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chomijiSo I meant to post about this like, Tuesday night, or maybe yesterday. Didn't happen. And nothing disastrous happened either - in fact, I had a lovely (if too-brief) visit with smillaraaq. But so much that was supposed to happen - didn't.
So I had this unlovely cold. And the Mr. had this gout flare up. And I had scheduled the following line-up for myself for the weekend:
Saturday: Attend morning Torah service (for the first time in weeks) followed by evening D&D game
Sunday: Take the Young Lady and her best friend shopping for jeans (Torrid was having a sale) and get my grocery shopping done.
Monday: Join smillaraaq downtown at the National Museum of the American Indian for the multicultural music festival that went on most of the weekend.
Tuesday: Watch the Inauguration on the TV and do the wash.
All that got done was the shopping expedition and the chore stuff and watching the Inauguration. And the groceries had to be split over two days because I was too tired to do the usual massive weekly trip.
I spent most of the weekend blowing my nose, coughing, and carrying trays of sustenance to the Mr. We have three functional stories to this house - TV in the basement rec room, our room and his office - with his big Macintosh with the Civilization game - on the top floor. It was easiest to park him and his gouty foot on one floor for the day and carry his meals to him. And the Young Lady disappeared to her best friend's house for most of Saturday and Monday.
On Sunday, after the shopping, the Young Lady, her best friend, and the friend's little sister (2 years younger) stayed with us to watch the concert at the Lincoln Memorial on TV, and we ordered in pizza.
On Monday, smilla came up to visit after the festival was over, bearing lovely souvenirs for us all. She also showed me cellphone video of some of the dancing and helped me make dinner. She made us frybread, which was delicious!
I guess I should not be surprised that the Young Lady insisted on watching the Inauguration on Monday on Facebook instead of downstairs with us ... .
Ah well. Thus is life, and we have a very promising-looking new President. Yays!
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Date: 2009-01-23 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-23 07:03 pm (UTC)It does look like we have a nice new President!
Big hugs.
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Date: 2009-01-24 04:03 am (UTC)Very stupid!! I've got one of my lingering bronchitis cough things ... my doctor just went ahead and called in the benzonatate pills! Without making me come in! This is a bit scary. I don't know whether to send her flowers or report her to the AMA ... .
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Date: 2009-01-24 04:05 am (UTC)It was pretty cold! I didn't envy Ms. Obama and Dr. Biden out there in nylons! (Hillary Clinton was wearing one of her pantsuits, smart person that she is.)
Yeah - wow! Look at those first actions!
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Date: 2009-01-24 04:07 am (UTC)I've got the usual stupid cough, but I have my medicine for it too. I'm so sorry that you are sick too! You're right, it doesn't sound like the same bug at all. Are you having any fever? Does gargling with mild saline help?
> hugs! <
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Date: 2009-01-24 04:12 am (UTC)Those are some fine executive orders right there, yes they are. :D
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Date: 2009-01-24 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-24 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-24 05:31 pm (UTC)Heh, I thought about that possible interpretation of what I said after I said it ... that's just silly cho-preferences wandering into things, and certainly not meant as an actual judgment of the relatively brain power of the women involved. Hell, they're probably all smarter than I am on the absolute standard!
Believe me, I can comprehend the the nature of the spotlight/microscope that Ms. Obama is now under, even though I can't fully understand it. And the children are an extension of her in many people's eyes - so many chances for other people to nitpick, I shudder to think of it! I think she looked fantastic (that's a difficult color to wear well, and she looked marvelous), and I'm glad for the explanation about the tights, because I was worried about her ... .
It's interesting, the names you're using for her, because I haven't decided what feels right/respectful to me yet. It's the explanations of the Japanese conventions on this, plus the fact that I've noticed that for myself, the more seemingly respectful I'm still being when I actually know the person well, the less I like them. And if I don't refer to the person by any sort of name at all, that's real death.
IIRC, on the rare occasions that I referred to the most recent former president, he was W (pronounced Dubya). His wife was Laura Bush - always both names. I had no grudge against her, but look who she married! I'm never sure what to do about Hillary Clinton. The fact that her enemies sneeringly referred to her by first name alone makes me reluctant to do the same. And so on, and so forth.
