things are gonna change. i can feel it.

Classes started back up on the main campus today, which I just completely forgot about it. My office for the online school is on the edges of campus by the hospital where students dare not tread. I felt like some kind of intruder when I wandered over to the student center to get a burrito for lunch today - I got back to the safety of my office right quick and breathed a sigh of relief. Since I'm taking the year off of the grad program (and I'm done with classes and proposals and even undesirable colloquia), I have a long year ahead of me of not dodging dumbass undergrads on bikes and iPhones, and, now that the move is complete, I also no longer have to dodge dumbass facebook employees in downtown Palo Alto on their bikes and iPhones.

kteighty: one, generation 2.0: zero

that'll do

I have, for some time now, been considering the possibility of getting a pig tattoo to match my mom's pig tattoo. Darling, I know. So I was googling around last night to see what kinds of pig tattoos are out there, and I was a little surprised by what I found.

First of all, not that many people have pig tattoos. Or at least the ones that do are not the sort to post pictures on Flickr. I've decided this a good thing - there isn't some mad hipster rush on the pig tattoo (as there currently is on the finger mustache tattoo. seriously, go search Flickr).

Second of all, the Google image search 'pig tattoo' reveals pages, yes pages, of pictures of pigs with tattoos. As in, people brought in a professional tattoo artist to tattoo their pig. wtf, my friends? w.t.f.?

And, finally, this search for some reason yielded pictures of tattooed babies. I'm guessing the same people who thought it was a good idea to tattoo their pigs also though it was a good idea to tattoo their baby. Cuz, you know, that kid's skin isn't change at all or anything.

I, personally, am still not entirely resolved on the whole matter for myself. Picking a good spot is tricky, and picturing myself wrinkly and old with a faded, crumpled pig somewhere on my body just bums me out. But picturing myself as a hip young professional with a hip little pig on my wrist in honor of my dear mater makes me pretty happy. So, basically, I'll end up waiting until I'm the age my mom was when she got her tattoo. Or I'll just buy a pig and tattoo a picture of my mom on it. Either way.

to have and to hold in custody

last night the miso came bursting into the apartment after biking home from campus, completely out of breath, pale-faced, and immediately dashed to the window. his explanation: 'i just outran a cop'.

now, i'm not so concerned that my dearest one takes his life into his hands every time he gets on his bike with brakes that 'kinda work', and splits lanes, and will, on occasion, go flying through intersections with both middle fingers raised, and, on at least one occasion, will yell back at a truck driver (who is yelling at him for riding down the middle of the street) 'fuck you, sarah palin' (=right now, in our house, calling someone 'sarah palin' is just about as horrible an insult as you can hurl). none of this worries me so much. he wears a helmet, right? no, what worries me is that the 'I just outran a cop' statement (and furtive, nervous glancing out the blinds) was followed by one simple word: 'again'.

broadcast nihilism

watching biggest loser and america's next top model on back-to-back nights somehow cancels out any warped body image I may gain from either show. it's a television programming miracle.

if only gossip girl was immediately followed by an anne of green gables rerun on PBS.

I came, I taught, I felt a small sense of pride

There a lot of reasons I like teaching Latin to high schoolers. I like that it takes me back to my happy place of taking Latin in high school (wow, that is a totally lame happy place), I like that I know what the heck I'm talking about, and I really like the age group. They're old enough to be within the grasp of emotional maturity, but still young enough to respect authority, to think that I know everything, and to absorb all the dumb stuff I say in class.

Case in point, I have a thing for the paradigm of the second person singular pronoun, tu. It just makes me giggle. And my students were well aware of this fact. So aware, in fact, that today I received the following gift from one of my students:



Yes, that would be a needlepoint of the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus, bordered by the paradigms for ego and tu. and the first Latin phrase my students ever learned. How can you doubt your career choice when this kind of thing shows up in the mail?

kapow

The video itself is pretty amusing, but I'm more fascinated by the resemblance of the interviewer to swellner.

the phantom photo booth

One of the new hip things to have at your wedding reception is a rented photo booth for your guests to take pictures. The photos are definitely awesome (just check out the recent pics on merlinmann's flickr stream), but to rent an actual photo booth is scads of money. money that could be spent on booze. and booze is really the secret to great photos.

