Cuteness Overload

After my morning class today, I went to the Student Union for lunch. The Union has a bunch of service offices for students that need things. (The ID card office, Student Medical Insurance office, Wellness Education Center, campus events Box Office, etc.) The offices had all decorated for Halloween, and the staff (professional and work-study students) all put on costumes. Students were encouraged to vote for the best decorated office and best costumed staff, I presume the winners would earn a prize.

I had a fun discussion with a wicked witch, who was trying to get a posse together to hunt down an illegal immigrant who murdered the first person she met when she crossed the border, and then stole the shoes off her victim's feet. Tragic, really.

But what really made the day was the kids. The on-campus Early Childhood Development Center (it's basically a research pre-school) had all their kids in costumes, trooping through the Union collecting candy. They were enormously adorable. Plus they kind of "classed up the joint" as most of the college students also thought they were adorable, so there was much oohing and cooing.

I've been invited to a horde of Halloween parties this year. I don't know how many I'll be going to, but at least I've got a costume together– I'm going as Al Bundy while Hil is Peggy Bundy. Most of the undergraduates have probably never seen that show.

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Tim Burton's Next Movie

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Gee, Thanks

My Wednesday evening seminar this semester is on "Twentieth Century German History" and the professor was born and raised in Germany. This is satisfying, because having a professor with a German accent is pretty much a stereotype of college movies, and he's the first one I've had.

Anyway, last class I wasn't too happy at the end of it, because I said something kind of stupid early on in class. We'd read a book called The Origins of the Nazi Genocide, which was about the eugenics euthanasia program that the Nazis instituted well before they started systematically executing Jews. The blind, the retarded, the crippled, and the insane were hauled off and executed secretly, and it was on them that the techniques of industrialized killing were developed (e.g. gas chambers, mass crematoriums, etc.) The book also talks about the extent to which the Jewish Holocaust has outweighed the Nazi's systematic killing of Gypsies.

Anyway, in seminar discussion, I made a minor point, forgetting that the book had pretty much demonstrated the opposite point. And the book's evidence for that point was on the book cover. Whoops!

Later, though, I kind of redeemed myself by making some good points about the other books we'd read for that week, The Reader. The end of class was people volunteering what topic they had in mind for term papers; after most of the class suggested interesting things, I had to confess that I was just thinking that doing something on WWI might be interesting, as the class had spent almost no time on it.

As class was let out, the professor called me aside. I was expecting to get criticized for showing my ass in the beginning on the point of fact– while I had read the book, my slip of memory had made it look like I hadn't. Instead, the professor said "I know you're enrolled in the Master's program. Have you considered seeking a doctorate?" As I'm still pondering that decision, having another professor suggest it was certainly a point in favor.

Then the next day, he sent me an email suggesting a few books I could read over the weekend to get a more solid idea for a paper topic. Friday I picked up the four books, which total 1900 pages. Hmmm. I already have plenty of other work, of course. I think a skim is the best I will manage before I meet the professor on Tuesday.

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I Am Very Flattered

I've been invited to give a Veteran's Day presentation at the Park School in Buffalo, which is a very reputable private K-12 school. I'd better make it a good presentation! I have no idea how long I'd be talking, if there are other speakers, which kids I'll be talking to, etc; I need to call them back tomorrow. I'm just very flattered to be invited. (I was recommended by one of my professors.)

UPDATE: I just talked to them. I'll be the sole presenter, for an hour program (40 minutes talking, 20 minutes of questions). It's a monthly series called "Walks of Life", where the try to expose their 9-12 graders to people with life experiences unfamiliar to the students. The last one was three refugees from a local resettlement center. I guess I'll be talking about what it means to be a Marine, what war is like, what other countries are like, and what it's like to reintegrate into society as a veteran.

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Steve & Lacey Get Hitched

Last weekend Hil and I went to the wedding of our friends Steve N. and Lacey J. Really, Steve is a friend to both of us, but I barely know Lacey, so the invitation was to Hilary and I was the "and guest."

