An undergrad talking to her friend on the bus tonight:

“And she was like, ‘You told me to shut up!’ and I was like, ‘I tell all my friends to shut up!’”

I was startled to hear the opening synth line from Prince’s “1999” as a ringtone on a cellphone this afternoon. I guess Prince has no copyright control over his Warner Brothers material, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that as much as I should that that particular song’s being used as a ringtone.

Another day, another weather pattern. Much more summery and mild today. It was pleasant weather to walk home tonight in short sleeves.

No sooner had I posted the last entry when, boom, in stomped autumn, ready to open a can of whoop-ass. Today was cold, windy, overcast, dreary, and even drizzly at points. When I was in the area around Liberty and Fifth around noon, the streets were almost deserted. Nobody wanted to be out unless they had to be out. Campus was a confused-looking place. Students looked either harried, bewildered, or else determined to completely ignore the weather altogether, either by barreling through the wind and rain with their cell phones glued to their ears as though talking into them non-stop would make the weather go away, or by continuing to wear yesterday’s shorts and flip-flops and T-shirts, as though defiant apparel would do the same trick. This was probably the first time in four or five months that I really didn’t want to be outdoors if I could avoid it. I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and was still underdressed. I sat on the church steps at State and William waiting for the bus tonight, and while the chill was not bone-deep yet, I definitely felt like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match-Seller. Yet there, across the street, strode an undergrad wearing his shorts and T-shirt, as though hoping that at 8.00 the weather would suddenly spring back to summery life. Such is youth.

The rest of the week’s supposed to be partly cloudy/sunny, according to the National Weather Service. We’ll see.

Weather’s getting gradually cooler, but it still feels like late summer (despite the change in our page colors). Today there was scarcely a cloud in sight, the temps were up in the 70s, and it felt more like May than September. (Well, it felt like May would have felt if May hadn’t been rainy and cold.) It was windy on Sunday, but it was a warm wind, not a chilly autumn one. The flora and fauna seem stymied. Some trees are turning, and some are staying put. Squirrels are still rushing around, with a noticeable increase in nut-gathering afoot. I startled a skunk rooting around in a front yard as I was walking home tonight. When we walked the beagle in the park on Saturday, a blue jay chattered at us angrily from a tree. I saw a flock of Canadian geese flying past one day last week, but it was unclear to me whether they were migrating or merely flying to another part of town. It hasn’t rained in quite a while; I don’t recall the last time it actually did rain. This will all be over sooner than later, though, I suppose. The nights are definitely starting to come earlier.

I saw a guy studying at a desk this afternoon who was wearing a big white sweatband and a powder blue sweatshirt. I felt like I was looking at a Xerox of John McEnroe circa 1981.

And was that old-school KRS-One I heard blasting from an SUV tonight while I was waiting for the bus? It sure sounded like it.

An ‘incendiary device’ discovered on a Virgin Blue 737 in Sydney « may (or may not) have been a hoax ».

But buried in the article on the find is this priceless ‘graph:

‘A baggage handler found the device on Monday in the cargo hold of the plane when it landed in Sydney after an internal flight from the state of Queensland. He then breached security procedures by carrying it into the terminal.

What a prize idiot. Glad to see they have ‘em down under and they’re not just running around the Empire.

It was inevitable, I just wondered how long it would take. « Southwest Airlines has been sued over its oversize passenger policy »:

‘An Oakland man who describes himself as being of “ample proportion” is suing Southwest Airlines, accusing the carrier of humiliating him by asking him to buy a second seat. Lionel Bea, 40, said in a lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court that a Southwest employee asked him whether he could fit in one seat before boarding a flight from Oakland to Los Angeles on Sept. 28. When Bea, a Southwest frequent flier, said, “Yes, is there a problem?” the employee said he would have to sell him another seat because of company policy “regarding passengers too large to fit in one seat,” according to the lawsuit filed earlier this month.’

Exhausted.

Finishing a two-week guest teaching stint at a northwest Ann Arbor middle school.

Seventh grade social studies. Some of the kids weren’t even born when Bush 41 got his butt handed back to him by Bill Clinton (thanks, Ross!).

