Sticky
We're having some Houston weather, a jillion degrees and ninety per cent humidity. Mmm, deelishus.
Adam and Sarah get married this weekend, one way or another (yay!). So Beth and I fly down tomorrow. Weddings and births share the "well, maybe there's some hope after all" kind of feel to them. And plus, usually not that many things go wrong with them. So it'll be fun. Plus, those guys are great and it'll be happy just to see them happy.
As soon as I get back, though, it's off to Professor Kamp. I'm packing my water balloons and short-sheet set. The "visioneering" in such thing is usually something to sit politely through, the learning styles and "pedagogical technologies" stuff sometimes annoying and sometimes very interesting. The team-building stuff is, to an INTJ like me, usually anathema. But we'll see how they do; their rep for this sort of thing is high and minimally obnoxious. So who knows? It could be okay, plus I'll definitely meet new colleagues, which will be good.
Not as good in the fun way is that my mom is having a pacemaker installed on Monday. A routine procedure these days, and Mom's so healthy she's like not had a hospital stay or surgical procedure to speak of in...ever: like, 75 years. So the progs are all good--I told Dad he should have been honest with the doc when he said the battery would last at least 5 years and told him that Mom would need like 4 new batteries minimum, given the life expectancy of, oh, 95 or so, of the women in her family. Still, it's a medical procedure, and everyone gets a case of the nerbs sooner or later about stuff like that.
Lastly, after talking to Friend Kristen the other day, who got wailed on for what she was wearing while like 9 1/2 months pregnant, let me not in turn slap such wailers upside the head, as they deserve, but rather, on behalf of people who will never be pregnant; will never have people gawk, objectify, critique, or indeed notice our figure or clothes; do not have bodies that would help sell any useful products; and are outside the target zone of fashion makers, I'd just like to say that, while I do think that women should be genuine and thoughtful about how they dress (men, too, in a different mode, for that matter), it's not very many other people's business (a few close girlfriends, your mom, maybe a husband). It's not that anything goes; for all I know whatever someone wears they may well have to answer for, but if so or if not, in any case it won't be to me. If you and God are good about something as unbelievably cultural-relative as dress, then fine. Dawn came from a buttoned-up holiness tradition (for which there were reasons); on the other hand, we visited areas in Zambia where public toplessness by married women was no big deal (hey, it's hot, and they're working hard all the time, and usually nursing something or other at the same time.) I mean look, I've got my own stuff to worry about without having, let alone expressing, opinions about other people's adiaphora ("stuff that doesn't matter"--great word). And that's the truth, as Edith Ann used to say.
Adam and Sarah get married this weekend, one way or another (yay!). So Beth and I fly down tomorrow. Weddings and births share the "well, maybe there's some hope after all" kind of feel to them. And plus, usually not that many things go wrong with them. So it'll be fun. Plus, those guys are great and it'll be happy just to see them happy.
As soon as I get back, though, it's off to Professor Kamp. I'm packing my water balloons and short-sheet set. The "visioneering" in such thing is usually something to sit politely through, the learning styles and "pedagogical technologies" stuff sometimes annoying and sometimes very interesting. The team-building stuff is, to an INTJ like me, usually anathema. But we'll see how they do; their rep for this sort of thing is high and minimally obnoxious. So who knows? It could be okay, plus I'll definitely meet new colleagues, which will be good.
Not as good in the fun way is that my mom is having a pacemaker installed on Monday. A routine procedure these days, and Mom's so healthy she's like not had a hospital stay or surgical procedure to speak of in...ever: like, 75 years. So the progs are all good--I told Dad he should have been honest with the doc when he said the battery would last at least 5 years and told him that Mom would need like 4 new batteries minimum, given the life expectancy of, oh, 95 or so, of the women in her family. Still, it's a medical procedure, and everyone gets a case of the nerbs sooner or later about stuff like that.
Lastly, after talking to Friend Kristen the other day, who got wailed on for what she was wearing while like 9 1/2 months pregnant, let me not in turn slap such wailers upside the head, as they deserve, but rather, on behalf of people who will never be pregnant; will never have people gawk, objectify, critique, or indeed notice our figure or clothes; do not have bodies that would help sell any useful products; and are outside the target zone of fashion makers, I'd just like to say that, while I do think that women should be genuine and thoughtful about how they dress (men, too, in a different mode, for that matter), it's not very many other people's business (a few close girlfriends, your mom, maybe a husband). It's not that anything goes; for all I know whatever someone wears they may well have to answer for, but if so or if not, in any case it won't be to me. If you and God are good about something as unbelievably cultural-relative as dress, then fine. Dawn came from a buttoned-up holiness tradition (for which there were reasons); on the other hand, we visited areas in Zambia where public toplessness by married women was no big deal (hey, it's hot, and they're working hard all the time, and usually nursing something or other at the same time.) I mean look, I've got my own stuff to worry about without having, let alone expressing, opinions about other people's adiaphora ("stuff that doesn't matter"--great word). And that's the truth, as Edith Ann used to say.
posted by Mark at 11:06 AM
1 Comments:
ooh, what i would've given to hear what that man might have said had I been NURSING...
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