Geeky Mom

No one told me life would be this crazy at times. Maybe I could have predicted it based on my senior year in college (which was crazy), but life settled down after that. Until now.

No one told me that I’d be asked to pack lunches, attend award ceremonies, send in fruit and 2-liter bottles of soda to school all while trying to hold down a 9-5 job.

No one told me I would be helping create a board game while trying to write a dissertation because my child (like me and like his father) has put it off until the last minute.

No one told me I’d have a husband who travels and works a lot, leaving me with the juggling act (not that I don’t sometimes leave him with the act).

No one told me that visiting relatives, birthday parties and the busiest week at work would occur at exactly the same time like some kind of special planetary alignment.

No one told me I’d look around at my clutter and my stained and mismatched furniture and be thankful.

No one told me how much I’d wish for a day when there was really, truly nothing that needed to be done.

No one told me how much fun this would all be.

Apparently, if a congressman undergoes an unwarranted search, congress gets its panties in a wad. If we are wire tapped, however, it’s in the name of the war on terrorism and we should just deal. Don’t get me wrong, Congress should have its panties in a wad, but it takes an attack on one of its own before they wake up to reality. Welcome to 1984, ladies and gentlemen.

And if you work for the federal government, check your bill of rights at the door.

I’d say long day’s journey into night, but I don’t want to imply there’s alcohol involved. Today begins the summer multimedia program that I organize and lead. This week is boot camp for the students. We give them a foundation of information and then, by working on real projects, they continue learning the specifics of the multimedia applications that apply to their projects.

The program is fun and quite successful, but the first two weeks are always long. Teaching for 7 hours a day is hard and then the second week, there are always a million questions.

I’m also planning to squeeze in some work on the dissertation this week. I got part of my methodology section written and I’m hoping to work on some revsions of chapter 1 as well as take care of some paperwork stuff. It’s coming along and I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel–weird, even though it’s six months away!

I’m ever so glad I took an extra day off this weekend. I needed the rest. Unfortunately, I’ve also hurt my back from sitting in a bad chair for several hours at a time. I tossed and turned a bit last night because of this. I’ll be standing most of today and that definitely feels better than sitting, but I have a feeling, I’ll need a hot bath when I get home.

Last night, Mr. Geeky and Geeky Girl went to a movie, and Geeky Boy was spending the night at a friend’s house, leaving me with free reign over the tv. (By the way, we think our Tivo is dead; we’re all adjusting okay, thanks.) I flipped through the channels and settled on “Flip this House.” Flip this House is about buying a house, remodeling it and then selling it for twice what you bought it for. In other words, these people are in it for the money. The buyer and the contractor (who also stood to make a lot of money) were two of the most shallow people I’ve ever seen. The contractor drove a hummer. The buyer and his partner drove luxury cars as well. The house they purchased was in a gated community. They paid half a million for it and were hoping to sell it for nearly 2 million. They put in nearly half a million in remodeling. In order to sell it, they offered to host a party for the local symphony. They offered the symphony any money they made over a certain amount as a donation. Not once did the buyer talk about the good that would come from that donation. No, what he cared about was the fact that the people coming to the party were all potential buyers.

People who care so much about material possessions creep me out. In part, this is because my mother was (and to some extent still is) all about the material possessions. My dad likes stuff too, but it’s for different reasons. My mother, whenever she purcases something, thinks about how others will perceive it. It was, while I was growing up, important to her that me and my sister wear designer clothes. They said something about our status. Never mind that I was trying to avoid getting beaten up for those clothes. Our house, too, was all about other people’s perceptions of it. We had to have figurines and an interior decorator and an expensive dining room table and real silver. We almost never used these rooms, but they had to be there, to tell people that we could afford such things.

Now I think everyone thinks about how other people people perceive their clothes, their house, and other possessions a little bit. But I generally agonize over large purchases (e.g. the phones, which really weren’t that large) and I think more about how long it will last and the pleasure it might bring to myself or someone else. I spend a lot of time in my house, so when I think about getting something slightly larger, it’s not because I want to impress anyone, it’s because I want to increase my and my family’s enjoyment of the place where we spend a lot of time. I also want to be able to have space for friends and family to stay over night and other such amenities.

My father thinks this way too. He thinks in terms of how much will he enjoy something. Now, he has enough income to not have to worry over the price the way I usually do, but still, his first thought is not, “Everyone will envy me,” but “I’m really going to enjoy this.” He’s actually been downgrading his houses over the last decade.

