Won't You Be My Neighbor?

If you're at all like me, you grew up watching a tall, thin, soft-spoken man on television. Every day he entered into his house while singing a song, changing his jacket for a zipper-front cardigan and his shoes for sneakers. He spoke quietly, with a smile, telling us about his day and about the world around us. He introduced us to some of his friends like Mr. McFeely, Trolley, King Friday, Lady Elaine and Henrietta Pussycat.

If you're at all like me, you spent a chunk of your childhood growing up in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Just brought to my attention: this upcoming March 20 would have been the 80th birthday of Frederick McFeely Rogers, aka Mister Rogers, one of the coolest people ever to grace our little planet Earth. In honor of Mr. Rogers's legacy, folks in Pittsburgh are asking that everyone nationwide wear a favorite sweater on the 20th, and then send pictures/videos to neighbordays@fci.org . For a nice little video explaining the whole deal -- and hosted by Mr. McFeely! -- check out YouTube. As Mr. McFeely says, "We're asking everyone everywhere(from Pittsburgh to Paris) to wear their favorite sweater on that day. It doesn't have to have a zipper down the front like the one Mister Rogers wore on the program, it just has to be special to you."

So mark your calendars for Thursday, March 20, and wear your sweater in honor of one of the lovliest people we ever knew, Mr. Fred Rogers.

The Song Remains the Same

I have the (newly-Oscar winning) song "Falling Slowly" in my head. It's a really lovely, lovely song but it's also one of those songs that is totally insidious. It creeps into your brain and then WHAM! It just won't get out. I hummed it all through dinner, through making chocolate cookies, and even now as I'm playing on the interweb. Seriously, I dig it and highly recommend it, but I challenge you to listen to it and then see if you don't end up like me, singing quietly under your breath as you go about your day.

As far as my broken left foot, it's hanging in there. I'm a tad sore today, but that's ok -- I'll get over it. In two weeks from today I go back to the surgeon and I'm hoping against hope that he'll give me the "all clear" to start at least standing on the MBLF and to get into PT. My broken two lungs are also doing ok; these days, other than the blood thinners and the bruising that goes along with them, I generally don't even know that my lungs have been broken. Of course, as soon as I start to forget, I am forced to remember: I suddenly had a little chest-flutter tonight after dinner as I sat in the kitchen, reading and watching my cookies bake. It's fine (I promise) but just a little unwelcome reminder that, six weeks later, I'm still trying to get back to normal.

Hope things are great in your neck of the woods, dear readers. Thanks for reading my little blog ... it's nice to know that we can have this time together.

Treats and Tomes

Field trip tonight! The fabulous Kim met us out for a little nibble and nosh this evening. We went to the Barnes and Noble in swanky P- to the -itts- to the -ford. I was actually up and out on the town in the nighttime, like a real grownup!! And of course, as I am wont to do, I did a little photo documentation of the monumental occasion.



J and K wait in the B & N cafe for our Godiva hot chocolates and assorted cookies. The Gimp (aka moi) waits patiently at the table for treats.

Round two of the treats ... once the sweet tooth was satisfied, it was time for savories. In my case, this was Fiji water and a spinach-and-feta hot pretzel (and no, I'm not supposed to have spinach because it has a ton of Vitamin K, but it was soooooo good).

I call this one "C and K do B & N." Catchy, no? Above K and I enjoy one another's company and admire each other's cool glasses.

Bumps and Spooks and Creepy Crawley Flying Things

Yo, all!

I've noticed lately that there seems to be quite a few -- yay, a veritable plethora of -- television shows dealing with supernatural/paranormal phenomena. For example, you have Ghost Hunters (two Roto-Router plumbers and friends travel the US in black vans, looking for scientific evidence of spookyness) and its two spinoffs, Ghost Hunters International (plumbers in Europe!) and UFO Hunters (hasn't aired yet but a guess: plumbers and little green men?). Then there's Paranormal State (i.e. a bunch of Penn State students go looking for Casper while wearing trench coats and talking importantly into digital recorders), A Haunting (possessions, possessions, possessions and, for the grand finale ... possessions) and of course, my eternal favorite, Scariest Places on Earth (narrated by Poltergeist's marvelous Zelda "This House is Clean" Rubenstein). And of course, there are other paranormal-based reality shows as well: MTV's Fear, Celebrity Paranormal Project, etc.

