last night at a parent program at school, i was walking into the room at the same time as some parents i have known for two years.  the mom gave me a hug and then ran her hands over my hair.  "look at your doll hair!," was her first comment.  "oh yes," i said as i laughed awkwardly, "it's gotten really long - i need a haircut!"  

doll hair?!  i don't even know what to make of this.  my hair hasn't gotten REALLY long…it's just a smidge longer than normal…but i didn't know what else to say.  i think this is a compliment and i will totally take it, but i'm laughing to myself a bit.

a ruby a day

sunday night:


yes, this amazon.com box has been transformed into a toy by cutting holes in it and putting a treat inside.  miss ruby likes to hunt for treats and try to open cabinets, so this seemed like a good thing for her little brain.  turns out it was a really HARD toy, though, because ruby was unsuccessful in getting the treat, even after putting in a good hour of work at 3am.  so...i made the holes a little larger, and the larger hole was made big enough for her head to get inside (turns out, not having opposable thumbs is a problem when scooping treats out).  and then she got her head stuck.  so i made that hole even bigger, and now the toy is fun and the goal is achievable.  whew.

sunday night cat lady fun!

i am…

…feeling sad about dropping ruby off at the boarding place for a few days while i go to a conference.  but the new lady there is persevering and making ruby be her friend even after ruby was a BITCH to her the first time they met.  i'm glad the new lady isn't holding it against her.  at least while i'm around.

…feeling victorious at beating my friend josh at fantasy football this week.  and though i do not care one lick about the NFL, i have found myself discussing recent events more than once in my government class.  my attempts at deep conversation ("why would a woman stay with a man who abuses her?" "what's the difference between punishing your child and child abuse?") have gone…okay…in my class.  even if they aren't thinking as critically as i want them to, i hope some of our conversations are sticking with them.

…feeling so excited to see two groups of fantastic friends in october, even though one of the plane tickets cost about $200 more than i wanted to pay.  pennies may need to be slightly pinched this month, but it will be totally worth it to spend two long weekends in a row with good good friends.

today was the last day of classes!  where did this year go?

things have calmed down since AP exams ended (aka the bane of my existence for 3 weeks), and i'm back to just my full time job.  another week and a half with students before summer hours start (9-3…very civilized).  i'm trying to do more yoga and be more diligent with this blog, which got ignored a lot over the last month or two.

i'm heading to the beach this weekend with friends - yippee!

in other news, the woman at the thai restaurant where i get take out every few weeks now calls me by name and can tell me my order.  i guess i'm really a houstonian now.

cat lady musings

on tuesday of last week, a little grey cat came up on my porch and talked to ruby through the window.

on sunday the cat said hi to me outside my apartment door.  i reached down to pet her (him?) and felt ribs under the fur.  skinny kitty!  i put a handful of food outside, which she ate up.

yesterday, skinny kitty followed me from the parking lot up to my apartment.  actually - led the way.  she knows where i live.  another handful of food.  how could i not?

today she appeared again.  yet another handful of food.

true or false: i'm in trouble.

(does skinny kitty have a home or not?  does she have a lot of friends who are putting out handfuls of food, or am i the only one?  is this the first fatal step toward becoming skinny kitty's mama?  i certainly don't need skinny kitty, but i can't let her go hungry!)

ice day #2

another day with no school!  it sleeted (that looks wrong - is that the correct usage?) all day and didn't get above freezing until 4pm, so it was probably a good decision for us weenie southerners.  we got the call that school was cancelled at 10:30pm last night, so i was able to turn off my alarm and sleep until 9 (minus the half-asleep stumbling to the bathroom to feed ruby at 6:30am).  yippee!  ruby and i watched tv and napped all day, and i finally ventured out at 5pm to buy more yarn for some projects i'm working on (stay tuned*) and to buy some groceries.  i'm about to kick this cold, so it was fantastic to have a day at home to focus on getting better.