The other thing about me and my father is that we also try to give away as much money as we can. My father donates a great deal to many local charities and we give about 1% (should really be more than that. sigh.) of our income to various charities as well as donating many of our possessions (clothes, etc.) to various charities.

I don’t know about my mother, but I think it unlikely that she’s donating money. Despite being fairly comfortable financially, she thinks of herself as poor.

Around here, you can throw a stone and hit a sizeable mansion. I often wonder if they’re mainly status symbols or if the people living there truly enjoy that rather large possession. I almost never see people in or around these houses, unlike the small houses in our neighborhood where people are out on their porches, in their backyards and putzing around their gardens every nice weekend. They enjoy their stuff. It allows them to enjoy the people around them.

I have no real easy conclusions here. Flip this House brought out my prejudice, and I do think of it as a prejudice, against rich people. I am envious of their ability to spend money without thinking, but it makes me angry to think they then don’t appreciate what they’ve bought and that they don’t contribute money to those who might really need it. I realize this is a gross generalization. I will likely never be rich, at least not in the way that affords me a 6,000 sq. ft. house, but if I am, I hope to appreciate it more and to use my wealth to help make the world a better place rather than simply to buy more stuff.

Well, we did it. We got new phones. It ended up being cheaper than the deals I was finding online and it’s going to be cheaper per month. We called Sprint before we left and they didn’t want to offer us anything. Sad.

So we switched to Cingular and so far so good. We got these phones. Mine’s pink. Mr. Geeky’s is black. I thought about getting a more neutral color, but I like bright colors. My first phone was red. I wish they made purple.

We did okay in terms of buying blue but not great. In terms of our spending, cell phones don’t amount to much. I’m looking at switching my spending on other things. Groceries is going to be the hardest. Both of the area grocery stores are seriously red. I could shop at Trader Joe’s or there’s another local chain that isn’t bad, but it’s far away.

In trying to find alternatives, I’ve realized that corporations are generally red-friendly because the Republicans tend to give them tax breaks and help them oppose unions and other fair labor practices. Basically, I can’t buy anything from these people. I’m going to have to resort to making everything myself. Sigh.

Yesterday morning, when I went upstairs to check on the kids, I found the following note:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Due to extremely high weather conditions in my room, we have moved our base downstairs. Thank you.

Geeky Boy and Friend

I found them asleep on the couch.

As we were driving around on our errands yesterday, Mr. Geeky was talking about getting a convertable so he could look young and hip. As he was saying this, one pulled up next to us at the light.

GG: Look, Dad, there’s one.
MG: Yeah, but they’re old. (the men in the car were probably 60-ish.)
GG: They’re not *really* old; they have hair.

Let’s just say it’s a good thing we weren’t moving at the time (and that the windows were up).

I spent the morning working on the diss, both writing and crunching some numbers. It’s not that I’m bad at math, but I’m bad at dealing with data, so Mr. Geeky has been helping with that. Everyone should have to use math in relation to something they care about. That’s what I think.

After that, we dropped Geeky Boy at a park to hang out with a friend and then we went off to run some errands. Primarily we had to replace our patio table which was destroyed in a freak accident in the winter when it shattered in a million pieces. So, naturally, we had to swing through Best Buy to replace our DVD player which died at least 6 months ago. Of course, we had to walk past the cell phones.

Mr. Geeky and I have matching phones that we purchased more than 2 years ago. It’s time for an upgrade. We glanced at the phones briefly and passed by. But then, after another round of picking up one kid and kids coming and going from one place to another, we were sitting at our new table and we started really thinking that maybe we do want to get new phones. So I hopped online to see what the costs were.

Interestingly, if you switch carriers, the costs decrease dramatically. Even if you offer to enter into a 2-year contract with your same carrier, you cannot get the discounts you can get as a new customer. How wrong is that?!

So then, we tossed around the idea that maybe we’d get rid of our landline and while we’re at it, maybe we can cut back on the cable. We really don’t watch that much tv. And then, I was poking around some more and thought, maybe I should try to buy responsibly. So I went to BuyBlue to check out my preferred providers and stores. Let me just say, it doesn’t look good. Most of the carriers I’m considering are either completely red or half and half. Here’s the list.

Working Assets looks like the best option in terms of “blueness” but they only have four phones to choose from. Sigh. Being a responsible consumer is hard. The deck is stacked against you. Maybe I’ll just contribute whatever I spend on the phones to some worthy cause.