Hands/wrists still messed up, so trying not to use them too much, even though it’s next to impossible.

When toilets need fixing and one has to drive to work and beagles need bathing and Dremel-ing and ‘blogs have to be updated and clients have to be satisfied and meals have to be made and so on and so on and so on, well, one must use one’s hands.

Surgeon doesn’t know at this point if I have CTS or if there is a disease of the cartilage in the wrist. Nerve conduction test is next week, followed by an MRI on 7-Oct.

And speaking of MRIs, what is UP with the University of Michigan hospital scheduling said procedures at frickin’ MIDNIGHT?! I have to report for the MRI at 11:50 p.m. at the hospital on 7-Oct. Yeesh.

Meanwhile, onward and upward. I’ve had some fun the last two weeks, and I’ve had some frustration. I’ve had some very good kids and I’ve had some who needed a can of whoop ass opened up on ‘em (which I promptly did). And I had one kid apologize to me later for her atrocious behavior.

Still, it’s not a bad start for the school year.

Just one question: When is it gonna be fall, already?! I’ve had the top down on the Jeep for the better part of two weeks, the longest it’s ever been off in the three-and-a-half years I’ve had it.

Not that I’m complaining. In a mere month or two, I’ll be shivering in a snowbank for sure.

A car coming up behind a bus stopping to let passengers off at a bus stop on Packard this evening and honking at it. What are you going to accomplish by honking at a bus, for crying out loud?

I don’t know if it’s just me, or if as a grad student you just become used to sitting at attention through three-hour classes several times a week, but it was fascinating to sit at the back of a room this afternoon during a presentation and watch a class of undergrads (who were, for the most part, polite, attentive, and non-sullen) start to shift around and squirm in their seats and lose their focus 35 minutes into it. (The presentation was terrific, so that wasn’t the issue.)

Oh, the oozing contempt with which the BBC reporter pronounced the phrase “to plant her spring garden” tonight (in reference to Martha Stewart’s stated desire to get out of prison by next March to attend to her horticultural obligations) …

Holy crap, that was a great ride I just took. Yes, the surgeon said stay off the bike for two months, but … I miss it too much. It’s almost an addiction/high today. I rode the long circuit around, just five miles, but got a total rush from it, particularly in the legs.

And my upper arms feel good too. The wrists … well, not so hot. But hey. You only live once. And I feel really, really good all over, so it compensates. We won’t talk about the further damage to the wrists.

I’m realizing more and more what a hot performing bike the Bobcat is. It is very easy to push along and it takes the abuse of the pavement without even pausing to think about it. That front suspension is wonderful and I’m especially pleased I held out for the disc brakes. Thing stops on a dime, which comes in handy with all the insane people on the roads around Ann Arbor.

Even though I am limiting myself to one or two rides a week, I’m still retaining most of my shape. I can push the sucker along with ease in most situations and rarely have to gear down. I’m more than ready to kick it up quite a bit and hit the serious road trip.

But the wrists are holding me back, big time. If I use the bike to whip my sorry self into shape, I cause further damage to the wrists. If I do what the surgeon wants, I become a blob and get really far behind on what I really want to do: climb fourteeners all over the US. Hike in national parks far from the maddening tourist crowd. Bike in Arches and Moab. And so on.

I’m enormously frustrated right now. This evening’s ride was both a rush and served to increase my frustration. But I’m not letting them set me back; I’m pushing on.

I am determined.

Pleasant: Walking home at twilight on a mildly warm Monday night, the streets of my neighborhood almost completely deserted. Looking up and seeing the crescent moon in all its glory. The sunsets and twilights this time of year are absolutely unparalleled.

Unpleasant: Harried and rude shoppers rushing around Kroger, acting like jerks even when the store was virtually empty. Memo to those shoppers: Despite what you may think, the supermarket is not your damn personal inventory barn. Get over yourselves and show a little common courtesy.

Pleasant: Walking through the neighborhood on a Sunday morning, early (before 11.00), before much of anybody has rolled out of bed yet. Squirrels romp over the grass and, I notice, the crows are slowly re-appearing. They are so big and ungainly, yet somehow simultaneously trashily elegant, and impossible to ignore. They are fascinating to watch.