Now you know I love this stuff. October is my favorite month. J and I are total freaks about Halloween (Barrys' Boneyard forever, y'all!) and we like nothing more than to cuddle up on the couch under a nice warm blanket, a fire in the woodstove and a classic horror movie (for my money, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein is the all-time winner) on the tube. And in the spirit (haha) of full disclosure, I admit that I do believe that there's more out there than science and the human intellect can prove -- in other words, "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy."

That said, I sincerely worry about these little guys who run around playing with evil spirits. They dress up in their black clothes and get their tape recorders (sorry, "EVP Recorders") and run about taunting "evil" and begging for a whoopin'. And I worry about the rest of us who watch these shows hoping that the spirits (ghosts? The devil? God? Anyone?) GIVE them that whoopin'. Because isn't that why we watch these shows? Let's face it: it's not really about "science" or "learning" or "broadening one's mind" at all. No, we watch because it's fun to watch people do stupid things when they are essentially wetting themselves with fear. And if he or she gets their heiney kicked in the meantime? Bonus. We enjoy seeing others blindly flail down dark and dusty hallways, whites of eye rolling back in their heads, as we (from our positions on our couches, sipping cocoa with those little marshmallows) cluck and shake our heads in a superior, knowing fashion. And of course ...

We watch because, in the end, we're just happy that isn't us.

Oh, as a culture we do enjoy being scared. But we like our fright in small, managable doses -- for example, a 90-minute adventure in scare cinema or a 15-minute stroll through a cheesy Halloween "haunted" house. We like that because we still challenge the nightmare, but we're in a controlled environment and know that the end of the experience is imminent. We get to face what's under the bed and be guaranteed a win -- but it's a domesticated demon, the boogeyman on a tight leash: the spookster equivillent to boxing the trained bear. The television shows we now seem to crave feature people facing the darkness without a net and we get our vicarious tingles by watching them take the risks that we're too smart/scared/etc. to take ourselves. I wonder, though, at what price this passive thrill? Are we losing connection to some primal force that we really need to experience personally in order to understand and treat it with the reverence/awe/fear it deserves?

Who knows, really. In the meantime, I should really go -- there's a Haunted Hotels marathon on the Travel Channel I just don't want to miss.

** Image courtesy http://tracosetrocos.files.wordpress.com/2006/10/if_ghost.jpg

The Worms Crawl In

I live in a town that has some jaw-droppingly gorgeous graveyards. Perhaps the best known of these is Mt. Hope Cemetery, 197-acres housing more than 350,000 graves, including those of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. J and I took a little cruise through yesterday to admire the art. It was a stunning day, and we caught a few lovely snapshots as we moseyed through.

To view my pictures from our visit, check out my latest Flickr set.

Welcome to Bat Country

I survived my second day at work, and Day 2 certainly made me feel much more at home: during my four short hours on campus, I had meetings from 8:30-9:30, 9:30-10:30, and 11-noon. Yee-haw! Back to reality again.

During one of my meetings (8:30? 9:3o?) there was a sudden outbreak of yelling and squealing out in the hallway. This isn't all that unusual, as this usually indicates that someone is getting married, having a baby, or is otherwise announcing some joyous life event. However, the squealing continued past the normal "Yay! Ohmigod, how WONDERFUL!" time limit, and was then accompanied by slamming doors. Something, clearly, was up.

We ventured over to the doorway and looked out, only to see Alicia inside Julie's office, pressed up against the door with her face peering out of the window. This, incidently, is not normal. She was laughing and saying something, but it was hard to hear through wood doors. Suddenly, we got it: apparently, over in Peggy's office, there was a bat.

Panic ensued. People ran back and forth, all trying to figure out how to handle this poor little thing, which I believe just really wanted some peace and quiet for it's mid-day nap. Eventually it was escorted from the premises, but not before the amazing Fran took a few quick pictures for me. One is of the bat and the other ... well, I believe the caption is self-explanatory.

Working 9 to Noon (What a Way to Make a Living)

Hey, y'all! Say hello to the working girl. (Note: Umm, that's me.)

Yup, you've got it -- I went back to Nazareth today. I'm currently doing a few half-days a week in-office, and telecommuting the rest; as stamina builds, so will my on-campus hours. Returning was a little nerve-wracking (Can I really do this? Am I ready? Are THEY ready? Is there still a place for me?) and a lot exciting. My team, and so many great friends, welcomed me back with, literally, open arms. It was amazing to see everyone, and to catch up on so many folks' lives. It's been a long few months!

