Is it live or is it Memorex?

The great thing about teaching is that you get a new audience every year. I get to recycle my stories year after year, which makes up for having a boring life!

But I’ve been noticing lately that my stories are starting to feel like exactly that: stories. They don’t feel like my personal experiences anymore. I’ve told them so many times that it isn’t remembering anymore, it is storytelling. I’ll be in the middle of a tale and think to myself: “Did it really happen that way or are you rearranging and modifying it for effect?”

Not that I have a problem with creative license in my own life, especially if it makes people laugh. I’m not trying to pass some of this off as a memoir or trying to get money out of people. But it does start to make me wonder about how much I “remember” is actually real or embellished.

Because of this, I’ve also started to wonder a few times if the things really did happen to me, or am I remembering something that someone else said. Did I think it was funny and just wanted it to happen to me so I co-opted it for my own? I have told stories that I wish had happened to me, but I usually make sure to ‘fess up at the end.

Memory is a strange thing that way. I keep telling the stories so that I don’t forget them. But I really hope that I’m not making up a past that didn’t exist!

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Running update: 5K today!! Not a real race, but I planned out a route in my neighborhood. Yahoo Maps told me it was 3.1 miles. I did it in 34:43. 11:30 pace, not bad!!

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Project 365 – No. 90 (November 19, 2008)

Fun in the non majors lab! What you can’t see is the smoke rising off of the watch plate. It was a very exciting day.

Project 365 – No. 91 (November 20, 2008)

We serve our cats from only the finest Riedel. (I know, I know. Creepy Cat Woman.)

Project 365 – No. 92 (November 21, 2008)

Our friends at Dusty’s for the Champagne tasting. YAY!! Champagne MegaFriday!!

Project 365 – No. 93 (November 22, 2008)

My attempt at Indian food. It was very good. Promise.

Project 365 – No. 94 (November 23, 2008)

This is a tree on my running route. I was very excited to see that it had apples!! That gives me hope for the Bartlett Pear that I planted. If I can just keep the deer away from it until it gets big enough, I might have pears!!

It was, like, amazing!

We grow out of a lot of things. Milli Vanilli albums, radical make-up usage, and hair that changes color about every three months. But I wonder, is using the word “like” as an interjection or phrase linker something that people grow out of?

“It was, like, the most amazing thing!” or “And I was, like, no duh!”

Husband and I were at lunch today and we had the misfortune to sit next to a pair of college age girls complaining about their dorms. Jim timed one girl in particular; she used the word “like” 7 times in 22 seconds. And we’re not talking “I really like this sandwich.”

Once you hear a conversation like this, it is almost impossible to train your ear not to hear it. We laughed every time we heard two or three “likes” in a single sentence.

This is a conversational usage that afflicts females from the ages of 16-23 (this statistic is PFA by the way). You don’t hear professionals peppering their speech with “like”. So is this something that you grow out of, or is it something that you eventually train yourself not to do?

I was tempted to, as we were leaving, walk by their table and let them know that the word “like” came up about every 4 seconds in their conversation. Just FYI, ya know. But I didn’t really want to deal with the fall out that I know would be coming:

“That is so, like, rude!! Who do you think you are? Like, the language police?”

36,000 feet above the Atlantic

Well, not when this post actually gets to the internet, but as I am writing it. Yup, made it safely to the airport in Florence at some ungodly hour, successfully navigated the Frankfurt airport and made it on to the plane. Only a couple more hurdles left – customs, a too long layover, and the flight to Lansing. Hopefully Lisa will be there to pick me up!

I should be working on the Sicily posts, and might do it after this post is done but I wanted to do my “Wrap-up” post while it is still fresh in my head.

WARNING: I might get a little maudlin and mushy. I think I just scared the guy sitting next to me when I started thinking about what I was going to miss and started tearing up. He must think my book is really sad!

I think that I can really sum up what I am going to miss about Italy in one word: choices.

Choices? How can this be? Isn’t America the land of choice? As you drive down the street, you are bombarded with choices, places to go, places to eat, things to buy! Let me explain what I mean.

The whole time I was in Italy, I didn’t eat fast food (as defined by the good ol’ US of A) once. I only ate food in a chain maybe five times. And that is only if you count the cafeteria at the Coop as a chain restaurant. I bought my espresso from the local bar. I would guess that most of the places that we frequented were owned by a single person or family. You could walk down the street and see 10 different restaurants, each with a different menu and different ambience. While husband and I did eat at a new restaurant every night, we sampled a few and made a choice to frequent some that were the most comfortable to us. When we went to a new city, we couldn’t fall back on a known quantity. We had to go and find something new.

Ah vino! I had wine with my lunch on the plane (this is a habit that I am going to miss!!). I asked for a red and the attendant said that they had a cabernet or a blend available. Silly me, I asked “What’s the blend?” She looked at me like a sprouted a third eyeball from my head. “Cabernet, syrah…”. Ah. I think about the places that Jim and frequented for wine: Le Volpi e l’Uva, Enoteca Ponte Vecchio, Osteria del Bricco. A lot times, wines would be offered where Jim had never even heard of the grape! Our cellar back home looks so one dimensional now.

