Bringing in the Bacon: Thoughts Over a Newcastle

Good evening, all. Good news on a good evening: Anna was offered and accepted a job with the Interior Architecture (IARC) department at UNC-G! Everything unfolded in a rather interesting manner.  As she was planning for her interview with Guilford County, she realized the position would require her to hound those who neglected to regularly pay child support, imploring them to settle their accounts.Those who know Anna know she is not an aggressive, confrontational person. The interview on Monday morning merely confirmed her suspicion that this was not a suitable job for her. Within an hour of the interview’s conclusion, UNC-G’s Human Resources department called to officially offer Anna the job. Suffice it to say, Anna no loner felt torn regarding which job to take if both were offered, and she gladly accepted the UNC-G job.

Shortly after Anna accepted the position, she called the IARC department to inform the program head, Dr. Marshall-Baker, of her decision. When Patty, the other office secretary, answered the phone and Anna shared the news, Patty, as I understand it, said, “Oh, good! We really liked you!” Rightly so, too; Anna is somehow able to exhibit a professional attitude alongside her compassionate and personable personality.

Work seems to be going fairly well for her, though she has a number of logistical loopholes to hurdle right now. I’ll let her write more about her job next week, but I did want to forward the good news to you.

Teaching has gone fairly well for me thus far. I teach five sections of Expository Writing, each class containing roughly 24 students. I’m dreading next Friday, which is when all five classes submit their first essay to me, for grading essays is going to be rather painstaking. There are a number of differences between Liberty and Randolph Community College to which I’m still becoming acclimated. I found this stark contrast most evident in that I went from an evangelical university to having to stop students who, while reading an essay aloud in class that used the word “evangelical,” did not know what the word meant. I share an office with a Mexican woman named Dolores who teaches Spanish, which never would happen at Liberty. I find myself gazing for inappropriate amounts of time at men’s ear piercings (as well as other piercings). I also find myself started by the, er-hmm, “beachy” attire girls choose to wear.

The student body at Randolph is rather fascinating. I have a number of mothers in my classes who had children while in high school. For them, college is a promising opportunity for them to provide not only for themselves but for their child or children as well. One student even went to school expressly to attend college alongside her now-grown daughter. A few of the adult men in my classes, like a number of men at Randolph, lost their jobs when the economy nose-dove, and they are hence improving their qualifications for jobs by returning to school to further their education. Many of these individuals have a great deal of work ahead of them, but they are determined to utilize this opportunity. If the younger students would observe this and follow this example, they would be very wise to do so.

Anna and I are very thankful that we will have compensation for our labor arriving shortly (my first paycheck comes next week). Although my grandfather left some furniture in his old house for us to use, we need our own as well. First on our furniture list is either a couch or a love-seat (essentially something we can actually sit on together). We also need quite  a few book cases as shelved homes for our ever-growing library of books that are all heaped in alphabetical and categorical stacks in the living room right now. We decided to spread the books out throughout the house rather than centralize them all in one room (mainly because the layout of the house doesn’t coincide well with our bookish ways, and we can’t comfortably situate any one room into a suitable library). I’ve already stated my intention of acquiring a few new poetry collections with my first paycheck (among them, Seamus Heaney’s forthcoming collection, Human Chain). They say you should always be up front about your expectations in relationships and in marriage.

Phoenix, as you can imagine, has not enjoyed having lost her second of two “people” now that Anna works during the day (her first day was on Wednesday). Once either of us return home from our workday, she shadows us all about the house; she rejects the possibility of being left home alone yet again (as if she could control it). We make sure to spend time with her, pet her, and so forth, for we don’t wish for her to disconnect from us out of loneliness and boredom. We’ve been taking her out for walks around the neighborhood, and she livens up from the activity.

Reading is still rather slow for both of us. I finished Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life this week. Anna recently finished Ian McEwan’s relatively recent novel, On Chesil Beach, and she has all but insisted that I also read the novel. I’m nearing the halfway point in Anna Karenina. I started Louise Gluck’s most recent collection of poems, A Village Life, this morning, and I find the collection rather disappointing, what with its over-prosaic tone and, oftentimes, dull diction.

