Esoteric Lucubrations

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Unfortunate Business Names
Thanks to a billboard by the academy, in Manhattan, I have discovered there is a brand of outdoor wear called Marmot. I assume their slogan is, "Our clothes are full of fleas that will give you the plague."

And a diagnostics lab that has a pick-up box in my shrink's hallway is Enigma, Inc. I see their intention, but it seems to me to have the opposite effect: Use us, and your problem remains an Enigma.

Mood: puckish

Radical Dream, or, The Heroic Rat
Last night I dreamed that

womzilla and I were at a small gathering in a big house, an informal convention, kind of like GoldenCon (decades-ago gatherings of members of The Golden Apa, for people fond of ILLUMINATUS! and like interests; Bob Shea went to the one in the Chicago area & we visited Bob Wilson during the Los Angeles one) but attended by Alan Moore and his friends.

Mostly we just hung out together, but one afternoon Moore and some friends from England put on a play he had written. In it, the government was doing & trying to hide evil things--small surprise. However, perhaps because of a 1984 approach to technology, broadcast was the default; the governmental people involved had a machine that covered or blocked the broadcast. The climax of the play was that a rat chewed through some vital cord or line of that machine, and the evil doings were broadcast everywhere.

When I told Womzilla this, he said, R for Ratatouille!

Yes, we agreed: "People should not fear rats. The government should fear people and rats."

Oh, and the actor who played the rat cuddled up with me and did a GREAT job of bruxing, but I couldn't figure out if he was flirting with me or just being nice.

Mood: waking up, entertained by my inner theater

Lupron vs. Tumors
Spaying has been amazingly effective in preventing ratsie tumors, but we didn't spay Esme (adopted from

wendyblackheart), and as she is around 2, she has become a little tumor factory. She was spayed with the removal of the first, but now has another. One bit of good news is that she is already out of today's surgery and doing well. By now, tumorectomies are almost routine for us--something always COULD go wrong, but we no longer worry much, let alone assume, it will.

Another bit of good news is that she will be given a shot of lupron, an estrogen blocker used to treat human breast and prostate cancer, which has shown great success in preventing further mammary tumors--even shrinking tumors--in some rats. It's not even that expensive, about $60 per shot, and seems to have few or no side effects in rats.

Mood: ratsie loving, optimistic
X-posted to

ratties

Dialogue with the Gout
Not my gout, but Benjamin Franklin's.

I came across some of this in an SAT II in Literature prep test, and I liked it so much that I Googled it to link here. I especially admire Franklin's willingness to give Gout the good lines.

The approach may seem to be Pollyanna-ish, but I do actually sometimes see diabetes this way: what else would have me becoming pisco-vegan and taking up yoga again in my 50s? Other times, I would crush this kind of preaching in a fist and wipe my ass with it.

Mood: sharing a neat link

Red Sky in Morning
Because I know you are all as completely fascinated by my peri-menopausal menstrual periods as I am, here's the report.

Very heavy flow, started yesterday with less of a ramp-up than usual, a few hours. A little discomfort, but not much, and certainly no PAIN as I used to have when I ate birds, mammals, eggs, and milk. This is especially good news because I am eating more seafood than ever, and I thought that would be OK but was not sure. In fact, while I need further evidence, possibly moderate seafood is better this way than lots of phyto-estrogen-laden soy.

Ironically, because most periods now are lighter, the only tampons I had left were the most absorbent, and that's what I need now.

Tomorrow my students go back to their regular school. I can sleep in weekday mornings! I can watch junkey movies! Woo hoo! And yet I will miss the ones I have taught every day, who are going back to boarding schools.

Mood: baseline but labile

Another Punning Sentence Completion
"The fact that he was doing badly in physiology, which threatened his dreams of becoming a cardiac surgeon, left him__________."

( Answer )

Mood: determined

Live and Learn
It turns out that the reason I was SO VERY TIRED earlier this week is that I wasn't eating enough.

( Perhaps only of interest to diabetics. )

I began to suspect this yesterday when I snacked on chestnuts all day long and actually felt better than I had in days, on the same amount of sleep or less. Today I deliberately ate more, and that blood-sugar thing does seem to have been part of my problem.

It's highly annoying to have to figure out, plan, and do deliberately what a normal system does on its own, but it can be interesting as well.

Also, it's Korean Pear season again, and I was given some by the academy head. She gets some in big boxes from Korea and parents bring some in. She knows I greatly enjoy them, and I'm sure she hopes they keep me healthy. So I physically CAN work as much as I would like to and she would like me to.

Mood: energized but tired

That's something..., Chauncey
Yesterday, somewhat of an adventure: New York's finest almost would not allow me to go to work.

