much bigger than himself!



















And here's the big guy I found on his web. (Above.) Looks like he's had to make a few repairs. There are more big spiders on my porch than small ones. (Although I find my fair share of small ones on lower ground.)

Since I'm not on Facebook and choose not to connect with people that way, and since I blog (more avidly these days... perhaps, I dare say, due to a slight increase in free time), I decided I'd add the little bit of iMood code back to my template as a kind of update. I guess it's almost like Twitter, but more brief and without the ridiculous connectivity.

I've evidently been a member of the iMood site since about 2004... that's probably close to the longest online membership I have anywhere, considering I dumped all my email addresses from the early days (Yahoo, Lycos, Hotmail) and other social sites (Facebook, Blogger, Wordpress). It's an ancient-looking website, but the creators don't make any money on it (they do it all in the name of fun and in their free time, so I'm not criticizing). At any rate, I can't think of a site I've been a member of for longer... Fortunately, I chose a great username: sugarpacket. :-)

I don't know if I'll keep it up for long, but I put it up just for fun. For now.

Yesterday I scoped out the latest additions in my yard: goslings. They're a few weeks old now and live down near the lake in my yard with their mother. There are some other geese hanging out with the mother and the babies too. On Saturday when it was pouring rain outside, these guys were out eating and playing. When some of the other geese get too close to the babies, the mother charges at them and they all go running and squawking. I watched them during the rain from my porch. Just for fun.

Also new to my yard are the blossoms of a recently identified flower! I had no clue what most of the plants were in my yard because I moved in last year at the end of summer. No flowers and dwindling leaves means no plant identification for me. I don't claim to know anything about botany or horticulture, that's for sure, but I do like knowing about the plants around me. I had no idea what the flower was, even when I noticed it blossomed the other day, so I took a photo and sent it off to a friend of mine who is very in-tune with nature. He identified it for me: a Christmas camellia. (Thanks, Michael!)

And on my porch is a robin's nest. I already had one mama bird using it for her chicks, who have all left the nest. It seems another bird (perhaps the same one? I don't know; I can't honestly tell the difference) has taken up the space so maybe I'll have more eggs to watch! my porch is prime real estate for the birds, though, because it's completely covered, up one story from the ground (no predators), and provides more protection from wind and weather than most trees. My landlord says there have been birds nests here each year since he's owned the property. So they've learned over time that my porch is a safe place to hatch their babies.

From my porch, I have a few incredibly artistic spiders who defy physics to create multifaceted webs on my porch. I leave the webs alone because 1) I know they've got to eat too, 2) they eat yuckier bugs like june bugs and mosquitoes, and 3) the webs are just flat-out amazing. I'll get a photo if I can, but I'm not sure it'll do them justice.

And then I read articles from The Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed that don't make me feel much better... The job market is bad. People who got their degrees years ago are still looking for jobs. The market shrinks as schools make budget cuts, succumbing to the financial crisis's belt going one notch tighter. It's all news I wish I didn't need to read. But to be realistic with myself, I read the articles, swallow my pride, and keep going to work. It's not my dream job, but it's paying the bills.

What I'm grateful for, in all this gloom, is some forward-thinking about how to assuage the current problem of the humanities Ph.D. An article today from Inside Higher Ed brings to light the real problem--"that advanced training in the humanities cannot be simply the province of aspiring tenure-track faculty members"--and thoughts toward a solution:

We are beginning to acknowledge that the graduate training we offer in the humanities is simply not fair to our students, the vast majority of whom will never get tenure-track jobs in their disciplines. But the worth of humanities graduate education need not depend on the number of tenure-track humanists it produces. Graduate education in the humanities is an excellent preparation for many, many careers. But our students should not have to find those careers on their own, and they should not have to think of those careers as “non-academic” careers—the jobs we take when we can’t get the jobs we’ve been trained for. Humanities education needs to take itself seriously. We believe that undergraduate humanities programs produce thoughtful, informed, global citizens. Now we need to decide what we really want graduate humanities programs to produce.
--Paula Krebs, "A New Humanities Ph.D.," Inside Higher Ed

So maybe it's still okay to get a Ph.D. in the humanities... Or maybe it will be, but isn't yet. (?) Shall I call forth all my entrepreneurial skills while pursuing the degree and hope I can market myself without being overqualified by just having a Ph.D.? Should I put off the Ph.D. for now and try to keep earning that time-favored badge of honor "Experience"?