The wedding was on Sunday afternoon at a banquet hall, on a weekend when the Buffalo Bills were trying to go 4-0. Note that before the NFL season began, the consensus was that the Bills would win two games all year. The week prior, the Bills beat the New England Patriots, who were pre-season favorites to go to the Super Bowl, ending a 13-game losing streak in the rivalry. (The Bills last beat the Pats in 1999.) So what I'm saying is, pretty much everyone in Buffalo was crammed into Ralph Wilson Stadium or watching the TV at home at 3 PM on Sunday. We were joking about exactly how easy it must have been to reserve the hall.

At any rate, getting dressed into our formal best always takes longer than expected, plus we decided at the last moment that the gift needed rewrapped. So we left with just enough time to make it for the 3 PM start time.

Until, on the drive down, I took a right when I should have taken a left. Whoops! We ended up arriving at the site at about 3:05, and as the couple actually started exactly on time, we ended up standing in the back of the room. I had dropped off Hil at the door and went off to park (it was raining, so I wanted to spare her getting wet), so I even missed the procession of the wedding party and the march of the groom. I did get inside before the bride made her appearance, though. And there were a good dozen of us late arrivals standing in the back, perhaps 10% of the whole crowd, so we didn't stand out too badly.

The minister wasn't very good, as he had a very strange speaking style. As he read the service, he placed vocal emphasis in very strange places and on inappropriate words. The text itself was fine, though. The groom and bride spoke their own vows, and as the newly married couple had their kiss, a single tear trickled down my friend Iggy's craggy cheek. Iggy's wife was thrilled that his stony heart had melted to the romance. The truth is, he'd been watching his smartphone, and as the bride said "I do" the Cincinnati Bengals kicked a field goal with four seconds left to seal the Bills's first loss of the year.

After the ceremony an open bar opened up, and all the young people in attendance stampeded over to whet their whistles. Hors d'oeuvre began coming out, and after an hour it was reception dinner time. The food was quite good. Hil was seated to my right, of course, but to my left was seated a girl getting the only vegetarian meal that had been requested. We joked that the kitchen probably didn't actually make it themselves, they just sent the bus boy off to a restaurant somewhere to get it as takeout.

Then came dancing, naturally. I did much more dancing than I normally do at weddings. Perhaps as I get older I don't care about my dignity as much. Or perhaps because there wasn't any family there, I didn't feel as self-conscious? I dunno. Hil did more dancing than I did anyway.

The it was garter time. The garter landed well short of the assembled gentlemen, and my friend Marc S. was the closest one, so he picked it up. Next was the bouquet toss. Once again, it landed well short. The closest person was… Hil.

So we had the spectacle of Marc putting the garter on Hil, while Marc's girlfriend and I gave comic glares. In a twist that was new to me, as soon as he was finished installing the garter, the DJ had Marc sit down, Hil take off the garter, and she put it on him! "Just as high as he put it on you!" The crowd was in stitches, as men's suit trouser legs are tailed tightly enough to be difficult to pull up very high.

In a final note, I may be the first person to have applied Godwin's Law to a wedding. I brought along a copy of Hitler and the Fall of Weimar Germany because my readings for school are never done. Sorry, Steve and Lacey! And best wishes to the both of you!

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I've Seen Worse

Over the weekend I went home to help my mother out with repairing her home, damaged in the flood of almost three weeks ago. I talked about that here.

The first three hours of the drive were lovely, with the trees in the higher elevations putting on their beautiful fall colors. It was a sunny morning, the perfect light to enjoy the seasonal beauty. And on the interstate, there are no leaf peepers to contend with. The colors will peak in a few more weeks, but it was delightful enough right now.

The last section of the drive was less fun. The highway follows the river, and flood damage was frequently visible. The road itself had been underwater in several sections. One stretch narrowed to one lane in each direction, because the road edges had been undercut, and a bridge had visible damage to the piers that hadn't been there last time I drove I-86.

Driving through Owego to my mother's house, the air was dusty from the cars kicking up flood mud from the road. There were plenty of visible puddles. Outside every house, on the curb, was a giant pile of debris. Pick-ups are underway, but they aren't keeping up with the damage.

