Apt. 11D

Out of town until Sunday.

A Very Tardy Weekend Journal

After days of rain and fallish weather, we got slammed with sticky heat on Saturday. I spent the day broiling on a back porch watching a distant friend open baby gifts for two hours. Lots of coordinated Winnie the Pooh accessories. Light switches. Garbage cans. Crib bolsters. Sometimes I'm glad my kids have grown past the cute stage, and it's actually difficult to find clothes for them in colors other than navy blue and maroon. Not a big fan of maroon.

Question of the Day -- Explaining Your Job to A Kid

Finished the paper. I just sent it to Steve and asked him if he could proof it, please. Yeah, that would be great. [Channeling the voice of the boss from Office Space.]

This afternoon with my head still on the paper, I took a break to feed Jonah. I explained why I've been ignoring him all week and giving him carte blanche on the Game Cube. I told him I am writing a paper for a conference in Chicago next week. I'm going to meet with all the other professors. We're going to get all dressesd up. I'm going to get on a stage and read my paper with a microphone and then they are going to raise their hands and tell me how their dissertations relate to my paper.

Jonah is not sure what he thinks about this conference except that he hopes they happen more often so that he can have more time on the Game Cube.

Steve just tells the kids he's a banker, because his job is rather confusing. I don't have a firm grip on what he does, and when he starts using words like "flex deals" and "the repo documentation," I'm completely befuddled.

I actually had the hardest time explaining to the kids, and well everyone else, what my job was when I was a stay at home parent without the professor bit, too.

Question of the Day: How do you describe your job to kids?

Response to Dan and Megan

As I said in the earlier post, I watched the whole Drezner-McArdle blogginghead thingie. (I refuse to call it a diavlog.) I found myself wanting to interrupt them several times. Good thing I have one of these blog gadgets. Otherwise I would have to wait until I saw Dan next week and tell him what I thought.

Dan says that political scientists have improved their wardrobe in recent years. We're now anti-dowdy. Mental note - pack the pointy sling backs for the conference.

Then Dan and Megan discuss the recent eruption in the political and academic blogosphere about whether or not that the foreign policy punditry has to accept some responsibility for the War in Iraq. If you've missed it, Megan and Dan summarize it pretty well and they have links on the sidebar.

I opposed the war though I didn't have a blog at the time. My opposition mostly took the form of my brother and I fighting with my dad over the the dining room table. So, I sympathize with Greenwald in his frustration. However, I..um.. er... how do i say this... "the netroots" is a little too... um... er... quick to use words like imperialism and ... em ...er... quick to find plots and conspiracies ... Alright. I have just blown my liberal credentials. I better shut up.

Well, one more word. I think we got into this war not because of Haliburton or oil or hegemonic American culture. We got into because good, old fashioned hubris. George and his cronies thought they could do it.  And even if George had better cronies who managed things better, we still would be losing this war.

Dan wants to know why every New Yorker who lived through the Guiliani era thinks he's crackers. After all, crime dropped while he was mayor. (Raising her hand.) In addition to the points that Megan made about not being able to really pinpoint the drop in crime to his policies, we think he's crackers, because of how he dealt with criticism while he was Mayor. If the press mentioned that he was sleeping with secretary for communication, ugly, vindictive Rudy showed his face. Public temper tantrums were regular features of the Rudy administration. We can deal with a little craziness in the city, but that kind of insanity does not play well elsewhere.

Wall Street. How bad is it? Well, hubby comes home with horror stories but the damage is contained. It is hitting the mortgage industries and the hedge funds that invested in them, but your 401 plan isn't gone yet. One buddy who works at subprime mortgage hedge fund will be collecting unemployment next week. Bonuses aren't going to be fantastic this year. He has a lot of extra work dealing with the clean up of these messes. The general mood isn't dismal, but concerned.

