Some Bits and Bobs

I'm getting ready to wrap up my semester this week. I've got five days to grade, process, and calculate all of the students' papers so that I can submit my final grades by noon on Friday. I'm sure I'll be able to do it, but I really don't want to. I'd much rather just start my summer vacation right now.

So, to kick off the week before the summer vacation kick-off, here are some things from this weekend for you to look at:

Look out for the zombie, Henry! Why are you so calm?!

OMG, it's even worse than a zombie! It's BARNEY!

I went to an artist talk at T.'s gallery on Saturday and listened to Fred Stonehouse and Tim Tate talk about their show. I should have been grading papers.

My learning community (that's my co-teacher in the front, sticking out her tongue)

My creative writing class, giving me some jazz hands

I still have one more class that will meet for a final time tomorrow, and I have to prepare a quiz for them. But I'm going to make sure that it's an easy quiz. And then it's meetings, grading, meetings, grading, meetings, grading, meetings, grading until Friday at noon. And then it's no more meetings (except one in June I said I'd go to) and no more grading until August. Holy cow.

Some Bosco Bits

Grand-mom Bork sent me some photos of Bo, and he's looking pretty awesome (and upright!). Check him out with some of his peeps.

Um, Dad and Auntie, my margarita is coming over so please put me down

Check me out, world! My toy totally matches my outfit!

Why yes, Grampa, I agree that E Bonds are a very secure long-term investment

A Sunny Day in April

I haven't been out of the house other than to walk Henry around the block since Thursday night; I caught a wicked chest cold the Sunday after returning from Tennessee (although I'm sure that I caught in on the trip itself) and have been sick ever since. I of course passed on my illness to T., and the two of us has been laid up, cold-medicated, and pathetic, for the past six days.

So we decided to take advantage of today's weather and get outside a bit. First, to provide us with enough energy, Trevor made us breakfast:

This is the biggest omelet ever, filled with peppers, onions, and broccoli, with a side of veggie sausage

Our primary objective for the walk was to get the Jewel on Des Plaines to pick up some more Kleenex and cold medicine. I also got us some ice cream (very good for a cold), which we ate in the park across the street from the grocery store. We walked all around after that, even visiting T.'s old workplace, Flatfile Galleries. The space has just been rented by the Chicago Artist Coalition and they were having an open house, so we popped by. We walked most of the way via Kinzie, which took us right through a great and odd little industrial area just east of the meat packing district.

I'm going to steal this to use as the logo for our school's creative writing club

And now we're home and beat. We might head over to the downtown Borks for some afternoon hang-out time, but we're waiting to hear from them. They had Bo over for his first ever over-night and they might be too tuckered out.

We hope you all enjoyed today's weather, too, wherever you are and whatever you're doing. I'll leave you with the best view in the city:

A view from our couch--I could stare at this all day long

Henry on the Town

Henry had some adventures on his walk tonight with Trevor.

Nashville

Unfortunately, I didn't come home with a pair of cowboy boots--though perhaps it was fortunate for our bank account, since I saw not one pair of boots in Nashville for under $250.

Now, the trip was a huge success, and hopefully you've been following the ASB blog and checking in our our progress. We got home last night about 7 p.m., which was earlier than we'd originally expected, and nice for the group, who were tired. We had four volunteer-packed days, spending time with the Second Harvest Food Bank, a Habitat for Humanity home store (a thrift store for home repair and construction goods), and three Youth Encouragement Services (YES) centers around the city of Nashville.

We drove from Nashville to Maryville on Wednesday night to the Once Upon a Time retreat, which is a hostel-like wilderness retreat. The majority of guests are "break away" groups like us, on alternative spring breaks from high schools and colleges. We did service on Thursday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with a group of rangers; we spent the time planting grasses meant to help the landscape and feed the animals in the park. The rangers told us that our group of twenty-eight did in about five hours what would have taken them weeks to do alone, and they were grateful and thankful for our work, which made us feel spectacular.

And now we're home! I still haven't unpacked or laundered my duffel bag full of dirty clothes, but I'll get to that after I (finally) take a shower. Yikes. Here's a picture of the group from Thursday in the park, and I'll be posting more later on.

We're in Tennessee!

I arrived tonight with my student and adviser crew for our 2011 Alternative Spring Break Trip. Here's a picture for you, and follow this link to read more about our trip on our "official" blog.