The academy is on 7th Avenue just off 34th, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was on 7th. None of us have photo i.d.s, for the building or the academy, which the police required. I tried to show them the quizzes I was handing back to a class, but that wasn't enough. (Would I be able to MAKE UP a class of Korean-Americans studying SAT vocabulary on Thanksgiving Day?)

Btw, I now understand why my late eldestsib, a Chicago police officer, always hated parade duty. As she said, you have to stand all the time, and (as I put it) you must get a colleague to relieve you in order to relieve yourself. In addition, as I found out yesterday, no one wants to hear what you must tell them. If they come up to you to ask, you already know they want in where you almost certainly can't let them.

Anyway, I called the academy. After what seemed like a long time, a fellow teacher came down with a student and a photo i.d. Note that I do not say "the student's photo i.d." let alone the teacher's. It was that of someone a few years older and not particularly similar looking, but at least, like the student, female. And, of course, Asian. So maybe they do all look alike! Also, the i.d. had the name of the security company, but no clue linking it to a building on 7th Ave.! But, you know, it was a photo i.d. (Yes, they visibly came from the blocked street. But that could be a trick! Like my fabricated quizzes!)

As we approached the building, I saw the parade coming the other way down the same otherwise-empty street and had a real "join the circus" moment. I still think we three should just have forsaken the academy for the day and marched in the parade. I did get to see the first three Macy's balloons, two logo-stars and Spiderman.

I also bought two bags of hot chestnuts, which it turns out made perfect snacking through the day until I went out to eat.

Mood: amused

T-day Meal, Very Happy
Harvest Buffet, how I love you!

Btw, I'm down to no glyburide in the afternoon or half a dose: yesterday I took the full dose, deliberately so I could eat with impunity! And it worked fine!

We had to wait 20 minutes, but it was more than worth it. I feel I did celebrate Thanksgiving in one way like a true American: eating up to a week's protein in one sitting. I did, however, have two helpings each of green papaya slaw and seaweed salad, more vegetative stuff than I had last time I went there. Oh, and avocado sushi.

squid sushi
sliced cuttlefish (seemed cooked)
sweet shrimp sushi
spicy shrimp sushi
fried coconut shrimp
king crab
soft-shelled crab sushi
crab and lobster sushi
spicy crab sushi
baked tarragon salmon
salmon sushi
salmon skin sushi
baked teryaki sea bass
tuna & white tuna in sushi
fried scallop

Let me just say that the king crab legs in the shell, overcooked, were the LEAST impressive of all this seafood.

I also had The Hottest Chive EVAR, or more likely a long chive and a very thin strip of jalapeno masquerading as another piece of chive.

Only one bivalve and fewer species of fish than last time (no yellowtail), but I love the variety, also possible because of small pieces. As I said last time, "I am a shark, predating the whole sea!" Afterward, I decided, I was not a beached whale (a term with my siblings) but a beached shark. A beached shark can always eat a BIT more, so I finished up with some very light, delicious, chocolate mousse cake.

The buffet did have a whole turkey being carved to order;

womzilla had some, while

supergee and I did not.

Mood: workaday

Grateful for Job
Even though I am now being overworked to an extent I have to prevent happening again, it still seems a good day to talk about why I like my job so much. I certainly complain enough about its minority of bad aspects.

1) The work itself
--uses many, many skills and much information I've gathered from many sources over the years
--just the right combination of new challenges and the familiar
--along those lines, can re-use jokes/great examples with each new student/class
--similarly, nice variety, staple SAT I and other work like spices in the mix
--exercises a nice blend of intellectual and personal skills

2) The work environment
--an office, a community; after years teaching in students' homes I wanted colleagues
--but not an OFFICE office, so I can wear batik/tie-dye tops & canvas shoes, not wear make-up
--definite recognition and respect, even flattery; field promotion to doctah
--all scheduling, the part I liked least and did least well, done for me
--office help: all copying, which I never minded but can take time, done for me; people who will buy food & caffeine for me if needed & I didn't bring enough

3) The students
--hard-working and motivated, usually both eager for advice and able to apply it
--even if not so hard-working, polite, docile; this year NO discipline necessary EVER even in the group classes
--a nice age-range from middle-school (SSAT/ISEE) through post-college (MCAT)
--"parenthood lite": many of the joys, 1/10 the responsibility!
--they like me, ask for me as a teacher, laugh at my jokes and funny examples

4) Work hours
--when school is in, cannot be much more than I want, c. 30 hour/week
--Not day work: most days, daytime hours free for yoga, vet, shopping, matinee movies; could sleep in if I want; do sometimes take naps in early afternoon
--ability to take off work more theory than real, but it's there if I assert myself
--I like inherent variety, long days working really hard and then shorter days with relaxation
--I like solid work then going home, more than on/off pace of an office

4) The pay
--not so high as to give me a feeling of Impostor Syndrome or unfair rapaciousness
--high enough to please me and inspire just a bit of envy
--no unpaid travel time between students, as when I taught in their homes
--under my control to take fully or turn down hours (should be better on this)
--like almost-illicit feel of being paid with many Benjamins

Mood: thankful

Team Player
At work, it seems very important to be seen as a team player; probably this is always true, and probably also it is even moreso due to (what I know of) Korean culture.