We watched Shekhar Kapur’s films about Queen Elizabeth this week. “Elizabeth” was slightly better than the sequel, but the films struck me as deficient, try as Cate Blanchett did to better them. Perhaps the fault lies with the screenwriter(s); yet even then, one would think Kapur would have insisted on a rewrite rather than proceed with a poorly-told story. Ah, well.  A copy of Ingmar Bergman’s “Autumn Sonata” should arrive from Netflix tomorrow, so I trust that film will revitalize our movie-watching after two duds. I doubt you can go wrong with Bergman.

That’s all for now, I’m afraid. I’ve been up since 5:00 this morning, and I am ready for sleep. Stay well, friends, and stay in touch.

– R

A quick succession of busy nothings.

Hi everyone; Anna here.

We’ve had an interesting week, as Ryan has completed his first week of teaching, and I completed a second interview at UNC-Greensboro. Whether this or something else works out, I will certainly be glad to finally be working as well. Until then, I’ve had to be creative in finding constructive things to do while waiting for Ryan to return home. Usually I end up with a rotation between washing dishes, doing laundry, vacuuming up endless piles of dog hair, watching movies that Ryan wouldn’t want to see, playing my lovely piano, playing Flashlight with Phoenix (she chases a flashlight beam, in much the same was as a cat chases a laser pointer), taking Phoenix for walks, doing our grocery shopping, writing snail mail, reading, and other good things. It sounds like quite a lot, but you would be surprised at how quickly I get through the list!

Today, I broke from routine and took on one of Ryan’s usual tasks: mowing the yard. Our house sits on a 2-acre lot, so needless to say, there is quite a bit of green. So out I went, bopping around in the tennis shoes I never wear, hopped on the mower and figured out how to operate the choke and the parking brake. I managed to bump and bounce my way over the whole yard without losing any fingers or toes, and without killing anything (except perhaps bugs, and for that I feel no remorse). There is certainly something satisfying about the neat lines in the grass once the job is done, but I was glad to give up my seat on the mower. And judging from the persistent ringing in my ears afterwards, they were glad I was done, too. (Incidentally, next time might involve safety goggles and earphones — those low hanging branches really got me this time!)

Something I’ve been reading/thinking about quite a bit recently is the characteristics of the “Millennial” generation. I finished a book not too long ago called The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation is Rocking the Workplace. The authors essentially dissect the trademarks of the Millennial generation (collaboration, social networking, search for meaning in work, etc.) and apply them to the workplace. Since then, I read part of this article in the NYT called “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” that principally (from what I read) deals with the “new” parameters of adulthood that are seemingly emerging from my generation. A thought-provoking and enlightening discussion, especially as I see a lot of myself (obviously) in both the criticism and the praises.

The rest of life has been, as the blog entry title suggests, a quick succession of busy nothings (shout out to all the Jane Austen fans!). 🙂 We are in Raleigh this weekend visiting with Ryan’s mom, and enjoying a change of pace from our peaceful country life. Lunch today was at Firebirds – DELICIOUS! I’m now tempted to pick up a kitchen torch at Bed, Bath and Beyond to make the a Creme Brulee cheesecake like we had at lunch today – yum! After a quick trip to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, where we picked up a new light fixture for our nautical-themed den, we stopped at Edward McKay Used Books, where we racked up a typical stack of bargains, including Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, a book of Czeslaw Milosz’s collected essays, Peter Irons’s A People’s History of the Supreme Court, and a couple others that I can’t remember the titles of right now. If there were any store that could, in a matter of minutes, completely dismantle our monthly budget, it’s Edward McKay. Some people think of depreciation as the money you lose when you buy a new car; Ryan and I think of it as the money you lose when you buy a book new instead of used!

With that, I think I’ll close for this week. Apologies if you leave us a comment and we don’t reply; the internet at our house has been out for a week and a half. (Incidentally, my phone calls to Time Warner’s technical support call to mind this comic from The Oatmeal.)

Cheers, and may your weekend be spared calls to Customer Service!