I'll check in more throughout the week!

Here's the gang, eating at Las Palmas in Nashville

Art Fairs, Tenure, and Spring Break

Trevor recently got back from a week in New York at The Armory Show for the gallery, and it was a very successful fair. They sold out of one new Gregory Scott piece (he's the same artist they sold out of at Art Miami in December), sold a few more of his pieces, and sold pieces from a number of other artists, including Nan Goldin. According to T.'s boss, Cathy, it was the gallery's most successful fair to date.

The Armory booth on Pier 94

 She and T.'s co-worker, Juli, are going back to NYC this week for AIPAD show (Association of International Photography Art Dealers), so T. will be manning the gallery with the new Steve Shapiro show. Stop by to visit him if you're interested in Taxi Driver and The Godfather, since the show features still shots from these two films.

While T. was out of town, I did a lot of not much. I hung out with Henry (I talked to him quite a bit more than he talked to me), did a lot of school work, watched a lot of trashy television, and spent one afternoon crafting with my friend Linda (she sewed and I knitted). She's pictured here hammering a snap onto a hand-sewn pouch:

I also had to take care of a semi-sick Henry, who'd decided to eat half of his blanket (about six pounds according to the before-and-after barfing weigh-ins the vet did...) and had some minor trauma to his inner eyelid, which fixed itself pretty quickly, but looked really awful (think walleye). We think he was so distraught at Trevor's absence that he started rebelling in strange ways. He's all better now.

Right before T. left for NY, I found out that I got tenure, which was exciting. The MCC Board of Trustees voted on it on February 24, and although the vote was really a nothing event (it was included with about thirty other "no contest" voting items, which they voted on all at once), it's nice to have it over. There was a Tenure Tea on Thursday for me and my fellow tenure recipients, and we got some sparkly tiaras to wear and some wands to wave:

Me and two of my six fellow tenurees (that's a lightsaber in the foreground)

Me and my friend Justin in his awesome airline sport jacket

In other exciting news, I'm going on our second annual Alternative Spring Break with school. We leave on March 27 and will be in Nashville for three days doing volunteer work with a number of different organizations. Then we'll head to Great Smoky Mountains National Park to help get rid of invasive species. We've got eighteen fantastic students--three are returning from last year, but the rest are new, including a new faculty member to bring us up to four trip advisers. We had our first meeting on Friday and snapped a picture of the group.

We'll be keeping up with the blog that we started last year (here's the link if you want to refresh your memory), and I'll be keeping this blog up to date with some postings as well.

And I'll end with a couple of images from the Learning Community I'm teaching. A Learning Community is a class composed of two different classes and two different teachers--usually a content class (like psychology or, in my case, art appreciation) and a skills class (like English or speech). The students enroll in both classes and get full credit for both classes, but go through the classes together as a cohort. The classes are co-taught by the two teachers, and the skills taught are taught in context using the content. My portion of my LC is a composition one class, so the students are learning the skills of composition and rhetoric, and all of the writing they're doing is about the art and artistic concepts they're learning. It's very cool. One of the first projects they did was a "sound interpretation": the students listened to six different songs and used pastel chalk to interpret those songs with color, line, and shape on paper. They each chose their favorite image from the six they'd created and wrote an artist statement, explaining what they'd done, why they'd done it, and what they hoped their audience would experience. And now those pieces are displayed! Check them out:

The sound interpretations are on the right, and another project our students did, a "texture and context" project, are on the left. Here's a close-up of those:

None of our fifteen students are art students--it's a gen. ed., and they're just in it for the humanities credit. This makes it even cooler that they've produced such interesting work, and they were so excited to see their pieces up in the art hallway, displayed for everyone. I'm so proud of them, and although this class takes a huge amount of preparation, I'm really excited to be doing it.

And now I'm going to stick some laundry in the dryer and organize a playlist of the Garth Brooks songs I just burned from Greg (was anyone else inspired by Scotty McCreery's rendition of "The River" last week on American Idol? The rendition was a little hammy, but it reminded me what a great song it is!). Good night, all, and have a lovely (and slightly warmer) week!

New Kitchen, Part One

There will probably be many more parts to this new kitchen as it's completed slowly over the next months, but here's installment number one: the new appliances!