Given that, I'm choosing not to try to get this week's schedule changed, but I'm getting ideas of where I have to draw the line for the future. I just can't work even eight nonstop hours per day anymore, not for more than three or four days in a row, and since Saturday it's been more like ten or so including prep. This is at least seven hours of SOLID high-energy work, no break, then more work though not as strenuous (critiquing essays, writing materials). I'd rather have a free half-hour to have lunch and some kind of break, staying a half-hour later.

OTOH, I need to sleep ten hours per night, the new commute is three hours right there, and I always take at least an hour to get ready in the morning and often an hour or more to wind down at night--so if I work for ten hours, well, you do the math. I can take being short on sleep for a couple of days, but after that it wears me down, makes me emotionally labile, and raises my blood sugar. I can really take one day with only a few hours sleep better than I can several days in a row just an hour or two short. And having to work on the subway rather than read novels--NO break ever is, again, wearing.

Fortunately, tomorrow is a short day: 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. (if I get two days of materials written tonight). Then dinner at Harvest Buffet! Then SLEEP!

The academy head and my students are all tired also. It's their -ism, as I might say. I endorse the idea of working hard and achieving a lot; I love having such students. I wish there were a way it didn't go too far, but I guess it is human nature to take worthwhile values too far.

Aww--

womzilla just walked in to make sure I know he's proud of me for this kind of work. The guys are just wonderful. I know I am so lucky in so many ways. I still like to complain!

Mood: would complain if hung with a new rope

Vacation=Work
SO
FUKKIN'
TIRED.

I do love my work, but I would absolutely love it at least as much if I had a bit less of it. Still, Bizarro Teacher works when others rest, can only rest when other teachers work.

Another teacher is giving daily vocabulary, but it's very academic; so I'm giving words that the SAT asks that are not so academic, especially ones that used to be popular but are not now. One sentence completion I wrote: "Despite the arthritis in his hands, Fred persevered and refused to _______ to the pain." Vocab word: knuckle under.

Mood: draggin' but cheerful

Dream of the Dead
Last night I had another dream about the living dead. It's actually been a while. I can sometimes stop or reframe these via semi-lucid dreaming, and last night I could tell I was trying that and failing. "Oh, sh*t, they're going to come down this corridor. Wake up a little! Be elsewhere! Make them go away! Oh, darn."

I guess I interfered with the dream a little, in that when I got bitten, it wasn't me but a man who was

supergee and/or

womzilla, though he didn't look like either one. However, that person then became my p.o.v. on the dream. He was living-dead but unusual in that he had a bit more intelligence and less drive to eat living flesh, plus he could still have sex. Believe me, the living-dead females were dying to get with him, or would have been had they not already been dead. The main plot-thread was the guy looking for me: he eventually found out I was still alive, in a tiny holed-up enclave, and was disappointed (otherwise we could be together) but didn't seek to change that.

Later he came across a small family of living dead like him; they were beset by remaining living people trying to wipe them out, and the guy/I kept saying, "Barricade those entrances!" but it was too late. Some dreams you just can't win, you know?

There was also some stuff about resenting my mother for something, looking for her, and then finding her as one of the living dead; and a scene in a big auditorium with audio-animatronic animals, including a small and wiry wombat, in a few of the seats.

This may be the result of my bringing up, yesterday in my short-term daily class, that I used to use "dead corpse" as an example of redundancy, but now the living dead are so popular that often the phrase isn't redundant.

Mood: anecdotal

Thanksgiving Decided: Thanks!
On Thanksgiving, we three are going to perhaps our favorite restaurant, Harvest Buffet in Great Neck, Long Island. Probably the guys can pick me up in Manhattan and we can drive right there. (Yes, I work on Thanksgiving--but only in the morning, making it my lightest day this week.) We made sure it's open.

They may even offer turkey, although they don't usually, but we don't care. I do have to shake this whole American Tradition thing, but sushi! teryaki sea bass! more sauteed vegetables than one Nellorat can eat! A pisco-vegan delight. And the guys love it, too.

I may even have a bit of duck, but probably not much, and maybe not at all. Maybe this year, Thanksgiving will NOT be for the birds.

