Bookcase of Nerd-dom
We have a serious problem at our house - to paraphrase Milton, the ratio of books to bookshelves is too many. To partially address this issue, I bought a five-shelf bookcase just for our technical books.
I didn’t realize we’d fill it instantly.
Yes, a couple of these books are about business, and a couple are science text books, but the vast majority are, well, computer books. A lot of them are no longer exactly relevant or up to date, but it’s awfully hard to throw away some of these bug squashers.
The good news is, now we really do have room on some of our other bookshelves for many of the books that have been stacked on floors and other available flat surfaces for far too long.
I was that girl …
In high school, I was the girl who punched my male friends all the time. I don’t really know why, but I think I somehow thought it was cute. I once lost a bet that I wouldn’t punch anyone for the next 24 hours - and I lost it in about 5 minutes. My dad used to warn me that if I didn’t knock that crap off, I’d eventually get slugged for real.
It all stopped about the time I started studying Tae Kwon Do, when I was maybe 15. Mr. Kurtz, via his character Brent, suggests that women “play” punch because we know guys won’t hit back. I think it’s more insidious, and he even hints at it in the previous comic - I think we “play” punch because we don’t think that we could possibly be punching hard enough to actually hurt someone. We’re socialized to believe we’re physically weak. In the media, female violence may be depicted as cute or sexy, but rarely as a serious matter. In real life, some men put up with physical abuse rather than calling the cops or getting out of the situation because it’s considered unmanly to admit that you’re being hit by a woman.
When I started martial arts and learned how to punch properly - I stopped hitting people. I learned to take the concept of my body as a weapon seriously, and through a conscientious instructor I learned that using my body as a weapon was a very, very serious matter, only to be done when there were no other options.
Maybe yet another reason for more girls to study martial arts.
Life Is Good
I do love those t-shirts. I know, I know, they’re kind of corny, but they also speak to me. I particularly like the one with the picture of the flower that says “Grow.”
Anyway. Life is good. I spent a wonderful week with my family over Christmas; we celebrated my father’s 70th birthday on the 24th. My mom made sure there were plenty of gluten free munchies for me, and she even made me GF pancakes. They were really good. Much better than I’ve ever managed, actually.
I had foot surgery on December 30th, which made for one heck of a New Year’s bash. Or not. I like to joke that I was having a ball on Percocet, but actually my foot didn’t hurt too much, so I mostly just slept, kept my foot elevated, and iced a lot. I don’t really like pain killers, and I don’t take them unless I absolutely have to. When I did take the meds, I just slept through it so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the vertigo.
So. The surgery. I had a choice, in December. I could get the surgery, or I could give up skiing. It wasn’t much of a choice. I let the doctor cut into my foot and remove a nerve from the third and fourth toes of my left foot. I sat around for four weeks letting it heal. It wasn’t very fun, and all that time sitting around gave me plenty of opportunity to contemplate what would go wrong.
So, about a month after the surgery, I went skiing. And it felt pretty darn good. And it’s felt better every day since. The surgery worked! The first day I was back, after being virtually immobile for a month, I skied all day in a high level mogul class. I was sore, sure, but it felt so good. It’s hard to describe how the absence of pain impacts my ski day. We don’t usually exclaim about the absence of something. But it’s so profound. I ski all morning, and my foot doesn’t hurt or cramp up. I don’t fantasize about getting to lunch so that I can take off my boots. When I get to lunch, I don’t even bother to unbuckle them most of the time. I ski the rest of the day, rather than calling it quits early because I’m in so much pain. I ski better because my foot isn’t all cramped up, and because I can apply my full attention to skiing rather than to the pain. After a full day of skiing, I get back to the car, and I start putting away my stuff, and only when I start thinking about starting up the car do I realize, hey, I’m still wearing my ski boots - I should probably take them off.
It’s unreal.
I do still have minor swelling in my foot; it’s not a problem skiing or hiking, but I do notice it in the morning especially, when I haven’t been moving around. I’m doing PT, and I’m told it’ll probably be a few months before the foot fully heals. But you know. Whatever. They cut into my foot. Of course it’ll take time to get back to normal. Only, it’ll be better than normal, because - no pain!
Oh where, oh where could she be?
Man, have I been busy. I can’t remember exactly what I’ve been up to, but there’s been a lot of it.
I’m still working for the same company, but with a completely different job description and reporting to completely different people, outside of the standard engineering project flow entirely. So that’s been pretty absorbing.
