4371 Miles Away, But Not Far From Home

I am a big Jane Austen fan surprisingly. I find her stories relaxing to read and rather clever. Sometimes while I am traveling I cannot help but recall some of these scenes where friends talk about writing to one another while away on their travels or in a different city for the summer (I found this excellent archive of old correspondences between friends called the Victorian Women Letters Project). It seems so sweet and it often makes me wonder if we have lost the art of letter writing today. Sure, we may send the occasional postcard, but they are often short due to lack of space or sometimes they do not arrive at all (like the batch I actually wrote last year from Vix). With today's technology, is it even necessary to write letters while traveling? If not, are today's technological advancements a good replacement for this old tradition? Do we talk about different things in letters compared to digital technology? Answers to these questions will be different for everyone I think, but I will share my thoughts on the matter.

The world in general is a smaller place. The average person probably knows hundreds of people rather than just a select few from their family or town as was the case during Jane Austen's time. If I had to write hundreds of people while traveling that is all I would be doing. Even if I select people I am in contact with most on a regular basis, it is still a rather high number of people to correspond with. Usually I am not a huge fan of technology and being connected 24/7, but in the case of modern travel, I find it a helpful thing. For a very obvious example, I am able to write about my travels and share my tales of triumph and failures in this blog. I can reach, potentially, an infinite amount of people, so everyone who knows me, or is interested in hearing about my trip, can easily keep up.

Other options include email and Facebook for more personal correspondence. While the blog typically has the highlights or summaries of my travels, I use email and Facebook messages for sending the occasional longer explanation fitting for only one person, a private joke, or just random complaints or embarrassing stories that are just too much for the entire world to see. Even when I am lacking internet access I can still keep in touch with my regular American cellphone. I have AT&T which has a "World Traveler" option which let's me pay a bit extra to use my phone abroad. I can call home and keep in touch easy as that.

All of these features are great, but I have to say that video chat through Skype or Google is by far the best advancement in technology when it comes to travel. You can actually see the other person and can still share a moment or 120 minutes together through the miracle of the internet. If I did not have Skype, I would have missed out on this epic moment of cuteness:

Regal Kitty patiently waiting for his dinner (in Reed's face), just like when I am at home! 

I do not think that it is necessary to write an actual letter while traveling, but I think we certainly make up for this in other ways. Everyone still loves to get letters in the mail I think. It is still just as exciting for me to see I have a new email from a friend or colleague checking in to see how the trip/research is going. In a way, we still talk about the same things people previously talked about in letters, we just have more ways of communicating these ideas. One thing letters cannot replace is seeing a smile from a loved one or hearing your cat purr while you are 4,000+ miles away. Yes, sometimes it is hard to be away for so long from family and friends, but with all this modern technology, sometimes its like I am not even gone...

And probably one of the cutest moments I have ever had on Skype...

The boys trying to figure out this darn technology...

Sum-Sum-Summertime!

Postponed the zoo again and went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. This well maintained arboretum is owned by the U of MN and is free to students. I was feeling a bit stir crazy since I had not left the cities since my trip to Stillwater over spring break, so I opted for the 40 minute drive out into the countryside.

It was a beautiful day and the fresh air was refreshing. There are several gardens available to walk through as well as numerous nature trails. There are also sections which specialize in specific trees, so for example, there are sections of only "Ash" or even areas dedicated to different types of hedges. I didn't walk out to these, but I drove through them on my way out and definitely plan to visit these on my next trip.

Not many of the flowers were in bloom yet, only a few flowering bushes or trees. The gardens would be quite lovely I imagine once everything has come to life for the season. Some of the specialty gardens include a multi-terraced rose garden, a medicinal garden, and a large herb garden.

I walked through the Shade Tree exhibit and the wildflower gardens which were both part of some of the trails. These were well maintained and had a pleasant and varied landscape. There were few bugs, mostly non bothersome types.


The arboretum was not far from a decent sized lake. I passed one on my drive in, but I believe the one in the photo is yet another lake.





Had another adventure previous Sunday. I went to a friend's party that previous Saturday and a friend was telling me that she had given her cat a bath. I laughed and said I could never do that with Mea because I would fear for my life! She absolutely hates water. When she gets in her mood to try to pounce/attack me, I grab a water bottle and spray her for her misconduct. The following day (Sunday) I was feeling inspired by my friend and decided to try it out with Mea anyway.

I suited up with leather gloves and a thick work shirt in the anticipation there would be much scratching and biting. I ran some warm water in the tub, got an old yogurt container to use for pouring water, added a bit of soap, then locked the kitty in the bathroom with me. I quickly picked her up, set her in the tub, and poured water down her back and did it again. She hardly moved. I believe she was in shock that she was all of the sudden soaking and did not feel the need to fight it because the damage was done. I got all the way through the bath, extra soap and all, without any trouble from her.

Her abundance of fur held a lot of water and she dripped for a long time. She wouldn't let me too near to her to help her dry off, so she had to stay locked in the bathroom for a while. I did manage to snap a photo of her all wet, which you can see posted on the blog wall. I think its pretty funny.