A, R & P

We’re Back

Sorry for the gap between posts. We were away on another mini-vacation last weekend.

I may as well start with recounting vacation. I got to meet more members of Anna’s family that I still hadn’t met. Her (and now my) uncle, Evan, is fond of planning outings; for him, the more exciting and thrilling, the better. Since we arrived in Fairmont, WV in the evening on Wednesday night, we stayed in for the evening. On Thursday night, however, anyone with college loans was eligible to participate in “Grown Ups Night Out” (three of Anna’s siblings are still in grade school), an evening in which we ate at a local Italian restaurant. We then puttered about in a Barnes & Noble until a late showing of “Inception” started. A very pleasant evening. The following day, we decided to go kayaking that beautiful afternoon. Afterward, we spent time on the family’s plot of land along the river, and we talked and ate by the campfire. Neither of us had ever been kayaking before. Considering the fact that Anna and I plan to invest in used kayaks sooner than later, I think it’s safe to say we enjoyed ourselves.

We don’t have any other mini-vacations planned any time soon since classes begin for me on Monday. I’ve been thoroughly overwhelmed this week, what with making syllabi, attending meetings, trying to remember new passwords I already forgot, etc. In my mind, everyone seems to have their act together except me; I suspect this is an unnecessarily critical judgment of myself, but it’s hard not to feel that way when you’re asking questions with answers so “common-sensical” you begin to believe there really is such a thing as a stupid question. There is, you think, even such a thing as a very stupid question. And you’re the one asking it. Ah, well. One day, I’ll be old and wise. For now, though, I’ll keep stopping people to ask where a building is, only for them to point at the one just to my right that I’ve just passed by.

Anna had her job interview with UNCG yesterday morning. She woke up for it even earlier than I normally wake up , which is saying something. They’ve already called her in for a follow-up interview. She also receive a phone call earlier this week requesting an interview for a Guilford Country child care position. I’m sure she’ll tell you more about it next week when she posts here. I’m very happy to see her slowly refining her idea of where she sees herself going vocationally. Her confidence in her future is steadily strengthening, and I’m delighted to see it, for she is, as I’m sure you’ve gathered from her posts, a woman with great promise.

While it’s certainly nice to have a job myself and to see Anna taking swift steps toward having a job as well, I’m also sad for our “extended honeymoon” (also known as mutual unemployment) ending. Already gone are the days when every minute is shared. We’re moving into unshared experiences in our respective workplaces, and I don’t doubt that communication is going to become all the more important. We can, of course, learn the names of the other person’s co-workers, but there’s a disconnect of experience without describing at length those co-workers, their lives, their oddities, quirks, and impulses, their behavior, and so forth. I’m sure we’ll get to meet one another’s co-workers at Christmas parties and such occasions, but there is an unavoidable sense in which I’ll be isolated from her work life and she from mine to some extent. The partial isolation, I suspect, can turn into a stronger, more all-encompassing form of isolation if we’re not careful to retell our workplace experiences as much as possible. Perhaps our readers who are older than us can shed light on this or respond to it; if so, I covet your comments and advice.

I may as well say here that, in addition to simply recalling our experiences on this blog, we also want to reflect on marriage itself. We both consider marriage a delicate and fragile gift. We will occasionally write about our struggles and challenges not to vent, but because we suspect other couples face similar and parallel challenges. It’s not our intention to simply complain about problems or exude frustration. I sincerely doubt anyone would want to read such garbled nonsense.

And I hope you always sense how glad we are to be married to one another. (Or, at least, how glad I am to be married to Anna; I’ll let her speak for herself.)

Reading has slowed down tremendously. Anna breezed through David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Perhaps to your surprise, I haven’t finished a single book since my last post. As always, we’ve watched a few movies, too: Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” Jeff Stilson’s documentary “Good Hair,” Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows,” Nancy Meyers’ “Something’s Gotta Give,” and, as I mentioned earlier, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” Thanks to those who have passed along movie recommendations; they’ve all made it onto our Netflix queue.

That’s all for now. I’ve got to work on my syllabi more. Thanks for your time and friendship.

– R