I am going to missed the freedom and the choices that we available when working in the lab. The facilities weren’t any better than what I have in the states, but I had the time to make those choices. I didn’t have the immediacy of classes and other responsibilities weighing on my head. I had the choice to go into the lab and work on things that were exciting to me, without having to justify my time.

(Here’s the mushy part. Skip this paragraph if you have a weak stomach.) I’m also really going to miss spending QT with husband. The apartment was small and only had one couch. We had to sit together when watching movies or House on DVD. I’m going to miss the fact that we had few distractions and got to spend a lot of time traveling together and just talking. We survived four months of enforced contact, and you know? I liked it a lot.

But beyond that, I AM going to miss Florence in general. I will miss walking everywhere. I will miss my bus ride past the Duomo. I’ll miss walks up to Piazza Michelangelo and laughing at the all of the tourists.

All good things must come to an end, and there are many things that I missed about home. Absence (even of a couple of hours), make the heart grow fonder.

OK, enough with the serious stuff. We were flying over some water (what body of water is between the mainland of Europe and Greenland? Don’t have the internet on the plane!!), and I was looking out the window and saw some floaty things in the water. Boats? Ships? Floating cities? We were almost 7 miles in the air and I could see them! One, I even saw the wake as it was moving. How freaking fast and big must that thing have been for me to see it all the way up in the plane?

PS – Made it to Detroit OK, all of the luggage showed up and made it through customs too!

If only…

There are two things that are keeping us from feeling like we really fit in here.

1. Knowing where to buy things.

In the states, if I want to buy index cards, I know where to go: Meijer. It’s where you buy everything!

If I want knitting needles and some more yarn, you go to Meijer. Or JoAnn, or Target. Or if you want the really good stuff, you go to Yarns for Ewe. The point is, I know where to go or have a good idea. But over here, big super stores like Meijer aren’t that common. So if you are in the city center and want some index cards, where do you go? I have absolutely no idea. I looked at the big Coop grocery store, because over in the US, that’s where they would be. But no dice. In fact, trying to find paper over here is an ordeal. Paper is expensive. I just wanted to find a simple, cheap notebook for practicing my Italian. HA!! It was a multiday trek to locate something reasonable.

I’ve learned to knit while I was over here too. I brought one skein of yarn with me to practice on. I’ve used that up and need to buy some new supplies. I checked the IperCoop (HyperCoop – in the mall. Kind of like a super Walmart or Meijer) but nothing doing. There is a yarn store that is close to the Ponte Vecchio, so I went there. It is run by a little old lady and she followed me around the store the whole time. The yarn didn’t have prices so I left. It was making me nervous. Jim and I found another store that looked like a good candidate. It has lots of craft stuff and yarn in the window. When I went to look, it was closed for siesta. ARGH!!

This is one of the biggest issues that I am having right now. But the other:

2. Knowing how to ask for specific things.

Yes, I have my phrase book and my dictionary but it only has very general phrases. It doesn’t have the important phrases like:

“I would like 300 grams of sausage that isn’t in a casing.” The local butcher made us some sausage the other day and it was AMAZING. But how do I go and ask for it again?

Another example: “What grapes are in this wine? Is this a region or a producer?” We like wine and we have really enjoyed exploring all of the different grape varietals available here. But while at a bar or a wine tasting, how do you ask these things?

Another example, this one at the lunch/coffee bar: “I want that sandwich.” or “What is orzo?” A lot of the places where you can eat lunch are take-aways. There is a large selection food in a glass case and you say or point to what you want. But if you want clarification on something, it is almost impossible for me right now because of the language barrier.

Slowly we muddle on.

It’s snowing, again.

We have gotten eight inches of snow so far today. I have shoveled the driveway TWICE. OK, so the first time I used the snow blower. The snow was wet and heavy and I was lazy. The second time I needed the exercise and just wanted to enjoy the quietness. They are predicting up to…. Ready for this? *15* inches. OMG. That’s a whole stinking lot of snow.

But I didn’t have to drive in it. Because I’m not teaching this semester. Instead, I spent the day in front of my computer working on revising student proposals and writing recommendation letters. Snooze. But don’t feel too bad for me. I have a laptop and was on the couch with a fire going in the stove. This is what the cats were doing:

Do you know how hard it is to take picture of a black cat? Photoshop is my friend.

A year ago you would have never seen this picture but recently the boys (Caymus on the left, Saki on the right) have starting snuggling. It’s actually Caymus snuggling up to Saki, which is pretty funny because Caymus is so standoffish.

Anyway – Italy update: We leave in almost exactly six days. EVERYBODY PANIC. Haven’t started packing but we did go and buy another large suitcase today. I have a list going (yes husband, vitamins are on the list!!).

I had the BEST italian lesson yet from Pimsleur. It was about 8 minutes of a dialogue between a man and women.

• Man: What time you like to have something to drink with me?
• Woman: No, thank you. I don’t want to drink with you.
• Man: At one o’clock?
• Woman: No.
• Man: At two o’clock?
• Woman: No. Do you not understand me?
• Man: Oh, I understand! You don’t want to drink with me. But would you like to have something to *eat* with me?

I’m really not making this up. It’s actually kind of sexist, but from what people are telling me (yes, people who are over there right now!) this might actually be a useful conversation to understand!