It is late now, so I will finish part two of this post tomorrow and inform you of my other activities of the week. Sweet dreams all!

Ello, ello!

I have not been updating because frankly I am exhausted! It is the beginning of the "bad part" of the semester and it is going to be pretty crazy. I will try to share a few things though...

My classes are fine. I am working my ass off in my artifact course. I was up twice this week til 3:30AM and haven't gone to sleep before 12:30 for the others. Its pretty time consuming, but seems to be going well. I got over my own insecurities and trusted my judgment enough to name/label my bone tools that I am responsible for based on my own opinions and reasoning. It may sound like a ridiculous fear, but everyone in archaeology has an opinion and I had to really think about why I was making the decisions I was. I had to consider whether this would make sense to others and if it was logical. My assessment was going against previous work done on this topic and I feared I may receive strong criticisms for it. The work we are doing on these artifacts will be published eventually, so I want it to be thorough and good.

I have a wonderful bunch of students this year. I've received several compliments from a few recently telling me that I'm doing a great job as a TA, that my enthusiasm has not gone unnoticed, and that they appreciate the extra effort I'm putting in making sure they are doing well and that I care. It has really lifted my spirits and confidence. I tried really hard with my kids last semester, but most were so bitter toward the course that they didn't care how hard I tried/cared. I honestly do want to see them do well and I'm glad when they do. These kids are also doing much better in the course which also works well for me because I can start using up my vintage sticker collection. Haha! I tell them to look at the copyright dates on some of the stickers and they laugh because they are definitely from the late 1980s or early 1990s. I knew I didn't use them for a reason! :)

Let's see, what else, what else... We have spring break next week which I cannot wait for! Mom and Greg are coming for a visit so I will finally see some of the cities, haha! I will be sure to update about what we did/saw/went. I also have a lot of work to do, so it wont be all fun and games.

My undergraduate professor, Mark, that I went to Turkey with has a new series on the History Channel. The show is called Battles BC and airs Monday nights 9PM E, 8 PM C. It started this week. It was fun to see Mark on TV again (he previously was on the show Bible Battles). The new one is neat because it is filmed in the style of movies like 300 or Sin City. The budget is obviously significantly less, so the quality isn't as good, but it is still fun.

Mea is well. She has started sleeping on my side of the bed now (her big monthly move of the favorite spot). She is stubborn as stubborn can be though. I got into bed last night and kept nudging her out of the way and ended up with my feet under her. She couldn't have been comfortable, but she didn't move... Are children like this??? If so...ugh.

Anywho... I'll leave all you Michiganders with an interesting link. It is a photo-story from Time magazine called Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline. It was pretty incredible to see these photos. I've always thought Detroit was an absolute shithole, but it really was something back in the day. I didn't even know half of these buildings existed. It is sad to see their current state because many are lovely, but broken and dirty now. Another strange experience I had looking at these was the feeling that I was at an archaeological site. Quite similar actually because the only things present are the structures and trash, no people or signs of life. Very eerie and apocalyptic.

Alright, on that cheery note, off to do work (hopefully).

Who Doesn't Like a Good Cat Video?

Its been a yucky week so far, mostly because I'm sick again and am starting to feel the crunch of the semester. I somehow got on to YouTube and ended up watching cat videos after a while. These are some of the highlights sure to bring a smile to your face. Enjoy!

Treadmill Kitty
Mea's Long Lost Cousin?
Talking Kitties (an oldie, but still funny, also see the translated version!)
Piano Playing Cat
The Funniest By Far...

And just to provide a brief update... Classes are fine, I'm quite tired though (probably just from being sick). My kids that I'm teaching this semester are pretty awesome...very smart and quick with labs which I think is VERY nice. Outside of school, nothing too exciting going on in my life...its pretty much all school all the time...school and Netflix, haha! Sad to think I'm wasting all of my "good years" in front of a computer or in a book... I'm sure grad school will be worth it in the end...

I don't think I posted anything of substance last week either, but it wasn't a very good week either. Another of my dogs, Chip-Chip, as I called him, had to be put to sleep. I was pretty sad, but he was Rook's best friend, so at least he will have company up in little doggie heaven. Its crazy for me to think that Rook died a year ago already...also crazy to think I was in Europe this time last year too...it went by so fast! Yikes! Speaking of Europe, I will try to get some pictures up eventually or a video. Maybe I'll do that over spring break when I'll have a moment or two for an actual life... Haha! Don't keep your fingers crossed, but I will do my best!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Yes, yes, I have been getting a lot of crap since I've been home about not updating my blog enough. I am a very pattern oriented person and like to keep things neat and orderly...if they happen to fall into an obvious pattern while doing so, all the better! Why am I talking about patterns, you may ask? Back in October when I noticed my dwindling blog entry numbers, I saw that it was going 5...4...3... a very obvious pattern. How can I not just let it go 2 and 1? Which is partly why I haven't been rushing to the computer to add more entries. I know, this sounds like a thing a crazy person would do or think of. I always tell people I'm a little OCD and OCP(personality)D, but no one ever seems to believe me. Now you have some clear evidence that I am in fact, a bit obsessive sometimes, haha!

