bugsii

Yesterday, we only went out to go to the mall for a bit.  It was good.  And, for some reason there was a power outage at midnight that finally forced me to stop reading.  Also good.

Today, Dan and I headed home.  It was chilly and there was some snow on the ground, which hadn’t been typical of the week.  Dan usually drives the whole ten hours, but he had a work call around lunch time, so I took over for awhile.  When I drive long distances, I like to use cruise control.  I like to get in the right hand land, set the cruise to 70mph and then just let my feet rest while I steer.  This is a fine idea, but it doesn’t last long because, inevitably, someone is going slower than I am and then someone else is in the left lane going too fast for me to pass without turning off the cruise for a bit.  Or, traffic increases and cruise is just impossible.  Or, a cop is monitoring traffic and everyone slams on their brakes.  I don’t know why, then, I keep on setting the cruise hoping that I’ll be able to rest easy, because it’s never going to happen.

I get it from my Dad.  Although, he set his cruise at 72mph because he heard from his state patrol friend that he could go up to 7mph over the speed limit without getting pulled over.  And, that was gospel, let me tell you.  It was a funny thing, the way my dad would use cruise (and by funny, I mean irritating, death-defying, unpredictable, as was most driving with him).  He was so intent on keeping the cruise on, on never having to veer from that perfect 72mph, that he would nearly hit cars in front of him before varying his speed.  He would yell, he would get all worked up because, gosh darnit, he wanted to maintain a level speed.  He would also criticize anyone who was incapable of maintaining speed.  If he were going to pass them and they sped up, that was outrageous.  If he got behind them and they slowed down, they were imbeciles.  Maintaining a perfect speed on long highway trips was, to my Dad, perfection.

As I was trying to use my cruise today, perhaps in a slightly toned down mode, I started to think about that idea of wanting to be able to maintain some set speed and not to be interfered with.  It’s like life, right?  We’re all on this road, thinking that things are going well, wanting to check things off of our list, wanting things to go as planned, when bam, someone slows down right in front of you and severely impedes your progress.  Maybe you have this plan that you’ll get a fellowship to prepare you for your dissertation, the fellowship is perfect, the category is so aligned with your dissertation that it couldn’t be any better, you spend hours preparing the application, it is honed, it is spotless, and then, rejection.  Bah, you brake, cancel cruise, and figure out how to get around this car before you start cursing life.

Yesterday was another uneventful day.  Aside from a short trip to Villa Italia for pastries, we stayed in all day and lump lumped.  Dan walked around the house (which was originally the home of his grandma and grandpa) and took pictures.  Check them out.

You can also see these pictures under the piictures tab.  Enjoy!

The past few days have been decidedly uneventful, which is just how I like them.  Spring break is not for beaches and parties, it’s for sitting at kitchen tables and eating massive amounts of pasta.  Am I right?

So, Monday we slept in, woke up to the news of the health reform, watched people say crazy things on facebook, ate leftover High Bridge for lunch, went to a lumber store, got groceries, came home, went to dinner at Five Guys, and watched MSNBC until bedtime.

Tuesday, watched Obama sign the healthcare bill, went to the mall, bought khakis form the Gap (well, that was just me), came home, went to Canali’s, consumed more pasta than is necessary, came back home, watched Idol, ate ice cream, and then watched MSNBC until bedtime.

Who knows what today will hold, but I’m guessing we’ll see at least a little MSNBC.

Ray at Canali's

Oh, and somewhere in between there, I snuck in a bit of school work.  I emailed my committee all of the documentation they need.  I worked on my literature review for the project I will be working on with my professor.  I worked on the lab I will be in charge of next quarter.  I also decided that this one week between quarters is entirely too short.  I need another week when I get home to do nothing/get ready for the quarter.  Ah, well.  A few more days of lump lumping will have to do.

This is the life.

We have arrived in New York and we have eaten of the pizza and now we are powered up and winding down.  Yeah, boy.