And of course my team, being the wacky group that they are, went nuts and decorated my office for me. There were (are) balloons everywhere! Of particular note were the armadillo balloons (hee) and my door decs. Thanks, everybody, for making me feel so welcome and happy to be back -- you're the coolest!

Ding-Dong, the Pin is Dead

Just returned from my monthly visit to the lovely Dr. Gorczyca. We began with our customary three x-rays of my broken left foot, and then I rolled on over to my usual exam room. After a bit of a wait, Dr. G and attending resident (he ALWAYS has a resident with him; it's rather like being treated by an orthopaedic rock star with bodyguard/groupies in tow) came in and we looked at the pretty pictures together. Moment #1 of the visit: I have just a LOT of metal in my leg. I think the tally is at a plate, 5 screws, two pins, a case and a rod (<-- in the ankle), and then a *very* long screw/pin and the removable pin (<-- in the foot). It's very ... bionic.

Dr. G looked at everything and then, "I think we can take that pin out today." And so we were off. My foot was raised, and we looked at the pin. "I'm just going to rotate this a bit," he said, and then suddenly there was this metal rod rotated and sticking about two inches out of my foot, shining in the light of the overhead florescents.

As I adjusted to that particular circumstance, Dr. G grabbed a wad of gauze from the cupboard. I looked at the resident: "I'm not going to look at all." The resident grimaced sympathetically. "Probably a good idea."

Dr. G rolled over on his blue leather stool, and I looked away. I felt warm hands on my cold, elevated leg, and then there was a sudden, unwarned-of wrenching in my foot, a turning, something long and hard scraping along the bones inside, a sharp and deep pain. I gasped and involuntarily looked down; blood welled up and trickled down the side of my arch. Dr. G slapped gauze onto the small, perfectly round hole, lifting only to peer down and assess how quickly the almost-black blood filled in the wound. The pristine gauze crumpled, turning vaguely dark on the inside layers and slowly spreading out in small-yet-vibrant crimson patches.

In his free hand the doctor held up a wicked-looking skewer. He held it up matter-of-factly: "This is what was in your foot." Four inches of steel lay across his palm, blood and antibacterial ointment making it gleam before he reached across and dumped it unceremoniously in the neon orange sharps box. He peeked under the gauze as blood welled again and then pushed down hard enough to make me wince at how weak my foot felt as it tried to hold upright against his hand. "We have a few minutes. Any questions?"

I, of course, DID have questions on my typed and outlined list, questions of which I already knew most of the answers. I go back to Dr. G on March 13, and hopefully that will be the appointment at which I'm told I can start working with therapy and bearing weight. The the fun really begins. I can't wait.

After a slapped-on BandAid and an admonition not to get the foot wet until Wednesday (full showers! full showers!), I slowly wheeled home. The pin pulling took no time at all (it SEEMED like slow motion, but was in reality about a minute from start to finish), and I'm so relieved that it's done. Now we move onward.

And that, my friends, was Monday.

A special note to my M & C team: on Wednesday A.M. expect the return of your favorite (only?) wheelchair-bound assistant director -- as the song says, "the Bitch is back."

It's Friday, I'm in Love

OK, so it's actually Saturday, but I SHOULD have posted this on Friday so ... we're just going to pretend, m'ok?

Yesterday I had my usual blood test (INR = 2.1, which is a decent level of blood coaguation. I generally have to have a clotting factor of between 2 and3 -- so I'm on the low side right now, but still within range. Woo-hoo!). After that I had a true treat: my dear friends Julie and Alicia came over to visit and have lunch! They brought a marvy feast with them, soup and salad from Great Northern Pizza Co., as well as a lovely present from their recent trip to Puerto Rico. It was so, so wonderful to be able to spend some time with them, hear how things are going with their families and work and life in general. I'm blessed to have such great friends, aren't I?

Today I had a shower (wOOt!) and then I went to ... WORK! Yes, James and I snuck onto campus and into the GAC for a stealth check of wheelchair accessibility. Surprisingly, it went pretty well! I can get into my office ok, actually, and can even wheel into the nearest bathroom as well (<-- my real concern). I'll likely need a hand with the bathroom door and all, but the rest seems do-able. A few doors do look too narrow for me to move through (namely the doors of a few of my teammates), but I'm just going to have to hope people will travel to me for a while. Ladies and gentlemen, it looks as though a return to the N-A-Z is imminent.