Trevor had to deal with the two fellows who installed them all--they were here for about three hours and managed to chip four of our counter tiles (luckily we got the appliances before the new counters and cabinets), lose the electricity to one wall, and have no idea how to get it back on. T. eventually realized the magical "reset" button on the outlet behind the toaster oven. He's pretty smart. And thankfully he used his noodle to figure it out before the installers had completely dismantled the fuse box. They'd gotten to the face plate and were about to start...god knows what. Snipping wires?

The microwave is hiding under the kitchen table (and when the guy set the dolly down on the floor, he set it on a floor lamp and almost broke it. truth be told, he sounds like kind of a disaster), and we'll put that in above the stove once the cabinets are fresh and new. For now, it stays in the box.

Oh, did you notice that we have two ovens? Yes, we do! We have a mini pizza-perfect oven and a second, larger oven for, well, I guess much larger pizzas.

The Last Meal

Six months of Bank of America yanking our chain for an absurdly small refinance finally resulted in T. and me getting our money last month. And those six months of paperwork lost and redundantly sent, dozens of e-mails shooting between us and one unbearably inefficient loan processor, Jesus "Jesse" Velasquez (if I had his home phone number, I'd certainly publish it here), and one accusation of forgery later, we're able to finally start thinking about remodeling the kitchen, which was the biggest reason for the refinance in the first place.

We spent a couple of afternoons at Abt Electronics, trying to figure out the best appliances for us, and we settled on a lovely group from KitchenAid. We decided to take advantage of some of the deals Abt was offering and arranged to get them delivered sooner rather than later. So even though we won't do the full remodel until May, once I'm finished with school for the semester, we'll be able to use our brand spanking new appliances, starting tomorrow! Tonight I "cooked" our last meal (a set of frozen dinners because we figured that doing any major grocery shopping right before a new fridge is delivered was kind of silly) in our old oven. The oven and fridge have served us well, and the dishwasher has served us, well...loudly. Very loudly.

Henry says goodbye to the stove

We checked out kitchen cabinets and counter-tops at Home Depot last weekend, and wanted to head to IKEA this afternoon to compare variety and price, but the weather didn't cooperate. We'll probably head out there on Friday night when the traffic is a bit lighter--if not on the roads, at least in the store.

Greg, Paula, and Bosco were in Arizona this week/week-end, so T. and I dog sat. Tequila and the girls say, "hellooooooo!"

And G. and P. have gone a little nutso (or have they gone "bosco"?) over the Bosco website they've recently discovered.

The chocolate bar is actually pretty tasty; once they open the syrups, I'll do a taste test and give a full report.

And here's some other big news: after Thursday night, I'll be a fully tenured faculty member at McHenry County College. The MCC Board of Trustees votes at the monthly meeting on whether or not I and four of my new faculty "classmates" get tenure, but it's a no-contest vote and according to our union president, it's a very underwhelming event. So she's taking us to dinner first at the local Mexican restaurant, Pablo's, and then we'll have a tenure "tea" in a few weeks (where we'll get tiaras and light sabers!) to make the event a little more memorable. So, that's going to be nice, although after almost three years of working towards this, and after finishing the portfolio project and submitting it in November, I feel a little underwhelmed, myself. Or maybe it's just the fifth week blahs. One of my colleagues in the art department gave the explanation, after I'd been complaining about a particularly lackluster class last Tuesday, "Oh, it's week five." According to her, it's the time in the semester when the students top trying to impress you. The bloom is off the rose, and you start to see who they actually are, as students and as people. And the picture isn't always pretty. I think she's right, but the Thursday classes were back on track, so hopefully not all of the students will turn out to be toads.

And before heading off to bed, I've got to read some creative writing essays by some students (and some toads...), so goodnight, all, and if the weather is going to be as crummy as promised, please drive safely!

We Survived the Thundersnow

Like most of Chicago, when the snow came, we'd had a few days of warning and were prepared. I had been sent home early on Tuesday afternoon from school, and luckily I'd taken the train and didn't have to deal with the early blizzard traffic. The gallery closed a couple of hours early, too, and Trevor, Juli, and Matt, had a few drinks late in the afternoon at our local bar before parting ways when the snow and wind really started to rip.