Dan and I are on our way to New York to visit Uncle Ray for spring break, but we made a slight detour to see Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous house, in SW Pennsylvania.  We got to our cute B&B at around noon, had lunch, and were on our way to Falling Water.  It was about a 45 minute drive through rolling hills of farmland and forests, broken down houses and resort towns.  Falling Water was pretty busy today as this is one of the first weekends it has been open this season.  We had about ten minutes to putz around the gift shop before our tour started.  The gift shop, just like the one at Taliesin West, was really nice and all of the people that work on the grounds are really professional and seem to love their jobs.  They make visiting these sites feel really special.  When they called for our tour, we walked down a path, alongside a river until we finally saw Falling Water in the distance.  It’s amazing how it is built into a hillside with a waterfall going through it and it still seems to blend in with the surroundings so nicely.  What’s even more incredible is that this was built in 1936 and 98% of the items inside are original.  Also, most of the house is created using cantilevers, which are basically beams with support on only one end.  He used concrete and rebar.  The guide said that this house would never be able to be built today.

As we were guided around the house, we started in the great room.  The first thing you notice is the view.  Wright designed it so that the inside and the outside seemed to blend together.  There were windows everywhere.  The view was neat too because he sort of blocked the view up, so you only see the lower tree line and it feels like you are part of the forest.  He put a hatch right in the living room, with stairs leading down to the river.   It was like a little staircase to nowhere.  It was so neat!  There were bookshelves all over the place and beautiful built-in furniture (all designed by Wright) made of black walnut.  There were also Picasso’s or Diego Rivera’s and Tiffany lamps in almost every room.  And, like Taliesin West, there were secret, dark staircases and hallways to get to different parts of the house.  All of the bedrooms had amazing views, their own terrace, and their own bathroom (which was interesting because, at the time, most houses in the area had no bathroom at all).  The top floor bedroom even had it’s own pool!

I just love Frank Lloyd Wright because he thought differently about architecture, and I think it’s rare for someone to really think differently about anything.  He made the man-made building seem to fit and flow with nature.  He hid the entrance, he played with natural light, artificial light, and darkness, he made secret tunnels and doorways, and it just feels exiting to walk through the places he designed and to imagine what it must have been like to live in that meticulously designed space.  I wonder what it takes to have an architect design your house.  Hmm, maybe someday.

There are more pictures on the piictures tab!

Is it just me or are flight attendants usually pretty cranky lately?  I flew home today from Arizona and was excited about a straight flight right into Columbus.  All was pretty smooth, I can’t complain too much.  But, when I got to my gate, there was a really grumpy woman manning the loudspeaker, announcing over and over again that you could only have two bags with you on the flight, and then to be extra snarky and demeaning, she would say, “1+1 is 2 NOT 3,” in this bored, sing-songy voice.  I wanted to ask her if she lived in a trashcan on Sesame Street, but I feared a random bag search or bad peanuts (turns out I didn’t need to worry about peanuts because you have to pay for ALL snacks on the plane, even on a 3.5 hour flight.  Sigh.).  Then, when we were boarding another cheerful lady barked at a guy that had an oversized bag without even looking him in the eye; another guy wasn’t sure which half of the ticket to give her and she gave Oscar a mutually grouchy/annoyed look.  When we got halfway down the port to the plane, we were informed that there was no more room in the overhead bins and any of us with two bags would have to check one piece (so apparently 1+1=1).  The people taking our bags weren’t especially grouchy, but not friendly either.  However, when I finally got on the plane and to my seat, there were PLENTY of overhead bins available.  Perplexing.  Not that I’m never grouchy because God knows I am, but it just seems to me lately that flight attendants are in especially bad moods.  I don’t know why that is.  I’m sure it’s annoying dealing with the same problems day in and day out.  I’m sure that travelers get pretty annoyingly predictable.  But, really, if you hate your job, you should look into other things and if you can’t look into other things, you should try to be content with the job you have.  It would probably be more pleasant for you if you took joy in even the repetitive tasks that start to get dull.  Being grumpy, I am sure, hurts you more than it hurts anyone else.  They should take a note from my mom who deals with the same customers day in and day out, has done so for the past 15 years, and remains a darn cheery waitress.

