We're still alive...

just buried under projects at the moment. We'll come up for air soon.

First snow

Calm

In 2004, The Stranger (Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper) ran this cover after the election. That week was rough for many of us. I remember crying in Prof Poet's office the day after the election. I felt betrayed by my fellow citizens and lost. How could the people in my country believe that our country was going in the right direction? How could they believe that voting for a guy because you could have a beer with him instead of because he is wicked smart is a good idea? Why was the decision for president of the USA resembling the decision for president of the senior class in high school (who's cuter, more popular, not too smart?)?

Today, I am calm. I don't think that our problems are solved because of these election results, in fact, I think we have a long way ahead of us. We (as a nation) need to focus on rebuilding our reputation internationally and collaborate on international problems like the global economy and global warming while simultaneously figuring out how to prioritize and deal with our national problems (health care, the deficit and debt, social security, housing market...) and our local problems too. Obama has a pretty terrible job. But, his speech last night was inspirational and moving.

It's hard to look at the red state-blue state maps and not be worried about the huge gulf in our country. Maps like this one show a stark divide.

2008 red/blue by state

However, maps like this

2008 map by county and population

are much more encouraging (and a little distorted!). The map maker uses population data to resize the states in proportion to their population and uses a scale of red-purple-blue to color county by county, thus the overwhelming amout of red is reduced. Instead of the red state blue state divide, we have lots of purple and some blue and a tiny bit of red. More maps (using electoral college votes, comparisons to 2004 etc) are available from his website.

They do care!

This was my day yesterday. Often, teaching is exhausting and unrewarding. They don't like you, the subject matter, or the whole scholastic enterprise (or at least that's how it can feel from the front of the class). But sometimes you get reminded that they do care (and I've had more than one!). At the very least, they can appreciate the work you do to try to make challenging material more accessible. I'm a big fan of phdcomics.com (Piled Higher and Deeper - what PhD is supposed to stand for, ha ha). It's a humorous but often accurate representation of life here.

Clearly, I'm doing this all wrong

Email I received today:

is an University Degree/Dip1oma holding you Back?
Kindly Call us to inquire about our Degree programs.

Whether You are seeking a Bacheelor, Diploma, M B A /P h D
We can provide you credentials to get you Better career
No exam, study, test, or Courseworks required!

Huh. I guess I'm wasting a lot of time working on this portfolio thing... why didn't they contact me earlier?!?

Voting

I voted in a polling place for the first time in my life on Thursday. The folks who aren't from our Rose State may not realize that Oregon adopted an entirely absentee ballot system a while back. When I first started voting, I registered in my home town and had mom mail me my ballot each year. Then, the state shifted over to the mail in ballot system. I didn't fully appreciate how great mail in voting is until this week.

Square State allows early voting in polling places during a few weeks before election day (they also have an absentee ballot system, but I didn't do that early enough to get it in the mail). They're predicting a huge turnout for election day, so I figured I vote now rather than wait (check out the byline on this story). On Tuesday, I wandered over to the student union to mail a few letters and cast my ballot. The line was so long (more than 30 people and it didn't move the entire time I waited for my stamps) that I got discouraged and decided to wait until later in the week. It's pretty cool that they're having the early voting scattered across campus, so I figured I'd find another time to vote. Today the voting was at the school library. So after I finished teaching, I packed up my stuff and stopped by the library on my way home. I found this line.

I waited to vote for over an hour. The line had DOUBLED by the time I got to the front. I let a few girls go ahead of me as they were trying to vote before running to class (see what a nice teacher I am?!). Anyone who claims that university students don't care this time around are sorely mistaken. I was surrounded by kids who had never voted in an election before. I had a few freshman around me talking about how they were in 9th or 10th grade when Bush got elected the second time. On the one hand, I was so excited to see the turn out. On the other, I'm truly afraid that the local election staff have completely underestimated potential turnout and are unprepared for the crush that will happen. If you remember our posts about voting in the primaries... we completely exceeded anyone's expectations for turnout. These kids were waiting in a line for more than an hour to vote.That's right, 19 year olds were waiting to vote.

