why is it so difficult to actually get to work?

Crossing my fingers wasn't enough this morning. I was just out of luck. And then I was soaked.

The radio morning show kept saying that a big line of storms was coming -- a nasty band of thunderstorms with strong winds. I rushed to get ready, thinking I only have to make it one block, get on the bus, walk another half block, and wait for the train. This is totally do-able. I'm leaving early, and I'll just make it.

I was so very wrong.

I've never been outside in rain like this. The rain was coming from everywhere, and my umbrella was essentially useless. Before I made it to the end of our block, my capris were literally dripping wet. I rounded the corner and kept walking, but I finally hit a point of This is INSANE. I can't work all day in these wet clothes. So, I went home, hung up my wet clothes, laid on the bed, and checked my email.

That's when I snapped this picture -- too bad I didn't a) look right before I left and b) take a picture of the radar right before I left. Then, you could have seen my red pinpoint in the red band of storms.



My second attempt involved the same, pitiful umbrella, much less rain, and a bright yellow poncho. After seeing a coyote running down between the Metra tracks -- no joke! -- I made the train and made it to work. Safely. And, pretty much dry.

I got a feeling...

Last week, Liz and I declared during our morning train commute that November was going to be a good month. We agreed we were both getting back to our weekday swims. So far, we're 2 for 2. And, unlike October, November has been sunny! Supposedly, we had 22 days of rain in October, when our average is 12. No wonder I felt like crap.

This talk of swimming and sunshine -- it's about feeling good. I get into a cycle of feeling meh and not wanting to exercise, when exercise is clearly something that helps me to not feel so meh, so I'm not exercising and not feeling less meh but feel too meh to get myself to exercise.

But, it's November. I got a feeling that this month's gonna be a good month...

I hate to sweat. I really, really do. Swimming is good because it's low-impact and not sweaty. It's strange for me to think of enjoying anything active, even when there isn't sweat involved, but I really enjoy my swimming.

Especially the first lap.

There's NOTHING like the first dive down, smoothly moving through the water to a steady freestyle stroke. Breathing is so simple, the water is so clear, and the strokes are steady and even. This first lap is as good as it gets for me, and I'd love to have every lap feel this week, this satisfying.

The problem is my breathing. The first lap is great because I've used my inhaler preventatively but haven't yet got my heart pumping. My need for air feel so much simpler in that first lap. I take one--maybe two--breaths across the pool in the first lap, compared with the three I take in subsequent laps. I don't work hard in that first lap. It just feels natural. The rest of them will all be work, and when I get a good lap in there somewhere in the middle of the swim, I feel really good about it.

Besides the asthma, I never learned proper swimming breathing. As a child, I was deathly afraid of the water, and I hated swimming lessons. As an adult, I don't know how to plug my nose underwater without actually wearing nose plugs. I honestly think my breathing would be smoother if I could swim without the nose plugs. (If you can describe how that's done--plugging you nose from inside while you swim--do tell!)

I'll close with a recap of our Halloween festivities with my family, courtesy of Anne. Her costume was truly frightening, by which I mean AWESOME. And, for your reading amusement, here's her story about what happens when I'm not there in the morning to save her life.

a weekend with a mix of rain and sunshine

Anne's parents were here over the weekend. They're good folks, and of course, we had a nice time.

Anne's paternal grandmother died not long before she was born. Parts of her life are well known, while some details remain shrouded in mystery. One of those mysteries has been her early life in Chicago. Anne's Aunt Mary has recently been doing some genealogical research, and between her research and Anne's dad's great uncle, we learned the name of the street she was born on: Grenshaw.

In my summer class on Chicago geography, we worked with a lot of homeowner data in Chicago's Puerto Rican neighborhood, so I learned how to find a lot of information online. I thought, Surely there must be a way to find her birth certificate, so I poked around the city websites. And, I found it. Fifteen dollars later, we knew a bunch more information about Anne's grandmother, including the address for the house in which she was born.

Saturday, we headed over to the North Lawndale neighborhood and found the house.



(That's her dad.)

After her parents flew home on Sunday, her dad emailed a few pictures to his siblings, along with the copy of the birth certificate, and he CC'd Anne and me. It's been a joy to see the responses from his siblings, reading how much it means to all of them to have this information. I'm happy I could give that to them.

Anne ran into one of our neighbors on her way in from the garage on Sunday, after dropping off her parents at O'Hare. We don't really know our neighbors that well, and in a moment of channelling her mother's extroversion, she stopped to chat with him.