I remember some time in my third or fourth year teaching I learned this same lesson (though I often forget).  I would get annoyed being asked the same questions over and over again by kids, especially when I had just addressed it.  You can’t really get angry in these circumstances (kinda like the flight attendants and waitresses), but you can sort of shut off and answer the question in a tone that clearly articulates annoyance.  I started doing this more often than I would like to admit and then one day I realized that I didn’t like myself when I did that (I don’t know what brought me to that conclusion).  So, what I noticed was that if I just accepted that kids were ALWAYS going to ask questions that they just heard the answer to and they were ALWAYS going to forget homework and they were ALWAYS going to run in the hallway (etc., etc., etc., I mean, they are KIDS for crying out loud), then I could quit trying to think that if I was clear enough, or organized enough, or scary enough that I was going to change their behavior.  Instead, I tried to see the child as the little unique person that they were and respond to each situation with as much love as I could manage.  This made my day so much more pleasurable and the relationships with my students so much better, and all I had to do was let go.  Let go of the crazy idea that things could ever go exactly as planned.  So, flight attendants… let go.  And, thanks for reminding me to that I need to practice this more often in my daily life.  And, thanks for making me miss teaching again.

Today, was another great lazy day in Phoenix.  I walked to a nearby theater to see The Princess and the Frog.  It was alright.  It was good as Disney movies go.  I was afraid that they were going to completely ignore the plight of African Americans in this country.  They didn’t, but still, getting to 2009 without a black princess is pretty insane.  Although I’m not so keen on the princesses in general, there should be equity in anti-feminism at the very least, right?

Heading home tomorrow… better get to bed.

Today was so great. I woke up to the beautiful Arizona sun, did some yoga in my room, read this blog and cried my eyes out: http://bandssullivan.blogspot.com/, showered, sat by the pool and read, took a walk to get coffee and read some more, talked to my sister, my mom and my cousin, and came back to the hotel to find Dan home from work.  Now, we are relaxing for a bit (like I need it) before heading out for some “authentic”* Mexican cuisine with his coworkers.

*A note on the word “authentic” since it came up in my cultural studies class a few times this quarter.  What does “authentic” Mexican cuisine mean anyway?  What does “authentic” anything mean?  Is there really an “authentic” Mexican that cooks some sort of “authentic” cuisine?  Yesterday, at the Heard Museum, Dan and I bought an angel ornament made by a Native American, and I thought it was funny because it had a tag on it that was a certificate of authenticity, which had the picture and the name of the “authentic” Native American who made it.  Can any culture really be boiled down to an “authentic” real?  Aren’t we all sort of a mash-up of some sort?

First of all, I just have to spend a moment on the name of this city.  Phoenix.  It’s such a great name.  It sounds great.  It has meaning.  I looked up the how the city got its name, just to be sure it was after the mythical bird, only to find out that it was first called Pumpkinville(!).  Then, it went through a series of names until someone suggested Phoenix because it described a city born from the ruins of a former civilization.  Interesting, no?

Today, Dan and I began again at the Black Bear Diner where we ordered the exact same breakfast we had yesterday (good thing we had a different waitress).  Then, we were off the Taliesin West, the winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright as well as his own school of architecture.  It’s set into a mountainside in Scottsdale (a suburb of Phoenix) and it’s so interesting and beautiful.  I just thought we were going to tour a house, but I learned so much.  Frank Lloyd Wright experimented with architecture in a way that I wish I could experiment with life.  He tried to confound architecture by making the building a part of nature, joining outside and in, and doing the unexpected.  For example, the main entrance was never in the front, in fact he purposefully made it hard to find.  And then when you found the front door, you would have to walk around some zig zagging hallways a bit to get to any room.  There were times I couldn’t tell if a hallway was going outside or in and sometimes we went through a tiny little courtyard where you could look up and see the sky (I felt a tiny bit like Alice in Wonderland).  Wright also didn’t like to waste any materials, so everything was very minimalistic.  I thought it was funny that he designed houses for the suburbs without an attic or a basement because he thought that if you put something in an attic or a basement, then you didn’t need it.  Isn’t that the truth?  He also said anyone over 6′ tall was a waste of materials (He was 5′8.5″).  That cracked me up.  His bedroom was a cool mix of outdoors and in and he made it so that he could pull his bed out and sleep outside on nice nights.  The best part of the tour, though, was learning about his school of architecture (which is still functioning today).  The school spends half of the year in Wisconsin at Taliesin and the other half in Arizona at Taliesin West.  He was all about learning by doing and he would have the students work on projects around Taliesin West.  There was both apprenticeship and trial and error.  The students also had to work 4 hours of day around the house.  They had to clean, make food, as well as design fireplaces and rooms.  Wright made the point that you can’t design a kitchen unless you work in one.  He also taught them how to dress appropriately for formal affairs because he knew that they would have to hob knob with some of the elites.  Oh, and when the students get to the school, they all get a certain amount of money to design their own tiny little room (some made tent-like structures, some made amazing tiny houses) to sleep in out in the desert.  To me, this sounded a lot like Dewey’s philosophy of experiential education, as well as the Montessori approach.  It sounded pretty fantastic.  And, since I’m an easy sell, it made me want to be an architect.  I now also would like to visit a bunch more of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses.