I couldn't park in my mother's driveway, because there was an unfamiliar pickup truck in her driveway. I found out that a horde of workers from a nearby factory (Dresser-Rand, I think?) were volunteering to help people out on that weekend, and one of them was suctioning up mud from Mom's basement. He was a nice guy, although we decided not to shake hands because of all the mud. Which was silly, since we both had muddy gloves.

Anyway, my mother's house had flooded up to about five feet on the first floor. According to the survey, she was going to have to remove the brand-new floors in the kitchen, dining room, and front hall. She's especially annoyed about the front hall, because there's some nice ceramic tiles there. I guess the wooded underfloor had swelled from the water and messed up the tile attachments? I wasn't quite clear on the details. I wonder if they can be pried off and re-glued down, as I didn't notice any that were actually broken.

The first day I moved stuff around, including things like getting an old dorm-style refrigerator down from the attic, for use while the downstairs is being renovated. Not only did Mom lose all the new appliances, the water got high enough to destroy the new lower and upper cabinets. We cleaned the mud off the basement window screens and put them back in, so as to reduce the number of insects arriving. Luckily, the flood waters are draining faster than last time, so the mosquitoes were an annoyance, not a nightmare.

The Red Cross is still driving around the affected neighborhoods, delivering hot food twice a day. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either, from the four samples I had. In order, I ate hot dogs, chicken breasts, dirty rice, and chicken nuggets.

The original plan was for me to stay at her place overnight, but I decided I wanted a hot shower in the morning too badly, so I drove to my Dad's house for the night. He was out at a concert featuring Count Basie's Orchestra, which was a bit of a surprise, since Count Basie died in 1984. If he's doing a concert tour, then one of three things must be true: (1) it's really creepy the way they keep him around like Lenin; (2) the zombie apocalypse is underway, so I'd better rush off and loot the sporting-goods store and then a grocery store; (3) I'd better re-evaluate my religious beliefs.

But my father cleared it up by pointing out that it was, in fact, Count Basie's Orchestra, and that the Count himself was no longer involved. In fact, only three or four of the members had been hired by Basie himself. I was told the concert was quite good.

The second day, back at my mother's somewhat later than planned due to staying up late studying and lingering over breakfast, I applied myself to a shop-vac. We were getting power via an extension cord from the neighbor's. My mother had already torn down all the wet wallboard, so I was sucking up plaster dust and mud, both of which were holding lots of water up against the house's balloon framing. It was clearly drying out much better in the non-gunky spots. I also helped her tear down some of the old plaster-and-lathe walls around the downstairs bathroom. They had been just covered with modern wallboard, but the lathe was soaking wet, and again the plan was to get as much portable wet stuff out of the house, to encourage the non-portable wet stuff (i.e. structural elements) to dry more rapidly.

While I was there a Verizon repairman showed up and got telephone service reestablished. He presumably didn't have to repair anything past the terminal block where the outside lines come in, but he tested the house lines and discovered one of the house's wires had gone bad. He suspected it had some split insulation from years back, and the flood had corroded it somewhere, So he replaced that wire, gratis. A nice guy.

Soon enough, though, the sun was setting and I had to get back on my way. I had plenty of academic work to do over the weekend, and I'd done none of it. I got back to my apartment at about 10:30 PM, and commenced a study session that lasted until the faintest streaks of light were brightening the horizon. Caffeine is pretty much my favorite substance, these days.

The day after I left, I got word that the electrician had replaced Mom's master circuit breaker, and she had power again. The next day a hot-water heater was installed. So at least the house is now safe and comfortable, although there's a bit of a hurry to get a new furnace installed, and the walls up and insulated, before the weather gets any colder.

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Everyone In the Room Is Now a Whaling Expert

Today I gave a presentation on my research so far. It went quite well, I'm proud to say. There were only seven attendees, but I wasn't realistically expecting overwhelming interest into the American whaling industry during the 1800s. We had the room for an hour, so I talked for 40 minutes and took questions for the rest. Then a first-semester MA student interrogated be for another hour about all sorts of things, from "how did you pick a topic" to "how can I teach a class without the undergrads ignoring me."