I’m still seeing Mary, my hand therapist, twice a week — once every two weeks for my chronic wrist thing, and three times every two weeks for my broken finger. Yeah. She predicts that my finger will be somewhat swollen and achy for a year and a half. But happily, I have most of my mobility back, and I’m cleared for climbing. Not sure I’ll ever be able to close my fist fully (glad it’s the left!) or straighten my finger all the way, though.
Recently, I had the mother of all busy weeks. My parents came into town the Friday after Thanksgiving for about a week. The day they left, my friend Jessica flew in and crashed at the house. Friday we packed up as much as possible and moved into our second home for the winter, an apartment in Frisco. We’re sharing that with a permanent resident who, fortunately for us, was in need of a roommate. Ski Saturday, then drive home Sunday morning, because I had to fly out to meet the client and I didn’t want to get caught in the brewing snow storm. Flew out Sunday evening, arriving after 11pm eastern, first meeting at 9am. After a very full day, go to bed early, because I have to get up at 4:30am (that’s 2:30 as far as my body’s concerned) for a 7:30 flight. Drive straight home in the snow, feeling worse and worse from all the sleep deprivation. Try to work for the rest of the day, but get basically nothing done. Apparently, some people do this kind of thing all the time. All I can say is, not me.
And my Thinkpad’s wifi stopped working, and I don’t have time to figure it out.
And Christmas shopping. Need I say more?
So while all this is going on, I’ve also been seeing a podiatrist about an ongoing problem I’ve had with my left foot, especially while skiing, but lately under other conditions as well. Apparently it’s something called Morton’s Neuroma. I got a few steroid shots, supportive foot beds, and a metatarsal pad, all of which helped a little, but not enough, especially once ski season started. (Yes. It is December 15 and I’ve already skied five days. Neener.) This weekend, skiing, my foot was bad on Saturday and worse on Sunday. It became clear to me: I had to do the surgery to remove the nerve.
Sounds drastic, but there are worse things, like being in pain all the time and not being able to ski.
So now, on top of everything else, I have a series of pre-op visits, then the trip to visit my parents, then surgery less than 24 hours after I fly back home. After which I won’t be allowed to ski for four weeks, basically the month of January. Which sucks, except that if I weren’t getting the surgery, I probably would be in such crippling pain that I wouldn’t be able to ski anyway, so really it’s a good thing, honest. Just why did it have to come to such a head this year? Oh, right, probably because I’m skiing so much.
Skiing. Let me tell you, Colorado Pass + Breck Unlimited Lesson Pass = bliss. Now, some silly people think that lessons are just for the novice. Those people are flat-out wrong. Not only do you get good solid instruction that helps you enjoy the experience more (and be less sore), but - you get to use the lesson lanes instead of the main ski lift lines. You get a guide (instructor) who knows the mountain way better than you ever will. You get to really know the whole community, instructors and students both; it’s a real community.
Anyway. We’d been targeting 30 days this season. It’ll be tough to make that happen when I can’t ski all of January. I’ve been rocking on skis this year; advancing through the lessons and getting a lot of confidence and skill. That’s on hold, and I won’t be able to work my way up through the terrain as it opens. I’m trying to tell myself that this is good for me, not just for this season but for the rest of my life. I’m telling myself that there’s never a good time to be off your feet and out of your activities for a month. I’m telling myself that I can catch up on paperwork, rest up, and after the first two weeks I can explore Frisco and Breckenridge with Cooper.
But still. It sucks.
Hi. My name is Monique, and I’m a feminist.
This post was inspired by Mel at [M]etabrain [E]ntry [L]og. I felt that if she could do it, I could — and should — do it, too. Her post is Hi. My name is Mel, and I’m female… and feminist.
So here’s my post. For Mel, and for me.
For the longest time, I didn’t think I was a feminist.
In college, I thought that feminism equated to the belief that women are better than men. I certainly didn’t believe that, so instead I rejected the concept of feminism and called myself an individualist.
I was young. I was arrogant. I had never failed. I had buckets of unexamined privilege that allowed me to believe that my experiences were simply the results of my own hard work and innate abilities. It never occurred to me that my experiences were only possible because others had fought for them before I was even born.
Maybe I can be forgiven for my ignorance. There was no Google. Altavista may have existed, but I didn’t know of it. And even if it did, there was no thriving blogosphere, or even really nearly as much data out on the ‘net as there is now. I must have heard the word feminist at some point, but I can’t recall my mother ever saying it (more on that later).
To be honest, I identified more with guys than girls, anyway, and I was something of a traitor to my kind in that I wanted to distance myself as much as possible from whatever it was that women were supposed to be. If the concept of feminism involved embracing and elevating those values traditionally associated with women, well, I wasn’t really interested. (And of course I didn’t have access to Figleaf’s awesome and not at all safe for work blog, Real Adult Sex, where he so excellently explains why feminism is good for everyone, not just women.)