I've also started up again with the committee of the HighEdWeb conference. HighEdWeb is a group in which I am truly invested; as part of the recently-incorporated HighEdWeb association, we organize an annual conference for higher education web professionals. Since 06 I've been part of the marketing team for the conference, and I'm thrilled to be back with the committee after my illness-induced sabbatical.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year -- the advent of 4706, and the year of the Rat.

From Wikipedia: "The first day (of Chinese New Year) is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and earth. Many people, especially Buddhists, abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed that this will ensure longevity for them. Some consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year's Day, so all food to be consumed is cooked the day before.

Most importantly, the first day of Chinese New Year is a time when families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended family, usually their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents. Some families may invite a lion dance troupe as a symbolic ritual to usher in the Lunar New Year as well as to evict bad spirits from the premises. Members of the family who are married also give red packets containing cash to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers."

Wishing everyone prosperity and health in the New Year!

Working Girl?

So it looks like I may be headed back into the working world, soon. My wonderful director Kate and I are working out a plan; right now it looks as thought I'll mostly be telecommuting but then will start a few half-days a week on campus, and then will steadily increase until I'm back in the saddle again. At some point -- a weekday evening or over the weekend -- I'm going to take a little trip to the office to see how wheelchair-friendly my work environs are (or are not). Hopefully we can get this worked out so I can get back into Naz-world again semi-soon. I miss my team.

Other than that, things are quiet. My ankle is a tad sore because, frankly, I'm pushing it a bit: I've been on my lovely and generous tushie enough now. It's time to start moving and getting up and about. This past weekend we were all around, including a breakfast at the Village Coal Tower, a trip to Wegs for munchies and a foray to the blessed Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters. Tonight I go vote (You, too! Go! Vote! It's important! Seriously, look what's happened in the last few elections, people.) and I have plans for the rest of the week as well ... PLANS, I tell you!

Oh, and: T-minus six days until pin removal.

PS:Also, the fabulous Web guy Fran used the term "rigamarole" in a conversation this A.M. -- this amused me, and struck me as another reason why he is, indeed, fabulous.

My Precious

So pretty, is the grande non-fat mocha latte, no whip. And I know this because she is in my hand even as we speak.

My precious, she is mine at last.

Marmota monax

According to http://www.punxsutawneyphil.com/, the official website of THE Groundhog's Day groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil:

"Phil's official forecast as read 2/2/08 at sunrise at Gobbler's Knob:

Here Ye! Here Ye! Here Ye!

On Gobbler's Knob on this fabulous Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2008,
Punxsutawney Phil, the Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators,
rose to the call of President Bill Cooper and greeted his handlers, Ben Hughes
and John Griffiths.

After casting a weathered eye toward thousands of his faithful followers,
Phil consulted with President Cooper and directed him to the appropriate scroll,
which proclaimed:

'As I look around me, a bright sky I see, and a shadow beside me. Six more weeks of winter it will be!' "

Freakin' groundhog.

Most people who know me know that I actually really kind of love Groundhog's Day. It's such a bizarre little holiday, if you think about it: we're listening to a rodent tell us if we're going to be snowed in for another month or two, or if instead spring is going to be sprung soon. It's a rodent, people, aka the groundhog, the woodchuck, the marmot, the land beaver, and the ground squirrel. Though some say that the day's observance originated in England, this is pretty much a load of hooey because, as far as we know, there ARE no groundhogs in England -- they are native to North America. Really the holiday stems from poems/sayings regarding Candlemas Day and Imbolc (the first, a major Christian holy day; the second, one of the four major pagan holy days, both observed on/around Feb. 2) which essentially advise farmers that the weather on Candlemas/Imbolc will determine oncoming weather for the season.

I love that Americans (particularly those of us in the Northeast where the snow seems neverending) have somehow co-opted the day and have taken all of these traditional poems and celebrations -- none of which refer to the furry little critter anywhere (though ancient Imbolc sayings DO reference snakes) -- and since 1886 or so have decided to pin our hope and dreams of green grass and summer tans on a big, fat GROUND SQUIRREL. It just seems uniquely American to me, somehow.

Anyhow, happy Groundhog's Day, my friends. Stay warm, stay bundled, because the little rodent saw his shadow and now we're in for six more weeks. If, you know, you believe that kind of thing.

Here's to you, Punxsutawney Phil. Freakin' groundhog.