That time of year has come around again. On Sunday, the roads in and out of town were clogged with Dorm Okies, Suburban Exodusters, College Joads: incoming students and their parents.
All the cars, trucks, SUV's and minivans pull into town, piled high with boxes and suitcases and furniture and everything the student could possibly need. Plus some other stuff. There's something both reassuring and horrifying about that bumper to bumper procession of overloaded SUV's.
On the one hand, it's nice that parents are still taking their kids off to the first day of college, just like they took them to the first day of kindergarten. It's an equally big step to the one the kids took at age 5. They need the emotional support and those last-minute twenty-dollar bills Mom and Dad are going to slip them.
On the other had, it's scary to contemplate how dependent on stuff these kids are. Please excuse me while I go into old fart mode for a moment, but that was not my college dorm experience, nor the experience of anyone else in the dorm I lived in. I went to college with a large suitcase, a laundry hamper, and a milk crate. Basically, all I took was clothes, shoes, sheets, towels, a stereo, a dictionary, and a few odds and ends.
That was pretty much what everyone else brought, too. Oh, sure some girls bought matching curtains and bedspreads and throw rugs for their rooms, and one girl brought a toaster, to maintain her Pop-Tart addiction. Other than that, though, we made do. Most of us used the computers and typewriters that were freely available all over campus.
Watching the Suburban Exodusters on Sunday, I could see how far away those days were. People were unloading microwaves and mini fridges. TV's and computers and video game consoles. Bunk beds and couches and scooters and exercise equipment. All the comforts of home, in short, as though they expected college to be just like home only in a different town. I wonder at what point they'll realize it isn't.
Welcome to New Graduate Student Orientation.
Orienting new GTA's is like herding cats. Except that cats are cute and you can generally use a laser pointer or a feather toy to get their attention. Not so much with GTA's.
It's the same every year, and there's the same basic assortment of incoming GTA's:
The quiet, nervous, overly conscientious international student, who always makes me wonder: "Really? You came all the way from Russia/India/Iran/South Africa to study French...in Kansas?"
The rather creepy, overly friendly, prematurely aged Easterner. He stands too close and laughs at all my jokes and asks personal questions, like we're on a date or something.
The utterly hysterical Kansan who wants to know why she hasn't received more information about her classes, registration, the orientation, housing, etc. Oh, and yes, in fact, she has moved three times since May and hasn't had internet access all summer. To whom, I always want to say, "Fer fuck's sake. You've been in Kansas all summer. I guarantee you, your local library had internet access. You could have ridden a mule over here if you wanted more information." Let's just say, this person is always an example of the stark difference between GRE scores and practical intelligence.
The intense, overachiever, who wants to be sure that everyone understands that he gets it, whatever it is. Later, he will be a thorn in my side, because he will get himself elected as a grad student representative. Then every month he will submit half a dozen motions for the departmental meeting, each of them with a the goal of changing the way I operate the office. He'll phrase it as suggestion to improve efficiency, but all he means is that it will improve his convenience.
The three blond (or brunette, depending on the year) GTA's who are virtually indistinguishable from each other and will remain so until approximately three weeks before graduation or until one of them seriously fucks up.
So, we'll see if I can't get them pointed in the right direction. Whichever direction that is.
Everybody loves Second Breakfast, but today I'm getting Second Birthday. One: my sister forgot it was my birthday yesterday, so she called this morning. Two: I have leftovers from my birthday dinner last night. So, I'll eat them at lunch and get to experience Birthday Goodness all over again.
I have to say this, though: what is the world coming to? On my birthday, I usually wear a tiara to signal to people that they need to treat me like a princess. (Same reason I wear a tiara on the days when I'm in a particularly foul mood.) Yesterday, at least a hundred people saw me wearing my tiara all over campus. No one asked me why. No one, in fact, looked at me any more strangely than they normally do. Come on! A tiara doesn't even bear mentioning? *sigh*
Oh, well, aside from my birthday leftovers, today's just another day. More paperwork, more slacking, more last-minute panicking from my boss. I'll see you around.
Oh, except that Hubbicula insisted on being in disguise. Still, it's a close likeness.
It's probably not the best sign in the world when the phrase that describes how you're feeling is lifted straight from a Merle Travis lament on coal mining. I'd like to say that I don't owe my soul to the company store, but since I owe my soul to the bank, it's not much different.