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Date: 2009-01-26 04:42 am (UTC)Thanks! It's definitely being quieted. It still pops up for a few moments from time to time, but the last time I had a really bad bout (where I simply couldn't seem to stop) was well over 24 hrs ago. I'm hoping it's on the run.
How about you? How are you doing?
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Date: 2009-01-26 04:51 am (UTC)See, but that's the thing - you have a connection there through a shared culture that makes your using that sort of casual name appropriate!
On Wednesday, when I came in, the pictures of W. and the head of the agency (who left officially on Inauguration Day) were already down, but Mr. Obama's picture wasn't up yet. An hour or two later, when Abbie and I went for coffee, we passed a group chatting enthusiastically in the hall - two security guards and some staffers from Admin. Services (building support, mailroom, procurement - that sort of thing), which has a number of its offices near the coffee shop. The youngest woman in the group was exclaiming "Well, they better get Barack's picture right up there on that wall where he belongs!" There was a sudden silence as all the older folks look at her, and she quickly said, "I mean Mr. President Obama - I know I've got to give him his respect!" It was an interesting look at another view on the subject.
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Date: 2009-01-26 05:04 am (UTC)I know what you mean. We always had a few African-American students in my schools, when I was growing up (as well as a goodly number of us Jews), and they were always impeccably turned out, probably for the same reason.
This also reminds me of my mother's attempts at being a DC suburban mom instead of a New York Jew from a garment-industry family. She was always impeccably turned out in the local Southern-influenced style until her mental illness got really bad in the late 1970s. In fact, I was regularly horrified by my New York cousins' fashion choices for synagogue occasions like Bar Mitzvahs, which were much more urban and loud and avant gard than what Mom thought was appropriate.
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Date: 2009-01-26 05:06 am (UTC)(BTW, did you get a chance to read nextian's thing that I posted about? It was very moving to me.)
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Date: 2009-01-27 03:02 am (UTC)I got it from here. He has some very lovely things, including some music-oriented ones, and a few mildly strange patriotic U.S. ones. I'm rather annoyed that on the ones with an entire little section of text but no English (like this one), his site doesn't have translations. Somewhere else (an online shop selling Judaica) I found a statement that this one says "You shall pursue peace." I gotta get a new Hebrew dictionary (mine fell apart ages ago).
I actually had another version of this that was a little better (more appropriate pattern on the sides, better centering of the main motif), but I didn't upload at lunch on Friday (stupid me), and I was procrastinating commenting on nextian's post, so I just made another one and did it.
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Date: 2009-01-27 03:02 am (UTC)> hugs!! <
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Date: 2009-01-27 03:05 am (UTC)Awww, thanks! Yeah, we basically are. But it keeps happening - this is the third stupid virus I've had since mid-December. I'm fully expecting one to come along just in time to screw up Katsucon - that's probably why I haven't done anything about registering in advance.
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Date: 2009-01-27 03:16 am (UTC)I think most, if not all of the group, were POC. The young woman who put her foot in her mouth definitely was. I think it was likely the age difference that tripped her up, really.
Yes, that was a lovely photo! The diversity idea is one of several reasons the Young Lady is attending a public school, and we deliberately moved to a location where she could both get a good education and be surrounded by people with varied heritages. We both felt very strongly about that: it's not a white world, and we wanted her to understand it from the get-go. (Unfortunately, the kids do make their own little micro-nations at the schools ... .)
It's tough to be in security ... I think I told you about my summertime experiences as a security aide at the Smithsonian?
>> you'd have to be their calabash aunty <<
0o0;
> Is overwhelmed by her new responsibilities <
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Date: 2009-01-31 03:44 am (UTC)Well, actually, in some ways government can be satisfying ... even though the red tape can be hideously aggravating, we do stuff for all the special emphasis months, and even though that's only little tiny baby steps toward real acceptance etc., it's a lot better than nothing. And there's all the ethics stuff we work on too - you can work i nmany places where no one ever talks about on-the-job ethics issues.