Our next stop was to the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix.  It’s a museum full of Native American Art both traditional and modern.  We got there a bit late, which meant we only had an hour to look around, but we got in for free, so that was nice.  Dan was sort of obsessed with these figures that he thought looked like Greedo from Star Wars, but I swear there were lots of things that were much more interesting (check out the piictures tab today).

Oh, Dan.

Our last stop for the day was to Tempe for a Greek dinner.  We went to a cheapo restaurant right across from Arizona State’s campus.  Dan said it was the best hummus he ever had, and he was also sort of gaga over his chicken pita.  I agree, everything was good.  Now, we are back at the hotel, I’m doing a load of laundry for Dan and watching Oprah’s White House Christmas special.  What a great weekend.

Yesterday was a long, busy day… and it was amazing.  We began on the Black Bear Diner and had the most delicious breakfast.  Then, we headed North on I-17 to Sedona.  The scenery along the way was pretty, desert mountains and cacti everywhere.  We took a side trip to see Montezuma’s Castle, which is a cave dwelling built right into a mountain and dates to the 1130s(!).  Of course, it’s misnamed because when the English explorers found it, they assumed that the people that lived there were the Aztecs, but they were actually another culture called the Sinagua.  But, the name stuck (and I bet it attracts more tourists).  Anyway, it was neat to see, but I was REALLY disappointed that we couldn’t go inside.  Dan thought that was funny, but who wants to just see the outside of a castle?

We got back on the highway for a bit and then we took the exit for Sedona and drove about 10 miles west, all of the sudden it was so beautiful I thought I could have died right there.  The red rock formations were spectacular and the mountains in the distance had snow on the tops!  Dan and I visited Bell Rock first and hiked around it.  There were some families on the trail with us and one little boy kept shouting, “It does look like a bell!” And, we were at a much higher altitude than we were in Phoenix and we were feeling every bit of that thin air.  We were both getting winded and feeling loopy… so that little boy was probably funnier than he would have been.

After that, we stopped by the Chapel of the Holy Cross, built right into the rock by a monk or a priest (can’t remember) in the 1950s.  It was pretty amazing and the view from inside was awe-inspiring.

Then, Dan and I heard (from the nice guy at the visitor’s center) that we could get a really amazing view from the airport.  So, we took airport rode up and, it was a fantastic view.  It started to rain a little bit and then the sun peaked out and guess what we saw… a rainbow! The picture didn’t turn out too great, but if you click on the piictures tab above you can see more scenic pictures (including the rainbow).

After all that sightseeing, we went to this little arts and crafts village called Tlaquepaque (T-lockey-pockey) to look around and grab a bite to eat.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, but last night was the light festival!  So, everything was all lit up, music was playing, and we got free apple cider and ate at a little Mexican restaurant.  It got me in the Arizonian Christmas spirit.  We finally headed home to find somewhere to watch UFC, which is why I was too pooped to write my blog last night.  Today, we’re going to do some Phoenix touristing.  Oh, what fun!