Home again

My class last week was so much fun. I got to sit with two of my favorite classmates, Lisa and Chris, with whom I started the program.

We had some good times outside of class, including drinks with our favorite associate dean, another visit to Dinosaur BBQ, and a round of afternoon tea that turned into a 8.5-hr talkfest. (These were some interesting and tasty drinks at Unique Tea House -- Chris had the "Green Night Elf.") I will miss them! Fortunately Lisa lives within a couple miles of my house and Chris has friends in Boston, so it won't be too long before I see them again. I have one more short paper to do before I'm done with school.

I got home late Friday night and had watched all my saved-up TV within 24 hours. Now I can start on the stack of books I've been piling up as a reward for finishing school. Oh, and the laundry.

On Sunday, Kris graduated from Tufts. I'm so proud of her! I managed to find some sock yarn in Tufts colors at etsy to give her as part of her graduation gift.



I snuggled with four different dogs at her graduation party and elicited no additional interest from Lola and Betty after I got home.

Betty is settling in well. She and Lola were within 3 feet of each other on the bed for an hour this weekend. They're not friends, but they tolerate each other. Once in a while they get a little feisty -- this morning they had a skirmish that woke me up briefly at 4 a.m. Betty likes to herd me once I start getting ready for bed. It seems to be her favorite part of the day and I like having the reminder to stop staying up so late for no good reason.

Ed is in Bombay on the Sloan Fellows international trip. We've had a couple of conversations on Skype. We got video to work last night -- it was great to see him. He's having a great time. He usually feeds the turtle, Benita, but now I'm on turtle duty as well. I actually said something to my sister yesterday about how I couldn't come over until after I had "fed the animals," as if I lived on a farm or something. ;)

I'm re-starting my training this week. It's kind of hard to get back into my pre-grad school habits but I'm working on it!

The home front

Ed is doing a wonderful job cat-wrangling back at the compound. Betty whisper-meows at him all the time (she can't make any noise because of damage from the pneumonia -- it's permanent, but she gets by). Lola and Betty can now hang out in the same room as long as they're supervised. Betty is apparently tougher than we thought and is good at standing her ground and maneuvering herself into an unassailable, superior position (such as the couch arm) when Lola gets a little feisty. Here she is admiring herself in the mirror.

Feats of strength

The first feat of course is graduating! I really have one class left, but that will end on June 6 and then I will be officially done. I got to walk at convocation though (I skipped the big university-wide graduation at the Carrier Dome).

Kris, Brad, and Ed all came. It was so great to have them there. I was very sad when they left -- and I won't get to see Ed again until June 2. I'm returning home late this Friday night, at which point he will have already departed for the Sloan Fellows international trip. He'll be in India and South Africa.

Here are some pics from graduation:





The lei was thoughtfully provided by Brad M., my BIL. We'll have to take pics of Kris, Brad, and Ed wearing it at their graduations as well. ;)

After convocation, we attended the opening of the new iSchool building. We enjoyed some "knowledge-enhanced beverages."



The food was yummy and I was so lucky to meet many of my professors in person. My econ professor in particular was so much fun to talk to. I think we really miss out on personalities sometimes online. My enterprise architecture professor invited me to visit him in DC (his agency is implementing SharePoint) and said my paper for his class, on enterprise information architecture, will be appearing in the August issue of the Journal of Enterprise Architecture. :)

Last night, I got to go out to dinner with Chris (we've taken many classes together) and her family at Dinosaur BBQ. I'm not particularly into BBQ, but the New York strip steak was charred to perfection (I ate every last morsel of my 14 ounces). The mac-n-cheese, featuring five cheeses and jalapenos, was the most amazing mac-n-cheese I've ever had in my whole life. The honey-soaked cornbread was divine. It was a fitting celebration!

This afternoon, I had to move from the "commencement dorm" to the "summer dorm." This turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated; the taxi took forever to arrive and I made a stupid mistake and asked to be taken to last year's summer dorm and not this year's summer dorm. Once I figured out what had happened, I decided I needed to walk. Getting another cab would have taken forever. But in addition to my clothes and computer bag, I also had what felt like 300 lbs of food from Trader Joe's in EarthTotes. My second feat of strength was to carry all this stuff 2 blocks (halfway to the new dorm) before mercifully being rescued by a phone call from Rory, a guy with whom I've taken many classes who lives in Juneau. He picked me up. Whew.