Which brings me really to my point when I started this post: voting in a polling place is stupid. I didn't really understand how dumb until today. For our readers who aren't familiar with the Rose State system, let me describe it briefly. Your ballot arrives in the mail along with the state funded voting guide which has the language of all ballot measures, the bios of the candidates, and then paid statements by candidates and supporters/opposition. The League of Women Voters and other groups generally send things out as well. You sit around and read the guide, the newpaper endorsements and figure out who you like. I generally took a few days to vote - voting on measures one day, people another. You had all your materials in front of you while making your decisions. Once you finished, you could either add a stamp and mail your ballot or drop it off at a large number of public ballor boxes (carefully guarded of course). When the state moved to this system, voter turnout increased.

Here, I just had my ballot in my little booth (with no curtain by the way). With all of the news coverage of the presidential election, I had heard no discussion of our local, county, and state choices. I hadn't even heard many of the names. Before I opened my ballot, I didn't even know who/what was up for election here. If I had the ballot at home, I could have done some online investigations, read up about candidates for the hospital board (!), judges, and other random seats. As it was, I didn't vote for any of the candidates. What was I going to do, pick the name I thought sounded "coolest"?

I'll be requesting an absentee ballot from now on, although I need to find out the state's policies on when they count those ballots first I guess.

Voting used to be so easy.

New opportunities!

So, a month or so ago, I applied for a job. Yes, I know I already HAVE a job (a busy one at that) but this job ad came to my email and was just about perfect for me. So, I applied. The job is teaching a class at a small liberal arts college (SLAC) nearby-ish. I'd get to teach a class in my discipline to students actually interested in the subject- how could I pass that up?

They interviewed me Wednesday, the assistant dean offered me the job Friday, and I said yes today.

On Wednesday, I submit a grant for a project in the spring as well. I'm collaborating with a professor in rocket science (not really) and we're working on a plan to buy me out of some teaching time at Farm U to do some cool rocket science meets basket weaving stuff. (Trust me, although I think it's cool, you aren't missing much by my obfuscation).

So, although there's still plenty to do this semester, next is looking pretty exciting! Woo hoo!

Map of Ames

Map of Ames, originally uploaded by pmauro2001.

Our first major review/critique was a week ago. We had to create a drawing/map/collage of the railroad corridor here. Somehow, this is what came out of my research.

My map is showing the growth of the city, which was three-pronged: the city area (where the normal people live), the campus area, and a random third area (in the upper left) that was its own town and eventually annexed into the bigger city.

The streets are made by overlapping the vellum.

The railroad is comprised of a series of pictures of native grasses and plants from the area.

As for a critique/review, that's an interesting process. You stand in front of the class and a few professors and defend your decisions through a series of questions. It's not unlike my old jobs, but somehow more nerve racking.

The final project is approximately 22" x 48" and is on vellum, with ink and Mylar card stock overlays.

Bounty

Wow. Yet another big haul from the garden.



This is the definition of plenty... you can see how I'm running out of space to put the squash. I squished in 5 more after I took this picture... it's getting out of control. Thankfully (but sadly) Peter and Hippie Librarian took down the fence today, so the garden is winding down. We still have carrots, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes to pick but not much else.

I'm hoping that by keeping the squash in our cool tornado shelter (aka under the stairs storage closet) that they'll last a few months. I mean, I like squash, but this is a LOT of squash. (Especially since you can't see the ones on the top shelf above the canning pot).

This is Getting Ridiculous

At this point, we're basically professional photographers.

This online travel guide, Schmap, apparently loves us. This time, they're used our photo of Galleria Umberto's, pretty much the best pizza in the country. We'll have to upload all our other photos so we can get into the guides for Mexico and other parts of Italy.

Banned Book Week

I almost forgot! It's Banned Book Week! Some easy things you can do...

1. read a banned book
2. visit your local library
3. visit your local book store (independent of course) and buy a book from them. With the economy tanking, I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
4. go to a reading

I'm sure there's more, and maybe you'll let us know what banned books you've been reading or any other events near you!

Deliciousness

There are few things better than a really good tomato.

from our garden!