Unpleasant: Not being able to find a crucial textbook I’ve been looking for … anywhere. I went to Borders late last week and asked about it; the information desk guy duly looked the title up, but it was not in inventory, so he said he’s get back to me. Of course, he never did, and it’s several days later. I guess it’s time to click on Amazon.com.

Laura Miller writes in today’s New York Times:

I doubt I bought a single new hardcover book for myself (as opposed to for a class) until sometime after I’d turned 30. Being underemployed and unencumbered by children like a lot of people in their 20’s, I read a lot, but the only new books I could afford were paperbacks. So I waited for the new novel everyone was talking about to come out in paperback.

When I read things like this, I’m always astonished. It’s as though certain “influentials” in Manhattan have never heard of (let alone set foot in) a library. I almost never buy new books anymore (I used to drop $100 easily on books in a month, and I often didn’t read what I bought; now if I don’t read it I return it). Between the Ann Arbor District Library and the university library, I have more new books available to me than I could read in a year if I had 24 hours a day to read them. I may have to wait a few weeks to get that new book I have my heart set on, but in the meantime there’s plenty of other stuff to read. To me, that’s probably one of the two or three greatest things about living here.

Of course, saying I get all my new books from the library is probably not as glamorous as saying I buy hardcovers or paperbacks at Borders, but I couldn’t care less.

This afternoon we took the beagle to the grounds of Forsythe Middle School, where he had a great time chasing squirrels and sniffing the ground (and making up for the ignominy of this morning, when he was tormented by a neighborhood cat who loves to saunter past and revels in ignoring him when he howls at it). The school grounds are huge — two playing fields, at least, plus enough walking space to spend lots of time traversing. It was a gorgeous Indian summer day today, quite a switch from yesterday’s autumnal gloom. After we took the dog home to get some water and rest, we went over to the west side of town and bought some used books and maps at the Borders tent sale, then when we got home I finished up cooking some white bean chili that I’d been slow-cooking all day and baked some apple oat bread and whipped up a few bunuelos. Overall, a nice way to spend a Saturday.

The game between Michigan and San Diego State was this afternoon too — it was actually more of a trial getting across town using Packard (all kinds of sluggish students out and about, some of whom seemed to think that red lights were intended for everyone but them) than Stadium. After last week’s blowout by Notre Dame, which prompted at least one indignant letter to the editor from an alumnus who liberally used the word “disgrace,” today’s match was redemption, though only slightly: the final score was 24-21. We passed the stadium at halftime and people were already leaving the game, which made us wonder how fervent Michigan fans really are.

I read a column in Thursday’s Michigan Daily (called, appropriately enough, “Get Over It Man: Your Favorite Band Sucks”) that made my jaw drop. Some writer made a point of slamming Coldplay, Dashboard Confessional, and David Gray. Not only that, he actually cited Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours and Joni Mitchell’s Blue as classics. He gave them the respect they’re due.

There’s still some sanity in the world, yes there is.

Wow … I don’t remember who it was, but something that somebody said about Michigan weather has stuck with me, which is that if it’s been one mode of weather for five days in a row, you can guarantee that the sixth day will be completely different. So after roughly 5 or 6 or so days of warm and/or humid weather, yesterday was cold, windy, chilly, and distinctly autumnal.

Of course, today, it’s frighteningly bright and sunny (albeit only 61 degrees), so … no pattern there yet.

But I think I’d hazard a guess that autumn is close at hand.

Last night I was waiting for the bus at the corner of South U and State. I guess srah’s right — the Gideons are out in force. Or at least I think it was the Gideons. It’s so hard to tell the different factions apart. Anyway, a guy with a bullhorn was standing on a stone bench in front of the museum and berating everyone within earshot for being sinners, fornicators, and hypocrites — while beginning every sentence with “My friends,” which, when you stop to think about it, is itself the height of hypocrisy. The best part, though, was when a frat boy started bouncing around the bullhorn guy and his handful of Bible-verse sign-carrying supporters, screaming “BIBLE THUMPERS! BIBLE THUMPERS!” at the top of his lungs. I guess Ann Arbor really is the gateway to Gehenna.