*i recently bought these two books on knitting little stuffed animals, and i'm kind of obsessed with trying out some new patterns.  right now i am finishing a rainbow octopus, and then i want to try an elephant wearing a sweater.  because what self-respecting elephant goes around naked all the time?

today i learned that sochi is 10 hours ahead of central time.

i haven't had many people over to my apartment yet because that's a thing close friends do and i'm, you know, new to this city.  newish friends go out to restaurants and bars.  old friends sit on the couch in their pajamas and eat take out food.

but!  i love the olympics, so i am having a party to watch the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics.  i decided this at 3pm and sent out the invitation like 3 hours later.  (apparently i work quickly once i make decisions.)  hopefully some new friends will want to come over and eat and drink and relax and watch the opening ceremonies with me.  a step forward in my new home!  ruby better not hide under the bed the whole time.

cue the obsessive checking of the evite to see if people have replied.

TWO PEOPLE HAVE REPLIED YES!  wooooooo!

all the christmas music is making me sentimental

i sit here with a kitty taking a nap on my lap for the SECOND time today, which is unprecedented…normally she would like to be right. near. by. (as in, under my chair, next to me on the couch, following me around the apartment, lying on the kitchen floor while i cook dinner, cuddled up against my legs when i sleep), but not on top of me, and i'm enjoying her soft warm self very much.  oh wait - she had enough.  she is back to her spot under the chair.

what i was GOING to say still applies…which is that i feel very very lucky these days.  why did i wait so long to get a cat?  ruby is the sweetest kitty ever (and is now back in my lap).  i felt a great deal of love from my students this week, with several of them stopping by with cards or candy or little gifts for me.  i went to trivia with work friends this week - my first trivia night in over a year - and it was so much fun and sounds like it will be a semi-regular thing.  today i went to get tea and see philomena (and cry kind of a lot - what an amazing movie) with a new non-work friend.  i am healthy and happy.  i am lucky.  thank you for being part of my little life.

i've probably posted this before, but it's one of my favorites so you get it again:

someone else's phone number

i have a new phone from work and new houston cell phone number (let me know if you don't have the number and want it - i tried to pass it along, but may have missed some people!).  with a new phone number comes the remnants of the previous owner's life.  in the past week i have received:

a daily koran verse to pray, via text message, which continues to come every day even though i replied letting the person know the phone number is in new hands.

a text message giving me an address and time and that is it.

a text message asking me if i have any appointments available on friday after 6pm.

i am having a hard time imagining the life of my phone number's previous owner based on these details.  it is so mysterious!

back to work!

i went back to work on wednesday and we hit the ground running with a college admissions bootcamp for the senior class.  i may have learned as much as the kids.  i was THAT GIRL checking her text messages all day, though, because BABY RYAN ARRIVED!  our group of atlanta friends loves to send epic group texts, and when mike texted at 3am to say he and kelly were headed to the hospital, a flurry of texts followed, with updates from mike a couple times during the day.  baby ryan was born at 1pm and looks pretty smushy and adorable.  i need to video chat with him pronto, but i guess i will let his parents get their feet under them first.

thursday was ruby's first day home alone while i was at work, and boy was she happy to see me when i got home after 9 hours.  we had 45 minutes of fight-loving, which is where ruby alternates between snuggling and purring loudly...and trying to bite off my fingers ("playing" with me).  pretty adorable.

friday was another work day, with more new faculty meetings and deans' office meetings and student parking organization (one of my duties this year), capped off by me discovering at 3pm that we are 20 spaces short after promising all the juniors and seniors they could park on campus.  oops.  to be continued...  i got an iphone 5 from work (!!) and am making the transition to my new houston number and fancy phone.  ruby discovered the loft in my apartment and gave me several heart attacks as she navigated the stairs (good thing they're carpeted and her claws can hold her up in them because she definitely tried to fall off).  she also discovered that she can go behind the washing machine, into a space that seems too tiny for a kitten.  i guess she knows what she's doing, though.

today was waking up at 6:30 because the kitten did...playing and snuggling with her to make up for leaving her alone so much...a yoga class...a pedicure...and more playing and snuggling.  weekends are the best.