But in many cases, some of the older staffers in that scene had likely worked for the gov't for years themselves, or had parents who worked for the gov't, or both. So for them it isn't as tricky as you might think.
The Smithsonian ... well, the need for security increases during the summer when there are more visitors, so they were hiring people as security aids. When I found out that they needed a lot of them, I told our whole D&D group, and we all applied and got in - but the security folks were smart: they split us up among the different museums. I went to work at the American History. I was 18, I guess (James Holloway, who was in my sister's grade, was only 15, and had to get a work permit.)
(And this got so long, I had to split it!)
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Date: 2009-01-31 03:46 am (UTC)Except for the fact that I was on my feet all day, it was a wonderfully interesting job. We were issued uniform shirts and had to wear navy or black slacks or skirts and black shoes, and every morning we were issued radios - unless we were working in the coat room. The coat room and the freight elevators were the only posts where you could sit. Each post had a number, and each guard company had a letter that was referred to by the military call terminology: we were "C" company - "Charlie." So your post would be, say "Charlie 11."
You were assigned your post at morning roll-call, and then you had to tell them how many hours you would work: minimum of 5, maximum of 8. They quickly noticed I only worked 8 when I could sit. But they also liked me in the newspaper exhibit, which at that time had the most hands-on stuff, because the real guard officers who wandered around, walking a beat and checking up on us, noticed I could get kids to behave without pissing off their parents. So sometimes I got to sit and sometimes I got to monitor bratty kids and guard the original Franklin printing press.
I think that was probably the first time I'd really interacted on a prolonged basis with people who were working a job that didn't require a college education. And it was a big chunk of education for me. The senior guards were wonderful. They were mostly retired military noncommissioned officer with tons of people smarts, and they took their work seriously but were mostly very humorous in an ironic way. I'd say probably 80% of then were POC, the rest white. And just about all of them were men, but it wasn't any sort of problem. No harassment, no crude remarks. As I said, their people skills were excellent. And I learned a lot from them.
I really began to resent the attitude of some of the curators and other "professional" staff, who often treated the guards like they were brainless drones, ordering them to take care of trash that visitors had dropped and so on. It's not like there weren't custodial staffers around, and if there had been an actual fire or terrorist attack, it was a lead pipe cinch who would actually be saving lives and keeping the artifacts from being damaged further, and who would be panicking and running about uselessly.
My relationships with the other summer hires were a little rockier. Most of them were recent graduates of the DC public schools, and I was that weird white girl from the suburbs.
There came a day when I hadn't got up early enough to wash my hair, and I put a bandanna over it because I thought it looked rotten. That wasn't proper uniform attire, and I was told at roll call that I'd have to take it off. I rushed to the restroom to fuss over my hair before I had to be on post. I think it was the first time that the other girls had seen me do anything so normal, and they started giving me advice. One of them remarked comfortingly that "no one can tell with your hair anyway," and then another girl, behind my back, muttered something about how I had "dog hair."
I felt mildly hurt, but you know, I guess it is sort of like dog hair. Certainly it gave me a momentary experience of what it was like to have physical features that deviated from the "established norm."
Anyway, it was all kinds of educational, and by far the most interesting summer job I ever had.
(And no, I haven't read Tatum ... of course it's relevant to what I just recounted, too! I remember oyce posting about it.)
Hebrew calligrapher
Date: 2009-02-10 03:28 am (UTC)I'm quite tempted to look into purchasing one. We have a bit of Judaica inherited from my parents (that's why we have two seder plates - one they gave us and the one we used through my childhood), but I haven't really invested in any on my own.
Heee ... the x-ray-type fill on the animals there reminds me of my own paper-cutting, to some degree ... .
Re: Hebrew calligrapher
Date: 2009-02-16 02:48 am (UTC)I'll have to do a wolf for you sometime (although as I said at the con, that one's meant to be a fox - I'd make a wolf a bit leggier). I thought of making you a wolf valentine, but I ran out of time ... (story of my life).