Seen on the way home from teaching middle school social studies Friday afternoon:

1. A minivan with New York license plates and the bumper sticker, ‘I’d Rather Be In Ann Arbor’ and …

2. The happiest dog in the world, riding in a car with gleeful abandon. He was quite sad when they had to stop for red lights, though. (And no, I don’t know who he is, but he’s a sweetie.)

This pretty much sums up the hypocritical state of the Empire. « Says Mike Reiss, a writer for The Simpsons »:

‘The rules governing what we may or may not say are a little hard to follow. This year, for instance, Howard Stern’s trash talk lost him six radio stations … then gained him nine more. The FCC imposed a $500,000 fine on radio stations for broadcasting the very same word Dick Cheney saw fit to use on the Senate floor. And churches urged families to see a blood-soaked, R-rated film in which Jesus gets the bejesus beat out of him.’

He then talks about the reaction of the Fascist FunDumbMentalists to his own children’s book and notes what he learned from the experience:

‘As for me, I’ve learned three things about the self-appointed watchdogs of modern morality:

1. They have no sense of history.

2. They have no sense of humor.

3. They have filthy, filthy minds.’

Yet another reason to LOVE The Simpsons … it has writers like Mike.

From Daniel Boorstin’s 1961 classic The Image:

Nowadays everybody tells us that what we need is more belief, a stronger and deeper and more encompassing faith. A faith in America and what we are doing. That may be true in the long run. What we need first and now is to disillusion ourselves. What ails us most is not what we have done with America, but what we have substituted for America. We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.

Speaking of missionaries, I guess the Mormons have a new trick going. One night last week when I was waiting to cross State, a guy appeared out of the corner of my vision and pressed a Book of Mormon card into my hand. He was in plainclothes, and he was flanked cleverly on both sides by two guys in the typical missionary garb. The theory, I guess, being that I’d be more likely not to resist the shill if the person performing it wasn’t dressed like a Mormon missionary.

Oh, yeah, I’ve had enough of the green T-shirted Jews for Jesus trying to shove their literature into my hand, too. They’re actually far more obnoxious than the Mormons. At least the Mormons don’t post themselves like sentries along every footpath on central campus so that you have to detour off onto the grass to get away from them.

There was a Jesus freak standing in the middle of the Diag at noon today railing against secular humanism and the evils of going to college, getting an education, and “getting ahead,” which he described as self-serving folly and as a sure road to hell. Sounded exactly like every line I was fed by fundie churches and fringe cults in my teenage years. I never understood how becoming an itinerant missionary and eschewing an undergraduate degree (and thus not being able to get a job and support myself) was supposed to fulfill God’s plan.

Somewhat incongruously, his gigantic hand-painted sign advertising Christ’s blood sacrifice was colored in garish shades of blue and maize.

It’s somewhat heartening in the midst of all of the media-fueled speculation about the political and philosophical leanings of today’s youth to see that some college kids are still just old-fashioned loud-mouthed lunkheaded party animals who live to throw monkey wrenches into the proceedings. When the preacher man was getting to the best part of his stemwinder about the evils of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, a couple of frat boys wandering by roared “HELL YEAH!” at the top of their lungs and pumped their fists in the air.

Not only did Johnny Ramone die today, but when I stopped during my hectic day to get a bite of lentil soup at the Rendezvous annex on South University, the kid behind the counter, as she was taking my order, said, “It sucks that all the great music was made the year I was born.”

I couldn’t resist. “What year was that?”

“1984,” she said.

And then she added, somewhat unnecessarily but very illustratively, “Blondie and Pat Benatar! WOO–HOO!”

Motley Fool says it best:

‘Think about it: Would shutting down the nation’s seventh-largest carrier really be such a tragedy? On a human level, yes, undoubtedly. The sting of more displaced workers wouldn’t be easily sedated. And yet, on paper, US Airways has been a net destroyer of shareholder value for years. The owners — that is, the shareholders — have every right to say enough is enough.