The debt part I've been feeling for several weeks, but I didn't feel older until the new faculty hire came in to get her keys. She's ten years younger than I am, just finished her Ph.D., and this is her first real teaching job--an assistant professorship. It's a big deal, the kind of thing that you have to work hard to get. I have to keep reminding myself that the reason this 20-something little pipsqueak has achieved this is that it's what she wanted. I have to remind myself that I didn't want the PhD or the professorship. Sometimes, working in this environment, it's hard to remember that.
All the same, here I am, the day before my 37th birthday and I feel tired. I ought to feel a bit cheered up. Unlike 2007, which was a zero sum year on the writing/publishing front, 2008 has been quite a bit better. I've had five short stories accepted for publication* and I've gotten a few nibbles on one of my novels. Still, it seems like there's so much work ahead of me with no guarantee of results. I guess I am getting old, because I think I need a nap.
*For my friends, who are curious, here's a list of the upcoming publications.
On the radio yesterday, I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger playing word games involving the livelihoods of state employees in California. As the economy tanks, the Governator is looking for ways to save money that don't involve raising taxes. His solution: cut the salaries of state employees. In some cases, lowering wages to $6.55/hour, the federally mandated minimum wage.
Help me, here, because I don't quite understand how this is different from a tax. If you tax me, you take money out of my paycheck. If you cut my salary, you take money out of my paycheck. What's the diff?
Oh, right, the difference is that in this scenario, which Schwarzie claims will save the state $1.2 billion per month, the only people being taxed are state employees. Everybody else gets a free ride, including the governor, who gets to claim he hasn't raised taxes.
$6.55 an hour. Think about that one. I don't know how much money you make, but I don't make a lot. Hubbicula laughed when he saw our tax return from last year. Still, $6.55 an hour is less than half what I make as a humble state employee. At $6.55 an hour, I wouldn't be able to pay my bills, let alone pay my mortgage, or keep the kittens in kibble. Never mind keeping Hubbicula in college.
Before you even start on state employees, I'll say it for you: we're
lazy, incompetent, indifferent, reckless, and greedy. Fine, agreed.
The only question is: do you want my job? No, I didn't think so. We
state employees may be the bottom of the barrel, but we were willing to
take the jobs nobody else wanted. No matter how grudgingly and slowly,
we provide important services. Without us, your kids don't get
educated, your paperwork doesn't get pushed, and your highway medians
don't get mowed. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.
I knew I shouldn't click on the link. I knew reading about the woman who had her dog cloned was just going to piss me off, but I did it anyway.
I expected a low-grade contempt, but it turned out to be even worse than that. Bernann McKinney sold her house to raise the $50,000 to pay for the cloning. Fine, it's her house, her money, although I'd certainly suggest there are more worthwhile causes to which one could contribute $50,000. What got me, what pushed me right up to the edge of a full-blown fit of rage is what Ms. McKinney had to say about why she had her dog cloned:
"I had to make sacrifices and I dream of the day, some day when everyone can afford to clone their pet because losing a pet is a terrible, terrible loss to anyone."
Where did this amazing, "indispensable" dog named Booger come from? McKinney rescued him from a shelter. So, instead of honoring Booger's memory and his invaluable contribution to her life by going back to the shelter and rescuing another dog, she opted to spend $50,000 to bring five more dogs into the world. Five. Five shelter dogs who got gassed in the place Booger. Imagine how many dogs that $50,000 would have saved.
McKinney's dream sounds like my nightmare.
UPDATE: Now it comes out that Ms. Dog-Cloner is also Ms. Mormon-Missionary-Raper. Charged in 1977 for stalking, kidnapping, and sexually assaulting a Mormon missionary. She jumped bail and disappeared into obscurity...until now.
So, the Accounting off ice has made the switch to an elaborate online bill-paying software that is theoretically a big improvement over the old software. I say theoretically, because at this stage it's really hard to tell if the new software is better. This is because thus far the training they've offered us has been largely hypothetical. Take for example this particular problem. They recently posted "instruction manuals" for the new software, which I diligently followed while paying the first bills I've been able to pay since the fiscal year-end blackout.
I entered my bills and everything was going smoothly, until it came time to print out the required report to send to Accounting with the bills. I flipped to the index and learned that the instructions for printing reports are on page 21:
On my walk to work this week I've seen this same item that the trash guys declined to pick up:
Yes, my people, that's a treadmill for dogs. A treadmill for dogs. A treadmill for dogs. A treadmill for dogs?
Or more accurately, a treadmill for the dogs of people who are too lazy to take their dogs out for a real walk.
Revolutionary? Sure, if your idea of a revolution is having your dog chew your favorite slippers, crap on your rug, and maul you while you're sleeping. Gee...I wonder why the Jog A Dog is sitting out at the curb.
Thank you to Spucko for giving voice to the existential crisis this device would surely produce in a dog accustomed to being walked in the park: "How am I supposed to take a crap on this thing?"
At least it wasn't a fatal encounter, as it was for the people in Minneapolis who didn't survive to tell their crumbling infrastructure story.
It rained all night and I went to bed hoping the basement wouldn't take on too much water. Nights like that I have serious buyer's remorse. Remorse that I didn't buy a boat. At about 1:30, I woke to the sound of my neighborhood transformer blowing. It's in my backyard, so it's hard to sleep through the conflagration that occurs almost any time it rains for more than hour, any time it snows more than an inch, any time the wind blows much, and sometimes when an errant sparrow flies by and farts in its general direction. It is a very sensitive little transformer.
So, after the transformer blew, I lay in bed, trying to convince the cats that despite the explosion and the bright lights and the cascading sparks, that we were not in fact about to be killed by terrorists. The electricity was out, naturally, so I also lay awake wondering how badly the basement would flood if it kept raining and the sump pumps didn't have power.
I had just started to drift back to sleep when I heard a man say, "Is that a toilet?"
Why, yes, yes it is.
Because the transformer is mounted on a pole in my backyard, when it goes kablooey, the city workers tromp through my yard to investigate. Often they wait until morning, and sometimes I actually sleep through their work, but not that night. It would have been hard to sleep through four massive trucks parked in front of my house and one in my drive and about seven guys in full-body rain slickers with halogen headlamps arguing outside my bedroom window. It was like something out of E.T.
Then the city workers began to drill and hammer and generally run whatever noisy power tools they could get their hands on. All of that, however, wasn't the best part. The highlight was this snippet of conversation I overheard:
Pole Guy #1: I don't know where you think I'm going to bolt that L-bracket. About half this pole is rotten.
Pole Guy #2: It shoulda been replaced ten years ago.
Ground Guy #1: Yeah, well, considering there's no money for maintenance, it's probably not going to be replaced for another ten years.
Ground Guy #2 (laughing): or until it falls down.
In my backyard. Until it falls down in my backyard. In the middle of some wretched winter ice storm and takes out the electricity of three city blocks. So, that's where we are. Not just big, headline-worthy catastrophes caused by a failure to perform maintenance on bridges, but a nationwide, localized failure to perform every kind of maintenance on our infrastructure.
When I was in college, I had a friend who had grown up in Lebanon and we were once stuck together during an ice storm in Manhattan, Kansas. The power was out for five days and we were miserably cold and hungry. On about the third day, Nadal said, "You know what makes America great?" Don't laugh, but at the time--1992--I answered: "Our Bill of Rights?" (Little did I know...) Nadal said, "No, it's that even the poorest people in America can get running water and electricity 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Oh, sure, it's out now because of the storm, but it'll come back on and it'll stay on. We never had that in Lebanon."
At the time, I thought she was being funny, but sometimes I look back and agree with her. One of the things that made us great was the notion that we were all in it together and we were all going to sink or swim together. We were all going have lights and water and good roads and decent schools. I don't feel like that's a sure thing anymore. I feel like as the infrastructure falls apart, as we keep giving tax breaks to corporations and rich people, as we keep wasting money of wars and military technology, we may enter a new era when the electricity and the water and the good roads aren't a given.
The answer is fairly simple: it's the FUCKING TAXES, STUPID. If we don't tax the citizens appropriately, we don't have enough money in the coffers to pay for repairs to things like bridges and electrical grids. That's exactly what we've been failing to do for years. After the initial outlay to build all the metropolitan water systems and a national electric grid and an interstate system, we just stopped allocating tax money to maintain it. Like buying a million dollar house and then refusing to repair the rain gutters until your whole roof falls apart.
What do the anti-tax people think? That the Infrastructure Fairy is just going to pop by and drop off a few billion dollars? Or do they think that all this free market enterprise is going to magically produce companies that will dip into their profits to maintain infrastructure, out of the goodness of their hearts?
And that, my people, is part of the conversation I'll be having with my city commissioner just as soon as he calls me back.
