Man, this is a week, and it’s only Wednesday.
Sunday we went to a memorial for the husband of Mark’s former boss, who died suddenly at the age of 45. He’d worked in a variety of positions around the University, related to evaluation primarily, and had just been made Assistant Dean for Academic Analysis, Planning, and Assessment at the Graduate School.
We went to a film fest movie, Little Woods, good but unrelentingly grim, about two young women trying to get by in the fracking fields of North Dakota, and keep their mom’s house, which is about to get foreclosed, without resorting to selling oxy.
When we got back from the film, I made these cute little mini corn muffins to serve with the leftover Spanish rice, and since the oven was hot I reheated Mark’s brought-home sausage pizza from Friday, and that took care of those leftovers.
Mini corn muffins
Monday was pretty normal, but long, since I went out for a walk with Annie at 7:30 a.m., and then stayed on campus till almost 7:00 p.m. for a Teaching Academy roundtable discussion on peer evaluation. I felt like I should participate, since I’m a fellow and have been on the executive committee, and have planned a lot of events, but have not been as involved for the last couple of years. For dinner, I made eggs with cheese for Anna, and added leftover collards & bacon for me, so used up a few more leftovers.
I also found our tax return in my email, and it is ugly. You have to be super-rich, or Foxconn, to benefit from the dayglo Cheeto’s tax plan, that has ballooned the deficit into the trillions, us middle class people get whacked.
Tuesday was an all-volunteer day – food pantry in the morning, Terese’s menu:
- Breakfast salad, tossed table-side
- Ham & broccoli & Swiss cheese noodle casserole
- Grapefruit stars and grapes – grapefruits cut on a zigzag – which kept making me think of Charlie Brown’s shirt – with green grapes in the center and on the side
- Oatmeal cookies with dried cherries and Terese’s maple syrup from Washington Island
Then I did my second and last 6-hour shift at the film fest. The plan was that I’d pick up Anna after soccer practice, because my film fest shift ended at 5:15 and soccer practice ends an hour later, at 6:15. But they had picture day instead and it went too long, so no practice. Anna tried to take the bus home, but misread her Google directions and thought the bus would not be there for 40 minutes, so asked me to come get her. I did not think to say, “Hmm, this is a time of day (5:30 p.m.) when buses usually come quite often. Wait a few minutes and then if it still doesn’t come ask me again”, and jumped in the car and went to get her. The bus went past me when I was about halfway to the bus stop, and then of course she wasn’t there when I got there, and had two texts saying, I’m getting on the bus…. I think it picked her up about 3 minutes after she asked me to get her. Oh, well, teenagers.
We finished the broccoli-no mushroom-cheese-noodle casserole a la Moosewood that I’d made last Wednesday, for dinner after all that running around. Then I still had to go out for a 7:00 haircut, and I decided to drive across town to retrieve my coffee cup that I’d left at the community center. Traffic was with me at almost 8:00 p.m. and the cup was right where I’d left it and not locked in somewheres, so mission accomplished.
Then finally today, Wednesday, the weather stared off OK but by afternoon, it was snowing hard enough that soccer practice actually got cancelled.
I went for a walk by myself, early, then got to work at a fairly decent time, and had class from 1:30-4:00. Took the bus home in the snow. I left sweet potatoes baking in the oven on timer so I had a pretty good dinner, squeezed some lime and butter and brown sugar on the sweet potato. Then an online class from 7:00-8:00, and only one student showed. I’m making navy bean soup with ham for tomorrow, but now it’s almost 10:00 and I’m sitting at my computer eating chocolate. Tiredness causing sugar cravings. Holiday mint M&Ms leftover from Christmas. Ah, leftovers. And white people problems.