‘Bronner, an investor himself who earned control of US Airways after buying a 37% stake through $240 million from the Alabama state pension fund he runs, might have said it best for investors during the Times interview: “It’s a whole lot cheaper for me to have the assets and start over than to have the liabilities.”

‘Painful? Yes. Callous? You bet. True? Yeah, probably.’

Haven’t been posting here thanks to the ongoing drama with my hands. But I hope to get to regular posting soon. The hands are healing, but I have to take it easy. It’s a total pain in the tuckus ..

I made it to 90 miles on the Bobcat before disaster struck: A few weeks ago, I was involved in a hit-and-run with a total bitch who came from behind me while I was cycling south in the bike lane on Packard and turned right into me. I hit her car hard with my hands and am still recovering from a nasty cut on my left ring finger.

Fortunately, the Bobcat is all in one piece and completely unscathed. My hands took the brunt of it. I came home and filed a police report. Long story short, the woman denied it and is allegedly facing a lie detector test. Haven’t heard anything beyond that.

The big problem is that my surgeon has now banished me from any bike riding for two long months, just as I was really enjoying it and getting into the groove. I had lost one waist size and some poundage. Now I’m relegated to putting it on the stationary stand in the basement and cycling in one place, without gripping the handlebars. It’s a total pain in the tuckus, let me tell you.

And fall is such a wonderful time to bike around. Sigh. I may have to get sneaky …

From Gag Rule by Lewis Lapham:

‘Ashcroft said that the onerous regulations under which the FBI had been operating for the last thirty years “mistakenly combined timeless objectives – the enforcement of the law and respect for civil rights and liberties – with outdated means.”

‘As modified by the context and subject to the circumstances, the phrase “outdated means” can be taken to refer to any paragraph in every article of the Constitution. Which is both good to know and important to bear in mind, because a modern war against terrorism cannot be fought with an old scrap of parchment and obsolete notions of freedom. Let too many freedoms wander around loose in the streets, and who knows when somebody will turn up with a bread knife or a bomb? Better to remember the lesson learned in the Vietnam War, which proved that the best way to save the village was to destroy it. So also now, in another time of trouble, the American people can best preserve their liberties by sending them to a taxidermist or donating them to a museum.’

We went to Nichols Arboretum this afternoon, our first visit there. It seemed strange that there was no parking, but I found out after we got home that the main entrance is apparently on the other side from where we entered. (We parked on Oswego and walked across Geddes to enter.) The arboretum is large – 123 acres – but we didn’t spend much time there this afternoon except for a quick walk-through. It’ll probably be a lot more spellbinding once the leaves turn later in the month. Today, it was blindingly green. There is a huge meadow in the middle of the arboretum (another website I visited calls it the Main Valley), which today was populated mainly by hyperactive squirrels (I know the ones in our backyard are nowhere near as athletic as these were), nervous chipmunks, and the occasional jogger and alone-time student with a book. It’s worth a return visit, if only because evidently we only got the briefest of walks through the southern edge of it today.

Classes only began for me Wednesday. But I officially began the second year of library school at 8.30 last Thursday morning when I volunteered to help out at one of the new student orientation events. One of the centerpieces of the SI orientation experience is showing students what it’s like to collaborate by throwing them together into groups of four or five and having them go out on a scavenger hunt around central campus for an hour or so. The students then come bnack and take an online survey (of course) and compare experiences. I wsn’t able to participate in the most significant part of the event, which was the second-years tossing in their thoughts about the previous year’s hunt, but I did help with a few minor logistical details at the start of the event. And I got up in front of the lecture hall of 80 or 90 first-years and introduced myself and gave my student organization affiliation, something I would never have been able to do five, ten, or fifteen years ago.

Then, a couple hours later, I helped staff the LILA table at the student organization fair at West Hall, which was also a good experience. More people stopped by than I would’ve expected, and a couple of people I had animated conversations with (about California, Michigan weather, small talk; but nonetheless). There were a few people who studiously avoided our table’s corner of the room, and a few who passed by the table with downturned mouths, but by and large it was a positive thing. And our table, needless to say, was the most festive one in the room (one of our group brought his rainbow-colored feather boa to drape the table with).

