Tuesday, May 18, 2010

To Dice a More Perfect Onion

Yesterday was Evaluation Day. Only 3 of 14 students responded, leaving me with one good, one average, and one bad eval. (I'm pretty sure who that one was, and he wasn't such a peach of a student.) I'm certain I can take away from this that the other 11 were satisfied/neutral enough not to feel the need to bleed all over me. Combine that with a big ball of internal rawr, a non-stop three week traveling schedule, and the annual let's-tally-how-much-work-you-did-accomplish v. let's-tally-how-much-you-should-have-accomplished reckoning and I morphed into one roiling, seething mass of primordial elements, a la The Blob.



I leap and glide and slip and slide my way home only to realize that I have a random smattering of groceries to pull into a cohesive, vaguely-healthy dinner. (Dieting--more later.) I have onions. This dinner is saved. My teaching skills may be questionable, but by golly, I can dice an onion. I learned this awesome trick from the Chinese cook on tv. Um...Simply Ming. (It's amazing what you can learn when PBS is coming through in any useful way.)

Slice one end of the onion off, and remove the papery skin layer. Don't cut off the other end. Make four or five slices across the onion in three directions, and voila! A beautifully cubic dice of onion. A dice so beautiful, so translucently pungent, so crisply caramelizing, such a supporter of the chickpeas and less of a competitor. The primordial ooze began slowly to retreat in the face of such brilliance. To question its ability to stand in the face of such superiority.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Squee

One of my super incredible, nerdy student workers got her dream internship today at Historic New England. I like to think I had a little hand in that. So proud of her hard work!

Saturday, May 8, 2010

My work blog got picked up by speaktopower.org, topsy.com, and Curator Journal. So, you know. Yay me!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

An update on TN museums in the wake of flooding

http://www.fhu.edu/blogs/archives/post/Local-museums-across-spectrum-of-flooding.aspx

This is a link to my work blog, "The Archives Weekly." I'm keeping a running list of what I can find out about museums and archives in the flooded areas of Middle and West TN. Please feel free to update by commenting or contacting me directly.

Here's the latest from Country Music Hall of Fame:
http://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/nashville-flood-update

Monday, May 3, 2010

Mea Culpa?



Spring is here, and without a couple of weekend tornado rallies, it wouldn't be West TN. So when I said the end was near...I didn't really mean to invite the apocalypse (which is wet, not snowy. At least then we didn't rescue people using boats, and we didn't keep running for cover every three hours). Was really looking forward to Allison's gathering in the sun. I guess she and I can trade declamations even without the trees.

Despite some flooding, all is well in Chester County. Parts of Tipton, Madison and Gibson Counties experienced severe flooding and the Navy got flooded out in Shelby County. The Navy. Got flooded out. Mom and Dad slept through the whole thing. Apparently, tornado warnings are routinely ignored by Baptist East. Which is probably practical.

A beautiful sunny day welcomed and beloved by all.
Listening to: birds.