annual post wherein i talk about the academy awards

movies i have seen that were nominated for stuff:
lincoln - great movie - daniel day-lewis was amazing - should have ended 30 minutes before it actually did.
beasts of the southern wild - i have a really hard time watching movies where kids are sad/scared/in danger, so this one was hard to watch but beautifully done.
les miserables - the best-worst movie i saw this year.  loved the stage musical and it was fun to see it on the movie screen, but seriously: it needed HUGE help with the editing.
brave - all pixar movies are well made, but this wasn't my favorite - the plot was pretty ridiculous...not that other animated movies aren't, but this was less entertaining for me.

movies i want to see that were nominated for stuff:
argo - wins best drama at the golden globes AND best director?  i obviously need to see this movie, which i was only moderately interested in beforehand.  love ben affleck and think he's a GREAT director - the town was brilliant.
silver linings playbook - seeing this tomorrow with andrea!

the end.

i'm back in new york!

if i can offer one piece of advice to people flying into la guardia from the south, it is this: sit on the left side of the airplane.  i had another GORGEOUS view of the new york skyline as we landed.  amazing.  how is it that i'm lucky enough to live here?!

today i'm planning to go grocery shopping, do reading for my first class (homework already?  ugh), and spend the evening with friends.  hooray!

it's 25 degrees outside.  i need to get used to this again...

things i have done since i got home:
1. slept.  a lot.
2. eaten.  a lot.
3. finished gone girl and started the fault in our stars.  reading is SO FUN when it is the kind of reading you want to do.
4. done last minute shopping with mom and dad
5. wrapped christmas presents
6. played many rounds of ticket to ride, which somehow costs twice as much on amazon.com now as when i bought it
7. did a puzzle with mama
8. helped dad cut down a tree, which was not as bad as it could have been.
9. made my first imovie!!!  i am incredibly proud of myself for learning how to use imovie.  stay tuned for the result.

merry early christmas!

sadness is: when there is a paul simon category on jeopardy, but the contestants are lame and pick that category last, thus only revealing two of the five clues before time runs out.  curses!!

um, yeah...i've been bad about posting recently.  it just doesn't feel like there's anything going on in my life...like the last two weeks have been me on a little treadmill running in place, waiting to get off and get in the car and go to new york.  i'm both excited and scared about my new adventure, and i'm tired of the treadmill, so bring it on.

okay, full disclosure: there are some problems with this treadmill metaphor.  have i been exercising?  um, not really.  i think that's part of my unsettled feeling - i don't have a routine because i don't need a routine because there's not a lot i need to get done.  (could exercising be part of my routine?  why yes of course, but it's hot outside and i don't want to.)  i complete one task of some sort a day so i can feel useful (don't we all want to feel this way?) and then spend the rest of the day reading or cooking or watching tv.  (i may or may not have watched two and a half seasons of breaking bad in the last two weeks.  that's, um, 2 or 3 episodes a day.)  when my one task of the day goes awry or isn't completable...well, then i just spent all day and i have nothing to show for it.  this is incredibly frustrating, since why the hell else did i wake up than to complete this task?  it's time to listen to this song again; this is how i feel.

so...something exciting ought to happen soon, and i'll keep you updated when it does.  onward, to new york!

my NC driver's license arrived AND MY PHOTO IS AWESOME.  yesssssssss.  this pleases me.  when the woman was taking it the light indicating she was taking the photo was on for like 10 seconds straight, and you know how a smile starts to fade and look really fake after about 3 seconds?  ugh.  my fake smile is...very fake.  i was so worried that was what the picture was going to look like.  but it doesn't - victory!

random thoughts

1. most of the time i very much prefer books to their movie remakes.  like, if you enjoy a book you should never see the movie because it will ruin the experience for you.*  exception to the rule?  the remains of the day.  really loved the movie; thanks to jen for encouraging me to watch it!

2. my parents leave for work every morning by 8am; i roll downstairs between 9 and 10:30.  it is glorious.  initially, it took the dogs a while to realize i was here and thus they should bark and scratch at the door to be let in.  then they got wise to the fact that this was going to happen EVERY DAY and were much quicker on the uptake.  this morning?  both dogs were inside when i woke up; abby greeted me in the kitchen and stella appeared a little later from under mom and dad's bed.  it's like they told my parents this morning, "no need to let us out - claire will be up in a couple hours!"