The class schedule is not as hellish this term, mostly because most of my classes are either afternoon or early evening. I much prefer that schedule to rolling out of bed at 7.30 almost every day as I had to do last fall. So far I’ve had good luck in class selection. All have been uniformly interesting and compelling, though as usual at SI, they will be heavy with work. I have one more course that hasn’t yet met, at which point I will decide whether I’m keeping all of my units.

The schedule (so far) this term includes Government Documents, Cataloging (under a different name), an Information Policy seminar, and Online Searching, as well as my work at SPO and a directed field experience at the Government Documents room in Hatcher. I also have a poster presentation to prepare on my summer’s work at the IPL.

It will be a busy term. But if I get through this term okay, I’ll have fewer units to contend with my final term, and I’ll be able to devote more time and attention to 502 (Choice and Learning), which is the one Foundations course I haven’t completed (I dropped it last spring because of the load I was trying to get through) and the one course that I am most dreading.

Update [9.21.04]: I ended up dropping out of the Online Searching course, which was not a function of the merit of the course (it looks like a great class), but a function of my workload and my desire to fight my tendency to bite off more than I can chew. So my schedule now is still hectic and busy, but at least it’s rational.

A very nice sunny day today, not too hot, almost no humidity to speak of. And the light is starting to take on that languid, deep-toned, Gatsby-esque autumnal quality. I went outside briefly tonight at dusk and looked west. There is nothing in California (at least nothing in any heavily populated areas of California) to compare to the colors of the twilight here. Absolutely stunning in clarity and brightness.

Student Move-In Days were this past week, from Wednesday through Friday. The dotty Ann Arbor News ran a front-pager recently featuring a list of the Top 10 ways you could tell students were back in town, but, unless you’re a Martian having made a recent first-time Earth landing, it really isn’t all that difficult to tell when they’re back. The State Street corridor between William and Liberty, for instance. During the summer, it’s got traffic, sure, but once the school year pattern is back, it’s not out of the ordinary for it to take over 5 minutes to traverse that one block in a vehicle. There’s of course no parking anywhere, as the News points out, and the license plates on the cars are as likely to be from Illinois, Maryland, or Florida as they are to be from Michigan. Central campus is clogged with packs of dozens of roving, frothing-at-the-mouth freshmen in flip-flops, training shorts, white undershirts, hip-riding jeans, and belly shirts carrying credit cards and looking for things to buy and stash in their dorm rooms. There are campus tours that wheel around and stop at all the buildings for minutes on end, though the obligatory nature of these tours is as evident as the glassy stares on the faces of the tour-takers. There’s that spanking new blue-and-gold banner hanging from the front of Hatcher saying WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, which always seems a little beside the point to me; does the lettered word “LIBRARY” on the original architecture of the façade not sufficiently denote what the building is? There’s the parents arguing heatedly over what year a particular building opened. There’s the sudden increase in customers in virtually every business along the Liberty/William circuit (except for David’s Books, the used bookstore on William next door to the Cottage Inn, which was almost deserted when I stopped in on Friday). There’s the University maintenance vehicles roaring down the pedestrian pathways whose drivers seem calculatedly oblivious to the intended use of the paths. There’s the always-predictable frat houses on State, whose residents are out in the front yards making sure that there’s enough sand on what should be a grassy front lawn to pretend that they’re ready for a scene from “MTV Beach House” or “The OC,” playing an appropriately studly game of beach volleyball.

Ah, yes, summer’s officially at an end.

Odd weather this past week … for the first time almost all summer long (except maybe for a few days in May and June) we had what could truthfully be called Summer Weather with capital letters, with highs in the mid-80s, strong humidity, and relatively cloud-free skies. Then, yesterday (Saturday), it rained part of the day, and by close to midnight, it was almost foggy (though not overcast), and outside in the backyard were more moths than I think I’ve ever seen in my life. Very odd, but then again, in Michigan, meteorologically, not much is odd.