He's living with his best friend in an apartment that's made me happy -- from the street, you can see the beautiful red color they painted the living room, and the bay windows have been flanked with beautiful flower boxes with amazing arrangements. The best friend told Anne about his friend, who went about creating the perfect space in that apartment. He wanted that work to continue around him until it was finished, even as he spent the weekend in bed, dying of cancer. The doctors did not expect him to survive the weekend.

The weekend was bittersweet. All around us... life and death, beginnings and ends, discovery and loss, joy and sorrow. Seemed fitting, really, that the weekend was a mix of cold rain and warm sunshine.

baby, it's cold outside

It was -17 F when I got up this morning. That's beyond the threshold at which point any lower temperature can be classified as Just Plain Stupid Cold. I've been self-medicating with peppermint mochas the past two days. Tomorrow, we'll have a heat wave of 22 degrees!

We had the happiest sight ever this morning upon disembarking from the train: our Public Safety office, which usually sends an officer out to drive people to campus (5 at most can fit in the car), sent BOTH of the department SUVs to pick us up! My favorite officer, C, talked her boss into it. We were so appreciative. They're really good to us. I made them cookies at the end of last semester as a Thank You for things like this that they do for us.

Aside from the cold, the first week of classes has been going just fine. I've had walk-in hours everyday for my students with disabilities, which makes things MUCH less of a scheduling nightmare at the beginning of the semester. In addition to those kids, some of the usual suspects have dropped in to say hello. I was ready for the kids to be back.

I've got to try and find a little time, perhaps at the end of the day, to finish watching the BSG webisodes--we're back with an all-new ep tonight! First of the final ten! OMG! H and one of A's friends are coming over to watch it with us. I can't believe we'll soon know who all the cylons are.

I've got a ton of knit/crochet projects I want to work on. I want to dye more yarn--I need to post my pics of the 3 skeins I've already dyed. I'm finishing up a sweater and working on a scarf. I have some mittens in the work, though the need for those has diminished this week with the arrival of fleece mittens from a friend of A's family. I also saw yesterday that people have been making felted iPod cases. Great idea. If only yarn could be my full-time job... A girl can dream. :)

killing 45 minutes

I'm one of the advisory people who meets with the academic appeals board, and this time around, I volunteered to take on an advisee (perhaps only for right now), which I think they liked because it meant Their Will Shall Be Done. Said advisee was supposed to come in at 4 today, and he called at 4:10 to tell me he'd be even later. We're definitely set for 9am tomorrow, though classes start tomorrow, which makes it more difficult for him, seeing as he still needs to pick 3 of his 4 classes.

Anyway.

I've just read on my friend Tonja's blog about her being in the black hole of knitting, a place in which she has no knitting motivation whatsoever. I think I'm in a place that I should designate the Mark Twain hole of crocheting. Mark Twain, who I adore, pretty much always puttzed out when it came to wrapping things up--you'll notice how he takes pretty big shifts at the end of his stories/books--and I'm having that problem with crocheting. I was working like a fiend on my pumpkin orange sweater, and now that I'm nearing the end (1 sleeve almost done and the other to do still), I hardly pick it up. Plus, I've dyed 3 skeins of yarn, none of which I've done anything with, project-wise (granted, I need to take them to the yarn group tomorrow). Summer's usually my slow time for crochet, so I need to get back in gear.

Other than that, I guess there's nothing too remarkable to say, other than OMG snow in Chicago.

winter failures

I slipped and fell twice yesterday morning--on the way to the train and on the way from the train to campus. Today, I'd barely made it past our front yard when I wiped out again. I'm so over this.

After hitting the ground nice and hard on the way to the College yesterday, I was not the least bit amused by the stellar (not!) snow removal, which is done by an outside contractor. The "weather event" had long since been over with, and yet the campus with a mess. Are we really getting our money's worth here, kids?

Thank goodness my students with mobility impairments aren't back on campus yet (classes begin next Tuesday):



And you'll love this one:



I'm fairly certain salt works better with snow and ice when you actually spread it around and don't just leave it in piles on the sidewalk.

five days to go, kids

We're five days from the big day, and I'm FAR less stressed out than I expected to be. I can certainly attribute that to the awesomeness that is Shanna and John. Not only did they come over on Saturday to help us get things accomplished, but it was their idea to come over because they are clearly made of awesome. (I should note that I have several other friends who also fall in this category of awesomeness, who've called people, looked into stuff, etc. And that my mom came up to help us this weekend, too. :) )

It's fall break here on Monday and Tuesday, so that means most of the kiddies are scattered - some went home, some are here in hibernation, etc. I've got my music up louder than usual. :) This certainly doesn't hurt my stress level.