Anywho...while talking about my lack of blogging with my lovely friend from high school, Juli, she came up with a great idea. She said I could do an entry on my New Year's resolution. I told her I didn't have one except maybe to eat a bit more (I've also received a lot of grief about being too thin while home), but after I thought about it some more, I decided my resolution could be to blog more --- nice how that all worked out! This will be my last blog of the year (just so I can see the nice pattern), but I will try to resume in full force at the beginning of January.

January will probably be more fruitful than a good portion of the year because I have most of the month off from school, but I will try to keep it to at least once a week like I initially set out to do. I also didn't think people were reading it anymore (except for Ami because she used by glass bottle tutorial for her x-mas presents -- yay!), which is another reason I didn't make it a priority to update, but now that I know you all are, I will get on it a bit more :)

Alright, moving on to some updates... The end of the semester was a horribly busy time. I had 48 hours to grade 50 exams with 4 short answer/essay questions. Luckily the multiple choice is all graded on the computer, but ugh! the short answers were enough to keep me busy for about 10 hours straight. My friend Linda, a fellow TA, moved into an apartment kiddy-corner from me and we spent the evening (and early hours of the morning) grading the exam with Burt, another TA, over a round or two of Tequila Sunrise. I decided to be pretty nice to my students because I graded them pretty harshly most of the semester. I was very thankful to get their grades in and to be done with this semester of teaching!

Also during that evening I had a visitor come into my apartment. I was grading at Linda's, but would go back to my place periodically to check on Mea. I went back about 11 PM and Mea was fixated in a corner of my kitchen looking at the radiator. I figured there was a mouse or something because the wall and the floor do not connect there and one could easily come up through the wall and sneak in. I check under it and didn't see anything and checked as best I could in the radiator too, but saw nothing. I left and came back around 1 AM to discover all of my kitchen rugs bunched up against the walls and place-mats shoved off the table. I was wondering what the hell Mea had been up to when I finally turned the light on in the kitchen and the answer was hanging from the ceiling. Thats right, I had a bat in my apartment.

After letting out the customary girly shriek, I hurried back to get Burt and Linda to see what they thought. They were quite interested in the bat (I stood behind a wall and stuck my head in the room, haha). We left the light on so that the bat would not get startled later and just left him there. I barricaded Mea in the bedroom and bathroom. When I got back at 3 AM for the night, the bat what just where we left him, so I went to sleep in my bat-proof room.

Called animal control in the morning and they said they don't do bats, so I called my apartment and they had someone come over and collect him. We had some up and down temperatures in Minneapolis that week and it was likely that when it got warm, he woke up, but then when it got cold again, he kept climbing until he got somewhere warm to go back to sleep again. I think Mea was sad to see him go --- looks like she had quite the time with him! There were dusty polka-dots all over my kitchen from where it flew into the walls, floor, and table trying to escape the cat (he was covered in dust from climbing the wall and hiding in the radiator).

I love my apartment, but between the bat and the mold problems I had a few weeks ago, it makes me wonder if I should stay there another year... haha!

Other than that, the semester finished with little pain or grief. I don't have my grades back yet, but it looks promising. The drive home to Michigan was easy and I was lucky enough to make it here between storms. It has been wonderful to be home. I needed a break from the city and from my apartment. I'm quite happy I've been able to spend so much time with my friends and family. Christmas was good too! I received new kitchen stuff, several good vintage finds, and some books and DVDs --- plenty of things to keep me busy for a while!

I am heading back to Minneapolis January 7th. I will be sure to start updating regularly again. Until then, I wish everyone a very Happy New Year and good luck with your resolutions!

Great Story! and some other stuff...

Some of you may know about the amazing 'Stumble Upon' feature that the Firefox web browser has. I am quite addicted. I was 'stumbling' today and came across this article someone else posted in their blog. It is a great story! I was disappointed that I had never heard of it before today.

Story

and for more information, they also have the official website.

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Not much new to report in Minneapolis today. The past few days have been spent doing small things around the apartment: cleaning, re-potting herbs (I had a really bad gnat infestation that I couldn't shake for the world!), laundry, etc. I applied for my new drivers license and also got my student ID and bus pass for the U, as every local calls the U of MN.

A few days ago I made homemade fruit leather which turned out really well! Fruit leather, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is basically pureed fruit that has been slowly dried either outside or in the oven at a low temperature. It is like a Fruit Roll-Up (a favorite lunchtime snack from my childhood), but all natural and without any extra sugar. I made blueberry...mmm! I'll attach the link I followed so you can give it a shot yourself. It really was the easiest thing I've ever made! I also made homemade granola, but I didn't follow a recipe and it needs a bit of tweaking. I'll post it when I finally come up with a good recipe.

The weather is a little cooler today than it has been (sad when 80 degrees is cooler!). Mea Kitty and I enjoyed some time outside as I brushed her. Other than that, not much new to report other than I start grad school in less than two weeks! Yahoo! I'm getting excited!