The questions for the last 20 minutes of the main session were a mix of requests for more information (e.g. the role of women in the industry) and suggestions for how I might extend the project and what additional questions I might ask. The only problem was that my adviser was there. One of my data sources was logbooks kept by the Seaman's Institute in New Bedford. The Institute included a church, the Seamen's Bethel. My professor suggested that I see if sermons from that church had been preserved, as so many sermons were in this period. Now, she's probably right, that if I can find those sermons I can get some great stuff for my project. But it's not like I'm swimming in free time. I have no idea how I'm going to make time to read a century of so worth of weekly sermons! I almost hope they have been lost. It's unlikely, though, since the Bethel was famous during this time period, and it survived, so its records probably survived too.

UPDATE: I've gotten lots of compliments from fellow students, which was nice, but we're a pretty friendly group. Today, though, the professor in attendance told me that she was very impressed. That was quite flattering to hear.

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That Time of Year

The Canada geese are leaving.* Apple-harvesting festivals are starting. Gardens are bringing forth their bounty. The local grocery store is offering huge pumpkins, along with mountains of candy. The maple leaves are beginning to turn. Last night I turned on the furnace.

* Some Canada geese now overwinter. Just another reason I hate those things.

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Zug Zug

Some have wondered why I'm not going home to help my mother out this weekend. Well, next week I have the following:

• Monday: 7 page paper on al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi aka Joannes Leo Africanus de Medicis aka Yuhanna al-Asad, an interesting figure in the early sixteenth century Mediterranean world.
• Tuesday: 30 minute public presentation on my current research.
• Wednesday: 20 page paper and 15 minute presentation on Wiemar Germany.
  
• Thursday: dental exam with bonus x-rays.
  

I'm pretty sure that the dental appointment will be the high point of the week. So, I don't really have the time to go help my mother clean and gut her house. But I'll be going down to help out the following weekend.

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I'm Trying Not To Use My Marine Vocabulary To Express How I Feel About This

My mother's house is currently underwater, suffering the third "100 year flood" in the last six years. This is the biggest yet, a "500 year flood", with the highest water on record. My quick calculation suggests that three such floods in that time frame, assuming floods are normally distributed, is about a four-sigma event. Which should be quite unusual. I suspect that the model used to predict floods of the Susquehanna River is not a very good one.

The last flood crested at 35.9 feet, and did substantial damage to the first floor of my mother's house. The current flood is projected to crest at 39.8 feet. My mother did receive a several hours of warning, courtesy of an automatic call from the town, which she spent in moving stuff from the basement and first floor to the second floor, and also getting things out of the garage to the extent possible. In the true spirit of community, two neighbors came over to help. I considered driving down to assist, but by the time I'd heard of the flood, if I drove straight there I'd have to swim the last part of the way. I have a good car, but it's no Humvee.

When she had moved all she could and the water was close, my mother evacuated and spent the night with her eldest daughter's in-laws. Today she was planning on continuing on to stay with her daughter. I hope to come down and help with the cleanup once the water recedes. I expect that my professors will be understanding.

If anyone wants to see the output of the river gauge in her town, here are two good sites: the US Geological Survey's and the National Weather Service's. They present the data in different ways. The first one also has a flow graph, which (as of 1600 on 08 Sep 2011) indicates the current instantaneous flow rate is 144,000 cfs. As a point of comparison, the flow rate on this date in 2010 was 1450 cfs. That hundredfold jump is not good.

The news is reporting various bridges out, but I'm moderatly confident that the main bridge from Owego to I-86 will be intact, as it's quite high. Of course, it's piers could be undermined. And there's a neat little historical marker on end of the bridge that mentions the previous bridges on that location that had been swept away.

So, I will summarize. There's a bad flood right now at my mother's place. My mother is safe. Her house is likely be inundated much higher than last time. And it was only this summer that the damage from the last flood was finally repaired. I'm just hoping that the water stays below the level of the second floor, where she had moved as much of her chattel property as she could.

Not-so-pretty pictures:




UPDATE: The river gauge stopped reporting at 0800 on 08 Sep 2011, because the gauge has a design maximum of 38 feet. That's how bad a flood this is.

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