I think we'll be at the peak of fall colors this weekend, but it looks like rain's in the forecast. Oh well. I accept that this is beyond my control.

And in crochet news, I made myself a winter hat yesterday, and it even got an endorsement from Anne, which never happens because--and this will no doubt surprise you (don't miss the sarcasm)--I like things to be a little colorful and crazy. ;)

Alrighty. Gonna take advantage of this quiet and get some things done.

noteworthy, I suppose

1. I was in the Red Eye this morning. Ha! I submitted a comment to "Hey CTA!" in response to Kyra Kyles's article yesterday on the expansion of the bus tracker system, and she ran it. I'm so famous.

2. According to HigherEdJobs.com, it looks like I'm pretty much in line with other professionals in salary. I can't complain, especially with the raise I took to come here from Cathoicland.

3. OMG 70 degree weather! I had a WWMD?* moment when deciding whether or not to wear sandals, and then I thought that in such situations, Merdie would ALWAYS vote yes for sandals. It wasn't bad, really, being out this morning when it was still in the 40s. I can't wait till I have to walk across campus later on and can enjoy the warm sunshine. (Boy, that's not something I say very often!)

4. H is sharing the love, so we're going to a Cubs game on Sunday. Yay!

5. I booked the hotel for my conference trip to Reno this summer and saved just under 50% more than the conference rate. Ha! Winner! That means I'm totally getting internet when I'm there. I hate how the fancyschmancy hotels make you pay for freakin' everything. I do think they have a Starbucks in the hotel, which means I can have coffee, at least, and maybe some real breakfast, unlike the PopTarts I chowed on at last year's conference.

* What Would Merdie Do? In grad school, she and I actually had a moment where we were trying to get into a concert and both thought to ourselves--and then aloud--"What would [rhetoric professor] do?" That professor had talked a friend's way into a concert while we watched in awe.

I'm doubtful, which means I'll end up eating these words.

According to the National Weather Service, for our area:

...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM FRIDAY TO 1 AM CDT SATURDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHICAGO HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM FRIDAY TO 1 AM CDT SATURDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OVERSPREAD THE AREA AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT AND CONTINUE THROUGH THE DAY FRIDAY BEFORE DIMINISHING EARLY FRIDAY EVENING. TOTAL SNOWFALL ACCUMULATION OF UP TO 8 INCHES IS EXPECTED OVER MUCH OF THE WARNING AREA. THERE WILL BE A VERY SHARP DIVISION BETWEEN THE HEAVY SNOW AREA AND A NARROW BAND OF MIXED PRECIPITATION BEFORE CHANGING OVER TO ALL RAIN OVER LOCATIONS SOUTH OF THE ILLINOIS AND KANKAKEE RIVERS.

A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW... SLEET... AND ICE ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. TRAVEL WILL LIKELY BE VERY HAZARDOUS. THIS WILL ALSO BE A VERY WET...HEAVY SNOW. EXERCISE CAUTION WHEN SHOVELING.

Except the national radar map is pretty much empty right now. I know that's still 12 hours away, but I can't help but feel like we ought to see something on the map. Shouldn't someone be getting pounded by that weather right now?

And our current weather? Mid-40's and sunny. Yeah, baby.

(I'm bringing my boots home with me, just in case.)

wanted: rock salt for streets and sidewalks

Lovely news, folks: Northern Illinois is low on its rock salt. This includes The College and This College Town. Given the 12 inches* of snow we got up here yesterday, this is somewhat of a problem. I've seen cars spin their wheels, trying to move through intersections on roads covered with what must be an inch of snowy compacted ice. I think our women's hockey team should move tomorrow's game outside for the fun of skating around the roads. Street hockey's run, right? So what if it's not an NCAA sport! I must admit that I do worry about how my students with mobility disabilities will fare getting around campus, given that our small reserve of snow is supposedly saved for the drives** around campus. My 2 kids' paths to/from class are supposed to be a shoveling and salting priority.

In college, I had serious loathing for February. Despite it being the shortest month, it always felt like February existed in the depths of despair and hopelessness, with no end of reprieve in sight. If my friend Heather is right, we've had only 11 minutes of actual sunlight here in the month of February. I'm self-medicating with chocolate.

____________________________
* Anne rightfully challenges my estimations of snowfall, given I have little to no depth perception. Today, however, this was confirmed by my friend Jennifer as we walked to campus from the train. So there, Anne! :P

** Pfff. The drive into the parking lot of the Butch--my building--was like any other thoroughfare in This College Town this morning.