Unfortunately, I’ve continued my pattern of watching movies that piss me off. Last night I watched Wal-Mart: The high cost of Low Price. I knew a lot about the facts they presented, having lived in Wal-Mart land for 6 years, but they really put a human face on the loss of small businesses and the harsh and unfair treatment of employees. I used to teach a series of essays on the “Wal Mart debate.” Pissed me off then. Still pisses me off. I haven’t been in a Wal-Mart in forever, but I will never go in one again.

Speaking of corporate greed. Don’t think the Enron judgement is going to solve all our problems. As a reverand said in the Wal-Mart movie, remember “The love of money is the root of evil.” Not money itself. The love of money. And CEOs love money and they get lots of it. I truly can’t understand how a CEO who makes tens of millions of dollars while his employees live below the poverty level can sleep at night. This slate article makes clear that we still have to keep our eye on the corporate ball.

If you’re an AT&T customer, I’d switch today. Though this came out earlier (this week? last week?), it’s been confirmed that AT&T was definitely cooperating with the government on the NSA wiretapping program. If you read what Wired has to say, you’ll definitely feel a chill up your spine. Back when the program was revealed, I wrote my phone companies. Their responses were fairly unsatisfactory.  We have to keep fighting this.

There is a little good news.  A court ruled that yes, bloggers have the same privileges as journalists. In the Blogger vs. Apple case, a judge has said that Apple cannot use the trade secret law to get the Blogger to reveal his source and that sometimes revealing trade secrets is in the public interest. (See AT&T above!)

And the net neutrality bill is one step closer to being passed. It made it out of committee and will likely go before the full house in the next couple of weeks. I still need to read up a little more on this, but it definitely seems like we’re headed in the right direction.

I have to say that Memorial Weekend is a perfect weekend to fight for your freedom. That’s what the veterans we honor have done. If we don’t, then we’re likely not to have a memorial weekend. We will instead have the two minutes’ hate on a daily basis.

If you haven’t read Ira Socol’s Inside Higher Ed piece today, you should. The topic of the article itself is, of course, near and dear to my heart, being about the appropriate use of technology in education. It’s really about focusing on teaching and learning rather than being afraid of Google (or MySpace or blogs or . . .). There’s quite a big discussion in the comments as well. What is everyone’s obsession with spelling. I find the whole obsession with spelling a bit classist. Yes, spelling well might show something about your intelligence, but not much. If you’re and* egregious misspeller, then it might be worth working on that skill, but if you occasionally misspell a word, big deal. One or two misspellings in a paper is not going to lower its grade, but 20 or so is going to be problematic. And it’s going to tell me the student didn’t even bother to use spell check. I find the comparison of spelling to algebra rather ludicrous. Maybe basic addition. Writing a complex sentence is more like algebra. Writing a poem is like calculus.

And what’s with the memorization thing. I have a lot of information in my head. I did not memorize it. I learned it. I remembered it because I connected it to other things in my head or to experiences in my life. I impressed a professor once because I could repeat almost word for word a passage in Sidney’s Defense of Poesie. It wasn’t that I’d made an effort to memorize it. If I had, I would have failed, I’m sure. It was just memorable to me.

One of the commenters, in response to my comment that we shouldn’t use paper because it, too, like the computer, is subject to damage and failure, suggested we rely on oral exams. I say, fine. I argued before that I think we should teach students presentation/public speaking skills. But we shouldn’t just teach them that. They should be able to communicate effectively in a number of ways, using different media and methods. Writing an email is different from writing a report is different from presenting a poster, etc. Learning, in the way Socol suggests, would allow students to think on their feet. They will have developed skills to analyze a situation, search their head for appropriate responses and perform effectively.

I don’t get why people get so freaked out about this stuff. It’s like Chicken Little. Yes, it might be true that things will change as a result of the emerging technology. Libraries might become more virtual than physical. More work may take place online; it might even be (gasp) collaborative. But really, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

I definitely think the virtual life that students lead needs to be contended with and challenged and channeled appropriately. Just like a kid who watches only sitcoms and thinks problems can be solved in 30 minutes to accompanying laughtrack, a kid who spends all their time in MySpace might think that writing is the equivalent of leaving a message. There’s a place for that type of writing and communication. What we need to do is find a way to make that a gateway to something better, rather than just dismissing it as unworthy.

*Mr. Geeky caught this. So do you think me any less intelligent?