Rhubarb Pie

Are You Sure You're Good At Your Job?

I worry a lot that I am bad at my job.  I really, really want to be good at my job, but it's hard to tell.  I work with smart kids, and they get fascinating jobs and internships and get admitted to fabulous graduate programs, but I can't take credit for that -- they probably would do all those things without me.  And of course they also get rejected from fantastic jobs and programs, and it doesn't occur to them or to me to blame me, but maybe it should.  Maybe if I were better they would all succeed all the time.  

(Just kidding. That would be a terrible fate, anyway, because one thing that's hard for these young people is that they haven't had much experience with failure yet and are paralyzed by fear of it.  I know what that feels like, and wish I could take it away from them.) 

Anyway, usually I feel like I'm reasonably good at my job, and trying to get better at it is really fun and motivating and hard.  I have a bulletin board full of thank you cards from students who seem to think I helped, and I get more secrets confessed to me than my colleagues, which seems like a good sign.  Students tell me I've helped.  But still, I'm not sure.  So I read a lot of the other advice out there in the world -- all the other "experts" giving career advice to young people -- to see what I can learn.  Some of it makes me so mad.  I don't know why inane career advice uttered confidently by slick self-promoters makes me furious. Glib smugness is pretty widespread in the world and it doesn't usually bother me.  Maybe this kind gets at me because I worry I don't have so much to offer; I fear being glibly smug and imagining myself indispensable.  Maybe it gets under my skin because I'm afraid my students will fall for it and feel bad about themselves when they are pushed by these experts into narrow boxes.  

But what kind of advice is really good?  This article says information is the best kind of advice -- better than recommendations for or against a decision, which I tend to avoid, and better even than advice about how to go about making a decision.  I've been thinking about that.  The truth is I think the best kind of help I offer students isn't any of those four.  I help them articulate the decisions they've already made, but they aren't yet sure they've decided.  I listen pretty well, and maybe I'm good at asking useful questions, and I imagine that I'm good at noticing when they are really engaged with something and when they are talking themselves into it.    

The best advice I get is thoughtful and provocative questions from smart friends that shines a light on my assumptions, and the feeling that they will accept any answer I give, as long as it is truthful.  That's the way I try to advise. But I have no idea if I'm any good, or if it's the right way.    

Got another one.

This one was unusually tame, displaying no fear of me.  He came close enough to ask permission.  Nevertheless, this isn't a posed shot.  If you're quiet and gentle, they'll soon return to their natural ways, even though they know you're there.

Just checking.

In the movies, when they show the girl singing along in the car or dancing around her room, is that to establish:

A.  She is a regular girl like all of us, because everyone dances around at home.
B.  She is especially energetic and effervescent. 
C.  Other _______________________________.

Show your work.

What I'm doing this weekend.

Well, the tomato plants I ordered from a local school are here, so I'm planting tomatoes.  I've been fretting about my garden for weeks.  I got it turned over and the cages dug in weeks ago, so I've been waiting, which is pretty much killing me.  But it has been so cold.  The days are in the sixties, which is just barely enough if you're running or in the full sun.  If the daytime temperatures are only in the sixties, I don't see how the soil temp can be in the seventies, which is what the tomato plants want.  It'd make sense to wait, but the other gardeners in the community garden have their tomatoes in, and I suffer from envy.  Comparisons only ever make the situation worse, and how much more true that is when you're comparing yourself to people who've already got tomato plants in.  I could probably wait a couple more weeks even, and will for the eggplants and cucumbers.  But my tomato starts are here, so I'll plant them.  I love the smell of tomato plant leaves as much as I love anything.

[UPDATE:  Why do all my trips to the garden have to involve near-handfuls of black widows?  I swear, I've seen at least one on my last four trips. 

Got the tomato plants in.  Twelve plants, just to keep me in tomatoes.  It won't be enough.  I'll still have to supplement with tomatoes from market.  My dad puts in 60 plants for a family of four.]

Then I'll head over to the gym.  There's a powerlifting competition today that I'm not in, which I am just fine with.  I'll probably end up plateloading, probably for deadlifting.  That's the hardest, because the bar is on the ground, so you're moving all those plates from a kneeling position.  And it is a lot of plates.  The big guys can deadlift hundreds of pounds, and those hundreds of pounds have to get on the bar somehow.  Last time I loaded for deadlift with Perfect Mike on the other end of the bar.  Perfect Mike is not just strong like an animal and a fantastic spotter.  Perfect Mike is also fast and accurate when he loads the bar, so we got compliments on how fast we worked.  It is true.  We got a lot of lifters through the meet fast.  I liked that when I look over at Mike, we are very often mirrored, reaching for a plate at the same time, or clamping down in unison.  After that I'll be tired, so the evening will be mellow.