We listened to the thundersnow and watched it fall through the night, and then hunkered down on Wednesday after the storm--the gallery was closed so T. didn't have to go in, and schools were closed all over the Chicagoland area, including mine--to watch news coverage of the blizzard, futz around on our computers, nap, eat sandwiches, and finally, finally, watch our Netflix movie (Micmacs--quite enjoyable). That night Trevor took some photos on his walk with Henry.

The second picture is right outside of our building. They're (still) fixing our roof from the fire at the end of September, and some giant foam boards blew off the roof and landed on the sidewalk. Trevor claimed that they weren't heavy, but I contest they could have knocked him out if they'd hit him in the head. They're still sitting there, or at least, they were still there on Friday.

Not everyone was as lucky as we'd been on Tuesday night, though. My friend Angie had been coming home from After-Words bookstore (where she and I used to work together, and before that, CST), and her bus trip from Illinois and State to Wrigleyville wasn't altogether pleasant. And here, for the first ever guest spot on Archipelago (how exciting!), is Angie, with her account of the trek:

"I was on Lake Shore Drive during the winter madness. I got out of work early and caught the northbound 146 bus home at about 5:20 p.m. Things were slowly but surely moving and it took two hours to get from Michigan Avenue to just north of Fullerton Avenue and then we just stopped. The wind outside made it impossible to see more than a few feet. We could see the lights from the other cars but that was very limited. Luckily the bus was warm and dry and had a diesel engine so we didn’t run out of fuel and kept our spirits up. I must confess to getting very freaked out at times mostly when I heard the thunder and saw the lightning. Thunder snow may be a rare meteorological event, but it’s nothing you want to hear when you are sitting in a plastic bus!
 
The most frustrating was the lack of communication between the CTA and emergency services and us. No one from the outside was telling us anything. We had to rely on people’s smart phones and iPads to tell us what was going on. Our bus driver was even afraid to use his cell phone because it’s against the rules and he could be fired. I find that very disheartening that there is no central dispatch that connects all the drivers and they can’t contact anyone or have a direct line to anyone when it was needed the most. We had a great bus driver and his high spirits made things a lot easier.
 
So the hours were ticking slowly by and I must admit I was beginning to think that I would have to sleep on the bus and wait for morning. Around one in the morning we were beginning to see the fire department walking around outside checking on people in the cars surrounding our bus. One fireman came on board and said that they were going to get another bus to us on the southbound side to take us to a “warming station” and see where we would go from there.
 
We were finally bundled off the bus and had to cross the highway median to another bus already full of other stranded folks from buses and cars. It was a tight fit but we all wedged in and made our way slowly to St. Joseph’s hospital for the next part of our night. It was crowded and I was sweating into my very thick coat, but I was happy to be on a bus that moved! It seemed that everyone on the bus was still in good shaped but very tired and looking forward to being off the road and, hopefully, make it home.
 
After a slow crawl and some backing up we walked about a block into the hospital where we were greeted with hot drinks, blankets, food and to my GREAT relief, bathrooms! After eight hours on a bus I was doing a very elaborate pee pee dance let me tell you. I inhaled the bagel and orange that I got from the staff and was nice to sit and take off my coat. Unfortunately there was no transport out of the hospital and I spent the next seven hours trying to doze and think about how I was going to get home to my bed and a large pot of tea.
 
The hospital provided a hot breakfast of bagels, and oatmeal (the first and last I’ll ever eat I hope) with and apple and orange juice. It was warm and there so I ate and was grateful for a full tummy. My blizzard buddy Heather and I had had enough and along with a couple of other ladies decided we were going to the bus stop at Belmont and see if the busses were running. That bus stop was close enough to my place that if I made it that far I could chance the walk home. CTA bus tracker said that the 151 was running and we went for it. I never felt more out of shape in my life as when we were climbing over the snow. Some places were at least a couple of feet deep and no shovel had yet touched them. We were nearing the Belmont stop and there were busses lined up so we knew that they were at least on the road. We arrived at the bus stop and found another of our bus mates already at the stop. Every bus that went by wasn’t ours but we were hopeful and just when I had decided to walk, it arrived. The warm, moving bus took me the final blocks to my apartment and we saw men, women, children and dogs playing and running down the middle of Lake Shore Drive.
 
