Hurray!

Two of my photos were chosen for Schmap. (Click on the "Photos" tab above to see them as well as some other people's pictures.)

Good News

I've just received a completely unexpected e-mail telling me that three of my photographs of the U.W. Medicinal Herb Garden have been shortlisted for inclusion in the next revision of the Schmap Seattle Guide. While there's no guarantee that they'll be chosen, and no fiscal reward for it if they are, I have to admit I'm thrilled.

Insert City Name Here

No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge. That before the internet café plugged itself in, you got your shoes resoled in the mom-and-pop operation that used to be there. You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

--Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

This is more or less exactly how I feel about Seattle. Not surprisingly, I'm quickly coming to adore the book--the rest of this chapter is a meditation on how your experiences shape "your" city, and the rest of the book is a tour of Whitehead's personal New York.

I've been thinking a lot about these issues because I've just recently been appointed to the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board. The criteria for landmark designation are pretty exacting, which is probably as it should be--but one of the first nominations that came before me dealt with a place that is clearly a part of many people's personal Seattle, and it was hard to watch them struggle to find a way to preserve that piece of their city under the terms of the ordinance. It was also quite an experience to make a decision about the designation in front of a room packed full of people with passionate opinions both for and against it. The Board ended up being split on the decision; I voted in the minority, for designation, but I was comfortable with the Board's decision.

Five months and 11 days later...

Hmmm. It's been a long time since the last update. Where has the time gone?

Alas, much of my time has been devoted solely to the gentle art of daily living. Although I'm getting better at managing my health, my energy's still pretty low, and I haven't been getting out as much as I'd like.

My Summer's off to a good start, however. As previously forecast, I switched to a new job at the UW last February; I managed to hit said new job at a point where several big projects were coming to a head, but things are settling down now, I'm settling in nicely, and I think I'm even beginning to see some small benefits from the quieter worklife.

I am positively delighted to be able to be back in school again. My quarters seem to be coming in MUP prerequisite themes this year; Spring was environmental science (with a 100-level online class and the UW Water Center's Tuesday morning seminar series), and Summer is American government (with POL S 202 supplemented by a class on state government at the Evans School, and a dash of GIS for kicks). I'm a little concerned about the workload this Summer; I'm taking vacation time for the first two weeks of the quarter (this week and next) and will also be using a few hours of vacation each week to go to class, but it may still be more than I can handle while still working. Fortunately, the Evans school class meets only during the b-term (mid-July to mid-August), so if I find my hands are full with the other two classes I can easily make it disappear.

January 11.

How can I be 37? It sounds like such an advanced age, an age at which I ought to be wise or at least set in my ways. For me, though, it's an age at which I feel very, very young. The last year has made it ridiculously clear that I need to make big changes in how I live my life, something I find by turns frustrating, frightening, and hopeful.

The first of those big changes is coming right up: I'm turning in the job I've found so stressful over the past three-odd years for something I think I'll find less so. I gave notice at the old job a few weeks ago, and am slowly coming to terms with everything that will entail: leaving a group of people I've come to care about, turning away from a challenge, likely even taking a pay cut. It's been hard and wonderful to hear over the past few weeks that I'll be missed there. I'll probably be gone by the end of the month.

Where am I going? Well, it's reasonably certain that I'll be the assistant to the director of a much smaller program on campus, although nothing's final as yet. If it works out, I think it will be a nearly perfect job for me right now. I'll have a chance to learn some new things, but in a quieter environment; I'm hoping that will help me manage my energy better so I can start taking classes again.

In the meantime, I've been having a great birthday week despite my battle with a nasty respiratory thing. Mom and Dad took me out to an indulgent dinner on Saturday, the lovely Carissa organized a wonderful (and deliberately non-surprise) dinner tonight, and I've been showered with gifts and good wishes. Thank you all--I won't be complaining this year about having a birthday so close to Christmas.

I carved my first pumpkin in more years than I care to contemplate last night. Far be it from me to boast, but I think it has a certain joie de vivre. Look for details of seed-roasting escapades soon on the Anderson Recipe Exchange.