Tomorrow, I don't know.  Market, of course.  A party for friends of mine whose apartment burnt down.  Man, I just purged my house so ruthlessly.  I put everything I hadn't used recently out on the curb, so I don't have back-up stuff to give to people.  I was thinking of picking out lamps for them, because people need lamps.  Actually, I need lamps, and I saw some adorable ones that don't match my house.  But I wanted to get them anyway and this would be a good reason.  Except that maybe they should be able to pick their own lamps.  I should get them a gift card, right?  Normally I'd say those aren't personal thoughtful gifts.  But this might be the time when they just want to be able to pick out the stuff they' need.

I should hang up lights on my porch, because I came up with an elaborate plan for lights and lanterns on my porch.  But that sounds like work.  I can't do work until the days warm up and I don't have to spend all my energy battling the cold.

Maybe Pub Quiz after, if dw and Jean-Michel want to go.  I haven't been to Pub Quiz since we won the third place prize, porn.  Once we'd won that, I felt like I'd completed all my goals and my life was satisfied.  But now I'm remembering that it was fun just to go to Pub Quiz, without trying to win porn.  It isn't always about the prize, you know, even when the prize is porn.  Sometimes the journey is the prize.  It is good to be reminded of that.

What I Did This Weekend

I dragged NBT down to Boston, where we attended ComicCon.  We went on Sunday, which was Costume Day.  If you're going to attend a comic convention, I think it's important to go on the day when there's a costume contest.      

One of the things I liked was the fact that the same hotel hosting it was also hosting a big convention of retinal and cataract surgeons.  So the lobby was a mix of expensively dressed pharmaceutical reps and eye surgeons and practice management salespeople, plus the occasional young woman in a pleather suit wearing a blue wig, or a big guy dressed like Hellboy or the three Ghostbusters.  I think I enjoyed looking across at the busy lobby Starbucks and seeing all of that almost as much as anything else. 

But I liked a lot of other things, too.  There was a lot of floor space, allocated about evenly between vendors selling comic books (and, to a smaller degree, other objects like T shirts or plush figures or shot glasses or statuettes) and artists.  I spent most of my time walking around talking to the artists, asking questions that were probably stupid or impertinent, about how they do their work.  Like, how much information is in the script you get with the story that the writer has written?  It depends, I learned.  The script tells an artist what appears in which panel -- that was one of my questions, who breaks a story into panels, the writer or the artist.  Sometimes a script specifies how a scene should look -- e.g. an overhead view of the hero sitting at the table, rain visible in the window in the background.  Sometimes it'll specify things like what kind of shirt the hero is wearing, and exactly what objects are on the table.  Other times it'll just say a mood, or a few important things about the view, and the artist decides how to depict it.  Fascinating.  And then there's a colorist, who decides how to color the pictures that the artist drew.  Some people do all three, but other times there's a big team of people who have never met one another working on a project together.   

I learned some technical things, about the kinds of pages people use to make comic books, for example.  I saw a lot of really cool things.  The most interesting was getting to see Kody Chamberlain's notebook, where he sketches out ideas and mocks up pages and keeps lists -- his idea journal, I guess -- and asking him questions about how he thinks about his projects.  I met the illustrator of this book, and bought it very excitedly.  It was one of the few non-narrative, non-fiction projects there that I saw.

I also bought books from a couple of other artists I talked to.  One of them I bought because I thought his drawing style was different from most everyone else's, and he had a really smiley girlfriend sitting in the booth with him, and I liked her.  (When I got the book home I realized that those were bad reasons to buy a comic book.)  One of them I bought because its writer was SOOO excited to be there, and he stopped me as I was walking by and talked at rapid and enthusiastic length to me about the plot of his forthcoming comic book (it's almost done) and the next one he wants to write, and how great it is to be sitting there at a ComicCon as an artist instead of as a fan, and how he met all these people he's been working on these projects with through a particular website, and so many other things that I felt like he had taught me a ton.  Also, his girlfriend was sitting beside him, and although she wasn't smiley, she WAS in costume, and I am pretty sure she was dressed up as the main character in his comic book, and I thought that was pretty cool.  When I bought the book he excitedly offered to sign it for me.  And those, it turns out, were really good reasons to buy a comic book.      

Makes perfect sense.

I understand the world so much better when I read Scott's explanations.

ADDED LATER:  This dude is also talking perfect sense, about compromise and health care.  I should have known he'd be great, because he's on Jay Smooth's site.

Who's In?

Thanks to the clue from Greg, I have learned the name of the coveted mug.  It is a "Spokane Barrel Mug."  

I have also learned where I can buy such a mug.  Hurrah!  Unfortunately, I have to buy at least 36 of them in order to place an order.  

