Little Road Trip

Yesterday, I went to Ada, Ohio with my daughter and son-in-law to see their new house.  They are renting a little place there while he attends law school at Ohio Northern University.  It's too cute!  It has a spacious kitchen, (but not too big to keep clean), a large living room, a laundry room, a study alcove, a HUGE bathroom, and two tiny, tiny bedrooms.  They have their own yard, with a swingset for their little boy.  Their apartment in Florida was bigger, but it cost more, too.  My son-in-law is very excited about living there.  My daughter is happy to be starting back to school herself, in the fall, and likes the ambience of the village of Ada.

I have been giving some thought to downsizing the last few weeks.  In our case, downsizing doesn't necessarily mean saving money, but it would give us more leisure time together, instead of in the car.  If we were to move to a place much smaller than our house in the 'burbs, but in the city, it would probably not cost a lot less than we are paying now.  We would only need one car, but insurance would be a lot more.  Property taxes might be less (that's a total crap-shoot in New Orleans) but we would probably have to pay for private school for the little boy, as the public schools are REALLY a crap-shoot.

If our lives are going to be centered in the city, though, it would be best to actually live there.  I don't want to do anything, though, until I get my employment situation resolved.  I'm going to aggressively address that when we get home.

Tying these two ideas together: my daughter's family is actually LARGER than mine (since my older son will be moving out in mid-August).  Why do I need three times as much space as she does?  Even with all the room I have, there's still not a place I can go sit in a chair and read a book without listening to the TV.  If we're going to only use five rooms, why do we need nine? 

My last math post (for a while)

I got an "A" in Pre-Calculus.  So, my GPA is intact, and in the last year I've completed 16 semester hours.  I may take up to ten hours in the fall, and go ahead and get Calculus out of the way. 

I have a line on a part-time job at the school, and that could be the way to go - half-time student/half-time employee.  If I go summers, I can finish up in about six years.  I'll be 50.  But I'll be fifty in six years in any case.

How do people LIVE like this?

My parents have a dial-up connection, and only one phone line.  It takes forever to do the simplest things...like download the Macromedia Shockwave Player so little boy can play games.

The second day I was here, I went to the library to read my mail and blogs, because it was so much faster.  But it's summer, so there are lots of people wanting to use the internet connections at the library, and my allowed time is limited.  I have jobs I need to apply for!

What would I do without him?

The truck was packed up in a torrential downpour.  Eight inches of rain fell in parts of Tampa (35 miles north) on moving day.  And there was my DH, the only employed person among the five adults present, moving furniture and boxes up and down a slippery ramp.

It's not just the income.  It's everything about him.  What would I do without him?  I simply can't bear the thought.

Perhaps I should stop thinking about it.  It's a thought that's been hovering in the back of my mind since the scary episode of several months ago.  I wonder if I bring it to the front and acknowledge it if I can make it go away.

Quick Note from the Road

I'm writing from my daughter's house in Florida.  We're getting ready to help her move to Ohio.  I'll probably be mostly out of the loop until the weekend.
 
My granddaughter has doubled in size since I saw her just three weeks ago.  Babies don't keep!

Tourism and exploitation

During the last week of my organizational communications class, we did a focus group for the prof on the hospitality industry in New Orleans and how we perceive it. He was especially interested in the accounts of people who had worked in the industry.

One of the women in my class talked about her experience working as a hostess at a jazz club last summer. The Essence Festival is a big event held in New Orleans every July, and attracts a lot of African-American visitors to the community. This club was a predominantly white club, but they wanted to capture some of that audience. The manager saw my classmate and her roommate walking outside, and asked if they would be interested in working that weekend.

On the upside, the young women made some pretty serious money: $600 each in tips for a weekend's work. It was easy money, too. And they didn't need to do anything immoral or unethical; they just needed to sell drinks and be friendly.

On the downside...well, I have so many issues with this maybe I'm not able to be unbiased. The bottom line is exploitation. These girls were hired based on their looks and their race to make money for the club, and even though they made money, too, it was probably a spit in the bucket compared to what the club raked in. They had to put up with strange men (who had usually been drinking) hugging them, touching them and otherwise hitting on them. They needed to be escorted to their car when the evening was over, because the nature of the work left them especially vulnerable to assault.

My classmate said that in the end, while the money was really easy, she didn't like it at all and wouldn't do it again.

My opinion, in the end, is that any city that expects to build its economy on sex, drugs, and rock and roll doesn't have much of a future.

I'm reminded of what I read about the early days of "The Apprentice" last year, when the women traded on their sex appeal to win the early contests. Who was the last person standing? Not a woman, but a guy. A serious guy, who worked hard and knew his stuff. And didn't have to show any T&A to get where he was going.

Proper Summer Attire in Louisiana

I have read elsewhere that the Student Honor Association at Brigham Young University has been pushing modest attire for young women (apparently, nobody cares what young men wear). This is not a new thing, and I've read about the push for modest attire for women in several places, such as the Church News, and the Ensign.

I am a prude. Really.

But I live in southern Louisiana, and it's HOT. I mean, really hot. Like, glasses fog when you leave the grocery hot. Like plastic bins left out in the sun to dry never actually dry hot.