This is one of them.

tomato, whole wheat toast, pepper bacon from local happy pigs

Tacos

Mmmmm, nothing like a good taco. But, I bet that most of my reading audience has never had a GOOD taco. Oh sure, you've had various tasty things wrapped in a tortilla calling themselves tacos. And I enjoy most of those things as well. But, a GOOD taco is a very different thing.

First, you need to go to a taqueria. As Peter explained, you just need to add -ria to the end of most nouns to get "a place who makes _____". And thus, a taqueria specializes in just that, tacos. At a very good taqueria, you can really only get a few things, tacos, maybe a torta, and a soda or beer. That's it. Taquerias are generally dive-y places, not known for high levels of apparent cleanliness, amenities, or bathrooms (particularly bathrooms). But, you can always tell a good taqueria, it will look like this one in Cuernavaca

Hordes of people waiting outside La Cubana for a taco

Good tacos come from simple ingredients. Many gringos are confused when they first try a GOOD taco because it looks so naked. Just a little sliced al pastor (or tongue or carne asada or chicken or something), cilantro, and onion all served on tiny 3-4 inch corn tortillas with lime and green and red salsas on the side. At a fancy place you might have pico de gallo as well. That's it. No lettuce. No cheese. No sour cream for heaven's sake. Simple and delicious. And you certainly can't eat just one. In fact, I've been known to eat 6 on my very own. MMMMmmmmmm

The best GOOD tacos to get are tacos al pastor. Al pastor is a mysterious meat rotisserie that looks a lot like the gyro or kebab places in Europe. The meat sits all day, slowly spinning as the guy in charge skillfully slices small amounts for you.

The al pastor spinning

And the best place to get them is in Mexico City... down the street from our hotel and next to the chicken rotisserie (mmm another post about that sometime!). At that taco place, we waited for a table to clear (from the 5 available ones), and parked ourselves down and ordered, what else, but tacos. They came, delightfully warm and juicy, right off the spinning al pastor machine, topped with tiny bits of pineapple with the cilantro and onion. At the best places, a whole fresh peeled pineapple is placed at the top of the rotisserie and the juices drip down over the meat, adding to the flavor. And at any place, these tacos are CHEAP! Generally, we found tacos to be between 4-8 pesos a taco (10 pesos=1 dollar). And with a llimited menu, you certainly aren't tempted to upgrade or go "high-end".

I'm missing the al pastor a lot by now. I have a good carnitas recipe, but it's just not the same. When you go to Mexico, you must eat a real taco, it will change your world.

Career Opportunities

While we are consumed by our academic lives, sometimes little things remind you of how easy not having a job/career/commitment can be.

We were recently approached, online of course, to allow the use of one of our pictures from our trip to Italy on an online travel guide known as Schmap. And of course we allowed it. Here's the link to the page.

I think this makes 3 photos that have been published on the internets, which is surprising. Maybe we should have gone into photography?

My Life As a Grad Student Begins

I'm already fairly busy.

I haven't been in school for almost a decade. Any kind of school. Since we moved to Iowa and I left my career in Portland, I decided to go back. I am currently enrolled in a Master's of Architecture program; it's designed for people who have no previous architecture experience - a first professional degree.

As it turns out, several people in my class have experience in interior design. And a bunch have a lot of construction experience. About half of us are returning students, mostly with kids or spouses. The other half are all right out of undergrad. So far it's made for a weird dynamic.

We walked into class the first day and got our first assignment: redesign our entire studio space for 18 students. Go!

We spent the first few days planning, making drawings, talking. Then we started working. One of my fellow students started a Flickr account to document the progress. You can find it here. I'm not in control of it, so I don't know how often it will be updated, but be sure to check it out.

Holy Crap

In previous posts (here) we talked and exclaimed about the vast quantity of produce we were picking from the garden. Clearly, we had no idea what was to come.

Here's our Saturday harvest:

that's our entire kitchen table covered in veggies. Starting at the top left, we've got white (really yellow) and green cukes, a big pile of eggplant, a few hot peppers, yellow crooknecks, green beans, purple beans, green and purple basil, one giant yellow zucchini, a "cheese" squash (so named since they're the color of cheese I guess?), a lonely beet, and in the middle are a pile of Italian peppers and two winter squash.