I'm happy to keep 4, and I'm going to have to send a couple to Megan just to make sure she learns what she has been missing.  But what am I going to do with the rest of them?  Would any of you guys like one or two?

What I'm talking about, apparently, is a limited edition Rhubarb Pie mug.  It looks like $10 to $13 would cover everything, including me schlepping it to the post office to ship it to you.    

Also, since an imprint is included, it seems silly not to put something on the sides of these babies.  

I could draw a picture of Dick Cheney's face?  Or a diagram of the brain?  Or a cartoon of Megan lifting weights with the words "BE STRONG"?  I suppose a little sketch of a pie would be obvious.  Or some kind of clever in-joke?  I am not very good at these things.  (In truth, I was thinking of asking them to give me the Pittsburgh Regional Traffic Management Center logo pictured, because that would make me smile every day -- except it's more than one single color, which isn't so great.)

[The alternative to this plan is I go over to the college bookstore and start lobbying that they order some of these, or at least request some free samples.  Which I am quite prepared to do.]

I have not felt the love of a curvy mug.

I'm sorry your favorite mug got broken.  That's no good.  I'm excited the internet is bringing you options for new mugs.  The internet is pretty amazing that way.

These are my two house mugs.  I have others, but I use these two.  The mexican one on the left is my longest favoritest mug.  That was the mug that convinced me to paint my house in such bright colors.  I figured that if all those colors could play together happily on a mug, they could get along on the walls of my house.

The other mug is a recent present.  Normally I don't like art with pictures of people in it.  I don't know those people, so why would I give them a place in my house?  I would have to think about them and figure out their story, which is too much trouble for a not-real person.  But she is so damn cute, and she even has the haircut I had when it was given to me.  Ali and I talked about making that skirt, so I could match her in all ways.  Anyway, I make tea or coffee for other people, but I never give it to them in these mugs.  I hoard these mugs for myself.

A Recent Tragedy

This photograph contains three of my favorite things.  There's the phrenology head, which is part of my brain project and is the best Valentine's day present I've ever gotten.  There's the wind up kitchen timer, which is in the background behind the head, and is how I get myself through chores or tear myself away from absorbing and wonderful frivolous activities, and also how I remember that the rice is cooking downstairs.    

And the third wonderful thing is my favorite coffee mug, which recently fell to its death on a patio stone in our backyard.  Note the graceful curves, the plain black ceramic finish with a hint of festive yellow glaze peeking out from the inside.  Note that it is the perfect shape and size -- a little bit larger than your average coffee cup, and curved inward to be both pleasant to hold and also to retain a little bit more heat.  

Before I found this picture I was trying to describe the mug to a colleague and I drew this picture to try to explain what I need: 

Do you know how hard it is to search online for a mug that is the right shape and size, to replace this beloved treasure?  I don't even know how to describe the shape.  I don't care what color it is, or whether it has a witty saying on it.  I don't care if it is handmade by a local artist using only the purest organic clay or if it is mass produced by child laborers and stamped with the face of Dick Cheney, as long as it is ceramic, the right shape and size, and can be purchased for immediate delivery.  

I've already looked at Target.com, www.mugheaven.com, crateandbarrel.com, and Pier 1, without any luck at all.  I got the originals at some cheapo place like that.  Edgecomb Potters makes the closest thing I've been able to find, and if I need to I guess I can shell out $38, but it seems kind of precious to me.  Got any ideas?  

(Ideas that involve me trying to consider using a different shape mug will be rejected as absurd.  I mean *real* ideas.) 

Just like the sparrows.

The season has started, with the return of the picture takers. Every year these beautiful and elusive creatures flock to the native flora in front of my house to take pictures.  I consulted online references, carefully selecting my plants to draw them in and furnish them with nectar.

Ali and I have sat in our blind a few feet away, waiting with the patience of ornithologists or duck hunters or something, hoping to catch a glimpse of our wild neighbors as they come in to take pictures, skittish and fearful, but drawn powerfully to bright colors.  Something inside them, something in their very nature must answer the call of orange and green.  Sometimes we refer to our blind as "the porch", and sometimes we call the long wait "drinking." But I don't mean to confuse you with technical jargon.  After one of us has been home all day, we'll compare sightings.  "I scored a backtrack, walked all the way back across the street to look again."   "Oh, I only bagged a family.  Those are too easy --kids always stop to look."

Ali's far away, in Korea, writing fantastic posts.  She'll be back one day.  Darling Sherry, can you come visit in the spring one time?  My other flowers will be bigger then, so we're likely to see more of the local fauna.  I would coach you in "drinking" "on the porch."  It takes fortitude and self-mastery, but I think you'd be a natural.