I was so happy to see my block, then my courtyard where the wind had not been kind and snow drifts had come up at least waist high in some places and the doors didn’t really want to close because of the all the packed snow. My apartment has never been so welcoming. I was never so glad to take off my clothes and put on my pajamas. I covered my eyes and plugged my ears and slept from 9 a.m. until at least 5:30 p.m. It was a great relief. After heating up some leftovers and making my long-dreamed-for pot of tea, I made my calls and was called by friends and relations checking in on me and catching me up on what had happened while I was stuck in the void. I went to bed again around midnight and slept through till eight this morning when my alarm went off. I was not looking forward to getting out again but it had to be done and I was not alone. The busses were running and they were full with people like me going to work and getting on with things."

Holy cow. All morning long T. and I had been watching footage of LSD, and poor Angie had spent the night there. I'm glad she's safe and sound, and can only imagine how good that pot of tea tasted. Just to end her story on a super high note, here's an image of her on a much, much happier day:

Thursday morning, T. got to go back to work, but MCC was still closed down, which meant another day off and a total monkey wrench in my class schedule. But I'm sure no one feels too bad for me, especially not my students. I spent most of the day grading papers, but still had time to do the laundry and watch two Tom Hanks movies (who knew he's appropriate movie material for a blizzard?).

And now, after five days away from school--some of it spent working, but much more of it spent watching movies, eating sandwiches (really delicious tomato sandwiches on this amazing sourdough from the Green Grocer), knitting (check out this scarf I finished for Maya!

And that's the very first time I've done a scarf with fringe--so exciting!), enjoying a date night with T. at Girl and the Goat (where we were pleasantly surprised by the variety of pescatarian options, especially the chick pea fritters and the grilled seppia), I finally have to go back to school tomorrow. Boo.

So, off I go. To sleep, or, rather, to bed to grade a few more creative writing assignments before falling asleep. And tonight, I shall dream of a world without thundersnow.

Some Bosco Blogging Before Classes Start

So, I felt that Bosco was under-represented during the last blog post, so I figured that I'd post some excellent pictures here, after I started with a video from his very first swimming lesson (check out his awesome one-piece swimming suit):

Here are a few pictures of Bosco on Christmas Eve-Eve.

Uncle Trevor and the B-man

In case he forgets his name

Overwhelmed by all of his loot

And here are my favorite two of him hanging out with Grandma Bork:

He's already reading. Obviously, this is Grandma's and not Greg's influence.

Auntie Laura got him this shirt. I suspect that on this particular afternoon, some major grandson spoiling went down.

And Fran N. sent me some of the pictures from our New Year's Eve weekend with them up in Door County. Here they are:

Me and T at the Log Den for NYE dinner

Fran and Neill at the Log Den for NYE dinner

Trevor sporting Jim's old denim vest

Happy New Year!

And that's pretty much it! Classes start tomorrow, and although my syllabus have been done for a little while, I'm not 100% prepared (surprise, surprise). Trevor gets his ManDay Monday back, which I have a feeling he's pretty happy about. And I'll be off for now to get a little bit of tomorrow's lesson plan finished, and to figure out what I'll wear. Wish me luck!

Leftover Miami

Guess what I'm supposed to be doing? Working on my syllabus!

Here are a couple of leftover pictures from my last day in Miami when Rae and Letty were in town; I forgot to post them here after I'd come home.

Rachel, Letty, and Trevor next to the CEG booth

One of the many, constant crowds around the Gregory Scott pieces at the CEG booth (and there's T's head in bottom left corner)

Okay, so...I guess that's it. I've already eaten breakfast, worked out, made a number of appointments for eye care and lunching dates, answered some e-mails and voice mails, bought a new calendar for the new year, bought me and T. some movie tickets for Thursday night (The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest!), and eaten lunch. And now. Now. I guess. I should work. bye.

The Holidays Are Over

And I am thankful. It was so nice to see all of our family and friends, but the three solid days of shopping, wrapping, Christmas-carding, and pie-baking, followed by four days of parties, parties, parties was exhausting.

The Sunday before the Christmas festivities really kicked off, we had Dan, Simona, and Maya over for dinner. She got a new Cookie Monster from me and T (let's be honest: everyone needs a Cookie Monster). She enjoyed it, but had a time keeping it away from Henry.