It took both privilege and ignorance to be where I was, who I was, without realizing how much I owed to feminism. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply wore whatever I wanted without any concern about being punished or shamed for it. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply expected to be treated as the equal to my male counterparts in every endeavor. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply didn’t see marriage in my future, or any reason why it should be. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply made it clear to my male friends that “rape” was not an acceptable metaphor for whatever suboptimal event they were discussing. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply expected to enjoy sex, to have it how and with whomever I chose, and to not have it when I didn’t want to have it. I wasn’t a feminist; I simply expected to get my prescription for birth control filled with all the difficulty of buying a tube of lip balm.
In other words, I was living in a post-feminism fantasy world that many women in the US, let alone other parts of the world, would love to have the luxury of living.
So back to my mother. I don’t remember if she ever used the word “feminist,” either positively or negatively, while I was growing up. But I do think that she tried very hard to teach me a feminist world view, so much so that maybe I didn’t even realize there could be another way. As far back as I can remember, my mother would tell me that “You can be anything you want, even President!” I didn’t really understand; I thought it would be silly to want to a job with so much responsibility and public criticism. My mom taught me that nudity was no big thing, and on the topic of private parts, she told me “Hey, if our noses were taboo, we’d cover them, too!” She taught me that the definition and perception of nudity was a cultural construct. As a teenager, I unthinkingly parroted the idea that raising a child is the most important job a woman could have, and she stopped me cold. No, she told me, women can do anything they want; they don’t have to have babies to be fulfilled and successful!
My mother is German. When she moved back to the US after marrying my father in the 70s, she was shocked to find that a married woman couldn’t get a credit card without her husband as co-signer. How could the supposed land of the free be so backward?
Just a couple of years ago, I asked my mother why she periodically asks me how many women are on my team. I assumed that she was concerned for me and wished that I could work somewhere where I could be surrounded by fellow women.
No, no, no, she said. No. She asks how many women are in my office because she is so proud of me, working in a male-dominated profession. She herself had also worked in predominantly male environments. She thinks it’s really cool that I’m doing the same.
So I guess I could also title this post, “How I constantly misunderstand my mother.” But anyway.
Let me say it now, so that it’s clear. I’m a feminist. I believe in a better world, a world where women and men are both far more free to follow their individual bliss and live the lives they choose. That’s what feminism means to me.
White Privilege
I was walking through the local megaTarget when a small sign stopped me in my tracks. I’d been walking past a rather long aisle of hair products. The last two or three feet were marked off as “Ethnic.”
“Ethnic.” It seemed an odd word choice for what, apparently, were products marketed to black women. When I hear the word “ethnic,” the next word to come to my mind is “food.” But I had trouble picturing an “ethnic” restaurant that caters to black people. (And I suspect that the term “ethnic food” has kyriarchical implications; it sets up an us vs. them perspective.)
So at first the word choice caught my attention. But then I noticed something else - something it would take a white person not to notice. There was no sign to distinguish “white” hair products. There was simply the category of hair products, and within them, a small sub-section labeled “ethnic.” The message is clear: the default is white.
And as I noticed this, I realized that I’d probably never noticed this before. I like to think of myself as being pretty aware; pretty socially conscious. But that’s just what privilege is about. It’s about not having to think about social context. It’s about your environment catering to your demographic so that you never even have to think about how that environment affects everyone else.
It’s how, in a novel, the white characters are never described as white. I guarantee that if you read a story where the protagonist is “5′7 with dark hair,” the author does not mean someone who is black, native American, Indian, or Asian. It’s just understood: the character is white.
I’d been meaning to sneak this link into a blog post or tweet anyway, so here goes:
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
I found the article eye-opening. And this quote frames it so well: “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group”
Rainy days
Rainy days are good for:
Rainy days. Actually kind of awesome.
Avulsion Fracture
Last weekend was a wonderful weekend. Right up till I broke my finger. I’m glad that at least it happened on the tail end of an eventful weekend.
On Saturday, Eric and I hiked Betasso with Cooper. It turns out that Betasso has some nice views; I’ve just always missed them while either zooming past on the bike or panting so hard that all I can see is the trail right in front of me.
Sunday morning, Eric and I rode the canyons on our motorcycles. Great fun. This is my third time (yes, less than once a year since I got the moto), and it finally felt really good. Fun. Pleasantly exciting at times, but never terrifying or nerve-wracking.