It's frustrating, to say the least, that the job market is so awful. Friends and family members alike have lost their jobs, had their hours cut, taken pay cuts, or were denied raises--all in the name of the financial crisis. New college grads (my younger brother among them) have a sad state of affairs to face. Then there are people like me: unhappy where they currently work purely because it isn't their dream job. But can I express how terrified I am to consider leaving said job to start a Ph.D. program when I'm not even sure that would get me my dream job?

While we're at it, what is Karissa's dream job? Directing a writing center or other learning support facility at a university and teaching English composition. (I'd teach ESL students or native speakers; I wouldn't care which, but might prefer ESL students.) I want to be up to my elbows in writing center tutor training, pedagogy, techniques, and research. I want to do hands-on research about technology and writing, technology and second language acquisition, and the culture of writing centers.

It is terrifying, absolutely unsettling, to think about walking away from the job (and life) that I have, that I've worked so hard to build for myself, to immerse myself in academe, learn to swim in its shifting tides, and not know for sure that I could be any closer to my dream job than when I started out... But I'll probably do it anyway.

I bought my Macbook (white, late 2007 model) in January 2008 on the coldest day I remember--it was -8º when I was walking around the Apple Store, sad because my beloved iBook days earlier gave me the gray screen of death, which, in multiple languages, suggested my computer required repair. After determining I couldn't afford to pay to fix the logic board in my iBook, I paid to have my data transferred to an external hard drive (these were the days before Time Machine changed my life) and I bought a brand shiny new Macbook. I didn't want to, but I needed a computer because I had just started grad school (quite literally, too--on the first day of classes it gave me the gray screen. Sad face).

Since then, the only problem I've had with was minor. The screen started to flicker when opening and shutting the screen after a few months of ownership, so I took it to the Genius Bar and they sent it out for repairs. It came back perfect and I was pleased. Turns out there was a loose wire.

When I noticed the cracks this weekend, I recalled my warranty and gave the good people at AppleCare a call. The technician I spoke to ensured me it was under warranty, said this is a known issue with the cases of Macbooks from this generation, and then explained my options for repair. I could mail it in to a repair center or take it to the Genius Bar again. I decided to give the mail-in service a chance.

I got the box with packing materials on Tuesday. I had Fed Ex pick it up Wednesday. Yesterday morning (Thursday) I got an email saying my computer had arrived and I could check its repair status online. This morning (Friday) I got a tracking number from Fed Ex that, by the time I checked it at 7:30 a.m., said my package was out for delivery. My doorbell rang at 9:15 and the Fed Ex man had me sign for my laptop.

Now that's service! No driving to the city for the Apple Store, no sitting in traffic, no need to convince someone that my laptop shouldn't have had a cracked case when I am so delicate with it. None of that.

Not only did they fix my case (giving me a new trackpad and keyboard in the process) they also replaced my hard drive. In the repair spec, they cited a bad sector and just replaced it with another drive of the same size. Yay! (Good thing I heeded their advice and backed up all my stuff before mailing it out.)

I just opened it up and turned it on and went through the introductory screens for Leopard (OS X 10.5). I'll have to migrate my data over to the drive soon, but that'll be easy because I have a wirelessly-connected Time Capsule. For now I'm glad to have my computer back.

What's Karissa been using in the meantime, you ask? My boyfriend's nostalgia-inducing 12" PowerBook G4, running Leopard. It reminds me of my iBook so much! The thing I miss the most is the keyboard of this machine. The Macbook keyboard is good, but the old PowerBook and iBook keyboards seem more intuitive to my hands.

All in all, though, I have to say that AppleCare is worth the almost $200 I paid for it back in January 2008. My warranty will be up in 2011, but in the meantime I've gotten at least my money's worth with the repairs I just sent in. I didn't have AppleCare on my iBook--if I had, I might still be using that computer. While the commonplace idea in our world of disposable goods is that newer is always better and older is useless, I think warranties like AppleCare are looking out for the longevity of the machine.