48 Hours In Front of My Computer

I've been glued to my computer since Monday. I'm pulling together a paper for next week's APSA conference and have already gotten the "where's your stupid paper" e-mail from the chair of the panel. It's now a tradition. I must wait until I get the "where's your stupid paper" e-mail before I kick into high gear and finish off the thing. I really must get a new tradition, because this week has been crazy.

The plan is to write the conclusion tonight. Edit all day tomorrow and send it out tomorrow night. The problem with writing papers during the last weeks of August is that the kids are home full time. Camp and daycare are finished. So, I've been letting them play as much video games as they like with the vague hope that Tim Burke is right and I haven't permanently scarred them. So what if Ian has started calling us names from Super Mario Brothers? Jonah is Bowser and I'm Kirby.

In addition to writing the paper, I somehow got sucked into Facebook. On Sunday, I followed a link in my sitemeter referrals to Facebook. Facebook wouldn't let me see the page until I became a member, so I decided to sign up. Henry Farrell said that he signed up on Facebook this summer, because as an academic who specialized in technology and politics, he really had to know about such things. Sounded like a good reason to spend my time this week when I had oh-so many other things to do. Yeah, it was for work.

Really strange this Facebook thing. None of my friends from outside of the blogs are on it. I think only one person out of the 250 from my high school class has signed up for it. Only 12 from the college class of thousands. Yet, most of the academic bloggers are on it, which feels a little redundant. I find the whole asking people to be your friend thing a little freaky. It's the eighth grade dance all over again and nobody wants to dance with me. I have to admit spending some time reviewing other peoples' friends and monitoring the degrees of separation.

Then I just watched the McArdle - Drezner bloggingheads show. All sixty of minutes it, while the boys pretended to be characters in their video game and beat the crap out of each other in the next room. "Quiet down, kids. I have to hear what Megan and Dan have to say about sub-prime mortgages." I have to admit that I really liked it. Haven't been a huge fan of the bloggingheads show in general, but I think that bloggers are getting the kinks out and things are getting fun. My theory about blogging is that new players are no longer coming into the system, but the old ones who stick around are getting better and better.

OK, I'm going to do another post on the McArdle-Drezner blogginghead episode later tonight. They covered a lot of topics that we've been talking about around here, but haven't made it to the blog.

Drug Store

Last week, my buddy, Suze, worried that she had strep throat. She was feverish and her throat has hurt for a week. Since she's rarely sick, she did not have a regular doctor for sore throats and coughs. Her mom told her to go to the clinic at a CVS or Duane Reade. For some reason, there are none in New York City, while they are springing up all over the country. We talked for a while why might be the case. But we kept coming back to one point -- we loved the idea of these walk-in clinics.

Neither of us have regular doctors. She has bargain health program that nobody takes. And I am just not that organized. Getting a check up is always on the bottom of my to do list. So, when Steve and I get sick. We go to the walk-in doctors office, HealthNet. My parents also use a Doc in the Box. It's convenient.

As generally healthy people, I only go to the doctor for a strep test. I'm prone to it. Either I have the flu or strep and any nurse can tell me that. I really don't have the need for a doctor. I love the idea of going to CVS for the test where I can pick up a magazine and mascara while I wait. Predictably, the AMA is having a fit about it.

Spreadin' Love

Elizabeth points us to this photo series of families across the world and their weekly diet. Elizabeth is struck by how many family drink soda. I was struck by how difficult it was to guess which middle class families were American by looking solely at the clothes and hair styles. It's a GAP world.

Godwin's Law:  “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

My little corner of New Jersey is ground zero for Juicy Couture sweats, Prada sunglasses, and Coach purses. I am particularly fond of the women who wear all those items at the same time, while shuffling in their flipflops to get their lattes at Starbucks. Hasn't anyone alerted this women to the fact that if everyone is wearing the same thing, it is no longer cool? This book explains how this all happened, along with this fun fact -- Miuccia Prada was a Communist with a doctorate in political science when she took over her family’s small luxury goods business in 1978.