Sunday afternoon, I played indoor soccer. After that I was supposed to go bouldering with friend Kim (first chance to use my new crash pad!), but she had been up all night and day with a sick child. Instead I called friend John and asked if he’d like to join me for his first-ever visit to BRC. He did. It was an honor to be able to share my knowledge of figure eight knots, belaying with an ATC, and anything else I could think of. After roped climbs got hard, we entered the bouldering cave. Yes, the problems are more strenuous there, but they’re also shorter. It’s a good way to really wear yourself out.
So I was trying a problem that spanned the arch above the cave entrance when it happened. I had my hands in an awkward position; I lost my footing, my body twisted beneath my hand, and I fell. I’m pretty sure it was the awkward position and the twist that did it, though John thinks it was the landing.
Oh the pain. I won’t describe it. I iced the finger, went home, and showed it to Eric, who pronounced it broken. I didn’t believe it till the doctors confirmed it on the x-rays. My tendon pulled a tiny, tiny, almost imperceptible bone fragment off of the main bone. The ER docs gave me a splint and directed me to an orthopedic surgeon. The pain hasn’t been too bad, though the swelling is impressive.
So today I finally saw the ortho surgeon, who happily is also a hand specialist. He told me that we should treat this “avulsion fracture” mostly like a really bad sprain. The key issues will be swelling and stiffness (from scar tissue run amok), so he took off my splint and replaced it with a compression bandage and “buddy taping”. Buddy taping is when you tape the injured finger to its neighbor to give support and shock absorption.
My job now is to encourage my finger to bend both fore and aft as much as I can to prevent scar tissue from building.
I pointed out that I already have a hand therapist whom I see regularly for my wrist issues. So he wrote me a prescription to see Mary 2/wk for a month. Naturally Mary has been on a backpacking trip all week; should be fun to see her reaction on Monday when I have my wrist appointment.
As for my usual activities. Well. I can, of course, hike to my heart’s content. Mountain biking is off limits due to the heavy use of hands and all the bumping around. He’s actually okay with me playing soccer because I can “always take a break if I bang it on something”, but I choose not to play this week because I’d be too worried about just that. Apparently banging it is a major problem, as it will trigger more swelling and set me back some.
Climbing. Not for a while. “How about with three fingers taped together?” No. “How about just using one hand?” No. He correctly pointed out that I would get to a point where I’d want to use that injured hand “just this once”. He said that with proper treatment I should see solid improvement in two months, but if I push it it might look more like nine months. But I don’t think the two months number necessarily means I’ll be back to climbing in two months. Sigh. And he said something about it still being painful, or maybe stiff, in six months.
I can possibly road bike once it feels okay.
So the time line is going to be killer, but is not unexpected. I’m happy to have the splint off. It is so much better to have something to do — work on getting more flexion — than to have to have this big metal thing on my finger and not be able to move it at all or do anything to help my situation. That being said, working on the finger has made it more achy than it’s been since the day of the fall. I choose to take that as a positive sign — I’m putting it back to work, and it’s cranky.
Impromptu collards recipe
We have soooo many veggies. Somehow we’ve started getting behind on the produce deliveries from Door to Door Organics, and we just keep slipping. I’ve changed our order from Small to Bitty. We’ll see how that does.
So anyway, we actually had one and a half bunches of collards, one a week older than the other. I looked in Joy of Cooking, but wasn’t real psyched by what I found. I did some web searches and found http://southernfood.about.com/od/collardgreens/r/blbb37.htm , which was interesting but not quite what I wanted. So I improvised.
I’ve started cooking with coconut oil lately, so I started with that. It looks kind of like lard, but I hear it’s the good kind of saturated fat. Or whatever. Anyway, heat up the coconut oil, which is flavorless, and then add a whole onion, coarsely chopped, and some salt. Let that sweat or sautee or whatever until it softens, and somewhere in there add in chopped ham (I used lunch meat ham since that’s what was in the fridge). After the onions are mostly ready, add in the collards, chopped without the stems, along with salt and pepper. Cover with a lid. Let cook for a while, lifting the lid occasionally to mix the onions and ham into the greens. Add some chicken broth. Cover for a little longer. When the greens are soft, which will take longer than you’d like, remove from heat and splash some red wine vinegar on the greens. Mix it all up.
This was actually really yummy. I think the vinegar cuts the bitterness of the greens. We served it over brown rice alongside grilled chicken.
Welcome, Cooper!
On Friday afternoon, Eric and I welcomed a 10 month old, 55 pound furry bundle of joy into our lives. We named him Cooper. He is amazingly well-behaved, tolerant, and just generally wonderful.