Painters and thieves seem to have a thing or two in common. I deduced this this morning, as I tried to open a window or two in my apartment...and found that the ones I'd found open were now stuck closed. Add that to the ladders lying about, my freshly-painted windowsills, and the incredible neatness of the presumed thieves in moving plant pots and plant pot feet, and I think I can come up with a hypothesis that fits all of the phenomena. Alas, it's one that would imply my home security system has yet to be tested (and one that means I'll have to ask the manager to ask the painters to reopen the windows on the east side of the apartment), but it does put paid to the master criminal scenario.

Interesting. I have finally had one of the classic urban experiences I'd heretofore missed: I think someone tried to break into my apartment while I was at work today. Fortunately, they don't seem to have succeeded.

My first clue that something unusual had happened was to find that the plant pot "feet" I'd been using to prop open one of the windows of my sleeping nook were on the futon, and the window was closed. All of my windows are single-hung sash windows, and this particular one is quite loose in its frame. It was a windy day, and my first thought was that the window might have been banging against the frame and that my manager had come in to close it--which seemed unlikely, as I'd seen him in the lobby just moments earlier and he'd said nothing about it, but was nonetheless a highly embarrassing thought. (A year's worth of illness has not done much for the cleanliness of my living quarters.)

I didn't really think about an attempted break-in until I went into the kitchen for cat food...and noticed that the pots on the kitchen windowsill had been moved, and the window itself was unlatched and pushed up against the secondary locks I installed after Carissa's apartment was broken into. After I fed the cats, I checked and, sure enough, the other window on that side of the apartment was also unlatched and pushed up against its secondary locks. I can't really tell if whoever it was also tried the window over the doorway awning or the other windows in the sleeping nook, since I usually leave them open up to the secondary locks anyway, but it seems likely.

The funny thing is that instead of feeling pleased that the secondary locks actually deterred the would-be thief, I just feel vulnerable. I chose the locks--which aren't really locks, but hinged wedge-shaped stops nailed on to the frame a few inches above where the window sits when it's closed--knowing that they wouldn't hold up to a sustained attempt to break in. I figured it was unlikely that anyone would attempt to get in at all since my apartment is quite exposed, and I didn't want to worry about getting out in an emergency or fuss with keys if I wanted to open the windows. (The wedge stops can easily be flipped out of the way if I want to open a window all the way.) Even though I'm pretty sure that whoever tried to get in was a not-particularly-persistent robber who gave up upon meeting resistance, I have a disturbing mental image of said robber coming back with something to pry the stops out of the frame. And, worse still, somewhere in my head there lurks a master criminal who got in, found (without disarranging a thing) the extra key that I really don't think I had, and let himself out of the apartment, locking the door behind him. I know it's silly--but there you have it.

Update: the ants have been vanquished! (I wouldn't want you to worry.) It took about a week to get rid of them, but the Dr. Bronner's solution was pure...magic. I still swab down the counters once a week; my kitchen smells like cloves and peppermint, and I haven't seen a single ant.

I'm back...

I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be gone so long. The short version: I managed to overburden myself last quarter. I got a lot out of doing so--apparently, so much that I'm going to do it again this quarter!--but the workload made me slightly, well, insane. I never thought I'd enjoy driving myself crazy with statistics and economics. It might have been better never to know it was possible.

I've made a solemn oath to take better care of myself this quarter. To that end, I'm spending some time on Sundays cooking, making sure I get to the gym, learning to knit, spending more time with the cats, and updating this web log. (Is there a better way to keep yourself sane than keeping in touch with the people you love? I can't really answer that question, poor correspondent that I am--but I'll keep you posted.)

I have a lot on the schedule in the next few months. This is usually the worst quarter for me at work, and this year's going to be even worse than usual: two new training grant applications and two competing renewals in addition to the circus of admissions and recruitment.* As noted above, I've signed up for two Public Affairs classes on top of that, one on survey design and the other on media relations. I think they'll be great fun, but also a lot of work.

So far, though, the new resolution is working. I was away from the gym for a couple of weeks as the result of an unfortunate tendon injury, but I went back today. I'm finding knitting both compelling and restful; my first project is a scarf in two shades of red, and I think I'll even be able to wear it outside of the house if the cats don't take it over behind my back. I made a big pot of lentils this evening, using a Greek recipe I found on the web. (If you're interested, you'll find it here. You'll need to search for "lentils" or just scroll down until you see the "Bottomless Lentil Soup Pot." I used the cinnamon variation, boiled it down a bit, and put in some sundried tomato paste as I didn't have any passata to hand. It was, and is, wonderful--a good thing, since I'll be eating quite a few bowls of it this week.)