But I do still like the idea of letting your friends and family take pictures of themselves (especially if you leave them a whiteboard for personal messages...), so I have been hunting around the web for some DIY options. The easiest solution would be to set up a laptop with mac's photo booth ready to go and use the apple remote to 'release the shutter'. There's a nice little app called remote buddy that will let you program the apple remote to do just that. But then I started thinking, do I really want to leave my laptop sitting unattended? I would be a basket case.

Enter option two, a wireless shutter release for my D40. I could just set the camera up on a tripod, provide some height guidelines and people could snap their own photos while maintaining a very comfortable distance from the equipment. I could set the camera to 'burst' mode and basically achieve the same multiple shot effect that you get in a booth.

I'm still left with the tricky problem of potentially inebriated guests (particularly those sneaky plus-ones who have not yet been completely vouched for and can't hold their free liquor very well) around my expensive toys. I'm also realizing that setting up a space for a make-shift photo booth at our venue could be pretty tricky - but I'm not admitting defeat yet. If my Doppelganger Ellen Page looks this adorable in a photo booth, it clearly bodes well for my own wedding day photo booth potential.

in love with letters

The miso and I have a new deal. Whenever he talks about academic/job/livelihood stuff, I get to talk about wedding stuff. Top of the list right now is save the date cards. I was surfing the tubes tonight and am currently inspired by this gem from Smock Paper:



I think what I like most about it is the lack of any graphics or design. It's just letters. And, what with being academic sorts who translate dead languages all day, the idea of an invitation with nothing but words on it in a cool font sounds pretty fitting. I'm also digging Smock because they use bamboo paper and are a small letterpress company.

I found smock through my other letterpress crush, bellafigura. The Tender is the Night design is just lovely.



Not that any of this gets me closer to deciding on save the date cards. But I now have even more things to add to the binder. So that's a small triumph, right?

alliteration nation

Me and the miso are moving to the mountains. He will be my mountain man and I will be his mountain momma. It will be a two-storied, two-bed, two-bath, two-car garaged, too hot to handle home. Woot.

And I will post more entries on a regular basis. I promise. So long as the electricity doesn't go out for too long or the dish for the internet isn't overpowered by bushes and weeds or the snow in the winter doesn't freeze the pipes and I'm forced to sell my lappy in order to get a room at the four seasons. Barring all that, I'll post more.

The move happened as all moves should - our friend from the department and his wife are moving to LA and passed along our names to his landlord. I'm pretty much totally jazzed. It's a house. As in, no more 'Apt #' 'Unit F' 'Number 4' after my street address. I am the street address. Well, kind of. Apparently getting packages up at our mountain retreat is a little tricky, so we got a PO Box here on campus. But at the very least my credit card statements will go to a one-line street address. Welcome to adulthood.

While the amazing scenery, gazebo and wrap-around porch will all be lovely, I think I'm most excited about adding the words 'upstairs, downstairs, laundry room, and dishwasher' to my domestic vocabulary. As in, 'Hey lovey, when you come upstairs after you're all done in the laundry room, could you run the dishwasher?' Note that my fantasy world also involves the miso engaged in all household chores. I think I'm in the hammock drinking a beer and eating chips while all that happens indoors.

On the weddin' side of things, I'm also excited to spend 'the year of the engagement' in a proper house with the miso. As odd as it sounds, I couldn't picture myself addressing save the date cards in our current apartment or even keeping my wedding dress there. And, on the superficial weddin' side of things, the new place has the counter space to hold a kitchenaid mixer and le creuset casserole dish.

The house also has some good marital mojo since our friends moved in right around when they got engaged and spent the first few years of their marriage there. And there still together, so that, you know, bodes well, right? All I know about the last girl in our current apartment was that she moved out when she got married. That would be bad marriage mojo. Or marriage juju. Not quite sure how all that works.

In any event, we're moving up to the woods and I could end up with lots of you-live-really-far-away-down-a-gravel-road-so-no-I'm-not-stopping-by-to-play-wii free time to keep the bloggy blog running along smoothly. I might even have the time to DIY the whole reception. Who wouldn't love a hand-knitted sachet for their jordan almonds? Actually, I'll just spend all that time looking at websites that detail the weddings of artists and graphic designers, become jealous and mildly inspired, and then remind myself that people usually just throw the invites out and remember the booze more than the centerpieces.