One day. We also ate a tomato (and a bunch of cherry tomatoes) in the garden and tossed some split melons and wrinkly squash. We've completely abandoned the lettuce (it's super bitter, completely inedible) and most of the herbs (except my basil field) couldn't compete with the weeds.

Still to come, we have tomatoes turning red (finally!) as well as tons of winter squash and melons that look like they're getting close. Thankfully, the garden is not particularly high maintenance at this point (it's rained every few days) and our gardening friends have been willing to do the daily garden checks.

See the rest of Saturday's garden pics here

First Day of School

So, as Peter predicted, posting has been light here. While I've been generally excited to be back in class (yay, friends! yay stuff I'm passionate about!), we've both be swamped. I'll let Peter share his stories here, but let me just point out that I'm teaching a new to me class, taking a class with 2 giant research projects, and working on the portfolio that determines whether or not they'll let me stay for year 3 of the program. So, yeah, busy is the word of the day.

However, we did get some first day of school photos for you.

Here's Peter, all dressed nicely for the first day. He's not holding up his fingers (part of the first day rules) showing which grade he's in because he wussed out.

I'm not holding up my fingers either because we couldn't actually figure out who many I needed... too many...

So, we're hoping that we'll find some time for this here blog (maybe Miles can step in for us?) and looking forward to this year's adventures. One week done already!

The Magic 8-Ball Says...Less Posting in the Future

Tomorrow morning, Kimberly returns to Farm U for the second year of her program. Additionally, after an 8 year hiatus, I will be returning to school to pursue a Masters degree.

Although I am taking more credits than Kimberly, we both have commitments beyond our class schedule. Kimberly will be teaching one class and assisting on another. And somehow, I was assigned as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class.

On top of that, I have a list of clubs and extracurriculars that I hope to partake in, one of which may or may not be trying to play on the Farm U Ultimate team (can a 30-year old compete with a bunch of 19-22 year olds in a fast-paced sports environment? I might be slightly insane). And I know Kimberly has a stack of school projects to work on, not to mention this small thing called a dissertation to start thinking about and planning.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that things around here are about to get really busy. And as important as this blog is, it is rapidly moving down the list of priorities. So if you thought we were bad about posting our inane thoughts on the internet for the world to read up to this point, prepare to be even less impressed. We'll do our best to keep things up to date, especially on the picture/Flickr account, but I'm just not sure how much we'll be able to post, especially me.

So wish us luck. Especially me. I really think I might be insane.

Red Gold

In PEter's hand there, you can see our very first red tomato. Seconds later, PEter, Librarian Guy and I devoured it.MMMMMMmmmmmm... there's nothing like a warm vine-riped tomato. I know, I know, another garden post? But, you see, until Monday, food is what we have going on.During that trip to get our first tomato, we also harvested this bounty:

You can see giant cucumbers, yellow zucchini, yellow crookneck, white cucumbers, and purple beans. And we're going again tomorrow to pick again. A recipe I made last night with some of the garden produce is over at What We're Eating now...

Anyway, gardening gardening. We have winter squash that are ripening, melons turning colors, and lots of green tomatoes. Unfortunately, by the time the tomatoes are red, we'll both be back in school. I guess we'll have to try to devote an afternoon some Saturday to canning tomatoes. It'll be a good creak from all that studying!

Easiest Indian Ever

My sister bought me 5 Spices, 50 Dishes for my birthday, which was a few weeks back. The book is intended to make Indian easy and accessible, using only 5 spices. The coolest thing is that my sister also bought me huge bags of the 5 required spices (turmeric, coriander, mustard seed, cumin, and cayenne).

Last night, Kimberly and I broke the spine on that book and made ourselves a little Indian feast. We made a turmeric-cayenne cabbage stir-fry, Punjabi-style red beans, and green beef. It was amazing, especially the red beans - they tasted like they had come from a restaurant.

So we're 3 recipes down, 47 to go. Judging from the first attempt, those last 47 recipes will be fun to try.