I’m determined to do a good job, not just as a dog owner but also as a cat owner, meaning that introductions need to proceed slowly, and I need to keep my sentimental anthropomorphism out of the picture. We actually knew Thursday evening that we were going to bring Cooper home the next day, so Friday morning I put Oscar, our skittish cat, into the guest bedroom. She spends most of her day there anyway, snuggled on the bed, so I didn’t figure it would be too traumatic. This way we didn’t have to rush to find and hide the cat when we got home, and Oscar wouldn’t associate the arrival of the dog with being dragged out from under a bed and locked into a room. Maybe.
Friday evening was fairly uneventful, except that we discovered that Cooper is afraid of dog crates, and he peed on the wall. Great. In a move that was traumatic for everyone, we stuffed him into the upstairs bathroom. Eric slept in the guest room with Oscar while I slept in the master bedroom (I think we were just tired and confused at this point — the original plan had been for each of us to sleep with one of the animals, but that had to be scrapped when we realized that the crate wouldn’t work out that first night.) Cooper only whined for a few minutes before settling down.
On Saturday, the adventure began in earnest. Eric and I got up at 6am to walk the dog. I hadn’t slept much, anyway. The bathroom was immaculate (good Cooper! It now looks very much like that first night’s pee was more about him being disoriented than any behavior problem. Knock on wood.). We got home, but didn’t know if we could trust him alone, so we took turns watching him. This was not a restful way to spend Saturday morning. Amazingly, while Cooper was gnawing on a bone, he allowed me to give him a much-needed brushing. I used one of those Kong static cling style brushes, and he seemed to enjoy it or at least not mind. He looked much better after I removed a small dog’s worth of downy fur from his undercoat.
I kept Cooper busy all day Saturday. Apparently, I later read, you’re supposed to keep things low key the first few days. Well, that’s not how it worked out. First Cooper and I went to Four Paws, where we bought some decent dry food (ie, real food ingredients and meat as the first one). He got fitted for a bunch of different harnesses and the Gentle Leader, throughout all of which he stayed amazingly good-humored. He didn’t seem to mind at all. Maybe it was all the women fawning over him and giving him treat after yummy treat. Arms full of stuff, we headed to the local shelter to get his dog tags. Again, shockingly well behaved among all the animals, people, and distractions. After the shelter, we went to PetsMart for more stuff, and again he wowed everyone with his friendliness.
By Saturday afternoon, I think it was, Eric and I had agreed that we had to get a fence.
Saturday evening, I took Cooper to a neighbor/co-worker’s house to play in his fenced yard with his yellow lab. Cooper ran around a lot, although he never quite figured out the retrieving thing.
Sunday — hike day! Poor guy threw up when I drove him up the twisty-turny-steep Flagstaff Road. But he seemed to enjoy the hike, and again everyone who saw him loved him.
Pictures of Cooper on the hike
So far he’s been awesome, and I’m looking forward to lots of great times with him. Today was our first day of class - Beginner obedience training. Mostly the trainer interviewed us and gave us verbal advice. We are using a clicker for training, which is a little weird. Apparently it’s actually supposed to signal praise. So our homework is to do some drills to associate the clicker with good things (treats) and to get Cooper to look in our eyes when we want his attention. The trainer also gave us some ideas for getting Cooper used to the crate - namely, put his food in it. I never thought he’d eat with his dish in the crate, but it worked pretty much instantly. I guess that’s why she’s the trainer and I’m the student. I’m leaving his water bowl in the crate so that he has to visit it pretty regularly. So far it’s working like a charm.
I have high hopes for Cooper, and I think he can live up to them. I want him to be a model of good citizenship. I want to be able to hike with him off-leash and never worry that he’s going to chase wildlife, startle horses, or run after a jogger or cyclist. I want to be able to run him alongside a bike.
Actually, I have no doubt that Cooper can be a wonderful dog. He can do all of these things, no problem. The question is whether I can be, will be, a good enough owner. Will I have the right blend of affection and discipline? Will I give him enough exercise and mental stimulation? Will I keep spending tons of time with him after the novelty wears off? And can I provide a good quality of life for my cat, Oscar, as well? I’m asking a lot of myself and of Eric. But then again, plenty of people have dogs, and most dogs I know seem pretty happy. And I really do believe that Oscar can get along with a dog, especially if we set up the right conditions by introducing them slowly and not letting the dog chase the cat.
Cooper is a wonderful dog. I’m going to do everything I can to deserve to be his owner.
Oh, one more thing. Cooper and Oscar have twitter accounts, just for fun: