Thank you all for the kind comments and words of encouragement.

For those of you who would like a Guayabera - Merida is the place to get them. Make sure that they are made out of cotton or linen, though. One of mine is really nice, but it is part polyester and it is really warm - not good for the weather they were intended to be worn in.

While they were traditionally for men, women look good in them too. Sara has one and although she has not worn it recently, she looks good in it.

The syllabus is done for now. Thankfully. I might tweak it a bit here and there, but I have the semester schedule laid out and the readings picked out. I now need to copy all the bits and pieces of books I am using to make the reader for the course. That is yet another tedious activity. I will be going into the department to do that tomorrow.

Going into the department is not that easy - it is about a 40 minute drive (at least an hour during rush hour). It is not that it is that far - probably about seven or eight miles. It is just the way Boston is laid out, there isn't an easy way to get there. Public transportation is not that useful either, although that may be an option once the semester starts (tomorrow I will be lugging many books with me, so the car it is). At least I can read or do something on my way there and back. If anyone wants to get me an iPod, I could also listen to recorded books - didn't think so.

I guess that is the price to pay after my "commute" last year, which was about 300 yards. Of course, my commute to my sweetie was about 3,000 miles. Not good.

Time to clear my head before I go to bed.

The interview was draining. I don't like interviews and I particularly don't like them in the summer when it is hot. I decided against dressing up - I wore a guayabera instead.

I think the interview itself went well and I think they were desperate to get someone to teach this class in the fall. However, the course is scheduled for the exact same time as the course I am already teaching. I asked about changing the time the course meets, but apparently the students at this very technical school (MIT), schedule their courses years in advance. So changing it would throw things off.

I asked the chair at the other university whether that course could be changed, but alas it cannot. So I will miss out on the opportunity to teach what seemed to be a fun class, to get some good experience, and to earn some extra $$$. It's all rather disappointing.

In my other activity, namely finishing off the syllabus for the course I am teaching, I am struggling in getting the reading load to something which the students can handle. I am having to cut out some fun, but lengthy, readings in favor of the more substantial ones. I also need to decide which films I am going to use. It is a tough task - everything needs to fit in neatly.

Sara is slogging through her last week of epidemiology and biostatistics. Despite the strain on her stamina and mental clarity these courses have placed on her, she has been wonderfully supportive. I will be happy when she is done with the classes and she is once again a little more lucid, though. I myself need to find some clarity too. I, however, have no excuse for my spaciness. Just the way I am, I guess...

I have an interview tomorrow to teach an extra course at a different university. I guess you could call it academic moonlighting. Some extra cash would be nice.

The strange thing is that the person I am meeting with is someone whose paper I read at a conference when she was unable to attend. She was part of a session Sara organized. At the last minute she could not make it and Sara asked me if I would read her paper during the conference.

This opportunity and interview popped up pretty quickly - maybe it is some kind of karmic thing.

I have also been working on the syllabus for the Latino course. It is a lot of work - tiring too. I think I have most of the readings set. I need to put in an order for the books and make photo copies for the course reader.

Random complaint: Is anyone else as annoyed as I am about the excessive coverage of that missing girl in Aruba?

I really wish I could go sailing. It's a great way to clear the mind.

I am going to give accupuncture a shot. Details to come...

My massage is still waiting for me.

Time for bed.

This Gay Marriage thing is for the Birds

Even birds are flocking to Massachusetts to take advantage of the gay marriage thing. Just read:

August 12, 2005 - It turns out there's a good reason why the eggs from Boston's famed Public Garden swans aren't hatching -- both birds are female.

Named Romeo and Juliet, the birds are star attractions at the park. The city went as far to name them after Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers.

However, tests have confirmed they are both female. In fact the tests were done months ago but park officials waited to announce the results. Says one spokeswoman "why spoil the fairy tale?" (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Please pitty me, living in such an amoral place where even the animals are deviant!

Random Thoughts

• I am tired.
• I have been working on editing an article Sara and I wrote together. It is being published in Europe, so I need to change all the formating to the British style. It is tedious work.
• My shoulders hurt and I can feel the tension work its way from my neck through my shoulders down to my arms. I need a massage - badly.
• I also would like to learn self-hypnosis. It seems fascinating...
• Although I don't know if my mind is the kind that would release to a hypnotic state. It is always running - I don't know where, but it is running.
• Zephyr keeps getting ticks. Zeus has had three ticks the whole time we have had him. I don't know what his secret is. If he doesn't want to share it with me, he should at least pass it on to Zephyr. It is unpleasant pulling those little buggers off of her.
• I have been reading a lot lately. I like it, but I find it tiring. Or maybe I am just tired and I am noticing it as I read. Dunno...
• I should read more. It is good for me.
• I should exercise more too. I don't think walking the dogs is enough. There is a yoga studio a few blocks away, but I have yet to get off my behind and head down there.
• I don't know why, but I am craving Brazilian food...and a good caipirihna.
• This month's Harper's magazine has some interesting articles in it - although they are also frustrating. Ask me for more details if you are interested.
  
• That's all for now.

If you really want to irritate someone (now why would anyone want to do that?), send them something registered mail at a time you know they are busy and won't be home very much.

We recently got a slip in our mailbox that said something to the tune of: Sorry we missed you, you have a registered envelope. You can either pick it up at your local post office or sign the slip and we will redeliver it, just tell us where to leave it.

Sara signed the slip (the slip said it was for her, but not who it was from), also wrote that I could sign for it, and we left it taped to our mailbox yesterday. Today I was extra vigilant for the postal carrier just in case he or she (it is usually a he) wanted someone to sign for it. Of course he came while I was occupied with some important business. I went outside and found the slip in our box with some extra scribbling saying that a signature was needed.

I ran all around our neighborhood looking for our postal carrier. This was particularly unpleasant because it was rather warm and humid today. I finally tracked him down. He said that not only did someone have to sign for it, that someone needed to pick it up from the post office. While I was annoyed that this information was not put on the slip in the first place, I put on a smile(you don't want to antagonize your mail carrier) and I asked him whether I could go or if Sara was the one who needed to go. He said I could go.

I should point out that Sara has been very stressed (for reasons I won't go into here, let me just say the words Biostatistics and Epidemiology) and not knowing what this was was just stressing her out more. Thus I was determined to get to the bottom of this. As this was unfolding, our power went out, creating other difficulties - but that is another story for another time.

I headed down to our post office and gave the overweight guy behind the counter the slip of paper. He asked for ID and disappeared for a rather long time. I saw him pop out one door and go into another. Finally he came out and said Sara had to come in to get it herself. Ugh!

When Sara got home this afternoon, I explained the saga to her and we decided to just go down to the post office there and then. This time it all worked out. The mysterious envelope? Some little thing Sara bought on eBay.

While I am at it, let me vent a little more:

• Why does the power go out right when you are in the middle of writing something important or just wrote down some brilliant idea on your computer? Moreover, how come the system saved version cut short right before this important thing or idea?
• Why does it take me five second to get one contact in and half an hour to get the other one in?
• And why do I get some trash in my eye an hour after said trial of getting the contact in? I swear a speck of dust feels like a boulder in your eye.

On the good news front, I found out today that a book I am reviewing for a publisher will get me either $150 or $200 worth of books from the publisher. I thought I was doing it for free (well, for professional advancement reasons, but no direct compensation).

Ok, I am tired and I have realized that I am babbling here so it is time to close up shop. Maybe I will go suck on a salted lime...

As I was making some guacamole today, I remembered one of my favorite snacks when I was a kid:

I would dip a lime in salt (and ground chile - de arbol, pequin, or similar - if it were available) and eat the flesh.

I was a weird child.

However, I just tried it again with a left-over lime. I still like it.

On the Agenda:

1. I sent my defense into the Town of Brookline today. It is nice that you can do it via mail. Thank you all for your comments. I did edit my letter and I drew a diagram to better illustrate my position.
2. I spent about half an hour on the phone today with my old phone company trying to get them to stop charging me a trivial amount of money. I cancelled my service in Washington on June 6. In the process they failed to cancel some long distance service charge that is $0.99 ($1.21 after all the taxes/service charges)/month. Things like this are just so irritating!
3. I can't wait until fall. I am sick of the hot and humid weather!
4. However, I am running out of time to complete all the things that were scheduled to "get done over the summer"... [gasp]
   
5. I am reading Always Running by Luis Rodriguez. It is an amazing story, gripping and chilling. I am defintely using this book in my course.
6. On the menu for tonight: pesto genovese with basil from our porch. Yum! Off to make it...
   

Parking Ticket Saga...

Here is my defense:

August 5, 2005

Parking Clerk
Town of Brookline
P.O. Box 470708
Brookline, MA 02447-0708

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to contest the parking citation I received on August 2, 2005 for unpaid meter at 1295 Beacon Street. The spot at which I was parked does not have a meter.

As illustrated by the attached photographs, the only meter in the vicinity of the spot lies beyond the parking line for the spot I was parked in. Unlike all the other meters in the area that are double meters, this meter is a single meter. If the meter seen in the photographs is for the spot I was parked at, it should be labeled as such or the line should be painted further down the street so that the meter is within the parking spot. Given that it is not adjacent to the delineated parking area, I believe that I should not be responsible for this ticket.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Sincerely,

X

The place of the incident!



No meter!


Meter beyond the spot



Meter-less spot

I hope this works...

Stupid meter maids!

Today was one of those days when I got very little accomplished. I days like this because as evening arrives I feel so unfulfilled. It was just hard finding enthusiasm to sink myself into anything worthwhile - my ganas as Cindylu put it, went AWOL. I didn't relax either - that would have been accomplishing something in my book. I was just restless and unproductive.

I did get myself back to the infamous parking spot and took some pictures. Now I need to print them out and craft my defense. I will put that up here when it gets done.

Rather than continuing my cybermope, I will take on the meme that Scott threw my way...

Number of books on shelf?
This is an extremely difficult question for a couple of reasons:
1. While there are books that are definitely Sara's and some that are definitely mine, many are ours (and there are some duplicates). So what to count becomes a problem.
2. As Scott pointed out, there are numerous shelves to be counted.
3. While we have many shelves, most of our books actually are not on shelves, but rather in boxes or bins.
At some point we should make an inventory of what we have, but that day is far off. So how many books are there...I could not even guess a number. We are two academics, who have 7 and a half degrees among us. I can say this, a least half of what we own is books.

Last book purchased?

The last book I got was "Growing Up Bilingual" by Ana Celia Zentella. But I got it for free because I am going to use it in the class I am teaching this fall. I also have bought a load of academic books recently (all at the same time) - too many to list here. Probably the last non-academic book I purchased was "Retired Greyhounds for Dummies."

Book I'm reading now?

Academic:
"Always Running. La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA," Luis Rodriguez
"How the Gracia Girls Lost their Accents," Julia Alvarez
"Canicula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera," Norma Cantu
"Growing Up Bilingual" by Ana Celia Zentella
"Anything but Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles," Rodolfo Acu~a
"Lo sguardo della mano. Practiche della localita' e antropologia della visione in una comunita' montana lombarda," Cristina Grasseni

Non-Academic:
"Children of God," Mary Doria Russell

Last five books read?
"Retired Greyhounds for Dummies"
"Brown" Richard Rodriguez
"Latinos: Remaking America," edited by Marcelo Suarez-Orozco and Mariela Paez
"Food" Travelers' Tales
"Foods of the Maya" (I know this one is cheating, but I did read it!)

Sara was also tagged by Scott, but she is lost in an abstract, confusing, and exhausting web of bio-statistics and epidemiology at the moment, I will just point out that I am quite certain that the last books that she purchased, read, and is continuing to read all relate to those two subjects. Oh, prior to that she got some books by some medieval astrologer, physicist, something or rather, but who knows why or where those books ended up....

I guess I am supposed to tag three people for this...I hate doing this and I won't hold it against anyone if they fail to respond...here goes:

Oso, Mala, and Mariposa

There you go, Scott. Mission accomplished! I guess that's enough for today, but somehow I still feel unfulfilled...go figure.

The Stars told me to do it...

As some of you already know, I am a masterful procrastinator. One of my refined techniques for putting things off is cleaning - whether it is my office, the house/apartment, the dogs, the cars, or doing the laundry, they all function well.

Today I decided that I would make an extra effort to be productive. When I sat at my desk and opened my browser, the home page is set at MyYahoo where among the headlines, sports scores and RSS feeds, I also get my horoscope. I am not a believer in these things, but I think for today it was spot on...

Libra

Daily extended (by Astrology.com)
Is there a thick layer of dust over your knickknacks? Are your books and papers piled haphazardly around the house? Well, no wonder you've got a case of the mean reds. Pick up your spirits by beautifying your immediate surroundings. It's amazing how much better you feel when your house, car and office are clean and organized. After you complete these small steps, the larger issues will become much clearer.

Hmm...my desk is still quite messy and my car is still crying for a good cleaning (I should go check in on my L/H/H "brothers" at the carwash). I sure there is a lot I can do to "beautify my immediate surroundings"!

And I can't wait to see how the "larger issues" will become much clearer.

BTW - tomorrow I will head down to the infamous meterless spot and document my evidence (which might also find its way on here!).

What had started as an uninspired day took a turn for the annoying and frustrating this afternoon. While I was out running some errands I got a parking ticket in the City of Brookline, MA for an "upaid meter."

Now I am willing to pay my dues when I make a mistake, but in this case it is hard to understand how I could get a ticket for an upaid meter when there wasn't a meter for the spot I was parked in. Granted, there was a meter for the spot ahead of me and one for the one behind me, so I should have been suspicious. I have no objections to paying the meter - in fact, I have a pocket full of change that I would have been delighted to put into a meter, HAD THERE BEEN A METER to put it in!

The ticket is for $25, hardly a fortune nor worth fighting for, but I am irritated and I am going to fight this all the way to city hall! (I always wanted to say that!)

This case illustrates why I find many of provisions of the Patriot Act troubling. If local meter maids are overzealous in dispatching their "justice", how can we trust higher authorities to act judiciously when our civil rights and freedoms are at stake? Especially if there are few avenues of recourse, unlike this case where I can challenge the ticket.

More of an update later when my irritation disipates some...

The AP picked up on the little league story.

Today I have been reading Richard Rodriguez Brown, which I should have read a long time ago. I seldom am captivated by a book like I am now. He truly has a great mind.

The detox regimen is on hold for now.

I ordered some protein shake powder online - I was unable to find the right kind at Whole Foods - and it is coming via UPS ground from Ukiah, CA. It is not scheduled to arrive until August 4. The shakes are an important part of the regimen's diet, so I will just have to wait.

As to why I am doing this. My body just feels out of balance and I think it would be a good first step towards gaining physical harmony. There has been a lot of stress in my life over the past two years, so I would not be surprised that there are a lot of toxins built up in my system. I generally eat well (healthy) when I at home - albeit probably a little too much. I do eat out and that can be unhealthy at times. Also my diet was not good during the cross-country trip - it is nearly impossible to do.

More details on the regimen coming up.

On the news last night...
In a Little League game here in Massachusetts an umpire threatened to toss out an assistant coach and a player for speaking in Spanish. He said players could only speak in English. The two Spanish speakers are from the Dominican Republic. How sad...

There was supposed to be some nasty thunderstorms coming our way. I looked at the radar images online and indeed there was a line of storms with reds and purples (really heavy precipitation) coming our way. However, as the line got closer the colors changed to green and eventually fizzled out.

Bummer.

I like a good thunderstorm when I am safe at home. I particularly like the dramatic change in weather when you have endured an extremely hot and humid day like today (ok, I spent most of the day holed up indoors, so there was very little enduring going on). Nonetheless, I am disappointed.

I am going to go on a detox regimen next week - that is if the protein shake powder I ordered arrives by Saturday. I have never really done anything like this before, so it will be an interesting experience. As part of the program, I am supposed to keep a journal. I am debating whether I should do it here or not. Since I write more on here than anywhere else, it might be the most efficient form. On the other hand, it might just be me writing about bodily functions and other unpleasantness - and I don't want to gross out and scare away my few readers.

[IDEA]

I could just start another blog about it, that way I will write about it, the few strange people who are interested can read it and those who aren't can avoid it. Gosh, that was brilliant. Well, no. It was obvious, but sometimes the obvious takes me a long time to figure out. Welcome to my life.

There are few things I find more entertaining than feeding dogs peanut butter.

Futbol!

This post will mean little to those of you who do not like/watch soccer. I watched the US play Panama last Sunday in the Gold Cup final. The Panamanians did very well - tying the US and eventually losing in penalty kicks. A few thoughts/observations:

• Whenever the US played a Latin American team in the US, for it to be a "home" game they would have to play in some obscure place (like Columbus, Ohio - sorry Elenamary) or else it would really be an away game. If it were played in Miami, LA, or NY, there would be more fans cheering the Latin American team. There are probably two reasons for this:

1. There is an unwritten rule in Latin America - root for your national team first and then for any other Latin American team.
2. Given that the US seems to dominate almost everything in sports and otherwise, it was good to see them humbled on the soccer field.

• In Sunday's game, however, which was played in NY, there were many L/H/H cheering for the US. This was something new. Are L/H/H finally transitioning from immigrants to Americans? Do they feel that the US is their home and worth supporting?
• Soccer tournaments use the penalty kicks to decide the winner should the final game end in a tie. I hate seeing this. My solution - if no one wins the game, then declare that there was no winner for that year. Why must there always be a winner? Same goes for any other sport...

I began this as a response in the comment section of the previous post. As I kept on writing, I decided to transfer it to a new post.

Eric-
Ironically you are probably the only reader that knows Latin, so perhaps you are more Latino than anyone else.

Yes, there is debate as whether Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, and the French (mon dieu!) can also be place in the L/H/H category.

Oso-
Re: Immigrants from Guyana - that is one of the key questions. There seems to be a seperate category that places them in the West Indies.