I hope you all are well. Take good care of yourselves, and let me know the latest!

*I can't help imagining The Circus of Admissions and Recruitment. If only we had a big tent and some lions!

I still haven't managed to send out the link to this log--ack! I have, however, been busy, and not only working and attending class: I am battling an ant invasion in my kitchen. So far, I have great hope that the organic homebrew anti-ant potion I found on the web (Dr. Bronner's soap and oil of cloves) will be effective, but I'm reserving judgment, and the right to run out and buy ant traps, for a while yet.

I hope you are are well, and pest-free. If you have any ant warfare tips, let me know.

I've posted pictures of the household (including a rather silly one of me) as a quick-and-dirty webpage. Don't worry, I'm not really planning to take over the world.

Hmmm. It appears to have been a good thing that I never managed to send out the link for this log back in April.

Many things have happened since April. Perhaps the most surprising is that I've managed to make a decision about my future: I'm going to apply to the UW Master's in Urban Planning program next February. This has kept me very, very busy, especially as I somehow managed to skate through my entire undergraduate career without taking a single one of the six prerequisites for the program. This Summer, I'm taking an economics class from a 22-year-old and revisiting the algebra I haven't studied in nearly as long as my econ instructor has been alive. In the Autumn, it will be introductory statistics and an American government class; in the Winter, a math class; and in the Spring and Summer, some sort of coursework in environmental systems and cultural diversity. So far, I'm enjoying it all--even the math.

I'm also starting to get involved with the Capitol Hill Housing Improvement Program, a local Public Development Authority. I'm not sure whether housing issues will be a particular focus of mine yet, but I walked by one of their new project development sites (on Harvard and Denny) and was shocked to find that they weren't just planning to bulldoze the existing buildings and put up vinyl-clad monstrosities instead. I'm looking forward to finding out more about how they do what they do.

In other news: I have a new cat. Feffo is still going strong at 13, but my dear friend Carissa talked me into bringing home a second from the Seattle Humane Society in late May. I'd planned to come home with a four-year-old female tabby, but through circumstances beyond my control I ended up with a six-month-old long-haired Balinese mix, who is an adorable little puff of fur and teeth and claws. I've named her Annushka, which means she gets called "Nush" or "Nou." She runs around scattering fur everywhere, attacking Feffo's tail, ambushing me, and scratching the furniture. It's a good thing she's cute.

I'm still holding up at work, but it's been a rough Spring--just too much work all the time. I have a couple of applications in for new jobs on campus; I'm particularly hoping to hear back from my old haunt, the Department of Philosophy, where I've applied for a job that's similar to mine but less intense. I'll keep you posted.

I do plan to post on a more-or-less regular basis--perhaps once a week. Please do check back to find out what's going on--and if you write me I'll make a concerted effort to write back. I miss you all!

It's taken me a while to succumb to the world of web logs--I'm still far too much of a purist to use "blog," although that may be the next standard to go--but I've been thinking of late that keeping a web log might be a nice way to atone for my sins as a correspondent. When I accidentally clicked on the blogger tool on my google toolbar, it seemed fated to be.

I wouldn't dream of opening this with a whine, but things are messy right now. I'm in the horribly busy season at work, and I'm also sick. To balance out that misery, I should note that I've also just finished reading the best book ever, Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She comes out swinging--the first sentence reads "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding"--and proceeds to demolish quite a few of the tenets of planning that were taken for granted in 1958 and are still with us now. It's amazing. I'm reading Christopher Alexander's A Timeless Way of Building now.

And why am I on this urban planning jag? I was inspired by a talk I attended last month about redeveloping Seattle's waterfront, which was sponsored by Allied Arts of Seattle (http://www.alliedarts-seattle.org/). It was wonderful to hear planning professionals talking about alternatives to the kinds of big-city development we've seen over the past few decades.

I hope you all are doing well--updates are always welcome!