Living Small

Absent Minded

Just about every morning, the first thing I do -- after brushing my teeth and getting dressed, is make a cup of tea. In theory, this is pretty simple: fill kettle and place on stove (with the burner on), put tea leaves in filter basket and place in mug, put hot water through the whole contraption, and wait four minutes. Most mornings, all the steps get done in their proper order and I have a nice cup of tea. Some mornings, though, I forget the filter basket and put the tea leaves right into the mug. If I realize what I've done before I pour in the water, the problem is easily remedied. What happens more often, though, is that I only realize four minutes later that I've got a cup of tea full of leaves, and then I have to strain it into another cup. This morning I managed to remember the filter basket: when the water boiled, I put the basket in the mug and the tea leaves in the basket, and set the timer for four minutes. When the timer went off, I went to remove the filter basket and only then realized that I had never poured the water in! Not such a good way to start the week.

The Fundamental Difference Between Men and Women

Aside from the physiologically obvious, is that men have a lot more pockets in their clothing, which makes it easier to carry around things like keys, cell phones, and wallets.  Women, on the other hand, have to either buy and carry a separate garment known as a purse (and we have to buy enough of them to be able to coordinate with any outfit) or just go around helpless.  I'm convinced that many of the social differences we observe between men and women stem from the unequal distribution of pockets.

Adding Fruit

One of the best things about traveling for work is the generous meal budgets we get. I had smoked salmon for breakfast nearly every morning I was in Seattle, and three-course dinners most nights. One thing that struck me at the restaurants I visited was the frequency with which fruit appeared in the main courses. I had risotto with blood orange and pizza with apple, and Sue had crab layered with grapefruit and avocado. Amazingly, despite the fact that I ate fish more than once a day while I was there, I came back wanting to eat yet more fish. David and I went out for sushi the night I got back, and tonight, inspired by my trip, I made this spinach salad with chevre vinaigrette, roasted red pepper, and satsuma:

Runway Time

In my recent travels, it seems that I have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting in airlanes on runways. Right now I'm in Seattle, waiting for freezing rain to end, after which we will get a second de-icing before we can take off. Between the freezing rain here and the thunderstorms in Detroit, March just seems like not the best month for flying. The good news is that the freezing rain just turned to snow, so we are heading back to de-ice (again) and should be able to take off after that, as long as the snow doesn't turn back to rain.

A Better Photo

Okay, I clearly haven't yet learned how to properly attach a photo using the TypePad app on my iPhone! Here is one that actually shows Oscar's adorable face. It doesn't quite seem possible to get his face and my socks into the frame at the same time...

More on Socks

Right after I posted yesterday morning about how my argyle socks are the only ones anyone compliments, I put on my stripey knee socks and headed off to the convention center, where I met another exhibitor who just couldn't get over my socks. His name is Oscar and his booth was near the entrance to the exhibit hall. Every time I walked by he made some kind of comment about the socks, and he was so cute that all I could do was blush and bat my eyelashes. Finally, my colleague Sue took a picture:

A Photo

Because Alex was right -- my last post was crying out for it.

Argyle Socks

I love skirts, but I probably only managed to wear one on a handful of occasions throughout 2008.  First it was too cold, then I was biking to work every day, and then it was too cold again.  But I recently made the discovery that if I layer knee socks over tights, I can wear a skirt (particularly a wool or denim skirt) without freezing on my commute to work.  So 2009 has become the year of knee socks.  I have glittery knee socks, stripey knee socks, polka-dotted knee socks, and argyle knee socks -- both with and without hearts!  The ones I get complimented on most often are the non-hearted argyles.  Everyone from my coworkers to the children of David's coworkers to random strangers seems to think they are just the coolest.  On a morning in Fort Collins, as I sat on a couch in the lobby of my hotel waiting to walk over to the University with my boss, a middle-aged man stopped to say, "nice outfit."  Last night, while crossing the street on my way to meet my friend Andy and his girlfriend Christine at the Dahlia Lounge, a man crossing the other way and wearing headphones said, "I like the argyles."  Sadly, I don't get the same comments on the sriped or polka-dotted knee socks, but it's so much fun to wear clothes that make the people around me smile!

Another Day in Seattle

Seattle Merchants
Originally uploaded by Emily Klancher Merchant.

The conference officially began this evening, with a reception in the exhibit hall, which meant that my colleague and I had yet another day to play around in Seattle. We began at a fairly pretentious breakfast place of which I was a bit dubious at first, as there were no other customers. But the food was excellent and by the time we left, there was one other family eating. We proceeded to the Seattle Public Library, arriving just as the doors opened. At that point, it appeared as though the entire homeless population of Seattle filtered in, heading to various parts of the building to check email, read want ads, etc. We made our way to the beginning of the spiral stacks and worked our way around and around, until we reached a sign informing us that we were at the highest viewing point, and then came down in the elevator. The library is rather ugly from the outside (I'll get a photo up on Flickr soon), but super-cool on the inside. Our next stop was the underground Seattle tour, definitely the most touristy thing we had done so far, but also a lot of fun. After that, we grabbed a quick Turkish lunch, wandered to the Seattle Art Museum but decided not to pay the admission fee, stocked up on fruit at Pike Place, and then returned to the hotel for a nap before our real work began.

The first few hours in the exhibit hall went well, and I even ran into someone I knew, though we were talking for about five minutes before I figured out exactly how I knew her. I think we have gotten really lucky with weather here, as the sun has been shining nonstop. Rain is predicted in the next couple of days, but that is probably okay -- we've had our playtime, and for the rest of the trip we will be mostly inside.

Further Travels

It seems that I was barely back in Ann Arbor for two days when I found myself at the airport again, this time heading to Seattle to staff the ICPSR exhibit booth at the biennial meeting of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Long-time readers might remember when I went to the same convention in Baltimore two years ago and returned with a whole new (second-hand) wardrobe. At the time, they announced that the 2009 meeting would be in Seattle, and I decided right then that I just HAD to go. After all, I grew up listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana and wearing flannels, and when I was younger it just seemed as though everything cool came from Seattle. But two years was a long time ago (1/15 th of my life) and in the intervening period I forgot all about ACRL and Seattle. Fortunately, however, the coworker u had gone to Baltimore with didn't forget and, when the colleague she was supposed to go to Seattle with ended up not being able to go, she asked me.

The first thing I did yesterday after checking in to my hotel (and calling David, of course) was going for a run along the waterfront. It was that rare sunny day in Seattle and there just happens to be a path from downtown that goes around the bay. I ended up running about twice as far as I had originally planned (though I didn't have my Garmin, so I don't really know how far it was) because I kept waiting for the path to end I'd loop back toward downtown. After about 35 minutes, when it was clear that neither would happen anytime soon, I turned around and went back the way I had come, though I zigzagged around town a bit to get my bearings and avoid six blocks straight uphill. When I returned to the hotel and told the doorman how far I had gone (he was the one who had recommended the path), he didn't seem at all impressed, but I was still proud of myself.

Today we checked out The Pike Place Market (photographed below) and tomorrow we will take the underground tour. What about the conference, you might be wondering? We will be there too. We managed to get the booth set up today, thanks to the nice folks at Greenwood Press, who let me borrow a chair to stand in in order to get the side panels hung. The exhibit hall opens tomorrow evening, so if any readers happen to be at the Trade Center tomorrow, stop by and say hi!