This story about Arthur Miller made me nauseous. (via John Holbo at CT)

Midweek Journal

I just tucked Ian into bed with all its necessary rituals and traditions. Bath, book, bed, momma-talk. For a while, he wanted a cup of water and ice in bed with him, but I think we're done with that one. Good. I can finally get rid of the last sippy cup from the cupboard.

Momma-talk is when he's all tucked in and the lights are out, I sit next to him and talk about everything that happened that. Tonight I said, "You had a whole bunch of fish for dinner tonight. You played with your toys in the bathtub. We read the Ratatouille book. You went to the gym with mommy. Mommy let you play with the DS. We went food shopping. Megan and Erin and Grandma came over." Then he added, "I scream reeeal loud. Run and hide."

When my nieces and mother rang the bell this afternoon, he slammed the door in their face and called them a monster. When I let them in, he screamed at the top of his lungs and hid in the basement. I am in the midst of writing a paper and badly needed some alone time in front of my computer. My mom came by to help me out for a couple of hours. When I drove off to the library with my laptop resting in the passenger seat, he sobbed, "I scream never again. I go to library, too. >Ian has been on and off for the past week or two. At times, he's been almost chatty. He was great on our vacation. And other times, he's been on edge screaming at the least infractions. If Jonah trips over one of the many trains carefully arranged on the tracks, he screams. If I turn off the TV, he screams. I've taken to marking Xs on a chart on the fridge again and giving timeouts on the stairs. I suppose he's worried about starting a new school.

In two weeks, Ian starts kindergarten. He'll be in a special classroom within a regular school. I'm still not sure that I've done the right thing by letting the district put him in this classroom. I am mainstream hardliner. I don't believe in segregating kids. And their program seems a little bootcampy for me with charts for progress and no recess. However, this program comes highly recommended. It is well funded. They say that they are committed to mainstreaming him for the academic subjects. They say that they are experienced with smart kids with disabilities. We'll see how it goes. It's certainly going to make my life easier to not train a regular education teacher. But then I feel guilty for thinking that.

Ian is not the only one on the verge of a major transition. I am, too. In two weeks, both of my kids will be in school full time. For the first time in seven and a half years, I will go for big chunks of the day without a kid in tow. I'll be teaching two classes with one new prep, so most of that time will be spent in my windowless office at school, but there will also be some free time. I will be able to finish my work during the week, so weekend will be free. Ian will have all his therapy at school, so I won't have to drive him around. I've been fantasizing about how I'll use that time.

Reason 267 Why We're Plotting A Move Back To NYC

According to this New York Magazine article, New Yorkers are living longer than other Americans. Yep. They walk fast. They don't drive. They go the park. It's easier to find like-minded people. There are better hospitals. More organic food. More cultural stimulation.

When I lived in the city, I smoked and drank. I saved money by living on egg and bacon sandwiches. But if I can counter balance the smokes and the bacon with a lot of fast walking, we're moving back. Now.

High School Musical Acid Trip

On Friday night, Steve and Jonah and I curled up on the sofa to watch High School Musical 2. I never saw the first one; my boys never cared about it. But I knew that the first one was supercool from my nieces and the girls on our block. I was very curious to see what all the hoopla was about.

I can see why this movie was so popular. It appeals to girls as they move from the horse and unicorn stage to the young gay boy stage.  Evidence A - the Hat and the Belt.

Evidence B - The Baseball Dance

This movie was jaw droppingly bad. Steve and I kept trying to stifle laughing, because Jonah was loving it. In addition to the homo-erotic subtext in the movie and horrendous wardrobe, The hokey editing transitions from the cheerful dialog to the over produced, studio songs cracked me up. As a bonus, we were treated to candid (wink, wink) conversation among the actors about how swell it was to film this movie. I feel quite certain that some enterprising college students were dropping acid while watching it.