After that we got together with two more classmates from econ and we had a blast hanging out on Marshall St and chatting. Online courses certainly have their weaknesses, but the great thing about them is that they make it possible for a systems analyst from Nicaragua, a technology analyst from New Jersey, a consultant from Alaska, and an info systems engineer from Massachusetts to become friends and grab a non-virtual drink together at the end of the semester.

Asheville: The Northampton of the South

I got to spend most of last week in Ashe-Vegas (NC) with my friend Heather. She was in Birmingham visiting family and took the train to meet me in Greenville, SC.

Tuesday, April 29

We spent the day exploring Asheville. After a yummy brunch at Tupelo Honey (hooray for grits and sweet potato pancakes), we checked out Kress, Mast General Store, and Longstreet. We indulged in one of our favorite hobbies and made snarky comments about some of the lesser pieces at the Asheville Art Museum. We walked part of the Urban Trail until we got bored and gave up. The Basilica of St. Lawrence was amazing. Malaprops yielded a couple of good guidebooks for the next day's travels. We finished off the evening with dinner at the Noodle Shop and dessert at Old Europe. All the food was yummy!

Wednesday, April 30

We drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville until it ended, then drove through Great Smokey Mountains National Park. It was gorgeous!!







We had another yummy meal at the Laughing Seed. Many of their dishes featured seitan, which I was afraid to order since I did not have the Internets with me and I was too shy to ask the waitress what the heck it was. Also, I do not think that "steaks" should be made of things other than animals. (Just kidding, sort of.)

Thursday, May 1

I took Heather to the train station at a very early hour and slept in after I got back to Asheville. I spent some more time in downtown after a lovely breakfast (more grits) at the Early Girl Eatery. The Grove Arcade is so cool. I had afternoon tea in Biltmore Village. The village was built to house servants who worked at the Biltmore and is a very weird, twee little English village. The houses all have fancy businesses in them now, such as Ye Olde House of Wachovia.

I met up with Ed's college friend Blake, his wife Cindy, and their gorgeous daughter Hattie for dinner at Old Europe. We had several sitings of the Hillary Car. (Click on that link. Please! Make sure you see the Hillary car, the masked Hillary army, and the 3 a.m. phone trailer.) We had incredibly tasty desserts at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge.

Friday, May 2

I was at a loss for activities, so chose late the night before. The theme of the day was "things I studied in Mrs. Neser's American history class in 8th grade."

I did a report in Mrs. Neser's class about Swedish-Americans (my paternal grandmother was Swedish-American), including a brief bit about Carl Sandburg. I went to his house, and as my guidebook (gifted to me by Alison) promised, the goats were indeed "enchanting." Sandburg had what I think of as the Swedish chin, which my sister and I have both also inherited (though obviously not from Sandburg!).

I did a presentation in Mrs. Neser's class on the Revolutionary War battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens. These two battles turned the tide against the British during their Southern Campaign, leading to the end of the war. First I visited Cowpens, site of the one of the few successful double envelopments ever executed. I had the great fortune of meeting a volunteer named Bob Lebrun. Mr. Lebrun fought in the Battle of the Bulge and has been on the History Channel more times than he can count. He is originally from Waterville, Maine, and was delighted to meet a "Yankee" (that would be me). He fell in love with a girl in South Carolina before he left for the war and married her when he got back. They were together for 57 years before she passed away. I hope to be as youthful as Mr. Lebrun when I am 82.



At Kings Mountain, I spent some time in the museum, watched a video, and walked the battlefield path (as I did at Cowpens). I was at each park for periods (1.5 hrs) that were longer than the battles.



After that, I got my flight back to Boston. It was a wonderful trip and I'm so glad I was able to go. I loved Asheville and the surrounding area and had a blast with Heather! I will be back.