Sherri-
Just as a question the L/H/H categories, I also question the overarching "white" category. There are so many differences and subtle forms of discimination that occurs within that category too. Of course, skin color is the prima facie (I just had to use some Latin here - I could not resist!) form of classification, yet our categories don't fit skin color. Language is a close second and this is where there is a lot of distinction even among "whites." Southern accents are frowned upon in New England. Student in the classroom would respond very differently to my lectures if I delivered them with either a "barrio" accent or a Mexican accent.

EM-
More irony - L/H/H having to speak in English in order to understand each other.

PLT-
You are in one of those places where cultures intersect (Puerto Rico - for those of you who do not know). It is usually in these places that the validity of our categories are shown to be false. I look forward to reading more about your experiences there.

I think the previous post and the ensuing discussion illustrates the disconect between the way the collective and social "we" contructs and visualizes culture and the way cultures exist. We see culture as categories, entities, things, yet cultures are more like processes and experiences. Thus culture continually changes and by doing so challenges our categories. It is what makes culture so fascinating (at least to me), yet at the same it can make it distressing. If we use culture(s) to construct our identites (what we are/what we are not), we expect it to be stable and it can be alarming when we discover that it is not.

Ok, I will end my brain deluge there. If people are interested, we can continue the discussion, if not I will ponder these things on my own.

Thoughts

Today I got a new pair of glasses - finally. I went to the opthomologist last November, but I had to wait until 2005 to get my glasses so that the insurance would cover it. Of course, the spring was busy and I did not get around to doing it until now. The pressure was on because my insurance ends in August. I will get new insurance from my new place of employment, but I don't know if they have an optical benefit.

Returning to the glasses, I am learning today why you should not wait six years to get a new pair of glasses. While the world is much crisper, I still feel like I am living in a fishbowl (of course the humidity also contributes to that feeling). It is going to take a while to get used to these. On the plus side, whenever I wear my contacts, there won't be that drastic change.

Yesterday I took the car that Sara drives to get washed and waxed. It desperately needed it because it had not had a good wash since I left last year. As the guy was hand waxing it, I sat and overheard the various conversations among the workers at the car wash. They were mostly from the Dominican Republic. There was one short and skinny guy (who also seemed a little slow) who was Puerto Rican. All the others made fun of this guy about his lack of success with women and his not having a car.

As I sat there evesdropping on their conversations, it was clear that they did not know that I could understand what they were saying (barely, though - the Domincan accent in Spanish is a tough one). I also started thinking about the categories in which we are placed in and those in which we place ourselves.

Why am I placed in the same categories as these men at the carwash?

We are Latinos/Hispanos/Hispanics.

Why?

I guess we speak the same language - barely.
We are part of the Latin American brotherhood/sisterhood - whatever that means.
We share an "immigrant experience". But not all L/H/H do. And I am quite certain that my experience has been quite a different one than theirs.

We can't deny that these are categories people use whether we place ourselves in them or not. How are these categories determined? Recently there has been a lot of debate here in Boston as to whether Brazilians are L/H/H. The debate has highlighted that these categories are not synonymous. We could ask the same about Haitians, Belizians, and Guayanians. And how about someone from Trinidad who is from South Asian/Indian herritage who migrates to the US? Is she Latina? How about a Peruvian with Japanese ancestry?

These are things I need to think about. I am teaching a class called "Growing Up Latino" this fall and I have no clue as to what that means. My goal for the class is to get the students to ponder the questions that entered my head while waiting at the carwash. I am just not sure where my own pondering will take me.

It's all a bit dizzying - or maybe it's just these new glasses with a different prescription. Who knows?

Today's Achievements

• Avoided all sorts of information overload on the Supreme Court nominee.
• Got my driver's license transferred.
• Got my license plates for my car - I got Red Sox plates (the extra proceeds go to Cancer research - something that is important to me because my mother is a cancer survivor and my best friend from high school's daughter is still engages in a nasty fight against it).
• Got the car inspected (it passed).
• Put up a sign asking people to keep our gate closed - greyhounds are hard to catch once they get loose (picture to come).
• Seem to have both dogs healthy.
• Found a fantastic way to procrastinate (thanks goes to a new discovery) - while this is very cool, it also seems very creepy.
• Bought more pita which is so good at the Lebanese/Syrian bakery nearby.
• Had more ice cream - what day isn't improved by a bowl of ice cream?
• Cleared up (sort of) some insurance/hospital billing issues - getting sick is a long term pain.

As you can see, today was rather productive - in a way.

Random observation of the day: our "mafia" neighbor has a guy who comes and drives his cab. They guy always parks his old and faded red Ford Escort in front of our house (maybe I will post a picture of this too) when he is out driving the cab. I noticed today that he puts a "club" on the steering wheel when he parks it. This is funny because no one in their right mind would steal this car. Ah, paranoia...