I'm still working on her post-Christmas present--a trio of scarves made from yarn Simona and I picked out about three months ago. Yes, I'll make you a scarf, and yes, I will have it ready by your 89th birthday. I'm almost finished with the first of the three, and it's turned out pretty good. Here's a sneak peek before I do the finishing with fringe.

The week was then spent doing the aforementioned shopping, carding, etc., we were ready to really celebrate.

Although we didn't take any pictures on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day with the Bosco-Bux-Bork family (too busy eating? drinking? talking loudly? all three?! and I'm hoping that Mom Bork can send me some of Bosco doing his first Christmas thing), but we have some nice pictures taken by Trevor's Uncle Doug (and one by Trevor) when we went to Doug and Jean's house for brunch the day after Christmas.

Great Grandma Madel, Sadie, and Angi--picture by Doug Madel

The post-Christmas brunch--picture by Doug Madel (top right)

Angi, Destiny, Fran and Sadie, and me--pic by T-spoon

After brunch, we drove out to Batavia to hang out with Pop and Fran Power for some lunch, games, and all around fun.

Sadie with her new blue pal, Devin

Grandpop Power and Sadie

He's got a little Capt'n in him

Sadie doesn't like the cut of Trevor's gib, so she's coming to get him

Now, when Trevor and I found that blue dog for Sadie, we knew that it was a bit old for her, but we figured she'd grow into it. We are so happy, though, that she can totally bounce on him for at least a few seconds before tilting off! Here's more of her enjoying Devin at home.

The Monday after Christmas, Trevor, Henry, and I packed our bags and headed out of town (Henry, though, just layed around like a bum and watched while Trevor and I packed his rubber bones into the suitcase). We drove up to Door County to spend a week and ring in the New Year in cheese head style.
We stayed the week with Jim in his new log cabin--a cabin he built himself, with help from his friend Paul. He finished it about a year ago, but we hadn't been up to see it, so while it's not super new to him anymore, it was new to us. He did a terrific job on it and we truly enjoyed hunkering down in front of a roaring fire for all of the reading, knitting (Henry and I did a lot of knitting, but Trevor didn't), napping, eating, and movie watching we did.

One evening for dinner, we visited Jim's favorite supper club, the Nightingale, and the next night we took in a show at the Sturgeon Bay cineplex.

And True Grit was pretty bad a**. Not as violent as we thought it would be (the word on the street had me thinking it would be on par with Kill Bill), but it was just perfectly violent enough for a really dusty, gritty (sorry, it had to be done), gun-filled Western.

Neill and Fran came up on Thursday night to spend the New Year's weekend, and we added "playing board games" to the list of high-octane activities we'd been doing. Here's Trevor posing with some of the games we played--Wits and Wagers was by far our favorite, so thanks, Mom Bork, for picking that one up!

Hmm. That's weird. Pic by Fran Napier

We also got to see Grandma and Grandpa Madel a few times, which was really nice. The lake view from their house was spectacular and we were so thankful not to be a part of the Polar Bear Club that was taking a yearly jump into Lake Michigan on New Year's Day.

We also have some nice pictures from our NYE dinner at the Log Den (where the food was good but the service left a lot to be desired), and Fran's going to e-mail them to me tomorrow, so look for that good stuff.

And now we're home. Our laundry has been done, our larder has been re-stocked, Trevor has gone back to work, and Henry has been sleeping off the vacation for the past 72 hours. I don't return to campus until January 12 (my first 2011 meeting, and even though it's only going to be about an hour, I'll be officially back) so this week I've got to finish my syllabus (no, I haven't finished, and yes, I'm a month late, and no, I don't want to hear any proverbs about procrastination), get my hair cut, meet my friend Kate for lunch in Kenosha, meet Mom for lunch, meet Paula and Bosco for lunch (Paula, I'll be calling you tomorrow), meet my friend Angie for lunch, finish Maya's scarf, Adam's scarf, and Gabe's new hat, finish the two Brock and Kolla mysteries that just came today in the mail (and the other five new books I got for Christmas [and the two books I got in Door County]), get my eyes checked and my teeth cleaned, and use my Christmas present from Trevor, a Swedish massage (!). And I should probably prep for my first week of classes, too. Oh, blah.

Look for a few more posts while I procrastinate finishing my syllabi tomorrow!