Thanks for the input, especially various stories of going to meat after vegan eating for a while. If it weren't for Harvest Buffet, I'd probably have salmon and a very small turkey, based on your advice. However, since this is a long, hard week work-wise, but with commensurate funds coming in, a ready-made buffet sounds just fine.

Mood: almost ready for bed, amazingly

Rhanksgiving Query
So, in large part thanks to info & encouragement from youngersib and my LJ friends, I've been pisco-vegan since--when? February? So now I head into my first holiday season. What to cook?

I actually like fake meat made out of tofu, but it's not juicy like turkey or salmon. And then again, maybe I don't want to consume vast quantities of protein at all. Is it wrong to cheat the guys out of a big, tender, Thanksgiving turkey? If we cook it for them, will I find it irresistible? If so, is that a bad thing?

Any vegans here with experiences eating animal protein after not doing so for a moderate time? Was it satisfying, gastro-intestinally or otherwise disastrous, or both?

Time for grocery shopping or dinner reservations is approaching! My decision is not exactly world-altering, but I turn to your combined wisdom.

Poll #1488822 What About Thanksgiving?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

For Thanksgiving, Nellorat should cook

View Answers

turkey
1 (6.2%)

Tofurkey
0 (0.0%)

salmon
5 (31.2%)

vegan soup & salad
2 (12.5%)

nothing & eat out
10 (62.5%)

Mood: indecisive

Two If by Sea
It's Apocalypse Thursday: channel-surfing*, I came across Peter Weir's amazing film The Last Wave just about to start on IFC and rewatched it. I can't resist eye-candy like 2012, but a film like Weir's, not dependent on state-of-the-art special effects, holds up. I kept thinking of its not-quite-theme-song, issued the same year, "Here Comes the Flood" by Peter Gabriel.

* No pun intended.

Mood: dancing apocalypso

2012
Enjoying my first day fully off work in over two weeks, and in just the right mood to see things explode and the world end, I went to see 2012. Does it make as little sense as The Day After Tomorrow? No, it makes LESS sense.

Impossible, you say? The disaster is caused when the neutrinos from the sun mutate! And MELT the core of the Earth!!

Oh, and there's a Tibetan lama named Lama Rimpoche, which is kind of like Pope Priest. And indeed, perhaps the Pope who went down with Rome, instead of fleeing to save his holy ass, was (we don't know)named Pope Priest. Symbolic crack down the Sistine Chapel dome, right between God's finger and Adam's hand.

Yes, I still liked it. Things blew up REAL GOOD. Lots of airplane-flying-between-collapsing-skyscraper fu. However, I was waiting for ex-husband and new boyfriend to become friends and agree to a triad with female lead, and that didn't happen.

Mood: existentially annoyed but coping

ICFA PoC Scholarship

nisi_la is going to the ICFA due to our personal scholarship and announces it on her LJ. Most comments there indicate exactly the response I'd hoped for, especially the one that says choosing her shows good sense rather than some bad agenda on our part. I could do without the 18th comment, but I'm not responding, and please don't you either.

I continue to be surprised at the depth of pain and anger still felt concerning me by people who don't really even know me, and to think about the many reasons that I keep being surprised. I'm not up for discussing that here right now, but I'm sure I will be again, and any insight is welcomed because if it's too much, I'll just say so and/or wait to reply. I said in one recent comment that I am determined to learn from this stuff or die trying: that's extreme (I did tolerate a small bump in bg due to more stress and less sleep, but I wouldn't tolerate a bigger one), more like I am resolved to keep learning from this until I've learned all there is for me there OR until I die.

In some ways, the ICFA is a long way off. Not in others! We three have our own plane & hotel reservations to make. It's always a great time for us, and I'm sure it will be this coming March also.

Mood: slow but potentially perky, waking up

A Weird Sense of Dislocation
Today

supergee fell and dislocated the middle finger on his left hand.

Also, I finished Stephen King's Under the Dome, in which three characters experience a dislocated shoulder & dislocated fingers. I read about one case of the latter as I waited for Supergee to call from the urgent care facility. At least Supergee both got pain meds and didn't have to fix his own.

Then

womzilla and I watched the recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, in which Penny dislocates her shoulder.

I'm used to such synchronicities, but I could well have done without Supergee's and my unexpectedly exciting yet boring parts in it all.

Mood: off to bed; trusting tomorrow will be less upsetting

Teaching last week, while strenuous, was not as huge as the week before: 32 billable hours. After two weeks without a day off, I a ready for one, which will be Thursday. I did have yoga today & am enjoying King's Under the Dome. A morbid mind in a healthy body.

A wonderful person has accepted our scholarship to the ICFA, and I did the sad drudgery of contacting those we didn't select, so that's finished. And it wound up in a way I'm overall happy with. We left it up to her to announce or not, and she says she'll do so in her LJ.

Mood: mellow but chipper