I also am attending a school with a minimal non-traditional student population. Almost all the students are 18-25 years old, and 2/3 are women. Young, beautiful women. Most of them wear shorts and tank tops, and maybe it's just what I'm used to seeing, but I don't think they're immodest at all. They're just dressed for summer. It's hot!

But then, there's this one young woman...she also wears a tank top, but she wears REALLY lo-rise track pants. You can see the top of the V of her pubic area (I think she shaves) and a fairly regular flash of butt crack. This isn't dressing for summer. This is dressing for attention.

How am I able to tell the difference? Is there a difference? 90% of these women won't attract a second glance here in southern Louisiana in July by what they wear. But drop any one of them onto the BYU campus and it would probably be a scandal.

On an only mildly related topic: I got a new pair of sandals today. Bass, on sale. Cute as can be. Which means tomorrow, as my nod to the cultural norms of a Louisiana summer, I'm not going to wear socks.

My beautiful azaleas

I'm not much of a gardener. Plants in my care tend to die. I overwater, or forget to water, or don't give them enough light. Outdoor plants are overtaken by weeds.

In the Spring of 2003, I was delighted to discover that the evergreen shrubs in front of my house were actually azaleas. They produced beautiful coral pink flowers. It was a short-lived display, but a lovely one. And I didn't have to do anything...they just bloomed! I noticed that they got a bit scraggly at the end of the summer, but they sent out vigorous new stalks in the fall and had lovely blooms again in the spring this year.

I was chagrined to notice, after pruning them down to a nice size a couple of months ago, that they were looking a bit shaggy again. I was out looking at them yesterday, trying to figure out how to extract a thorny vine that had grown into one of them, when I observed one of these:



I looked more closely. No, there wasn't one. There were dozens!

Google is my friend. I typed "azalea caterpillar" and discovered the creature's common name: the azalea caterpillar. Datana major is found primarily in the southeast, as far north as Maryland and as far west as Louisiana. The young larvae skeletonize the leaves and the mature caterpillars eat the whole leaf. According to the fine folks at North Carolina State University, it is harmless to humans, and can be removed by hand. Clemson University elaborates, and suggests that they be disposed of in soapy water.

DH picked about a hundred off my azaleas this morning. The Hampton Roads Gardening web site says that they rarely kill the plant, but only slow growth, and that early treatment with Sevin in June can control the caterpillar before it damages the plant.

Here is a link to a number of images of the caterpillar, including a couple of them feeding. Yes, there were that many of them.

Another boring post about math

I got my third test back. An 88, the highest grade in both classes. I completely blew one question, so I knew I wasn't going to get more than a 90, but I'm still quite pleased with the results.

The instructor has said that since nobody got an A, the scores will be curved up about 8-10 points. Also, he has assigned us to re-do all the questions on the first three tests as homework this weekend, to be worth anywhere from 40-60 points (probably 40, maybe 50). I got 30/30 on the quiz I took yesterday, and got 10/10 on classwork today. I'm solidly in the "C" range now, and I MIGHT be able to pull off a "B" if I do well on the final.

So, I'm not going to drop the class. And I'm going to work my backside off, and see if I can pull off a "B."

I've been a little concerned about all the babbling I've done about this at home. It must be tedious for my DH to hear me prattling on about my little undergraduate freshman math class. He has a Ph.D., fercryinoutloud. But bless him, he humors me.

On the job search front, I sent out four resumes this week and haven't even started on the classifieds. I'm thinking of looking for a job at a grocery store or something during the day when little boy is at school in the fall. And I do still have a couple of irons in the fire that I'm carefully tending that might lead to REAL jobs.

Disintegrating bathroom

We've had some problems by the tub in our bathroom. The grout was cracking in a number of places, and we had some accidents (DH pulled off the soap dish, drywall and all, and put his foot through some tiles next to the faucet).

We had decided to retile. We thought we would probably have some mold to deal with, and expected to need to replace some sheetrock. What we did not expect was to find a totally rotted out 2x4, part of a cluster that acts as a support beam.

I'm not sure what to do about this. Also, the process of ripping out the tile has me thinking about just completely redoing the bathroom. I hate our bathroom. Some idiot thought it would be good to put a vanity sink in the bedroom, and the bathroom is just the toilet and tub. The configuration is really dumb, and we could make a much more spacious room (and get more closet space, to boot) by pulling out the vanity, reconfiguring some interior walls, and putting a nice pedestal sink in the bathroom.

I'm going to call the insurance company to see if any of the repairs to the wall are covered by our homeowner's insurance. We probably can't afford any of this, but at least if the wall can be fixed, we ought to do it. It seems silly to spend any money at all putting tile up when we could just bite the bullet and get the room done the way we want. DH is a very handy guy, and none of this is beyond the scope of his abilities - except for the wall.

School's going to have to wait for a while

I had been thinking that perhaps I should just bite the bullet and go to school full-time in the fall. I haven't been putting much effort into my job search, because I've enjoyed school so much (and it's kept me so busy). I had thought it might be good to jump in with both feet and just "do it."

But yesterday I did the numbers (as they say on American Public Media's Marketplace. And they aren't good. So, today I'm redoubling my job search efforts. I guess I'll just finish up my certificate and take some night classes for a couple of years until the money situation is in better shape.

It's disappointing, but I like to think I'm being practical.