3. i have received my first email from a professor...with about 100 pages of reading attached that i need to read for our first class.  i've done about half of it - it's both exciting and daunting to think about this year ahead.  i've also made the transition to doing my reading on my computer, highlighting and making comments to myself right in the document.  welcome to 2012, miss claire.

4. you know how apparently the whole country is in a drought?  um, not our little corner of the country.  it's lush and green and gorgeous here, and hasn't been too hot - i remember august being the WORST in terms of heat and humidity when i was younger, but it's perfectly fine this year.  highs in the 80s, pretty humid, but i can sit inside without air conditioning and be just fine.  hoo-ray.

5. and yes, these ARE the only things going on in my life right now.  a little boring, yes, but i'm enjoying the ability not to be ON all the time.  disconnecting for a little while is a good thing.


*next up in my netflix queue: pillars of the earth.  anyone seen it?  i've heard mixed reviews about the miniseries version...

thoughts on shorts

like perhaps many women, i have a love-hate relationship with my legs.  good old legs, you take me places.  silly legs, you are larger than i would like.

i do not like showing off my legs.

but then i started running, as you may remember, and my yoga pants would be falling off me as i ran - not enough elastic in the waist - and were prettttttty warm for running.  so i started running in an old pair of gym shorts that i bought during my two season stint coaching jv girls softball.  but then they were too long and would ride up on my legs and be uncomfortable.  SO I BOUGHT SOME RUNNING SHORTS.  i can't believe it either.  they are short.  they are cute!  but they are SHORT.  i wore them for the first time today and it was pretty awesome - no riding up, little pocket in the waistband for my keys, and i didn't see anyone i knew which showing a lot of leg.  victory on all counts.

now i'm back in my dorm room getting ready to shower and go to dinner while some low budget movie involving child actors films outside my window.  actual quote from the director (? is a director allowed to wear a tube top while filming a children's movie?): "look meaner, ellie.  even meaner!  now maybe put your hands on your head and make fun of her hat!  keep going!  keep going!"  oh dear lord.

right now:

it's 80 degrees, the sun is shining, and the pollen count is like 9,000 (apparently 1,000 is high, so...it kind of feels like you're swimming through the air, it's so thick with pollen).  i've gone to the gym the past two days, so i can relax this evening with no guilt.  my tivo is full.  last night we won 2nd place at trivia.  i'm 32 hours away from the hunger games movie.  i'm reading some sherlock holmes on my kindle and loving it.  i finished all my grading, so i can breathe a sigh of relief until my kids turn in projects on monday.  i'm engrossed by the this american life retraction of their apple story from january.

all in all, life is pretty good right now.  i don't have much to blog about - things are really just going along like normal - but normal-good, not the normal-ugh that sometimes exists.  so: hooray.

first day back at work from spring break: observations.

1. i walked 11,817 steps today.  this is my new record, though the competition is only a week old.  i spent an hour at the gym on the treadmill and elliptical machine, so this obviously helped me obtain this record.

2. it WAS good to be back at work, even though i wanted spring break to continue.  i had a meeting with a parent that i thought was going to be BAD and SCARY and it was neither.  i sort of got asked for parenting tips.  whenever this happens - and it happens every once in a while - i used to totally avoid answering the question because i don't have children and i don't know how to be a parent.  and then a coworker/mentor of mine told me that sometimes we do know more.  and it's okay - parents want input.  and now i don't shy away from offering advice, though it is no less bizarre.

3. during a faculty meeting today i miiiiiight have been on my computer, reading articles about march madness like this one: "what your bracket says about you" - i love it!

4. extremely loud & incredibly close is SO GOOD and also SO HEARTBREAKING at the same time.  tragedy through the eyes of a child - even if it's fiction - is so powerful.  love the author's writing style, too - this is the first of his books that i've read.

and now, my friends, i will slide into a prone position on the couch and let my eyes glaze over as i watch tv.  hooray!