Roll of 28+1, day 28: Waste not

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roll of 28

Roll of 28+1, day 19: Lonely job

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roll of 28

Sometimes I sneak the Bows onto campus with me, because they know how to chill quietly and behave themselves while I work.

Today, I left them at home, which was surely for the better. High schoolers were spilled all over the hallways, as the campus was hosting a regional speech competition. Youths in suits talking and gesticulating at walls, plastic file tubs stacked precariously on cheap dollies, the crisp syllables of well-groomed competitors in sugar-fueled conversation… it would have been overwhelming to the Bows, indeed.

Roll of 28+1, day 17: The revolution is not a dinner party

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mao, roll of 28

Vietnam burns and me I spurn Mao Mao
Johnson giggles and me I wiggle Mao Mao
Napalm runs and me I gun Mao Mao
Cities die and me I cry Mao Mao
Whores cry and me I sigh Mao Mao!

~ Claude Channes, “Mao Mao“

Roll of 28+1, day 15: Loaded udon

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roll of 28, udon

15 February 2012

Well, I guess this is the “hump” of Roll of 28 where I am uninspired to take a picture of anything else but my lunch. And it was a busy day. Still, I tried to eat decently.

Lunch today was a big ol’ bowl of udon with Taiwanese spinach, buna shimeji, a cake of tempura with veggies, boiled egg, and delectably squishy and spongy mini age tofu. With a side of guava juice and some vitamins.

Roll of 28+1, day 14: The excess of love

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roll of 28, valentine's day

And as a reminder of how little some things have changed, here are two pictures of the same tree taken exactly four years apart — the one on the left from Valentine’s Day 2008, and the one on the right from today.

Roll of 28+1, day 13: 英語禁地

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roll of 28

No printing in English…

… or they’ll read your dirty love letters out loud to the whole class.

Roll of 28+1, day ten: 拆na scholar

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roll of 28

Here’s a glimpse into my workaday life — or what passes for it.

10 February 2012

One of my grad school cohorts delivered a mock job talk this afternoon. He did quite well; I’m proud to call him my senpai. Well technically, we came in the same year, but he’s on the job market, while I’m still limping along with no foreseeable end in sight.

In the humanities, we each progress at our own pace. Or until the funding runs out…

Roll of 28+1, day four: On the hunt

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bonzo dog band, dog album covers, irish wolfhound, record stores, roll of 28

Yup, we still buy records.

4 February 2012

To make this post dog-related, let me show you this album cover for the Bonzo Dog [Doo-Dah] Band, The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse (1968), featuring Irish Wolfhounds.

Okay, fine, you can find a larger image in better resolution elsewhere. Or you can locate the actual album and hold it in your hands (ah, the tactile pleasures of a real record store!). Anyway, I have a track from them queued up in the next collection of dog songs. Stay tuned.

The difference between his family and mine

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snapfish

First: The Doggy Daddy is no longer to be referred to herein as the DD. He’s as much a “father” figure to our dogs as I’m a mother to… uhm, anything or anyone. It’s not that I take offense at the idea that pet guardianship is like parenting, or that the Bows are like children. However, I shouldn’t pretend to know anything about parenting and I WON’T know for some time to come, having made a pretty conscious decision not to be a biological mother in my own lifetime. Since the moniker far exceeds either of our experiences, I may as well drop it.

So from now on, the DD is just RJ.

Now here’s an example of the difference between RJ’s family and mine, when it comes to pets.

Bowpi is conducting quality control inspections on our second annual calendar order from Snapfish. I made one last year for RJ’s grandma, and it was apparently such a hit that I had to compile another one for 2012. We printed up an extra one for his folks this year. RJ’s family was the first to greet us when we moved back to the States with Bowdu, but since they haven’t actually had a chance to meet Bowpi, the pictures help flesh out her personality when his folks inevitably ask how the dogs are doing.

They always ask, just like they ask how I’m doing, because they see the dogs as part of the family.

Then, there’s my folks. Though my Facebook profile picture has featured myself flanked by both Bows since this March (and we’ve had her since two Marches ago), my mother just figured out that we added a new canine member to the household.

Mom: I heard you have TWO dogs now.
Me: Ha ha ha… so it finally dawned on you.
Mom: *sigh* Such a nuisance. Think of how much trouble it is!
Me: Nah, she’s the most easy-going gal. Just a wee little second dog.
Mom: Little? I don’t think so! And so much dog fur everywhere!
Me: Oh, Bowdu sheds enough for three dogs. Can’t be helped. Besides, she barely has any fur. She’s an African Basenji.
Mom: An African dog? They have dogs in Africa?
Me: *exasperated* Yes, mom.
Mom: The Africans can’t even feed themselves! How can they take care of dogs?
Me: Mom!! Geez. A good African hunting dog can be very valuable for bringing home meat, you know…
Mom: Their dogs are not for eating?
Me: MOM!!!
Mom: By the way, your sister brought you some bawan.* She couldn’t bring the sauce on the plane. Do you know how to make it? …

… And so she pinballed off to another topic, without even bothering to ask the name of our second Bow.

* My younger sister, who now lives in my neck of the woods, recently made the long journey home to visit the folks for the holidays, and brought back some bawan 肉圓, or “meat dumplings” as a local Taiwanese restaurant calls them on the menu. Our recipe is a unique family specialty and one of the tastes of home that I absolutely crave… if only I didn’t have to risk parental nuttiness just to score a bite.

delicious Taiwanese bawan (meat dumpling), filled with pork, bamboo, mushrooms

Library therapy

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book stacks

Every now and then, when I have to fight the urge to run away from grad school and move the House of Two Bows to a Wyoming goat farm or something, I raid the university library and come back with a stack of stuff to read for “fun.”

It’s a good reminder that not everything can be found online (yet!) and that I’m in the right place. I have access to some top-notch resources and the fortune, if not always the leisure, to be engaged in the pursuit and production of knowledge for a living.

Besides, I don’t even like goat’s milk.