An open letter to the National Park Service

Dear NPS,

I am a big fan of your work. I love that my taxes help support you. That is saying a lot, for me.

However, I need to mention to you the horrendous typo I discovered last Friday. I was enjoying the small museum at the Kings Mountain National Military Park when I saw this in a very permanent exhibit:



I know you folks are busy over there at NPS. You might want to outsource your editing to my friend Heather at oncalleditor.com.

Sincerely yours,
Michele

EDITED TO ADD: I didn't mean to be so mysterious. :) The apostrophe is not necessary because "Carolinas" is a plural and not a possessive. I used to write a humor column for the Univ. of Hawaii student newspaper and did a whole piece on the extra apostrophes on permanent signs on campus ("Hot Entree's"). I'm nerdy like that.

Betty

We're hanging out in the spare room with our new kitty, Betty, right now. We picked her up earlier today from two of my co-workers who volunteer with the Billerica Cat Care Coalition. Betty was rescued from a feral cat colony near the Wal-Mart in Tewksbury last fall. She and her kitten, Widget, both had upper respiratory infections, and Betty had pneumonia as well. I met Betty and Widget at a "meet-and-greet" at the local Petco when Kris and I were shopping back in December. They were a package deal, so as much as I liked Betty, I was really sure we didn't need 3 cats. I ran into my co-worker who was fostering her a couple weeks ago, and she said Widget had just been adopted separately. So we applied for Betty and now she's chilling in Ed's lap because she's kind of nervous.

These photos were taken a while ago for her PetFinder profile. We'll post some new ones later. She's gorgeous! She looks like she could be Lola's sister. Which I guess she sort of is now. :)

Betty:



Widget (left) and Betty:

Sometimes a DNF is not so bad

So, as was made obvious by my last post, I was really not ready for Palmer. I wasn't able to ride at all over the past week, since my classes are wrapping up for the semester. I spent several days sitting in front a computer alternating between procrastinating on writing my national ID paper and writing it. There went my planned training sessions for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On Friday the many late nights caught up with me. On Saturday I was busy finishing a group paper on e-textbooks, cleaning up our spare room for the kitty we're adopting (more on that next weekend when we pick her up), studying for and taking my weekly econ quiz... So when I woke up this morning, wondering why I had sacrificed sleep to fold six loads of laundry at midnight, I really knew I was not ready.

I got to Palmer at 10 for our annual team photo (outtake below).



This photo was the result of Ed trying to mix things up by telling us to "look serious." Brenda said, "Yeah, like we just had a book club meeting where we discussed Descarte." Obviously, this comment made it impossible to keep a straight face.

I decided a reasonable goal would be to "finish with people." At about mile 7, my teammate Silke had a mechanical. Of course it sucked that she had a mechanical, but I was happy to know that I'd have something to do for the team before getting dropped and stopped to help. After she had her front derailleur adjusted, we worked together to get back to the pack. I was sure that was it for me, but we went fairly slow for most of the rest of the lap while a super super sketchy rider (who has been riding in this incredibly sketchy manner for almost 10 years -- lots of complaints made about her to the officials today) was off the front, where she couldn't hurt anyone. (She got dropped sometime on the second lap.)

Around the same point where Silke stopped on lap 1, I got dropped when an attack went up a small climb on lap 2. My goal for the day was quickly downgraded from "finish with people" to "finish." As I rode on alone, hurting all over, for the rest of the lap, my goal downgraded further to "finish riding after 2 laps and forget about the third." I got cleaned up and waited for my teammates to come in -- and Silke won! It turned out she had an additional mechanical, for which Pauline dropped back. (Not all of my teammates are lucky enough to have 24/7 access to a mechanic like Ed.) When they made it back to the pack, Silke went straight on through and off the front. Brenda and Zoe were also really active on the front, so all in all it was a great race for the team. I was really happy to have played a small part. :) And I'm really going to work on catching up with my training in May and June now that school is nearly finished.

We made a side trip on our way home to take Ed's mom out to dinner for her birthday. Very fun. And now I'm tying up some loose ends with school and work before I leave tomorrow for my vacation in Asheville, NC, with my friend Heather.